Page:Percival Lowell - an afterglow.djvu/121

An Afterglow

Poor Dr. Slipher this morning! He is now living in the violet room and as you know the photographic basement trap-door opens just outside it. This he had shut himself on going to bed having found it open. On getting up for Mars at 4:45 he opened his door and stepped right do^n into the abyss, Mr. L. having opened the door in the meantime and forgotten to close it. He had an awful fall and for two hours was in agony. He is now better and is sitting in the new library, opposite me, before the fire. Severe bruises, I believe, are all, fortunately.

After a spell of ten days of impossibility of observation, Mr. E. C. Slipher and I began again last night and finding the seeing not so good as we had expected went to bed to rise again early this morning. He is now developing one of the photographs we took this A. M. The canals are ever so much more evident than they were last opposition. Soon I shall send you prints of drawings and photographs.

Plate has just been developed; canals show fairly well about the eye of Mars. 93