Page:Percival Lowell - an afterglow.djvu/31



His best friend in the far West was Judge Edward M. Doe, of Flagstaff; and his own words: "We insensibly find those persons congenial whose ideas resemble ours, and gravitate to them as leaves on a pond do to one another, nearer and nearer until they touch," are exemplified by this friendship. He found there, in the wilds, this learned gentleman. And his greatest delight was to dine with him, picnic, climb the mountains, scan the cañons, or what not, and discuss at large with him subjects of law. Indeed so well versed was Dr. Lowell, legally, that an outsider overhearing these conversations would have thought him a member of the bar or mistaken him for a judge himself.

Hundreds of people have felt the spell of Dr. Lowell's personal magnetism. So puissant was it that his presence was often felt even before he entered the room! He himself has said: "About certain people there exists a subtle something which leaves its impress indelibly upon the consciousness of all who come in contact with them. This something is a power, but a power of so indefinable a description that we beg definition by calling it simply the personality of the man. It is not a matter of subsequent reasoning, but of direct perception. We feel it. Sometimes it charms us; sometimes it repels. But we can no more be oblivious to it than we can to the temperature of the air. Its possessor