Page:Percival Lowell - an afterglow.djvu/72

Percival Lowell I am up in the study on Mars' Hill, listening to the ticking of the clock and looking at the room and its setting without. As I can see you reading, it is natural that I should speak to you and this is a case where the pen is mightier than the (s)word.

It is a last quiet study afternoon here, for tomorrow the Limited that we see rolling down to the station below with its long-drawn whistle should be taking me in a moment eastward too.

A tall yellow flower—the single-blossomed one—nods to me out of one window, while Indian paint-brushes blush at me from without the other. There are numbers of the last this year, more than I ever saw before. Paint-brush Point you remember—where the earliest are found is carpeted with them and from the rock where the very first always appear. I yesterday plucked one which I shall tuck between these sheets when this goes into its mailbag sleep.

Yesterday evening we had a mass meeting in the court house to rouse the people to advance the town,—the meeting, of which the clipping already sent you recounted the futurity. Doe and I spoke, Doe outdoing himself and the thing was a success. A committee was appointed to draw up a petition of the A. T. & S. F. Ry. Co. to build a suitable tour- 54