Page:Percival Lowell - an afterglow.djvu/79

An Afterglow

Your note, though only two hours after me in starting, was days behind before it got here, only arriving yesterday. This is the penalty one pays for taking the fastest boat. Was it not fortunate I did not take that of three days before and then the midnight train to London? Had I done so I should have made a farther journey to a land whence there is no return.

Here engagements multiply as I stay. One of the first things I did was to run across Millet who is trying to get the English Admiralty to adopt the submarine sound signal and seems to be succeeding. I see much of him, and yesterday he took me to tea at the Alma Tadema's who, whether primed by him or not, welcomed me as the Martian. Yesternight I dined with Kellogg, the man whose picture is in the left-hand corner of my desk, coming last winter from London. It was a pleasant little affair of six, Mr. and Mrs. Foster,—he the son of the celebrated surgeon, Sir Michael Foster, and she the former wife of Governor Russell—among the company.

This morning comes a note from Sir Robert Ball asking me to lunch and dine in Cambridge next Sunday,—also last night a telegram to lunch with Lady Playfair on Thursday. 59