Page:Dan McKenzie - Aromatics and the Soul.pdf/154

142 It is true that we can get on quite well without smelling. Probably congenital anosmia is the least crippling of all sense-deprivations. But how much it enters into our enjoyment of life when we have once possessed it is shown by the blankness that attends its loss ; we feel then as if a tint had been bleached out of the world.

At this juncture we may stay a moment to allude to the action of tobacco on olfaction. There are few people nowadays who would uphold King Jamie's “Counterblaste,” wherein he denounces smoking as—

“as custome loathsome to the Eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmefull to the Braine, dangerous to the Lungs, and in the black stinking fume thereof, necrest rescmbling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is botlomlesse.”

But, in fact, regarding the influence of the tobacco-habit on the sense there is a conflict of opinion. Some say it dulls olfaction; others, it has no deleterious effect. My own experience would lead me to agree with the former opinion.

We now proceed with our memories.

Who does not become a boy again when the fragrance of a gardener’s bonfire fills the air ? In my own case when I smell it my eyes begin to smart and to water, and I hear the laughter and shouts of my brothers as, daring the wrath of