Page:Dan McKenzie - Aromatics and the Soul.pdf/161

Rh that make up a complex domiciliary atmosphere, but everybody must have noticed that basement houses smell differently from bungalows, the former greeting you with a harmonious blend of earthiness, soapsuds, and sinks.

Nay ! The house you live in has a separate odour for each room : the drawing-room with its chintzes ; the snuggery with its stale tobacco, and, perhaps, like an insinuating nudge, with a whiff of the stronger alcohols; the bedrooms, if your housekeeper knows her business, with the freshness of well-aired linen.

The very days of the week have each its own particular olfactory mark, dating from our childhood : Sundays (in Scotland), peppermint followed by roast beef and richness; Mondays, pickles and soapsuds ; Tuesday, the damp airs from the washing hung up to dry ; Wednesdays, warmth and beeswax from the laundry, with ever and anon the thump of the flat iron ; Thursdays, bread new from the baker and the washing of floors with soft soap—“Mind yer feet, now!”—Fridays, jam-boiling and the never-to-be-forgotten aroma of oat-cakes on the girdle ; Saturdays—but Saturday is a day of wind and banging doors, of tops and dust ; all its smells are out of doors.

Shops, too ! What of the coffee-shop ?—Who does not pause a moment at that door when the