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150 beans are roasting? One of the richest of all odours that; curious how you lose it in the beverage ! Then there is the ironmonger’s, where the sharp smell of steel strikes, by some strange reflex, the upper incisor teeth and gums; the oil and colour shop, with its putty, turpentine, and general clamminess ; and, last and best of all, the druggist’s !

What about the fried fish-shop ? Faugh ! I once for a reason connected with my calling had cause to spend a whole night in a room above a fish-shop—once only. The next time (there never will be a next time, she swears, but there always is)—the next time I happened, curiously enough, to arrive late !

But although houses and rooms and, as we hinted, streets also, all smell differently, each town and city has its own peculiar fundamental odour. There is a town in Yorkshire that smells of “mungo.” I know another that smells of mineral oil, and many that exhale the dank smell of the coal-mine.

London has a smell of its own, a fundamental familiar odour, which, by the way, has changed of late. Twenty years ago it was faintly acid with a background of horses and harness. To-day it is a mixture of tar and burned lubricating oil, by no means so pleasant. In addition to these, however, there is another and less prominent odour