Page:Dan McKenzie - Aromatics and the Soul.pdf/167

Rh time. Perhaps not, if we happen to be geniuses. But the mischief is that the rest of your family deny (with oaths) the major premiss, and the prophet - without - honour consolation prize is but a poor substitute for the loss of comfortable eternities dozed away beside the lazy kine.

Some time in the ’eighties of last century a French professor (Jaccoud) recommended the air of a byre as beneficial in phthisis.

I have known worse cures.

Why do not the perfume-makers present us with more of these gateways to Paradise, short cuts beside which De Quincey’s laudanum in the waistcoat-pocket is but a by-path to hell? We might be given odours of peace and contentment—think of them in the hands of a clever wife ! We might make libraries of them as people make libraries of gramophone records. So far all we have are flower scents, like roses, lilies, violets, and outlandish Eastern aromata, redolent rather of vice and its excitements than of virtue and its placidity.

Then there is the scent of thyme and roses in the farm garden. This brings to me old Sundays and ladies passing the open garden-gate on their way to church, with their Bible carefully wrapped up in a clean pocket-handkerchief, bearing with