Page:Dan McKenzie - Aromatics and the Soul.pdf/169

Rh the air is damp and chilly ; visual, for it is a blank, a negative, and yet a powerful influence ; olfactory, smelling ominous and of death. Old dried bones emit precisely the same exhalation. In a subtle way, too, the presence of mould is perceptible, all blending into the horrible and grisly atmosphere of despair; the Valse Triste and the Dance of Death.

Smell can bring as certainly and as irresistibly as music emotions of all sorts to the mind.

In this same category we may place the dusty smell of a dry hay-loft, which is curiously like that of bitter almonds and hydrocyanic acid. It has a sensation like ghostly fingers fumbling about your neck with a threat, half playful, half serious, of suffocation, And, curiously enough, the mental feeling of throttling fingers is not amiss. Prussic acid kills by paralysing the respiratory centres.

Let us get out into fresh air again ! The sun is shining. A gentle breeze from the west is snowing the lawn with fragrant hawthorn blossoms. I catch a whiff of delicate lilac, and see coming towards me over the grass a slender figure in white. …

And so we close with the perfumes of the spring, sunshine, and beauty.