Page:Under the Sun.djvu/333

Rh sympathy, by some magnetic relation between like and like, the result of natural affinities. It may be that each Hindoo is flint to the other’s steel, and that more than one is requisite for the combustion of the aromatic particles; and that, as evening draws the perfume from flowers, and excitement the “bouquet” from a muskrat, contiguity and congregation are required for the proper expression of the fragrance of Orientals. Cases of individuals innocent of all savor carry therefore no weight, unless to those who believe that all asses can speak because Balaam’s quadruped was casually gifted with articulate utterance, or that fish as a rule possess stentorian lungs because Mr. Briggs once caught a pike that barked.

A notable point about this Eastern savor is that, though it approaches many others, it exactly resembles none. Like Elia’s burnt pig, it doesn’t smell of burnt cottage, nor yet of any known herb, weed, or flower. Though unique, its entity is intertwisted with a host of phantom entities, as a face seen in a passing train, instantly recognized but never brought home to any one person from its partial resemblance to a hundred; and they say that no number of qualified truths can ever make up an absolute verity. By smelling a musk-rat through a bunch of garlic an idea of it may be arrived at, but hardly more; for the conflicting odors hamper the judgment by distracting the nostrils, keeping it hovering in acute uncertainty between the components without allowing it to settle on the aggregate — “so blended and running into each other, that both together make but one ambrosial result or common substance.” This seems to be affected not by an actual confusion of matters but by parallel existence; rather by the nice