tic mornings that my teacher and I spent wandering in the fields,
while I learned new words and the names of things. Smell is a potent
wizard that transports us across a thousand miles and all the years we
have lived. The odour of fruits wafts me to my Southern home, to my
childish frolics in the peach orchard. Other odours, instantaneous and
fleeting, cause my heart to dilate joyously or contract with remembered
grief. Even as I think of smells, my nose is full of scents that start
awake sweet memories of summers gone and ripening grain fields far away.

The faintest whiff from a meadow where the new-mown hay lies in the hot
sun displaces the here and the now. I am back again in the old red barn.
My little friends and I are playing in the haymow. A huge mow it is,
packed with crisp, sweet hay, from the top of which the smallest child
can reach the straining rafters. In their stalls beneath are the farm
animals. Here is Jerry, unresponsive, unbeautiful Jerry, crunching his
oats like a true pessimist, resolved to find his feed not good--at least
not so good as it ought to be. Again I touch Brownie, eager, grateful
little Brownie, ready to leave the juiciest fodder for a pat, straining
his beautiful, slender neck for a caress. Near by stands Lady Belle,
with sweet, moist mouth, lazily extracting the sealed-up cordial from
timothy and clover, and dreaming of deep June pastures and murmurous
streams.

The sense of smell has told me of a coming storm hours before there was
any sign of it visible. I notice first a throb of expectancy, a slight
quiver, a concentration in my nostrils. As the storm draws nearer, my
nostrils dilate the better to receive the flood of earth-odours which
seem to multiply and extend, until I feel the splash of rain against my
cheek. As the tempest departs, receding farther and farther, the odours
fade, become fainter and fainter, and die away beyond the bar of space.

I know by smell the kind of house we enter. I have recognized an
old-fashioned country house because it has several layers of odours,
left by a succession of families, of plants, perfumes, and draperies.

In the evening quiet there are fewer vibrations than in the daytime, and
then I rely more largely upon smell. The sulphuric scent of a match
tells me that the lamps are being lighted. Later I note the wavering
trail of odour that flits about and disappears. It is the curfew signal;
the lights are out for the night.

Out of doors I