Читать книгу Revisiting the Earth - James Langdon Hill - Страница 28

Table of Contents

I read in an old legend that a Damascus Blade gave forth both sparks and perfume. My sense of smell was always exceedingly acute. It has guarded me often against exposure. I can instantly detect invisible forms of peril. I knew a way to find out about those qualities of a Damascus Blade. A boy is always ready to educate himself by the use of his sense perceptions, and is particularly prompt with taste and smell. I had from the first a rare, refreshing pleasure from flowers, perfumes, aromatic materials producing a sweet odor when burned and the smell of fruits. I used to love the fragrance of new hay and of the freshly plowed ground and of the earth when moistened by a quick summer shower, the scented fumes wafted from the land when approached from the ocean, and the fishy smell of the shore when you have reached it. The odor of a well-kept light harness when well warmed up on a fine gaited horse, and the odor of the varnish on the carriage, I, to this hour, remember from my boyhood days. I loved the intensity of odors so peculiar, so unlike those of summer, that we used to notice after the frost had fallen, when the winter was at hand, and the aroma of the woods having been first imprisoned, was exhaled by a warm sun, in a cloud of incense. All the sense perceptions were wide open to the mind. We were constantly learning. Life was a school without recesses or vacations and had a full corps of instructors in all the departments.

"Speak to the earth and it shall teach thee." "There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices in the world, and none of them is without signification."