exactitude of balance than mutual absorption; not so much by a mingled unity as from our impotence to unravel the main threads, to single out any one streak of color. It is like a nobody’s child, a Ginx’s baby, with a whole parish for parents; or one of those puddings which at every mouthful might be sworn to change its taste, and which when finished leaves one indelible but impalpable fragrance on the memory of the palate, that may be called up by every passing odor, but is never in its composite singularity again encountered. It is a lost chord.
In the West no such community of fragrance obtains, and the great science of perfume, though exquisitely perfected in certain details, does not command as in the East the attention of the masses. With us it is the exception to use scent, but with them the singular person is the scentless one. The nose nevertheless plan’s an important part even in Europe, and it is well, therefore, that this feature has at last found one courageous apostle.
Dr. Jäger, a professor of Stuttgart, has, after most patient experiments with his own nose, proved it to be the seat of his soul. Simply with the nose on his face the learned professor is enabled, eyes shut and ears stopped, to discriminate the character of any stranger he may meet, or even that he has passed in the street. He can, then, by merely putting his nose to the keyhole, tell what the people on the other side of the door are doing; and, more than this, what they have just been doing, can assure himself whether they are young or old, married or single, and whether they are happy or the reverse. Proceeding upon the knowledge thus acquired by a process which we may call successful
