Page:Under the Sun.djvu/336

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312
Idle Hours under the Punkah.

circle. Dr. Jäger, however, has brought the whole gamut of smells under his own control; and so, by letting out from his pocket any one he chooses, he can at once dissolve an assembly in tears or make every face in it ripple with smiles. The great secret of composition once attained, care in uncorking is all that is demanded; and the professor, with his pocket full of little bottles, can move about unsuspected among his kind, and, by his judicious emission of various smells as he goes along, can tranquilize a frantic mob, or set the passing funeral giggling, or a Punch-and-Judy audience sobbing.

Hitherto the nose has been held, as compared with the other organs of sense, in very slight account indeed. It has always been looked upon as the shabby feature of the face, and, in public society, has been spoken of with an apology for mentioning it. Many attempts have been made to render it respectable, but the best-intentioned efforts of philosophers have been thwarted by the extremes to which their theories have been pushed by the longer-nosed individuals of the public. The nose may be really an index of character, but the amount of nose does not necessarily imply, as some people contend, a corresponding pre-eminence of genius or virtue. Many great and good men have had quite indifferent noses, while the length of the proboscis of more than one hero of the Chamber of Horrors is remarkable. The feeling against this feature has, therefore, been irritated rather than soothed by the well-meant efforts of theorists. When the urchin, innocent of art, wishes, with his simple chalk, to caricature the householder upon his gate-post or garden-door, he finds in the nose the most suitable object for his unskilled derision. Grown up, the same