sights, and sounds, and thoughts of by-gone times awaiting only the
whiff from some latticed gateway, some closed-in court to spring again
into exuberant life. If only we are ready for the great moment!

As for the odour of the burning wastage of the fields at evening I
scarcely know if I dare say it. I find it produces in the blood of me a
kind of primitive emotion, as though it stirred memories older than my
present life. Some drowsy cells of the brain awaken to a familiar
stimulus--the odour of the lodge-fire of the savage, the wigwam of the
Indian. Racial memories!

But it is not the time of the day, nor the turn of the season, nor yet
the way of the wind that matters most but the ardour and glow we
ourselves bring to the fragrant earth. It is a sad thing to reflect that
in a world so overflowing with goodness of smell, of fine sights and
sweet sounds, we pass by hastily and take so little of them. Days pass
when we see no beautiful sight, hear no sweet sound, smell no memorable
odour: when we exchange no single word of deeper understanding with a
friend. We have lived a day and added nothing to our lives! A blind,
grubbing, senseless life--that!

It is a strange thing, also, that instead of sharpening the tools by
which we take hold of life we make studied efforts to dull them. We seem
to fear life and early begin to stop our ears and close our eyes lest we
hear and see too much: we clog our senses and cloud our minds. We seek
dull security and ease and cease longer to desire adventure and
struggle. And then--the tragedy of it--the poet we all have in us in
youth begins to die, the philosopher in us dies, the martyr in us dies,
so that the long, long time beyond youth with so many of us becomes a
busy death. And this I think truer of men than of women: beyond forty