many women just begin to awaken to power and beauty, but most men beyond
that age go on dying. The task of the artist, whether poet, or musician,
or painter, is to keep alive the perishing spirit of free adventure in
men: to nourish the poet, the prophet, the martyr, we all have in us.

One's sense of smell, like the sense of taste, is sharpest when he is
hungry, and I am convinced also that one sees and hears best when
unclogged with food, undulled with drink, undrugged with smoke. For me,
also, weariness, though not exhaustion, seems to sharpen all the
senses. Keenness goes with leanness. When I have been working hard or
tramping the country roads in the open air and come in weary and hungry
at night and catch the fragrance of the evening along the road or upon
the hill, or at barn-doors smell the unmilked cows, or at the doorway,
the comfortable odours of cooking supper how good that all is! At such
times I know Esau to the core: the forthright, nature-loving, simple man
he was, coming in dabbled with the blood of hunted animals and hungry
for the steaming pottage.

It follows that if we take excessive joys of one sense, as of taste,
nature, ever seeking just balances, deprives us of the full enjoyment of
the others, "I am stuffed, cousin," cries Beatrice in the play, "I
cannot smell." "I have drunk," remarks the Clown in Arcady, "what are
roses to me?" We forget that there are five chords in the great scale of
life--sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch and--few of us ever master
the chords well enough to get the full symphony of life, but are
something like little pig-tailed girls playing Peter Piper with one
finger while all the music of the universe is in the Great Instrument,
and all to be had for the taking.

Of most evil odours, it can be said that they are temporary or