perfumer, like all the fine arts, suffered an eclipse. "The odor of
sanctity" was in highest esteem and what that odor was may be imagined
from reading the lives of the saints. But in the course of centuries the
refinements of life began to seep back into Europe from the East by
means of the Arabs and Crusaders, and chemistry, then chiefly the art of
cosmetics, began to revive. When science, the greatest democratizing
agent on earth, got into action it elevated the poor to the ranks of
kings and priests in the delights of the palate and the nose. We should
not despise these delights, for the pleasure they confer is greater, in
amount at least, than that of the so-called higher senses. We eat three
times a day; some of us drink oftener; few of us visit the concert hall
or the art gallery as often as we do the dining room. Then, too, these
primitive senses have a stronger influence upon our emotional nature
than those acquired later in the course of evolution. As Kipling puts
it:

Smells are surer than sounds or sights
To make your heart-strings crack.




VI

CELLULOSE


Organic compounds, on which our life and living depend, consist chiefly
of four elements: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. These compounds
are sometimes hard to analyze, but when once the chemist has ascertained