'^ FLOWERS AND THEIR SOUL 177 



their senses trained they would, as adults, find 

 this a very much more interesting world than 

 most persons do now. Though we look on sight 

 as the most important sense, few of us learn 

 even to see, except vaguely. If you don't 

 believe this, read, for example, Ruskin's chap- 

 ters on clouds, in his Modern Painters. You 

 will marvel at the many beauties of nature he 

 saw which had escaped your notice. You look 

 vaguely at the mouths of men and women you 

 talk to, but you do not see the subtle move- 

 ments which enable a deaf person to read on 

 your lips every word addressed to him. 



I never fully realized how shamefully I had 

 neglected my sense of touch till I saw a copy of 

 my Chopin as reprinted for the blind. The 

 groups of dots which tell the whole story to 

 those who cannot see were not distinguished by 

 my dull finger tips. But, thank Heaven, I did 

 learn from my infancy to use my senses of sight, 

 hearing, and smell. Had I not done so, I should 

 not have seen all the entrancing things in 

 women and scenery that impelled me to write 

 five books about them; I should not have 

 recorded my enthusiasm for good music in half 

 a dozen volumes, nor spent several years of my 

 life collecting facts to prove, in Food and 

 Flavor, that nine-tenths of our enjoyment of 

 food is due to the sense of smell, exercised in a 

 way of which most people haven't the faintest 

 consciousness. 



