PERFUME OF AN EVENING PRIMROSE 233 



horizontal steins and a profusion of small sym- 

 metrical flowers. 



All this about the plant, and much more, with 

 many scenes and events of the past, are suggested 

 to my mind by the flower in my hand; but while 

 these scenes and events are recalled with pleasure, 

 it is a kind of mental pleasure that we frequently 

 experience, and very slight in degree. But when I 

 approach the flower to my face and inhale its per- 

 fume, then a shock of keen pleasure is experienced, 

 and a mental change so great that it is like a 

 miracle. For a space of time so short that if it 

 could be measured it would probably be found to 

 occupy no more than a fraction of a second, I am 

 no longer in an English garden recalling and con- 

 sciously thinking about that vanished past, but 

 during that brief moment time and space seem 

 annihilated and the past is now. I am again on 

 the grassy pampas, where I have been sleeping 

 very soundly under the stars, would that I could 

 now sleep as soundly under a roof! It is the 

 moment of wakening, when my eyes are just open- 

 ing to the pure over-arching sky, flushed in its 

 eastern half with tender color ; and at the moment 

 that nature thus reveals itself to my vision in its 

 exquisite morning beauty and freshness, I am 

 sensible of the subtle primrose perfume in the air. 

 The blossoms are all about me, for miles and for 

 leagues on that great level expanse, as if the 

 morning wind had blown them out of that eastern 



