234 IDLE DAYS IN PATAGONIA 



sky and scattered their pale yellow stars in mil- 

 lions over the surface of the tall sere grass. 



I do not say that this shock of pleasure I have 

 described, this vivid reproduction of a long past 

 scene, is experienced each time I smell the flower ; 

 it is experienced fully only at long intervals, after 

 weeks and months, when the fragrance is, so to 

 speak, new to me, and afterwards in a lesser de- 

 gree on each repetition, until the feeling is ex- 

 hausted. If I continue to smell again and again 

 at the flower, I do it only as a spur to memory; 

 or in a mechanical way, just as a person might 

 always walk along a certain path with his eyes 

 fixed on the ground, remembering that he once 

 on a time dropped some valuable article there, 

 and although he knows that it was lost irrecover- 

 ably, he still searches the ground for it. 



Other vegetable odors affect me in a similar 

 way, but in a very much fainter degree, except in 

 one or two cases. Thus, the Lombardy poplar was 

 one of the trees I first became acquainted with in 

 childhood, and it has ever since been a pleasure 

 to me to see it; but in spring, when its newly 

 opened leaves give out their peculiar aroma, for 

 a moment, when I first smell it, I am actually a 

 boy again, among the tall poplar trees, their my- 

 riads of heart-shaped leaves rustling to the hot 

 November wind, and sparkling like silver in the 

 brilliant sunshine. More than that, I am in that 

 visionary moment, clinging fast to the slim verti- 

 cal branches, high above the earth, forty or fifty 



