PERFUME OF AN EVENING PEIMEOSE 237 



house, let us say, is looked at again after a long 

 interval, it does not, unless seen in a new setting, 

 create a new image distinct from the old and 

 faded one, but covers the former image, so to 

 speak, the preexistent picture, and may therefore, 

 be said to freshen it. Most of the impressions we 

 receive are no doubt very transitory, but it is cer- 

 tainly an error that all our mental pictures, not 

 freshened in the way described, fade and disap- 

 pear, since it is in the experience of every one 

 of us that many mental pictures of scenes looked 

 at once only, and in some cases only for a few 

 moments, remain persistently in the mind. But 

 the remembered scenes or objects do not present 

 themselves to the mental eye perfect and in their 

 first vivid colors, except on very rare occasions; 

 they are like certain old paintings that always 

 look dark and obscured until a wet sponge is 

 passed over them, whereupon for a short time 

 they recover their clearness of outline and bril- 

 liancy of color. In recalling the past, emotion 

 plays the part of the wet sponge, and it is excited 

 most powerfully in us when we encounter, after a 

 long interval, some once familiar odor associated 

 in some way with the picture recalled. But\ why? 

 Not finding an answer in the books, I am compelled 

 to seek for one, true or false, in the wild&rness of 

 my own mind. 



The reason, I imagine, is that while smells are 

 so much to us they cannot, like things seen and 

 things heard, be reproduced in the mind, but are 





