244 Idle Days in Patagonia. 



of its own accord." Probably it is a fact that when 

 any scene, not yet lost by the memory, a 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 pre- 

 existent picture, and may therefore be said to 

 freshen it. Most of the impressions we receive are 

 no doubt very transitory, but it is certainly an 

 error that all our mental pictures, not freshened in 

 the way described, fade and disappear, 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 per- 

 sistently in the mind. But the remembered scenes 

 or objects do not present themselves to the mental 

 eye perfect and in their first vivid colours, 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 brilliancy of colour. In recalling the past, 

 emotion plays the part of th'e wet sponge, and it is 

 excited most powerfully in us when we encounter, 

 after a long interval, some once familiar odour 

 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 wilderness of my own mind. 



The reason, I imagine, is that while smells are 

 so much to us they cannot, like things seen and 



