244 Ldle Days in Patagonta. 
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 the 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, 
Iam 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 
