McKenzie

“ It's just as well to probe it, anyhow."
"If Morrison is hatching up anything," declared Ruthven, "it is all a tissue of lies. Why, McKenzie is a member of the legislature and a man of high social standing, respected by all who know him. Morrison is of the underworld, and not in McKenzie's class at all. I don't see why you should stop off with Morrison and call on McKenzie. Just the looks of the thing ought to keep you from making such a move."
"Morrison says McKenzie's daughter met him on the train between Williamsburg and Burt City. ”

“ Ruthven. What is it?"
"He has been captured!"
A wild exclamation broke from the girl's lips. McKenzie dropped into the chair as though felled by a blow. A moment later the girl was perched on the arm of the chair, one arm around his neck and one hand stroking his graying hair.
"Never mind, daddy," she murmured. "Right is right, and you'll not be made to suffer. Don't let this bother you any more. We both hoped that Morrison would be captured, and we both did what we could to have it happen. If necessary, we can face the world together—and leave Burt City if we have to." ”

“ McKenzie said to the tenderfoot; "but whatever you do, be wary, because——"
Somebody else laughed, and McKenzie looked about sharply. "What's the joke?" he asked.
[Pg 23] "Danny's afraid," the mocker explained; "that's where the dead man swings."
Biddie strolled forward. "Alex will be enough to work Elsie's right," he said to McKenzie. "Give me the Death Head trail. You'll need Dan here about the camp."
But Danny raised his head quickly. It is true that his face was dead-white, but his head was up.
"I'll go to the Death Head," he said to McKenzie. ”

“ It was Roger who asked the question.
"Something serious," answered McKenzie, "but Mr. Gordon didn't say what. Have you had supper?"
They replied in concert, eager to receive orders.
"Well," continued McKenzie, "we've got to cover the mountain here, for signs of—anything unusual. You'll have to be careful not to run into trouble yourselves, but you must know your ground. There'll be a good moon if the clouds break."
"Glory be!" Danny heard Elsie Whitman [Pg 21] breathe in expectant ecstasy, and he would have given the world to have felt with him that eager joy. But Danny had taken a dare! ”

“ McKenzie has a prospect of being of much utility to them; in fact, though he had only been there a year, he had got them to attend the church very attentively and regularly twice a week. Gaelic is the only language spoken, but one man, I believe, understanding any English. Mrs. McKenzie, a Glasgow lady, does not speak it, and therefore, was, I am inclined to think, very glad to see us, as it must have been six months since she exchanged a sentiment with any one but her husband. ”

“ Squire. Men coming after such property ought to be killed.
Slaveholder. Do you know where we can find a doctor?
Squire. Yes; there are plenty of doctors South.
Being much disabled, and becoming enraged, they abruptly left, and journeyed on until they reached McKenzie's tavern, where their wounds were dressed and their wants attended to. So strongly was McKenzie in sympathy with these demons, that he declared he would never employ another nigger, and actually discharged a faithful colored woman who had lived a long time in his employ. Dr. ”

“ Never, Justin McKenzie, never! You forget the stain dyed by your hand that will never washout!"
"No! no! God knows I do not forget!" and the youth's voice was hoarse with anguish. "Could it be undone, I would gladly undo the deed. But, tell me, Harris about her. Does she still live?"
"Live? We-l-l, yes, if you can call staying living. Life is but a blank ”

“ Rome is a city of candles and incense mingled with the dry mustiness of crumbling skeletons.
In Edinburgh you encounter here and there the smell of old Scotland. Thatch enters into its make-up, why I cannot tell you. But the cold grey metropolis still preserves the soul of the thatch, a cosy sensation that is prone to bring tears to the eyes of the returning exile. ”

“ This West London efflorescence does not lie blooming alone. It is by no means the last rose of summer. On the east side of the great city, another, a rival upas-tree, spreads its nauseating blight, This is a mess that, oozing from a soap factory near Stratford-atte-Bow, envelops in its oleaginous cloud several hundred yards of the main line of the Great Eastern Railway. ”

“ It is the first breath of the rose that makes the fullest appeal, when the whole being becomes for a moment suffused with the loveliest of all perfumes. But only for a moment. All too soon the door of heaven closes and the richness thins away into the common airs of this our lower world. ”

“ Thus when an ant sets out from her nest she distinguishes the various odours and varying strengths of odours she comes upon, noting and memorising them as in two main fields, one on her left side, the other on her right. ”

“ Nor must we overlook the carminatives, the pleasantly smelling dill, aniseed, rue and peppermint, the very names of which bring to our minds the sweetness of old country places and the efforts, not always vain, to quiet screaming country babies ! ”

“ From Winter’s silence, breathing, sighing, sleeping, creeping on to Spring with sap, with shoot, with bud and flower, hour on hour playing, plying gentleness and power for Summer’s rest to temper strength for birth in Autumn, with crowning brilliancy and rich rewards untaxed to bird, to beast, to insect and to man, gift on gift for full contentment, sustenance and labor. ”

“ Thus the personality is something that travels on the wings of sound. But is that all ? Is there not something more, something imperceptible which yet exercises a secret power over our emotions and passions? ”

“ As your eyes become accustomed to the dimness you can see on the floor the wide, shallow milk coolers, silvery as full moons in that twilight, the only light that enters coming through the long slit of a narrow unglazed window where blistery leaves of green docken, springing rank from the unkempt garden without, show a splash of sunlight. The smell is sourish and cold, if we may speak, as I think we may, of the temperature of a smell. ”

“ Only a little imagination is needed to convey us out of the magic circle into which we have been born, and what a strange universe do we then find ourselves in! Entangled in a meshwork of space-time and permeated by whirling maelstroms of varied and innumerable oscillations, we lose all hold on reality in the very act of grasping it. ”

“ E. W. B. Childers starts from the page the moment his creator breathes into our nostrils a breath of his life :—“a smell of lamp oil, straw, orange-peel, horses’ provender, and sawdust.”
I could fill this book with olfactory citations from Dickens alone. But to come to contemporary writers, those of Rudyard Kipling are almost as plentiful, the smell that brings places to the mind being a favourite with him. ”

“ It is always evening, “’twixt the gloamin’ and the mirk.” The moon, still golden, is hung low in the sky; the wind is sharp with a touch of frost, but the glare and the glow of the embers reddens and warms us—at least that part of us we turn to the fire. ”

“ We may here remark that although we are usually able to perceive that the odour and the flavour of a sapid food or drink are akin to each other, the sensation of the odour anticipating that of the flavour, yet they are by no means always identical. ”

“ Naturally the air of a cold country is clearer of obnoxious vapours than that of tropical and subtropical climes, but in spite of that, the first whiff of a Tibetan monastery, like that of an Eskimo hut, grips the throat, they say, like the air over a brewing vat. ”

“ But what it is that makes one dog smell to another of enmity or of friendship is as mysterious as—the mutual attraction or repulsion felt for each other by two human beings, shall we say ? For, of course, this suspense of judgment on encountering a new-comer is a human no less than a canine trait. ”

“ The mind, in short, has not absorbed, nor can it absorb, the fact. We seize a glass of water to drain it, and presently, like Alice, we find ourselves swimming about in an ocean! Obviously the universe is beyond our comprehension, a conclusion desperate if you like, yet undeniable. ”

“ Whilst I do not for one moment suggest that the whole phenomena of smell can be explained entirely in terms of chemical constitution, I do maintain that it has much to do with it, and T certainly think that more valuable information about the cause of various odours has been obtained from considerations of chemical constitution than from the many extravagant physical theories which do not lead us very far. ”

“ Behind this rationale, however, there lies perhaps the idea of association of death with the fœtor of decomposition and the expectation that a pleasant aromatic odour will naturally “obviate the tendency to death.” This view of the matter must have become strengthened among nations like the ancient Egyptians, who had discovered that aromatic substances might be relied upon to preserve the body after death. ”

“ Modern science has cleared up much of the mystery of the objective world, and although it may be far from the end of its search, although, indeed, the search, one must think, can never entirely elucidate the dense obscurity that envelops us on every side, dark as a starless night around a candle, yet we already know this much, that the real world is very different from the world depicted for us by our senses. ”

“ The influence of the perfume of a woman’s hair in unexpectedly arousing a feeling of intimacy will appeal to the male reader as a good example of this upsurging interference with the placid flow of normal ideation. ”

“ This strange revival of bygone days by olfaction is, as I have said, automatic. It is most clearly and completely to be realised when the inciting odour comes upon us unawares, and then as in a dream the whole of the long-forgotten incident is displayed, even although it may have been an incident in which the odour itself was not specially obtrusive. Yet the display is not only a spectacle, for we become, as I have already laboured to point out, once more actors in the old life-drama. ”

“ The olfactory sense of insects has been credited with perhaps even more wonderful powers than those we have just been writing about. For instance, both Lubbock and Forel have shown that the extraordinary aptitude ants possess for finding their way back to their nest after their peregrinations in the mazy labyrinth of their world depends upon the sense of smell. On their return to the nest they follow the scent left by their own footsteps. ”

“ For smell often operates powerfully, not only in surreptitiously enriching and invigorating the mental impression of an event, but also in directing at times the flow of ideas into some particular channel independent of the will. ”

“ Apart from this particular problem, however, to which we return below, biologists agree that insects undoubtedly possess an olfactory sense capable of appreciating the same kind of odours as ours does. Lubbock, for example, demonstrated that ants give signs of perceiving the presence of musk and other perfumes. There is no doubt, indeed, that the olfactory sense plays a great, it may be a preponderating part in their life-activity. ”

“ But the sum and substance of Havelock Ellis’s exhaustive inquiry on this point is undoubtedly this, that if a lover loves the aroma of his lady, that is because of his love, not because of her inherent sweetness. In other words, the attraction, subtle though it be, at least in the early or romantic stage, is seldom or never obviously olfactory. ”

“ We are now able to follow the undulations we term light, not only into the eye, but into the brain itself, locating their central station in the occipital lobe, whence their effects radiate all over the organism. And in the case of olfaction Pawlow has taught us that its chief vegetative function, the result of radiations from the olfactory central station in the brain, is the arousing of the digestive glands to activity. ”

“ It is supposed, that is to say, that the vibrations of the odorous molecule set up undulations in the ether, and that it is those ethereal undulations that stimulate the olfactory hairs, just as ethereal undulations emanating from a luminous source stimulate the retina.
There is one great difference, however, between light and odour, a difference admitted, we may mention, by the supporters of the undulatory theory, but not emphasised by them. ”

“ One of the mysteries that must, one would suppose, for ever remain hidden from us, is what aspect the world we both share in company bears to this our closest animal friend. Who can tell what is passing through his mind as he sniffs at us ? ”

“ Etymologists, delving down among the roots of our spoken language, come, so they say, to a point at which even the simplest epithet, even the plainest description of a sensation, is seen to derive from some object. ”

“ The odour of a big hæmorrhage is unmistakable and, to obstetricians particularly, ominous.
Then there is the smell of mice which attends upon the skin disease known as favus.
The breath of a chronic drunkard is familiar enough to everybody, and the more delicate aroma in the circumambient atmosphere of the careful tippler, ethereal and by no means unpleasant, will often reveal to the physician the hidden cause of obscure symptoms. It is particularly valuable when your patient is, as so many of these secret drinkers are, a woman, it may be a woman of good social standing. ”

“ OLFACTORY MEMORY
The predominant special senses in man are vision and hearing, olfaction occupying a quite unimportant position in the scale,
Smell and taste, by the way, are usually regarded not only as allied senses, but also as if they were akin in their nature and function, Allied they are, undoubtedly, seeing that both subserve the function of food-perception. ”