of the savage, the wigwam of the
Indian. Racial memories!

But it is not the time of the day, nor the turn of the season, nor yet
the way of the wind that matters most but the ardour and glow we
ourselves bring to the fragrant earth. It is a sad thing to reflect that
in a world so overflowing with goodness of smell, of fine sights and
sweet sounds, we pass by hastily and take so little of them. Days pass
when we see no beautiful sight, hear no sweet sound, smell no memorable
odour: when we exchange no single word of deeper understanding with a
friend. We have lived a day and added nothing to our lives! A blind,
grubbing, senseless life--that!

It is a strange thing, also, that instead of sharpening the tools by
which we take hold of life we make studied efforts to dull them. We seem
to fear life and early begin to stop our ears and close our eyes lest we
hear and see too much: we clog our senses and cloud our minds. We seek
dull security and ease and cease longer to desire adventure and
struggle. And then--the tragedy of it--the poet we all have in us in
youth begins to die, the philosopher in us dies, the martyr in us dies,
so that the long, long time beyond youth with so many of us becomes a
busy death. And this I think truer of men than of women: beyond forty
many women just begin to awaken to power and beauty, but most men beyond
that age go on dying. The task of the artist, whether poet, or musician,
or painter, is to keep alive the perishing spirit of free adventure in
men: to nourish the poet, the prophet, the martyr, we all have in us.

One's sense of smell, like the sense of taste, is sharpest when he is
hungry, and I am convinced also that one sees and hears best when
unclogged with food, undulled with drink, undrugged with smoke. For me,
also, weariness, though not exhaustion, seems to sharpen all the
senses. Keenness goes with leanness. When I have been working hard or
tramping the country roads in the open air and come in weary and hungry
at night and catch the fragrance of the evening along the road or upon
the hill, or at barn-doors smell the unmilked cows, or at the doorway,
the comfortable odours of cooking supper how good that all is! At such
times I know Esau to the core: the forthright, nature-loving, simple man
he was, coming in dabbled with the blood of hunted animals and hungry
for the steaming pottage.

It follows that if we take excessive joys of one sense, as of taste,
nature, ever seeking