Pah! it is too devilishly hot to write anything about anything
practical and serious--let us dream dreams.
. . . . . . . . .
We picked up a little fan in a street-car the other day--a Japanese
fabric, with bursts of blue sky upon it, and grotesque foliage sharply
cut against a horizon of white paper, and wonderful clouds as pink
as Love, and birds of form as unfamiliar as the extinct wonders of
ornithology resurrected by Cuvieresque art. Where did those Japanese
get their exquisite taste for color and tint-contrasts?--Is their sky
so divinely blue?--Are their sunsets so virginally carnation?--Are the
breasts of their maidens and the milky peaks of their mountains so
white?
But the fairy colors were less strongly suggestive than something
impalpable, invisible, indescribable, yet voluptuously enchanting which
clung to the fan spirit-wise--a tender little scent--a mischievous
perfume--a titillating, tantalizing aroma--an odor inspirational as of
the sacred gums whose incense intoxicates the priests of oracles. Did
you ever lay your hand upon a pillow covered with the living supple
silk of a woman's hair? Well, the intoxicating odor of that hair is
something not to be forgotten: if we might try to imagine what the
ambrosial odors of paradise are, we dare not compare them to anything
else;--the odor of youth in its pliancy, flexibility, rounded softness,
delicious coolness, dove-daintiness, delightful plasticity--all that
suggests slenderness graceful as a Venetian wineglass, and suppleness
as downy-soft as the necks of swans.
. . . . . . . .
Naturally that little aroma itself provoked fancies;--as we looked at
the fan we could almost evoke the spirit of a hand and arm, of phantom
ivory, the glimmer of a ghostly ring, the shimmer of spectral lace
about the wrist;--but nothing more. Yet it seemed to us that even odors
might be analyzed; that perhaps in some future age men might describe
persons they had never seen by such individual aromas, just as in the
Arabian tale one describes minutely a maimed camel and its burthen
which he has never beheld.
There are blond and brunette odors;--the white rose is sweet, but the
ruddy is sweeter; the perfume of pallid flowers may be potent, as that
of the tuberose whose intensity sickens with surfeit of pleasures, but
the odors of deeply tinted flowers are passionate and satiate not,
quenching desire only to rekindle it.
There are human blossoms more delicious than any rose's heart nestling
in pink. There is a sharp, tart, invigorating, penetrating, tropical
sweetness in brunette perfumes; blond odors are either faint as those
of a Chinese yellow rose, or fiercely ravishing as that of the white
jessamine--so bewitching for the moment, but which few can endure all
night in the sleeping-room, making the heart of the sleeper faint.
Now the odor of the fan was not a blond odor:--it was sharply sweet
as new-mown hay in autumn, keenly pleasant as a clear breeze blowing
over sea foam:--what were frankincense and spikenard and cinnamon and
all the odors of the merchant compared with it?--What could have been
compared with it, indeed, save the smell of the garments of the young
Shulamitess or the whispering robes of the Queen of Sheba? And these
were brunettes.
The strength of living perfumes evidences the comparative intensity of
the life exhaling them. Strong sweet odors bespeak the vigor of youth
in blossom. Intensity of life in the brunette is usually coincident
with nervous activity and slender elegance.--Young, slenderly graceful,
with dark eyes and hair, skin probably a Spanish olive!--did such an
one lose a little Japanese fan in car No.-- of the C. C. R. R. during
the slumberous heat of Wednesday morning?