Page:Under the Sun.djvu/338

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314
Idle Hours under the Punkah.

sorrow in a doleful one. Does not a hungry man on smelling a joint of meat at once rejoice? I myself have been so overcome by the scent of a favorite fruit that, under an uncontrollable impulse, I have fallen upon and devoured the whole plateful! so powerful is the sense of smell.” To present the different perfumes accurately and easily to the eye, the professor, when first delivering his lecture, drew upon a blackboard a number of diagrams showing the various curves taken by the scent atoms when striking upon the soul-nerves, and explained briefly certain instruments he had constructed for registering the wave motion of smells, and the relative force with which they impinged upon the nose of his soul or the soul of his nose. The audience meanwhile had become restless and agitated, and the professor therefore hurried on to the second section of his discoveries — those for counteracting the passions detected by the nose. “I have here,” he said, “a smell-murdering essence, which I have discovered and christened Ozogene, and with which I can soothe the angry man to mildness or infuriate a Quaker.” But the audience, such is the bigoted antipathy to the exaltation of the nose, would not stand this on any account, and the professor, in obedience to the clamor, had to resume his seat.

Dr. Jäger did not, therefore, secure a patient hearing; but he should remember how at all times the first apostles of truth have been received, and live content to know that posterity will gravely honor his memory, though contemporary man makes fun of Ms discoveries. Indeed, posterity will have good cause to honor the great man who shall thus have banished from among them strife and anger. The Riot Act will never have