Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1918-06-19
LISTENING IN
The Smell Of Smells

7 SMELT it the other morning. wonder
if you know the smell mean?
1t had rained hard during the night. and
trees and bushes twinkled in the sharp
early sunshine like ballroom chandeliers.
AS soon as I stepped out of doors caught
that faint but unmistakable musk in the
air: that dim, warm sweetness. It was the
smell of summer. so wholly different from
the crisp tang of spring.
It is drowsy. magical watt Of warmth
leaves and vegetation have grown to a
certain fullness and juice, and when the
sun bends in his orbit near enough to draw
out all the subtle vapors Of field and wood
land. 1t is a smell that rarely If ever can
be discerned in the city. It needs the wider
| air of the unhampered earth for its cir
culation and play.
J don't know just why, but associate
| that peculiar aroma of summer with wood
| piles and barnyards. Perhaps because in
| the area of farmyard the sunlight is
caught and focused and glows with it's
| fullest heat and radiance. And it is in the
grasp of the relentless sun that growing
things yield up their innermost vitality and
| emanate their fragrant essence l have
seen fields of tobacco under a hot sun that
| smelt as blithc as room thick with blue
| Havana smoke. | remember a pile of birch
| logs, heaped up behind barn i'm Pike
! County, where that mellow richness OF
summer flowed and quivered like a visible
eXhalation in the air. 1t is the soodly
soul of earth, rendering her health and
| sueetnesS to her CT he s,,p
Every one. | suppose, who is fancier
of smells, knows this blithe perfume of the
| summer air that is so pleasant to the nostril
almost any fine forenoon from mid-June
| until August. 1t steals pungently through
| the blue sparkle of the morning fading
| away toward noon when the moistness is
dried out. But when one first issues from
the house at breakfast time it is at its
| highest SAVIOR. Irpesstibly it suggests
worms, and tin caiisHith the lid jaggedly
bent back, and a ptchfork turning up the
earth behind the COW stable. Fishing was
first invented when Adam smelt that odor
in the air
The first fishing morning can't you
| imagine it, Has no one ever celebrated IL
in verse or oils? The world all young and
full of unmitgated sweetness the Garden
of Eden bespangled with the early dew:
Adam scrabbling up a fstful of worms and
hooking them on bent thorn and line
of twisted pampas grass; hurrying down
to the branch or the creek or the bayou
or whatever it may have been; sitting
down on a brand,new stump that the devil
had put there to tempt him: throwing out
his line; sitting there in the sun dreaming
! and brooding. .
And then a tug, a twitch furry in the
clear water of Eden, pull, splash. ant
the First Fish lay on the grass at Adams
foot. Can you imagine his sepsations'
How he yelled to Eve to come-look-see
and how annoyed he was because she
called out she was busy.
Probably 1t was in that moment that al
the chickering's and back-talk of husband,
and wives originated; when Adam called tc
Eve to come and look at his First FISH
while it was still silver and vivid in itl
living colors; and Eve answered she wa,
busy. In that moment were born tn,
| mems clubs and the women's clubs and tn,
pinochle parties and being detained at tn,
Office and Kelly pool and all the other de
vices and stratagems that keep men an,
women from taking their amusements to
gether.
Well, ! didn't mean to go back to tn,
Garden of Eden; just wanted to say tina
summer is here again, even though tn
almanac doesn't vouch for 1t until the els,
| rhose of vou who are fond NJ smells snrea
| your nostrils about breakfast time tomor
row morning and see II you detect it.
SOCRATES.