OCR Text |
Show Secret of the Satisfaction j We Derive From Certain . Stenchesa French View The French people usually ridicule tho Americans for their coarseness, but what American would caro to bo-como bo-como a Frenchman and adopt hl3 ways and cultivate a taste for stenches stench-es as ho cultivates. Tho following article we commend to our readers. Most people Imagine that smells can bo classified as sweet or vile In an absolute sense. The smell of a flower is assumed to bo sweet and odor of putrefaction Is deemed vllo. Tho truth is, according to tho Paris Cosmos, that habit,, the association of Ideas, and individual temperament de-termlno de-termlno the reality of these impressions. impres-sions. There are In Paris municipal . employes who bo lovo the odor of the . Bowers ia which they toil that they feel Indisposed after their retirement upon a pension. They drop back Into In-to the old associations now and thon 1 for H whiff of tho stench. This Is not ' morbid. Tho smell of tho rose sick- ens not a fow persons. Nor aro they to bo deemed morbid. It 1b we, with our sensitiveness to perfumes, who are tho morbid. Wo aro over per-1 per-1 fumed by tho barber, tho hairdresser and even by tho doctor. r Tlmo was when men lived In mag-" mag-" nlflcence amid the worst conceivable 1 stenches. They loved those stenches Just as today we all lovo particular odors of a disagreeable kind. Tho smell of a, newly printed book delights 1 the bibliophile although It makes " some people sick at the stomach. The 1 odor of tho newly manufactured glove 1 In large quantities Is overpowering to certain sensibilities, yet It is not a E stench. For a stench In tho true :" meaning of tho word" wo must consider consid-er tho noses of our seventeenth' and '" eighteenth century ancestors. Marie Antoinette lived amid odors bo vile that rustics fresh from the fields fainted from tho first whiff, but tho Queen did not mind them. One or two of her ladles were delighted with these consequences of bad plumbing for that was tho cause of the stench thoy loved. Tho British Medical Journal Jour-nal supplies dotalla even more surprising: surpris-ing: The French memoirs of the seventeenth seven-teenth and eighteenth centuries are full of disgusting details of the Insanitary In-sanitary stUjte of Paris, including the Louvre Itself. Tho palace of tho French kings was open to the public more froely- than the White House at Washington Is to the citizens of the great Republic of tho west. Taking Into account the fact that the customs cus-toms of the French people, ns of most other nations in tho good old days were filthier in some respects than those of primitive man, tho state of the dwelling of tho sovereign may easily be imagined. The mere reading read-ing about these things almost makes a modern reader sick. But probably among those to the manner born it caused no inconvenience and the recollection re-collection of tho stenches of the Louvro and Versailles In later days was oven associated in loyal1 breasts? with tender foellngs of regret for tho past. Tho famous architect Vlolctt-lo-Duo saya that oven In the unsavory details that have been referred to tho old tradition was rovlved at the Restoration. Res-toration. Ho remembered tho stenches sten-ches which pervaded the corridors of Saint Cloud In tho days of Louis XVIII. One day when a moro boy ho visited tho palace nt Versailles In the company of tin elderly lady who had been an ornament of tho court of Louis XV. In going about they found W their way Into a passage whero their nostrils woro assailed by tho foulest K odors Tho old lady Inhaled theso E with tho deopest pleasure, oxclalmlng H rnnfnfmiol V Alii flint VATYilnila ryyt .,'' W..U.,, , . .. ...i.w .iiu H of tho beautiful past! It Is well known E that tho olfactory nervo often retains 1 Impressions moro vividly than ony of I tho other senses; henco tho smell of H a flower will call up in nn old man k I the memory of a sceno of youthful I lovo or nwtmen forgotten associations. I It Is natural enough, theroforo that a I oncu familiar stench should bring J bock a vanished past. Rut an old i |