Some odors are as intoxicating as wine, and others cling to the memory like the impressions of childhood. Yet it is rare for the insane to have delusions of the olfactory sense; and I have found few persons who dream of odors. Some writers who claim to be scientific have set up “a gamut of scents,” and others pretend such a harmonic scale can be made the basis of a sort of music of perfumes. This is riding theory beyond sight of practice; but who does not inhale with conscious joy the balsamic fragrance of the pines, the salt and stimulating whiffs from old ocean, or the laden redolence from gardens of roses? Many writers attribute the pleasure which tobacco gives to its influence on the sense of smell; but this, I am sure, will not explain the intense satisfaction which it yields to men in all climes, consuming it in so many varied ways. I know nothing in physiology more surprising or more puzzling than the eager demand for this plant, which sprang up throughout the world after its discovery in America. I have been a smoker from boyhood, and am just as unable to analyze the pleasure it gives me as to explain it in others. That prince of epicures, Brillat-Savarin, spent some time in the United States, and in his delightful volume on the _Physiology of the Taste_ has a chapter on “cookery in America,”――which is filled with nothing but asterisks and interrogation points! A hundred years have passed since he was among us, and we have reformed our cuisine indifferently, though not altogether. We have been too much hampered by fatuous bigots preaching that we should eat to live, and not live to eat; whereas we should most certainly live to eat during two or three hours out of every twenty-four; and so doing we shall be passing them more creditably than do most men, or probably ourselves, the remainder of the day. The game of “beggar your neighbor” has advocates enough and fervent disciples, so I shall have something to say about eating for the fun of it and as a fine art. All nations of culture have connected a certain solemn joy with the act of taking food. To “break bread” with one is the expression of the sweet sentiment of hospitality, and for the lovers to share the same loaf before the High Priest was the simple and beautiful marriage-rite among the ancient Romans. The “love feasts” of the early Christians were the repetitions of the only ceremony which their Founder prescribed; and science traces to appropriate nutrition the growth of both physical and mental abilities. The devout Novalis called meal-times the “flower-seasons of the day,” and claimed that all spiritual joys can be expressed through the service of the table. Can there be anything in it unworthy or debasing?