A House Whose Past You Can Smell
A house, nightfall and a landscape recognized through smell: three paragraphs from Helen Keller’s lived world.
I know by smell the kind of house we enter. I have recognized an old-fashioned country house because it has several layers of odours, left by a succession of families, of plants, perfumes, and draperies.
In the evening quiet there are fewer vibrations than in the daytime, and then I rely more largely upon smell. The sulphuric scent of a match tells me that the lamps are being lighted. Later I note the wavering trail of odour that flits about and disappears. It is the curfew signal; the lights are out for the night.
Out of doors I am aware by smell and touch of the ground we tread and the places we pass. Sometimes, when there is no wind, the odours are so grouped that I know the character of the country, and can place a hayfield, a country store, a garden, a barn, a grove of pines, a farmhouse with the windows open.