Explore "The Sacred Herb" by Fergus Hume on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Odour is one of the strongest aids which memory can have, and a chance whiff of a particular scent will recall to the most lethargic brain, circumstances both trivial and important of long-forgotten years. But the well-known fragrance of the tuberose usually brings funerals to mind, since that flower is so extensively woven into burial wreaths and mortuary crosses. It was strange indeed that it should conjure into an idle-thinking mind the vision of a heathen festival.
There were many people crowding the corridor, so that it was impossible for the young man to tell who wore the flowers which gave forth the magical scent -- for magical it was in its effect. They might adorn a man's button-hole or a woman's bodice. He could not tell, since the evening-dress of both sexes was veiled by voluminous dominos. But as he leaned against the wall, the vision became clearer and more insistent. His body was in London -- in Alexander Mansions, at a masked ball, as he well knew -- but the scent of the tuberose had drawn his spirit across leagues of trackless sea to the uttermost parts of the earth. The present vanished, and he beheld the past.