to me, as I first thought of its cause, a mere mechanical result, but I incline to suspect now that it was in a measure due to a true increase in capacity to feel, because I found also that the sister sense of pain was heightened.  Slight things hurt me, and a rather gentle pinch gave undue discomfort.  No doubt a part of this was owing to my having taken a good deal of opium, and then abruptly laid it aside.  As I have elsewhere stated, this is apt to leave the nerves oversensitive for a season.  The sense of hearing seemed to me to be less wide awake.  I did not hear better, but high notes were for a while most unpleasant.  The sense of taste grew singularly appreciative for a time, and made every meal a joyful occasion.  The simplest food had distinct flavors.  As for a glass of old Madeira,—­a demijohned veteran of many ripening summers,—­I recall to this day with astonishment the wonderful thing it was, and how it went over the tongue in a sort of procession of tastes, and what changeful bouquets it left in my mouth,—­a strange variety of varying impressions, like the play of colors.  In these days of more unspiritual health and coarser sense I am almost ashamed to say what pleasure I found in a dish of terrapin.

The function of smell became for me a source both of annoyance and, later on, of pleasure.  I smelt things no one else could, and more things than I now can.  The spring came early, and once out of doors the swiftly-flitting hours of sensory acuteness brought to me on every breeze nameless odors which have no being to the common sense,—­a sweet, faint confusion of scents, some slight, some too intense,—­a gamut of odors.  Usually I have an imperfect capacity to apprehend smells, unless they are very positive, and it was a curious lesson to learn how intense for the time a not perfect function may become.  Recent researches have shown that a drug like mercaptan may be used to test the limit of olfactory appreciation.  We have thus come to know that the capacity to perceive an odor is more delicate than our ability to recognize light.  Probably it is an inconceivable delicacy of the sense of smell more than anything else which enables animals to find their way in the manner which seems to us so utterly mysterious.  Yet, even in human beings, and not alone in a fortunate convalescence, do we see startling illustrations of the possibilities of this form of sensorial acuteness.  I know of a woman who can by the smell at once tell the worn gloves of the several people with whom she is most familiar, and I also recall a clever choreic lad of fourteen who could distinguish when blindfold the handkerchiefs of his mother, his father, or himself, just after they have been washed and ironed.  This test has been made over and over, to my satisfaction and surprise.