“There must be,” he thought, “some deep race-memory in which these things are stored up, to be drawn upon by those who seek for them through the world⁠—a memory that has the power of obliterating infinite debris, while it retains all these frail essences, these emanations from plants and trees, roadsides and gardens, as if such things actually possessed immortal souls!” He turned from the gate and pursued his road, swinging his stick from side to side like a madman, and repeating aloud, as he strode along, the words “immortal souls.”