A Wonderful Light

Honor C. Appleton

Her little hands were almost numbed with cold. Oh! a match might afford her a world of comfort, if she only dared take a single one out of the bundle, draw it against the wall, and warm her fingers by it. She drew one out. “Rischt!” how it blazed, how it burnt! It was a warm, bright flame, like a candle, as she held her hands over it: it was a wonderful light. It seemed really to the little maiden as though she were sitting before a large iron stove, with burnished brass feet and a brass ornament at top. The fire burned with such blessed influence; it warmed so delightfully.

It seems an odd choice for a warm and sunny spring day in March, the kind of day that makes people ride their bicycles without their coats on and that makes children with pale legs sticking out of shorts test their supersoaker water guns. But when you look at the notes of the scent, the choice is perhaps not so strange. 

Three radiant ambers with honey, linden blossom, bourbon vanilla, and orange zest.

 Although linden trees (in England they are called lime trees) will not bloom until June, yet their scent seems very appropriate on a warm and sunny spring day even as early as March.