this part of the mundane sphere, we strolled out upon one of Carson’s
beautifully shaded avenues for a walk. While pondering upon the
uncertainty of everything human, we came suddenly upon two persons, both
of whom were not of the same gender, standing one upon either side of a
gate, which seemed to require a pressure of forty pounds to the square
inch to keep it from falling; but, strange to say, it remained upright
when they separated at our approach. Further on we came in sight of a
kind young man who was assisting a poor lame girl with his arm around her
waist. Not wishing to investigate the matter further, we turned into the
next cross-street, but had not proceeded more than a block when we heard
a sweet voice exclaim:
“Ed, if you kiss me again, I’ll call ma.”
Thinking how such things could be, we returned to our sanctum, where
reference to the “Chronicle” of yesterday explains it. It is all in the
climate, you know.
* * * * *
Mr. S. S. Cox, in his illustrations of American humor, refers to the
newspaper fashion of giving a comic account of a catastrophe, and then,
by a sudden and serious turn, leaving a suggestive hiatus, making a
conclusion which connects the premises. Among the examples given is this
one:
Mr. Jones was observed by his wife through the window to kiss the cook in
the kitchen. Comment: “Mr. Jones did not go out of the house for several
days, and yet there was no snow-storm.”
* * * * *
“I say, Mr. Smithers,” said Mrs. Smithers to her husband, “didn’t I hear
you down in the kitchen kissing the cook?” “My dear,” replied Smithers,
blandly, “permit me to insist upon my right to be reasonably ignorant.
I really cannot say what you may have heard.” “But wasn’t you down
there kissing the cook?” “My dear, I cannot really recollect. I only
remember going into the kitchen and coming out again. I may have been
there, and from what you say I infer I was. But I cannot recollect just
what occurred.” “But,” persisted the ruthless cross-examiner, “what
did Jane mean when she said, ‘Oh! Smithers, don’t kiss so loud, or the
old she-dragon up-stairs will hear us’?” “Well,” said Smithers, in his
blandest tones, “I cannot remember what interpretation I did put on the
words at the time. They are not my words, you must remember.”
* * * * *
A Milwaukee chap kissed his girl forty times right straight along, and
when he stopped the tears came into her eyes, and she said, in a sad tone
of voice, “Ah, John, I fear you have ceased to love me.” “No, I haven’t,”
replied John, “but I must breathe.”
* * * * *
A new design for an upholstered front gate seems destined to become
popular. The foot-board is cushioned, and there is a warm soap-stone on
each side, the inside step being adjustable, so that a short girl can
bring her lips to the line of any given moustache without trouble. If the
gate is occupied at half-past ten P.M., an iron hand extends from one
gate-post, takes the young man by the left ear, turns him around, and he
is at once started home by a steel foot.
* * * * *
A man who has been travelling in the “far West” says that when an Idaho
girl is kissed, she indignantly exclaims, “Now put that right back where
you took it from!”
* * * * *
At a recent wedding in Ohio, the minister was about to salute the bride,
when she stayed him with, “No, mister, I give up them wanities now.”
* * * * *
A Maryland editor, on the subject of kissing, says, “The custom is an
old one, and no _written_ description can do it justice; to be fully
understood and appreciated it must be handed down from mouth to mouth.”
* * * * *
“Stay,” he said, his right arm around her waist and her face expectantly
turned to him, “shall it be the kiss pathetic, sympathetic, graphic,
paragraphic, Oriental, intellectual, paroxysmal, quick and dismal, slow
and unctuous, long and tedious, devotional, or what?” She said perhaps
that would be the better way.
* * * * *
Reference having been made to the basial diversities mentioned in the
Bible, it was incidentally remarked that there is another kind of kiss
which young ladies receive on the sofa in the parlor after the gas is
turned low, which the Scriptures don’t mention,—nor the young ladies
either.
* * * * *
An Indiana editor advises people against using a hard pencil, and goes on
to tell why. His wife desired him to write a note to a lady, inviting her
to meet a party of friends at her house. After “Hubby” had done as his
wife desired, and started to post the note, she saw on another piece of
paper an impression of what he had written. It was:
“Sweet Mattie—Effie desires your company on Wednesday, to meet the
Smithsons. Don’t fail to come; and, my darling, I shall have the
happiness of a long walk home with you, and a sweet good-night kiss. I
dare not see you often, or my all-consuming love would betray us both.
But, Mattie dear, don’t fail to come.”
* * * * *
Harriet McEwen Kimball is responsible for this description of a
paroxysmal kiss:
“Only the roses will hear;
Dear,
Only the roses will see!
This once—just this!
Ah, the roses, I wis,
They envy me!”
That kiss was clearly _sub rosa_.
* * * * *
The incongruities in the repetitious mode of singing hymns are shown in
such illustrations as these: “Send down salvation from on high” became
“Send down sal-.” A soprano in one case sang “Oh for a man,” and the
chorus responded, “Oh for a mansion in the skies.” In another case the
soprano modestly sang, “Teach me to kiss;” the alto took up the strain,
“Teach me to kiss;” while the bass rendered it quite prosaic by singing,
“Teach me to kiss the rod.”
* * * * *
“Punch” publishes the following from its sensational reporter: An
appalling tragedy in domestic life has lately scattered consternation in
the neighborhood of Bayswater. A newly-married couple, in possession of
ample fortune, and moving, it is rumored, in extremely good society, had
been observed to live together upon very loving terms, and no suspicion
as to their affection was entertained among their friends. It appears,
however, that on Monday morning last the young husband left his wife in
considerable agitation, having, as he alleged, some business in the city.
It has since transpired that he had previously secured himself a stall at
Drury Lane for Salvini in “Othello;” and there seems reason to believe
that the tragical event which subsequently happened was first suggested
to his mind by this most masterly performance. It was noticed by the
footman that he did not return until a few minutes before his usual
dinner-hour, when, rushing in abruptly, without one word of warning, he
proceeded to the bed-chamber where his wife was in the act of dressing
for the evening, and before her startled maid could even scream for
help, he caught his wife up in his arms in a frenzy of excitement and
deliberately proceeded to smother her—with kisses!
* * * * *
In that very amusing sketch, “Johnny Beedle’s Courtship,” occurs the
following droll scene:
“It is a good sign to find a girl sulky. I knew where the shoe pinched:
it was that ’are Patty Bean business. So I went to work to persuade her
that I had never had any notion after Patty, and, to prove it, I fell to
running her down at a great rate. Sally could not help chiming in with
me; and I rather guess Miss Patty suffered a few. I now not only got hold
of her hand without opposition, but managed to slip my arm round her
waist. But there was no satisfying me; so I must go to poking out my lips
after a kiss. I guess I rued it. She fetched me a slap in the face that
made me see stars, and my ears rung like a brass kettle for a quarter of
an hour. I was forced to laugh at the joke, though out of the wrong side
of my mouth, which gave my face something the look of a gridiron. The
battle now began in the regular way.
“‘Come, Sally, give me a kiss, and ha’ done with it now?’
“‘I won’t! so there, you’—
“‘I’ll take it, whether or no.’
“‘Do it, if you dare!’
“And at it we went, rough and tumble. An odd destruction of starch now
commenced; the bow of my cravat was squat up in half a shake. At the
next bout, smash went shirt-collar; and at the same time some of the
head-fastenings gave way, and down came Sally’s hair in a flood like a
mill-dam let loose, carrying away half a dozen combs. One dig of Sally’s
elbow, and my blooming ruffles wilted down to a dish-cloth. But she had
no time to boast. Soon her neck-tackling began to shiver; it parted at
the throat, and away came a lot of blue and white beads, scampering and
running races every which way about the floor.
“By the hookey, if Sally Jones is not real grit, there is no snakes. She
fought fair, however, I must own, and neither tried to bite or scratch;
and when she could fight no longer she yielded handsomely. Her arms fell
down by her sides, her head back over her chair, her eyes closed, and
there lay her plump little mouth, all in the air. Lord, did ye ever see a
hawk pounce upon a young robin, or a bumble-bee upon a clover-top? I say
nothing.
“Consarn it, how a buss will crack of a still frosty night! Mrs. Jones
was about half-way between asleep and awake.
“‘There goes my yeast-bottle,’ says she to herself, ‘bust into twenty
hundred pieces, and my bread is all dough again.’”
* * * * *
In “The Tour of Dr. Syntax,” Combe gives us the following amusing
passages:
_Squire._ This, Doctor Syntax, is my sister;
Why, my good sir, you have not kissed her.
_Syntax._ Do not suppose I’m such a brute
As to disdain the sweet salute.
_Squire._ And this, sir, is my loving wife,
The joy and honor of my life.
_Syntax._ A lovely lady to the view!
And with your leave, I’ll kiss her too.
...
With heart of joy and look of woe,
The Doctor now prepared to go;
He silent squeezed the Squire’s hands,
And asked of madam her commands.
The Squire exclaimed, “Why so remiss?
She bids you take a hearty kiss;
And if you think that one won’t do,
I beg, dear sir, you’ll give her _two_.”
“Nay, then,” said Syntax, “you shall see!”
And straight he gave the lady _three_.
The lady, blushing, thanked him too,
And in soft accents said, “Adieu.”
PRENTICEANA.
The following epigrammatic hits are from the pen of George D. Prentice,
the late distinguished editor of the “Louisville Journal”:
We once had a female correspondent who wrote, “When two hearts are
surcharged with love’s electricity, a kiss is the burning contact, the
wild leaping flame of love’s enthusiasm.” This is certainly very pretty,
but a flash of electricity is altogether too brief to give a correct
idea of a truly delicious kiss. We agree with Byron that the “strength”
of a kiss is generally “measured by its length.” Still, there should be
a _limit_, and we really think that Mrs. Browning, strong-minded woman
as she is, transcends all reasonable limits in her notion of a kiss’s
duration. Why, she talks in her “Aurora Leigh” of a kiss
“As long and silent as the ecstatic night.”
That indeed must be “linked sweetness” altogether too “long drawn out.”
* * * * *
An exchange says that we have a right to take an umbrella or a kiss
without permission whenever we can. Well, but if the umbrella isn’t
returned the fault is ours; if the kiss isn’t, it is the lady’s.
* * * * *
Surely it is a blessed privilege to be kissed by the breeze that has
kissed all the pretty women in the world.
* * * * *
“That’s very singular, sir,” said a young lady when we kissed her. “Ah,
well, we’ll soon make it plural.”
* * * * *
As Claude R.’s wife sat quietly in the twilight, a fellow stole behind
her and kissed her. “Is it Claude?” she asked, hurriedly. “No, dear
madam.” A moment afterwards he was heard to exclaim, “Oh, yes, I am
_clawed_ now, indeed I am.”
* * * * *
A female correspondent suggests a condition on which she will give us a
kiss. We feel in duty bound to say to her that kissing is a thing that,
at every proper opportunity, we set our face against.
* * * * *
Last evening we chanced to see a pair of interesting lovers kissing at an
open lattice. Young people! that was very improper lattice-work.
* * * * *
“Is the smoke of my cigarette unpleasant to you, sir?” “Oh, no, madam: I
would rather inhale smoke from your beautiful lips than taste kisses from
any others.”
* * * * *
Return a kiss for a blow.—_Sunday-School Union._
Always provided the giver of the blow be a pretty girl.
* * * * *
A beautiful young girl has just sent us a basket of fruit, the very sight
of which, she thinks, must make us smack our lips. We thank her, and
would greatly prefer smacking hers.
* * * * *
A kiss on the forehead denotes respect and admiration; on the cheek,
friendship; on the lips, love. The young men of our acquaintance have not
much “respect” for young ladies.
* * * * *
According to the New York “Express,” nine thousand ladies of that city
shook hands with Mr. Clay, and kissed him, or were kissed by him, in
the brief space of two hours. This was just seventy-five kisses to
the minute, or considerably more than one to the second. We are not
altogether sure that Mr. Clay, instead of kissing nine thousand girls in
two hours, would not have preferred to select the prettiest one of the
whole number and kiss _her_ two hours.
* * * * *
If you doubt whether to kiss a pretty girl or not, give her the benefit
of the doubt.
* * * * *
A young lady says that males are of no account from the time the ladies
stop kissing them as infants till they commence kissing them as lovers.
* * * * *
We are never satisfied that a lady understands a kiss unless we have it
from her own mouth.
* * * * *
A young lady’s first-love kiss has the same effect on her as being
electrified. It’s a great shock, but it’s soon over.
* * * * *
A young physician asking permission of a lass to kiss her, she replied,
“No, sir; I never like a doctor’s bill stuck in my face.”
[Illustration]
MISCELLANEOUS ASPECTS AND RELATIONS.
QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS.
Kissing is not to be talked about; one practical demonstration is worth a
thousand prosaic descriptions. The emotions of anger, fear, doubt, hope,
and joy have been appropriately described; but no one has done justice to
a warm, loving kiss. Among the attempts which have been made is one by a
young lady still in the dreamy regions of girlhood. She sings,—
“Let thy arms twine
Around me like a zone of love,
And thy fond lip, so soft,
To mine be passionately pressed,
As it has been so oft.”
This is cold enough, surely. Here is something better; the heart has made
advances and speaks from experience:
“Sweetest love,
Place thy dear arm beneath my drooping head,
And let me lowly nestle in thy heart;
Then turn those soul-lit orbs on me, and press
My panting lips, to taste the ecstasy
Imparted by each long and lingering kiss.”
Alexander Smith seems to have been electrified by a kiss; one made him
feel as if he were “walking on thrones,”—a figure quite as remarkable as
the old deacon’s, who, upon taking too much apple-brandy, likened his
sensations to being on top of a meeting-house and having every shingle
turned into a Jew’s-harp. But let us hear Alexander:
“My soul leaped up beneath thy timid kiss,
What then to me were groans,
Or pain, or death? Earth was a round of bliss,
I seemed to walk on thrones!”
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KISSING.
What’s in a kiss? Really, when people come to reflect upon the matter
calmly, what can we see in a kiss? The lips pout slightly and touch the
cheek softly, and then they just part, and the job is complete. There is
a kiss in the abstract! View it in the abstract, take it as it stands,
look at it philosophically, what is there in it? Millions upon millions
of souls have been made happy, while millions upon millions have been
plunged into misery and despair, by this kissing; and yet when you look
at the character of the thing, it is simply pouting and parting of the
lips. In every grade of society there is kissing. Go where you will,—to
what country you will,—you are perfectly sure to find kissing. There is,
however, some mysterious virtue in a kiss, after all.
There’s something in a kiss;
If nothing else would prove it,
It might be proved by this:
All honest people love it.
THE SCIENCE OF KISSING.
People will kiss, though not one in a hundred knows how to extract bliss
from lovely lips, any more than they know how to make diamonds from
charcoal; yet it is easy enough, at least for us. First know whom you
are going to kiss; don’t make a mistake, although a mistake may be good.
Don’t jump up like a trout for a fly and smack a woman on the neck, or
the ear, or the corner of her forehead, or on the end of her nose. The
gentleman should be a little the taller; he should have a clean face, a
kind eye, and a mouth full of expression. Don’t kiss everybody; don’t
sit down to it; stand up; need not be anxious about getting in a crowd.
Two persons are plenty to corner and catch a kiss; more persons would
spoil the sport. Take the left hand of the lady in your right; let your
hat go to—any place out of the way; throw the left hand gently over the
shoulder of the lady and let it fall down the right side. Do not be in
a hurry; draw her gently, lovingly, to your heart. Her head will fall
submissively on your shoulder, and a handsome shoulder-strap it makes.
Do not be in a hurry. Her left hand is in your right; let there be an
impression to that, not like the gripe of a vice, but a gentle clasp,
full of electricity, thought, and respect. Do not be in a hurry. Her head
lies carelessly on your shoulder; you are heart to heart. Look down into
her half-closed eyes; gently, but manfully, press her to your bosom.
Stand firm; be brave, but don’t be in a hurry. Her lips are almost open;
lean slightly forward with your head, not the body; take good aim; the
lips meet; the eyes close; the heart opens; the soul rides the storms,
troubles, and sorrows of life (don’t be in a hurry); heaven opens before
you; the world shoots under your feet as a meteor flashes across the
evening sky (don’t be afraid); the heart forgets its bitterness, and the
art of kissing is learned! No fuss, no noise, no fluttering or squirming
like that of hook-impaled worms. Kissing doesn’t hurt, nor does it
require an act of Congress to make it legal.
That reverend wag, Sydney Smith, says, “We are in favor of a certain
amount of shyness when a kiss is proposed; but it should not be too long,
and, when the fair one gives it, let it be administered with warmth
and energy,—let there be soul in it. If she closes her eyes and sigh
immediately after it, the effect is greater. She should be careful not
to slobber a kiss, but give it as a humming-bird runs his bill into a
honeysuckle, deep but delicate. There is much virtue in a kiss when well
delivered. We have the memory of one we received in our youth, which
lasted us forty years, and we believe it will be one of the last things
we shall think of when we die.”
THE COMPOSITION OF A KISS.
Cupid, if storying legends tell aright,
Once framed a rich elixir of delight.
A chalice o’er love-kindled flames he fixed,
And in it nectar and ambrosia mixed;
With these, the magic dews which evening brings,
Brushed from the Idalian star by fairy wings,
Each tender pledge of sacred faith he joined,
Each gentler pleasure of the unspotted mind,—
Day-dreams, whose tints with sportive brightness glow,
And Hope, the blameless parasite of Woe.
The eyeless chemist heard the process rise,
The streamy chalice bubbled up in sighs,
Sweet sounds transpired, as when the enamored dove
Pours the soft murmuring of responsive love.
The finished work might Envy vainly blame,
And “Kisses” was the precious compound’s name.
COLERIDGE.
THE SOUND OF A KISS.
A kiss is a difficult thing to describe on paper with only the
unyielding, unimpressible materials of pen and ink; but it has been
courageously attempted by a wag who had been at a wedding, “all of which
he saw, and part of which he was.” Having “seen it done and performed,
and heard the reverberation,” he describes a kiss as follows:
“This is the age of improvement, ladies and gentlemen; stand back and you
will see _a kiss on paper_. Don’t be incredulous. I will give you the
sound in types. Listen:
“When two pairs of affectionate lips are placed together to the intent of
osculation, the noise educed is something like to the ensuing,
_Epe-st’ weep’ st-e’ ee!_
and then the sound tapers off so softly and so musically that no letters
can do it justice.
“If any one thinks my description imperfect, let him surpass it if he
can, even with a pen made from a quill out of Cupid’s wing.”
Another writer describes the acoustic phenomena of the process in the
following stanzas:
Men’s fancies have long been sore tasked
Some simile meet to bestow
On that which all figures of speech
Never fail to fall vastly below.
Of the magical power of the touch,
And the odorous perfume distilled,
Already there’s written so much
That poetical books are now filled.
But a thought rather novel occurs
To my mind in regard to the sound:
It is this,—that a kiss is just like
The swell which in music is found.
Beginning most gently at first,
To the middle you gradually swell,
Then softly reduce to the close,
And, though luscious, take care not to dwell.
This gradual ascent to the swell
Prepares for the climax of bliss,
And letting one down as he rose
Will weaken a fall such as this.
This provision of nature most wise
I have studied, and sagely conclude
’Twas done by this scale of degrees
Certain death from excess to elude.
THE DANGEROUS SIDE.
THE LEGAL VIEW.
POOR ENCOURAGEMENT.
An Iowa school-teacher was discharged for the offence of kissing a
female assistant. Whereupon a local paper inquired, “What inducement is
there for any person to exile himself to the country districts of Iowa
to direct the young idea in its musket-practice, if he is to be denied
the ordinary luxuries of every-day life? If a Platonic exercise in
osculation, occasionally, cannot be connived at, where are the mitigating
circumstances in the dreary life of a Western schoolmaster? We give it
up.”
KINDLY CAUTION.
A young fellow in a Western town was fined ten dollars for kissing a girl
against her will, and the following day the damsel sent him the amount
of his fine, with a note saying that the next time he kissed her he must
be less rough about it, and be careful to do it when her father was not
around.
RETALIATION.
The following colloquy occurred in an English divorce-case. Mr. Sergeant
Tindal, “He treated her very kindly, did he not?” Atkinson, “Oh, yes,
very; he kissed her several times.” Mr. Sergeant Tindal, “And how did she
treat him?” Atkinson, “Well, she retaliated.”
AN EXPENSIVE KISS.
An interesting suit for damages was tried in the Circuit Court of Sauk
County, Wisconsin. The title of the case was Helen Crager _vs._ The
Chicago and Northwestern Railroad Company. The facts are substantially as
follows. The plaintiff, who is a good-looking, interesting young lady,
twenty-one years of age, and a school-teacher, on the 6th of March, 1873,
bought a ticket of the company’s ticket-agent at Reedsburg, for Baraboo,
and took a seat in a passenger-car attached to a mixed train. When
within a few miles of her destination, the plaintiff, being at the time
alone with the conductor (the only other passenger and an employé of the
company having left the car), was caressed and kissed by the conductor.
There being nothing in the lady’s manner to induce such familiarity, the
ticket-puncher was, soon after the occurrence, arrested upon a charge of
assault and battery. He pleaded guilty, was fined twenty-five dollars
by the justice, and discharged by the company. The court ruled as a
matter of law that the company was liable for the plaintiff for actual
damage occasioned by the wrongful act of the conductor. The case was
well argued, and submitted to the jury, who returned a verdict for the
plaintiff, and assessed her damages at one thousand dollars.
TWENTY SHILLINGS FINE.
A noteworthy trial may be found among the proceedings of a Connecticut
court held at New Haven, May 1, 1660. In this case, the kisser was Jacob
M. Murline, and the kissee was Miss Sarah Tuttle. It was demonstrated
that Jacob “tooke up or tooke away her gloves. Sarah desired him to give
her the gloves, to which he answered he would do so if she would give
him a kysse, upon which they sat down together, his arme being about her
waiste, and her arme upon his shoulder or about his neck, and _he_ kyssed
her and _she_ kyssed him, or they kyssed one another, continuing in this
posture about half an hour.”
On examination, the amatory Jacob confusedly admitted that “he tooke her
by the hand, and they both sat down upon a chest, but whether his arme
were about her waiste, and her arme upon his shoulder or about his neck,
he knows not, for he never thought of it since till Mr. Raymond told him
of it at Mannatos, for which he was blamed, and told he had not layed it
to heart as he ought.” Jacob and Sarah were each fined twenty shillings.
So much for two centuries ago.
BREACH OF PROMISE.