Part 5

There is a certain gluttony of kissing of which many examples might be given. There was once a jovial vicar who was such a glutton for kisses, that when he obtained the wished-for kiss, far from being satisfied he asked for a score; and

Then to that twenty add a hundred more, A thousand to that hundred; so kiss on To make that thousand up to a million; Treble that million, and when that is done, Let’s kiss afresh, as when we first begun.

There is a proverb which says: “When gorse is out of blossom, kissing is out of favor;” and gorse blossoms always, year in and year out. This matter of countless kisses has been the theme of many a poet. Catullus averred that though his crop of kissing were thicker than the dry ears of the corn-field, he would not have enough. Another ancient poet starts off with a thousand kisses, adds a hundred thousand, repeats the process (in rhyme, of course) twice, and urges that he and his sweetheart shall purposely confuse their memories as to the number and begin all over again. Another poet wants kisses equal in number as the grains of sand on the seashore, as the stars in the heavens.

Kisses told by hundreds o’er, Thousands told by thousands more, Millions, countless millions, then, Told by millions o’er again; Countless as the drops that glide In the ocean’s billowy tide, Countless as yon orbs of light Spangled o’er the vault of night, I’ll with ceaseless love bestow On those cheeks of crimson glow, On those lips so gently swelling, On those eyes such fond tales telling.

The poet exclaims that love was never satisfied with numbers, and argues that no one would dream of counting each blade of grass, each ear of ripening grain, or to a scanty hundred would confine the clustering bunches of grapes. Who would ask for a thousand bees and no more, or regulate the number of rain-drops that should fall on some parched pasture-land? One of our modern poets, John G. Saxe, has expressed this ancient desire, and from much of our modern poetry we should imagine the sentiment was still in favor:

Give me kisses—do not stay Counting in that careful way; All the coins your lips can print Never will exhaust the mint. Kiss me, then, Every moment—and again.

Old Ben Jonson said that it would be his wish that he might die kissing, and it is said so grave a philosopher as John Ruskin once invited a young lady to kiss him—“not sometimes, but continually.”

A young lady reading in a newspaper of a girl having been made crazy by a sudden kiss, called the attention of her uncle, who was in the room, to that singular occurrence, whereupon the old gentleman gruffly demanded what the fool had gone crazy for. “What did she go crazy for?” archly asked the ingenuous maiden; “why, for more, I suppose.”

And, in rhyme, we have the same sentiment.

“Of all the poets, darling one, Who’ve rhapsodized of love, Which one evokes your ardent praise All other bards above?” And as he took her in his arms And kissed her o’er and o’er, She spoke, in tones of ecstasy, “O Tommy, give me Moore!”

Some curious excuses are recorded for not kissing. In a certain Methodist church the young people were in the habit of playing games whose forfeits were kisses, but a pious old deacon was much troubled about it; he said he was not opposed to kissing if they did not kiss with “an appetite.” A woman in trying to express her contempt for a certain female friend, said: “If I was a man I would no more kiss such a woman than I would kiss a pair of tongs that had been left out over night in a snow-bank.”

Kissing experiences vary. A country damsel, describing her first kiss, told her female friend that she never knew how it happened, but the last thing she remembered was a sensation of fighting for her breath in a hot-house full of violets, with the ventilation choked by blush-roses and tu-lips.

A Western man relates his experience. “Talk about kissing! Go away! I have kissed in the North, I have kissed in the South; I have repeated the soul-stirring operation East and West; I have kissed in Texas and away down in Maine; I have kissed at Long Branch and at the Golden Gate— in fact, in every State in the Union; in every language and according to the manners and customs of every nation. I have kissed on the Mississippi and all its tributaries; but, young man, for good sound kissing, give me a full-fledged Caribou girl. When you feel the pegs drawn right through the soles of your feet, from your boots, that’s kissing, that is.”

We read of a king’s kiss that “fell like a flame,” sending through every vein love’s joy and pain. And Shakespeare speaks of two lovers whose lips were “four red roses on a stalk, and in their simple beauty kissed each other.” A country girl insisted on taking a stamp instead of a stamped envelope at the post-office. “My beau,” she said, “doesn’t like stamped envelopes. He lives away out in Colorado, and he says he never gets a chance to see me; but if I lick the stamp and stick it on, he can chew it, and it is the next thing to kissing me.” The fact is, that 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.

My Julia from the latticed grove Brought me a sweet bouquet of posies, And asked, as round my neck she clung, If tulips I preferred to roses? “I cannot tell, sweet girl,” I sighed, “But kiss me, ere I see the posies.” She did. “Oh! I prefer,” I cried, “Thy two-lips to a dozen roses.”

Almost every one has heard of the first kiss given by Dominie Brown to his sweetheart Janet, after a courtship of seven years. One evening, as they sat together in the customary solemn silence, Mr. Brown summoned courage and said: “We have been acquainted now for seven years, and I’ve ne’er gotten a kiss yet. D’ye think I might tak’ wan, my bonnie girl?”

“Just as you like, John, only be becoming wi’ it.”

“Surely, Janet, we’ll ask a blessing. For what we are about to receive, Lord make us truly thankful.”

The kiss was taken, and the worthy divine, overpowered by the blissful sensation, rapturously exclaimed: “Oh! Janet, it is gude. We’ll return thanks.” Six months afterwards they were married.

There is a poetic account of the kiss of that black-eyed Spanish girl who first kisses with her glances, practicing for the coming encounter:

Then she kisses with her eyelids, Kisses with her arching eye-brows, With her soft cheek softly rubbing, With her chin, and hands, and fingers. All the frame of Manuela, All her blood and all her spirit, All melt down to burning kisses, All she feeds on is their sugar.

And there is what may be called the apropos experience, equally interesting:

She took my coat—I’m rather tall— And she is not so very; The steps led upward from the hall, She stood, the little fairy, Just balanced on the second stair, My great-coat’s burden holding; And then her hands, the kindest pair, The collar down were folding.

There never was an eye so clear, Nor lips so red in moving; “Just tall enough now, ain’t I, dear? See how I’ve grown from loving!” Just tall enough! from eye to eye Ran horizontal light; Just tall enough to—let me try— Yes, tall enough—good-night.

And there is another kind of good-night kiss. A certain swain, after having escorted his sweetheart to and from a New England forfeit party, where the poor girl, the belle of the evening, had been kissed, as he expressed it, “slobbered over by all, and sundry,” of course kissed her good-night at the gate. He declared in that one chaste salute he could discriminate nine distinct and separate flavors, viz., onions, tobacco, brandy, peppermint, gin, lager-beer, checkerberry, musk, and camphor.

With some of us a kiss is our earliest recollection:

I recollect a nurse called Ann, Who carried me about the grass; And one fine day a nice young man Came up and kissed the pretty lass. She did not make the least objection. Thinks I, “Ah, When I can talk, I’ll tell mamma.” And that’s my earliest recollection.

In that old-fashioned youthful game, “Kiss in the Ring,” a favorite manœuvre of some of the boys was to keep out of a place in the ring till they had kissed all the pretty girls in succession. Those who grow up with the same fondness for osculatory attentions would probably like the custom in some parts of Germany, which requires a young man who is engaged to a girl, to salute, upon making his adieu for the evening, the whole of the family, beginning with the mother. Thus, in a family circle embracing half-a-dozen girls, each having a lover, no less than forty-eight kisses would have to be given on the occasion of a united meeting; and when we consider that each lover would give his own sweetheart ten times as many kisses as he gave her sisters, the grand total would outnumber a hundred.

We must not omit the mother’s kiss. Her good-bye kiss has been the charm which has kept many a schoolboy in the right path when he has got free from home influences. Tom Brown, _en route_ for Rugby, made a bargain with his father, before starting, that he was not to be subjected to the indignity of a paternal kiss; not so, however, with his mother, whose last kiss all the racket of public school life could never efface from his memory. Benjamin West, the artist, once said: “A kiss from my mother made me a painter.”

VIII.

THE IMPORTANT CONSEQUENCES CONNECTED WITH KISSING— ARRAH-NA-POGUE—REFUSING THE SACRAMENT ON ACCOUNT OF A KISS—HOW A CHILD’S KISS AFFECTED THE COURSE OF A DESPERATE MAN—WHAT A LITTLE MARE’S KISS DID—BROUGHT TO LIFE BY A KISS—THE KISS OF DEATH—KISSING IN TUNNELS—A MOUNTAIN EXPERIENCE—KISSING THE COOK.

Many curious stories might be related of important consequences coming from a kiss. Sometimes a kiss proves useful. There is a romantic story of the great Irish rebellion, in which an imprisoned patriot under sentence of death was enabled to make his escape, the plan of operations being conveyed to him in a billet carried to him by his sweetheart in her mouth, and passed to him by the medium of a kiss through the iron grating of his dungeon. This was done under the very noses of the governor and sentinels placed there to intercept any improper communication. This story has been used in Arrah-na-Pogue, which means literally “Arrah of the kiss.”

In the “Memoirs of Adam Black,” published by his sons in Edinburgh, is related an incident which occurred in Adam’s youth, and illustrates the severe sort of orthodoxy that then prevailed among the Evangelicals of Scotland. On one sacrament Sunday morning the wife of the Rev. John Colquhoun, of Leith, being desirous of having him nicely rigged out for the occasion, had his coat well brushed, his shirt as white as snow, and his bands hanging handsomely on his breast; and when she surveyed her gudeman, she was so delighted with his comely appearance that she suddenly took him around the neck and kissed him. The Rev. John, however, was so offended by this carnal proceeding, that he debarred his wife from the sacrament that day.

In a prison at New Bedford, Mass., there was a man whom we will call Jim, who was a prisoner on a life sentence. He was regarded as a desperate, dangerous man, ready for rebellion at any hour. He planned a general outbreak, but was “given away” by one of the conspirators. He plotted a general mutiny or rebellion, and was again betrayed. He then kept his own counsel, and while never refusing to obey orders, he obeyed like a man who only needed backing to make him refuse to. One day, a party of strangers came into the institution. One was an old gentleman, the others ladies, and two of the ladies had small children. The guide took one of the children on his arm, and the other walked until the party came to climbing the stairs. Jim was working near by, sulky and morose as ever, when the guide said to him: “Jim, won’t you help this little girl up the stairs?”

The convict hesitated, a scowl on his face; and the little girl held out her arms to him and said: “If you will, I guess I’ll kiss you.” The scowl vanished in an instant, and he lifted the child as tenderly as a father. Half-way up the stairs she kissed him. At the head of the stairs she said, “Now, you’ve got to kiss me, too.”

He blushed like a woman, looked into her innocent face, and then kissed her cheek, and before he reached the foot of the stairs again the man had tears in his eyes. From that day he was a changed man, and no one in the place gave less trouble. Maybe in his far Western home he had a Katie of his own. No one knows, for he never revealed his inner life; but the change so quickly wrought by a child gave hope that he would forsake his evil ways.

When Mr. Cole, a well-known circus proprietor in the South, sold his stock in New Orleans, three dun ring horses that he had owned for years went with the others by mistake. Mr. Cole at once bought them back, saying that he would never consent to have the horses become the property of any one who would make them work, and that he had decided to put them to a painless death. He proposed bleeding them to death, but W. B. Leonard, a liveryman, suggested that the use of chloroform would be a better and less painful mode. This was finally decided upon, and a reliable man procured, who was to have performed the operation.

They were all collected in the circus tent. There were Cole, Leonard, the riders and the clowns, the ringmaster, the tumblers and leapers, and the three pet duns. Calling the little mare by name, he told her to kiss them all good-bye. The intelligent animal, stretching forward her head, kissed each one. This was more than they could stand, and the sacrifice was put off. Cole had no place to take them to, so Mr. Leonard promised to find some one who would assume charge of them, under a guarantee never to work them, but to keep them in good order until death should claim them for the grave.

A remarkable case of a child being brought back to life by a kiss occurred in Louisville, Ky. A man named Joseph Meyer had two children, a boy about ten years and a girl about two months old. This baby, which appeared healthy, was suddenly taken ill with something like convulsions, and came very near dying before medical aid could be summoned. The doctor was called in and gave the child some medicine, not thinking, however, that it could possibly live. He then left, but returned the next morning. When he reached the house the child was barely breathing, and in a few minutes afterwards respiration stopped altogether. Every appearance of death was visible; the face assumed the hue of death, the jaw dropped, limbs relaxed, and the eyes became glazed. The doctor examined the pulse, and listened for the beating of the heart, but failing to find any signs of life, pronounced the child dead. It lay thus for fully ten minutes, with the members of the family grouped around the bed lamenting, as is usual in such cases. The little girl’s brother, who was just old enough to understand the situation, and who seemed to be greatly grieved, suddenly stepped from the circle and approached the supposed corpse, leaned over and imprinted a kiss upon the pallid lips. The baby’s mouth was slightly open, and in kissing her the boy blew his breath down her throat. The little lips suddenly moved, the child gave one or two sudden gasps and then commenced to breathe, slowly and feebly at first, and then gradually stronger, until respiration became almost natural. Every one around was terribly astonished at this unlooked-for coming back from the dead, and did not seem to realize the fact until the child had been breathing for half an hour. The little one rapidly improved, and eventually regained its health.

An old Roman Catholic missionary in a little Mexican town speaks of a curious superstition among his people in regard to a certain grave in the cemetery. “A spirit,” he says, “is said to have appeared to every one buried in that grave, and to warn the family whenever any of them is about to pass away. Its appearance, which is generally made in the following manner, is believed to be uniformly fatal, being an omen of death to those who are so unhappy as to meet with it.

“When a funeral takes place, the spirit is said to watch the person who remains last in the graveyard, over whom it possesses a fascinating influence.

“If the person be a young man, the spirit takes the shade of a fascinating young female, inspires him with a charmed passion, and exacts a promise that he will meet her at the graveyard a month from that day. This promise is sealed with a kiss that communicates a deadly taint to him who complies. The spirit then disappears. No sooner does the person from whom it received the promise and the kiss pass the boundary of the churchyard than he remembers the history of the spectre. He sinks into despair and insanity and dies. If, on the contrary, the spectre appears to a young woman, it assumes the form of a young man of exceeding elegance and beauty.”

On the subject of the humors of kissing there is abundant material to draw from. Stories about kissing in tunnels naturally come to mind. The well-known court-plaster incident is said to have occurred in one of the tunnels of the Hudson River Railroad. A very pretty lady was seated opposite to a good-looking gentleman, who was accompanying a party to Saratoga Springs. It was observed that this exceedingly handsome young woman had the smallest bit of court-plaster on a slight abrasion of the surface of her red upper lip. As the cars rambled into the darkness of the tunnel, a slight exclamation of “Oh!” was heard from the lady, and when the cars again emerged into the light, the little piece of court-plaster aforesaid had become in some mysterious manner transferred to the upper lip of the young gentleman.

Horace Vernet, the artist, was going from Versailles to Paris by railway. In the same compartment with him were two ladies whom he had never seen before, but who were evidently acquainted with him. They examined him minutely, and commented freely upon his martial bearing, his hale, old age, the style of his dress, etc. They continued their annoyance until finally the painter determined to put an end to the persecution. As the train passed through the tunnel of St. Cloud, the three travelers were wrapped in complete darkness. Vernet raised the back of his hand to his mouth and kissed it twice violently. On emerging from the obscurity he found that the ladies had withdrawn their attention from him, and were accusing each other of having been kissed by a man in the dark.

Presently they arrived at Paris, and Vernet, on leaving them, said: “Ladies, I shall be puzzled all my life by the inquiry, _which_ of these two ladies was it that kissed me?”

There have been some amusing osculatory experiences in the far western part of our country. A young Montana chap, upon stepping aboard of a sleeping-car, thus addressed the conductor: “See here, captain, I want one of your best bunks for this young woman, and one for myself individually. _One_ will do for us when we get to the Bluff—hey, Mariar?” (Here he gave a playful poke at “Mariar,” to which she replied: “Now, John, quit.”) “For, you see, we’re goin’ to git married at Mariar’s uncle’s. We might a bin married at Montanny, but we took a habit to wait till we got to the Bluff, bein’ Mariar’s uncle is a minister, and they charge a gosh-fired price for hitchin’ folks at Montanny.”

“Mariar” was assigned one of the best “bunks.” During a stoppage of the train at a station, the voice of John was heard in pleading accents, unconscious that the train had stopped, and that his tones could be heard throughout the car:

“Now, Mariar, you might give a feller jes one.”

“John, you quit, or I’ll git out right here and hoof it back to Montanny in the snowstorm.”

“Only one little kiss, Mariar, and I hope to die if I don’t——”

“John——”

At this moment an old gray-beard poked his head out of his berth, at the other end of the car, and cried out:

“Maria, for pity’s sake, _give_ John one kiss, so that we can go to sleep some time to-night.”

Thereupon John subsided and retired to his berth to dream of the distinction between the hesitancy of the kiss of courtship and the freedom of the kiss connubial.

A young and romantic Western girl, kissed for the first time, said that she felt like a tub of butter swimming in honey, cologne, nutmegs, and cranberries, and as though something was running through her nerves on feet with diamonds, escorted by several little Cupids in chariots drawn by angels, shaded with honeysuckles, and the whole spread with melted rainbows!

Among the comic songs about kissing, the one about Esau is the best:

I saw Esau kissing Kate; The fact is we all three saw; For I saw Esau, he saw me, And she saw I saw Esau!

A young lady of the gushing sort, while passing through one of the military hospitals, overheard the remark that a young lieutenant had died that morning.

“Oh, where is he? Let me see him. Let me kiss him for his mother!” exclaimed the maiden.

The attendant led her into an adjoining ward, when, discovering Lieutenant H., of the Fifth Kansas, lying fast asleep on his hospital couch, and thinking to have a little fun, he pointed him out to the girl. She sprang forward and, bending over him, said: “Oh, you dear Lieutenant, let me kiss you for your mother.”

What was her surprise when the awakened “corpse” ardently clasped her in his arms, returned the salute with interest, and exclaimed:

“Never mind the old lady, Miss; go it on your own account; I haven’t the least objection.”

There is the experience of kissing the cook. “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 really cannot recollect. I only remember going into the kitchen and 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.”

Our journey in the sweet fields of osculation stops here. As a conclusion to the whole matter, let us say with the immortal bard:

Now let me say good-night, and so say you; If you will say so, you shall have a kiss.