DIFFERENT KINDS OF KISSES: THE LONG, LONG KISS, THE PAROXYSMAL, THE ICY, THE WESTERN, THE LIFE-TEEMING KISS— HOW COLLEGE GIRLS KISS—THE KISS OF A FEMALE CORNETIST— PLATONIC KISSES—ROMAN OSCULATION—CHARACTERISTICS OF KISSES—THE KISS AS A PUNISHMENT—THE KING OF BABY-KISSERS—THE KISS AFTER MARRIAGE—STOLEN KISSES, SOMETIMES CALLED “DAINTY BITS OF PLUNDER”—THE STORY OF A CIRCASSIAN GIRL.
There are a great many kinds of kisses. There is Byron’s “long, long kiss of youth and love.” A rural suitor kissed his girl repeatedly after this fashion. When he finally ceased, the tears came into her eyes, and she said, in sad tones: “Ah, Rufus! I fear you have ceased to love me!” “Oh, no, I haven’t,” he replied, with a wearied air, “but I must breathe!” The “paroxysmal kiss” has been described as a kiss “buttered with soul-lightning.” Very different from the kiss of a certain prominent actress:
Hail! kiss of Mary Anderson, all hail! All hail, we sing, for hail is ice in chunks, And Mary’s kisses are but chunks of ice. Brittle and snappy, with no sign of thaw, Or warmth that meets and pins two souls Together at the touch of lips.
There is a story told of a light, free-hearted Western girl—probably auburn-haired—who, while engaged in the osculatory performance with her lover, swooped down upon him like a summer fog upon a millstone and scooped him in. She sat in his lap and kissed him with a kissness which an emotional actress would have given ten years of her life to imitate upon the stage. It was an earthquake of love, a simoon of affection. She kissed him until his back hair smoked.
It is said that in nearly all the famous colleges for women there is a special teacher or doctress in physiology, and in the so-called oral recitations the pernicious effects of osculation are considered at great length. By way of tolerating what seems to be a necessary evil, various theories are advanced and various provisions advocated. The girl who comes from Smith College, Northampton, kisses on the oblique lines that fall from the left corner of your mouth, but when kissed, is so adroit in the way she jerks her head, that the point of salutation may be found on a radius from the right of her demure little mouth. The Vassar graduate kisses more than her Smith College friend, but the chin is her choice, as you will observe in an attempt to salute her. The seniors from Wellesley press their kisses high up on the face, almost under the sweep of the eyelash, and the Lake Forest and Harvard Annex maidens kiss at a point equally distant from the nose and ear.