THE SCIENCE OF KISSING.
I NOTE that a Britisher named Prof. Bridger has
been infringing my copyright by proclaiming, as an
original discovery, that kissing is an excellent tonic and
will cure dyspepsia. When the o'erbusy bacteriologists
first announced that osculation was a dangerous pastime,
that divers and sundry varieties of bacteria hopped
blithely back and forth engendering disease and death, I
undertook a series of experiments solely in the interest of
science. Being a Baptist Preacher and making camp-meetings my specialty, I had unusual opportunity for
investigation, for those of our faith are strict
constructionists of the biblical law to “greet one
another with a kiss.” I succeeded in demonstrating
before the end of the tenting season that osculation,
when practiced with reasonable discretion and unfaltering
industry, is an infallible antidote for at least half the ills
that human flesh is heir to. The reason the doctors
arrived at different conclusions is that they kissed
indiscriminately and reasoned inductively. They found on
casting up the account that bad breath and face powder,
the sour milk-bottle of youth and the chilling frost of age,
comprised six-sevenths of the sum total. Under such
conditions there was nothing to do but establish a
quarantine. I pointed out, as Prof. Bridger has since
done, that a health microbe as well as a disease bacillus
nidificates on the osculatory apparatus, and added that
failure to absorb a sufficient quantity of these hygiologic
germs into the system causes old maids to look jaundiced
and bachelors to die sooner than benedicts. Kisses,
when
selected with due care and taken on the installment plan,
will not only restore a misplaced appetite, but are especially
beneficial in cases of hay fever, as they banish that
tired feeling, tone up the liver, invigorate the heart, and
make the blood to sing through the system like a giant
jewsharp. I found by patient experiment that the health
microbe becomes active at fifteen, reaches maturity at
twenty, begins to lose its vigor at forty, and is quite
useless as a tonic when, as someone has tersely
expressed it, a woman's kisses begin to “taste of
her teeth.” Thin bluish lips produce very few health
germs, and those scarce worth the harvesting; but a full
red mouth with Cupid curves at the corners, will yield
enormously if the crop be properly cultivated. I did not
discover whether the blonde or brunette variety is
entitled to precedence in medical science, but incline to
the opinion that a judicious admixture is most advisable
from a therapeutical standpoint. Great care should be
taken when collecting the germs not to crush them by
violent collision or blow them away with a loud explosion
that sounds like hitting an empty sugar hogshead with a
green hide. The practice still prevailing in many parts of
this country of chasing a young woman ever the furniture
and around the barn like an amateur cowboy trying to
rope a maverick, rounding her up in the presence of a
dozen people, unscrewing her neck and planting almost
any place a kiss that sounds like a muley cow pulling her
hind foot out of a black-waxy mud hole, and which jars
the putty off the window panes, possesses no more
curative powers than hitting a flitch of bacon with the
back of your hand. I prithee, avoid it; when a girl runs
from a kiss you may take it for granted either that the
germ crop is not ripe or you are poaching on somebody
else's preserves. The best results can be obtained about
the midnight hour, when the dew is on the
rose, the jasmine bud drunken with its own perfume and
the mock-bird trilling a last good night to his drowsy
mate. You entice your best girl into the garden to watch
Venus' flaming orb hanging like the Kohinoor pendant
from the crescent moon. You pause beneath the great
gnarled live oak, its myriad leaves rustling softly as the
wings of seraphs. Don't be in a hurry, and for God's
sake, don't gab—in such a night silence is the acme of
eloquence. “In such a night Troilus mounted the
Trojan walls and sighed his soul toward the Grecian tents
where Cressid lay.” She watches the fireflies
respiring in phosphorescent flame amid the clover
blooms, while you watch her and twine a spray of
honeysuckle in her hair. Your clumsy fingers unloose the
guards and her fragrant tresses, caught up by the cool
night wind, float about your face. Somehow her hand
gets tangled up with yours, and after a spasmodic flutter
there remains a willing prisoner. The fireflies have failed
to interest her and she is studying the stars. You move
your shoulder forward to give her head a rest and get
hold of her other hand. Be patient; when she wants you
to kiss her she'll find means to make it manifest, and a
maid worth kissing despises a forward man. She looks
very beautiful with her face upturned in the moonlight;
but don't say a word about it, for there's a little of the
poseur about all the daughters of Eve. She withdraws
her eyes from the stars, slowly turns them dreamily upon
yours, and you note that they are filled with astral fire.
They roam idly over the shadowy garden, then close as
beneath a weight of weariness. Her head rests more
heavily against your shoulder and her bosom trembles
with a half-audible sigh. There is now really no occasion
for further delay. Do not swoop down upon the health
germs like a hungry hen-hawk on a green gosling, but
incline your head gently until your carefully deodorized
breath is upon
her lips—there pause, for the essence of enjoyment is in
anticipation. The man who gulps down a glass of old
wine without first inhaling its œnanthic and feasting
his eyes upon its ruddy splendors, is simply a sot. Wait
until you have noted the dark lashes lying upon the cheek
of sun-flushed snow, “the charm of married
brows,” the throat of alabaster, the dimple in her
chin, the wine-tint of her half-parted lips with their glint
of pearl—wait until her eyes half-open, look inquiringly
into yours, and close again, then cincture her gently but
firmly with one arm, support her chin with the other
hand, and give the health germs ample time to change
their home. A kiss to have any scientific value, should
last one minute and seven seconds by Shrewsbury clock,
and be repeated seven times, not in swift succession, but
with the usual interval between wine at a symposiac.
Byron did these things differently, but the author of
“Don Juan” is not a safe example for young
folks to follow. He pictures Mars lying with his head in
the lap of Venus,
“Feeding on thy sweet cheek, while thy lips are
With lava-kisses melting while they burn,
Shower'd on his eyelids, brow and mouth as from an urn.”
That may be eminently satisfactory to Mars,
but scarce proper for Venus. It is exciting, but not
scientific. It suggests charity children gorging
themselves with plum-pudding, rather than poetic natures
drunken with beauty; and fragrance, swooning 'neath the
sweetness of a duet sung by their own chaste souls.
The dyspeptic who cannot recover by following my
prescription deserves to die. The pessimist whom it
doesn't make look at life through rose-tinted glasses,
should be excluded from human society. The
hypochondriac whom it doesn't help ought to be hanged.
There is not a human ill—unless it be hypocrisy—for which
nature does not provide a remedy, and I
recommend the health germ which builds its nest on
lovely woman's lips as worth more than the whole
materia medica. I don't know whether it will raise the
dead, but I've always doubted the story that Egypt
kissed the cold lips of her Roman Antony—have
suspected it would have brought me back to life and love
had I been dead a month. The unscientific catch-as-catch-can kiss has no more beneficial effect than
slapping yourself in the face with a raw beef-steak. It is
but a slight improvement on the civilization of Ashantee,
where a man proposes marriage by knocking his Dulcina
down with a club and dragging her through the
backwoods' pasture by the hair of her head; but kisses
properly taken—beneath the stars and among the roses—
are the perennial fount of youth for which Ponce de Leon
sailed far seas in a vain search for the blessed Bimini.