New-York tribune., 1870-05-27
KISSES AND BLOWS.

We once knew a sweet and benignant lady,
member of the Society of Friends, who suf-
fered great deal at the annual necessity of
drowning litter of kittens. She preferred to
do it herself and make sure of it, but she also
spared the feelings of the kittens by warming
the water in which they were to be immersed.
Such tenderness hath Nature implanted in the
heart of woman. 1t was said of a brilliant
French lady that she always Kissed with honey
on her lips, and of another that, if she wished
to poison you, she would choose the mildest
drug. And a late American novelist says of
smooth heroine that "if she were to commit
ga graceful forgery to-day, or mild murder
"tO-morrow, nobody would be surprised, and
call her intimate friends would say that 1t
"was just what they had always expected"
Whether women ever get the ballot or not, 1t is
evident that they are to take more and more
part in active life. Therefore it will be in
teresting to see the influence which their finer
and smoother ways of action will exert among
men. 1t il evident that this influence will not
Immediately tend toward peace, but it will GER
tainly affect the form and quality of strife.
The history of the late civil war and of the
woman suffrage agitation do not certainly
prove the fairer sex to be the gentler. But
then q woman fights with so much finer
weapons than mans. She hits so quickly,
guards so gracefully, and walls all her move
ments so skllfully and with an aspect of such
inscrutable candor, that she really makes the
old style of contest seem very stupid and
clumsy thing. Who would not rather be
transfixed adroitly-perpetrated right through
and through, as Mrs. Partington says-by a
woman's wit, than be simply beaten black and
blue by q mani
But the most formidable weapon after all is
that used most literally by woman against her
own sex, although not wholly withheld, let us
hope, from the other. Nature kept from her
the power of the fist, but intrusted to her that
most formidable of all engines, the kiss. With
what desperate unscrupulougness is this deadly
| instrument brought to bear Who has not
| seen the commotiOn Sometimes produced among
party OF ladies', whether in private parl0r
OF on the platform of a convention, by the
| arrival OF Zone other lady whom they all par
ticularly dislike, and against whose fell de-
signs they are all perhaps plotting to defend
themselvesf She may come like Lochiels eagle,
"compaDicnless, bearing destruction abroad y
they may wish her, and she may know that
they wish her, thousand miles off-but all
how they kiss her. You would suppose that
the hereditary animosities of ten generations
might be disarmed by such greeting. Not at
all the dangerous visitor is not moved by
them, nor is it expected she should be. After
all, there is something graceful, if little ques-
tiOnable, in such endearments. As between
opponents, they smooth the asperities of the
fight, without destroying its zest. They
sweeten life, perhaps at the cost of q little
sincerity. hoy are like the mutual salutations
Of Dick Swiyeller and his Glorious Apollos
"mOrsels of enthusiasm, which raised them
"abOve this duh, cold earth.n Perhaps, in
deed, this ready osculation of opponents indi-
Gates p stage of progress. If we cannot have
kiss for blow, such as the Sunday school
tracts recommend, it is something to have
the kisses and the blows alternately.
And when we pass beyond these special de-
monstrations, II will stiii be found that the
presence of women will give new situations
| and more subtle combinations through all the
| affairs of life. There viii be less of the tire
some straight line, and new and charming in
directions. 1t may be said, as q general rule,
that women know more of the by-ways of
the human heart than of the highways, while
with men the opposite is true. When We add