Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1890-05-04

but the question cannot be answered as :,
Should she commit murder? or some kin
bred subjects, should be, for not even a
millIner's fashions are so mutable
as the standard of right and
wrong in this matter. A hundred
years ago or so, the gravest young gen.
tleman "saluted' the most prudish
young lady when he was first presented
to her, and it was no more a matter of
offense than twenty years ago it was to
shake hands. Nowadays we don It shake
hands under such circumstances, and
perhaps century hence it will be as ex-
traordinarY for a man to offer his hand
as it now would be should he offer his
lips.
In the rural regions of our own country
as well as of England, the favorite
amusement at a social gathering of
young persons is, or until recently has
been, a succession of "kissing games''
wherein the most modest girl of the
company was saluted by every swain who
chose, with as little embarrassment as if
he had been her mother. But even in
the rural districts this sort of thing is
passing away, and the permitted realm
of the kiss is narrowing day by day.
1t would be mere prudery; however, to
deny that kisses are still snatched, or
half stolen, or coaxed from many pair
of sweet lips which would most demurely
affirm that they never, never, never
could consent to such thing. A very
painful state of things, no doubt, but
not of easy remedy quite yet. Only dear,
sweet rosebud girls, let me give you
one bit of worldly wisdom: 1t
is the fruit that hangs just out of reach
that is most tempting; 1t is the bright,
delicate blossom at the top of the impass-
able cliff that is the fairest flower of all.
Men have risked their lives to find and
gather edelweiss in its frozen hiding
places; but edelweiss gathered, and
handled, and made common, is TO my
thinking very poor sort of thing.
But when one is engaged? All, yes,
of course that alters matters good deal,
but it does nor alter the nature of man,
which Is grasping, encroaohing, loving
pursuit and conquest and dreadlng
safety. An old lady oooe told me that
when she was a girl she visited bride
friend, and when the husband came
home at night, tired, hungry, cold and
cross, his young wife rushed into the
hall, and Selling him as he struggled
out of his overcoat, devoured him with
''There, tire, my dear; perhaps if
you didn t kiss me quite so much 1 SHOULD
want TO kiss you more. -
OF course, the man was brute, but
his brutality was founded upon a sound
truth.
The great trouble with women under
conditions of permitted love is. that she
lavishes out of the vast treasure-house of
IL,
object can receive or assimilate. Her
own powers of loving and being loved
are so tremendously in excess of his, that
they weary, terrify and satiate him long
before she has adequately expressed her
own tenderness.
But there are so many kinds of kisses,
that again the subject of what Is per-
Missile becomes involved in doubt.
There is the kiss of loving friendship be-
tween women, the kiss of reconciliation,
the kiss or simple greeting, the respect
full kiss offered to age, the kiss Of mere
custom. happily going out of fashion,
for il has been at some periods a most
wearisome and nauseous obligation as
often as one met the most casual ac-
cuaintance.
And then there are the Judas kisses,
when man or woman dares to offer the
token of love TO conceal inconsistency,
treachery, and meditated treason, the
worst kind of lie the lips can frame.
And last OF all comes that chill, sad
kiss, that passionless caress upon lips
never cold to US before, that mute fare
well that every one OF US has been called
to make soon or late, and which some
one yet shall make to US; and then2 All,
then7
Just why this contact of the lips. in