The Washington herald., 1917-10-31
News and Nevs of Interest the Women Readers of The He
KISSING.
By DOROTHY DIX.
The Worlds Highest Paid Woman Writer.

I get a great many letters from
young girls who want to know what
they shall do about the kissing propo-
sition. They say that 1t is practically
a case of no kiss, no beau. for the
young men who take them about de-
mand a goodnight kiss as pay for
their courtesies, and IL they refuse II
is. indeed, goodnight. in the slang
phrase. for they never see these oscu-
latory youths again.
Now the innate modesty and deli
, cacy OF these girls revolts at yielding
their lips to men to whom they are
not even engaged; to men who do not
even pretend to be in love with them.
1t violates their sense of what is
proper. but. at the same time, they do
not want to be regarded as prudes
| and puritans. Still less do they desire
to be wall flowers left out of all the
fun and parties. and numbered with
those forlorn damsels who never have
any attention from men.
So the girl is torn between her in
stinctive sense of what is right and
her knowledge of expediency, and
she wants TO know what she shall
do and how she shall answer the
eternal argument of man when he is
trying to persuade a woman into
doing the thing that he knows she
should not do. To kiss, or not to
kiss, that's the question that troubles
her.
There can be but one answer TO
give a girl to this problem. 1t is
no, no, no. A maiden's lips should
be kept inviolate. and the first mans
kiss that is pressed upon them should
be the kiss of love from the man
she expects to marry. For a girl
to give her lips to every Tom, Dick
and Harry who takes her to a mov-
ing picture show or escorts her home
/ from a dance is something unthink-
able. 1t is as much of a desecration
as II she trailed a white rose bud
through a sewer.
1t is a pity that girls can never
be made to realize that the most
alluring and attractive thing about
them is the aura of innocence and un-
sophistication that surrounds them.
1t is the whiteness, the untrodden
snow-ness of their souls that is their
chiefest charm, and they never make
so fatal a mistake as when they throw
this away.
II girls were only wise enough to
realize how fascinating aloofness is,
| and what an. appeal unsullied purity
makes to the masculine imagination
they would keep every man at arm S
length at least until he had come
out and popped the question. They
would not think for a minute Of put
| ting up with cheap familiarities from
men that rob them of their fresh
ness and make them little shop worn
bits of humanity that have been
paved over like the goods on bar
gain table. Girls should never for
get that it is the shy and shrinking
, violet that is mans favorite Mower
not the brazen sun flower.
Nv girl correspondent says that she
| does not know how to answer a man
when he begs her to kiss him and
/ tells her that there is no harm in II.
and that his arguments make her feel
J foolish because she seems to be maxi
/ ing a great ado over a very little
4 matter. There is one answer that
every girl can make TO a mans re-
quest for a kiss.
She can ask him IL he would like his
| sister to kiss any man good night who
! happened to call upon her. She can
ask him what he would advise his
sister to do IL his sister were in her
place. And she can ask him IL he
would like to think that the girl that
! he is going TO marry some day had
| kitssed a hundred men who were mere
casual acquaintances.
Such questions will make any de-
cent man writhe. a man will tell
| his own sister quickly enough what he
| thinks on the subject. and his own lips
would grow cold and stiff on his
sweetheart's II he remembered that
her soft young mouth had belonged
TO long procession Of men before
! him.
Girls can never bear in mind too
constatly the fact that men never
play fair with women, and are never
| just or logical in judging them. A
man will spend hours, days and
months psrsuading a girl to do some
! thing that is wrong, and have a
| contempt for her ever afterwards
for yielding to him. He will argue