The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-09-04
Kissing
By DIR. FRANK CRANE

THERE are all sorts, and degrees of kisses
 from the Iife-giving kiss of Cupid and
 Psyche to the death-sealing kiss of Judas. But of all kisses the kiss .of q man and woman, equally smitten with the Ian guorous disease of love, is the ideal; which to my knowledge has been nowhere indicated in words more artifully than in Tennysons Fatima: 70 love! o fire once he drew With one long kiss my whole soul through My lips, as sunlight drinketh dew"
 It is the soul rising to the lips that makes a kiss fun sacrament; that is an outward act expressing a spiritual reality.
 The mouth is the exit portal of thought, the lips coin those sounds that embody the cre- ations of the brain, so it is but natural that the meeting of lips is the perfect symbol of unity. To lovers all the words possible to be said melt into the mute substance of a kiss.
 To one who feels this the custom of indis- criminate kissing is not agreeable. Nor" says Montaigne (Florios translation), do divided into four parts, so for four faire ones we must kiss five foule; and to a nice and tender stOmack, as are those of mine age, one i'll kisse doth surpay one good"
 1t would be interesting to find a com plete history of kissing, combined with q discriminating classification of the various species and geni of kisses all by some learned author who might be old enough not to be suspected and still young enough to know what he was talking about
 For kiss has as many meanings and con nections as a word, and each kiss has it's accent and pronunciation, so to speak. If the performance is hurried, mere brushing of the lips, it says something quite different that tOuph " n ing to part.
 There are races, as the Japanese, where kissing is not the custom and certain negro tribes rub noses in sign of amity; and there are rational nuisanceS who would like to set back our civilization to this mark; but can conceive of no tyranny more odius than that of physicians by all means let us live anti septically, but l hope never to see the day when our fear of microbes will be stronger than our courage to kiss the lips that ask.
 There is the paternal kiss, upon the fore head; and the French family kiss on one cheek and then on the other; the courtly kiss upon the hand and the farewell kiss blown from the finger-tips; the kiss upon the Bible in oath taking; and the kiss upon the dust of the ground, among slaves, but all these are but petty suburbs around the main cita- del which is the kiss of love.
 There are infidels and scoffers in the court of kissing Pooh and Pah, Bosh and Oof are stubborn Voltaires, Tom Paines, and In. gersols who have their following; there are Puritans who regard osculation as a form of sin, and prudes who look upon it. or at least look upon mentioning it, as somewhat indecent; but the great commonality of the human family consider kissing to be one of the most interesting exercises, as fascinating as it is dangerous one of those little acts that hang like scarlet flower right on the edge of the cliff between the Elysian Fields and the Bottomless Pit; everybody likes kiss ing except the usual protecting minority. and even they like to talk about it.
 Then there is the kiss of desperation, of which that of Hartley Coleridge is q classical type. Tennyson tells us that Coleridge had accepted an invitation to dinner at the house of a dull and stiff Presbyterian minister.
 There was a long waiting for dinner ip the drawing room. Nobody talked. At last Hartley could stand it no longer. He jumped up from the sofa, kissed the clergyman's daughter, and bolted out of the house.