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                                THE ART
                            ... OF...
                                KISSING.

                 [Illustration: SEVEN.

                 At seven!! a sly kiss is so sweet,
                 To steal one now and then’s a treat.]

                            Curiously,
                            Historically,
                                Humorously,
                                Poetically
                            Considered.

                [Illustration: SEVENTEEN.

                At seventeen!! they’re nicer still,
                And there’s a way where there’s a will.]

                               DEDICATED
                                   TO
                             ALL WHO LOVE.

                 [Illustration: SEVENTY.

                 At seventy!! it’s just the same,
                 They still keep up the old, old game.]

                               New York:
                   J. S. Ogilvie Publishing Company,
                            57 Rose Street.

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                                  THE

                            ART OF KISSING.


                        CURIOUSLY, HISTORICALLY,
                         HUMOROUSLY, POETICALLY
                              CONSIDERED.

                             --------------

                  (COPYRIGHT, 1902, BY WILL ROSSITER.)

                             --------------

                               NEW YORK:
                   J. S. OGILVIE PUBLISHING COMPANY,
                            57 ROSE STREET.




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                                  THE

                            ART OF KISSING.




                                   I.

    ORIGIN OF KISSING; THE SCANDINAVIAN TRADITION; AN OLD
        POET’S IDEA—KISSING IN ANCIENT ROME, AND AMONG THE
        JEWS AND EARLY CHRISTIANS—BIBLICAL KISSING—RELIGIOUS
        SIGNIFICANCE—KISSING IN EARLY ENGLAND—ANCIENT KISSING
        CUSTOMS AS DESCRIBED BY ERASMUS—THE PURITANICAL VIEWS
        OF JOHN BUNYAN—HOW ADAM KISSED EVE—A KISS DEFINED: BY
        THE DICTIONARY, SHAKESPEARE, ROBERT HERRICK, SIDNEY,
        COLERIDGE—COMICAL AND SHORT DESCRIPTIONS—A GRAMMAR OF
        KISSING—THE SCIENTIFIC REASON WHY KISSES ARE PLEASANT.


Of kissing it has been quaintly said that nature was its author and it
began with the first courtship. The Scandinavian tradition was that
kissing was an exotic introduced into England by Rowena, the beautiful
daughter of Hengist, the Saxon. At a banquet given by the British
monarch in honor of his allies the princess, after pressing the brimming
beaker to her lips, saluted the astonished and delighted Vortigern with
a little kiss, after the manner of her own people.

For a long time it was an act of religion in ancient Rome and among the
Romans the sacredness of the kiss was inviolable. At length it was
degraded into a current form of salutation.

The kiss was, in process of time, used generally as a form of salutation
in Rome where men testified their regard and the warmth of their welcome
for each other chiefly by the number of their kisses. There was a
curious law among the Romans made by Constantine; that, if a man had
kissed his betrothed she gained thereby the half of his effects should
he die before the celebration of the marriage; and should the lady
herself die, under the same circumstances, her heirs or nearest to kin
would take the half due her, a kiss among the ancients being the sign of
plighted faith.

Among the Jews, kissing was a customary mode of salutation as we may
judge from the circumstance of Judas approaching his Master with a kiss.
The Rabbis did not permit more than three kinds of kisses, the kiss of
reverence, of reception and dismissal. Kissing in many religions has
played a part as a mark of adoration or veneration. In Hosea xiii-2,
speaking of idolatry, we find the sentence “Let the men that sacrifice
kiss the calves.” Again, the discontented prophet is told that even in
idolatrous Israel are seven thousand knees which have not bowed to Baal,
“and every mouth which hath not kissed him.” The Mohammedans, on their
pious pilgrimage to Mecca, kiss the sacred black stone and the four
corners of the Kaaba. The Roman Catholic priest kisses the aspergillum,
and Palm Sunday the palm.

In the works of St. Augustine we find an account of four kinds of
kissing; the first,