while in the maturer days of manhood courtship brings the happy day when, as a bridegroom, he meets his bride,

“And claims her with a loving kiss.”

Then come the kisses of connubial and parental love, and, finally,

“Life’s autumnal blossoms fall,

And earth’s brown clinging lips impress

The long cold kiss that waits us all.”

The observance of the custom, therefore, throughout life, and in all the relations of life, presents a broad field for the inspirations of the poet and the “situations” of the novelist; while in history, tradition, legend, and story it furnishes an endless number of charming and picturesque episodes. To gather together some of its varied interpretations and exemplifications from the wide range of our accumulated literature is the object of this volume. To recur to its ancient as well as its modern phases, to re-awaken some of its historic memories, to dwell briefly upon its poetic enchantments, to show its employment in the drama and in fiction, in metaphor and in anecdote, to exhibit its humorous side and its sorrowful side, to unveil the strength of its sincerity and the peril of its treachery, is the purpose of the editor. Inasmuch as the limitations of a duodecimo are too disproportionate to such breadth and scope of illustration to permit exhaustive treatment of our subject, the aim is to be selective and at the same time comprehensive. In the preparation of a work to fill a hiatus in our modern Collectanea, the difficulty which is constantly encountered is that of exclusion. Much that is worthy of a place is necessarily omitted, but the editor trusts that the materials which have been appropriated will measurably supply the deficiency which has been pointed out, and prove acceptable to a large class of readers. To those who welcome the book it has only briefly to say, in the language of the Eastern apologue, “I am not the rose, but I live with the rose, and so I have become sweet.”

CONTENTS.

PAGE
The Kiss in History[9]
The Kiss in Poetry[93]
The Kiss in Dramatic Literature[191]
The Kiss in Fiction[225]
The Kiss in Humorous Story and Anecdote[273]
Miscellaneous Aspects and Relations[321]