“We never believed Pope’s line,
‘Die of a rose in aromatic pain,’
till we once accidentally got a kiss awarded to us at a game of forfeits, some fifty years ago. Eheu! fugaces! The fair one in question was the secret idol of our soul. Oh, those cerulean eyes! those flowing silken tresses! those ruby lips! that exquisite form!
‘Her presence was as lofty as her state;
Her beauty of that overpowering kind
Whose force description only would abate:
I’d rather leave it much to your own mind
Than lessen it by what I could relate
Of form and feature.’
“But we must tear ourself away from these charms and return to our mutton, or, rather, our lamb, for our heart’s worship was only eighteen cents a pound,—confound the butchers! the high price of meat has confused our notions,—we mean she was only eighteen years of age. When we found ourself entitled to a kiss by the sacred game of forfeits, the keenness of the rapture almost grew into a toothache. A kiss seemed more than we could manage; it grew into Titanic dimensions. We had a vague notion of asking the company to help us out by sharing our bliss, as the school-boy who, when he hears of his two-hundred-pound cake being on the road, promises all his comrades a slice, but when it arrives he keeps it all to himself!