And said, ‘It grieved him, but he could not stoop
To any shoe, unless it shod the Pope.’”
Finally the matter was compromised by kissing the hand, the proud Castilian promptly acknowledging the requirement of a common courtesy:
“For through the South the custom still commands
The gentleman to kiss the lady’s hands.”
Sir R. K. Porter, the Eastern traveller, tells the readers of his interesting sketches of a Persian who was not only not so fastidious, but ludicrously otherwise in the depth of his self-abasement. Says Sir Robert, “I took a lancet out of my pocket-book, put it into his hands, and told him it was for himself. He looked at me, and at it, with his mouth open, as if he hardly comprehended the possibility of my parting with such a jewel. But when I repeated the words, ‘It is yours,’ he threw himself on the ground, kissed my knees and my feet, and wept with a joy that stifled his expression of thanks.”
ALL-EMBRACING INCLUSION.
In that old-fashioned youthful game, “Kiss in the Ring,” a favorite manœuvre of some of the boys was to keep out of a place in the ring till they had kissed all the pretty girls in succession. Those who grow up with the same fondness for osculatory attentions would probably like the custom in some parts of Germany, which requires a young man who is engaged to a girl to salute, upon making his adieu for the evening, the whole of the family, beginning with the mother. Thus, in a family circle embracing half a dozen girls, each having a lover, no less than forty-eight kisses would have to be given on the occasion of a united meeting; and when we consider that each lover would give his own sweetheart ten times as many kisses as he gave her sisters, the grand total would outnumber a hundred!