Horace Twiss was snatching a kiss
From the lips of Hannah More!”
Chevalier Bunsen, who rose from a humble position in life to great honor, was a man of vast savoir but little erudition. As a theologian, the character to which he most aspired, he was severely criticised by the celebrated Dr. Merle d’Aubigné. The two savans met at Berlin at the Evangelical Alliance held several years ago. Bunsen kissed Merle; of course the polite Genevan could but return the compliment. Great was the ado about the “kiss of reconciliation,” as the Germans called it, much to the annoyance of Dr. Merle, who had no idea of compromising the solemn writers of theology by a kiss! Besides, he said, he preferred the English custom in kissing to the German. A delicate insinuation, that; but the professor meant nothing wrong.
In the famous Brooklyn trial, Tilton versus Beecher, in which the world was favored with some extraordinary revelations respecting the ethics and æsthetics of modern osculation, the defendant, Mr. Beecher, while on the witness-stand, testified to his singularly varied experiences. In the course of his testimony, he said:
“Mrs. Moulton then came in; she came to me and said, ‘Mr. Beecher, I don’t believe the stories they are telling about you; I believe you are a good man.’ I looked up and said, ‘Emma Moulton, I am a good man;’ she then bent over and kissed me on the forehead; it was a kiss of inspiration, but I did not think it proper to return it.”
When subsequently asked what he meant by a kiss of inspiration, he replied:
“I meant—well, it was a token of confidence; it was a salutation that did not belong to the common courtesy of life: neither was it a kiss of pleasure, or anything of that kind, but it was, as I sometimes have seen it in poetry—if you will excuse me—it was—it seemed to me, a holy kiss.”
Q. “You have said something about your not returning it?”