The Art of Kissing: Curiously, Historically, Humorously, Poetically Considered

by Will Rossiter

Robert Herrick, the old English divine, says of a kiss:

It isn’t creature born and bred

Between the lips all cherry red;

It is an active flame that flies

First to the babies of the eyes;

Then to the cheek, the chin, the ear;

It frisks and flies—now here, now there;

’Tis now far off, and then ’tis near;

Here and there and everywhere.

Among short definitions we have that of the old Georgia farmer who caught a young couple kissing on a train that was passing through a tunnel, and called the act “dipping sugar.” A kiss is like a rumor, because it goes from mouth to mouth; its shape is a lip-tickle; as a grammatical part of speech it is a conjunction; kisses are the interrogation points in the literature of love. Then again, kissing has been called lip-service and has been defined as the prologue to sin; more often, let us hope, it is simply a sweetmeat which satisfies the hunger of the heart.