Graham's Magazine, Vol. XX, No. 6, June 1842

What glorious times, Oliver, the old Turks must have, sitting, on a sultry day like this, listening to the cool plashing of their fountains, and smoking their chiboques—egad!—until they fall asleep, and dream of dark-eyed Houris smiling on them, amid the fragrant groves and by the cool rivers of a Musselman Paradise. What a pity we were not born in Turkey, you a Bashaw of three tails, and I the Sultaun of Stamboul! How we would have stroked our beards—and smoked our pipes—and given praise to the prophet as we drank our sherbert, spiced, you know, with a very little of the aqua vitæ, that comfort of comforts to the inner man! We could then have dressed like gentlemen, and not gone about, as we do now, breeched, coated, and swaddled in broadcloth, like a couple of Egyptian mummies. Just imagine yourself in a dashing Turkish dress, with a turban on your head, and a scimitar all studded with diamonds at your side, with which—the scimitar I mean—you are wont to slice off the heads of infidels as I slice off the top of this pyramid of ice-cream—help yourself, for it’s delicious! I think I see us now, charging at the head of our spahis against the rascally Russians, driving their half starved soldier slaves like chaff before a whirl-wind, and carrying our horse-tails and shouting “Il Allah!” into the very tents of their chieftains. What magnificent fellows we would have made! Ah!—my dear boy—you and I are out of our element. Take my word for it, a Turk is your finest gentleman, your true philosopher, the only man that understands how to live. He keeps better horses, wears richer clothes, walks with a nobler mien, smokes more luxuriously, drinks more seductive coffee, and kisses his wife or ladye-love with better grace, than any man or set of men, except you and I, “under the broad canopy of heaven” as the town-meeting orators have it. And let me tell you this last accomplishment—this kissing gracefully, “_secundum artem_”—is a point of education most impiously neglected amongst us. Kissing is a science by itself. Let us draw up to the window where we can drink in the perfume of the garden, and while you whiff away at your meerschaum, I will prove the truth of my assertion. One has a knack for talking after dinner—I suppose it is because good steaks and madeira lubricate the tongue.

We are born to kiss and be kissed. It comes natural to us, as marriage does to a woman. Why, sir, I can remember kissing the female babies when I was yet in my cradle, and my friend Sir Thomas Lawrence did himself the honor to paint me at my favorite pursuit, as you know by that exquisite picture in my library. The very first day I went to school I kissed all the sweet little angels there. I wasn’t fairly out of my alphabet, when I used to wait behind a pump, for my sweetheart to come out of school, and as soon as I saw her I made a point of kissing her just to see how prettily she blushed. As I grew older I loved to steal in, some summer evening, on her, and kiss her asleep on the sofa—or, if she was awake, and the old folks were by, I’d wait till they both got nodding, and then kiss her all the sweeter for the slyness of the thing. Ah! such stolen draughts are delicious. I wouldn’t give a sous to kiss a girl in company, and I always hated Copenhagen, Pawns, and your other kissing plays, as I hope I hate the devil. They had a shocking custom when I was young, that everybody at a wedding should kiss the bride, just as they all drank, in the same free and easy way, out of the one big china punch-bowl; but the practice always hurt my sensibilities, and I avoided weddings as I would avoid a ghost, a bailiff, or any other fright. No—no—get your little charmer up into a corner by yourselves—watch when everybody’s back is turned—then slip your arm around her waist, and kiss her with a long sweet kiss, as if you were a bee sucking honey from a flower. Nor can one kiss every girl. I’d as lief take ipecacuanha as kiss some of your sharp-chinned, icicle-mouthed, lignum-vitæ-faced spinsters—why one couldn’t get the taste of the bitters out of his mouth for a week! I go in for your rosy, pouting lips, that seem to challenge everybody so saucily—egad! when we kiss such at our leisure, we think we’re in a seventh heaven. I once lived on such a kiss for forty-eight hours, for it took the taste for commoner food out of my mouth “intirely,” as poor Power used to say. Oh! how I loved the wide, dark entries one finds in old mansions, where one could catch these saucy little fairies, and, before they were well aware of your presence, kiss them so deliciously. There’s kissing for you! Or, to go upon a sleigh ride, and when all, save you and your partner, are busy chatting—while the merry ringing of the bells and the whizzing motion of the vehicle cause your spirits to dance for very joy—to make believe that you wish to arrange the buffalo, or pull her shawl up closer around her, and then slyly stealing your face into her bonnet to kiss her for an instant of ecstasy, while she blushes to the very temples, lest others may catch you at your sport. And then, on a summer eve, to row out upon the bosom of a moonlit lake, and while one of the ladies sings and all the rest listen, to snatch a chance and laughingly kiss the pretty girl at your side, all unnoticed except by her. Or to sit beside a charmer on a sofa, before a cozy fire on a bitter winter night, and fill up the pauses of the conversation, you know, by drawing her to you and kissing her. But more than all,—when you have won a blushing confession of love from her you have long and tremblingly worshipped with all a boy’s devotion,—is the rapture of the kiss which you press holily to her brow, while her warm heart flutters against your side, and every pulse in your body thrills with an ecstasy that has no rival in after life. Ah! sir, that kiss is The Kiss. It is worth all the rest.

Next to being born a Turk I should choose to have been born an Englishman in the days of Harry the Eighth. Do you remember how Erasmus tells us, in one of his letters, that all the pretty women in London ran up to him and kissed him whenever they met? That’s what I call being in clover. I don’t wonder people long for the good old times, for, if all their fashions were like this, commend me to the days of the bluff monarch, when

“thus paused on the time, With jolly ways in those brave old days, When the world was in its prime.”

Did you ever attend a children’s party, and see the little dears play Copenhagen? The boys seem to have an instinctive knack at kissing their partners, who always show the same modest repugnance—for modesty is inborn in every woman—aye! and flings a glory about her like the halo around a Madonna’s head. The very instant one of the young scapegraces gets into the ring, he looks slyly all around it, and there be sure is one little face that blushes scarlet, and one little heart that beats faster, for well the owner knows that she is in peril. How fast her hands slide to and fro along the rope, and directly the imprisoned youngster makes a dash at her hand, and, missing it, turns away amid the uproarious laughter and clapping of hands of the rest, and essays perchance a feint to tap some other little hand, all the while, however, keeping one corner of his eye fixed on the blushing damsel who has foiled him. And lo! all at once—like an eagle shooting from the skies—he darts upon it. And now begins the struggle. What a shouting—and merry laughing—what cries of encouragement from the lookers on—what a diving under the rope, and over the rope, and among the chairs, mingled with whoopings from the boys, ensues, until the victim has escaped, or else been caught by her pursuer. Sometimes she submits quietly to the forfeit, but at other times she will fight like a young tiger. Then, indeed, comes “the tug of war.” If she covers her face in her hands, and is a sturdy little piece beside, young Master Harry will have to give up the game, and be the laughing stock of the boys, or else set all chivalry at defiance and tear away those pretty hands by force. Many a time, you old curmudgeon, have I laughed until the tears ran out of my eyes to see a young scoundrel, scarcely breeched, kissing an unwilling favorite. How sturdily he sticks up to her, one hand around her neck, and the other, perhaps, fast hold of her chin; while she, with face averted, and a frown upon her tiny brow, is all the while pushing him desperately away. But the young rascal knows that he is the strongest, and with him might makes right. With eagerness in every line of his face, he slips his arm around her waist, and, after sundry repulses, wins the kiss at last. And then what a mighty gentleman he thinks he is! In just such a scene has my old friend Lawrence taken me off, in that picture, of The Proffered Kiss, in my library, egad!