Page:The Kiss and its History.djvu/159

Rh over this usage in a little epigram to Posthumus:

This kissing of friends gradually became a veritable nuisance to the country. Fashion ordained that every one should give and receive such kisses, but, in reality, every one preferred evading them. Martial, in another epigram to this same Posthumus, exclaims:

and

Under such frightful circumstances people had recourse to shifts which seem almost as unsavoury as the kisses they would escape: