Page:The art of kissing (IA artofkissing987wood).djvu/12

 of kissing should be devoted to the exotic method called the nose kiss. This method may be stored for future reference by those essaying the kiss for the first time; but hardened veterans in love’s sweet practice may at once proceed to try it out, along the lines indicated below. So far, we have assumed the necessity for a manual of osculation. This is as good a place as any to indicate the two essential reasons for this book. First, kissing is an art, and not a gift. Indeed, the whole practice of love is one of the most charming of the applied arts. No man or woman is born a perfect kisser, or a perfect lover. The teacher may be experience—there is no more competent instructor. But unless you wish your Cupid’s Boulevard to be full of unnecessary ups and downs, of countless incidents where a little more knowledge on your part would have caused the love incident to become immeasurably more pleasurable both to the kisser and the kissed, you will not suffer from a few lessons given by an OO.D.—doctor of osculations. Society, as now constituted, is sadly lacking in proper facilities for learning the technique of love and kissing. A hundred years from now, every well-equipped school will contain departments of Erotology, teaching theory as well as laboratory experimentation. If I live that long, I expect to become at one leap a full-fledged professor in kissing. I may even rise higher. Second, American men and women are woefully ignorant on the proper technique of love,