Page:The art of kissing (IA artofkissing987wood).djvu/17

 Rachel is said to have been a young and attractive damsel; but why the weeping? Something must be left out of the story: perhaps she would let him kiss her but once. And, in the great love song of the Old Testament, we find what we are seeking: "Then let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth" (Song of Solomon i 2). We can overlook countless kissings of the dust, to show humble subjection, for one real description of the kiss of love like this. The Old Testament worthies were on the right track, after all. The other kisses made us feel like the British soldier in Kipling's Mandalay:

But we have arrived at last at a real kiss, and with this we can pass onward.

We learn that Arabian women and children kiss the beards of their husbands and fathers, which must be about as thrilling as kissing a shredded wheat biscuit or a clothes brush. The Mohammedans, on their pious pilgrimage to Mecca, kiss the sacred black stone, which was worshipped long before Mohammed was born. In Egypt, the inferior kisses the hand of a superior, generally on the back, but sometimes on the palm; the son kisses the hand of his father, the wife that of her husband, the slave and servant that of their master. Here the kiss spells subjection. We know that, among