Page:The art of kissing (IA artofkissing987wood).djvu/59

 concerning an imprisoned patriot under sentence of death, and his faithful sweetheart. The girl secured permission from the prison authorities to kiss the condemned man goodbye. The kiss was given and received: and, at the moment of kissing, the clever girl passed to her lover, from her mouth to his, a memorandum containing full information of how to escape. Acting on the plan thus revealed, he made good his escape. May every kiss be as fortune-bringing!

There are other kisses which bring, not freedom, but death. Lucian tells the story of the death of Demosthenes. When the Greek had fallen into the hands of Antipater, he asked permission to enter a certain temple in the neighborhood, for a moment of worship. This was granted. As he entered the temple, he carried his hand to his mouth—the old gesture that Job referred to in moon and sun worship, and a common gesture in the Orient and the Mediterranean world. The guards thought that he was merely kissing his hand, as an act of religion. But in his hand he held poison, and in this kiss of death he found his release. Cleopatra, when the kisses of Pompey, Caesar and Antony had staled on her lips, when her castles of hope and aspiration lay in ruins about her, and when the coldly cynical Octavius paid no attention to her charms, placed the asp, the poisonous mud-viper of the Nile, at her breast, and let the snake's kiss give her freedom.

Then there was the tremendous climax of the Haymarket riots in Chicago. Seven an-