has devoted his whole life to illuminating the mysteries
of sex, and his collection of materials is unsurpassed in the world.
Surely there must be an enormous mass of instructive stuff about kissing
in his card indexes, letter files, book presses and archives.

Just why the kiss as we know it should have attained to its present
popularity in Christendom is probably one of the things past finding
out. The Japanese, a very affectionate and sentimental people, do not
practise kissing in any form; they regard the act, in fact, with an
aversion matching our own aversion to the rubbing of noses. Nor is it in
vogue among the Moslems, nor among the Chinese, who countenance it only
as between mother and child. Even in parts of Christendom it is girt
about by rigid taboos, so that its practise tends to be restricted to a
few occasions. Two Frenchmen or Italians, when they meet, kiss each
other on both cheeks. One used to see, indeed, many pictures of General
Joffre thus bussing the heroes of Verdun; there even appeared in print a
story to the effect that one of them objected to the scratching of his
moustache. But imagine two Englishmen kissing! Or two Germans! As well
imagined the former kissing the latter! Such a display of affection is
simply impossible to men of Northern blood; they would die with shame if
caught at it. The Englishman, like the American, never kisses if he can
help it. He even regards it as bad form to kiss his wife in a railway
station, or, in fact, anywhere in sight of a third party. The Latin has
no such compunctions. He leaps to the business regardless of place or
time; his sole concern is with the lady. Once, in driving from Nice to
Monte Carlo along the lower Corniche road, I passed a hundred or so open
taxicabs containing man and woman, and fully 75 per cent. of the men had
their arms around their companions, and were kissing them. These were
not peasants, remember, but well-to-do persons. In England such a scene
would have caused a great scandal; in most American States the police
would have charged the offenders with drawn revolvers.

The charm of kissing is one of the things I have always wondered at. I
do not pretend, of course, that I have never done it; mere politeness
forces one to it; there are women who sulk and grow bellicose unless one
at least makes the motions of kissing them. But what I mean is that I
have never found the act a tenth part as agreeable as poets, the authors
of musical come