III.—CARESSES “Tenderness,” says Professor Bain, “is a pleasurable emotion, variously stimulated, whose effort is to draw human beings into mutual embrace.” Darwin finds the peculiarity of love in the same desire for contact; and, as usual, he seeks for the origin of this desire, and endeavours to trace it to analogous peculiarities of the animals most closely related to us. “With the lower animals,” he says, “we see the same principle of pleasure derived from contact in association with love. Dogs and cats manifestly take pleasure in rubbing against their masters and mistresses, and in being rubbed or patted by them. Many kinds of monkeys, as I am assured by the keepers in the Zoological Gardens, delight in fondling and being fondled by each other, and by persons to whom they are attached. Mr. Bartlett has described to me the behaviour of two Chimpanzees, rather older animals than those generally imported into this country, when they were first brought together. They sat opposite, _touching each other with their much-protruded lips_, and the one put his hand on the shoulder of the other. Then they mutually folded each other in their arms. Afterwards they stood up, each with one arm on the shoulder of the other, lifted up their heads, opened their mouths and yelled with delight.” Concerning human beings Darwin remarks: “A strong desire to touch the beloved person is commonly felt; and love is expressed by this means more plainly than by any other. Hence we long to clasp in our arms those we tenderly love. We probably owe this desire to _inherited habit_, in association with the nursing and tending of our children, and with the mutual caresses of lovers.” When love first dawns on the mind, the faintest superficial contact flashes along the nerves as a thrill of delicious emotion. To walk along the beach in a stiff breeze, and have her veil accidentally flutter in his face, is a romantic incident on which a youthful lover’s memory feasts for a month. If allowed to carry her shawl on his arm, he would not feel the cold of a Siberian winter. And later, what a variety of tell-tale caresses are there by which mutual Love may be revealed! It is not the voice alone that can say “I love you”; nor the speaking eyes. Confessions of Love, proposals and acceptance—complete dramas of Love—have been enacted by the language of two pairs of feet that have accidentally touched under the table. A slight pressure of the hand in the ballroom has told thousands of lovers, before a word was spoken, that now they may soon put their arms round that lovely waist without the excuse of a waltz or polka.