Kissing the hand is a national custom in Austria. A gentleman on meeting a lady friend kisses her hand, and does the same at parting from her. A beggar-woman to whom you have given an alms, either kisses your hand or says: “I kiss your hand.” The stranger must expect to have his hand kissed not only by beggars, but by chambermaids, lackeys, and even by old men. In Ben Jonson’s play, “Cynthia’s Revels,” Hedon says to his friend: “You know I call Madam Philantia, my Honor; and she calls me her Ambition. Now, when I meet her in the presence, anon, I will come to her and say, ‘Sweet Honor, I have hitherto contented my sense with the lilies of your hand, but now I will taste the roses of your lips;’ and, withal, kiss her; to which she cannot but blushingly answer, ‘Nay, now you are too ambitious.’ And then do I reply: ‘I cannot be too Ambitious of Honor, sweet lady. Will’t not be good?’” And his friend assures him that it is “a very politic achievement of a kiss.” When the gallant Cardinal, John of Lorraine, was presented to the Duchess of Savoy, she gave him her hand to kiss, greatly to the indignation of the irate churchman. “How, madam,” he exclaimed, “am I to be treated in this manner? I kiss the Queen, my mistress, who is the greatest queen in the world, and shall I not kiss you, a dirty little Duchess?” Without more ado he caught hold of the princess and kissed her thrice in the mouth. He was apparently of the mind of Selden, who thought “to kiss ladies’ hands after their lips, as some do, is like little boys who, after they eat the apple, fall to the paring.” It was a custom among the Greeks and Romans to drink from the same cup as their lady friends, and from the spot where the fair one had touched the brim. Ben Jonson borrows this idea from a Greek poet when he says: Or leave a kiss within the cup, And I’ll not ask for wine. One of the older poets referring to this custom, writes: Blest is the goblet, oh! how blest, Which Heliodorus’ lips have pressed! Oh, might thy lips but meet with mine, My soul should melt away in thine. Of course the poets have had a good deal to say about lips. Anacreon speaks of “lip-provoking kisses,” and, alluding to the lip of another fair one, calls it a “sweet petitioner for kisses.” Tatius speaks of “lips soft and delicate for kissing;” and Lucretius gave it as his opinion that girls who have large lips kiss much sweeter than others. The ancient ladies seemed to enter into kissing with such enthusiasm that they often bit their lovers. Cattalus, in one of his poems, asks: Whom wilt thou for thy lover choose? Whose shall they call thee, false one, whose? Who shall thy darted kisses sip, While thy keen love-bites scar his lip! And Horace, in one of his odes, says: