The Scandinavian tradition is that Balder was killed by a mistletoe arrow given to the blind Höder by Loki, the god of mischief and potentate of our earth. Balder was restored to life, but the mistletoe was placed in future under the care of Friga, and was never again to be an instrument of evil till it touched the earth, the empire of Loki. Hence, it is always suspended from ceilings. And when persons of opposite sexes pass under it, they give each other the kiss of peace and love, in the full assurance that the plant is no longer an instrument of mischief. Quiet it hangs on the wall, Or pendent droops from the chandelier, As if never a mischief or harm could fall From its modest intrusion, there or here! And yet how many a pulse it has fired, How many a lip made nervously bold, When youthful revel went on, untired, In the Christmas days of old! A modern English writer says that in Battersea Park on bank holiday he found kissing to be all the vogue. “But what kissing! Instead of the rhythmic chant, the graceful dance, or even the sportive chase of the northern kissing games, here was simply promiscuity of osculation of the most unabashed description. There was no ring to begin with, only an imperfectly cleared space in the middle of a great crowd. In this crowd a young woman would approach a young man—as often as not a perfect stranger—thrust a chip into his hand, and then bolt across the green. The man chases her, runs her down, and brings her back with his arm around her waist, enters the cleared space, and kisses her, sometimes half a dozen times, before the on-lookers. Sometimes the girl chases the man, sometimes the man the girl. If they wanted their kisses _sans ceremonie_ they were caught at once, and kissed without more ado.” In Diedrich Knickerbocker’s veracious History of New York, it is told how the good burghers of New Amsterdam, with their wives and daughters, dressed in their best clothes, repaired to the governor’s house, where the rite of kissing the women a happy new year was observed by the governor. Antony, the Trumpeter, who acted as head usher, was a young and handsome bachelor. “Nothing could keep him from following the heels of the old governor, whom he loved as he did his very soul; so, embracing all the young vrouws, and giving every one of them that had good teeth and rosy lips a dozen hearty smacks, he departed, loaded with their kind wishes.” The Trumpeter seems to have been a prodigious favorite among the women, and was the first to exact the toll of a kiss levied on the fair sex at Kissing Bridge, on the highway to Hellgate. In the far west they have “kissing bees,” and the rural husking frolic common to many parts of the country has been described by Joel Barlow, an early American poet: