The lilies kiss the waves they love, The ripples kiss the flowers; The swallows sweep from heaven above, To kiss this world of ours; The foaming billows kiss the beach, In wild, ungentle fashion; The weeping willows earthward reach T’ enjoy the darling passion; The ivy kisses from its birth, All other things dismissing; And all things loveliest on earth Seem most engaged in kissing. As this by all is seen and heard And known to be most true, love, ’Twere quite unnatural and absurd That I should not kiss you, love. There is a poem about a father lying beside his little child, Daisy, as she is being put to bed, and asking the foolish question that wife and lover ask over and over again: There, close at her side, “Do you love me?” I cried; She lifted her golden-crowned head, A puzzled surprise Shone in her gray eyes— “Why, that’s why I kiss you,” she said. A humorous excuse was that given by the defendant in a case of breach of promise. The defendant was allowed to say a word in his own behalf. “Yes,” he said, “I kissed her almost continually every evening I called at her house.” Lawyer for plaintiff: “Then you confess it?” Defendant: “Yes, I do confess it, but I had to do it.” Lawyer: “You had to do it! What do you mean?” Defendant: “That was the only way I could keep her from singing.” The casuistry of kissing has been set forth in these lines: When Sarah Jane, the moral Miss, Declares ’tis very wrong to kiss, I’ll bet a shilling I see through it! The damsel, fairly understood, Feels just as any Christian should, She’d rather _suffer_ wrong than _do_ it. There is a certain gluttony of kissing of which many examples might be given. There was once a jovial vicar who was such a glutton for kisses, that when he obtained the wished-for kiss, far from being satisfied he asked for a score; and Then to that twenty add a hundred more, A thousand to that hundred; so kiss on To make that thousand up to a million; Treble that million, and when that is done, Let’s kiss afresh, as when we first begun.