Almost every one has heard of the first kiss given by Dominie Brown to his sweetheart Janet, after a courtship of seven years. One evening, as they sat together in the customary solemn silence, Mr. Brown summoned courage and said: “We have been acquainted now for seven years, and I’ve ne’er gotten a kiss yet. D’ye think I might tak’ wan, my bonnie girl?” “Just as you like, John, only be becoming wi’ it.” “Surely, Janet, we’ll ask a blessing. For what we are about to receive, Lord make us truly thankful.” The kiss was taken, and the worthy divine, overpowered by the blissful sensation, rapturously exclaimed: “Oh! Janet, it is gude. We’ll return thanks.” Six months afterwards they were married. There is a poetic account of the kiss of that black-eyed Spanish girl who first kisses with her glances, practicing for the coming encounter: Then she kisses with her eyelids, Kisses with her arching eye-brows, With her soft cheek softly rubbing, With her chin, and hands, and fingers. All the frame of Manuela, All her blood and all her spirit, All melt down to burning kisses, All she feeds on is their sugar. And there is what may be called the apropos experience, equally interesting: She took my coat—I’m rather tall— And she is not so very; The steps led upward from the hall, She stood, the little fairy, Just balanced on the second stair, My great-coat’s burden holding; And then her hands, the kindest pair, The collar down were folding. There never was an eye so clear, Nor lips so red in moving; “Just tall enough now, ain’t I, dear? See how I’ve grown from loving!” Just tall enough! from eye to eye Ran horizontal light; Just tall enough to—let me try— Yes, tall enough—good-night. And there is another kind of good-night kiss. A certain swain, after having escorted his sweetheart to and from a New England forfeit party, where the poor girl, the belle of the evening, had been kissed, as he expressed it, “slobbered over by all, and sundry,” of course kissed her good-night at the gate. He declared in that one chaste salute he could discriminate nine distinct and separate flavors, viz., onions, tobacco, brandy, peppermint, gin, lager-beer, checkerberry, musk, and camphor. With some of us a kiss is our earliest recollection: