I recollect a nurse called Ann, Who carried me about the grass; And one fine day a nice young man Came up and kissed the pretty lass. She did not make the least objection. Thinks I, “Ah, When I can talk, I’ll tell mamma.” And that’s my earliest recollection. In that old-fashioned youthful game, “Kiss in the Ring,” a favorite manœuvre of some of the boys was to keep out of a place in the ring till they had kissed all the pretty girls in succession. Those who grow up with the same fondness for osculatory attentions would probably like the custom in some parts of Germany, which requires a young man who is engaged to a girl, to salute, upon making his adieu for the evening, the whole of the family, beginning with the mother. Thus, in a family circle embracing half-a-dozen girls, each having a lover, no less than forty-eight kisses would have to be given on the occasion of a united meeting; and when we consider that each lover would give his own sweetheart ten times as many kisses as he gave her sisters, the grand total would outnumber a hundred. We must not omit the mother’s kiss. Her good-bye kiss has been the charm which has kept many a schoolboy in the right path when he has got free from home influences. Tom Brown, _en route_ for Rugby, made a bargain with his father, before starting, that he was not to be subjected to the indignity of a paternal kiss; not so, however, with his mother, whose last kiss all the racket of public school life could never efface from his memory. Benjamin West, the artist, once said: “A kiss from my mother made me a painter.” VIII. THE IMPORTANT CONSEQUENCES CONNECTED WITH KISSING— ARRAH-NA-POGUE—REFUSING THE SACRAMENT ON ACCOUNT OF A KISS—HOW A CHILD’S KISS AFFECTED THE COURSE OF A DESPERATE MAN—WHAT A LITTLE MARE’S KISS DID—BROUGHT TO LIFE BY A KISS—THE KISS OF DEATH—KISSING IN TUNNELS—A MOUNTAIN EXPERIENCE—KISSING THE COOK. Many curious stories might be related of important consequences coming from a kiss. Sometimes a kiss proves useful. There is a romantic story of the great Irish rebellion, in which an imprisoned patriot under sentence of death was enabled to make his escape, the plan of operations being conveyed to him in a billet carried to him by his sweetheart in her mouth, and passed to him by the medium of a kiss through the iron grating of his dungeon. This was done under the very noses of the governor and sentinels placed there to intercept any improper communication. This story has been used in Arrah-na-Pogue, which means literally “Arrah of the kiss.”