Mary Kyle Dallas says love-making is always awkward. “A stolen kiss, if seen, creates a laugh; a squeeze of the hand, if detected, is a great joy. I myself, who claim to be romantic, did grin at a shadow picture cast upon the wall of the white garden fence, next door, by an envious gas-light, when I saw the shadow of the young lady with much waterfall feed the shadow of the young gentleman with no whiskers with sugar-plums and then kiss it; but the shadows were very black, and took odd crinks in their noses as they moved to and fro, and that may have been the cause of my mirth.” * * * * * “Oh! your nose is as cold as ice,” a Boston father thought he heard his daughter exclaim the other evening, as he was reading in the next room. He walked in for an explanation, but the young fellow was at one end of the sofa and the girl at the other, while both looked so innocent and unconscious that the old gentleman concluded that his ears had deceived him, and so retired from the scene without a word. * * * * * A country girl, coming from a morning walk, was told that she looked as fresh as a daisy kissed by the dew, to which she innocently replied, “You’ve got my name right, Daisy; but his isn’t Dew.” * * * * * SCENE at the Atlantic Telegraph office. _Fond Wife_ (_to telegraph-operator_). “Oh, sir! I want to send a kiss to my husband in Liverpool. How can I do it?” _Obliging Operator._ “Easiest thing in the world, ma’am. You’ve got to give it to me with ten dollars, and I’ll transmit it right away.” _Fond Wife._ “If that’s the case, the directors ought to put much younger and handsomer men in your position.” (Operator’s indignation is great.) * * * * * A young lady of Cincinnati, who had just returned from completing her education in Boston, wanted to kiss her lover, but her mother objected. The daughter drew up her queenly form to its full height, and exclaimed, “Mother, terrible, tragical, and sublimely retributive will be the course pursued by me, if you refuse to allow him to place his alabaster lips to mine, and enrapture my immortal soul by imprinting angelic sensations of divine bliss upon the indispensable members of my human physiognomy, and then kindly allowing me to take a withdrawal from his beneficent presence.” The mother feebly admitted that her objections were overruled. * * * * * _Mabel._ “Yes! that young man is very fond of kissing.” _Mater._ “Mabel, who ever told you such nonsense?” _Mabel._ “I had it from his own lips!” * * * * *