“I say, Mr. Smithers,” said Mrs. Smithers to her husband, “didn’t I hear you down in the kitchen kissing the cook?” “My dear,” replied Smithers, blandly, “permit me to insist upon my right to be reasonably ignorant. I really cannot say what you may have heard.” “But wasn’t you down there kissing the cook?” “My dear, I cannot really recollect. I only remember going into the kitchen and coming out again. I may have been there, and from what you say I infer I was. But I cannot recollect just what occurred.” “But,” persisted the ruthless cross-examiner, “what did Jane mean when she said, ‘Oh! Smithers, don’t kiss so loud, or the old she-dragon up-stairs will hear us’?” “Well,” said Smithers, in his blandest tones, “I cannot remember what interpretation I did put on the words at the time. They are not my words, you must remember.” * * * * * A Milwaukee chap kissed his girl forty times right straight along, and when he stopped the tears came into her eyes, and she said, in a sad tone of voice, “Ah, John, I fear you have ceased to love me.” “No, I haven’t,” replied John, “but I must breathe.” * * * * * A new design for an upholstered front gate seems destined to become popular. The foot-board is cushioned, and there is a warm soap-stone on each side, the inside step being adjustable, so that a short girl can bring her lips to the line of any given moustache without trouble. If the gate is occupied at half-past ten P.M., an iron hand extends from one gate-post, takes the young man by the left ear, turns him around, and he is at once started home by a steel foot. * * * * * A man who has been travelling in the “far West” says that when an Idaho girl is kissed, she indignantly exclaims, “Now put that right back where you took it from!” * * * * * At a recent wedding in Ohio, the minister was about to salute the bride, when she stayed him with, “No, mister, I give up them wanities now.” * * * * * A Maryland editor, on the subject of kissing, says, “The custom is an old one, and no _written_ description can do it justice; to be fully understood and appreciated it must be handed down from mouth to mouth.” * * * * * “Stay,” he said, his right arm around her waist and her face expectantly turned to him, “shall it be the kiss pathetic, sympathetic, graphic, paragraphic, Oriental, intellectual, paroxysmal, quick and dismal, slow and unctuous, long and tedious, devotional, or what?” She said perhaps that would be the better way. * * * * * Reference having been made to the basial diversities mentioned in the Bible, it was incidentally remarked that there is another kind of kiss which young ladies receive on the sofa in the parlor after the gas is turned low, which the Scriptures don’t mention,—nor the young ladies either.