Beyond this extremely limited range the literature of kissing is scattered as widely as its practice. For the earlier presentment of a custom favored in all ages, we must recur to the Bible. There only may we raise “the barred visor of antiquity” for full and conclusive revelation; and there shall we find that the kiss, in all the varied forms of which it is susceptible, was recognized among ancient kindred, and lovers, and friends, as an expression of affection or sympathy, as a symbol of joy or sorrow, as a token of welcome or farewell, as a mark of reverence, or reconciliation, or gratitude, or humility. There, likewise, shall we find the kiss of hypocrisy, as noted in the case of Absalom on the eve of his conspiracy; the sensual kiss, as referred to in the Proverbs; and the spiritual kiss, of the Song of Solomon. In the annals of the later periods of human passions and activities the records of the custom are more widely diffused. Since the woman “which was a sinner” washed the feet of the Master, with tears, wiped them with her hair, and kissed them so humbly and with such affectionate tenderness, millions of good Christians have done the same in their hearts. Since the Emperor Justinian kissed the foot of the sovereign pontiff Constantine, millions of the faithful in the mother church have bowed their necks to kiss the embroidered cross on the slipper of the Pope. Since “the sweet, soft murmur of a kiss of love” was first heard in the groves and gardens of Judea, “a great multitude, which no man could number,” have had recourse to the same token as seal to the indenture of their own loves, have found in the same attraction another eloquence than that of words, and in the retrospections of after-days have lingered lovingly upon the memories of the same rainbow radiance, the same celestial beam that from their own life smiled the clouds away. It is the same charm, the same story, “Old and yet ever new, and simple and beautiful always.” In endless succession, from generation to generation, are the kisses arising from the filial and fraternal relations, the interchanges of affection and friendship, the meetings and the partings, the compliments of esteem and the promptings of admiration, the outburst of grief and the beguilement of treachery. Whether formulated by the cautious prescripts of Mrs. Grundy and her disciples, exhibited in the bluff and unconventional fashion of swaggering rustics, or quickened into life with the emotional abruptness which in Brooklyn is termed “paroxysmal;” whether consecrated only to the holiest affections, or peddled at church fairs and festivals as a substitute for raffling; whether under moonlight or gaslight, by the seaside or the fireside, it is still in its diversified forms the one perennial beatitude, the one never-ending, still-beginning delight, which “age cannot wither, nor custom stale;” “The young men’s vision, and the old men’s dream.”