“We can all see the impropriety of verbal declarations of passion in such cases; and how much more unsafe any act bearing such interpretation! Wherever men and women meet in friendly or business relations, one or both must be constantly mindful of the differences and dangers of the sex,—must guard looks, words, and actions, and in no moment of overwrought sympathy can the stern barriers of decorum be safely broken down. Before kissing Mr. Beecher, Mrs. Moulton should have waited until he had taken that powder, until it had done its work and the undertaker had the body ready for burial. Only in his coffin is it safe for even ‘a section of the day of judgment,’ in the shape of a woman, to kiss any one man in a thousand. There seems to be no room for doubt that she is, or was, a perfectly upright woman; but her childish act shows the atmosphere in which these men have been living,—shows the unconscious steps by which they passed from virtue to vice,—and ought to awaken all lovers of virtue to a more careful guard of her outside defences. Chastity is not the natural condition of the race, but the very opposite, and it can only be secured by ages of culture and constant vigilance. It is a something to be acquired and maintained through grace and watchfulness, and those who open doors through which the enemy enters and causes the fall of others are responsible for their negligence and mistaken confidence.” This judgment brought out some humorous responses. A lady thus expressed her indignation in the “Graphic:” “I never saw Mrs. Swisshelm, thank goodness; but what a perfectly ridiculous old creature she must be! According to her own account, no live man could be found who would venture to kiss her, and so she was obliged to go and unscrew a dead man’s coffin and kiss him. I never heard of anything so dreadful in the whole course of my life. “Mrs. Swisshelm’s letter is enough for me. I can understand just what a dreadful old person she must be. She wears trousers, I am told, besides that perfectly preposterous garment, the ‘chemiloon.’ If I was a man, I would no more kiss such a woman than I would kiss a pair of tongs that had been left out over-night in a snowbank. “Kissing, when done innocently, is as innocent as strawberries-and-cream, and as nice. If Mrs. Swisshelm could only grow young and pretty, and take off her trousers and dress like a Christian, she would soon change her mind about kissing. Her letter is the expression of a cross old woman’s envious mind, and she ought to be ashamed of herself.” Another writer, who objected to such forcibly expressed and sweeping opposition to kissing, said, in the “Inter-Ocean:”