Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 June 1886 — The True Ministry of the Kiss. [ARTICLE]

The True Ministry of the Kiss.

Of the great needs of American home life to-day, a hearty, sneere, and frequent manifestation of affection stands at the head. Thousands of families there are in which never a kiss is exchanged. The day is begun and ended by all, from the father to the five-year-old, in the same heartless fashion. No wonder the years rapidly hide their faces in the “long ago.” Yet what can stay so many sorrows as the hearty kiss of true affection? Does mamma’s kiss possess Buch wonderful curative power for the baby, and the child’s have no power of healing for the mother ? Boys, kiss your mothers. It won’t break the heart that has endured the strain of ceaseless vigil and care through all the years of your infantile tenderness, and the later years of your happy, headlong, heartless helplessness. Try it some day. Many a boy has risen to noble renown by the selfdenying toil of a widowed mother. She is proud of your success, and asks no other reward for the heavy struggle than the hearty affection of an appreciative soul. Don’t deprive her of that slight recompense, my boy. Should the cloud become so heavy as to take her from your sight, you will never have another mother. The law may give a man a dozen wives; heaven can give him but one mother. The boy that is too big to kiss his mother is too small to kiss anybody else. Girls, beware of him! Such boys fairly pant with anxiety to attend every occasion that may afford them opportunity to kiss some butterfly, whose chief accomplishments may be little waist (no reference to economy) and big bustle—not of useful activity, but of paper. I know, my boy, your mother’s voice may lack the low melody of your “last flame,” but it will ring with the music of unselfish affection long after your “flame’s” has been lost amid the ashes of selfishness. Your mother may not be able to vie with some girl you know in coddling, with a wealth of affectionate adjectives and languishing attitudes, a pet pug-nosed dog or rabbit-tailed cat. But with arms and body rising superior to the pain and ache that tortured her frame, she carried you night and day in the lingering sickness of your infancy; she pressed you to her heart and covered with kisses your face, even while made so repulsive with foul disease that your fair charmer, who daily divides her affections between you and her dog, would have turned away in disgust. But, then, her arms have borne a nobler burden, her heart is filled with a holier love, her mind occupied with a loftier ideal, else you would not be where you are to-day. Then kiss the dear old face, deeply seamed with care for you. Don’t wait till that loving smile, stereotyped by death, can only be impressed upon your heart forever. The noblest and highest ordeal of your future is embodied ijj your mother, my boy. Girls, kiss your fathers. Make them glad every day that their patient toil has such affectionate reward. .Show, each one of you, that you appreciate your father. His tremulous hand may not be as fair and smooth as the “lily” hand of the dude seeking your smile. His aged form may not be as erect as the brainless fop who impatiently waits permission to take you to a n£w home, there to surround you with every luxury—at your father’s expense. His handwriting may not be as roundly regular as that of your last correspondent; but that s rawing signature on the corner of an old envelope will drain more money out of the bank in a minute, than your admiring Adonis’ copperplate, written all over a spotless page of foolscap, can in ten years. Then, each kiss imprinted on that whitening brow may help you to remember that your parents won’t be with you forever. The rapidly revolving hand is completing the circuit of life’s dial; each passing day brings nearer the season for flight; each growing infirmity is a pluming of the wings; by-and-by the mellow dusk of life’s autumn will lure the gentle spirit from your bleak neglect to the summer bloom of the glory-land. Then will settle over the old homestead the blight of a poverty which no wealth can banish. So strengthen the soul and cheer the spirit of your father and mother by the affection of to-day; and if, by reason of early privation and disadvantage (from which they have carefully guarded their children), you breathe the purer atmosphere of better things, know that the frequent kiss of loving appreciation is the magical power by which you may daily lift the hearts of your parents to the height upon which their loving self-denial lias placed yoix. — Rev. Henry B. Hudson.