Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 July 1886 — Lips. [ARTICLE]

Lips.

Lips were made for smiles and kisses. Birds cannot smile, flowers cannot kiss, nothing on the earth can smile aud kiss but man. A smile is the color love wears, a kiss is a demonstrative expression of affection. A smile is the light in the window of the face, a kiss is the snapping of love’s fire in the heart. A smile has come to be in these degenerate days often a meaningless thing; a kiss, through the custom of its indiscriminate use, is frequently but little more. This vulgarization of the kiss is a profanation. It should be one of the holiest demonstrations of the soul, but among some people —not all —and especially between bubbling over, demonstrative femininity, a kiss pops a good-morning, whizzes a goodevening, sputters here and fizzles there, until a sensitive refinement causes ns to set our teeth, brace our lips, and abide the shock as lest we can. Indeed, it has come to such a pass that even Miss Prim is obliged to look sharply to the dew on her lips, or ten to one it is spirited away on some graceless mustache. All of which is high-handed sacrilege, and we herewith enter our protost and leave the further discussion of its propriety to the sage«. In seeking more light upon this tantalizing subject, we are convinced we cannot do better than consult the poets. It would seem from the exuberant fashion in which they gush over “intoxicating kisses,” “dewy lips,” aud “heaven-born smiles,” that they have boomed tbe market and made a corner in tbe commodity. The bards, so far as we have been able to find, have neglected to sing of masculine smiles and khses. \Vliat, however, is*more soul-inspiring than a man’s smile, not to mention a man’s kiss? .The faint flutter of the mustached oorners

of his month, the gentle parting of the full lips, and then the round, hearty laugh, accompanied by the sly twinkle of the bright eye. That is one kind of a masculine smile. There is yet another, a description of which we will have to omit —he generally goes out between acts to indulge in it. When you come to investigate a masculine liis3 ycra will find that, strictly speaking, there is no such thing in nature —it is always a mixed matter. But to return to the poets. It was Shakspeare who told us what a woman’s lip was for. He says: “Teach not thy lip such scorn; for it was made For kissing, lady, not for such contempt." Commenting upon this quotation, not long since, a gentleman presumably well up in the science remarked that, judging from these words, Shakspeare was in the habit of kissing only one lip of his sweetheart, and if that were so he had lost half the delights of the operation. When any kissing was done it should be spread all over the mouth. Perhaps some inexperienced youth may profit by this hint. If old Shakspeare was priggish in his ideas of kissing, it would seem Byron was possessed of the opposite qualities, expressed by the same word, with the letter It omitted —piggish. In speaking of lovely woman, he says: “I love the sex, and sometimes would reverse The tyrant’s wish that all mankind but had One neck, which he with one foil stroke might pierce. Mv wish is quite as wide, but not as bad ; That womankind had but one rosy mouth. To kiss them all at once from n: rth to south.” Byron c rtainly lived before bis time —be would have made such a dear, delightful “Latter-Day Saint.” We do not recall any exact quotation, but there has been a great deal of nonsense written about lips so bedaubed with nectar that bees would leave the dewy rose to sip their sweets. If there ever was such an idiotic bee it must have been a long time ago—none are ever discovered at that business nowadays. Men differ from bees in that respect. A kiss is an unfailing baromet: r. Tl:e initiated can tell “the signs of the times” invariably. It is a sure indication of a cold wave if the young lady’s best beau tells her her kisses are ever so much sweeter than the girl’s across the way. There is sure to be a storm if the young woman’s father catches him in the act. There will be heavy clouds in the sky if when he is just about to kiss her, he slops short and asks her “how’s her mother?” The rule is just as sure when the girl has been eating onions. If he puts his arms around her like a bear and almost smothers her when he kisses her, they are not married. If ho comes up with bis hands in his pockets aud gives her a tasteless smack, the probabilities are that they are. After all, what would a girl be without lips? She might be blind, and yet be beauful. She might be bald, and yet wear some other woman’s hair. But if she had no lips life would be a desert drear. Ah, it is woman’s lips that try men’s souls!— Annie E. Myers, in Chicago Ledger.