Rensselaer Union, Volume 11, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 March 1879 — Don’t Kiss the Babies. [ARTICLE]

Don’t Kiss the Babies.

When any person of either sex, or of anjr condition, sees a small child walking oy running about in charge of a nurse, he (or she. generally she.) counts it his pi iviiege'to kiss the child, if he happens to be pleased with its appearance. Even if he is not pleased, he feels well-nigh obliged, should he be polite, to caress the “ aear little thing," because he conceives.it to bo a sort of duty Which cotemporaries owe to the rising generation. It is singular how this custom of greeting small children, under all circumstances, shonld have grown up. Entire strangers -to the families, not less than its friends, seem to think this kissing imperative. A good-looking, nicely-dressed child cannot be seen in a hotel, on the promenade, or in any of the parks, without incurring the habitual embrace from a number of men and women of high and low degree. That it is an impertinence, to say the least, cannot be denied; that it is a habit which many parents..deplore, and try in vain to correct, is widely fcnOWn. It is most undesirable, nor Is it safe, this wholesale, indiscriminate kissing. Imagine how children themselves must suffer It is one of their wrongs that has not been suffi-

ciently Insisted on. It is not improbable that they bare often been made ill by rubbing the gauntlet with Tom. Dick and Harry,, or Jane, Mary and Bara£. The custom is mere established here than ih any other country, and it is time it should be discontinued. Nobody has any right to kiss a child unless invited to do so by its parents, ana this should be understood.—N. Y. Times. *'