I should not do my whole duty if I did not make some reference to the “holy kiss,” nor yet contribute what I can to enlighten the mothers who honor me by reading my book concerning the universal but almost unspeakable questions that are always coming into the minds of young people about this sacred form of salute. You may know as much about these questions as I do, perhaps more; but there is many a mother who never dreamed that they could infest any brain but her own, and she never dared speak of such a thing.  
One girl came to me, her face suffused with blushes, but with a determined expression about her mouth, and said:—
 
“I am going to ask you something right out plain, because I think you will not laugh. I’ve never dared ask anybody yet, because everybody always laughs in such a 71 mean way if you try to find out anything about such things; and I’d like to know how girls are going to know just what to do. Now it’s just this way: I am going with Charley, and he is a nice boy; he wants to do what is right, I know he does, but all the boys have such queer ideas about their ‘rights.’ When he takes me home from church or any place—and I’ve just got so I dread to have him; and sometimes I think I won’t go with another boy as long as I live, because, you see, when I go to say ‘Good night,’ he—he thinks I am so queer because I won’t let him kiss me. But I won’t; I never let anybody but my own folks. I don’t like it. I don’t think it’s nice to do that way unless it’s somebody you’re sure of, and love very much. He says I’m queer; and he gets provoked, and says it’s his right, if he goes with me. Now I want to know—is it?”
 
“No; it is not,” I said, positively, and 72 perhaps with a little flavor of indignation. “And no properly instructed young man would make such a claim. He is not to blame, of course,” I added more mildly, “for he is young, too; but your instincts are all right; they are true; they are of God who made the kiss, and gave it its own place in common human language. It belongs to the home, and to the purest Christian fellowship between man and man, woman and woman; to society, never.”
 
“Oh, I am so glad I asked you!” she said; “for I was sure my feeling about it was right. But you know one doesn’t like to offend one’s friend, and one doesn’t like to be called queer. But what does make boys act so,—good boys, too, for Charley is a good boy?”
 
I can not bring into the compass of these pages all that followed in our talk, but I would like to give the points of truth to the young mothers for whom I write.
 
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The answer to my young questioner is found in the fact that boys, as well as girls, have been left in ignorance of the principle, as it is in God, of which the kiss is one form of expression, and have been left to catch up its perversion as Satan has undertaken to work it into custom and habit, in the world. Anything which Satan can not wholly spoil, he will counterfeit; or, better yet for his purpose, make so common, if possible, that it shall become worthless, as was the case with silver in the days of Solomon, when it became as the stones of the street, and “was nothing accounted of.”
 
The kiss, made common, is ridiculous. To be worth anything, it must speak exclusively the language of a pure, changeless affection, such as is represented in the love of God for his............