Kissing by Mrs. S. M. I. Henry

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 20, 1908

Kissing

By Mrs. S. M. I. Henry

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 any one yet, because every one always laughs in such a 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 Charlie, 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 any one but my own folks. I don’t like it; I don’t think it’s nice to do that way unless it’s some one 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 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.”—Mrs. S. M. I. Henry.