Puck — November 13, 1878 — page 7: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

PUCK. EAREST ANGELINA, Meet me at the gate. Come prepared to stay out Kinder sorter late. Wrap yourself in cotton, Like a tooth that aches; Drink up the molasses For to-morrow's cakes, Eat about a hundred Pounds of honeycomb; With a pint of syrup, Just to send it home. Send to meet the other things Sixteen sugar-loaves, And, by way of spicing, Take two little cloves. Cover with a pound of Maple-sugar chips; Put a stick of candy 'Twixt your dainty lips, ‘Then tell Mr, Edison To send the bill to me, And charge you to the nozzle With electricitee. Then if you will pocket ‘That piece of chewing-gum, You will be just luscious, love, For Yum Yum Yum! That there is a serious scientific basis to the divine art of oscula- tion may have been suspected by some of its more advanced devotees, acolytes of the inner temple of Aphrodite Phrontgatis, but as yet no one has appeared to formylate the fundamental laws of the kiss for the benefit of a world that delights in the dear lip-service of the gracious god- dess, and literally and figuratively “ plays with light loves in the portal.” Let this, then, be Puck’s pleasing task. Puck is, or ought to be, an authority on the subject. He has culled sweet flowers of experience on the front gate and on the door-step. Also elsewhere. If there exist a base-born wretch who dares to imagine that Puck's youthful and cherubic beauty is not appreciated by the one sex whose appreciation is worth having, let him stand forth. We will wager our basement shekel that the lowest envy alone influences his disordered mind, and that he never got a kiss in all his-loveless days. -—PRITIVE FORM, PLEASANT, BUT IMrERVECT. ''The fact is that the original, primitive, plain-style Kiss, the Kiss simplex, taken wherever convenient, without choice of location, always left a sense of uniatisfactoriness Gn the minds of the osculant parties. 7 People of commonplace minds, people who do not look below the surface of things, have alleged that this feeling of incompleteness arose sulely from the obvious difficulty of getting a supcrabundant, or even fairly sufficient, supply of the article in question. But this is merely the superficial aspect of the case. There was another and a profounder reason, There was a definite element lacking in the composition of the sugar-plum. Passion yearned for something to hold on by, just as art yearns for definite form. The Kiss BALUSTRALIS.—PARTIAL ESTABLISHMENT OF THE Evectric CURRENT, AND MARKED IMPROVEMENT. This has, in some vague way, impressed itself on the mind of many an enraptured brace of lovers as they hung over the railing of a hotel verandah, or snatched casual refreshment on the stairs; and the man who has taken labial toll on the foot-bridge that crosses a country streamlet, has probably got a good deal of light on the subject. But it was not until this great and glorious land blossomed out all over with front-gates that the perfect crystalization of the kiss thrilled all humanity with complete and satiated happiness. ELECTRIC CURRENT IN FULL. Force. Comrerent Orerators. Tue Kiss Surracatis, ABSOLUTE PERFECTION ATTAINED B) And why? Because Science was, for the first time, supremely satisfied. For the first time the great active principle of the kiss, the uninterrupted Current of Osculant Electricity, was put in full-operation. It was partially established when the baluster or hand-rail of the rustic bridge afforded a grip to the close communicants of osculation; but it reached its highest power alone when that inspired piece of mechanism, the Gate, interposed its effective insulation between kisser and kissee, or rather, since it might be rather difficult to define this distinction, between the two halves of the kiss, Glory, then, to the supreme efflorescence of our civilization. Glory in the highest to the Front Gate. ‘There is no other land under the broad heaven that can‘boast of an institution like this, It is the special and particular privilege of Ameri- cans to spoon over a front gate. Hence the beauty of American femininity. Hence the nobility of American manhood, Hence the toughness of American gate posts, and the proficiency of American fathers in the art of lubricating hinges. And let glory in the highest, And peace on earth await ‘The abstract idea of The American Front Gate. comicbooks.com