Teasing

“ A vigorous child, even when a girl, grows aggressive and attempts various forms of playful attack. As we have seen, to tickle another is merely one variety of a large class of teasing operations, in which the teased as well as the teasing party is supposed to find his merriment. Regarding now the child as teaser, we see that he very early begins to exercise at once his own powers and others’ endurance. The pulling of whiskers is one of the earliest forms of practical jokes. Ruth took to this pastime in the first week of the fifth month. ”

“ Now, this idea will, I think, help us to understand how loud and prolonged laughter came to join itself to the combative game of tickling and being tickled. If play—pure, good-natured play—was to be developed out of teasing attacks, it would become a matter of the highest importance that it should be clearly understood to be such. ”

“ Teasing is not so very bad, you know, although it is dreadfully silly, but when people begin by teasing they sometimes get to saying things in earnest—even really hateful, mean things. And that was what made the Muskrat father and mother stop it whenever they could. ”

“ Here are displayed those marks of sensuality which ought to be hidden. All know how much the upper lip betokens the sensations of taste, desire, appetite, and the enjoyments of love; how much it is curved by pride and anger, drawn thin by cunning, smoothed by benevolence, made flaccid by effeminacy; how love and desire, sighs and kisses, cling to it, by indescribable traits. The under lip is little more than its supporter, the rosy cushion on which the crown of majesty reposes. ”

“ What joy! to kiss those eyes that wanton rove,
Then catch the glances of returning love;
Or clinging to the cheek of crimson glow,
The bosom, shoulder, or the neck of snow;
What pleasure! tender passion to assuage,
And see the traces of our amorous rage
On the soft neck or blooming cheek exprest,
On the white shoulder, or still whiter breast!
’Twixt yielding lips, in every thrilling kiss,
To dart the trembling tongue,—what matchless bliss!
Inhaling sweet each other’s mingling breath,
While Love lies gasping in the arms of Death! ”

“ Was it a wonder that my tone was formal; that, overcome by a sense of estrangement, I talked of the weather as I sipped my tea; that I asked her if she had enjoyed last night's dance, speaking as though dancing were my own favorite amusement; that when I pronounced her name it was in a halting, embarrassed undertone? Even speaking, it thus seemed gross presumption. How unlikely, then, that I should refer to by-gone days in her presence when it was incredible that there had ever been days like those! ”

“ There is the proud kiss, a pledge of eternal hatred, which strikes the recipient like a falling avalanche of Alpine snow. There is the icy kiss, which sends your heart into your boots and almost stifles the ebb and flow of one’s life-blood. There is the frothy kiss, which means nothing, and is common between relations and friends. There is the hypocritical, or Judas kiss, which gives you a convulsive bang of pretended affection on both cheeks—lips saying, “I am so glad to see you,” etc., and the heart saying, “I dislike you, and if I could show it, I would.” ”

“ For you the sweet proffered kiss?
Can such pleasure from an earthly life flow?
Ah! How light and radiance danced before my eyes.
All my senses yearned for those lips!
A longing in those bright eyes sparkled ”

“ Our host, if we came to that, had the secret; but he could only express it in grand practical ways. One of them was precisely this wonderful "afternoon tea," in which tea only--that, good as it is, has never the note of style--was not to be found. The beauty and the poetry, at all events, were clear enough, and the extraordinary uplifted distinction; but where, in all this, it may be asked, was the element of "horror" that I have spoken of as sensible?--what obsession that was not charming could find a place in that splendid light, out of which the long summer squeezes every secret and shadow? ”

“ A kiss is expressive of love in the widest and most comprehensive meaning of the word, bringing a message of loyal affection, gratitude, compassion, sympathy, intense joy, and profound sorrow. In the first place a kiss is the expression of the deep and intense feeling which knits parents to their offspring. At its entrance into the world the little helpless infant is received by its father’s and mother’s warm kiss. ”

“ What tactless asses we are, you and I, boney nose,
always indiscriminate, always unashamed,
and now it is the souring flowers of the bedraggled
poplars: a festering pulp on the wet earth
beneath them. With what deep thirst
we quicken our desires
to that rank odor of a passing spring-time!
Can you not be decent? Can you not reserve your ardors
for something less unlovely? What girl will care
for us, do you think, if we continue in these ways?
Must you taste everything? Must you know everything?
Must you have a part in everything? ”

“ Kisses are sweet as woman's gentle breath, which, according to a Roumanian folk-song, smells of "delicate young wine," or, as the French poets say, of "thousands of flowers."—
Laughing mouth, mouth to caress,
Kissing ere its lips you press;
Sweet for kissing, balmy breath
Like the perfume of fresh heath.
W. F. H. A woman's breath, which intoxicates man, is, as it were, the ethereal expression of her whole being. ”

“ Are we face to face with something primitive, or something conventional and derivative? Is it as natural to kiss when we are transported with love as it is to smile when we are mirthful, or weep when we are sad? ”

“ Then all the little spirits feel the sweet waves, and creep with laughing eyes out of their dark corners; they stretch their delicate little crystal limbs, and plunge to bathe in the wine-flood, and plash and shoot, and rise quivering out again, and shake their sparkling spirits' wings, that, as they rustle, the clear drops fall from the little plumes. They run about and meet each other, and kiss a joyous life one from the other's lips. ”

“ Why, girl, I hear your voice at night, and it haunts me in my dreams. I've smelt the open range in springtime when all the little unknown flowers peep up overnight and make the air sweet and soft—and you, your presence, leaves just such a fragrance behind! ”

“ A blush spread itself on her face and bosom; she turned upon her back as if impelled by the agency of someone, her lovely thighs spread of themselves, her breasts heaved rapidly, her whole body was agitated, her arms spread then of a sudden fell, and then she became motionless as death. Certainly she had tasted in a dream all those joys which the waking sense can know. A soft emotion succeed the calm in which she had been absorbed. ”

“ When I kiss your face to make you smile, my darling, I surely understand what the pleasure is that streams from the sky in morning light, and what delight that is which the summer breeze brings to my body—when I kiss you to make you smile. ”

“ And one kiss of your lily-white lips Is all that I would have.’ ‘Your breath is as the roses sweet, Mine as the sulphur strong; If you get one kiss of my lips, Your days would not be long. ‘Mind not ye the day, Willie, Sin you and I did walk? ”

“ And it is excited in young children not only by the sensation of tickling, which lies, as it were, between pleasure and pain, but by the apprehension of this, or any other apprehension sufficiently moderate, by every surprise, and every mental emotion that lies between pleasure and pain, and by all the associates of these, as particularly by seeing others laugh. ”

“ TEA. To dream of drinking tea, or being present at a tea-party, is a sign of thrift and domestic happiness: a girl who dreams of meeting her lover at such a party, or of drinking tea with him, may be sure that he’s all right, and she can close her matrimonial bargain with him at once without any risk. ”

“ My arms about thee—scarcely dare to speak.
And nothing seems to me so wild and bold,
As with one kiss to touch thy blessèd cheek.
Methinks if I should kiss thee, no control
Within the thrilling brain could keep afloat
The subtle spirit. ”

“ But ah! comes a melody far more soft
Than the troubled notes of a lydian lute
Or the echoing strains of a fairy's flute;
It bids me awaken and live and rejoice,
'Tis only the sound of Elviry's voice--
Like an angel's whisper it comes to me:--
"Wake up, you fool, and come to tea." ”

“ There are but few among the many who know the meaning of a kiss:—or that the soul, from its seat in the brain, is in telegraphic unity with the lips.—affectional, friendly, filial, parental, general, in the upper one; sensuous, magnetic, passional, in the lower; nor that, when loving lips meet lips that love, there is a magnetic discharge of soul-flame, and each party gives and receives large measures of magnetic life and fluid love at the instant of impact or contact, which measures are greater or less according to the love-fulness or emptiness of each respectively. ”

“ Now-a-days intellectual ladies will have none of such matters in connection with the mental 'teas' (which they enjoy along with tea for the body) ; the honoured hide of a favourite poet--if he would retain his footing at 'teas,' and in pocket-books--must, at highest, be blackened by a tap or so on the nose, or the least little box on an ear. ”

“ Darkness cleaving to darkness, she hung close to him, pressed herself into soft flow of his kiss, pressed herself down, down to the source and core of his kiss, herself covered and enveloped in the warm, fecund flow of his kiss, that travelled over her, flowed over her, covered her, flowed over the last fibre of her, so they were one stream, one dark fecundity, and she clung at the core of him, with her lips holding open the very bottommost source of him. ”

“ It is too hot to go out much except very early in the morning and again after tea. We read and write and work till luncheon, then go to bed and try to sleep till tea-time. We waken hot and very cross, and it is the horridest thing to get up and get into a dress that seems to fasten with millions of hooks and buttons. My old Bella is back with me, but she has found a mistress whose temper has shortened as the temperature has risen. ”

“ Often a door is opened, a curtain drawn aside, in the halls of romance, where the reader may roam at will. With this nation of artists in emotion, the taste of the tea is a thing of lesser importance; it is the aroma which remains and delights. The poems of the T`angs are full of this subtle aroma, this suggestive compelling fragrance which lingers when the songs have passed away. ”

“ Let the word tea be erased from our vocabulary, and from our minds all the cheerful associations which it awakens, and there passes from our hearts none can tell how much of that which we most fondly cherish there,—the family of both sexes, and occasionally some neighbors and friends, seated around the table,—the gently stimulating narcotic diffusing a charm over the whole social being, and communicating itself to the vocal machinery. ”

“ Come! who will be my pupils in a Course,—Poetry taught in twelve lessons? That made a laugh, in which most of The Teacups, myself included, joined heartily. Through it all I heard the sweet tones of Number Five's caressing voice; not because it was more penetrating or louder than the others, for it was low and soft, but it was so different from the others, there was so much more life,—the life of sweet womanhood,—dissolved in it. ”

“ Then come the kisses of connubial and parental love, and, finally,
“Life’s autumnal blossoms fall,
And earth’s brown clinging lips impress
The long cold kiss that waits us all.”
The observance of the custom, therefore, throughout life, and in all the relations of life, presents a broad field for the inspirations of the poet and the “situations” of the novelist; while in history, tradition, legend, and story it furnishes an endless number of charming and picturesque episodes. ”

“ Or any fallen feather of the Dove.
"The broken little laugh that spoils a kiss,
The ache of purple pulses, and the bliss
Of blinded eyelids that expand again—
Love draws them open with those lips of his,
"Lips that cling hard till the kissed face has grown
Of one same fire and colour with their own;
Then ere one sleep, appeased with sacrifice,
Where his lips wounded, there his lips atone." ”

“ If we had been endowed with the sense of smell, and with no other sense whatever, the sensations of this class would have been simple feelings of pleasure or pain, which we should as little have ascribed to an external cause, as any of our spontaneous feelings of joy or sorrow, that are equally lasting or equally transient. ”

“ Be a sensible woman, say Yes, and sit down to tea with me, and we'll talk it over together; for, after tea, I shall be busy; say No' (he hesitated a moment to try and keep his voice in the same tone) , 'and I shan't say another word about it, but pay up a year's rent for my rooms tomorrow, and be off. Time's up! Yes or no?'
'If you please, sir—you have been so good to little Ailsie—'
'There, sit down comfortably by me on the sofa, and let's have our tea together. I am glad to find you are as good and sensible as I took you for.'
And this was Alice Wilson's second wooing. ”

“ Then she opened her eyes and looking round, exclaimed in a sweet and melodious voice, ‘Out on thee, O breeze! There is in thee neither drink for the thirsty nor solace for him whose thirst is quenched! ”