THEORY OF KISSING. 301 



Women are delicately nerved; they move to instincts 

 deeper, and influences more ethereal, than our coarse natures 

 can respond to ; but they have not the faculty of induction ; 

 and heaven forbid they ever should ! When a lady thinks 

 she has a call to unravel a tangled skein of facts through 

 experiment believing it a duty she makes a mistake. All 

 this is no part of the duty of woman. I remember, when a 

 boy, poring over a good-sized quarto, liberally illustrated with 

 copper-plate engravings, and finished up with a ghost-story 

 at the end. It was called the Whole Duty of Man. It never 

 fell to my lot to read the Whole Duty of Woman ; wherefore, 

 as, according to my views, it admits of being given in few 

 words, I shall give it accordingly. The whole duty of woman, 

 then, I humbly submit is this, videlicet : that whilst unmar- 

 ried she be always amiable, and that she look as pretty as she 

 can ; farther, that when married she add to these the crown- 

 ing virtue of obedience to her lord. Love we need say nothing 

 about it being natural to the sex; and as for honour, it 

 comes as the result of following the maxims just laid down. 



If the baron had testified to the issuing of a light from 

 magnetic poles by the evidence of his four young ladies and 

 the sickly boy alone, then undoubtedly his testimony would 

 be accorded far less ready credence or rather, disposition 

 towards credence than one now tends to accord to it. He 

 has furnished the particulars of certain indications ^concern- 

 ing the light from magnets, as made known through physical 

 instruments, mediately or immediately. As a mediate experi- 

 ment, the following was tried. Let it be premised that a 

 faint light admits of being concentrated by a convex lens, as 

 most of us will have seen on different occasions. It occurred 

 to the baron, then, that he might succeed in concentrating 

 the magnetic light in such wise, by transmitting it through 

 a lens, that being thrown upon a screen in a focus, it might 

 become to ordinary eyes recognisable. Trying the experi- 

 ment, the result was a failure, so far as the evidence of his 



