THE OK Y OF KISSING. 307 



thereupon and, mind me, I am not joking; only quoting 

 soberly and seriously the baron's own record the baron 

 thereupon, I say, hints, he does not venture to do more, at a 

 rational theory of kissing ! 



According to the testimony of his sensitised young ladies 

 to borrow a photographic term the magnetic or crystalline 

 fire was often perceptible to their eyes, coruscating on human 

 lips the barons lips ? His young ladies had previously borne 

 testimony to the fact that the sensation of contact by this 

 sort of fire, even when emanating from magnets or crystals, 

 was to their organisms most agreeable ; wherefore the baron 

 shrewdly suspects that the recognisedly agreeable sensation of 

 kissing may be due to a purely physical cause, viz. to this 

 newly discovered force acting upon the ramifications of the 

 fifth pair of nerves, and thence conveyed by contact and trans- 

 ference to the sensorium ! 



Once more, I am not joking. This is what the baron does 

 say ; and anybody who disbelieves my statement need only 

 refer to the baron's own book, where the author may be seen 

 to express himself just as I have put it. Although the odic 

 force has been greedily laid hold of by spiritualists, table- 

 turners, spirit-rappers, phantom fiddle-fliers, and other varie- 

 ties of that sort of mystic people, it would be hard to deter- 

 mine why. The baron was assuredly no mysticist, or anything 

 approaching one. A man who tries to reveal the holy mystery 

 of kissing, and refer the operation to gross physical conditions, 

 is anything but a spiritualist. The baron did not restrain 

 himself to the task of destroying the mystery of kisses. He 

 next addressed himself to the task of unravelling the mystery 

 of ghosts! Most materialistic in his tendencies does Baron 

 Eeichenbach seem to be ; so that I wonder how spiritualists 

 can like to hold communion with him. According to the 

 baron, churchyard ghosts, grave-hovering spirits, have no 

 existence. Visions formerly referred to their presence are 

 nothing else than flickering luminosities of magnetic flame, 



