When a young man presses the girl that he sincerely loves to his bosom-when heart meets heart-when soul mingles with souland when lips meet lips-Oh, then come exquisite touches of tenderness!—then he cannot help feeling a sort of furziness all over! -and she must unquestionably feel as though she were ready to pin-feather at the moment. Such, my young brethren, are the delightful, but indescribable, sensations attending the kiss of pure and unadulterated love. But he that kisses only to deceive and setuce, imbibes a poison at the time, which rankles in his bosom, and induces more or less of grief and mortification, according to the injury inflicted. I hold him a very Judas at best—and if, after committing the deed, he were to go straightway and hang himself, society would reckon his loss as an unlooked-for and fortunate gain. My hearers-as for me, I don't dive very deeply into miscella neous kissing, and consequently kiss but few; but, when I do kiss, an explosion takes place which must convince all within hearing that it originates from the heart, and is meant in earnest. There was a time, in my school-boy days, when I could extract the sweets of a kiss as calmly, composedly, and I may say as coldly, as a bee sucks the honey from a hollyhock; but now I never undertake the business of bussing unless I go into it with a heart heated in the blaze of enthusiasm. A mother kisses her child, and no one presumes to mistrust her motives: true lovers do the same to one another, and no evil consequences ensue;-doves bill and coo, and they know no more about the practised arts of love than a man knows when he goes to sleep ;-but oh! this kissing to gain some mean, mercenary or unlawful end, ought never to be countenanced in a christian community. To kiss in jest, as is often practised by chaps among the girls, is productive of no absolute harm nor actual good; yet the young men love to indulge in it; and so long as the amusement is innocent in itself, I have no objections to their gratifying their naughty, but not wicked, propensities, to their hearts' content. But they must be careful whom they kiss, and how they kiss. Some girls will undergo the pleasurable punishment as quietiv as a good-natured child submits to baptism by sprinkling—some twist and squirm like an eel while being skin ned, and either return a smart slap in the face, or exercise no other defence than by merely saying, 'Why! aint you ashamed !—and then again there are others whom it is as dangerous to attempt to kiss as it would be to undertake to break open the trunk of an elephant. Look out for this latter sort, my young friends; for they have teeth like a tiger's and claws like a wild cat's-and you must keep at a respectful distance, or pay dearly for your rashness. You, married men, may greet one another with a holy kiss, bu. don't kiss each others' wives, lest the green-eyed monster haunt the blooming bowers of matrimony, and every beautiful blossom of connubial bliss be blighted in the frost-bringing breeze of jealousy You, young folks, of both genders, partake prudently of the pleasures of kissing, now while every kiss is rendered hot by the enthusiasm of youthful ardor-for, like buckwheat cakes, they are only good while hot; and they will grow cold for a certainty as you go down into the frosty vale of years, where beauty loses its charms, and pleasure its power to entice. I want you, my young sinners, to kiss and get married; and then devote your time to the study of morality and money-making. Then let your homes be well provided with such comforts and necessaries as piety, pickles, potatoes, pots and kettles, brushes, brooms, benevolence, bread, charity, cheese, crackers, faith, flour, affection, cider, sincerity, onions, integrity, vinegar, virtue, wine, and wisdom. Have all these always on hand, and happiness will be with you. Don't drink anything intoxicating-eat moderately-go about business after breakfast-lounge a little after dinner-chat after tea-and kiss after quarrelling; and all the joy, the peace, and the bliss the earth can afford shall be yours, till the graves close over you, and your spirits are borne to a brighter and a happier world. So mote it be? ON AVARICE. TEXT.-God made man, and man made money, God made bees, and bees made honey. MY HEARERS-if you were to ask me for what purpose man was created, I should say at once, he was created to love, serve and obey his Maker, and to do all the good he can, without directly meddling with the business of others: but, generally speaking, he does lik♣ to believe this doctrine: He'd rather believe that the chief end of man Is to keep what he's got, and to get what he can. I think, ry hearers, that man has made money his chief end, whe ther he is designed for i: or not. Go where you will among the nations of the earth-among the enlightened, civilized, half-civilized, savage, heathen, barbarian, unitarian, trinitarian, bibletarian, nothingarian, and Money is the god bowed down to by all. Yes, my friends, it is the general or universal god for the whole world. There is but one greater, and more powerful; but it makes me feel bad to say, that this greater One is most shamefully slighted by the unhallowed attentions paid the other. The difference is, one is worshipped six days in the week—aye, I may say seven-while the other is worshipped only one day—and, in thousand of cases, not even that. You may well hang down your heads, ye proselytes of modern avarice, and blush for the shameful truths that I fire off at you! I shoot no blank cartridges-mine are no paper wadsbut, with the leaden bullets of conviction, I mean to pierce your understanding-chests, which, alas! have been converted into sub-treasuries for miserly, worldly, gain-getting, hard-currency thoughts. Supposing, my hearers, that I should, in the superabun. dance of truth and honesty, have the superfluous kindness to say that you were all worshippers of false gods, the same as are those pagan idolaters of the East, who don't know enough to move back when too near the fire: supposing I should say this—what might you do to me? You might, perhaps, tar and feather me—you might ride me on a rail, as averse as I am to such a mode of travellingyou might persecute me to the fullest extent of the lynch law Therefore I shan't say any such thing: but I will venture to say, that between you and the poor ignorant heathen, there is a practi cal likeness. They bow down to a log of wood, a piece of stone, or a pair of stuffed breeches; and you worship pieces of gold, bits of silver, and scraps of paper. How much better then, are you than they? Not but a precious little, when the moral and intellec tual advantages which you possess are thrown into the scale of consideration. They, poor things, are surrounded by the thickest darkness of ignorance—so thick that their little sixteen-to-the pound candles of instinct can burn but with a sickly glare: but you, my dear friends, are differently situated. Here you are, placed in an ever-blooming garden of knowledge. The sun of enlightenment shines down upon you from an unclouded firmament of peace: around you, on every side, flow streams of learning, enriching the soil of your intellects, and beautifying the flowery vales of virtue before you stand the two trees of good and evil, and you know which is what as well as I do. With all these advantages, how is it possible that you, ye children of avarice, can be content to wallow in the filthy mire of lucre? But you will keep gnawing at the root of all evil, regardless of the poison that lurks therein, the effect of which is most awful. It causes some to steal sheep, rob hen-roosts, lie, cheat and dissemble-others to put on the robe of piety, and go to church to pick pockets in prayer time -others to squeeze a poor man's sixpence in his clutches, till it squeals out for mercy-and others to perform a clandestine pilgrimage to Texas, to worship at the shrine of Mammon. O, my friends! these things are a disgrace to a civilized community. I have no objections to your making money, if you can make it honestly and not too fast. Go to the bees, those little democratic insects, and grow wiser. They obtain their bread and their honey by incessant industry. There are no beggarly misers, thieves and robbers among them—no land-sharks, money-changers, flint-skinners, and sharpers-no striking for wages-no wrangling, disputing and quarrelling about gain, and the division of spoils. No, my friends, all there is love, harmony, industry, and peace. The corruptions of avarice can find no crack through which to enter their well-secured domicils; and sloth is drummed out instanter by the whole bee posse comitatus. The bee quits his hive in the morning, as soon as the sun begins to lick the dew from the grass, and hies him away to far distant fields, where it buzzes about from flower to flower, till he is heavily laden with the treasure he seeks; and he then returns, re-returns, and returns again, and so on till the shades of evening call him in. He folds up his wings and retires to sleep with a calm conscience; for he knows that he has mind ed his own business, not meddled with others, and labored to pre pare for a rainy day. His sleep must be sweet, and no mistake. My hearers-I might as well let out the whole cable of my opinion, as to keep such a weight of it coiled up in my breast. Therefore, I say, I consider the practice of bees making honey far more decent than many of your modern plans for making money' because one is made by industry-the other by fraud, idleness and rascality. You will all go to destruction in a dirt cart one of these days, unless you think less of money, and more of your own inoral characters The devil is fishing for yo1 with a shilling on bas book for bait. He caught a lawyer the other day, but he couldn't keep him He went to scale him, but he didn't like to be in such a scrape; and sc he slipped through his fingers, and went ker-flap down into the muddy pool of his former iniquity. But you, my friends, are not all lawyers; so I advise you not to snap rashly at the devil's shilling, nor hang longingly round it, or you may ge hooked up by the gill-and if you do, you are fried eels, as sure a a cat can jump. All you want here is enough to make you com fortable; and that can always be got fairly-besides a small sur plus to pay your assages to that happy land where one is as rich as another, and a perfect equality exists. So mote it be ' ON CHASTITY. TEXT.-My brethren, be chaste till you're tempted As oft as you have nothing to eat. MY HEARERS—in a world like this, where almost every one is al most knee-deep in moral mud, it is hardly to be supposed that un sullied chastity can exist; and yet there are numberless cases where only the bottoms of the petticoats and pantaloons of purity have been tarnished, while the main fabric remains unspotted. These, however, are sufficient for the promulgation and propaga. tion of slander; for, as my friend Shakspere said, or might have said, 'Be thou as pure as ice, and as chaste as snow, verily thou shalt not escape calumny,' if a suspicious spot, as big as thy thumb nail, appear upon the fine linen of thy virtue. Another of my particular friends, Spenser, says that the only amaranthine flower on earth is virtue; but I think he is wrong. How can sublunary virthe be an ever-blooming flower, when its blossoms are so frequently trampled upon by the foot of vice, and crushed for ever? Sometimes even the breath of suspicion causes it to fade, wither and blossom no more-and I have known it to droop and die itself, untouched by frosts, fingers, anything or anybody. Poh! my friends, it is absurd to talk about terrestrial virtue being unfading. It is just as likely to fade as the roses upon the cheek of that pretty young lady yonder, or the sprigs upon my calico night-gown. I can have hopes of its immortality only when I see it blooming and putting forth new buds at the door of the tomb. Any place this side |