Measuring noses
Posted by Constanza on January 29, 1998 at 21:03:54:
To be sure, my dear old lady once confessed to a story neither so pretty nor so proper, namely, that one of the amusements of her youth was "measuring noses" with some gentlemen, -not an uncommon thing in those days; and, as lips lie below noses, such measurements frequently ended in kisses.
This paragraph is from The Last Generation in England, an Appendix to Cranford, by Elizabeth Gaskell. As this essay is dated 1848, I think that the time period referred to might very well be JA's times. Anyway, ever since I first read it I've been waiting to join it with somebody, and I guess you are the right sort of people.
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