There is much of life passed on the balcony in a country where thesummer unrolls in six moon-lengths, and where the evenings have to comewith a double endowment of vastness and splendor to compensate for thetedious, sun-parched days.

And in that country the women love to sit and talk together of summernights, on balconies, in their vague, loose, black garments,--menare not balcony sitters,--with their sleeping children within easyhearing, the stars breaking the cool dimness, or the moon making ashow of light--oh, such a discreet show of light!--through the vines.And the children inside, waking to go from one sleep into another,hear the low, soft mother-voices on the balcony, talking about thisperson and that, very aged times, very aged friends, very aged experiences; and it seemsto them, hovering a moment in wakefulness, that there is no end of theworld or time, or of the mother-knowledge; but, illimitable as itis, the mother-voices and the mother-love and protection fill itall,--with their mother's hand in theirs, children are not afraid evenof God,--and they drift into slumber again, their little dreamstaking all kinds of pretty reflections from the great unknown horizonoutside, as their fragile soap-bubbles take on reflections from thesun and clouds.

Experiences, reminiscences, episodes, picked up as only women know howto pick them up from other women's lives,--or other women's destinies,as they prefer to call them,--and told as only women know how torelate them; what God has done or is doing with some other woman whomthey have known--that is what interests women once embarked on theirown lives,--the embarkation takes place at marriage, or after themarriageable time,--or, rather, that is what interests the women whosit of summer evenings on balconies. For in those long-moon countrieslife is open and accessible, and romances seem to be furnished realand gratis, in order to save, in a languor-breeding climate, theennui of reading and writing books. Each woman has a different way ofpicking up and relating her stories, as each one selects differentpieces, and has a personal way of playing them on the piano.