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BALCONY STORIES

BY

GRACE KING

1892

BALCONY STORIES

THE BALCONY

There is much of life passed on the balcony in a country wherethe summer unrolls in six moon-lengths, and where the nights haveto come with a double endowment of vastness and splendor tocompensate for the tedious, sun-parched days.

And in that country the women love to sit and talk together ofsummer nights, on balconies, in their vague, loose, whitegarments,—men are not balcony sitters,—with theirsleeping children within easy hearing, the stars breaking the cooldarkness, or the moon making a show of light—oh, such adiscreet show of light!--through the vines. And the childreninside, waking to go from one sleep into another, hear the low,soft mother-voices on the balcony, talking about this person andthat, old times, old friends, old experiences; and it seems tothem, 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 notafraid even of God,—and they drift into slumber again, theirlittle dreams taking all kinds of pretty reflections from the greatunknown horizon outside, as their fragile soap-bubbles take onreflections from the sun and clouds.

Experiences, reminiscences, episodes, picked up as only womenknow how to pick them up from other women's lives,—or otherwomen's destinies, as they prefer to call them,—and told asonly women know how to relate them; what God has done or is doingwith some other woman whom they have known—that is whatinterests women once embarked on their own lives,—theembarkation takes place at marriage, or after the marriageabletime,—or, rather, that is what interests the women who sit ofsummer nights on balconies. For in those long-moon countries lifeis open and accessible, and romances seem to be furnished real andgratis, in order to save, in a languor-breeding climate, the ennuiof reading and writing books. Each woman has a different way of