Balcony Stories

There is much of life passed on the balcony in a country where the summer unrolls in six-moon lengths, and where the nights have to come with a double endowment of vastness and splendor to compensate for the tedious, sun-parched days. And in that country the women love to sit and talk together of summe'r nights, on balconies, in their vague, loose white garments—men are not balcony sitters—with their sleeping children within easy hearing, the stars breaking the cool darkness, or the moon making a shadow 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 this person and that, old times, old friends, old experience; and it means to them, hovering a moment in wakefulness, that there is no end of the world or time, or of the mother-knowledge; but illimitable as it is, the mother-voices and the mother-love and protection fill it all—with their mother's hand in theirs, children are not afraid even of God—and they drift into slumber again, their little dreams taking all kinds of pretty reflections from the great unknown horizon outside, as their fragile soapbubbles take on reflections from the sun and clouds.