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28 DAYS IN THE SUN
incompetent posterity, who sit with their legs crossed,
tailor-fashion, in the gutters of Morocco, basking in
the sunlight, gazing at nothing.
Only the homes are reminiscent of the Moorish
harem, for there the ladies of the upper class continue
to sit, lost in vague reveries, putting on fat. A whole
week may pass before you see a better-class Sevillian
woman walking through the street; and the city may
even appear—in spite of its reputation for beautiful
women—to be the city most devoid of beauty in the
world. On Sunday evening, however, beauty opens
up all its sluice-gates, and every porte-cochére is filled
with the charms of luxuriant females. At five o’clock,
the promenade along the Guadalquivir is swarming
with elegant glass coaches on rubber wheels, and in
each coach reclines an obese Sevillian dame, wide-eyed
and voluminous in silks and laces—a formidably
corseted beauty of the harem.
On the other six days of the week these rather portly
beauties—quite stylish in appearance, however—idle
about at home all day with hair unkempt, dressed in
calico kimonos, their only exercise a trip from living-
room to balcony, or vice versa. The Sunday outing re-
minds one of the weekly outing of the seraglio except
that in this instance onlookers are not driven away but
stand about in great numbers, representing all classes
of society. The Seville promenade is perhaps the only
one in the world which is meant for all the people.
Splendor here walks naturally and simply by the side
of modesty and poverty as if these qualities had ar-
ranged a meeting in this place. Here a mass of wan-
dering rags may be as proud as if the rags covered
a Spanish grandee. A dazzling beauty may have her
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