The home life is jealously shielded from curious eyes. In no place in the world is the social circle more closely guarded than among the higher classes in the City of Mexico. The thick walls, the barred, prison-like windows and the massive, well-guarded doors prevent intrusion and perhaps serve to foster this inclination to lead exclusive lives. Cultured Americans, unless in the official set, who have lived there for years have found it impossible to break into these exclusive circles. Whether this action is due to jealousy, diffidence, a feeling of superiority, or aversion to aliens the fact remains that they are very loth to admit Americans into the privacy of their homes. The foreigner has few opportunities of judging intelligently of the women for they are immured so closely within the four walls of their dwellings. Social life in the semi-public, gregarious ways of American cities is unknown and would not suit these privacy-loving, domestic women. In “The Awakening of a Nation” the author, Mr. C. F. Lummis, gives a very good description of the Creole woman: “Always and everywhere the Spanish-American female face is interesting; at least as often as in other bloods it is beautiful. Photographs tell but half the story, for complexion is beyond them. But a certain clearness of feature, the almost invariable beauty of the eyes and fine strength of the brows seem as much a Spanish birthright as the high-bred hand and foot. Not even the Parisian face is so flexible in expression, so fit for archness, so graphic to the mood. Yet there is a certain presence in it not to be unnoticed, not to be forgotten. To no woman on earth is religion a more vital, ever-present, all-pervading actuality; and that is why you meet the face of the Madonna almost literally at every corner in Spanish-America. And it is not a superficial thing. There is none to whom the wife-heart, the mother-heart is truer-womanly.”