“They are dapper and very confident young men” (these oglers), “combining in their demeanor the gallantry of their Spanish inheritance with a certain bumptiousness rather characteristically Chilean. They stare at those who pass—some in _mantos_, some in French dresses with Paris hats—and in Spanish murmur, half audibly, such observations as, ‘I like the blonde best,’ or ‘Give me the little one.’ And, as they still retain some of that simplicity which in the interior causes a stranger to be watched as though he were a camel or a calliope, they will stare even at the _gringo_, comment on the cut of his clothes or facetiously compare his blunt walking boots with their long, thin ones. They are rather irritating sometimes, especially the young officers in their smart German uniforms, and one dreams of home and a Broadway policeman marching down upon them leisurely with a night-stick and fanning them away.” Though why he should have mentioned a “blonde” in illustrating their comments, one must wonder. Maybe it was because there are so few. As a rule their hair and eyes, if not black, are a dark, rich brown, and their complexion of the clear, cream-tinted, brunette type. “But,” he continues— “The young women do not mind it at all.... And you will not make yourself at all popular by sympathizing, for they would only laugh and say: ‘Oh, they’re all right. That’s only their way of beginning. They’re quite sensible and nice when you come to know them.’ There are ways and ways, and in South America a girl who may not receive a formal call from a man without having her mother and half the family in the room at the same time may blandly listen to repartee that would make our maidens gasp for breath.... It is at dusk, particularly if the band is playing, or if it is Sunday, that the promenade begins round the Plaza—a row of spectators on the inside benches, on the outside young idlers and officers two or three deep—between two shuffling concentric circles, in one of which are the men, in the other the shrinking _señoritas_, two by two, or hanging on the arm of a protector. Every man who can sport a top-hat and a pair of saffron gloves, if it is Sunday, and all the women except the very austere ones, gather here and circle round in that armed neutrality of the sexes which is the tradition of their blood.”