around climate. Why the place was not
crowded with health seekers, was a puzzle to me. I had thought that the
bay of San Francisco offered the most agreeable climate in America,
but, in the Territory of New Mexico, Santa Fe was the perfection of all
climates combined.

The old city lies in the broad valley of the Santa Fe Creek, but the
valley of the Santa Fe Creek lies seven thousand feet above the
sea level. I should never have known that we were living at a great
altitude, if I had not been told, for the equable climate made us forget
to inquire about height or depth or distance.

I listened to old Father de Fourri preach his short sermons in English
to the few Americans who sat on one side of the aisle, in the church of
Our Lady of Guadaloupe; then, turning with an easy gesture towards his
Mexican congregation, who sat or knelt near the sanctuary, and saying,
"Hermanos mios," he gave the same discourse in good Spanish. I felt
comfortable in the thought that I was improving my Spanish as well as
profiting by Father de Fourri's sound logic. This good priest had grown
old at Santa Fe in the service of his church.

The Mexican women, with their black ribosos wound around their heads and
concealing their faces, knelt during the entire mass, and made many long
responses in Latin.

After years spent in a heathenish manner, as regards all church
observations, this devout and unique service, following the customs of
ancient Spain, was interesting to me in the extreme.

Sometimes on a Sunday afternoon I attended Vespers in the chapel of
the Sisters' Hospital (as it was called). A fine Sanitarium, managed
entirely by the Roman Catholic Sisters of Charity.

Sister Victoria, who was at the head of the management, was not only a
very beautiful woman, but she had an agreeable voice and always led in
the singing.

It seemed like Heaven.

I wrote to my friends in the East to come to the Sisters' Hospital if
they wanted health, peace and happiness, for it was surely to be found
there. I visited the convent of Our Lady of Loretto: I stood before a
high wall in an embrasure of which there was a low wooden gate; I pulled
on a small knotted string which hung out of a little hole, and a
queer old bell rang. Then one of the nuns came and let me in, across a
beautiful garden to the convent school. I placed my little daughter as
a day pupil there, as she was now eleven years old. The nuns spoke very
little English and the children