In the Footprints of the Padres

In the Footprints of the Padres

by Charles Warren Stoddard

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Title: In the Footprints of the Padres
Author: Charles Warren Stoddard
Release Date: August 29, 2004 [EBook #13321]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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FOOTPRINTS OF THE PADRES ***

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[Illustration: Life at the Mission of Dolores, 1855]
IN THE FOOTPRINTS OF THE PADRES

BY CHARLES WARREN STODDARD
NEW AND ENLARGED EDITION
INTRODUCTION BY CHARLES PHILLIPS
SAN FRANCISCO A.M. Robertson MCMXII

TO MY FATHER SAMUEL BURR STODDARD, ESQ. FOR HALF
A CENTURY A CITIZEN OF SAN FRANCISCO

THOUGH THE KINDNESS OF THE EDITORS OF THE SAN
FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, THE CENTURY MAGAZINE, THE
OVERLAND MONTHLY, THE AVE MARIA, NOTRE DAME,
INDIANA, THE VICTORIAN REVIEW, MELBOURNE

INTRODUCTION
Since the first and second editions of "In the Footprints of the Padres"
appeared, many things have transpired. San Francisco has been
destroyed and rebuilt, and in its holocaust most of the old landmarks
mentioned in the pages that follow as then existing, have been
obliterated. Since then, too, the gentle heart, much of whose story is
told herein, has been hushed in death. Charles Warren Stoddard has
followed on in the footprints of the Padres he loved so well. He abides
with us no longer, save in the sweetest of memories, memories which
are kept ever new by the unforgettable writings which he left behind
him. He passed away April 23, 1909, and lies sleeping now under the
cypresses of his beloved Monterey.
Charles Warren Stoddard was possessed of unique literary gifts that
were all his own. These gifts shine out in the pages of this book. Here
we find that mustang humor of his forever kicking its silver heels with
the most upsetting suddenness into the honeyed sweetness of his

flowing poetry. Here, too, we find that gift of word-painting which
makes all his writings a brilliant gallery of rich-hued and soft-lighted
wonder. Of the green thickets of the redwood forests he says, in
"Primeval California": "A dense undergrowth of light green foliage
caught and held the sunlight like so much spray." So do Stoddard's
pages catch and hold the lights and shadows of a world which is the
more beautiful because he beheld it and sang of it--for sing he did. His
prose is the essence of poetry.
In my autograph copy of "The Footprints of the Padres" Stoddard wrote:
"A new memory of Old Monterey is the richer for our meeting here for
the first time in the flesh. We have often met in spirit ere this."
Whenever we would go walking together, he and I, through the streets
of that old Monterey, old no longer save in memory, he would
invariably take me to a certain high board fence, and looking through
an opening show me the ruins of an adobe house--nothing but a broken
fireplace left, moss-grown and crumbling away. "That is my old
California," he would say, while his sweet voice was shaken with tears.
That desolated hearth seemed to him the symbol of the California
which he had known and loved.... But no, the old California that
Stoddard loved lives on, and will, because he caught and preserved its
spirit and its coloring, its light and life and music. As the redwood
thicket holds the sunlight, so do Stoddard's words keep bright and
living, though viewed through a mist of tears, the California of other
days.
In this new edition of "The Footprints" some changes will be found,
changes which all will agree make an improvement over the original
volume. "Primeval California," first published in October, 1881, in the
old Scribner's (now The Century) Magazine, when James G. Holland
was its editor, is at times Stoddard at his best. "In Yosemite Shadows"
shows us the young Stoddard full of boyish enthusiasm--he could not
have been more than twenty when it was written and published, in the
old Overland, then edited by Bret Harte. It is more than a gloriously
poetic description of Yosemite, when Yosemite still dreamed in its
virgin beauty; it is the revelation of a poet's beginnings, for it gives us
in the rough, just finding their way to the light, all those gifts which

later won Stoddard his fame.
The third addition to this volume is "An Affair of the Misty City," a
valuable chapter, since it is wholly autobiographical, and at the same
time embodies pen portraits of all