The Lure of San Francisco | Page 5

them to our missions with gifts and
friendship. While you were leaving them in ignorance we were
teaching them--"
He stooped to get a full look at my eyes. "I never knew a Spaniard to
have eyes the color of violets. Look up your family tree, my dear
enthusiast, and I think you will find that you are we."
"I'm not," I declared indignantly. "I'm a Californian. I was born here

and even if I haven't Spanish blood in my veins, I have the spirit of the
old padres."
"But the spirit has not left a lasting impression. Indeed civilization
whether dealt out with friendly hands or thrust upon the natives at the
point of the bayonet seems to have been equally poisonous on both
sides of the continent."
"True, philosopher, but would you call the work of these padres
impressionless, when it has permeated all California? The open-hearted
hospitality of the Spaniards is a canonical law throughout the West, and
their exuberant spirit of festivity still remains, impelling us to celebrate
every possible event, present and commemorative."
We had reached Dolores Street, a broad parked avenue where
automobiles rushed by one another, shrieking a warning to the
pedestrian. Suddenly I found myself alone. My companion had darted
across the crowded street to a little oasis of grass where a mission bell
hung suspended on an iron standard.
"It marks 'El Camino Real,'" he reported as he rejoined me.
"The King's Highway," I translated. "It must have been wonderful at
this season of the year, for as the padres traveled northward, they
scattered seeds of yellow mustard and in the spring a golden chain
connected the missions from San Francisco to San Diego. Over there
nearer the bay," I nodded toward the east where a heavy cloud of black
smoke proclaimed the manufacturing section of the city, "lay the
Potrero--the pasture-land of the padres--and the name still clings to the
district. Beyond was Mission Cove, now filled in and covered with
store-houses, but formerly a convenient landing place for the goods of
Yankee skippers who, contrary to Spanish law, surreptitiously traded
with the padres."
We turned to the massive façade of the old church, where hung the
three bells, of which Bret Harte wrote.
"Bells of the past, whose long forgotten music Still fills the wide
expanse; Tingeing the sober twilight of the present, With the color of
romance."
As we entered the low arched doorway, we seemed to step from the
hurry of the twentieth century into the peace of a by-gone era. Outside,
the modern structures crowd upon the low adobe building, staring
down upon it with unsympathetic eyes and begrudging it the very land

it stands on, while inside, hand-hewn rafters, massive grey walls, and a
red tiled floor slightly depressed in places by years of service, point
mutely to the past, to the days when padres and neophytes knelt at the
sound of the Angelus. Within still stand the elaborate altars brought a
century ago from Mexico, before which Junipero Serra held mass
during his last visit to San Francisco. On the massive archway spanning
the building, can be seen the dull red scroll pattern, a relic of Indian
work.
"Sing something," my companion suggested. "It needs music to make
the spell complete."
"It does," I assented, "but you must stay where you are," and climbing
to a balcony at the end of the building, I concealed myself in the
shadow.
He glanced up at the first notes, then sat with bowed head. I filled the
old church with an Ave Maria, then another. As I sang, the candles
seemed to have been lighted on the gilded altars, and the brown friars
and dusky Indians took form in the dim enclosure.
"More," he urged, but I would not, for I feared that the spell might be
broken. So he came up to see why I lingered, and found me mounted on
a ladder peering up at the old mission bells and the hand-hewn rafters
tied with ropes of plaited rawhide.
My song must have attracted a passer-by, for a voice greeted us as we
descended.
"Did you see the bells?" he asked eagerly. "They're a good deal like
some of us old folks, out of commission because of age and disuse, but
nevertheless they have their value. One has lost its tongue, another is
cracked and the third sags against the side wall, so they're useless as
church bells, but still they seem to speak of the days of the padres and
the Indians."
"Were there many Indians here?" questioned the Bostonian.
"Often more than a thousand. I was born in the shadow of this building,
in the year when the Mission was secularized, but my father knew it in
its glory and used to tell me many