There were no factories; no noise was ever heard; the sun shone peacefully on, through winter and summer alike. There was no cold, no heat, but a delightful year-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 none at all.
The entire city was ancient, Spanish, Catholic, steeped in a religious atmosphere and in what the average American Protestant would call the superstitions of the dark ages. There were endless fiestas, and processions and religious services, I saw them all and became much interested in reading the history of the Catholic missions, established so early out through what was then a wild and unexplored country. After that, I listened with renewed interest to old Father de Fouri, who had tended and led his flock of simple people so long and so lovingly.