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.
