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.
