Given a dime's worth of imagination to start on, almost any one could people that spot with the dead-and-gone figures of that shadowy past; could forget the trolley cars curving right up to the walls; the electric lights strung in globular festoons along the ancient ceilings of the porticoes; the roofs of the new, shiny modern bungalows dotting the gentle slopes below--could forget even that the brown-cowled, rope-girthed father who served as guide spoke with a strong German accent; could almost forgive the impious driver of the rig that brought one here for referring to this place as the Mish. But be sure there would be one thing to bring you hurtling back again to earth, no matter how far aloft your fancy soared--and that would be the ever-present souvenir-collecting tourist, to whom no shrine is holy and no memory is sacred. There is no charge for admission to the Mission. All comers, regardless of breed or creed, are welcomed; and on constant duty is a gentle-voiced priest, ready to lead the way to the inner rooms where priceless relics of the day when the Spaniards first came to California are displayed; and into the church itself, with its candles burning before the high altar and the quaint old holy pictures ranged thick upon the walls; and through the burying-ground--and to all the rest of it; and for this service there is nothing to pay. On departing the visitor, if he chooses, may leave a coin behind; but he doesn't have to--it isn't compulsory. There is a kind of traveler who repays this hospitality by defiling the walls with his inconsequential name, scratched in or scrawled on, and by toting away as a souvenir whatever portable object he can confiscate when nobody is looking. Up in the bell tower the masonry is all defaced and pocked where these vandals have dug at it with pocketknives; and as we were coming away, one of them--a typical specimen--showed me with deep pride half of a brick pouched in his coat pocket. It seemed that while the priest's back was turned he had pried it loose from the frilled ornamentation of a vault in the burying-ground at the cost only of his self-respect--admitting that he had any of that commodity in stock--and a broken thumbnail. It was, indeed, a priceless treasure and he valued it accordingly. And yet, at a distance of ten feet in an ordinary light, no one not in the secret could have said offhand whether that half-brick came out of a Mission tomb in California or a smokehouse in Arkansas. We didn't see any Indians when we ran down into Mexico. However, we only ran into Mexico for a distance of a mile and a half below the California state boundary, and maybe that had something to do with it. By automobile we rode from San Diego over to the town of Tia Juana, signifying, in our tongue, Aunt Jane. Ramona, heroine of Helen Hunt Jackson's famous novel, had an aunt called Jane. I guess they had a grudge against the lady; they named this town after her.