"This was only for temporary use and later was pulled down. Six years after the fathers arrived, a larger and more substantial church was built one block farther east. But before you see that you must get into the spirit of the past by imagining a square of four blocks lying between Fifteenth and Seventeenth streets and Church and Guerrero, swept clean of these modern structures and filled with mission buildings. At the time when you New Englanders were pushing the Indians farther and farther into the wilderness, killing and capturing them, we Californians were drawing 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."