What a pity so many of us have an early impress of religion as of vinegar aspect and harsh duty hard as flint and unhuman as a block of wood. This Mother Superior is merry-faced and red-blooded and human and dear. She evidently believes that goodness should be warmer, dearer, truer, more attractive and kindly than evil; and all the little Indian wards of the four schoolrooms look happy and human and red-blooded as the Mother Superior. A collie pup flounders round us up and down the court walk where the old missionary monks suffered cruel martyrdom. Poll, the parrot, utters sententious comment; and the Shetland ponies whinny greetings to their mistress. All this does not sound like vinegar goodness, does it? But it is when you enter the church that you get the real surprise. Three times, the desertion of this Mission was forced by massacre and pillage. Twice it was abandoned owing to the expulsion of Jesuit and Franciscan by temporal power. For seventy years, the only inhabitants of a temple stately as the Alhambra were the night bats, the Indian herders, the border outlaws of the United States and Mexico. Yet, when you enter, the walls are covered with wonderful mural painting. Saints' statues stand about the altar, and grouped about the dome of the groined ceiling are such paintings as would do honor to a European Cathedral. The brick and adobe walls are from two to six feet thick. Not a nail has ever been driven in the adobe edifice. The doors are of old wood in huge panels mortised and dovetailed together. The latch is an iron bar carved like a Damascus sword. The altar is a mass of gilding and purple. To be sure, the saints' fingers have been hacked off by wandering cowboy and outlaw and Indian; but you find that sort of vandalism in the British Museum and Westminster Abbey. The British Museum had careful custodians. For over seventy years, this ancient Mission stood open to the winds of heaven and the torrential rains and the midnight bats. Only the faithfulness of an old Indian chief kept the sacred vessels from desecration. When the fathers were expelled for political reasons, old Jose, of the Papagoes, carried off the sacred chalices and candles till the _padres_ should return, when he brought them from hiding.