Lying only eighteen miles away, over a small branch road from Llamy (a station on the Atchison and Topeka Railroad), few people take the trouble to stop over to visit it. "Dead old town," says the commercial traveller, "nothing doing there." And it is true. But no spot that I have visited in this country has thrown around me the spell of enchantment which held me fast in that sleepy and historic town. The Governor's Palace, the old plaza, the ancient churches, the antiquated customs, the Sisters' Hospital, the old Convent of Our Lady of Loretto, the soft music of the Spanish tongue, I loved them all. There were no factories; no noise was ever heard; the sun shone peacefully on, through winter and summer alike. There was no cold, no heat, but a delightful year-around climate. Why the place was not crowded with health seekers, was a puzzle to me. I had thought that the bay of San Francisco offered the most agreeable climate in America, but, in the Territory of New Mexico, Santa Fe was the perfection of all climates combined. The old city lies in the broad valley of the Santa Fe Creek, but the valley of the Santa Fe Creek lies seven thousand feet above the sea level. 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.