Lima is the city of bells. Exuberant wedding carols blend their metallic jingle with three solemn peals for the dying. Hoarse, ill-cast bells mingle with bells whose tones drip like honey upon the monks beneath, who, with cowls thrown back, are pruning monastery gardens, bringing water to the fig-tree from the fountain. Bells are pitched high and bells are pitched low. Bells struck from without shake off the clear ring circling their edges. There are notes with a dry sonority like the clash of bones. Sharp bells nag the persistent sinner. Soft, sweet bells lure him to prayer. Quick strokes near at hand only half conceal those distant thuds, as if the tone had been struck from the atmosphere, giving “a solemn, religious shimmer to the day.” Though they are more used than those elsewhere, the bells of Lima, it is said, never grow old. The tones are of every quality, from the tinkle of little convent bells calling the sisters to midnight prayer, to the great bell of the Jesuits, whose “clash, throb, and long swoon of sound” strikes your chest. Silver and gold in this bell cling to the clear, deep notes struck from it and pulsate more than half a minute in the tone, which carries far out over city roofs to sugar-fields and vineyards. The left tower of San Pedro was built about this bell in 1666 and it cannot be removed. San Pedro has three portals on the façade, only allowed for a cathedral. The story goes that when it was building, permission was asked from Rome for a portal, which was given of course without delay. When the church with its three bronze-knobbed doors was finished, the Vatican was outraged. “What,” word was sent, “you ask for one door and make three?” “For two doors one has not to have permission,” came the reply, “only for three. We would have had two, anyway; it was for the extra one we needed to ask.” The church was finished and consecrated. What could be done? Monastery bells waken the monks at five o’clock, masses follow every half-hour throughout the morning. Burials are tolled very early by two large, discordant bells, struck simultaneously, “a roaring, sinister, mournful peal.” At noon a great caroling honors the Holy One to whom the next day is dedicated. After sunset three slow peals boom from all churches. Old people stand, men take off their hats. At eight sounds the prayer to the dead, at nine, nine peals from every bell in the city are an invitation to pray for those who die to-night. This is the time when the bell in the left tower of San Pedro rings. The left tower of the cathedral is the home of many owls, which come out at night to cry above the houses where the sick are lying to warn them of approaching death. Because innocent voices are intercessors most pleasing to God, Indian mothers in the mountains prod the poor little savage babies, flopping [Illustration: A FRANCISCAN FRIAR AT HOME, LIMA.] on their backs, with long, pointed, rat-tail silver spoons, so that they wail intermittently.