As we entered the low arched doorway, we seemed to step from the hurry of the twentieth century into the peace of a by-gone era. Outside, the modern structures crowd upon the low adobe building, staring down upon it with unsympathetic eyes and begrudging it the very land it stands on, while inside, hand-hewn rafters, massive grey walls, and a red tiled floor slightly depressed in places by years of service, point mutely to the past, to the days when padres and neophytes knelt at the sound of the Angelus. Within still stand the elaborate altars brought a century ago from Mexico, before which Junipero Serra held mass during his last visit to San Francisco. On the massive archway spanning the building, can be seen the dull red scroll pattern, a relic of Indian work.
"Sing something," my companion suggested. "It needs music to make the spell complete."
"It does," I assented, "but you must stay where you are," and climbing to a balcony at the end of the building, I concealed myself in the shadow.
He glanced up at the first notes, then sat with bowed head. I filled the old church with an Ave Maria, then another. As I sang, the candles seemed to have been lighted on the gilded altars, and the brown friars and dusky Indians took form in the dim enclosure.
"More," he urged, but I would not, for I feared that the spell might be broken. So he came up to see why I lingered, and found me mounted on a ladder peering up at the old mission bells and the hand-hewn rafters tied with ropes of plaited rawhide.
My song must have attracted a passer-by, for a voice greeted us as we descended.
"Did you see the bells?" he asked eagerly. "They're a good deal like some of us old folks, out of commission because of age and disuse, but nevertheless they have their value. One has lost its tongue, another is cracked and the third sags against the side wall, so they're useless as church bells, but still they seem to speak of the days of the padres and the Indians."
"Were there many Indians here?" questioned the Bostonian.
"Often more than a thousand. I was born in the shadow of this building, in the year when the Mission was secularized, but my father knew it in its glory and used to tell me many stories about the good old padres."