Where are they now, O, bells? 
      Where are the fruits o’ the mission? 
    Garnered, where no one dwells,
      Shepherd and flock are fled. 
    O’er the Lord’s vineyard swells
      The tide that with fell perdition
    Sounded their doom and fashioned their tomb
      And buried them with the dead. 
    What then wert thou, and what art now?—­
      The answer is still unsaid.

        And every note of every bell
        Sang Gabriel!  Rang Gabriel! 
        In the tower that is left the tale to tell
          Of Gabriel, the Archangel.

    Where are they now, O tower! 
      The locusts and wild honey? 
    Where is the sacred dower
      That the bride of Christ was given? 
    Gone to the wielders of power,
      The misers and minters of money;
    Gone for the greed that is their creed—­
      And these in the land have thriven. 
    What then wer’t thou, and what art now,
      And wherefore hast thou striven?

        And every note of every bell
        Sang Gabriel!  Rang Gabriel! 
        In the tower that is left the tale to tell
          Of Gabriel, the Archangel.

Charles Warren Stoddard.

IN THE FOOTPRINTS OF THE PADRES

[Illustration:  View of Montgomery, Post and Market Streets, San Francisco, 1858]

OLD DAYS IN EL DORADO

I.

“Strange countries for to see”

Now, the very first book was called “Infancy”; and, having finished it, I closed it with a bang!  I was just twelve.  ’Tis thus the twelve-year-old is apt to close most books.  Within those pages—­perhaps some day to be opened to the kindly inquiring eye—­lie the records of a quiet life, stirred at intervals by spasms of infantile intensity.  There are more days than one in a life that can be written of, and when the clock strikes twelve the day is but half over.

The clock struck twelve!  We children had been watching and waiting for it.  The house had been stripped bare; many cases of goods were awaiting shipment around Cape Horn to California.  California!  A land of fable!  We knew well enough that our father was there, and had been for two years or more; and that we were at last to go to him, and dwell there with the fabulous in a new home more or less fabulous,—­yet we felt that it must be altogether lovely.  We said good-bye to everybody,—­getting friends and fellow-citizens more or less mixed as the hour of departure from our native city drew near.  We were very much hugged and very much kissed and not a little cried over; and then at last, in a half, dazed condition, we left Rochester, New York, for New York city, on our way to San Francisco by the Nicaragua route.  This was away back in 1855, when San Francisco, it may be said, was only six years old.