s set upon it! Here we have evidence
of it painfully wrought out by the hands of rude Indian artisans. The
ancient bells have been carried away into unknown parts; the owl hoots
in the belfry; the hills are shown of their conventual tenements; while
the wind and the rain and a whole heartless company of iconoclasts have
it all their own way.

Once in the year, on San Carlos' Day, Mass is sung in the only
habitable corner of the ruin; the Indians and the natives gather from
all quarters, and light candles among the graves, and mourn and mourn
and make a strange picture of the place; then they go their way, and the
owl returns, and the weeds grow ranker, and every hour there is a
straining among the weakened joists, and a creaking and a crumbling in
many a nook and corner; and so the finest historical relic in the land
is suffered to fall into decay. Or, perhaps I should say, that was the
sorry state of Carmelo in my day. I am assured that every effort is now
being made to restore and preserve beautiful Carmelo.

III.

She was a dear old stupid town in my day. She boasted but half a dozen
thinly populated streets. One might pass through these streets almost
any day, at almost any hour of the day, footing it all the way from the
dismantled fort on the seaside to the ancient cemetery, grown to seed,
at the other extremity of the settlement, and not meet half a score of
people.

Geese fed in the gutters, and hissed as I passed by; cows grazing by the
wayside eyed me in grave surprise; overhead, the snow-white sea-gulls
wheeled and cried peevishly; and on the heights that shelter the
ex-capital the pine-trees moaned and moaned, and often caught and held
the sea-fog among their branches, when the little town was basking in
the sunshine and dreaming its endless dream.

How did a man kill time in those days? There was a studio on Alvarado
Street; it stood close to the post-office, in what may be generously
denominated as the busiest part of the town. The studio was the focus of
life and hope and love; some work was also supposed to be done there. It
was the headquarters of the idle and the hungry, and the seeker after
consolation in all its varied forms. Choice family groceries were
retailed three times a day in the rear of the establishment; and there
we often gathered about the Bohemian board, to celebrate whatever our
fancy painted. Now it was an imaginary birthday--a movable feast that
came to be very popular i