July 4th was fearfully hot, and the searchers were ravenous for the resumption of their hunt, so to try and make the time less apparent in its tardy passing, they visited San Juan Hill and re-peopled it with the contending troops and the impetuous Colonel Roosevelt, although their thoughts continuously reverted from the hill to the hole in the corner of room 7. At last the superheated day and evening drooled away, and at midnight, Young, Inger and Ottinger were, by turns, steadily shoveling out the dirt from the hole, frequently picking up coins scattered through the fragmentary mass. They ultimately reached two iron chests and a wooden chest, or box, all empty and with their lids pried open, and their golden as-. pirations were lurched to the bitterest disappointment.

In the early gray of the morning, they discerned a ray of light enter the hole, and descried that it came from a tunnel leading to the outside, and that instantly solved the mystery of the empty chests and broken box, and of the waterhaul they had made in lieu of the magnificent plunder they had reasonably anticipated. The coins they had found proved to be gold, and worth $1,243, so that those, with the ruby ring, would more than compensate for the expenses of the trip-so buoyant before the chests were attained, so disappointing afterward.

The ruby ring was given to Mrs. Smith and the $243 divided between the three men, Ottinger receiving in addition the

$1,000 as remuneration for the money spent.

The day after the evanescence of the two millions, Mr. Ottinger visited the lot contiguous to the hotel, and found a fence surrounding it, but with a hole in it, through which he entered. He then saw a small bungalow about eight feet from the side of the hotel, and adjacent to the wall of room 7. This bungalow he entered, and there saw the mouth of the tunnel leading from its floor to the former cache of the treasure; the tunnel having been hewn through the solid rock, obviously by the explorer who had distanced the quartette in the attainment of the wealth. So to satisfy his curiosity in the matter, Ottinger asked Consul Shuman to introduce him to one of the oldest residents of Santiago, and he thus made the acquaintance of Senor Laredo. Ottinger asked him who had built a high fence around the vacant lot adjacent to the hotel (into which the sole window of room 7 opened) and was informed that a Spanish priest had come from Buenos Ayres about 1899 or 1900, had bought the lot, fenced it in, and built the little bungalow near the corner on which room No. 7 abutted. Laredo also told him that the padre had bought the former home of the Kerr's (where their only son had died of smallpox but a few days before their flight) situated near the gas-works, which fine gas works Senor Laredo also said had been built by Kerr for the city. He likewise stated that the padre had been very reticent, and had lived a secluded existence; that he ultimately sold properties for much less than he had paid for them, and disappeared from the Santiago purview, as did very shortly afterward the chagrined quartette.

T

O ANY ONE who does not know San Francisco intimately, the idea of a Passion Play being produced in the metropolis of the Pacific Coast must appear something of an anomaly. The man in Michigan who reads about our graft prosecutions, the Vassar girl whose cousin Tom lived here for six months, and the short-skirted tourist from classic Boston who has participated in a specially conducted Chinatown tour-all these and more cf their ilk are very likely to raise their eyebrows, if not decorously to wink, when they read of San Francisco producing a Passion Play. Have they not all heard that San Francisco is the wickedest city in the world? They may not altogether believe it, of course; but at the same time they are prone to hold, with a fair degree of certainty, that San Francisco is not precisely a devotional center.

We who are on the spot, we who were born here and raised here and live here, know better. We know that San Francisco has an unsavory side-how otherwise could Eastern visitors find life here worth while?-but we also know that the typical San Franciscan is not by any means a had lot. Furthermore, if we have probed a little beneath the surface of things, the fact has been brought home to us that San Francisco abounds with men and women possessed of strong, deep and practical religious convictions. Too long has San Francisco been regarded as a city of restaurants and other things; it is opportune to emphasize the fact that San Francisco is likewise a city of churches.

In itself the fact might not count for much were we not to bear in mind that churchgoers in San Francisco differ greatly from church-goers elsewhere. There is very little smug religiosity here. We are not over-burdened with men who cheat and steal and lie all week, and then sit

in their rented pews on Sunday morning. Men of that class elsewhere go to church; here, they stay at home. Many San Franciscans, it is safe to say, do not know what the inside of a church looks like; but those who do know are consistent worshipers. They are true to the basic principles of revealed religion, and they have the courage of their creeds. As a consequence, San Francisco's churches are well supported, and the men and women who support them are actuated by a genuine religious spirit. This it is that made so signal a success of the Passion Play recently produced under the direction of the Franciscan Fathers.

As originally planned, the Passion Play was to have been a strictly parochial production designed for the edification of the German' catholics who attend St. Boniface's Church in Golden Gate avenue. The offering was to be staged in the parish hall -the expenditure of time and money was to be small, and the great world was to know nothing whatever of the occurrence. Nothing more ambitious was in the mind of Father Josaphat Kraus, who planned the production.

But San Francisco thought otherwise. Public sentiment was aroused, and potent influence was brought to bear upon the humble Franciscan, with the result that the sacred drama was presented on a scale of almost unbelievable magnificence and grandeur. San Francisco is now justly entitled to the name of a second Oberammergau-unless, indeed, Oberammergau deserves to be called a second San Francisco.

Twenty-five thousand dollars is a conservative estimate of the cost of the production, a cost which involved acres of scenery, countless yards of expensive costumes and miles of electric wiring. The largest auditorium in the city was chartered for the season of rehearsals and pro

ductions, and a stage constructed 234 feet long and 65 feet deep-the largest stage ever used west of Chicago. To further the acoustic properties of the building, a net of finest piano wire was stretched from wall to wall, with results commensurate with the expense and originality of the device.

Rightly to understand the Passion Play we must know something of the man who stands sponsor for it. Father Josaphat Kraus is the direct antithesis of the popular conception of the Franciscan monk. He is not corpulent, nor florid, nor, in the offensive sense, jolly. Father Josaphat is

work-he is an accomplished scholar and linguist-Father Josaphat brought to his routine labors a mind capable of converting experience into knowledge. His duties in the confessional, in the hospital, in the asylum, brought him close to human nature. He learned men and the ways of men, their strength and their weakness; and this knowledge brought the conviction that, despite what prosy moralists may say to the contrary, the average man is influenced less by reason than by emotion.

Father Josaphat is a Catholic monk, and the reason why the Catholic monk exists to-day is that he may help his fellow

small in stature and slightly built, with a well-shaped head delicately poised above the expansive collar of his brown monastic habit. His face is youthful, almost boyish-the face of a man who, shielded from the sordid things of life, has devoted years to the calm contemplation of eternal truth.

For something like a score of years, Father Josaphat has labored in the work of the Catholic priesthood at St. Boniface's Church. Admirably trained for his life

men to live better, nobler lives. So Father Josaphat sought to do his little share in the great work of uplifting humanity. And there is no suggestion of cant in the expression as it is understood by men like him. He sincerely strived for the betterment of the man in the street-for this he labored and prayed. And then, finding that the man in the street is profoundly influenced by an appeal, rightly made, to his emotional nature, Father Josaphat asked himself this question: "How can I