Page:Creole Sketches.djvu/102

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MEXICAN COINS[1]

"Sit down, O sunburnt wanderer, sit down! — Well, well! And hence comest thou?"

"I come," he observed with grim solemnity, "from Mexico."

And he laid upon the table a striped blanket, a worn valise, and a heavy leathern bag whose contents clattered like castanets as it struck the mahogany — Mexican gold.

"Why, we thought you were dead — all these years, and not a word!"

"Dead!" he echoed; "yes, I was dead, dead to the century for which I was born, and to modern civilization — dead from 1870 to 1879. I feel like one of the Seven Sleepers awaking to find himself moving in a new age; I have been living in the

  1. Item, November 3, 1879.