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Alabaster Blue Sectory 17
Page 10
All was silent and dark in the little house where Hanz Toodleburg lived, when the wagon containing Tite and the inn-keeper drew up at the gate. A dull, dreamy stillness seemed to hang over the place, and the little, old house was in the full enjoyment of a deep sleep. The two men alighted, and Tite stood for a few minutes viewing the scene around him. How strange and yet how familiar everything seemed. He was at the opposite side of the world only a few months ago, and time had sped on so swiftly that it seemed as if he had gone to bed at night on one side of the globe, and waked up in the morning at the other. Then he was on an island almost unknown to the rest of the world, surrounded by scenes so wild, so strange and romantic, that the reader would not believe them real.
The Jicarillas, or, as they are commonly called, "Jicarilla Apaches," occupy a reservation of nearly four hundred and fifty square miles of mountainous country in northern New Mexico. Linguistically the Jicarillas are of the same stock as the Apache of Arizona; but here the relationship ceases, for the two peoples have virtually no knowledge one of the other; each, according to their respective genesis myths, had their origin in the general region in which they live to-day, while the dialect, mythology, legends, and medicine rites of the Jicarillas more closely resemble those of the Navaho than any of the Apache groups. The designation "Jicarilla Apaches" is an inheritance from the early Spaniards, who were wont to designate as Apache any warlike tribe which had not been brought under subjection. Such were the Apaches de Nabaju (Navaho), the Apaches del Perrillo, the Apaches Gilenos, Apaches Tejuas, Apaches Vaqueros, Apaches Faraones, Apaches Llaneros, Apaches Lipanes, and a host of others, of whom the Spanish missionaries and colonists had little or no knowledge except that derived, alas, from predatory raids on the peaceable Indians among whom they were established. The name "Apache," therefore, was applied in the Rio Grande country of New Mexico in much the same way as the term "Yavapai" was given in the Rio Colorado region of Arizona, and, naturally enough, it still survives.
In truth, the firm was a mystery in Wall Street, and its largest creditors were in the greatest darkness concerning it. Some one has truly said that in a great commercial city men are known only by their enterprises and their successes; that their antecedents become lost in the magnitude and rapidity with which events revolve. This is particularly so with us. The firm of Topman & Gusher had fixed itself in Pearl Street, and gone quietly into business without friends, acquaintances, or endorsers; and in a single year had secured both credit and respectability. And it had done this on what is too frequently mistaken for energy and enterprise--show and pretension.
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