The man bit into it and found rottenness and bitter dust.
“What is this?” he asked.
“It was the apple of Life,” said the Spirit. “It is now the apple of Success.”
How It Started
“You had better move your chair a little further back,” said the old resident. “I saw one of the Judkinses go into the newspaper office just now with his gun, and there may be some shooting.”
The reporter, who was in the town gathering information for the big edition, got his chair quickly behind a pillar of the hotel piazza, and asked what the trouble was about.
“It’s an old feud of several years’ standing,” said the old resident, “between the editor and the Judkins family. About every two months they get to shooting at one another. Everybody in town knows about it. This is the way it started. The Judkinses live in another town, and one time a good-looking young lady of the family came here on a visit to a Mrs. Brown. Mrs. Brown gave her a big party—a regular high-toned affair, to get the young men acquainted with her. One young fellow fell in love with her, and sent a little poem to our paper, the Observer. This is the way it read:
To Miss Judkins
(Visiting Mrs. T. Montcalm Brown.)“We love to see her wear
A gown of simple white.
Nothing but a rose in her hair
At Mrs. Brown’s that night,
The fairest of them all
She stood, with blushes red,
While bright the gaslight shone
Upon her lovely head.
“That poem, now, was what started the feud.”
“I don’t see anything wrong with the poem,” said the reporter. “It seems a little crude, but contains nothing to give offense.”