Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 December 1878 — The Apple in the Bottle. [ARTICLE]

The Apple in the Bottle.

On the mantelpiece of my grandmother’s best parlor, among other marvels, was an apple in a vial. It quite filled up the bottle. Childish wonderment constantly was, “How could it have got there ? ” By stealth I climbed a chair to see if the bottle would unscrew, or if there had been a joint in the glass throughout the length of the vial. I was satisfied by careful observation that neither of these theories could be supported; and the apple remained to me an enigma and a mystery. One day, walking in a garden, I saw it all. There, on a tree, was a vial tied, and within it a tiny apple, which was growing within the crystal. The apple was put into the bottle while it was little, and it grew there. More than thirty years ago we tried this experiment with a cucumber. We laid a bottle upon the ground by a hill of cucumbers, and placed a tiny cucumber in the bottle to see what would be the result. It grew till it filled the bottle, when we cut it off from the stem, and then filled the bottle with alcohol, and corked it up tight, We have it now, all as fresh, with the little prickers on it, as it was when first corked up.—Exchange. Hindoo scientists claim that the earth is 4,000,000 years old.