The Clifton clarion., 1889-07-24
A HUMAN CUCUMBER.
The Arabian Nights Outdone h Peaceful
 Georria.

The Arabian Nights outdone h Peaceful
 Georgia.
 It is well-known that when cucum- bers are first cut from the vine there is a piece which exudes or bleeds from the stem. One of our prominent north ern truck growers, Jared Benson, cut his hand a year or two ago and this juice got into the cut and his hand commenced to infame, and an erup- tion similar to erysipelas made its ap- pearance on his hand and extended up his arm, and finally spread over his whole body. Strange to say, there was no pain attending these eruptions of erysipelas, and he continued to gather and pack his cucum- bers and prepare them for ship ment- To the great surprise of every body these little erysipelas pimples assumed the appearance and form of small cucumbers and continued to grow. Although Benson kept well and hearty, he was compeled to strip him. self and take to his bed. Of course the news of this strange phenomenon spread far and wide, and the doctors and scientific men visited him from various sections of the country. One prescribed one thing and one another. One wished to bleed him; one wished to cut the cucumbers of; another said not to let him have any water and they would dry up; another said stick a hole in each cucumber and they would die and a new skin form; another wished to wrap him up in mammoth poultice Of barn-yard manure. and draw them all to one head; another said they ought to be scattered.
 Each had a different remedy, but they all disagreed. So there was some hope that the patient would get well. But the small cucumbers grew into big ones. and his whole body was com pletely covered with them from head to foot and the commenced to ripen and turn yellow and hang down, and the man assumed the appearance of huge bunch of bananas. When they got ripe they began to shrivel and dry up and so did the man. His sap was all gone and he died. The doctors pro- cured the consent of the family to per- met an autopsy to be made, for the benefit of science, and they cut into him with their knives, aud to their amazement found no flesh, no bones, no muscles, no sinews, no veins, uo arteries; but found only one solid mass of cucumber seeds. It was so remark able that it would be useless to have the remains inferred and foolish to have them cremated, and the widow concluded that she would keep them in the house. She had the corpse hung up by the hair in the barn. The next spring some of the children picked up some of the seed which had dropped on the floor and planted them.
 They grew rapidly and matured, and instead of being like the parent stock of cucumbers, they were pure pickles and needed no vinegar, no pepper, no salt, nothing but simply packing into barrels and shipping to market and selling. Of course, news of the dis covery spread rapidly and multitudes of applications for seed flowed in like the incoming tide, and thus enabled the disconsolate widow and children to turn the cause of their bereavement into means of maintenance and SUD- port. The wind of affliction was thus tempered to these shorn lambs. They sold small packets of seed for big prices and could not supply the de- mand. The vine grown from the new seed is a perennial evergreen and can be propagated from cuttings, blooms in the spring and bears in the summer a bountiful crop of perfect pickles. The widow sells the seed at dollar a paper.-Griffin (Ga.) News.