The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1913-10-18
TO EAT AN APPLE
That Was Advice of Police
Judge to MuskOgee Red.
The Tramp Printer Will Never
Recover From the Shock.

Muskogee Red, we'll known to the
fame of five states of the Louisiana
Purchase, came into the State Journal
office one day this week, the sorest
tramp printer that ever walked across
the face of this earth. Red was just
out of the Topeka Jail, where he had
served ten days term for his old
and only failing, drunkenness. But
that wasn't what he was so sore about.
The walls of his wrath had been open
ed by another cause.
When Red appeared in his own per-
son before Police Judge Huron to ans
wer to his old weakness, the judge
took him aside and sat down with him
before a little table to talk to him
about the frailtieS of the flesh. Red
explained the matter of his failing for
liquor, told how it was hereditary,
gloomy and peculiar to his individual
case, and rested upon the mercy of
the court.
Judge Huron then told Red that
hereafter, whenever he wanted
drink to eat a winesap apple.
Red gasped for breath, faltered,
turned from red to purple and then
to pale, CROPPED for room, asked for
air, sought for speech, and all his
powers failed him.
For thirty years Red has ranged
the Mississippi valley on foot and in
box cars. He has, during that time
consumed more strong whisky than
ten men could have drung among
them and lived year. He has left
forty towns drunk and drinking and
came back to them like Mulvaney did
to the camp before BenareS, which is
to say drunken than he was before
He has survived storms, pestilence,
famine, rockpileS and bondage in a
hundred jails. He has been reported
dead in six different wrecks and has
three times outlived pneumonia and
ravaging fevers.
And now" said Red, Eat my time
of life and with my habits fixed by a
hundred barrels of whisky, this wine
sap judge tells me to eat an apple
when 1 want drink
Red wept. He could not do justice
to his feelings in any other way.
Then he lifted up his voice and
spoke with feeling and fluency against
courts of law and Judges of cour1>
The recall was not enough for Red
He wanted the inQuisition, the rack
and the gibbet The oppression of
the Poles, the Saxons and the Irish
were as nothing to the variations of
the wrongs of the redheaded, wander
ing printer from Muskogee. 1t was
not the ten days servitude upon which
Red dwelt with the most protest, sor
row and indignation. 1t was the adj
vice regarding the apple.
at was a wineSap he wanted me to
eat" continued the Muskogee outcast.
mot a Ben Davis. Get that right.
And he went further. He urged me
to buy a half bushel of 'em and carry
'em around with ms. Think of that
if you can Me carrying half
bushel of apples around over the coun-
try like a blooming cornucopia..
Say, 1 wish you would put an edi-
torfal in your paper to read like this:
'Wanted-A half bushel of winesap
apples. Apply to Muskogee Red
How would that read? A hundred
printing Offices from Topeka to the
sea would go into Mysteries, wouldn't
they? Or they would swear that old
Red had gone crazy as a lima bean
in a Hindoo garden.
And another thing. Go as far as
you like about that judge. Red will
be twenty-eight miles outside his jur-
isdiction before tomorrow. night and
he won't be back till they change ad-
ministrations in Topeka"
And Red wept some more. And
talked some more. And snorted in
his impOtent search through his soul
for words to tell how moved he was
by his wrongs.