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Where There's Fog There's Fire?
I must confess that some gaps exist in the newspaper archives of the 1840s. However, any uncertainty seems to be eliminated by various surviving retrospective articles about Hicksville – none of which offer any facts to support the idea that the newborn village had any wooden structures to burn until after the original Quaker speculators sold their properties. It seems clear that the Fable of 1882 never had any basis – and yet it was accepted, repeated, and embellished as part of the fog of Hicksville’s past.
When historians fail to think critically, they may accept mere fog as smoke, and come to believe there once was a fire.
