Fremont journal. [volume] (Fremont, Sandusky County [Ohio]) 1853-1866, 1859-11-25
Apples and Haystacks.

The Virgnians are evidently going daft;
old John Brown has added them; he and
his seventeen white men and five negroes
have thrown them into such state of pre-
ternatural exctemect that they no longer
see anything as it it. Their terror exag-
gerates the slightest occurrences. If that
poor old prisoner only coughs in his soliia-
ry cell, they think it pistol-shot and fly to
arms. A gentleman picks up an apple in
his orchard, and instantly the apple is con
verted into an image of the terrible Brown.
"An apple has just been sent US" says the
Richmond Enquirer, by gentleman of
Abingdon. 1t resembles a human head of
the long kind, such as we see in pictures of
odd Brown The face thereon is a remark
able feature, with eyes, Roman nose, mouth
and flowing beard strangely marked there
onT What an awful portent, when the
very apple-trees sympathise with the mar
tyr, and impress his features upon their off
spring The apple is a significant fruit,
and has played great part in tradition and
history. 1t was an maple that over-tcmptod
our luckless mother, Eve; the three golden
apples, it may be remembered, defeated At
Atlanta in her famous foot race with her low
er; and an apple suggested to Newton the
theory of universal gravitation.
But haystacks as well as apples, are play
ing their pranks upon the Virginia mind.
Some fellow to avenge himself upon his
neighbor sets haystack on fire, and in
stantly the whole of Jefferson county kin
dies into blaze. The citizens grasp their
frelocks; Colonel Davis tclegraphs Govern
scene from Alexandria and Richmond the
federal government orders "two thousand
pounds of powder and large number of
Mimic balls and howitzer-shcls to be sent
from the Washington Arsenal to Harper's
Ferry and everybody and everything is in
a frantic uproar. What on earth, let us
ask, have riflemen, powder and howitzer
shells to do with burning haystack p
Couldn't the people of the vicinity put it
out? Or must they summon the whole
state, together with forces from Washing
ton, to extinguish few bundles of hay i
In any rational condition of things a dozen
old women might easily get the upper hand
| ol SuCu CouldSIdllOli, anu lue lhCJ tudl
the Virginians call together their military
companies to charge upon the luminous bun
die as Don Quxote charged upon the wind
mill, shows that they are not in a rationa
condition.
Yet we have some pity for these delu
ded people: they are not exclusively tho
authors of their own madness; for they
have been foolishly goaded and excited from
without, and those newspapers and polite
ians which have been telling them storie;
of northern hobgoblins and bugaboos arc
responsible for part of the craze. The
nurse that tells the already terrified chile
that the "ugly mar iscoming to catch him,
is universally reprobated; but those dema
gogues who have been nventing portentou
falsehood about conspiracies and invasioni
are in the same category. We believe tha
the Virginians would by this time have re
covered from their first fright if they hac
been let alone-if they had been allowed
to see for themselves how inconsidorab
the means of Old Brown were, and hov
generally his plan was condemned as mis-
chievous and mistaken; but they have no
been let alone, and are consequently KEEP
in paroxysm of fear by the raw head an,
cross-bones which the politicians rattle il
their ears.-M y. Post.