Paul Revere’s Ride

Listen, my children, and you shall hear of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, on the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five; hardly a man is now alive who remembers that famous day and year.

He said to his friend, “If the British march by land or sea from the town to-night, hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch of the North Church twoer, as a signal light, -- one, if by land, and two, if by sea; and I on the opposite shore will be, ready to ride and spread the alarm through every Middlesex village and farm, for the country-folk to be up and to arm.”

Mostly he watched with eager search the belfry-tower of the Old North Church, and lo as he looks, on the belfry’s height a glimmer, and then a gleam of light! He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns, a second lamp in the belfry burns!

The fate of a nation was riding that night; and the spark struck out by the steed, in his flight, kindled the land into flame with its heat.

It was twelve by the village clock, when he crossed the bridge into Medford town. It was one by the village clock, when he galloped into Lexington. It was two by the village clock, when he came to the bridge in Concord town.

You know the rest. In the books you have read, how the British regulars fired and fled, -- how the farmers gave them ball for ball. From behind each fence and farm-yard wall, chasing the red-coats down the lane, then crossing the fields to emerge again under the trees at the turn of the road, and only pausing to fire and load.

So through the night rode Paul Revere; and so through the night went his cry of alarm to every Middlesex village and farm, -- a cry of defiance and not of fear, and a word that shall echo forevermore! For, borne on the night-wind of the Past, through all our history, to the last, in the hour of darkness and peril and need, the people will waken and listen to hear the hurrying hoof-beat of that steed, and the midnight message of Paul Revere.