![]() ![]() And both correct the misinformation in Longfellow's poem.Ĭontingency, Fischer insists, deserves a respected place in historiography narrative, he reasons, is the best form for acknowledging that human decisions, errors, accidents and prudent anticipation of contingencies do make a historical difference. Both demonstrate that Revere was much more than a solitary rider. ![]() Then the camera rises to depict three heads above the counterpane, the horse's between Harpo's and the woman's.īoth Esther Forbes, whose "Paul Revere and the World He Lived In" won a Pulitzer Prize more than 50 years ago, and David Hackett Fischer, whose meticulous narrative focuses on Revere's midnight ride and the battles throughout the first day of the American Revolution (April 19, 1775), build the question of legend and fact into the very structure of their respective books. A young woman smiles at Harpo from an upstairs window, he rides his horse right into her house, and the next scene shows three pairs of shoes at her bedside-a man's, a woman's and horseshoes. In my own suburban childhood, in the 1930s, I laughed ecstatically when Harpo Marx's patriotic ride to awaken the people in "Duck Soup" came to an absurd end. ![]() Millions of American children knew the legend of Paul Revere's midnight ride well enough to enjoy the parodies and burlesques. ![]()
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