YOUR EDITORIAL "Boston in verse" (Jan. 21) comments, "Read Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, 'Paul Revere's Ride,' and it's still easy to hear through the poem's rhythms how the famous rider clip-clopped through Boston's streets." But Longfellow does not depict Revere riding a horse within Boston.
For Revere's midnight ride through the suburbs of Boston, the poem's rhythms evoke the sound of "the hurrying hoof-beats of that steed," galloping, not clip-clopping. Perhaps the editorial writer was thinking of Robert Lawson's book "Mr. Revere and I," narrated by Revere's horse, Scheherazade, who describes walking through Boston's streets with "the clicking of my shoes on the cobbles."
JONATHAN SISSON
Eastport, Maine
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