The Power of Numbers in Longfellow's Paul Revere's Ride
The Power and Specificity of Numbers in Art, including Letterpress Posters
Ever since I read the Hazelnut’s Epoch Times story (5 Classic Poems for Children) which mentioned the poem Paul Revere’s Ride, I had to print a letterpress poster using the numbers in this stanza:
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.
I wanted the stars of this poster to be the numbers. Not hard to do when you’re working at the Hamilton Wood Type Museum where there are shelves of large numbers, which were used for posters promoting auctions and events. These numbers had to be large so that posters posted on walls and windows could be easily read from the street. Some of wood-type numbers at Hamilton are easily four-feet high, likely used for banners inside auditoriums to mark section rows.
I didn’t have the luxury of using ultra-large numbers because I was limited to the size of my paper measuring about 11 x 17 inches. But I used two wood-type numbers (7 and 5) that measured 10 inches high. They were more than 100 years old, and they showed their age on the press with the uneven impression from wood that’s shrunken slightly over the years. They also had their share of scars: scrapes likely from being dropped, scraped across a shelf and who knows what else.
I could have used used newer blocks. I’m thinking of the wood-type numerals crafted using the Cooper typeface, which was created in Chicago in 1923. I’ve used Cooper typeface numbers to commemorate my brother’s wedding and the imprints were sharper than what I used this past weekend at Hamilton.
Cooper not, there’s a charm to these large numbers, which are more like graphic design elements these days. In fact, Hamilton is hosting workshops this month focusing on large numbers and letters. Most printers use them in ways they weren’t intended to be used back when they were originally carved. Next time I print another poster honoring Revere’s Ride, I’ll go as large as I can with the numbers 1, 8, 7, 5. I almost wish I could have printed the word 18th like Longfellow did. Something was lost when I neglected to add ‘th’ to the number 18.
I wanted to illustrate the word ‘midnight’ with a number 12 or even a clock with two hands pointing at the 12. But I ran out of time and space.
Longfellow’s Revere poem is a powerful reminder to use numbers in our creative writing. It adds specificity in a way that vague words like “after the middle of April” or even “sometime in the mid-seventies” don’t. It’s so much easier to memorize a poem that the words ‘‘the eighteenth of April, in “Seventy-Five.” It’s like remembering a birthday or day a loved one passed away. You might even know the hour of birth or death, years after the fact.
How easy it is to remember “On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five.” It certainly makes it easy for children to recall “that famous day and year.” I never memorized Paul Revere’s Ride, but it’s not too late. I already know the 1st stanza…