Essays of E. B. White (47 page)

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Authors: E. B. White

He lived a long and full life. . . . He loved his fellow men and he loved his fellow creatures. I wouldn't know whether White ever prayed in the technical sense of that term. He certainly attended no church. Well, he prayeth best who loveth best, all things both great and small. I trust it is not too cryptic to say that he had too much natural reverence to need religion. Thoreau was his god, or one of them. And did our modest friend, I wonder, ever suspect what we all now seem quite sure of—that all those years he was worshipping an equal?”

—
Hal Hager

About the Author

E. B. WHITE
was born in 1899. He is widely known as the author of two children's classics,
Charlotte's Web
and
Stuart Little
, as well as one of the finest essayists of the twentieth century. He died in 1985.

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Also by E. B. White

Essays of E. B. White

Letters of E. B. White

The Trumpet of the Swan

The Points of My Compass

The Second Tree from the Corner

Charlotte's Web

Here Is New York

The Wild Flag

Stuart Little

One Man's Meat

The Fox of Peapack

Quo Vadimus?

Farewell to Model T

Every Day Is Saturday

The Lady Is Cold

An E. B. White Reader
edited by William W. Watt and Robert W. Bradford

The Elements of Style
William Strunk, Jr. (revised and enlarged by E. B. White)

A Subtreasury of American Humor
co-edited with Katharine S. White

Is Sex Necessary?
with James Thurber

Copyright

Essays copyright © 1934, 1939, 1941, 1947, 1949, 1954, 1955, 1956, 1957, 1958, 1960, 1961, 1963, 1966, 1971, 1975, 1977 by E. B. White.

“Farmer White's Brown Eggs,” © 1971 by the New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission. (Now titled “Riposte.”)

“Farewell, My Lovely!” Copyright 1936,
The New Yorker
Magazine, Inc.

Introduction to
A Subtreasury of American Humor.
Copyright 1941, by E. B. White and Katharine S. White.

Introduction to
the lives and times of archy and mehitabel
by Don Marquis. Copyright © 1950 by Doubleday & Company, Inc. Reprinted by permission.

A hardcover edition of this book was published in 1977 by Harper and Row, Publishers, Inc.

E
SSAYS OF E. B. WHITE.
Copyright © 1977 by E. B. White. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

First Harper Colophon edition published 1979. Reissued in HarperPerennial 1992.

First Perennial Classics edition published 1999.
Perennial Classics are published by HarperPerennial, a division of HarperCollins
Publishers.

White, E. B. (Elwyn Brooks), 1899–

Essays of E.B. White.—1st Perennial Classics ed.

  
p.   cm.

ISBN 0-06-093223-6

EPub Edition February 2014 ISBN 9780062348753

1. American essays—20th century.   I. Title.

   PS3545.H5187A16   1999

   814'.52—dc21                                       98-56019

  05 06 07 08 ♦
/RRD-H
20 19 18 17 16

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*
In 1962, two years after this piece was written, Nelson Rockefeller managed to discuss unity in exact terms in his Harvard lectures. He proposed the federal design as the correct
theoretical
solution to mankind's urgent problem. This is the first and hardest step. Until a design is welcomed
in theory
by persons high in public life, not much progress can be made among the people toward the political goal of liberty-in-unity.

*
This piece originally appeared in
The New Yorker
over the pseudonym Lee Strout White. It was suggested by a manuscript submitted by Richard L. Strout, of
The Christian Science Monitor
, and Mr. Strout, an amiable collaborator, has kindly allowed me to include it in this collection. The piece was published as a little book in 1936 by G. P. Putnam's Sons under the title “Farewell to Model T.”

*
Adapted from the preface to
A Subtreasury of American Humor
, Coward-McCann, 1941.

*
This essay, in a slightly different form, appeared as the introduction to Doubleday's 1950 edition of
the lives and times of archy and mehitabel.

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