Essays of E. B. White by E. B. White Read Free Book Online

vivid picture to the imagination and was worth thinking about.) The roof of the pullet house had blown off during Carol, and the pullets had developed a prejudice against hurricanes, so I shut them up early. I went to bed that night confident that all was in readiness.
    Next morning, everything was in place, including the barometric pressure. The power was on, the telephone was working, the wind was moderate. Skies were gray and there was a slight rain. I found my wife curled up in bed at ten of seven with her plug-in going, tuned to disaster. In the barn, I received an ovation from the geese, and my failure to release them caused an immense amount of gossip. After breakfast, the whole household, with the exception of our dachshund, settled down to the radio, not in a solid family group but each to his own set and his own system of tuning. No matter where one wandered, upstairs or down, back or front, a radio voice was to be heard, bringing ominous news. As near as I could make out, the storm was still about a thousand miles away and moving north-northeast at about the speed of a medium-priced automobile. Deaths had been reported in New Jersey. A state of emergency had been declared in New London, Connecticut, and in Portland, Maine. Something had happened to the second shift at the Commercial Filters Corporation plant in Melrose, Massachusetts, but I never learned what. A man named Irving R. Levine wished me “good news.” The temperature in Providence, Rhode Island, was sixty-eight degrees.
    It became evident to me after a few fast rounds with the radio that the broadcasters had opened up on Edna awfully far in advance, before she had come out of her corner, and were spending themselves at a reckless rate. During the morning hours, they were having a tough time keeping Edna going at the velocity demanded of emergency broadcasting. I heard one fellow from, I think, Riverhead, Long Island, interviewing his out-of-doors man, who had been sent abroad in a car to look over conditions on the eastern end of the island.
    â€œHow would you say the roads were?” asked the tense voice.
    â€œThey were wet,” replied the reporter, who seemed to be in a sulk.
    â€œWould you say the spray from the puddles was dashing up around the mudguards?” inquired the desperate radioman.
    â€œYeah,” replied the reporter.
    It was one of those confused moments, emotionally, when the listener could not be quite sure what position radio was takings— for hurricanes or against them.
    A few minutes later, I heard another baffling snatch of dialogue on the air, from another sector—I think it was Martha’s Vineyard.
    â€œIs it raining hard there?” asked an eager voice.
    â€˜â€˜Yes, it is.”
    â€œFine!” exclaimed the first voice, well pleased at having got a correct response.
    At twenty-one and a half seconds past eleven o’clock, a New England prophet named Weatherbee, the WBZ weatherman, reported that the storm was moving north-northeast at fifty miles an hour and said that New England as a whole would not get the sustained force of the wind. This prediction was followed by a burst of inspirational music, and I wandered away and into the kitchen, where I found Mrs. Freethy mixing up a spongecake. “Heard from Edna?” she asked with wry amusement as she guided the electric mixer on its powerful way through the batter. Mrs. Freethy takes her hurricanes where she finds them.
    When I returned to the radio, a man was repeating the advice I had heard many times. Fill the car with gas before the pumps lose their power. Get an old-fashioned clock that is independent of electricity. Set the refrigerator adjustment to a lower temperature. I weighed all these bits of advice carefully. The car had already been fueled. The clocks in my house have never been contaminated by so much as a single jolt of electric current. And I decided against monkeying with the refrigerator, on the ground that