Free Essays of E. B. White by E. B. White Page A

being what it is, and is all ready to go without any fire-building. You just add a stick of wood, open the draft, and shove the kettle a few inches to the left, toward the heat.
    I don’t think I am kidding myself about this stove. If I had to go to the woods myself, cut the wood, haul it out, saw it, and split it, I wouldn’t be able to afford a wood stove, because I lack the strength and the skill for such adventures. In a way, the stove is my greatest luxury. But I’m sure I’ve spent no more on it than many a man has spent on more frivolous or complex devices. A wood stove is like a small boat; it costs something to keep, but it satisfies a man’s dream life. Mine even satisfies all the cooks in this family—and there are half a dozen of them—which is a more telling argument and a more substantial reward.
    I read a statement by Jim Bailey not long ago, after he had run his mile in 3:58.6. “I have no sensation of speed when I run,” he said, “and I never know how fast I’m going.” Such is the case with most of us in this queer century of progress. Events carry us rapidly in directions tangential to our true desires, and we have almost no sensation of being in motion at all—except at odd moments when we explode an H-bomb or send up a hundred new planets or discard an old stove for a new one that will burn thorium instead of spruce.
    My stove, which I’m sure would be impractical in many American homes, is nevertheless a symbol of my belief. The technologists, with their vision of happiness at the core of rock, see only half the rock—half of man’s dream and his need. Perhaps success in the future will depend partly on our ability to generate cheap power, but I think it will depend to a greater extent on our ability to resist a technological formula that is sterile: peas without pageantry, corn without coon, knowledge without wisdom, kitchens without a warm stove. There is more to these rocks than uranium; there is the lichen on the rock, the smell of the fern whose feet are upon the rock, the view from the rock.
    Last night, to amuse the grandson who is presently handling the problem of our “dirty room,” we read the first chapter of The Peterkin Papers , and I was amazed to discover what a perfect fable it is for these times. You recall that Mrs. Peterkin poured herself a delicious cup of coffee and then, just as she was ready to drink it, realized that she had put salt in it instead of sugar. Here was a major crisis. A family conference was held, and the chemist was called in on the case. The chemist put in a little chlorate of potassium, but the coffee tasted no better. Then he added some tartaric acid and some hypersulphate of lime. It was no better. The chemist then tried ammonia and, in turn, some oxalic, cyanic, acetic, phosphoric, chloric, hyperchloric, sulphuric, boracic, silicic, nitric, formic, nitrous nitric, and carbonic acid. Mrs. Peterkin tasted each, but it still wasn’t coffee. After another unsuccessful round of experimentation, this time with herbs, Elizabeth Eliza took the problem to the lady from Philadelphia, who said, “Why doesn’t your mother make a fresh cup of coffee?”
    The lady’s reply is arresting. Certainly the world’s brew is bitter today, and we turn more and more to the chemist and the herbwoman to restore its goodness. But every time I examine those Cal Tech elements—sun, sea, air, and rock—I am consumed with simple curiosity, not about whether there is thorium in the rock but whether there is another cup of coffee in the pot.
    P.S. (March 1962). Six years have elapsed. It is a pleasure to report that the coon tree is still in business and so is our black iron stove. When I wrote that a coon comes down a tree headfirst and then reverses herself when near the ground, touching down with one hind foot, I had observed only one coon in the act of leaving a tree. The coon I wrote