Essays of E. B. White by E. B. White

ninety miles an hour, but when the barometer reached its lowest point and the wind shifted into the NW and began to tear everything to pieces, what we got on the radio was a man doing a whistling act and somebody playing the glockenspiel. All the livelong day we had had our mild weather to the sound of doom, and then at evening, when the power failed and the telephone failed and the tide flooded and the gale exploded, we heard the glockenspiel. Governor Cross, a Republican, who also lives to the westward, had already announced that the worst of the storm was over and that, except for a few benighted areas along the coast, everything was hunky-dory. I notice he got voted out of office a couple of days later, probably by an enormous outpouring of Republican turncoats from the coastal towns to the east of him, whose trees were being uprooted at the time he was speaking.
    My own evening was an odd one. As Edna moved toward me across the Gulf of Maine, I watched the trees and the rain with increasing interest, albeit with no radio support except from the glockenspiel. At half past six, I evacuated my wife from a front room, without police action, and mixed us both a drink in a back room. At 6:55, she leaned forward in her chair and began neatening the books in a low bookshelf, pulling the volumes forward one by one and lining them up with the leading edge of the shelf, soldiers being dressed by their sergeant. By half past seven the wind had slacked off to give Edna’s eye a good peep at us, the glass was steadying, and ten minutes later, watching the vane on the barn, I saw the wind starting to back into the north, fitfully. The rain eased up and we let the dachshund out, taking advantage of the lull. (Unlike the geese, she had no use for rough weather, and she had obeyed the radio faithfully all day—stayed put under the stove.)
    At 7:45, the Governor of New Hampshire thanked everyone for his cooperation, and Logan International Airport announced the resumption of flights. At eight o’clock, my barometer reached bottom—28.65. The Governor of Massachusetts came on to thank his people, and somebody announced that the Supreme Market in Dorchester would be open for business in the morning (Sunday). Another voice promised that at eleven o’clock there would be a wrap-up on Hurricane Edna.
    At this point, I decided to take a stroll. The night was agreeable—moon showing through gray clouds, light rain, hurricane still to come. My stroll turned out to be a strange one. I started for the shore, thinking I’d look over things down there, but when I got to the plank bridge over the brook I found the bridge under water. This caused me to wonder whether my spring, which supplies the house and which is located in the low-lying woods across the road, was being unindated. So, instead of proceeding to the shore, I crossed the road and entered the woods. I had rubber boots on and was carrying a flashlight. The path to the spring is pretty well grown over and I had difficulty finding it. In fact, I’m not sure that I ever did find it. I waded about in the swampy woods for ten or fifteen minutes, most of the time in water halfway up to my knees. It was pleasant in there, but I was annoyed that I was unable to find the spring. Failing in this, I returned to the house, kicked off my boots, and sank back into radioland. The Bangor station predicted ninety-mile winds within half an hour, and I discovered a scrap of paper on which my wife had scribbled “Bangor 9437, 7173, and 2313”—emergency numbers taken down just as though we were really in telephone communication with the outside world. (The phone had been gone for a long time.)
    At 8:44, the power failed, the house went dark, and it was a whole lot easier to see Edna. In almost no time the storm grew to its greatest height: the wind (NW by this time) chased black clouds across the ailing moon. The woods to the south of us bent low, as though the trees