AMONG THE THINGS I AM CURRENTLY reading is The 40s: The Story of a Decade, a selection of articles from New Yorker Magazine. Granted, most articles pre-date my existence (I am looking forward to reading The 60s volume) but the authors, their style and their wisdom is timeless. Take, for instance, some of E. B. White’s replies to “The Meaning of Democracy.” You may know him best for Stuart Little and Charlotte’s Web but he is much more.
Democracy, White writes, “is the line that forms on the right. It is the don’t in don’t shove. It is the hole in the stuffed shirt through which the sawdust slowly trickles. It is the dent in the high hat. Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time. It is the feeling of privacy in the voting booths. . . . Democracy is a letter to the editor. Democracy is the score at the beginning of the ninth. It is an idea which hasn’t been disproved yet, a song the words of which have not gone bad. It is the mustard on the hot dog.”
Something to think about.