In one chapter Louis spends the night at the Ritz in Boston. He orders a dozen watercress sandwiches for dinner and then puts himself to bed in the bathtub. Then he turned out the lights, climbed into the tub, curved his long neck around to the right, rested his head on his back, tucked his bill under his wing, and lay there, floating on the water, his head cradled softly in his feathers. The large bird's calm and successful attempt to cope with an unfamiliar environment has a penetrating charm. The world of E.B. White's children's books is eminently a reasonable one.
Nature serves as a reservoir of common sense.
Nobody panics, and catastrophes are taken in stride. Not birth, nor death, are meant to dismay us. We're born, we live a little while, we die. A spider's life can't help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. Man, in his folly, has given me a mortal wound.