TWENTY-FIVE years ago, I wrote a letter to E.B. White, my favorite writer. While I did not keep a copy of my handwritten letter to him, I still remember most of what I told him.

First, writing him had been in my mind for some 12 years or so. (This was roughly the time when I finished my Philosophy course at the University of the Philippines in Diliman, where I ?met? him in my English III class by way of James Thurber, author of ?The Day the Dam Broke,? one of our assigned readings under Ms Josefina Mariano. It was Thurber?s book, ?The Years with Ross,? which finally led me to White. I did not mention these details, however, in my letter).

Second, I told him of my deep admiration for him and how much I enjoyed reading his books. Third, my having gone back to school to take up veterinary medicine as I wanted to take care of animals. After I signed the letter, on the spur of the moment, I added a postscript: ?I hope it won?t take you 12 years to answer me back!?

In a letter dated Nov. 13, 1983, he said: ?I won?t keep you waiting 12 years for a letter. For one thing, I don?t expect to be here 12 years from now, so it is best to seize the moment. Thank you for writing and for your kind words about my books. I am sorry they are so hard to find in the Philippines, but for that matter they are hard to find in American bookstores, too. I hope you passed your board exam and can devote your life to helping animals. I have just acquired a new dog?a Norfolk terrier named Red. He is asleep under my chair as I write this, and I have to be careful not to move the chair. I try not to wake a sleeping dog, and he tries never to be more than two feet from me.?

He passed away on Oct. 1, 1985.

Gift

The New Yorker, where he wrote from 1927 to 1976, captured it best when it said of him in an editorial after his death: ?As an essayist, as a humorist, as a stylist, he was one of America?s masters? White had abundantly that most precious and least learnable of writerly gifts?the gift of inspiring affection in the readers. Affection and trust, for the writer we like is the one who never gives us anything less than the trustworthy truth, in his version of it, delivered up without fuss or shame.?

With White, the reader always has a friend?someone who will take his hand and guide him along the way. Just like William Strunk Jr., his English 8 professor at Cornell, White had great concern for the reader (who) ?was in serious trouble most of the time, a man floundering in a swamp, and that it was the duty of anyone attempting to write English to drain this swamp quickly and get the reader up in dry ground, or at least to throw a rope.?

?Elements of Style?

Strunk had a required text on English usage, ?The Elements of Style,? which he himself wrote. In 1957, Macmillan asked White to revise it and in 1959, the first edition came out. It has been a bestseller since. Its popularity would perplex White who once said: ?It?s a funny little book, and it keeps going on? The book is used not only in institutions of learning, but also in business places. Bosses give it to their secretaries. I guess someone in the office has to know how to write English.?

When I wrote White in 1983, this was his only book that I have. Bought in 1976, it was already the second edition and it cost me P6 (the price marking is still visible). I have since acquired the book?s third and fourth editions as well as ?Charlotte?s Web? and the following books on E.B. White: ?A Treasury of American Writers? from Harper?s Magazine edited by Horace Knowles, whose first article was a selection from White?s ?One Man?s Meat? column at Harper?s which he contributed from 1939 to 1942; ?Life Stories: Profiles from The New Yorker? edited by David Remnick, which included a piece on Katharine White, the wife of E.B. White; ?Walden and Other Writings,? which included White?s commentary on Henry David Thoreau; ?Here at The New Yorker? by Brendan Gill; ?E.B. White: A Biography? by Scott Elledge; and ?E.B. White/ Writings from The New Yorker 1927-1976? edited by Rebecca M. Dale.

Apart from ?Charlotte?s Web,? White also wrote two other children?s classics: ?Stuart Little? and ?The Trumpet of the Swan.? His childlike wonder never left him?the reason, perhaps, why children love his stories and have easily connected with his fictional characters. In his lifetime, he received numerous letters from children (and other letters simply addressed to Charlotte or Stuart which reached his publisher, Harper and Row) asking if his stories are true. In response, White prepared a letter which Harper sent back to his young readers, part of which said: ?Are my stories true, you ask? No, they are imaginary tales, containing fantastic characters and events? But real life is only one kind of life?there is also the life of the imagination. And although my stories are imaginary, I like to think that there is some truth in them, too?truth about the way people and animals feel and think and act.?

Animal lover

He loved animals, no doubt. ?Animals are a weakness with me, and when I got a place in the country I was quite sure animals would appear, and they did.? His place in the country turned up to be a 40-acre farm in North Brooklin, Maine, where he and his wife settled in 1938. And animals did appear?geese, roosters, pigs, sheep, skunks, weasels, foxes, deer, hummingbirds, snails and frogs, among others. It was, in short, a veritable zoo.

From this vantage point, he continued to write not only essays and books but also letters, including one in 1947 addressed to The New York Herald Tribune about its defense of the Hollywood blacklist of writers and directors: ?I am a member of a party of one, and I live in an age of fear. Nothing lately has unsettled my party and raised my fears so much as your editorial on Thanksgiving Day, suggesting that employees should be required to state their beliefs in order to hold their jobs? I can only assume that your editorial writer, in a hurry to get home for Thanksgiving, tripped over the First Amendment and thought it was the office cat.?

White is a writer?s writer not only because of the way he wrote but also because of what he wrote about. He was someone who valued life, love, freedom and friendship and they all seeped into his writings. In all this, too, White?s characteristic humor never fails to hit the mark.

If I were to write another letter to E.B. White today, I would tell him the following:

One, long before I ever got to read any of his works, I already liked him. Here?s why: in ?The Years with Ross,? Thurber described how White believed and fought for his illustrations. The first time was when Thurber did a pencil sketch of a seal on a rock which White approved and sent to the art department of The New Yorker. The drawing came back with another drawing of a seal?s head and a note under it: ?This is the way a seal?s whiskers go.? White would send back the drawing to the art department with this note: ?This is the way a Thurber seal?s whiskers go.? Practically the same thing happened when Thurber and White collaborated on the book ?Is Sex Necessary?? To the consternation of their publisher who thought Thurber?s drawings were only rough sketches of what would finally go into the book, White said otherwise and got his wish.

Two, I would tell White that I did pass the vet board exam but, save for a few months of practice, I went back to my first calling: writing. But I still love animals and continue to help them in whatever way I can. As far back as I can remember, our family has always been outnumbered by pets so caring for animals is already a given in our household. We even get helpers less on the basis of their cooking or ironing skills and more on their ability to get along well with our menagerie. At present, we keep 12 dogs, over 20 cats, two finches and one turtle. We used to have five turtles but the four others managed to escape. Apart from the common mayas, we have also sighted brown shrikes, yellow vented bulbuls, pied fantails, flowerpickers and small bats in our garden. We try to let them be and not disturb them in any way.

Third and last, I would thank White again for the wonderful times I spent (and continue to spend) reading and rereading his works.