My first impression of E.B.White came from his well-known children’s books, which are loved by children and adults alike. The stories and words of those works are simple, beautiful and imaginative. However, little did I know that he can also write such essay as beautiful and imaginative, and yet conveying serious and deep thoughts. Once More to the Lake proves the author’s exceptional versatility in writing.

In this essay, E.B. White mainly recounts an experience of a short-term vacation by the lake. For the author, it is such an abundant vacation, for what he saw and heard during this week had been always boosting his memory of the similar experience in the past and sometimes giving him illusion or even “creepy sensation”. Therefore, we can say that this essay is composed of the author’s present activity, memory, feeling and illusion.

What this essay impresses me is both of its outside beauty and inner beauty.

First of all, the outside beauty. By “outside”, I mean the style of writing. As we all know, in writing an essay about a scenery, it’s usually the description part that decides what the article looks like. Just as many other good essays, the wording of the descriptions in this essay is also careful and beautiful. Some phrases in the essay like “revisit old haunts” , “creepy sensation” and “tentatively, pensively dislodging the fly” etc., can always perfectly describe the specific scene or action that sometimes we find hard to express so appropriately.

But in my opinion, what makes this essay unique in literal sense is that it always provides me certain sense of mystery in its description. As I mentioned above, besides the description of the scene in sight, the author also carefully adds in many of his past memory, deep feelings and sudden illusion. Therefore we can always see such a situation: one moment the author is describing a specific scenery in detail with very concrete words, the next moment he is already recalling the past experience, confiding his feeling or even acquiring some illusion. For example, in paragraph 4, at first the author is describing how he “was right about the tar”, then very natually, he began to mix in his illusion of “dual existence” and “creepy sensation”. There are many other examples of those “mixed-ins” in the essay. Instead of a long description of a scenery, this way of writing provides variety to the article and therefore interests the readers, while at the same time the readers won’t feel awkward. In fact, it can only be natural because it folllows the exact way how people think. Just as the author put it: “You remember one thing, and that suddenly reminds you of another thing.”

In addition to the outside beauty, the inner beauty of this essay also leaves me a deep impression. “Inner beauty”of an essay is actually the profound ideas conveyed in the essay. There are various thoughts that the author has expressed in this essay. Simply from the title “Once More to the Lake”, we have already acquired a slight feeling of the author’s nostalgia. And the author’s obsession with the sensation of “dual existence” shows the mysterious connection between different generations. Moreover, by carefully describing in detail about “a two-track road” and “the nervous sound of the outboard motors”, we can definitely see the author’s attitude about the nature and the influence of the urban civilization. Here and there, we can easily grab some scattered ideas like these hidden in between those seemingly-casual words.

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