Good Progress
FAR INTO the night, while the other creatures
slept, Charlotte worked on her web. First she
ripped out a few of the orb lines near the cen-
ter. She left the radial lines alone, as they were
needed for support. As she worked, her eight legs
were a great help to her. So were her teeth. She loved
to weave and she was an expert at it. When she was
finished ripping things out, her web looked something
like this:
A spider can produce several kinds of thread. She
uses a dry, tough thread for foundation lines, and she
uses a sticky thread for snare lines-the ones that
catch and hold insects. Charlotte decided to use her
dry thread for writing the new message.
"If I write the word 'Terrific' with sticky thread,"
she thought, "every bug that comes along will get stuck
in it and spoil the effect."
"Now let's see, the first letter is T."
Charlotte climbed to a point at the top of the left
hand side of the web. Swinging her spinnerets into posi-
tion, she attached her �hread and then dropped down.
As she dropped, her spinning tubes went into action
and she let out thread. At the bottom, she attached the
thread. This formed the upright part of the letter T.
Charlotte was not satisfied, however. She climbed up
and made another attachment, right next to the first.
Then she carried the line down, so that she had a
double line instead of a single line. "It will show up
better if I make the whole thing with double lines."
She climbed back up, moved over about an inch to
the left, touched her spinnerets to the web, and then
carried a line across to the right, forming the top of the
T. She repeated this, making it double. Her eight legs
were very busy helping.
"Now for the E! "
Charlotte got so interested in her work, she began to talk to herself, as though to cheer herself on. If you
had been sitting quietly in the barn cellar that evening,
you would have heard something like this:
"Now for the R! Up we go! Attach! Descend! Pay
out line! Whoa! Attach! Good! Up you go! Repeat!
Attach! Descend! Pay out line. Whoa, girl! Steady
now! Attach! Climb! Attach! Over to the right! Pay
out line! Attach! Now right and down and swing that
loop and around and around! Now in to the left!
Attach! Climb! Repeat! O.K.! Easy, keep those lines
together! Now, then, out and dovn for the leg of the
R! Pay out line! Whoa! Attach! Ascend! Repeat!
Good girl! "
And so, talking to herself, the spider worked at her
difficult task. When it was completed, she felt hungry.
She ate a small bug that she had been saving. Then she
slept.
Next morning, Wilbur arose and stood beneath the
web. He breathed the morning air into his lungs. Drops
of dew, catching the sun, made the web stand out
clearly. When Lurvy arrived with breakfast, there was
the handsome pig, and over him, woven neatly in block
letters, was the word TERRIFIC. Another miracle.
Lurvy rushed and called Mr. Zuckerman. Mr. Zuck-
erman rushed and called Mrs. Zuckerman. Mrs. Zuck-
erman ran to the phone and called the Arables. The
Arables climbed into their truck and hurried over.
Everybody stood at the pigpen and stared at the web
and read the word, over and over, while Wilbur, who
really felt terrific, stood quietly swelling out his chest
and swinging his snout from side to side.
"Terrific!" breathed Zuckerman, in joyful admira-
tion. "Edith, you better phone the reponer on the
Weekly Chronicle and tell him what has happened. He
will want to know about this. He may want to bring a
photographer. There isn't a pig in the whole state that
is as terrific as our pig."
The news spread. People who had journeyed to see
Wilbur when he was "some pig" came back again to
see him now that he was "terrific."
That afternoon, when Mr. Zuckerman went to milk
the cows and clean out the tie-ups, he was still thinking
about what a wondrous pig he owned.
"Lurvy! " he called. "There is to be no more cow
manure thrown down into that pigpen. I have a terrific
pig. I want that pig to have clean, bright straw every
day for his bedding. Understand?"
"Yes, sir," said Lurvy.
"Furthermore," said Mr. Zuckerman, "I want you to
start building a crate for Wilbur. I have decided to take
the pig to the County Fair on September sixth. Make
the crate large and paint it green with gold letters! "
"What will the letters say?" asked Lurvy.
"They should say Zuckerman's Famous Pig."
Lurvy picked up a pitchfork and walked away to
get some clean straw. Having such an important pig
was going to mean plenty of extra work, he could see
that.
Below the apple orchard, at the end of a path, was
the dump where Mr. Zuckerman threw all sorts of
trash and stuff that nobody wanted any more. Here,
in a small clearing hidden by young alders and wild
raspberry bushes, was an astonishing pile of old bottles
and empty tin cans and dirty rags and bits of metal and
broken bottles and broken hinges and broken springs
and dead batteries and last month's magazines and old
discarded dishmops and tattered overalls and rusty
spikes and leaky pails and forgotten stoppers and useless
junk of all kinds, including a wrong-size crank for a
broken ice-cream freezer.
Templeton knew the dump and liked it. There were
good hiding places there-excellent cover for a rat.
And there was usually a tin can with food still clinging
to the inside.
Templeton was down there now, rummaging
around. When he returned to the bam, he carried in
his mouth an advertisement he had tom from a crum-
pled magazine.
"How's this? " he asked, showing the ad to Charlotte.
"It says 'Crunchy.' 'Crunchy' would be a good word
to write in your web."
"Just the wrong idea," replied Charlotte. "Couldn't
be worse. We don't want Zuckerman to think Wilbur
is crunchy. He might start thinking about crisp,
crunchy bacon and tasty ham. That would put ideas
into his head. We must advertise Wilbur's noble qual-
ities, not his tastiness. Go get another word, please,
Templeton!"
The rat looked disgusted. But he sneaked away to
the dump and was back in a while with a strip of cotton
cloth. "How's this?" he asked. "It's a label off an old
shirt."
Charlotte examined the label. It said PRE-
SHRUNK.
"I'm sorry, Templeton," she said, "but 'Pre-shrunk'
is out of the question. We want Zuckerman to think
Wilbur is nicely filled out, not all shrunk up. I'll have
to ask you to try again."
"What do you think I am, a messenger boy?"
grumbled the rat. "I'm not going to spend all my time
chasing down to the dump after advertising material."
"Just once more-please!" said Charlotte.
"I'll tell you what I'll do," said Templeton. "I know
where there's a package of soap flakes in the woodshed.
It has writing on it. I'll bring you a piece of the pack-
age."
He climbed the rope that hung on the wall and dis-
appeared through a hole in the ceiling. When he came
back he had a strip of blue-and-white cardboard in his
teeth.
"There! " he said, triumphantly. "How's that?"
Charlotte read the words: "With New Radiant
Action."
"What does it mean?" asked Charlotte, who had
never used any soap flakes in her life.
"How should I know?" said Templeton. "You
asked for words and I brought them. I suppose the next
thing you'll want me to fetch is a dictionary."
T ogerher they studied the soap ad. " 'With new
radiant action,' " repeated Charlotte, slowly. "Wilbur! "
she called.
Wilbur, who v:as asleep in the straw, jumped up.
"Run around!" commanded Charlotte. "I want to
see you in action, to see if you are radiant."
Wilbur raced to the end of his yard.
"Now back again, faster! " said Charlotte.
Wilbur galloped back. His skin shone. His tail had
a fine, tight curl in it.
"Jump into the air!" cried Charlotte.
Wilbur jumped as high as he could.
"Keep your knees straight and touch the ground
with your ears! " called Charlotte.
Wilbur obeyed.
"Do a back flip with a half twist in it!" cried Char-
lotte.
Wilbur went over backwards, writhing and twisting
as he went.
"O.K., Wilbur," said Charlotte. "You can go back
to sleep. O.K., Templeton, the soap ad will do, I guess.
I'm not sure Wilbur's action is exactly radiant, but it's
interesting."
"Actually," said Wilbur, "I feel radiant."
"Do you? " said Charlotte, looking at him with
affection. "Well, you're a good little pig, and radiant
you shall be. I'm in this thing pretty deep now-I might
as well go the limit."
Tired from his romp, Wilbur lay down in the clean
straw. He closed his eyes. The straw seemed scratchy
-not as comfonable as the cow manure, which was
always delightfully soft to lie in. So he pushed the
straw to one side and stretched out in the manure.
Wilbur sighed. It had been a busy day-his first day of
being terrific. Dozens of people had visited his yard
during the afternoon, llnd he had had to stand and pose,
looking as terrific as he could. Now he was tired. Fern
had arrived and seated herself quietly on her stool in
the corner.
"Tell me a story, Charlotte!" said Wilbur, as he lay
waiting for sleep to come. "Tell me a story!"
So Charlotte, although she, too, was tired, did what
Wilbur wanted.
"Once upon a time," she began, "I had a beautiful
cousin who managed to build her web across a small
stream. One day a tiny fish leaped into the air and got
tangled in the web. My cousin was very much sur-
prised, of course. The fish was thrashing wildly. My
cousin hardly dared tackle it. But she did. She swooped
down and threw great masses of wrapping material
around the fish and fought bravely to capture it."
"Did she succeed?" asked Wilbur.
"It was a never-to-be-forgotten battle," said Char-
lotte. "There was the fish, caught only by one fin, and
its tail wildly thrashing and shining in the sun. There was the web, sagging dangerously under the weight of
the fish."
"How much did the fish weigh? " asked Wilbur
eagerly.
"I don't know," said Charlotte. "There was my
cousin, slipping in, dodging out, beaten mercilessly
over the head by the wildly thrashing fish, dancing in,
dancing out, throwing her threads and fighting hard.
First she threw a left around the tail. The fish lashed
back. Then a left to the tail and a right to the mid-
section. The fish lashed back. Then she dodged to one
side and threw a right, and another right to the fin.
Then a hard left to the head, while the web swayed
and stretched."
"Then what happened?" asked Wilbur.
"Nothing," said Charlotte. "The fish lost the fight.
My cousin wrapped it up so tight it couldn't budge."
"Then what happened?" asked Wilbur.
"Nothing," said Charlotte. "My cousin kept the fish
for a while, and then, when she got good and ready,
she ate it."
"Tell me another story! " begged Wilbur.
So Charlotte told him about another cousin of hers
who was an aeronaut.
"What is an aeronaut?" asked Wilbur.
"A balloonist," said Charlotte. "My cousin used to
stand on her head and let out enough thread to form a balloon. Then she'd let go and be lifted into the air and
carried upward on the warm wind."
"Is that true?" asked Wilbur. "Or are you just
making it up?"
"It's true," replied Charlotte. "I have some very
remarkable cousins. And now, Wilbur, it's time you
went to sleep."
"Sing something!" begged Wilbur, closing his eyes.
So Charlotte sang a lullaby, while crickets chirped
in the grass and the barn grew dark. This was the song
she sang.
"Sleep, sleep, my love, my only,
Deep, deep, in the dung and the dark;
Be not afraid and be not lonely!
This is the hour when frogs and thrushes
Praise the world from the woods and the rushes.
Rest from care, my one and only,
Deep in the dung :md the dark! "
But Wilbur was already asleep. When the song ended,
Fern got up and went home.