HistoryLink Essay: The Seattle Times fires E. B. White on June 19, 1923.

I wonder. Are we teaching our youngsters that often even the best men fall flat on their face (and/or have to be kicked in the seat of their pants a time or two) before they become successful and/or worthy of respect? I guess an alternate way of saying that is - are we making it clear that sometimes it isn't that the world is against you, it's that you haven't learned to pull your own weight yet?

Before he became a writer for The New Yorker and author of Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little and Elements of Style (with William Strunk Jr.), among other books, E. B. White was apparently the sort of young man who quite frankly needed to be fired from his job.

Use the title link to read a short article on what White called his "Years of Wander."