Alarms and Discursions | Page 7

came to the straight pole we could see
that the pines were not really straight. It was like a hundred straight
lines drawn with schoolboy pencils all brought to judgment suddenly
by one straight line drawn with a ruler. All the amateur lines seemed to
reel to right and left. A moment before I could have sworn they stood
as straight as lances; now I could see them curve and waver everywhere,

like scimitars and yataghans. Compared with the telegraph post the
pines were crooked--and alive. That lonely vertical rod at once
deformed and enfranchised the forest. It tangled it all together and yet
made it free, like any grotesque undergrowth of oak or holly.
"Yes," said my gloomy friend, answering my thoughts. "You don't
know what a wicked shameful thing straightness is if you think these
trees are straight. You never will know till your precious intellectual
civilization builds a forty-mile forest of telegraph poles."
We had started walking from our temporary home later in the day than
we intended; and the long afternoon was already lengthening itself out
into a yellow evening when we came out of the forest on to the hills
above a strange town or village, of which the lights had already begun
to glitter in the darkening valley. The change had already happened
which is the test and definition of evening. I mean that while the sky
seemed still as bright, the earth was growing blacker against it,
especially at the edges, the hills and the pine-tops. This brought out yet
more clearly the owlish secrecy of pine-woods; and my friend cast a
regretful glance at them as he came out under the sky. Then he turned
to the view in front; and, as it happened, one of the telegraph posts
stood up in front of him in the last sunlight. It was no longer crossed
and softened by the more delicate lines of pine wood; it stood up ugly,
arbitrary, and angular as any crude figure in geometry. My friend
stopped, pointing his stick at it, and all his anarchic philosophy rushed
to his lips.
"Demon," he said to me briefly, "behold your work. That palace of
proud trees behind us is what the world was before you civilized men,
Christians or democrats or the rest, came to make it dull with your
dreary rules of morals and equality. In the silent fight of that forest, tree
fights speechless against tree, branch against branch. And the upshot of
that dumb battle is inequality--and beauty. Now lift up your eyes and
look at equality and ugliness. See how regularly the white buttons are
arranged on that black stick, and defend your dogmas if you dare."
"Is that telegraph post so much a symbol of democracy?" I asked. "I
fancy that while three men have made the telegraph to get dividends,

about a thousand men have preserved the forest to cut wood. But if the
telegraph pole is hideous (as I admit) it is not due to doctrine but rather
to commercial anarchy. If any one had a doctrine about a telegraph pole
it might be carved in ivory and decked with gold. Modern things are
ugly, because modern men are careless, not because they are careful."
"No," answered my friend with his eye on the end of a splendid and
sprawling sunset, "there is something intrinsically deadening about the
very idea of a doctrine. A straight line is always ugly. Beauty is always
crooked. These rigid posts at regular intervals are ugly because they are
carrying across the world the real message of democracy."
"At this moment," I answered, "they are probably carrying across the
world the message, 'Buy Bulgarian Rails.' They are probably the
prompt communication between some two of the wealthiest and
wickedest of His children with whom God has ever had patience. No;
these telegraph poles are ugly and detestable, they are inhuman and
indecent. But their baseness lies in their privacy, not in their publicity.
That black stick with white buttons is not the creation of the soul of a
multitude. It is the mad creation of the souls of two millionaires."
"At least you have to explain," answered my friend gravely, "how it is
that the hard democratic doctrine and the hard telegraphic outline have
appeared together; you have... But bless my soul, we must be getting
home. I had no idea it was so late. Let me see, I think this is our way
through the wood. Come, let us both curse the telegraph post for
entirely different reasons and get home before it is dark."
We did not get home before it was dark. For one reason or another we
had underestimated the swiftness of twilight and the suddenness of
night, especially in the threading of thick woods. When