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.