the one that is really a pine tree. However this may be, there is
something singularly thrilling, even something urgent and intolerant,
about the endless forest repetitions; there is the hint of something
like madness in that musical monotony of the pines.

I said something like this to my friend; and he answered with
sardonic truth, "Ah, you wait till we come to a telegraph post."

My friend was right, as he occasionally is in our discussions,
especially upon points of fact. We had crossed the pine forest
by one of its paths which happened to follow the wires of the
provincial telegraphy; and though the poles occurred at long intervals
they made a difference when they came. The instant we 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