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