The Old Blog in the Desert

There is a man so particular about straight lines that he could not pass a crooked fence without suffering a moral injury.

His name was Mr. Abner P. Dill, and he held the belief, firm as a tax collector, that Providence favored symmetry. If a gate leaned, he rebuked it. If a shutter sagged, he corrected it. If a dog’s tail curved too freely, he looked at it with deep theological concern.

Now it happened that a certain stretch of fence along the north road had taken to leaning at an angle suggestive of leisure. It did not collapse, nor did it impede traffic, but it possessed a relaxed philosophy that offended Mr. Dill’s sense of geometry.

“That fence,” he declared, “is a public disgrace.”

The fence, being a fence, offered no defense.

So Mr. Dill fetched his tools and set about improving it. He dug, he hammered, he measured with an instrument so precise it could detect the moral failings of a snowflake. By sundown, the fence stood straight as a sermon and twice as stiff.

The townsfolk admired it politely.

Three days later, a wind came down from the hills with a mind of its own. It passed over barns that had stood crooked since the War, around sheds that leaned companionably upon one another, and through orchards whose trees had long ago surrendered to artistic expression.

The wind paused at Mr. Dill’s fence. Now, a crooked fence may bow to the wind and survive by courtesy, but a straight fence, being full of principle, does not bow at all.

By morning, the fence lay flat upon the road, straighter than ever.

Mr. Dill examined the wreckage with the air of a man betrayed by righteousness itself. The townsfolk, wishing to preserve harmony, said nothing, though a few got observed studying their own crooked arrangements with renewed affection.

The fence had to be rebuilt, though not quite so straight.

And from that day forward, whenever Mr. Dill passed a leaning structure, he looked upon it not with condemnation, but with a certain thoughtful respect, as one citizen regards another who has made accommodations with the weather.

Which only proves that while virtue is admirable, flexibility keeps the roof over one’s head.