Taylor had a flashing memory of old Luke, staring at a white moon through the plume of a yellow pine, a counterfeit pine, longing for Michigan forests again, hopeless and cynical. And he looked at this girl, sitting up cross-legged now, gazing at the river, cheeks glowing, eyes far away, and he remembered that Humphrey Bryant had said of her—that in her heart was something of Joan of Arc, of Catharine of Russia, and something of the Blessed Damosel—
She looked back at him and went on.
"That has helped my forest—the available supply pinching down. We've gotten along somehow with box lumber and lath and pulp wood from our thinnings, but the pinch is coming and we are not ready to cut now. We could cut, we could make money, but it would prove only half the argument. My father's whole object was to get his capital turning its full interest return each year and then to take that interest while maintaining the capital—not eating it up, not making the forest a temporary property. It's in the waiting period now, just as a fruit grower is with a young orchard. Our thinnings and their income are like the first few apples or cherries, just enough to stall off some of the interest accumulations. The fruit grower realizes on the increasing bearing area of the trees; we realize on the quality growth of these pines and the climbing lumber values.
"Foraker's Folly is at the turning point. The value of the standing timber is commencing to overtake the interest which has been compounding away all these years, but neither the timber nor the investment is quite ripe. To cut now would be to over-cut the rate of growth, but in a few years, a very few years, we can harvest a
