Flatland
account among the great nobles of Flatland, whence I have come to visit you, in the hope of enlightening your ignorance.”
Hearing these words the King advanced towards me with a menacing cry as if to pierce me through the diagonal; and in that same moment there arose from myriads of his subjects a multitudinous war-cry, increasing in vehemence till at last methought it rivalled the roar of an army of a hundred thousand Isosceles, and the artillery of a thousand Pentagons. Spell-bound and motionless, I could neither speak nor move to avert the impending destruction; and still the noise grew louder, and the King came closer, when I awoke to find the breakfast-bell recalling me to the realities of Flatland.
§15.—Concerning a Stranger from Spaceland.
From dreams I proceed to facts.
It was the last day of the 1999th year of our era. The pattering of the rain had long ago announced nightfall; and I was sitting[1] in the company of my wife, musing on the events of the past and the prospects of the coming year, the coming century, the coming Millennium.
My four Sons and two orphan Grandchildren had retired to their several apartments; and my wife alone remained with me to see the old Millennium out and the new one in.
I was rapt in thought, pondering in my mind some words that had casually issued from the mouth of my youngest
- ↑ When I say “sitting,” of course I do not mean any change of attitude such as you in Spaceland signify by that word; for as we have no feet, we can no more “sit” nor “stand” (in your sense of the word) than one of your soles or flounders. Nevertheless, we perfectly well recognize the different mental states of volition implied in “lying,” “sitting,” and “standing,” which are to some extent indicated to a beholder by a slight increase of lustre corresponding to the increase of volition. But on this, and a thousand other kindred subjects, time forbids me to dwell.
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