rstand you.

I. Alas! How shall I make it clear? When you move straight on, does
it not sometimes occur to you that you COULD move in some other way,
turning your eye round so as to look in the direction towards which
your side is now fronting? In other words, instead of always moving in
the direction of one of your extremities, do you never feel a desire to
move in the direction, so to speak, of your side?

King. Never. And what do you mean? How can a man's inside "front" in
any direction? Or how can a man move in the direction of his inside?

I. Well then, since words cannot explain the matter, I will try deeds,
and will move gradually out of Lineland in the direction which I desire
to indicate to you.

At the word I began to move my body out of Lineland. As long as any
part of me remained in his dominion and in his view, the King kept
exclaiming, "I see you, I see you still; you are not moving." But when
I had at last moved myself out of his Line, he cried in his shrillest
voice, "She is vanished; she is dead." "I am not dead," replied I; "I
am simply out of Lineland, that is to say, out of the Straight Line
which you call Space, and in the true Space, where I can see things as
they are. And at this moment I can see your Line, or side--or inside
as you are pleased to call it; and I can see also the Men and Women on
the North and South of you, whom I will now enumerate, describing their
order, their size, and the interval between each."

When I had done this at great length, I cried triumphantly, "Does that
at last convince you?" And, with that, I once more entered Lineland,
taking up the same position as before.

But the Monarch replied, "If you were a Man of sense--though, as you
appear to have only one voice I have little doubt you are not a Man but
a Woman--but, if you had a particle of sense, you would listen to
reason. You ask me to believe that there is another Line besides that
which my senses indicate, and another motion besides that of which I am
daily conscious. I, in return, ask you to describe in words or
indicate by motion that other Line of which you speak. Instead of
moving, you merely exercise some magic art of vanishing and returning
to sight; and instead of any lucid description of your new World, you
simply tell me the numbers and sizes of some forty of my retinue, facts
known to any child in my capital. Can anything be more irrational or
audacious? Acknowledge your folly or