depart from my dominions."

Furious at his perversity, and especially indignant that he professed
to be ignorant of my sex, I retorted in no measured terms, "Besotted
Being! You think yourself the perfection of existence, while you are
in reality the most imperfect and imbecile. You profess to see,
whereas you see nothing but a Point! You plume yourself on inferring
the existence of a Straight Line; but I CAN SEE Straight Lines, and
infer the existence of Angles, Triangles, Squares, Pentagons, Hexagons,
and even Circles. Why waste more words? Suffice it that I am the
completion of your incomplete self. You are a Line, but I am a Line of
Lines called in my country a Square: and even I, infinitely superior
though I am to you, am of little 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 movement 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.

SECTION 15 Concerning a Stranger from Spaceland

From dreams I proceed to facts.

It was the last day of our 1999th year of our era. The patterning of
the rain had long ago announced nightfall; and I was sitting (footnote
3) 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 Grandson, a most
promising young Hexagon of unusual brilliancy and perfect angularity.
His uncles and I had been giving him his usual practical lesson in
Sight Recognition, turning ourselves upon our centres, now rapidly, now
more slowly, and questioning him as to our positions; and his answers
had been so satisfactory that