a position full in front of
her mouth so as to intercept her motion, and loudly repeated my
question, "Woman, what signifies this concourse, and this strange and
confused chirping, and this monotonous motion to and fro in one and the
same Straight Line?"

"I am no Woman," replied the small Line: "I am the Monarch of the
world. But thou, whence intrudest thou into my realm of Lineland?"
Receiving this abrupt reply, I begged pardon if I had in any way
startled or molested his Royal Highness; and describing myself as a
stranger I besought the King to give me some account of his dominions.
But I had the greatest possible difficulty in obtaining any information
on points that really interested me; for the Monarch could not refrain
from constantly assuming that whatever was familiar to him must also be
known to me and that I was simulating ignorance in jest. However, by
preserving questions I elicited the following facts:

It seemed that this poor ignorant Monarch--as he called himself--was
persuaded that the Straight Line which he called his Kingdom, and in
which he passed his existence, constituted the whole of the world, and
indeed the whole of Space. Not being able either to move or to see,
save in his Straight Line, he had no conception of anything out of it.
Though he had heard my voice when I first addressed him, the sounds had
come to him in a manner so contrary to his experience that he had made
no answer, "seeing no man," as he expressed it, "and hearing a voice as
it were from my own intestines." Until the moment when I placed my
mouth in his World, he had neither seen me, nor heard anything except
confused sounds beating against, what I called his side, but what he
called his INSIDE or STOMACH; nor had he even now the least conception
of the region from which I had come. Outside his World, or Line, all
was a blank to him; nay, not even a blank, for a blank implies Space;
say, rather, all was non-existent.

His subjects--of whom the small Lines were men and the Points
Women--were all alike confined in motion and eyesight to that single
Straight Line, which was their World. It need scarcely be added that
the whole of their horizon was limited to a Point; nor could any one
ever see anything but a Point. Man, woman, child, thing--each as a
Point to the eye of a Linelander. Only by the sound of the voice could
sex or age be distinguished. Moreover, as each individual occupied the
whole of the narrow path,