them than the other, and accordingly know my
shape to be 6.457 inches. But you will of course understand that my
wives do not make this calculation every time they hear my two voices.
They made it, once for all, before we were married. But they COULD
make it at any time. And in the same way I can estimate the shape of
any of my Male subjects by the sense of sound."

"But how," said I, "if a Man feigns a Woman's voice with one of his two
voices, or so disguises his Southern voice that it cannot be recognized
as the echo of the Northern? May not such deceptions cause great
inconvenience? And have you no means of checking frauds of this kind
by commanding your neighbouring subjects to feel one another?" This of
course was a very stupid question, for feeling could not have answered
the purpose; but I asked with the view of irritating the Monarch, and I
succeeded perfectly.

"What!" cried he in horror, "explain your meaning." "Feel, touch, come
into contact," I replied. "If you mean by FEELING," said the King,
"approaching so close as to leave no space between two individuals,
know, Stranger, that this offence is punishable in my dominions by
death. And the reason is obvious. The frail form of a Woman, being
liable to be shattered by such an approximation, must be preserved by
the State; but since Women cannot be distinguished by the sense of
sight from Men, the Law ordains universally that neither Man nor Woman
shall be approached so closely as to destroy the interval between the
approximator and the approximated.

"And indeed what possible purpose would be served by this illegal and
unnatural excess of approximation which you call TOUCHING, when all the
ends of so brutal and coarse a process are attained at once more easily
and more exactly by the sense of hearing? As to your suggested danger
of deception, it is non-existent: for the Voice, being the essence of
one's Being, cannot be thus changed at will. But come, suppose that I
had the power of passing through solid things, so that I could
penetrate my subjects, one after another, even to the number of a
billion, verifying the size and distance of each by the sense of
FEELING: how much time and energy would be wasted in this clumsy and
inaccurate method! Whereas now, in one moment of audition, I take as
it were the census and statistics, local, corporeal, mental and
spiritual, of every living being in Lineland. Hark, only hark!"

So saying he paused a