name
the most trustworthy authorities concur in calling him,--turned his
variegated frame, there he at once excited attention, and attracted
respect. No one now needed to "feel" him; no one mistook his front for
his back; all his movements were readily ascertained by his neighbours
without the slightest strain on their powers of calculation; no one
jostled him, or failed to make way for him; his voice was saved the
labour of that exhausting utterance by which we colourless Squares and
Pentagons are often forced to proclaim our individuality when we move
amid a crowd of ignorant Isosceles.

The fashion spread like wildfire. Before a week was over, every Square
and Triangle in the district had copied the example of Chromatistes,
and only a few of the more conservative Pentagons still held out. A
month or two found even the Dodecagons infected with the innovation. A
year had not elapsed before the habit had spread to all but the very
highest of the Nobility. Needless to say, the custom soon made its way
from the district of Chromatistes to surrounding regions; and within
two generations no one in all Flatland was colourless except the Women
and the Priests.

Here Nature herself appeared to erect a barrier, and to plead against
extending the innovation to these two classes. Many-sidedness was
almost essential as a pretext for the Innovators. "Distinction of
sides is intended by Nature to imply distinction of colours"--such was
the sophism which in those days flew from mouth to mouth, converting
whole towns at a time to the new culture. But manifestly to our
Priests and Women this adage did not apply. The latter had only one
side, and therefore--plurally and pedantically speaking--NO SIDES. The
former--if at least they would assert their claim to be really and
truly Circles, and not mere high-class Polygons with an infinitely
large number of infinitesimally small sides--were in the habit of
boasting (what Women confessed and deplored) that they also had no
sides, being blessed with a perimeter of one line, or, in other words,
a Circumference. Hence it came to pass that these two Classes could
see no force in the so-called axiom about "Distinction of Sides
implying Distinction of Colour"; and when all others had succumbed to
the fascinations of corporal decoration, the Priests and the Women
alone still remained pure from the pollution of paint.

Immoral, licentious, anarchical, unscientific--call them by what n