Flatland - Edwin A. Abbott (early reader books .TXT) 📗

“But supposing,” said I, “that a man should prefer one wife or three?”

“It is impossible,” he said; “it is as inconceivable as that two and one should make five, or that the human eye should see a Straight Line.” I would have interrupted him; but he proceeded as follows:

“Once in the middle of each week a law of Nature compels us to move to and fro with a rhythmic motion of more than usual violence, which continues for the time you would take to count a hundred and one. In the midst of this choral dance, at the fifty-first pulsation, the inhabitants of the Universe pause in full career, and each individual sends forth his richest, fullest, sweetest strain. It is in this decisive moment that all our marriages are made. So exquisite is the adaptation of bass to treble, of tenor to contralto, that oftentimes the loved ones, though twenty thousand leagues away, recognize at once the responsive note of their destined lover; and, penetrating the paltry obstacles of distance, Love unites the three. The marriage in that instant consummated results in a threefold male and female offspring which takes its place in Lineland.”

“What! Always threefold?” said I. “Must one wife then always have twins?”

“Bass-voiced monstrosity! yes,” replied the King. “How else could the balance of the sexes be maintained, if two girls were not born for every boy? Would you ignore the very alphabet of Nature?” He ceased, speechless for fury; and some time elapsed before I could induce him to resume his narrative.

“You will not, of course, suppose that every bachelor among us finds his mates at the first wooing in this universal Marriage Chorus. On the contrary, the process is by most of us many times repeated. Few are the hearts whose happy lot it is at once to recognize in each other’s voices the partner intended for them by Providence, and to fly into a reciprocal and perfectly harmonious embrace. With most of us the courtship is of long duration. The wooer’s voices may perhaps accord with one of the future wives, but not with both; or not, at first, with either; or the soprano and contralto may not quite harmonize. In such cases Nature has provided that every weekly Chorus shall bring the three lovers into closer harmony. Each trial of voice, each fresh discovery of discord, almost imperceptibly induces the less perfect to modify his or her vocal utterance so as to approximate to the more perfect. And after many trials and many approximations, the result is at last achieved. There comes a day at last, when, while the wonted Marriage Chorus goes forth from universal Lineland, the three far-off lovers suddenly find themselves in exact harmony, and, before they are awake, the wedded triplet is rapt vocally into a duplicate embrace; and Nature rejoices over one more marriage and over three more births.”

Thinking that it was time to bring down the Monarch from his raptures to the level of common sense, I determined to endeavour to open up to him some glimpses of the truth, that is to say of the nature of things in Flatland. So I began thus: “How does your Royal Highness distinguish the shapes and positions of his subjects? I for my part noticed by the sense of sight, before I entered your Kingdom, that some of your people are Lines and others Points, and that some of the Lines are larger⁠—”

“You speak of an impossibility,” interrupted the King; “you must have seen a vision; for to detect the difference between a Line and a Point by the sense of sight is, as everyone knows, in the nature of things, impossible; but it can be detected by the sense of hearing, and by the same means my shape can be exactly ascertained. Behold me⁠—I am a Line, the longest in Lineland, over six inches of Space⁠—”

“Of Length,” I ventured to suggest.

“Fool,” said he, “Space is Length. Interrupt me again, and I have done.”

I apologized; but he continued scornfully, “Since you are impervious to argument, you shall hear with your ears how by means of my two voices I reveal my shape to my wives, who are at this moment six thousand miles seventy yards two feet eight inches away, the one to the North, the other to the South. Listen, I call to them.”

He chirruped, and then complacently continued: “My wives, at this moment receiving the sound of one of my voices, closely followed by the other, and perceiving that the latter reaches them after an interval in which sound can traverse 6.457 inches, infer that one of my mouths is 6.457 inches further from 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