On the weak and aged,
and especially on delicate Females, the force of attraction
tells much more heavily than on the robust of the Male Sex,
so that it is a point of breeding, if you meet a Lady on the street,
always to give her the North side of the way--by no means
an easy thing to do always at short notice when you are
in rude health and in a climate where it is difficult
to tell your North from your South.
Windows there are none in our houses: for the light
comes to us alike in our homes and out of them,
by day and by night, equally at all times and in all places,
whence we know not. It was in old days, with our learned men,
an interesting and oft-investigate question,
"What is the origin of light?" and the solution of it
has been repeatedly attempted, with no other result
than to crowd our lunatic asylums with the would-be solvers.
Hence, after fruitless attempts to suppress such investigations
indirectly by making them liable to a heavy tax, the Legislature,
in comparatively recent times, absolutely prohibited them.
I--alas, I alone in Flatland--know now only too well
the true solution of this mysterious problem;
but my knowledge cannot be made intelligible
to a single one of my countrymen; and I am mocked at
--I, the sole possessor of the truths of Space
and of the theory of the introduction of Light
from the world of three Dimensions--as if I were
the maddest of the mad! But a truce to these painful
digressions: let me return to our homes.
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