When it was objected that Priests and Women had no sides, they retorted
that Nature and Expediency concurred in dictating that the front half
of every human being (that is to say, the half containing his eye and mouth)
should be distinguishable from his hinder half. They therefore brought
before a general and extraordinary Assembly of all the States of Flatland
a Bill proposing that in every Woman the half containing the eye and mouth
should be coloured red, and the other half green. The Priests were to be
painted in the same way, red being applied to that semicircle in which
the eye and mouth formed the middle point; while the other or hinder
semicircle was to be coloured green.
There was no little cunning in this proposal, which indeed emanated
not from any Isosceles--for no being so degraded would have angularity
enough to appreciate, much less to devise, such a model of state-craft--
but from an Irregular Circle who, instead of being destroyed in his childhood,
was reserved by a foolish indulgence to bring desolation on his country
and destruction on myriads of followers.
On the one hand the proposition was calculated to bring the Women
in all classes over to the side of the Chromatic Innovation.
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