and skill which suffice to avert a Woman's sting are unequal to the
task of stopping a Woman's mouth; and as the wife has absolutely
nothing to say, and absolutely no constraint of wit, sense, or
conscience to prevent her from saying it, not a few cynics have been
found to aver that they prefer the danger of the death-dealing but
inaudible sting to the safe sonorousness of a Woman's other end.

To my readers in Spaceland the condition of our Women may seen truly
deplorable, and so indeed it is. A Male of the lowest type of the
Isosceles may look forward to some improvement of his angle, and to the
ultimate elevation of the whole of his degraded caste; but no Woman can
entertain such hopes for her sex. "Once a Woman, always a Woman" is a
Decree of Nature; and the very Laws of Evolution seem suspended in her
disfavour. Yet at least we can admire the wise Prearrangement which
has ordained that, as they have no hopes, so they shall have no memory
to recall, and no forethought to anticipate, the miseries and
humiliations which are at once a necessity of their existence and the
basis of the constitution of Flatland.

SECTION 5 Of our Methods of Recognizing one another

You, who are blessed with shade as well as light, you, who are gifted
with two eyes, endowed with a knowledge of perspective, and charmed
with the enjoyment of various colours, you, who can actually SEE an
angle, and contemplate the complete circumference of a Circle in the
happy region of the Three Dimensions--how shall I make it clear to you
the extreme difficulty which we in Flatland experience in recognizing
one another's configuration?

Recall what I told you above. All beings in Flatland, animate and
inanimate, no matter what their form, present TO OUR VIEW the same, or
nearly the same, appearance, viz. that of a straight Line. How then
can one be distinguished from another, where all appear the same?

The answer is threefold. The first means of recognition is the sense
of hearing; which with us is far more highly developed than with you,
and which enables us not only to distinguish by the voice of our
personal friends, but even to discriminate between different classes,
at least so far as concerns the three lowest orders, the Equilateral,
the Square, and the Pentagon--for the Isosceles I take no account. But
as we ascend the social scale, the process of discriminating and being
discriminated by hearing increases in difficulty, partly