nually inducing conjecture and giving an opportunity
of immediate verification, imparts to our existence a zest which you in
Spaceland can hardly comprehend. I speak now from the aesthetic and
artistic point of view when I say that life with us is dull;
aesthetically and artistically, very dull indeed.

How can it be otherwise, when all one's prospect, all one's landscapes,
historical pieces, portraits, flowers, still life, are nothing but a
single line, with no varieties except degrees of brightness and
obscurity?

It was not always thus. Colour, if Tradition speaks the truth, once
for the space of half a dozen centuries or more, threw a transient
splendour over the lives of our ancestors in the remotest ages. Some
private individual--a Pentagon whose name is variously reported--having
casually discovered the constituents of the simpler colours and a
rudimentary method of painting, is said to have begun by decorating
first his house, then his slaves, then his Father, his Sons, and
Grandsons, lastly himself. The convenience as well as the beauty of
the results commended themselves to all. Wherever Chromatistes,--for
by that 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 innovations to these two classes. Many-sidedness