ere into Space, and to the
Assembly Hall in our Metropolis, and then to Space again, and of my
return home, and of everything that I had seen and heard in fact or
vision. At first, indeed, I pretended that I was describing the
imaginary experiences of a fictitious person; but my enthusiasm soon
forced me to throw off all disguise, and finally, in a fervent
peroration, I exhorted all my hearers to divest themselves of prejudice
and to become believers in the Third Dimension.

Need I say that I was at once arrested and taken before the Council?

Next morning, standing in the very place where but a very few months
ago the Sphere had stood in my company, I was allowed to begin and to
continue my narration unquestioned and uninterrupted. But from the
first I foresaw my fate; for the President, noting that a guard of the
better sort of Policemen was in attendance, of angularity little, if at
all, under 55 degrees, ordered them to be relieved before I began my
defence, by an inferior class of 2 or 3 degrees. I knew only too well
what that meant. I was to be executed or imprisoned, and my story was
to be kept secret from the world by the simultaneous destruction of the
officials who had heard it; and, this being the case, the President
desired to substitute the cheaper for the more expensive victims.

After I had concluded my defence, the President, perhaps perceiving
that some of the junior Circles had been moved by my evident
earnestness, asked me two questions:--

1. Whether I could indicate the direction which I meant when I used
the words "Upward, not Northward"?

2. Whether I could by any diagrams or descriptions (other than the
enumeration of imaginary sides and angles) indicate the Figure I was
pleased to call a Cube?

I declared that I could say nothing more, and that I must commit myself
to the Truth, whose cause would surely prevail in the end.

The President replied that he quite concurred in my sentiment, and that
I could not do better. I must be sentenced to perpetual imprisonment;
but if the Truth intended that I should emerge from prison and
evangelize the world, the Truth might be trusted to bring that result
to pass. Meanwhile I should be subjected to no discomfort that was not
necessary to preclude escape, and, unless I forfeited the privilege by
misconduct, I should be occasionally permitted to see my brother who
had preceded me to my prison.

Seven years have elapsed and I am still a prison