t ground recovered, the full 60 degrees
attained, and the Ascent from the Isosceles finally achieved. And all
this series of calamities from one little accident in the process of
Feeling.

At this point I think I hear some of my better educated readers
exclaim, "How could you in Flatland know anything about angles and
degrees, or minutes? We can SEE an angle, because we, in the region of
Space, can see two straight lines inclined to one another; but you, who
can see nothing but one straight line at a time, or at all events only
a number of bits of straight lines all in one straight line--how can
you ever discern any angle, and much less register angles of different
sizes?"

I answer that though we cannot SEE angles, we can INFER them, and this
with great precision. Our sense of touch, stimulated by necessity, and
developed by long training, enables us to distinguish angles far more
accurately than your sense of sight, when unaided by a rule or measure
of angles. Nor must I omit to explain that we have great natural
helps. It is with us a Law of Nature that the brain of the Isosceles
class shall begin at half a degree, or thirty minutes, and shall
increase (if it increases at all) by half a degree in every generation;
until the goal of 60 degrees is reached, when the condition of serfdom
is quitted, and the freeman enters the class of Regulars.

Consequently, Nature herself supplies us with an ascending scale or
Alphabet of angles for half a degree up to 60 degrees, Specimens of
which are placed in every Elementary School throughout the land. Owing
to occasional retrogressions, to still more frequent moral and
intellectual stagnation, and to the extraordinary fecundity of the
Criminal and Vagabond Classes, there is always a vast superfluity of
individuals of the half degree and single degree class, and a fair
abundance of Specimens up to 10 degrees. These are absolutely
destitute of civic rights; and a great number of them, not having even
intelligence enough for the purposes of warfare, are devoted by the
States to the service of education. Fettered immovably so as to remove
all possibility of danger, they are placed in the class rooms of our
Infant Schools, and there they are utilized by the Board of Education
for the purpose of imparting to the offspring of the Middle Classes
that tact and intelligence of which these wretched creatures themselves
are utterly devoid.

In some States the Specimens are occas