_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 clases, 
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 because 
voices are assimilated, partly because the faculty of voice-
discrimination is a plebeian virtue not much developed among the 
Aristocracy.  And wherever there is any danger of imposture we cannot 
trust to this method.  Amongst our lowest orders, the vocal organs are 
developed to a degree more than correspondent with those of hearing, 
so that an Isosceles can easily feign the voice of a Polygon, and, 
with some training, that of a Circle himself.  A second method is 
therefore more commonly resorted to. 

    _Feeling_ is, among our Women and lower classes -- about our upper 
classes I shalls peak presently -- the principal test of recognition, 
at all events between strangers, and when the question is, not as to 
the individual, but as to the class.  What therefore "introduction" is 
among the higher classes in Spaceland, that the process of "feeling" 
is with us.  "Permit me to ask you to feel and be felt by my friend 
Mr. So-and-so" -- is still, among the more old-fashioned of our 
country gentlemen in districts remote from towns, the customary 
formula for a Flatland introduction.  But in the towns, and among men 
of business, the words "be felt by" are omitted and the sentence is 
abbreviated to, "Let me ask you to feel Mr. So-and-so"; although it is 
assumed, of course, that the "feeling" is to be reciprocal.  Among our 
still more modern and dashing young gentlemen -- who are extremely 
averse to superfluous effort and supremely indifferent to the purity 
of their native language -- the formula is still further curtailed by 
the use of "to feel" in a technical sense, meaning, "to recommend-for-
the-purposes-of-feeling-and-being-felt"; and at this moment the 
"slang" of polite or fast society in the upper classes sanctions such 
a barbarism as "Mr. Smith, permit me to feel Mr. Jones." 

    Let not my Reader however suppose that "feeling" is with us the 
tedious process that it would be with you, or that we find it 
necessary to feel right round all the sides of every individual before 
we determine the class to which he belongs.  Long practice and 
training, begun in the schooles and continued in the experience of 
daily life, enable us to discriminate at once by the sense of touch, 
between the angles of an equal-sided Triangle, Square, and Pentagon; 
and I need not say that the brainless vertex of an acute-angled 
Isosceles is obvious to the dullest touch.  It is therefore not 
necessary, as a rule, to do more than feel a single angle of an 
individual; and this, once ascertained, tells us the class of the 
person whom we are addressing, unless indeed he belongs to the higher 
sections of the nobility.  There the difficulty is much greater.  Even 
a Master of Arts in our University of Wentbridge has been known to 
confuse a ten-sided with a twelve-sided Polygon; and there is hardly a 
Doctor of Science in or out of that famous University who could 
pretend to decide promptly and unhestitatingly between a twenty-sided 
and a twenty-four sided member of the Aristocracy. 

    Those of my readers who recall the extracts I gave above from the 
Legislative code concerning Women, will readily perceive that the 
process of introduction by contact requires some care and discretion.  
Otherwise the angles might inflict on the unwary Feeling irreparable 
injury.  It is essential for the safety of the Feeler that the Felt 
should stand perfectly still.  A start, a fidgety shifting of the 
position, yes, even a violent sneeze, has been known before now to 
prove fatal to the incautious, and to nip in the bud many a promising 
friendship.  Especially is this true among the lower classes of the 
Triangles.  With them, the eye is situated so far from their vertex 
that they can scarcely take cognizance of what goes on at that 
extremity of their frame.  They are, moreover, of a rough coarse 
nature, not sensitive to the delicate touch of the highly organized 
Polygon.  What wonder then if an involuntary toss of the head has ere 
now deprived the State of a valuable life! 

    I have heard that my excellent Grandfather -- one of the least 
irregular of his unhappy Isosceles class, who indeed obtained, shortly 
before his decease, four out of seven botes from the Sanitary and 
Social Board for passing him into the class of the Equal-sided -- 
often deplored, with a tear in his venerable eye, a miscarriage of 
this kind, which had occured to his great-great-great-Grandfather, a 
respectable Working Man with an angle or brain of 59 degrees 30 
minutes.  According to his account, my unfortunately Ancestor, being 
afflicted with rheumatism, and in the act of being felt by a Polygon, 
by one sudden start accidentally transfixed the Great Man through the 
diagonal and thereby, partly in consequence of his long imprisonment 
and degradation, and partly because of the moral shock which pervaded 
the whole of my Ancestor's relations, threw back our family a degree 
and a half in their ascent towards better things.  The result was that 
in the next generation the family brain was registered at only 58 
degrees, and not till the lapse of five generations was the lost 
ground recovered, the full 60 degrees attained, and the Ascent from 
the Isosceles finally achieved.  And all this series of calamaties