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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°, ordered them to be relieved before I began my defence, by an inferior class of 2° or 3°. 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 prisoner, and - if I except the occasional visits of my brother - debarred from all companionship save that of my jailers. My brother is one of the best of Squares, just, sensible, cheerful, and not without fraternal affection; yet I confess that my weekly interviews, at least in one respect, cause me the bitterest pain. He was present when the Sphere manifested himself in the Council Chamber; he saw the Sphere's changing sections; he heard the explanation of the phenomena then given to the Circles. Since that time, scarcely a week has passed during seven whole years, without his hearing from me a repetition of the part I played in that manifestation, together with ample descriptions of all the phenomena in Spaceland, and the arguments for the existence of Solid things derivable from Analogy. Yet - I take shame to be forced to confess it - my brother has not yet grasped the nature of the Third Dimension, and frankly avows his disbelief in the existence of a Sphere.
Hence I am absolutely destitute of converts, and, for aught that I can see, the mille
That is the hope of my brighter moments. Alas, it is not always so. Heavily weighs on me at times the burdensome reflection that I ca
Footnotes
The Author desires me to add, that the misconception of some of his critics on this matter has induced him to insert in his dialogue with the Sphere, certain remarks which have a bearing on the point in question, and which he had previously omitted as being tedious and u
"What need of a certificate?" a Spaceland critic may ask: "Is not the procreation of a Square Son a certificate from Nature herself, proving the Equalsidedness of the Father?" I reply that no Lady of any position will marry an uncertified Triangle. Square offspring has sometimes resulted from a slightly Irregular Triangle; but in almost every such case the Irregularity of the first generation is visited on the third; which either fails to attain the Pentagonal rank, or relapses to the Triangular.
When I was in Spaceland I understood that some of your Priestly circles have in the same way a separate entrance for Farmers, Villagers and Teachers of Board Schools (Spectator, Sept. 1884, p. 1255) that they may "approach in a becoming and respectful ma
When I say "sitting," of course I do not mean any change of attitude such as you in Spaceland signify by that word: for as we have no feet, we can no more "sit" nor "stand" (in your sense of the word) than one of your soles or flounders.
Nevertheless, we perfectly well recognize the different mental states of volition implied in "lying," "sitting," and "standing," which are to some extent indicated to a beholder by a slight increase of lustre corresponding to the increase of volition.
But on this, and a thousand other kindred subjects, time forbids me to dwell.