"Abbott, Edwin A - Flatland" - читать интересную книгу автора (Abbott Edwin A)

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