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Abbott, Edwin Abbott, 1838-1926

"Flatland: a romance of many dimensions (Illustrated)"


The birth of a True Equilateral Triangle from Isosceles parents
is the subject of rejoicing in our country for many furlongs around.
After a strict examination conducted by the Sanitary and Social Board,
the infant, if certified as Regular, is with solemn ceremonial
admitted into the class of Equilaterals. He is then immediately
taken from his proud yet sorrowing parents and adopted by some
childless Equilateral, who is bound by oath never to permit the child
henceforth to enter his former home or so much as to look upon
his relations again, for fear lest the freshly developed organism may,
by force of unconscious imitation, fall back again into
his hereditary level.
The occasional emergence of an Equilateral from the ranks
of his serf-born ancestors is welcomed, not only by
the poor serfs themselves, as a gleam of light and hope shed upon
the monotonous squalor of their existence, but also by the Aristocracy
at large; for all the higher classes are well aware that
these rare phenomena, while they do little or nothing to vulgarize
their own privileges, serve as a most useful barrier against
revolution from below.


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