Place a needle on the table. Then, with your eye on the level of
the table, look at it side-ways, and you see the whole length of it;
but look at it end-ways, and you see nothing but a point,
it has become practically invisible. Just so is it with one of our Women.
When her side is turned towards us, we see her as a straight line;
when the end containing her eye or mouth--for with us these
two organs are identical--is the part that meets our eye,
then we see nothing but a highly lustrous point;
but when the back is presented to our view,
then--being only sub-lustrous, and, indeed,
almost as dim as an inanimate object--her hinder
extremity serves her as a kind of Invisible Cap.

The dangers to which we are exposed from our Women must
now be manifest to the meanest capacity of Spaceland.
If even the angle of a respectable Triangle in the
middle class is not without its dangers;
if to run against a Working Man involves a gash;
if collision with an Officer of the military class
necessitates a serious wound; if a mere touch from
the vertex of a Private Soldier brings with it danger of death;
--what can it be to run against a woman, except absolute
and immediate destruction? And when a Woman is invisible,
or visible only as a dim sub-lustrous point,
how difficult must it be, even for the most cautious,
always to avoid collision!

Many are the enactments made at different times in the different
States of Flatland, in order to minimize this peril;
and in the Southern and less temperate climates,