I was "perfect" in geography, a most erudite subject.
But what was the truth?
The words that I repeated so accurately on my paper had about as much meaning to me as the words of the Psalms I used to chant in Hebrew.

I got an idea that the city of Chelsea, and the world in general, was laid out flat, like the common, and shaved off at the ends, to allow the north, south, east, and west to snuggle up close, like the frame around a picture.

If I looked at the map, I was utterly bewildered; I could find no correspondence between the picture and the verbal explanations.

With words I was safe; I could learn any number of words by heart, and sometime or other they would pop out of the medley, clothed with meaning.

Chelsea, I read, was bounded on all sides--"bounded" appealed to my imagination--by various things that I had never identified, much as I had roamed about the town.