Alice in Blunderland - John Kendrick Bangs (best non fiction books of all time .TXT) 📗

only we guarantee to extend the date of payment to 3963 in case the sinking fund has sunk so low we don't feel like paying them in 2963," explained the Hatter. "It's an ingenious financial idea that I got from studying the economic theories of Dr. Wack, Professor of Repudiation and Other Political Economies at the Wack Business College at Squantumville, Florida. It is the only economic theory I know of that absolutely prevents debt from becoming a burden. But that aside, when Mr. Burbank showed that he preferred fooling with such futile things as pineapples and hollyhocks, to the really uplifting work of providing the people with gas that was redolent of the spices of Araby, I resolved to do the thing myself."

"He is a man of real inventive genius," said the March Hare, anxious, apparently, to square himself with the Hatter again.

"Thank you, Alderman," said the Hatter. "It is a real pleasure to find myself strictly in accord with your views once more. But to resume, Miss Alice--as I say I resolved to tackle the problem myself."

"Fine," said Alice. "So you went in and studied how to make gas the old way and then----"

"Not at all," interrupted the Hatter. "Not at all. That would have been fatal. I found that everybody who knew how to make gas the old way said the thing was impossible. Hence, I reasoned, the man who will find it possible must be somebody who never knew anything about the old way of making gas, and nobody in the whole world knew less about it than I. Manifestly then I became the chosen instrument to work the reform, so I plunged in and you really can't imagine how easy it all turned out. I had no old prejudices in gas-making to overcome, no set, finicky ideas to serve as obstacles to progress, and inside of a week I had it. I filled the gas tanks half full of cologne, and then pumped hot air through them until they were chock full. I figured it out that cologne was nothing more than alcohol flavoured with axiomatic oils----"

"Aromatic," interrupted the March Hare, forgetting himself for the moment.

The Hatter frowned heavily upon the Alderman, and there is no telling what would have happened had not the White Knight interfered to protect the offender.

"It's still an open question, Mr. Mayor," he observed, "if axiomatic applied to a scent is constitutional. If an odour should become axiomatic we could never get rid of it you see, and I think the Alderman has distinguished authority for his correction, which----"

"O very well," said the Hatter. "Let it go. I prefer axiomatic, but the private predilections of an official should not be permitted to influence his official actions. I intend always to operate within the limits of the law, so if the law says aromatic, aromatic be it. I figured that cologne was nothing more than alcohol flavoured with aromatic oils, and that inasmuch as both alcohol and oil burn readily, there was no reason why hot air passed through them should not burn also, and carry oil some of the aroma as well."

"It certainly was a very pretty idea," said Alice.

"All the M. O. ideas are pretty," said the March Hare. "It is only the question of reducing beauty to the basis of practical utility that confronts us."

"And how did it work?" asked Alice, very much interested.

"Beautifully," said the Hatter. "Only it wouldn't burn--just why I haven't been able to find out. But in the matter of perfume it was fine. People who turned on their jets the first night soon found their houses smelling like bowers of roses, and a great many of them liked it so much that they turned on every jet in the house, and left them turned on all day, so that in the mere matter of consumption twice as much of my aromatic illuminating air was used in a week as the companies had charged for under the old system, and we used the same metres, too. In addition to this, as a mere life-saving device, my invention proved to have a wonderful value. In the first place nobody could blow it out and be found gas-fixturated the next morning----"

"Good word that--so much more expressive than the old privately owned dictionary word asphyxiated," said the March Hare.

The Hatter nodded his appreciation of the March Hare's compliment, and admitted him once more to his good graces.

"And nobody could commit suicide with it the way they used to do with the old kind of gas, because, you see, it was, after all, only hot air, which is good for the lungs whichever way it's going, in or out. We use hot air all the time in our Administration and it is wonderful what results you can get from it," he went on. "But it wouldn't light. In fact when anybody tried to light it, such was the pressure, it blew out the match, which I regard, as an additional point in its favour. If we have gas that blows out matches the minute the match is applied to it, does not that reduce the chance of fire from the careless habit some people have of throwing lighted matches into the waste-basket?"

"It most certainly does," said the White Knight gravely, and in such tones of finality that Alice did not venture to dispute his assertion.

"We're all agreed upon that point," said the Hatter. "But there were complaints of course. Some people, mostly capitalists who were rich enough to have libraries of their own, complained that they couldn't read nights because the gas wouldn't light. I replied that if they wanted to read they could go to the Public Library, where there were oil lamps, and electric lights. Besides reading at night is bad for the eyes. Others objected that they couldn't see to go to bed. The answer to that was simple enough. People don't need to see to go to bed. They may need to see when they are dressing in the morning, but when they go to bed all they have to do is to take their clothes off and go, and I added that people who didn't know enough to do that had better have nurses. Finally some of the chief kickers got up a mass-meeting and protested that the new gas wasn't gas at all, and in view of that fact refused to pay their gas tax."

"Oho!" said Alice. "That was pretty serious I should think."

"It seemed so at first," said the Hatter, "but just then the beauty of the Municipal Ownership scheme stepped in. I called a special meeting of the Common Council and they settled the question once for all."

"Good!" cried Alice "How did they do it?"

"They passed a resolution," said the Hatter, "unanimously declaring the aromatic hot-air to be gas of the most excellent quality, and made it a misdemeanor for anybody to say that it wasn't. I signed the ordinance and from that minute on our gas was gas by law."

"Still," said Alice, "those people had already said it wasn't. Did they back down?"

"Most of 'em did," laughed the Hatter. "And the rest were fined $500 apiece and sent to jail for six months. You see we made the law sufficiently retroactive to grab the whole bunch. Since then there have been no complaints."

Whereupon the Hatter invited Alice to stroll through the gas-plant with him, which the little girl did, and declared it later to have been sweeter than a walk through a rose-garden, which causes me to believe that the Mayor's scheme was a pretty wonderful one after all, and quite worthy of a Hatter thrust by the vagaries of politics into the difficult business of gas making.


CHAPTER IV


THE CITY-OWNED POLICE

After Alice and her companions had enjoyed the aromatic delights of the Blunderland Gas Plant the Hatter and his Cabinet went into executive session for a few hours to decide where they should go next. The interests of Blunderland were so varied that this was a somewhat difficult matter to settle, especially as Mr. Alderman March Hare, who was a great stickler for the rights of the honourable body to which he belonged, wished to have the question referred to a special meeting of the Common Council. The White Knight as Corporation Counsel, however, advised the Hatter that there was no warrant in law compelling him to accede to the March Hare's demand.

"The Municipal Ownership of Rubbernecks act has not yet been passed," he observed. "Consequently visitors to our City can be shown about in any way in which the party in charge chooses to choose."

"All right if you say so," said March Hare coldly. "Only I'd like to have that opinion in writing. Public officials nowadays are too prune to deny----"

"Prone, I guess you mean," laughed the Hatter gleefully.

"I prefer prune," said the March Hare, with dignity. "Public officials are too prune nowadays to deny what they say in private conversation to encourage me to take any chances."

"Certainly," returned the White Knight. "I'll write it out for you with pleasure." Whereupon, taking a piece of chalk from his pocket, he wrote with it on the side of a convenient gas tank the following opinion:


IN RE WHAT TO DO NEXT

Opinion 7,543,467,223. Liber 29. Gas Tank No. 6

You can go to the People's Shoe Shop,
Or down to the new Town Pump.
You can visit the Civic Glue Shop,
Or call on the Public Chump.

You can visit the Social Rooster,
Or sample Municipal Cheese--
In short you can do what you choose ter,
And go where you dee dash please.

(Signed) JOHN DOE WHITE KNIGHT,
Copperation Counsel.

Meanwhile Alice had been turned over to the Chief of Police to be cared for, and was charmed to discover that that individual was none other than her old friend the Dormouse whom she had met in her trip through Wonderland at the Hatter's tea-party.

"How did you ever come to be Chief of Police?" she cried delightedly, as she recognised him.

"I'm the soundest sleeper in town," he replied with a yawn, "so they made me head of the force. You see, young lady, the great trouble with the average policeman is that he's too wide-awake, and that leads to graft. When the Hatter's Municipal Police Commission looked into the question they found that the Cop who spent most of his time asleep spent less of his time clubbing people who wouldn't whack up with him on the profits of their business. Every ossifer who has been convicted of petty larceny in the past, the records show, has been a fellow who stayed awake most of the time, and no ossifer has ever yet been known to go in for graft or get a record for clubbing innocent highwaymen over the head while he was asleep either on a Park Bench, or in an alleyway. Consequently, says they, Mr. Dormouse who wakes up only on every fifth Thursday in February will make the best Police ossifer in the bunch, and being the best had ought to be chose chief. Hence accordingly, it became thus. Moreover I am a champion Tea Drinker."

"What's that got to do with it?" demanded Alice.

"Everything," said the Dormouse, rubbing his eyes sleepily. "Every blessed thing. Tea Drinking is one of our hardest duties under the new system providing for the Municipal