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

Ratter, Spatter and Scatter."

"Fine!" chortled the Hatter.

"Don't forget Chatter," put in Alice.

"Thank you--I'll make a note of it," said the Commissioner.

"And Snatter," growled the March Hare gloomily, who evidently felt that somebody ought to be looking for rhymes to March Hare as well.

"What does snatter mean?" demanded the Hatter frowning.

"It's a corrupt form for snatcher," retorted the March Hare. "One who snatches everything he can lay his hands on, without regard to whether it's his by divine right or not. I guess they can use it in poems calling attention to your Civic Virtues."

"Except by unanimous vote of the Common Council over my veto Snatter stays out of the Municipal Vocabulary," returned the Hatter coldly. "Your own confession that it is corrupt is enough to condemn it with me."

"I wouldn't use batter either, Mr. Mayor," said the Commissioner. "Batter is dough and we haven't got any worth mentioning."

"It is also to whack, slam, bang, bust, smack," retorted the Hatter, "so your recommendation is not accepted. Seems to me I can almost hear the campaign clubs singing as they march:

"O the noble, noble Hatter,
Ain't he grand!
How his enemies do scatter
Thro the land!
How his foemen he doth batter
With their idle gloomy chatter
On this Muni--cipal Matter
Beats the band!"

"O Gee!" ejaculated the March Hare. "Do you call that poetry?"

"Sir, I call it truth," returned the Hatter, "and poetry is truth just as art is truth, and if you don't believe it all you've got to do is to try and run against me next fall on that issue. I'll beat you to a stand-still."

"Of course you will," sighed the March Hare. "But you wouldn't but for that last ordinance you jammed through while I was off on my vacation."

"What was that?" demanded the Hatter.

"Giving the Election Commission absolute control over the votes, and then appointing yourself Election Commissioner ex-officio," said the March Hare. "I don't believe that Municipal Control of the ballot is constitutional."

"Well, it will be constitutional," said the Hatter drily.

"When?" demanded the March Hare.

"When we secure Municipal Control of the Constitution," said the Hatter. "I'll make it Constitutional if I have to rewrite the whole blessed Constitution myself."

Whereupon the Hatter walked majestically forth into the street once more, and Alice and the March Hare together with the White Knight followed meekly in his train.


CHAPTER VII


OWNERSHIP OF CHILDREN

"What time is it?" asked the Hatter, suddenly turning to the White Knight.

"Six o'clock," replied the White Knight, looking at his watch.

"Mercy!" cried Alice. "I had no idea it was so late! I shall have to run along home--it's supper time."

The Hatter laughed.

"O, as for that," he said, "there's no hurry. Under our present system of Municipal Ownership of Everything, I can issue, as Mayor, a general order postponing the Municipal Supper Hour to seven or eight o clock. Still--if you'd prefer to go home----"

"I don't want to," said Alice courteously, "but I think I'd better. My mother would be worried not finding me in the nursery. You see, I left home without telling anybody where I was going."

Again the Hatter laughed.

"What foolishness!" he ejaculated. "That's the great trouble with the private ownership of children. It worries their poor mothers, keeps 'em from their daily Bridge parties, interferes with that freedom of action which is guaranteed to the individual by the contravention of the United States----"

"Constitution, I guess you mean," suggested Alice.

"It used to be the Constitution," returned the Hatter, "but now it's the Contravention. It has been contravened so often in the past few years that our Reformed Language Commission at Washington has named it accordingly."

"It simply bears out what you said in your message approving the Public Ownership of Children Act passed by the Common Council last November, which I wrote for you, and consequently consider a very able document," said the White Knight.

"The Public Ownership of Children?" cried Alice, with a look of alarm on her face.

"Yes," said the Hatter. "Just as the Nation has gone in for paternalism, we here in Blunderland have gone in for maternalism. The children here belong to the city----"

"But--" Alice began.

"Now, don't bother," said the Hatter kindly. "It works very well. It has reduced children to a state of scientific control which is as careful and as effective as that of the street cleaning department or the public parks, and it has emancipated the mothers as well as materially decreased the financial obligations of the fathers."

Alice's lip quivered slightly, and she began to feel a little bit afraid of the Hatter.

"I want to go home," she whimpered.

"Certainly--as you wish," said the Hatter. "We'll take you there at once. Come along."

Reassured by the Hatter's kindly manner Alice took her companion's outstretched hand and they walked along the highway together until they came to a handsome apartment house fronting upon a beautiful park, where the Hatter pressed an electric button at one side of the massive entrance. The response to the bell was immediate, and Alice was pleased to find that the person to answer was none other than the Duchess herself.

"Why, how-di-doo," said the Duchess affably. "Glad to see you again, Miss Alice."

"Thank you," said Alice. "It is very nice to be here. Do you live in this beautiful building?"

"Yes," said the Duchess. "You see, I've just been appointed Commissioner of Maternity. I'm what you might call the official mother of the town. Since that great Statesman, the Hatter"--here the Duchess winked graciously at the March Hare--"devised his crowning achievement in the Municipal Control of the Children and appointed me to be the Head of the Department, I have been stationed here."

"And a mighty good old mother she is!" ejaculated the Hatter with fervour.

"Palaverer!" said the Duchess coyly.

"Not at all," said the Hatter. "I speak not as a man, but as a Mayor, and what I say is to be construed as an official tribute to a faithful and deserving public servant."

"Servant, sir?" repeated the Duchess haughtily.

"In the American sense," said the Hatter with a low bow. "In the sense that the servant is as good as, if not better than the employer, Madam."

"That man's a perfect Dipsomaniac," said the March Hare.

"Diplomat, man--diplomat," corrected the White Knight. "A dipsomaniac is a very different thing from a Diplomat. Consuls may be dipsomaniacs, but a Diplomat is a man worthy of Ambassadorial honours.

"Oh--I see," said the March Hare. "Well--he's a Diplomat all right, all right."

"How are things going to-day, Duchess?" asked the Hatter. "Children happy?"

"They will be in time," said the Duchess. "So many of them have been brought up so far on the _Ladies' Home Journal_ system that it is hard to introduce the new Blunderland method without friction."

"I was afraid of that," said the Hatter. "How does the compulsory soda-water regulation work?"

"Splendidly," said the Duchess. "Since I started in in January to make the children drink five glasses of Vanilla Cream soda every day as a matter of routine and duty, sixty per cent. of them have come to hate it. I think that by the end of the year we shall have stamped out the love of soda almost entirely. The same way with caramels and other candies in place of beef. We have caramels for breakfast, gum-drops for dinner and marshmallows for tea, regularly, and last night seventeen of the children presented a petition asking for beefsteak, mutton chops and boiled rice. I have a firm conviction that when the new law, requiring beef to be sold at candy stores, and compelling those in charge of the young to teach them that boiled rice and hominy are bad for the teeth, goes into effect, we shall find the children clamouring for wholesome food as eagerly as they do now for things that ruin their little tummies."

"It's a splendid system--and how are you meeting the matinee problem?" asked the March Hare.

"Same way," said the Duchess. "Every Wednesday and Saturday afternoon we make 'em go to a matinee, rain or shine, whether they want to or not, and really it's pathetic to see how some of the little dears pine for a half-holiday with a hoople, and since I forbade the youngsters to even look at the back of a geography or a spelling book, it is most amusing to see how they sneak into the library and devour the contents of those two books when they think nobody's looking. I caught one of the boys reading an Arithmetic in bed last night, wholly neglecting his Jack Harkaway books that I had commanded him to read, and leaving his 'Bim, the Broncho Buster of Buffalo,' absolutely uncut.

"Fine!" chuckled the Hatter. "And now, my dear Duchess, will you oblige me by taking charge of Miss Alice? She has expressed a desire to go home and so I have brought her here."

"Certainly," said the Duchess. "I'll look after her."

"You'll excuse us, Alice," said the Hatter, politely. "We'd escort you further ourselves, but a question has come before the Municipal Ownership Caucus that we must settle before the meeting of the Common Council to-night. Certain of our members claim that they have a right to sell their votes for $500 apiece----"

"Mercy!" cried Alice. "Why, that is--that is terrible."

"It certainly is," said the March Hare ruefully. "It's more than terrible, it's rotten. Here I've been holding out for $1,250 for mine, and these duffers want to go in for a cut rate that will absolutely ruin the business."

"It's a very important matter," said the Hatter. "After all our striving to elevate the people we don't want them to make themselves too cheap. For my part I don't think they should let go of a vote on any question for less than $2,500."

"That's all right, Mr. Mayor," said the White Knight. "But you don't want to frighten capital, you know."

"Well, you and I disagree on that point," said the Mayor. "Capital isn't at all necessary to the success of our schemes. My watchword is Bonds, and as long as I have a printing press to print 'em, and a fountain pen to sign 'em I'm not going to be influenced one way or another by a feeling of subserviency to the capitalist class. Good night, Miss Alice. Glad to have met you and I hope you will have a pleasant time with the Duchess. Here," he added, taking a beautifully printed green and gold paper from his pocket, "here is a Blanket Mortgage 18% Deferred Debenture Bond on the Main Street Ferry of a par value of $100,000 payable in 3457, as a souvenir of your visit."

"A hundred thousand dollars," cried Alice. "For me?"

"No," corrected the Hatter. "A hundred thousand dollar bond. You don't get the money until 3457, and not then unless you present it in person to the City Treasurer."

With which munificent gift the Hatter respectfully bowed himself away and made on, followed by the March Hare.

"Good-bye, Alice," said the White Knight sympathetically; and then thrusting a paper in her hand, he leaned forward and whispered into the little girl's ear, "If you get into trouble, use this."