Part 3 (1/2)

”Ee-liminate,” whispered the March Hare.

”I beg your pardon, Mr. Hare,” retorted the Hatter. ”I did not mean ee-liminate, which means to suppress, but subliminate, which means to sublimify or make sublime. I guess I know my own language.”

”Excuse me,” said the March Hare meekly. ”I haven't studied the M. O.

Dictionary beyond the letter Q, Mr. Mayor, and I was not aware that the Common Council had as yet pa.s.sed favourably upon subliminate, either,”

he added with some feeling.

”That is because it was not until yesterday that the Copperation Council decided that subliminate was a const.i.tutional word,” said the Hatter sharply. ”In view of his report to me, which I wrote myself and therefore know the provisions of, he states that subliminate is a perfectly just and proper word involving no infringement upon the rights of others, and in no wise impairing the value of innocent vested interests, and is therefore legal. Therefore, I shall use it whether the Common Council approves it or not. If they resolve that it is not a good word, I shall veto the resolution. If you don't like it I'll send you your resignation.”

”That being the case,” said the March Hare, ”I withdraw my objections.”

”Which,” observed the Hatter triumphantly, turning to Alice, ”shows you, my dear young lady, the very great value of the Munic.i.p.al Owners.h.i.+p idea as applied to the Board of Aldermen. As the White Knight put it in one of his poetical reports printed in Volume 347, of the Copperation Council's Opinions for October, 1906, page 926,

”A City may not own its Gas, Its Barber Shops, or Cars It may not raise Asparagra.s.s, Or run Official Bars; It may not own a big Hotel Or keep a Public Hen, But it will always find it well To own its Aldermen.

”When Aldermen were owned by private interests the public interests suffered, but in this town where the City Fathers belong to the City they have to do what the City tells them to, or get out.”

”It sounds good,” was all that Alice could think of to say.

”What I was trying to tell you when the Alderman interpolated--” the Hatter went on.

”There he goes again!” growled the March Hare.

”Was that the first thing we did when we took over the Gas Plant was to sublimify the externals of the works along lines of Architectural and Olfactoreal beauty both to the eye and to the nose, two organs of the human structure that private interests seldom pay much attention to. I asked myself two questions. First, is it necessary for a gas works to be ugly? Second, is it necessary for gas works to be so odourwhifferous that the smell of the Automobile is a dream of fragrant beauty alongside of it? To both these questions the answer was plain. Of course it ain't.

Beauty can be applied to the lines of a gas-tank just as readily as to the lines of a hippopotamus, and as for the odours, they are due to the fact that gas as it is now made does not smell pleasantly, but there is no reason why it should not be so manufactured that people would be willing to use it on their handkerchiefs. I learned that Professor Burbank of California had developed a cactus plant that could be used for a sofa cus.h.i.+on--why, I asked myself, could he not develop a gas-plant that will put forth flowers the perfume of which should make that of the violet, and the rose, sink into inoculated desoupitude?”

”It hardly seems possible, does it?” said Alice.

”To a private mind it presents insuperable difficulties,” said the Hatter, ”but to a public mind like my own nothing is impossible. If a man can do a seemingly impossible thing with one plant there is no reason why he shouldn't do a seemingly impossible thing with another plant, so I immediately wrote to Professor Burbank offering him a hundred thousand dollars in Blunderland Deferred Debenture Gas Improvement Bonds a year to come here and see what he could do to transmogrify our gas-plant.”

”Oh, I am so glad,” cried Alice delightedly. ”I should so love to meet Mr. Burbank and thank him for inventing the coreless apple----”

”You don't means the Corliss Engine, do you?” asked the White Knight.

”Well, I'm sorry,” said the Hatter, ”but Mr. Burbank wouldn't come unless we'd pay him real money, which, although we don't publish the fact broadcast, is not in strict accord with the highest principles of Munic.i.p.al Owners.h.i.+p. We contend that when people work for the common weal they ought to be satisfied to receive their pay in the common wealth, and under the M. O. system the most common kind of wealth is represented by Bonds. Consequently we wrote again to Mr. Burbank, and expressed our regret that a man of his genius should care more for his own selfish interests than for the public weal, and as a sort of sarcasm on his meanness I enclosed five of our 2963 Guaranteed Extension four per cents to pay for the two-cent stamp he had put upon his letter.”

”What are the 2963 Guaranteed Extension four per cents?” asked Alice.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ”STUDYING THE ECONOMIC THEORIES OF DR. WACK.”]

”They are sinking fund bonds payable in 2963, 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 n.o.body in the whole world knew less about it than I.