Part 3 (2/2)
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.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”THE WHITE KNIGHT INTERFERED”]
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 const.i.tutional. 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 pa.s.sed 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.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”IN THE MATTER OF PERFUME IT WAS FINE”]
”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 n.o.body could blow it out and be found gas-fixturated the next morning----”
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”n.o.bODY COULD BE GAS-FIXTURATED”]
”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 n.o.body 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 a.s.sertion.
”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 ma.s.s-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 Munic.i.p.al Owners.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sed 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.
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