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 Municipal Ownership 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 Asparagrass,
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 cushion--why, I asked myself, could he not develop a
gas-plant that will put forth flowers the perfume of which shou