Produced by Annie McGuire
[Illustration]
ALICE IN BLUNDERLAND
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
A House-boat on the Styx
Coffee and Repartee
Mollie and the Unwiseman
Worsted Man; A Musical Play for Amateurs
The Enchanted Typewriter
Ghosts I Have Met
Mrs. Raffles
Olympian Nights
R. Holmes & Co.
And Many Other Short Stories
Alice in Blunderland
An Iridescent Dream
By
JOHN KENDRICK BANGS
Illustrated by
ALBERT LEVERING
New York
Doubleday, Page & Company
1907
COPYRIGHT, 1906, BY THE
MUNICIPAL OWNERSHIP PUBLISHING BUREAU
COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
PUBLISHED, SEPTEMBER, 1907
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Off to Blunderland 3
II. The Immovable Trolley 19
III. The Aromatic Gas Plant 37
IV. The City-owned Police 56
V. The Municipaphone 73
VI. The Department of Public Verse 92
VII. The Municipal Ownership of Children 108
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
The Cheshire Cat 5
The March Hare 6
"'Listen here'" 7
The municipal chewery 11
The municipal toothery 13
"Handing her a card" 17
"'Put that fellow off'" 20
"Requested the Hatter to crack a filbert for him" 24
"'Banged into the car ahead'" 27
The Chief Engineer 30
"'It came to me like a flash'" 31
"'Studying the economic theories of Dr. Wack'" 45
"The White Knight interfered" 48
"'In the matter of perfume it was fine'" 50
"'Nobody could be gas-fixturated'" 51
"Wrote on the side of a convenient gas tank" 57
"'I'm the soundest sleeper in town'" 59
"'Tea is served on every corner'" 64
"'We respond immediately to the call'" 67
"Made off with the agility of an antelope" 69
"'You can talk all you please'" 73
"'Fined five dollars'" 84
"'The dictionary we are compiling'" 85
"Alice transfixed at the phone" 86
"'The biggest jackass from Dan to Beersheba'" 87
"'Larger measure than was the custom'" 94
"Greeted by the Commissioner, the Haberdasher" 99
"'It runs this way, your honour'" 100
"'Our thinking department'" 102
"'When they think nobody's looking'" 116
"'If you get into trouble, use this'" 119
"Seizing her by the arm" 122
"'Why--have I--I really fallen?'" 124
CHAPTER I
OFF TO BLUNDERLAND
It was one of those dull, drab, depressing days when somehow or other it
seemed as if there wasn't anything anywhere for anybody to do. It was
raining outdoors, so that Alice could not amuse herself in the garden,
or call upon her friend Little Lord Fauntleroy up the street; and
downstairs her mother was giving a Bridge Party for the benefit of the
M. O. Hot Tamale Company, which had lately fallen upon evil days.
Alice's mother was a very charitably disposed person, and while she
loathed gambling in all its forms, was nevertheless willing for the sake
of a good cause to forego her principles on alternate Thursdays, but she
was very particular that her little daughter should be kept aloof from
contaminating influences, so that Alice found herself locked in the
nursery and, as I have already intimated, with nothing to do. She had
read all her books--The House of Mirth, the novels of Hall Caine and
Marie Corelli--the operation for appendicitis upon her dollie, while
very successful indeed, had left poor Flaxilocks without a scrap of
sawdust in her veins, and therefore unable to play; and worst of all,
her pet kitten, under the new city law making all felines public
property, had grown into a regular cat and appeared only at mealtimes,
and then in so disreputable a condition that he was not thought to be
fit company for a child of seven.
"Oh dear!" cried Alice impatiently, as she sat rocking in her chair,
listening to the pattering of the rain upon the roof of the veranda. "I
do wish there was something to do, or somebody to do, or somewhere to
go. The Gov'ment ought to provide covered playgrounds for children on
wet days. It wouldn't cost much, to put a glass cover on the Park!"
"A very good, idea! I'll make a note of that," said a squeaky little
voice at her side.
[Illustration: THE CHESHIRE CAT]
Alice sprang to her feet in surprise. She had supposed she was alone,
and for a moment she was frightened, but a glance around reassured her,
for strange to say, seated on the radiator warming his toes was her old
friend the Hatter, the queer old chap she had met in her marvellous trip
through Wonderland, and with him was the March Hare, the Cheshire Cat,
and the White Knight from Looking Glass Land.
"Why--you dear old things!" she cried. "You here?"
"I don't know about these others, but I'm here," returned the Hatter.
"The others seem to be here, but I respectfully decline to take my
solemn daffydavy on the subject, because my doctor says I'm all the time
seeing things that ain't. Besides I don't believe in swearing."
[Illustration: THE MARCH HARE]
"We're here all right," put in the March Hare. "I know because we ain't
anywhere else, and when you ain't anywhere else you can make up your
mind that you're here."
"Well, I'm awfully glad to see you," said Alice. "I've been so
lonesome----"
"We know that," said the White Knight. "We've been studying your case
lately and we thought we'd come down and see what we could do for you.
The fact is the Hatter here has founded a model city, where everything
goes just right, and we came to ask you to pay us a call."
"A city?" cried Alice.
"Yep," said the March Hare. "It's called Blunderland and between you and
me I don't believe anybody but the Hatter could have invented one like
it. His geegantic brain conceived the whole thing, and I tell you it's a
corker."
"Where is it?" asked Alice.
"That's telling," said the Hatter. "I haven't had it copyrighted yet,
and until I do I ain't going to tell where it is. You can't be too
careful about property these days with copperations lurkin' around
everywhere to grab everything in sight."
"What's a copperation?" asked Alice.
"What? Never heard of a Copperation?" demanded the Hatter. "Mercy! Ever
hear of the Mumps, or the Measles, or the Whooping Cough?"
"Yes--but I never knew they were called Copperations," said Alice.
[Illustration: "LISTEN HERE"]
"Well, they ain't, but they're no worse--so they ought to be," said the
Hatter. "Listen here. I'll tell you what a copperation is."
And putting his hat in front of his mouth like a telephone the Hatter
recited the following poem through it:
THE COPPERATION
A copperation is a beast
With forty leven paws
That doesn't ever pay the least
Attention to the laws.
It grabs whatever comes in sight
From hansom cabs to socks
And with a grin of mad delight
It turns 'em into stocks
And then it takes a rubber hose
Connected with the sea
And pumps em full of H+2+Os
Of various degree
And when they're swollen up so stout
You'd think they'd surely bust
They souse 'em once again and out
They come at last a Trust
And when the Trust is ready for
One last and final whack
They let the public in the door
To buy the water back.
"See?" said the Hatter as he finished.
"No," said Alice. "It sounded very pretty through your hat, but I don't
understand it. Why should people buy water when they can get it for
nothing in the ocean?"
"You're like all the rest," groaned the Hatter. "Nobody seems to
understand but me, and somehow or other I can't make it clear to other
people."
"You might if you didn't talk through your hat," grinned the Cheshire
Cat.
"Then I'd have to stop being a public character," said the Hatter. "I'm
not going to sacrifice my career just because you're too ignorant to see
what I'm driving at. I don't mind telling you though, Alice, that
outside of poetry a Copperation is a Creature devised by Selfish
Interests to secure the Free Coinage of the Atlantic Ocean."
"Little drops of water,
Plenty of hot air,
Make a Copperation
A pretty fat affair,"
warbled the March Hare.
"O well," said Alice, "what about it? Suppose there is such an animal
around. What are we going to do about it?"
"We're going to gerraple with it," said the Hatter, with a valiant shake
of his hat. "We're going to grab it by its throat, and shake it down,
and shackle it so that in forty years it will become as tame as a fly
or any other highly domesticated animal."
"But how?" asked Alice. "You aren't going to do this yourself, are you?
Single handed and alone?"
[Illustration: THE MUNICIPAL CHEWERY]
"Yes," said the Hatter. "The March Hare and the White Knight and I.
We've started a city to do it with. We've sprinkled our streets with
Rough on Copperations until there isn't one left in the place.
Everything in town belongs to the People--street cars, gutters,
pavements, theatres, electric light, cabs, manicures, dogs, cats, canary
birds, hotels, barber shops, candy stores, hats, umbrellas, bakeries,
cakeries, steakeries, shops,--you can't think of a thing that the city
don't own. No more private ownership of anything from a toothbrush to a
yacht, and the result is we are all happy."
"It sounds fine," said Alice. "Though I think I should rather own my own
toothbrush."
"You naturally would under the old system," assented the Hatter. "Under
a system of private ownership owning your own teeth you'd prefer to own
your own toothbrush, but our Council has just passed a law making teeth
public property. You see we found that some people had teeth and other
people hadn't, which is hardly a fair condition under a Republican form
of Government. It gave one class of citizens a distinct advantage over
other people and the Declaration of Independence demands absolute
equality for all. One man owning his own teeth could eat all the hickory
nuts he wanted just because he had teeth to crack 'em with, while
another man not having teeth had either to swallow em whole, which
ruined his digestion, or go without, which wasn't fair.
"I see," said Alice.
[Illustration: THE MUNICIPAL TOOTHERY]
"So it occurred to Mr. Alderman March Hare here," continued the Hatter,
"that we should legislate in the matter, and at our last session we
passed a law providing for the Municipal Ownership of Teeth, so that now
when a toothless wanderer wants a hickory nut cracked he has a perfectly
legal right to stop anybody in the street who has teeth and make him
crack the nut for him. Of course we've had a little trouble enforcing
the law--alleged private rights are always difficult to get around.
Long-continued possession has seemed so to convince people that they
have inherent rights to the things they have enjoyed, that they put up a
fight and appeal to the Constitution and all that, and even when you
mention the fact, as I did in a case that came up the other day (when a
man refused to bite on another chap's cigar for him), that the
Constitution doesn't mention teeth anywhere in all its classes, they are
not easy to convince. This fellow insisted that his teeth were private
property, and no city law should make them public property. He's going
to take it to the Supreme Court. Meanwhile his teeth are in the custody
of the sheriff.
"And what has become of the man?" asked Alice.
"He's in the custody of the sheriff too," said the Hatter. "We couldn't
arrange it any other way except by pulling his teeth, and he didn't want
that."
"I can't blame him," said Alice reflectively. "I should hate to have my
teeth taken away from me."
"O there's no obfuscation about it," said the Hatter.
"Confuscation," corrected the March Hare. "I wish you would get that
word right. It's too important to fool with."
"Thank you," replied the Hatter. "My mind is on higher things than mere
words. However, as I was saying, there is no cobfuscation about it. We
don't take a man's teeth away from him without compensation. We pay him
what the teeth are worth and place them at the service of the whole
community.
"Where do you get the money to pay him?" asked Alice.
"We give him a Municipal Bond," explained the Hatter. "It's a ten per
cent. bond costing two cents to print. When he cracks a hickory nut for
the public, the man he cracks it for pays him a cent. He rings this up
on a cash register he carries pinned to his vest, and at the end of
every week turns in the cash to the City Treasury. That money is used to
pay the interest on the bonds. The scheme has the additional advantage
that it makes a man's teeth negotiable property in the sense that
whereas under the old system he couldn't very well sell his teeth, under
the new system he can sell the bond if he gets hard up. Moreover, the
City Government having acquired control has to pay all his dentist's
bills, supply tooth powder and so on, which results in a great saving to
the individual. It hardly costs the city anything, except for the Tooth
Inspector, who is paid $1,200 a year, but we can handle that easily
enough, provided the people will use the Public Teeth in sufficiently
large numbers to bring in dividends. Anyhow, we have gone in for it,
and I see no reason why it should not work as well as any other
Municipal Ownership scheme."
"I should love to go and see your city," said Alice, who, though not
quite convinced as to the desirability of the Municipal Ownership of
Teeth, was nevertheless very much interested.
"Very well," said the Hatter. "We can go at once, for I see the train is
already standing in the Station."
"The Station?" cried Alice. "What Station?"
[Illustration: "HANDING HER A CARD"]
But before the Hatter could answer, Alice, glancing through the window,
caught sight of a very beautiful train standing before the veranda, and
in a moment she found herself stepping on board with her friends, while
a soft-spoken guard at the door was handing her an engraved card upon a
silver salver "Respectfully Inviting Miss Alice to Step Lively There."