ch way the
car was going."

"Must have been awful," said Alice.

[Illustration: "BANGED INTO THE CAR AHEAD"]

"It was," said the Hatter, "and the public began to complain. One man
who got his nose pinched between two cars sued us for damages and we
had to return his fare. Finally one day one of the old bobtail cars got
running away, and the first we knew it banged into the car ahead and
went right through it, coming out in front still going like mad after
the next car, and we knew something had to be done."

"Mercy!" cried Alice. "I should think the passengers in the first car
would have sued you for that."

"They would have," said the Hatter, "if they could have scraped enough
of themselves together again to appear in court."

"It was a hard problem," said the March Hare.

"The hardest ever," asserted the Hatter. "But the White Knight there
gave me a clue to the solution--he's our Copperation Council--and I put
it up to him for an opinion, and after thinking it over for two months
he reported. The only way to prevent collisions, said he, is to cut the
ends off the cars. That was it, wasn't it, Judge?" he added, turning to
the White Knight.

"Yes," said the Knight, "only I put it in poetry. My precise words were

"The only way that I can find
To stop this car colliding stunt
Is cutting off the end behind
And likewise that in front."

"Splendid!" cried Alice, clapping her hands in glee. "That's fine."

"Thank you," said the White Knight. "You see, Miss Alice, I made a
personal study of collisions. The Mayor here ordered a fresh one every
day for me to investigate, and I noticed that whenever two cars bunked
into each other it was always at the ends and never in the middle. The
conclusion was inevitable. The ends being the venerable spot, abolish
them.

"A very careful and conscientious public servant," whispered the March
Hare aside to Alice. "When we have Municipal Ownership of the Federal
Government we're going to put him on the Supreme Court Bench. He means
vulnerable when he says venerable, but you mustn't mind that. When we
have Municipal Ownership of the English Language we'll make the words
mean what we want 'em to."

[Illustration: "THE CHIEF ENGINEER"]

"Then of course the question arose as to how we could do this," said the
Hatter. "I got the Chief Engineer of our Department of Public Works to
make some experiments, and would you believe it, when we cut the ends
on the cars, ther