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 mass-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 Municipal Ownership 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 passed 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.

CHAPTER IV

THE CITY-OWNED POLICE

After Alice and her companions had enjoyed the aromatic delights of the
Blunderland Gas Plant the Hatter and his Cabinet went into executive
session for a few hours to decide where they should go next. The
interests of Blunderland were so varied that this was a somewhat
difficult matter to settle, especially as Mr. Alderman March Hare, who
was a great stickler for the rights of the honourable body to which he
belonged, wished to have the question referred to a special meeting of
the Common Council. The White Knight as Corporati