before we go any further we would
better show Miss Alice our Municipal Poetry Factory. The whistle will
blow very shortly and our Divine Afflatus Dynamo will shut down, so if
she is to see that feature of our work now is the time to do it.

"Yes," said the March Hare, "although the office is in some confusion
owing to your recent Municipal Order Number 20,367 making _Alabazam_
rhyme with _Mulligatawney_, and extending the number of lines in the
municipal quatrains from four to twenty-three. The employees are finding
considerable difficulty in making twenty-three-line quatrains and at
least half the force have gone home suffering from acute attacks of
brainstormitis."

"It'll do em good," laughed the Hatter. "A good brain storm may result
in a few of them being struck. Come along, Miss Alice, and we'll show
you our City Poets at work."

"I don't think I understand," said Alice. "What is a city poet?"

[Illustration: "LARGER MEASURE THAN WAS THE CUSTOM"]

"He bears the same relation to Municipal Poetry that a White Wing bears
to the Street Cleaning Department," explained the Hatter. "Two years ago
the City took over all the Verse-making enterprises of Blunderland,
appointed a Municipalaureat, otherwise a Commissioner of Public Verse,
and started him along with a Department. He employs 16,743 poets who
provide all the poetry that is consumed by our people. It has resulted
in great good for everybody. Poetry is cheaper by eight cents a line
than it used to be, and, as you may have guessed from what the March
Hare has just said, we give larger measure than was the custom under
the private ownership of _Pegasus_. Quatrains have been increased from
four lines to twenty-three, and the old stingy fourteen-line sonnet has
been enlarged to fifty-four lines. We have also passed an ordinance
requiring that poems shall say what they mean, which is a vast
improvement on the old private control method whereunder anybody was
allowed to write rhymes which nobody could understand--like that thing
of Miss Arethusa Spink's, for instance, called Aspiration. Remember
that?"

"I don't think I ever heard it," said Alice.

"Well it went this way," said the Hatter, and striking a graceful
attitude he recited the following lines called:

ASPIRATION

_By Arethusa Spink_

Down by the purple opalescent sea,
Flung like a ribbon limp athwart the sky,
A rose lay blooming on the restless lea,
While sundry birds came chattering swe