etly by.
'Twas then my soul that all too long had slept,
Awoke from out its iridescent nap,

crept
Down where the pink-cheeked crocus blossoms
From out fair Nature's over-bounteous lap,
And cried aloud "Alas! What hath betode?
What dream is this that like the ambient brook
Forbids the mind to face the solemn goad
And know itself forsook!"

The Hatter paused.

"Well?" said Alice, slightly puzzled.

"That's all there was to it," said the Hatter. "It was printed in one of
our Magazines and within forty-eight hours the ambulance from the Insane
Asylum was called out 737 times by people who had gone crazy trying to
find out what it meant. It capped the climax. I called a special meeting
of the Common Council to take the matter up purely as a matter of public
health, and before I went to bed that night they had passed and I had
signed an Act giving the control of the Verse Industry to the City and
taking it out of the hands of irresponsible, unlicensed independent
poets.

"And a good job it was too," said the March Hare.

"And you chose one of the best poets in town for the Commissioner, I
suppose?" suggested Alice.

"No we didn't," said the Hatter. "I didn't want any Moonshine in a City
Department and no poet is a good business man. I picked out a very
successful Haberdasher in the Sixth Ward for the delicate business of
organising the Department, and he has done most excellent work. We found
that just as a first class confectioner made a splendid manager of our
gas plant, and a successful Hoki-Poki merchant had the required push to
keep our trolley systems going, so the Haberdasher had the precise kind
of genius to manage the poets. He won't stand any nonsense from them,
and any poem that he can't understand is immediately thrown into the
Civic Waste-Basket, taken to the Municipal Ferry and used for fuel to
run the boats. I guess we burn nineteen tons of refuse verse a day,
don't we, Alderman?"

"About that--on the average," said the March Hare. "Sometimes it gets as
high as twenty tons and occasionally it falls off to sixteen--but using
these rejected manuscripts in place of coal has reduced the loss on the
Ferry about thirty-eight dollars a year in real money."

"How much is that in bonds?" asked Alice slyly.

"O--let's see," said the Hatter, his face getting very red, "well--I
should say on a basis of 43-1/3% to one, thirty-eight dollars woul