The So-called Human Race Part 19

"h.e.l.lo!" said the Hatter. "I haven't seen you for a long time."

"No," said Alice; "I've been all over--in Wonderland, in Bookland, in Stageland, and forty other lands. People must be tired of my adventures.

Where am I now? I never know."

"In Cartoonland," said the Hatter.

"And what are _you_ doing here?" inquired Alice.

"I'm searching for an original cartoon idea," replied the Hatter. "Would you like to come along?"

"Ever so much," said Alice.

"The first thing we have to do is to get across that chasm," said the Hatter, pointing.

Alice saw a huge legend on the far wall of the chasm, and spelled it out--"O-b-l-i-v-i-o-n."

"Yes, Oblivion," said the Hatter. "That's where they dump defeated candidates and other undesirables. Come on, we can cross a little below here."

He indicated a thin plank that lay across the Chasm of Oblivion.

"Will it hold us?" said Alice.

"It has held the G. O. P. Elephant and the Democratic Donkey, and all sorts of people and things. Let's hurry over, as here comes the Elephant now, with Mr. Taft riding it, and the plank _might_ give way."

II.

"By the way," said the Hatter, "here is my hat store."

There were only two kinds in the window--square paper caps and high silk hats. Alice had never seen paper caps before.

"They're worn by the laboring man," said the Hatter; "but you never see them outside of Cartoonland. The plug hats are for Capitalists. I also keep whiskers; siders for Capital and ordinary for Labor."

"O, there's a railroad train!" said Alice, suddenly.

"No use taking that train," said the Hatter; "it doesn't go. Did you ever see an engine like that outside Cartoonland? And even if it did work we shouldn't get very far, as the rock Obstruction is always on the track."

"I'd just as soon walk," said Alice.

III.

"Mercy! there's a giant!" exclaimed Alice.

"Don't be alarmed," said the Hatter; "he's perfectly good natured."

"What an awful-looking creature!" said Alice.

"He's awfully out of drawing," said the Hatter, critically; "but, then, almost everything in Cartoonland is. It's the idea that counts."

"You said you were searching for an original idea," Alice reminded him.

"But I don't expect to find one," the Hatter replied. "You see, it wouldn't be any use; n.o.body would understand it. People like the old familiar things, you know."

"Still, we might happen on one," said Alice. "Let's walk along."

IV.

Suddenly a door opened, and a great quant.i.ty of rubbish was swept briskly into the street.

"That's the New Broom," said the Hatter. "There's been another election.

Evidently the Democrats won, as there goes the Donkey, waving his ears and hee-hawing."

"Oh, is that a fruit store?" asked Alice.

"No; the Republican headquarters," replied the Hatter. "That huge cornucopia you see is a symbol of Prosperity. Prosperity in Cartoonland is always represented by a horn of plenty with a pineapple in the muzzle. You've heard the expression, 'The pineapple of prosperity.'"

"No," said Alice, "but I've heard about the 'pineapple of politeness.'"

"That," said the Hatter, "is something else again."

V.

Presently they came to a collection of factories, the tall chimneys of which poured out smoke in great volume.

"Those are the Smoking Stacks of Industry," said the Hatter.

"What do they manufacture here?" asked Alice.

"Cartoonatums," said the Hatter. "A cartoonatum," he explained, "is a combination of wheels, rods, cogs, hoppers, cranks, etc., which sometimes looks like a sausage grinder and sometimes like a try-your-weight machine. It couldn't possibly go, any more than the locomotives in Cartoonland."

"Why don't the Cartoonlanders have machines that _can_ go?" inquired Alice.

"That," replied the Hatter, "would require a little study and observation."

VI.

As Alice and the Hatter walked along they pa.s.sed many curious things, such as Wolves in Sheep's Clothing, the skin of a Tiger nailed to a barn door, St. George and the Dragon, Father Knickerbocker, barrels of political mud, a huge serpent labeled "Anarchy," a drug store window full of bottles of Political Dope and boxes of Political Pills, an orchard of Political Plum Trees, and other objects which the Hatter said were as old as the hills. "I'm afraid there's nothing to hold us here,"

he declared.

Alice's attention was suddenly attracted by a little girl in a thin and ragged dress who, with an empty basket on her arm, was gazing wistfully at the goodies in a bakeshop window.

"She represents Poverty," said the Hatter. "When she isn't staring at a bakeshop she's looking at a proclamation by the ice trust, or something like that."

Alice spoke to the child and learned that she was one of a large family.

Her father, she said, was a New York cartoonist who one day had been visited by an Original Idea.