So splice the garboard strakes, my lads, And reef the starboard screw-- For it sticks like tar, that sandy bar, To the _Nancy P. D. Q._
O the Skipper swore with a "Yeave-ho-ho!" And the crew replied "Hi-hi!" And then, with a cheerful "Heave-ho-yo," They pumped the bowsprit dry. "Three cheers!" the Mate cried with a sneeze "Hurrah for this old boat! She sails two knots before the breeze, But on the bar, by Jingo, she's The fastest thing afloat!"
So up with the gallant flag, my lads, With a hip-hip-hip-hooroo, For the liner fast is now outclassed By the _Nancy P. D. Q._
Alice scratched her chin in perplexity, but the Hatter never stopped.
"I got an idea from that ballad," he rattled on. "If you want trains fast you've got to build 'em fast."
"Yes, but if they don't go--how does anybody get anywhere?" asked Alice.
"They can get off and walk," said the Hatter. "And it's a great deal less dangerous getting off a train that doesn't move than off one that does."
"I can see that," said. Alice. "That weasel, for instance, would have been badly hurt if he had been thrown through the window of a moving car."
"That's it exactly," said the Hatter. "As Alderman March Hare puts it, we M. O. people are after the comfort and safety of the people first, last and all the time. Everything else is a tertiary consideration merely."
"Third," said the Hatter. "To come in third. It's a combination of turtle and dromedary."
[Illustration: "REQUESTED THE HATTER TO CRACK A FILBERT FOR HIM"]
Just at this moment a man walking through the car stopped and requested the Hatter to crack a filbert for him, which the Hatter cheerfully did. The passer-by thanked him and paid him a cent, which the Hatter immediately rang up on a small cash register on his vest, as required by the laws of Blunderland.
"That's the way the Municipal Ownership of Teeth works," said the Hatter as the man passed on, and then he resumed. "This street railway business, however, was a much harder proposition than the Municipal Ownership of Teeth. When we took the railways over of course we had to run 'em on the old system until we'd learned the business. The first thing we did was to get educated men for Motormen and Conductors--polite fellows, you know, who'd stop a car when you asked 'em to, and when they started wouldn't do it with such a jerk that in nine cases out of ten it was only the back door that kept the car from being yanked clean from under your feet, letting you land in the street behind."