“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 passed 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 [p 113] />]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.
“Where is he?” cried the Hatter excitedly.
“He dropped dead!” replied the child, weeping bitterly.