"You're like all the rest," groaned the Hatter. "Nobody seems to understand but me, and somehow or other I can't make it clear to other people."
"You might if you didn't talk through your hat," grinned the Cheshire Cat.
"Then I'd have to stop being a public character," said the Hatter. "I'm not going to sacrifice my career just because you're too ignorant to see what I'm driving at. I don't mind telling you though, Alice, that outside of poetry a Copperation is a Creature devised by Selfish Interests to secure the Free Coinage of the Atlantic Ocean."
"Little drops of water,
Plenty of hot air,
Make a Copperation
A pretty fat affair,"
warbled the March Hare.
"O well," said Alice, "what about it? Suppose there is such an animal around. What are we going to do about it?"
"We're going to gerraple with it," said the Hatter, with a valiant shake of his hat. "We're going to grab it by its throat, and shake it down, and shackle it so that in forty years it will become as tame as a fly or any other highly domesticated animal."
"But how?" asked Alice. "You aren't going to do this yourself, are you? Single handed and alone?"
