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“A very careful and conscientious public servant,” whispered the March Hare aside to Alice. “When we have Municipal Ownership of the Federal Government we’re going to put him on the Supreme Court Bench. He means vulnerable when he says venerable, but you mustn’t mind that. When we have Municipal Ownership of the English Language we’ll make the words mean what we want ’em to.”

“Then of course the question arose as to how we could do this,” said the Hatter. “I got the Chief Engineer of our Department of Public Works to make some experiments, and would you believe it, when we cut the ends on the cars, there were still other ends left? No matter how far we clipped ’em, it was the same. It’s a curious scientific fact that you can’t cut off the end of anything and leave it endless. We tried it with a lot of things–cars, lengths of hose, coils of wire, rope–everything we could think of–always with the same result. Ends were endless, but nothing else was. As a matter of fact they multiplied on us. One car that had two ends when we began was cut in the middle, and then was found to have four ends instead of two.”

“That’s so, isn’t it!” cried Alice.

“It unquestionably is,” said the Hatter, “and we were at our wits’ ends until one night it came to me like a flash. I had gone to bed on a Park Bench, according to my custom of using nothing that is not owned by the city, for I am very serious about this thing, when just as I was dozing on the whole scheme unfolded itself. Build a circular car, of course. One big enough to go all around the city. That would solve so many problems. With only one car, there’d be no car ahead, which always irritates people who miss it and then have to take it later. With only one car, there could be no collisions. With only one car we could get along with only one motorman and one conductor at a time, thus giving the others time to go to dancing school and learn good manners. With only one car, and that a permanent fixture, nobody could miss it. If it didn’t move we could economise on motive power, and even bounce the motorman without injury to the service, if he should happen to be impudent to the Board of Aldermen; nobody would be run over by it; nobody would be injured getting on and off; it wouldn’t make any difference if the motorman didn’t see the passenger who wanted to get aboard. Being circular there’d always be room enough to go around, and there’d be no front or back platform for the people to stand on or get thrown off of going round the curves. The expenses of keeping up the roadbed would be nothing, because, being motionless, the car wouldn’t jolt even if it ran over a thank-you-marm a mile high, and best of all, a circular car has no ends to collide with other ends, which makes it absolutely safe. I never heard of a car colliding with itself, did you?”

“No, I never did,” replied Alice.

“Nor I neither,” said the March Hare. “I don’t think it ever happened, and therefore I reason that it ain’t going to happen.”

“And how do the people like it?” asked Alice.

“O, they’re getting to like it,” replied the Hatter. “At first they didn’t want to ride on the thing at all. They said what you did, that they didn’t seem to be getting anywhere, and they hated to walk home, but after awhile we proved to them that walking was a very healthful exercise, and on rainy nights they found the covered car a good deal of a convenience, especially when under the old system of private ownership of umbrellas they had left their bumbershoots at home. Once or twice they lost their tempers and sassed the conductor, but he put them in jail for lazy majesty–a German disease that we have imported for the purpose. As an officer of the Government the conductor has a right to arrest anybody who sasses him as guilty of sedition, and a night or two in jail takes the fun out of that.”