The Dogs and the Fleas

THE DOGS AND THE FLEAS.

Canisville.—Founded by Rebel Dogs from Kyhidom.—Prosperity and Happiness of the Early Canisvillians.

THERE was once a time when dogs were dogs and dwelt together respectably in the respectable town of Canisville. Canisville was situated on the west side of a big fish pond, from the east side of which the forefathers and foremothers of the dogs had come, driven out by the dogs of Kyhidom, the great city of those parts, because they had dared to say many most grievous things about the folly of dogs allowing fleas to settle on them, to boss them and suck their blood.

For be it known, the dogs of Kyhidom were great idolaters with very small heads, who had been easily taught to reverence and worship fleas in general, and their own in particular, as having been ordained of God to suck their blood; and when these rebel dogs with preposterous, new fangled notions about the rights of dogs, got loud-mouthed in their remarks, the good, orthodox, divine-right-of-fleas dogs were scandalized and said that the rebel dogs were committing the sin of doubting the wisdom of things that were and had been, and were flying in the face of Providence; and as they were there to protect Providence at all hazards, those dogs must either cease flying in the face of Providence or fly from the country. So the rebel dogs, not being able to stop flying in the face of Providence aforesaid, did fly from the country and paddled their own canoe to the other side of the pond, where they founded the new town of Canisville.

Nevertheless, this same Providence, who, on that side of the pond, apparently could not bear to have his face flown in, did seem to mightily bless and prosper them on this side thereof; and they became a well-to-do community and were guided, ruled and advised by a wise and venerable patriarchal chief of the name of Bull McMastiff, who taught them various wise maxims and laws. Every morning he would call them to a conversazione, and after admonishing them of their sins, faults, mistakes and transgressions of the day before, would advise them of the way wherein they should trot to-day; and he always dismissed them with this particular bit of advice: “My children, your enemy the flea goeth about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. He loveth dogs, and neglecteth no opportunity to take possession of one, particularly the lazy one. But remember, I pray ye, your forefathers and foremothers; how they refused to hump the back for fleas to ride upon; how they gat themselves up out of Kyhidom, out of the House of Bondage, and came into this land flowing with milk and honey, where ye have grown to be a mighty, prosperous and free people undevoured of fleas. Therefore I say unto you, be vigilant, and diligently beware of the flea.”

And so it was that while they continued to hearken unto the barks of the good chief McMastiff, they dwelt in safety and put away from amongst them all those who had the itch and the mange and the scab and the botch.

And they searched diligently all through the camp, and whomsoever they found scratching with the hind leg, or viciously biting himself, they incontinently hauled up before the judge and made confess where he had caught his flea, or rather where his flea had caught him; and when they had taken the flea and caused it to be put to death, they sentenced the culprit to be cleansed every day for a month; but if the offender offended again, they worried him to death and cast out his carcass.

CHAPTER II.

MEPHISTOPHELES. (Sings.)

FROSCH.

MEPHISTOPHELES. (Sings.)

BRANDER.

MEPHISTOPHELES.

CHORUS, (Shouting.)

FROSCH.

SIEBEL.

—Goethe.

Death of Bull McMastiff.—Accession of Pup McPoodle.—His Evil Reign.—Trouble With the Dogs of Kyhidom and How it Ended.—National Debt.—A Fleas’ War and a Dogs’ Fight.—How the Victorious Dogs Became National Pets.

NOW all the inhabitants of Canisville walked righteously all the days of Bull McMastiff, and the blessing of Heaven was upon them. They kept his statutes and judgments and laid up his commandments in their hearts, and were blessed in their uprising, and their downsitting, in their going out, and in their coming in. Plenty crowned their years, and full were always their basket and their store; their bread was certain and their water sure; peace and everlasting joy were in all their borders, and want and poverty and plague were far away and unknown, save as by stories of travelers in strange and heathen lands.

But it came to pass that Bull McMastiff died and was gathered to his fathers, full of days, full of honors, and toothless, and Pup McPoodle reigned in his stead. And Pup McPoodle did evil in the sight of all the community, and walked not in the ways of Bull McMastiff. In the cussedness of his heart, he caused the whole community of dogs to turn aside from following the wise maxims and counsels of Bull McMastiff, in keeping of which they had grown fat and strong and sleek and well-to-do. He scoffed when certain good old conservative canines reminded him of McMastiff’s vigilant care of the community, and when they quoted his maxims, he barked and said “Rats.”

And the canines turned aside from following Bull McMastiff. And it came to pass that they neglected to haul up for punishment those who scratched with the hind leg; and soon it was found that many were with flea.

In those days other trouble fell on the inhabitants of Canisville; for the fleas of Kyhidom, who had ordered the dogs of Kyhidom to drive out the rebellious dogs that flew in the face of Providence, felt the loss of the driven-out dogs; and although they hated much their heretic doctrines, they hated more to lose the tribute of blood they had been accustomed to get out of them. So they sent some delegate fleas over the pond to beg of the outlawed and exiled dogs, to be good enough not to forget the fleas of their own beloved native land, but to send over at stated times a little of their blood to keep them from starving. And the delegates pleaded so hard in the names of religion, patriotism, the old country, the old ties of blood, and for old acquaintance’ sake that the exiled dogs relented and repented, and consented to bleed themselves so much a month and send the blood over in a bowl for the sustenance of the Kyhidom fleas, who were content to receive it thus, although they grumbled at the quantity which they said ought to have been at least two bowlfuls.

In process of time, however, when the fleas of Kyhidom had grown accustomed to receiving regularly the monthly bowlful, and the dogs of Canisville had become accustomed to being bled, the appetite of the fleas began to grow, and they grew fretful and began to say that the dogs over the pond were growing mean and unmindful of the duty they owed to their mother country.

So they sent over another delegation to tell the dogs of Canisville that the appetite of the fleas of Kyhidom had very much improved, and that it was very necessary unto their health that the dogs send over a double tribute of blood, and that in case of refusal the fleas would feel very much hurt in their feelings; and above all, that the refusal would be very displeasing to Gorgeous Littlehead Flea, the King of Kyhidom, who was the especial friend and protector of fleas; in fact, so dearly and devotedly did he love them that they were to him as the apples of his eyes, and any insult to them he would regard as tantamount to treason against him. But the dogs made reply that they could not conscientiously comply with the new request; that they themselves were not doing as well as formerly; that they had fleas of their own to support now, and that really, while holding the very highest regard and reverence for the fleas of their beloved old Kyhidom (having forgiven the outrage perpetrated there upon their forefathers), they hoped the fleas would kindly excuse any additional contribution, and try to rest content with the usual monthly bowlful.

Certain of the dogs, however, who were known as “Advanced,” very disrespectfully spoke up and said that this sending of blood away over the pond was all wrong; it was contrary to sound sense, and was detrimental to the interests of the community to send blood away to fleas that didn’t live in the country; that this was “Absenteeism” and absenteeism was the ruin of any country; that the first duty of dogs was to their own native fleas and not to foreigners, and that their advice was to refuse to send any more blood over the pond, and to drive the whole pesky lot of foreign fleas out of the land.

And all the native fleas cried out that that was well spoken, and displayed the true Spirit of Independence. And they violently urged all the other dogs to take up that Spirit and make a firm and decided Stand for Liberty, and refuse to send any more blood over the pond to the Kyhidom fleas, but to remember their own who were brought up with them, and were blood of their blood. And it was so that these words prevailed, and the Canisville dogs did refuse to send any more blood.

So the Kyhidom fleas went home and reported the gross insult and grievous injury they had received, which moved the whole of Kyhidom to anger; and the fleas told the dogs of the insolence and wickedness of their cousins beyond the pond; and the dogs were even more angry than the fleas, for they had been for many generations schooled and drilled by the fleas in the sound and profitable (to the fleas) doctrine that an injury to one flea is the concern of all dogs.

Therefore the dogs got on their Dignity—which was all in their hind legs—and cried aloud that the National Honor had been insulted, and the National Flag had been dirtied, and the face of Providence had been flown in, and His Majesty, King Gorgeous Littlehead Flea, had been treasoned against; and some fleas cried “Down with the Canisvillians,” which cry was taken up by the dogs, who howled “Down with the Canisvillians,” until they were hoarse, though who the Canisvillians were and where they dwelt, few of the dogs knew, and what they had done still fewer had any idea; but all knew it felt good to shout, and was, withal, well pleasing to the fleas. So they all ran and asked the fleas to lend them files to sharpen their teeth and claws with, and demanded that the fleas pick out the most valiant dogs to lead them across the pond, that they might tear out the eyes and bowels of the vile Canisville dogs, who had dared to insult and rob their dearly beloved fleas, and treason against His Superbly Serene and Supersacred Majesty, Gorgeous Littlehead Flea, by the Grace of God King of Kyhidom and defender of All Wrong and Bad Faith.

And the fleas said the conduct and high spirit of the dogs were exceedingly commendable and showed the highest Patriotism. And they gave sanction for the dogs to sharpen their teeth and claws, and to go over the pond to tear out the eyes and bowels of the Canisville dogs. The fleas, moreover, said thus unto them: “Good dogs; brave dogs; it is a grand and glorious thing to fight and die for our Hearths and Homes, as ye are about to go and do by ripping up those of the dogs beyond the water; it is meet that ye take our National Honor and our National Flag and go wash out their stains in the blood of their insulters, as your forefathers and foregrandfathers have done thousands of times before. Bear with you and ever jealously guard those sacred Junk, for it takes so very, very little to dirty them, and so very, very much blood to cleanse them. Ours is a Just Cause and will command the blessing of Heaven, which has never failed to bless the strong claws and teeth of the dogs of Kyhidom, to the discomfiture of weaker dogs. But, dear dogs, we must ALL do our duty; an occasion like the present calls for sacrifice from every one. In this solemn hour, and face to face with DUTY, let no one shirk to do his uttermost share in aid of the Common Cause. In this solemn Crisis, we cannot all go to the field; some must remain at home; but whether we go to the field or remain at home, each can nobly bear his part. We are not equally gifted; some have the teeth and the claws, and some have the Means; we need both equally; the Means without the teeth and claws, is utterly useless, the teeth and claws without the Means can do but little, but with both united and the Blessing of God, all things are possible. We have the Means and you have the teeth and claws; let us then, with an eye single to the glory of Our Common Country, join our gifts in a Common Sacrifice and lay them both on our Country’s Altar; ye shall, with your teeth and claws, go to the fight, and we will stay home and find the Means to send you and maintain you in the fight; and ye can repay us when ye come back; but if ye come not back, why then, your children, and your children’s children can repay us. We will not be hard upon you, we will Loan the Means, we will Advance it, and we will call it your DEBT which ye may owe forever and ever, provided ye or your children pay us a little for it every year.

“Then go to the war, good dogs, and the Lord be with you, and we will stay home with the Lord and Manage the country for you.”

And all the dogs gnashed their newly sharpened teeth and howled again, “Down with the Canisvillians,” “God save our Noble Fleas,” and “Long live King Gorgeous Littlehead Flea.”

But when they arrived in the land of the Canisvillians, and proceeded, with the Blessing of God, to tear out their eyes and their bowels, those Canisville dogs also showed surprisingly large teeth and dreadfully sharp and strong claws; whereupon the blessing of God did go over to their side, and they did amazingly wallop the life out of the Kyhidom dogs, insomuch that all that were not dead ran howling down to the pond and swam away home, and did no more venture to come back.

Then did the dogs of Canisville feel highly elated at having walloped the dogs of Kyhidom, and kept on barking and barking about their victory, and saying they could do it again, and they wished some of those Kyhis would come back again to be walloped. All which great joy and elation their own native fleas, being fleas of subtlety, did turn to their own profit; for they, seeing that dogs always like to be pushed in the way they want to go, ordained certain Remembrance Days to be observed through all the land, on which days the dogs should have flattering looking glasses held up to them, should be sung to and made poetry to, and orated at, and have incense burned for the gratification of their nostrils. There was “Defiance to Kyhidom Day,” and “The Awful Walloping Day,” and “Kyhi Skedaddle Day,” and “Get-Along-all-by-Ourselves Day,” and “Slain Dogs Day” and a host of other Days on which the dogs told one another and the fleas told them what grand, noble and gloriously independent dogs they were, that would never, no never, endure the tyrant on their soil, or suffer any bobtailed, measly, foreign dog to boss it over them.

And it was so that they grew so ineffably conceited and vain, by reason of eternally Remembering themselves and admiring their own features, that they quite forgot the fleas on their own backs. So the fleas had good fat times and were little disturbed; and in the inmost sanctuary of their own private gatherings they did knowingly wink the eye and say that for enabling dogs to Forget their own Rights the Remembrance Days beat all Creation.

CHAPTER III.

Unprofitable Victory.—Plague of Fleas.—Desperate Condition of the Dogs.

NOW the poor fool dogs of Canisville had been told by their own fleas that victory over the wicked dogs of Kyhidom meant Freedom, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Prosperity, Universal Wealth, Heaven, to themselves; and they believed them. But it did not. On the contrary, Freedom, Liberty, Equality, etc., etc., gradually vanished like a setting sun, and a great plague of itch, came upon all the dogs; and from the rising of the sun until the going down thereof, and until his rising again, the dogs scratched and scratched and abraded themselves against walls and posts, and howled and barked and barked and barked about the “Good old times” when all dogs were healthy and lustrous of coat.

And the dogs grew thin and lank and mangy looking. Their eyes grew lustreless, and their ribs could be counted by the naked eye at quite a distance. Their ears hung down; their spirit departed; and only when some specially venomous flea gave a dog a specially venomous nip did he awake from his listlessness; with a quick explosive yelp he would suddenly flop on the ground and cause his hind leg to vibrate with the rapidity of a suddenly released spring.

But as for the fleas they prospered in an inverse ratio to the dogs. All the qualities of the dogs seemed to be transferred to them. As the dogs grew thin the fleas grew fat and plump. As the dogs grew listless the fleas grew lively. As a total aggregate of dog and flea there seemed to be no loss of volume; for what one lost the other seemed to gain. The average of blood, vitality and energy seemed about as before; and to the outside spectator, it made no difference; but it was another matter entirely with the constituent parts; for the only part of this society that was abundantly satisfied was the fleas, and the only part that was not at all satisfied was the dogs.

And it came to pass that the dogs became possessed, seemingly, of a desire to work harder. Everyone now frenziedly tore around, scratching in gutters for any kind of dirty eatables, nosing in garbage barrels and keeping up an incessant trot in search of something to eat. Moreover they seemed to become possessed of the devil. Their tempers went sour, and they seemed to be perpetually on the hunt for a fight. Let but one dog be found munching a bone, and instantly half-a-dozen others, with growls, would rush upon him and compel him to let go, only to snarl, and rage and battle for it amongst themselves; from which conflict several would emerge bleeding, torn and ragged. And the more they fought and squabbled for bones and scraps, the scarcer the bones and scraps seemed to grow. The dogs were always hungry, and in spite of their utmost efforts many fell by the wayside and died of starvation; and the wail of the hungry ones nightly went up to heaven.

Why was all this? Nobody seemed to know, save a few old fogy dogs who remembered the good time of the reign of the departed chieftain, Bull McMastiff. They said that there were as many bones and scraps in the community as ever there were; yea, that there were more than ten times as many as in McMastiff’s reign. They said that the real reason was that every dog had become so thickly settled with fleas, that, no matter how hard and how many hours a day he hunted for food, he could never get enough to nourish himself, because the fleas he carried ate him up and so continually sucked his blood, that they kept him always thin and on the very edge of starvation. Said they: “Behold the fleas; they toil not, neither do they spin, neither do they hunt after bones, nor do any manner of work on the Sabbath, nor on any other day, for a living; and yet, verily, not a dog in all his plumpness in the good old times, was half so plump as one of these. Behold how easy be the times these suckers have; the body which maintains them carries them around, and is, in all respects, their most humble and obedient servant.”

But the bare-ribbed, hungry and flea-ridden mob of dogs derided these wise old stagers and mockingly cried out to them, “Go up, ye bald heads; what do ye know about these things?” “Shut up your jaw!” “Pull down your vest!” “Shoot them teeth!” and other such ribald remarks. Therefore the wise old dogs did shut up, and did no more try the impossible job of teaching fools. And in a few more years they drew up their feet and gave up the ghost; and the community had rest from their unwelcome prophesying.

But the miseries of the dogs did not abate with the death of those who told them what the matter was. Every day the police dogs reported that they had discovered another one either dying or dead of starvation; and then the dogs ran together and called a confab, which they named an “inquest.” And the “inquest” was a solemn ceremony where a dozen or more dogs, each blind in one eye, headed by another dog called a “Coroner”—also blind in one eye and weak in the other—looked the dead dog all over and then said: “Natural causes;” “Visitation of God;” “Anæmia;” “Atrophy;” “Cardialgia;” “Vacuity of the Alimentary Canal,” and then ordered somebody to bury him in the sacred place of dogs called the “Field of the Potter.”

But it was several times noticed that no “inquest” was ever held over a flea. When a flea died he was always in bed, surrounded by a coming and going host of his sorrowing pulician friends, and attended by a peculiar set of creatures called “Emdees.” who did all they could to retard his death. And when he was dead they all signed an elaborately ornamented paper called a “certificate,” which set forth that the “late lamented” sucker had “deceased” and “passed away” and “gone to Heaven” by reason of the highly respectable complaint known as “Abnormal Enlargement of the Paunch,” and recommended him to the gracious notice and distinguished consideration of the angels.

CHAPTER IV.

Piety’s Philosophy of Poverty.—Andronicus Carnivorous and his Glory.

THINGS went from bad to worse among the dogs. It became the universal thing for dogs to be hungry and coatless and to go about weary, languid and sore distressed.

But what was worst of all, there was arising in the community a sentiment that for dogs to be hungry, coatless, weary, languid and sore distressed was the natural and normal condition; that this condition was ordained and fixed by some higher power against which it was blasphemy to contend or even to murmur. Yea, one poor fool of a dog, who said he had been to a place called a “Church,” where the fleas got together one day in every seven to hear a renegade dog bark to them for a good basketful of meat, got up and told them that he had seen the said barking dog, whose name he thought, if he remembered rightly, was Tee de Little Wit Blatherskite, turn over the leaves of some big book or other that lay on a costly cushion, and then tell the fleas, in a very loud voice, that inside that big book it was written, in big letters, that some very great person, called Jesus, or some such name, did in a far-away country, a very many hundreds of years ago, once say to some friends of his “the poor ye have always with you,” and that that meant that it was and always would be God’s will that dogs should be poor, and lank, and hungry, and covered with fleas. And he said that it was the evident design of God himself that dogs were created expressly for the purpose of carrying and nourishing fleas. That God, who had done all things well, had seen fit in his wisdom to create for his own glory both dogs and fleas, in order that the fleas, having sucked nearly all the blood out of the dogs, might show their “Charity” in giving back to them a few drops now and then.

And he told them a most beautiful and touching story of how one Andronicus Carnivorous, a certain well-known sucker, who, originally, came over the pond from North Kyhidom and settled amongst them, had grown monstrously big and strong on the blood of poor dogs, after having sucked some scores of millions of drops out of thousands of them, had on a certain day before high heaven and the assembled priesthood, and with the burning of incense and the applause of a great mob whose voice was as the sound of many waters, most generously and magnificently given fifty thousand drops back again to be distributed by a committee of lady fleas, amongst the “most worthy and deserving poor,” and five hundred thousand drops more to the “Church” to be expended on a new organ, a new, big, golden cross on top of the steeple, and some windows of stained glass, and a big brass plate in the most prominent part of the “Church” stating for all posterity, the name of the great sucker who gave it. All of which showed that the said eminent sucker, although he did not, alas, and unfortunately, believe in the God of the fleas, was a most pious saint, who humbly regarded his great wealth as a trust, and was endeavoring to give a good account of his stewardship.

And he told them what a great and brilliant light this Saint Andronicus had shed over all the town and country of the Canisvillians, and how, by his illustrious example he had shown the only true and honorable way of getting up from nothing to the highest pinnacle of wealthy comfort—which was by “organizing” great bodies of dogs to build him a high pyramid of dying dogs for him to climb up and feed on as he climbed; how by his enormous diligence and ability in “acquiring” he had come to own many mansions and palaces here below; how by strict methodical habits and careful husbanding of time he had been able to snatch a few moments from his arduous duties of trotting around from mansion and palace to palace and mansion enjoying himself, to write beautiful sermons on the true way of distributing the results of dog phlebotomy—it was, he said, to take the blood of the dogs he had exhausted, and carry it many miles away (from three to ten thousand) and there pour it out into a long trough, and whistle to any and all dogs living thereabouts to come, without money and without price and lap it up. “Thus,” said he, “do I fulfill the great Natural Law of the Circulation of the Blood; the dogs who yield it see it no more, and strange dogs who yield it not get it all—save the tribute I take from it for the maintenance of me and mine. Thus do I make brethren of all the world of dogs and all is well, and Saint Andronicus is glorified.”

He had also so far descended from his high glory as to write by proxy a beautiful book of trashy platitudes, entitled “Triumphant Dogocracy” which set forth and proved that the dogs of Canisville were the fattest, freest, happiest and most prosperous dogs in all the world, and that their fatness, freedom and prosperity were all owing to the fact that, since the driving out of the dogs of Kyhidom and the abolition of the sending of blood over the pond to nourish the Absentee Fleas, and the destruction of the system of not allowing dogs to consent to being bled by the fleas, they had established the self governing system of permitting them to consent, and allowing the fleas to go over the pond and take the dogs’ blood with them. All which demonstrated the glorious advantage of having abolished the system of Tweedledum and of having established that of Tweedledee.

Nevertheless the said most estimable Andronicus had been unfortunately compelled to allow sundry of his own dogs to receive fatherly chastisement because they had become restive under several extra bites he had proposed to give them for their good.

And the barking dog in peroration said, “Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth; even so hath Saint Andronicus done unto those he loved, that they may not again err from the path of duty.”

And all the little dogs, who sat on the “free seats” all around the “Church,” wagged their little tails and barked pleasantly; and all the assembled fleas stroked their fat paunches contentedly, and said that they had heard that morning a most powerful gospel sermon, and that their salaried barker was a true prophet of God.

CHAPTER V.

The “Battle of Life.”—Pup McPoodle’s Wicked Reign.—Invention of the Protectivtarif.—How it was Worked.—Construction of the Blood and Bones Grindery.—Singular Blood.

AT last it came to pass by reason of having forgotten that there ever had been better days than they now saw that the dogs grew to believe that the state of things they lived under was the only true and natural one. True, they grew bad tempered and fierce and bit and tore one another in their daily “Battle of Life.” True, every dog tried to snatch the meat out of every other dog’s mouth, and true, many a dog was murdered for the sake of any scrap of food he had succeeded in “saving up” and had “put by for a rainy day.” True, canine society had become a hell upon earth, where every dog took for his motto, “Every dog for himself, and the devil take the hindmost,” but not one among them ever dreamed of doubting that their state was according to natural pre-ordination. Thus they came to regard the rule of strength, craft, cunning and good luck as the proper one, because the only one; and to this they squared their lives and their philosophy.

Their chief, Pup McPoodle, “stood in” with the fleas, and on condition that his own body should be free, he undertook to use his power as chief to make it easier for them to suck the blood of the rest of the community. He walked in more evil ways than any evil dog that ever reigned before him. He revived all the abominations of the heathen whom the Lord cast out, and burnt incense unto strange gods and worshipped devils, and being tempted of these, he called a council of the hungriest and thirstiest of the fleas, and they did devise and invent a wicked instrument of torture called a “Protectivtarif.” It was a machine having a nice bed on which a dog was laid, and an upper portion called a “dooty” which was worked with a long handle called a “government,” which was invisible to all but the operators, but which when properly operated brought down the “dooty” upon the dog with variously regulated degrees of squeeze and crush, ranging from twenty-five to one hundred and fifty pounds per square inch, and which caused the dog to howl and his blood to squirt out far more rapidly than the fleas could extract it by ordinary suction.

But over the use of this instrument the fleas got to disagreement and bickering. For there were those who said that the higher pressures were destructive of profit to the fleas, as they nearly killed the dog and prevented him making new blood; that the lower pressures alone were profitable economically. But the others said, “No, the higher the pressure the better for the dog;” for they had invented a Rule-of-Contrary Magnifying Glass that had a most astonishing property, when looked through, of making a dog appear bigger and plumper and more prosperous, the more he was flattened out. Argufy as they might, the Low Pressure fleas could not get the High Pressure fleas to look at the squeezed dogs with the naked eye. For answer the High Pressurists rolled up their eyes most piously and said that the invention of the Glass was the Gift of God, sent down from Heaven to look at dogs with, and it would never do to despise the Gift by blasphemously doing without it, and looking at facts with sinful natural eyes. And the High Pressurists did prevail in argument, for they were more powerful than the Low Pressurists, and kept up the high pressure against the protests of the Low Pressurists, so that many dogs had the ghost squeezed out of them and died.

And then with the help of this instrument the fleas went off and invented another called a “Trust,” the wickedness of which can only be fully expressed in Satanese. And other base dogs seeing that the only way to get freedom themselves was to help the fleas to suck the rest, went and licked the feet of McPoodle, and became his courtiers and aided and abetted him in bringing their fellow dogs under the power of the fleas.

Then did some of the biggest and fattest of the fleas gather themselves together, and put their wits together to devise a most wondrous scheme of prosperity to themselves. Said they, “Lo! These dogs be jackasses most foolish. They act not together, neither bark they in unison. Though they be exceeding strong and we be but weak, we can do just as we please with them, for we have wit and they have strength which they know not how to use. We will put on them therefore ‘as much as they will bear.’ We know how far we dare go; and if any out-of-date fool, with such a piece of antiquated old furniture as a heart within him, shall dare to remonstrate with us we will say, ‘The dogs be damned.’”

And it was so that they ordered McPoodle to order his slaves to build them a big Mill with a great, wide, deep hopper to it, which Mill was turned with a long Handle that went exceedingly hard and creaky for want of oil. And McPoodle set a lot of his courtier and lickspittle dogs called “Chuckers-in” to catch and chuck other dogs into the hopper; and got a lot of very hungry dogs for a promise of reward to turn the Handle so that the poor dogs thrown in were ground up body and bones, and their blood ran out by a big Spout into a big Tank below, around which sat a large company of big fleas—who called themselves “The Brethren,” chief of whom was Andronicus Carnivorous—drinking blood by wholesale; a method which they said was a great improvement over the slow one of boring for it with the old-fashioned stiletto, and raising it with the suction pump, and was much less laborious and more reliable.

This blood was of a very peculiar appearance, for its corpuscles were very large and quite visible to the naked eye. They were disk shaped, and when held up to the light showed most singular markings on both sides. On one side there seemed to be the figure of a head and bust of a female of the human species, having on a ridiculous looking night cap, on which was the word “Liberty,” and on the other side of the disk were some words that the learned said were “In God we Trust,” the meaning of which nobody was able to make out. How the corpuscles came to have those strange markings nobody knew, but a few of the more daring hazarded the conjecture that they were due to a surviving taint in the blood of some old time religion that had gone out of fashion and been forgotten. But the greedy drinkers of the blood said these peculiarities did not at all derogate from the goodness of the flavor of it.

CHAPTER VI.

Weariness of the Grinders.—Growing Greed of the Monstrous Fleas.—Conundrums.—The Sanguinometer.—Pharaoh Phrique.—Strike of the Dogs.—Their Defeat.—Groaning for a Savior.

NOW the dogs did grind and sweat eighteen hours a day at the Mill, and the fleas around the Tank at the bottom had high old times, and said that the lines had fallen unto them in pleasant places and they had a goodly heritage. But they were very considerate of the dogs at the Handle, and to reward them for their grinding, did smear a little spoon quite liberally with the Blood in the Tank, and did send up the spoon for them to lick, but with strict injunctions that they were to regard the gift as something to be thankful for, in that Capital had condescended to set up a Mill in their midst and had vouchsafed to give them employment at the Handle thereof; and they added the further injunction that they were not to stop turning the Handle, but to lick the spoon as they turned.

But the dogs did frequently grow weary, and often one would fall down fainting: whereupon the fleas ordered the chuckers-in to chuck him into the hopper and run for another to take his place at the Handle, which caused the other Handle turners to turn with double diligence, in the deadly fear of being thrown in themselves. But the fleas who sat below and drank the Blood grew bigger and bigger and bigger, until they were all paunch; so big and fat and full did they become that their skins glistened with very tightness; and had some one pricked them with a pin, they would have exploded with a loud report. But the fuller and tighter they grew the more savagely and ferociously hungry did they grow; and when the dogs grew weary at the Handle and the Stream of Blood slowed down slightly, they sent up fierce messages to them wanting to know why the Satan they didn’t turn, and what in the Everlasting Profundo they meant by it, and did they not know that they were cheating and robbing their masters; and what were dogs coming to nowadays, anyway?

To all of which deep conundrums the dogs could find no answer but to wake up and grind with hysteric fury; and the more furious grinding gave a temporarily thicker stream of Blood below, which only whetted the appetite of the fleas, so that the thicker Stream had then to be kept up, otherwise the fleas did send up the savage conundrums to the dogs at the Handle.

At last, however, the dogs became so faint with the unrequited turning that the Stream very greatly slowed down, which very greatly quickened up the anger of the Brethren, who not only sent up doubly savage conundrums, but an announcement that they were losing terribly in their income; that instead of being very full and very tight, they were merely full, and were going rapidly down hill to bankruptcy and ruin; and that they really, out of simple justice to themselves, could not afford to smear the little spoon so liberally; but would be compelled in future to smear it according to an instrument called a “Sliding Scale Readjuster,”—a new Sanguinometer, the invention of Saint Andronicus Carnivorous and Pharaoh Phrique, two very eminent Brethren—which, when put under the Stream, showed with the utmost accuracy, when and how much the allowance to the Handle turners must be reduced.

This marvelous and unique instrument had two faces, one of which was towards the Brethren around the Tank and the other towards the grinders at the Handle. On that facing the fleas was registered only the rise of the stream, and on that facing the grinders were registered only the downward fluctuations of the rise. The readings of this impartial instrument, said the fleas, should determine the rise and fall of the allowance to the Handle turners; whenever the reading showed a rise, the wages should go up, but whenever the reading showed a fall the wages should go down. But as the register of the rise was always invisible to the dogs, and the fleas were scrupulously dumb as to what they saw, the Sanguinometer never showed a rise, but always the downward fluctuations; therefore the licks at the spoon were always reduced. So the dogs did groan by reason of the Sanguinometer.

Moreover, the fleas, having given ear unto the wise counsel of Pharaoh Phrique and Saint Andronicus (who said, however, that he was a modest flea and a flea of reputation, and did not want the honor of appearing in the matter), issued an edict that henceforth each and every dog that had the gracious privilege of being allowed to help turn the Handle must, on entering the service, cut off two toes and throw them into the hopper, as an initiation fee and an evidence of good faith towards the company below, said two toes or their equivalent to be returned to the depositor when he left the service at the Handle—if he ever did.

At which the dogs lifted up their voices and wept sore; but weeping did not save them; for the fleas told the chuckers-in to tell the grinders that there were crowds of hungry dogs around the corner, standing ready and anxious to take their places at the Handle and willing to give three toes for the privilege. Which was all true; for in spite of the awful hunger of the dogs at the Handle, and their common fate of dropping down faint and being thrown into the hopper, there were hundreds of pinched and meagre dogs, who sat around on their haunches casting covetous and envious glances at the workers, and hoping to see some fall; yea, so eagerly anxious were they for a chance at the Handle, to earn a little lick at the spoon, that when they saw one growing faint and ready to fall, they would all rush forward and fight amongst themselves to be first to be taken on by the chuckers-in; and it became the common practice of almost everyone to creep up behind any fainting dog and slyly pinch his tail or bite his leg, in order to make him faint quicker and let go of the Handle.

So the grinding dogs, finding themselves helpless, did cut off two toes and fling them into the hopper, and ground and groaned and wept, and got their little lick at the smeared spoon, and fainted by scores, and were mercilessly flung into the hopper. And the Brethren around the Tank grew bigger and fuller and tighter every day; and as the Stream grew thicker and thicker, they grew more querulous and angry at the pesky laziness of good-for-nothing dogs that could not be encouraged to diligence, no, not by “good wages” and a steady position at the Handle; and they sent up more savage conundrums, wanting to know why the two Satans they didn’t turn, and what in the two Everlasting Profundos they meant by robbing and cheating their masters and driving them to bankruptcy?

To all of which the dogs at the Handle replied that they had reached the limit of canine endurance, and would stop the turning of the Handle unless the company of Brethren would raise their allowance of blood to the standard of the old liberal smearing of the little spoon, and abolish the requisition of two toes to the hopper. To which the fleas angrily made reply that the dogs at the Handle might all go to the bottom of the Everlastingist Profundo, for they would put other more docile and appreciative dogs at the Handle.

Whereupon the dogs struck, and the Handle came to rest, and the Blood Stream stopped. But the fleas sat patiently around the Tank and leisurely drank themselves full, and sent for the other hungry dogs that anxiously sat around; and the other dogs did come, and were set upon and worried and wounded by the original grinders. But the chuckers-in and the police dogs did help the new dogs and slew divers of the first Handle turners and finally routed them. Then did the first Handle turners go meekly crawling on their bellies to the company of the fleas, and humbly confess their sins and beg to be reinstated at the Handle. But the company deigned not to speak unto them, but sent out unto them Brother Pharaoh Phrique, who lifted up his nose high in the air, and said unto them: “Well; what will ye?” And the dogs cast down their eyes and hugged the dust with their bellies and answered: “That thy bondservants may find favor in thy sight and be reinstated at the Handle.” But Pharaoh’s heart was hardened like unto armor plate, and he said: “Not so, ye wicked dogs; faithless and perverse generation of dogs, despisers of our goodness and mercy; ye shall in no wise return to your positions at the Handle, save and unless ye shall be content to receive as wages no more Blood than can be carried upon the point of a needle, and shall first contribute five toes to the hopper, and execute a contract to fling into the Mill all the little bow-wows that shall henceforth be born unto you.”

And all the dogs, with sighs and wailing and grievous lamentations, did consent, and went and turned the Handle and groaned for a Savior.

CHAPTER VII.

The Great Idea.—Combination to Agree.—The White Label.—“Lengthen the Handle.”—Formation of the White Leg Association.—Gracious Reception of the Idea by the Monstrous Fleas.

IT came to pass one day when the Handle went more heavily than usual, that one dog was seen to jump up from his work with a yelp as though bitten by ten thousand fleas all at once. His eyes rolled in a fine frenzy; he rolled over and over on the ground and turned somersaults by the dozen. All the dogs at the Handle were temporarily paralyzed with consternation, and dropped work to inquire what was amiss. “What’s the matter?” said one of the crowd to him; but he only yelped the harder and turned more somersaults. “He’s gone crazy with hunger,” said they; “we must put him in the madhouse;” and they seized him by the ears and the tail for to take him there; which caused him suddenly to come back to sobriety.

“Brethren,” said he, “while turning at that infernal Handle I was suddenly seized with an Idea. It is a grand Idea; it is none other than how we may ameliorate the cruel lot of the grinders at the Handle and raise our wages.”

“Raise our wages?” they all cried in astonishment, letting go of the Handle. “Oh tell us how, and tell us quickly.”

“Well,” said he, “you see, it stands to Common Sense that if all dogs would combine and agree not to turn that Handle for less than so much a day, those big bloats would have to give it us or suffer the cessation of the Stream.”

“That’s so; so it is,” cried the other dogs in astonishment; “we never thought of that; why, that must be one of those Revelations, those deep abstrusities which the philosophers call ‘Axioms’—self-evident truths. And only to think it was given to a common dog to make the discovery! But canst thou tell us, oh wonderful discoverer, how we may all combine, with all those other dogs around us who cannot get a chance at the Handle? That is a problem, beside the complexity of which the Great Truth is simplicity itself.”

“Oh, ye simpletons,” said the dog with the Idea, “these things are hidden from the wise and prudent and are revealed unto pups. The thing is self-evidently simple. All we require is simply that all dogs shall agree.”

“But,” said the other dogs, “how art thou going to get the outside dogs to agree not to turn except for so much, when now they neither turn nor get a lick; it is simply asking a dog to abstain from doing what he hasn’t done, and is not going to do. The agreement can only interest those at the Handle, while it does not interest the others who want to be there but cannot get there.”

“Well,” said the dog with the Idea, “we at the Handle must keep up our wages, anyhow; so I propose that we make the agreement and that, as a mark to be known by, each dog that agrees, have a white label bound on his right hind leg; and we will further agree that whomsoever has not on the ‘White Label’ shall be called a Black Leg and be worried and cast away from the Handle.”

But there arose another dog, and said he had an Idea, too, that was much better. Said he: “Suppose all of us do adopt the White Label, and do live up to the solemn agreement—which is not probable—what will it avail us to worry and cast away from the Handle all those that have not the White Label, when there are so many more dogs who through hunger will jump in to take their places? We can’t worry them all. My Idea is to lengthen the Handle so that all the unemployed dogs can catch on and help to turn.”

But some said, “What good would that do? You could not make it long enough to give every dog a place; and besides, the Handle belongs to the Mill, and the Mill belongs to the fleas, and they won’t permit it to be lengthened, so that settles it.”

“Well, then,” replied the other dog, “let us agree to work fewer hours so as to put some of the unemployed at the Handle; average things, as to speak.”

“Bow-wow wow-wow!” barked all the other dogs in chorus. “What! Put ourselves on half time for unemployed dogs! Why, we don’t make a living as it is on full time. Thou art no friend of ours. Want us to reduce our wages, do you? Out with him!” And they worried him and cast him out.

And it was so that they did agree; and each dog did bind on his right hind leg a White Label and they called themselves the Great United Order of White-Legged Handle Turners, and called themselves “White Legs” for short.

By this time the big bloats around the Tank, having perceived that the Mill was going very slowly on account of the grinders’ attention being taken up with the Agreement, sent up to them a terrible conundrum wanting to know why the half-a-dozen Satans they didn’t grind, and what in half-a-dozen Everlasting Profundos they meant by robbing their employers by such laziness.

But when it was told them that the grinders had been taking a recess to hold a mysterious confab, and that all the Handle Turners had white badges on their right hind legs, they called down several of the dogs and demanded of them what this new thing should mean? And one of the dogs meekly answered that they had formed an Association of White Legs, and that the purpose of the said Association was to petition the big fleas at the Tank to raise their allowance of blood to the old standard of the good licks at the liberally smeared spoon, when they first began to turn the Handle.

And the big fleas said that was all right, and it did them great credit to wish to better their condition, and that provided they confined their efforts to mutual help, and to making their members more honest, industrious and well behaved, and to improving their minds in their leisure hours, and didn’t go to demanding more blood, but left the raising of their allowance entirely to the good judgment and good-heartedness of their employers, and didn’t go to violating the inalienable rights of their employers to shove away from the Handle any objectionable dog, or the inalienable rights of the unlabelled dogs to take their places at the Handle and to make free contracts as free-born dogs should, and didn’t conspire to incite to breaches of the Blood and Bones Grinding Laws, but confined themselves to peaceful methods and the use of moral suasion, why, they would have their hearty good wishes for their prosperity, and everything would be lovely.

So the dogs returned to their fellows and reported the gracious reception they had met with, and all the White Legs rejoiced and went back to their grinding with a will and with new hopes in their hearts. But though the dogs turned for many days, they found things go on just as usual; they turned and ground and fainted and were thrown into the hopper, but their allowance was not raised, although they sent down many humble petitions to the fleas to raise it.

CHAPTER VIII.

Barren Hopes.—The Handle Tied up.—Defeat of the White Legs by the Black Legs and the Pink Eyed Dogs.—Invention of the Will of the Dogs Expresser.—The Invention Graciously Accepted by the Fleas.—Sanguine Hopes.

SO at last the White Leg dogs, weary unto death with waiting for the fruit which came not on the barren fig tree of the big fleas’ “hearty good wishes,” resolved that they would demand a larger allowance.

Therefore they sent down some of the big and bold dogs, to tell the fleas around the Tank that unless they would restore their allowance to what it was at first, and abolish the contribution of toes, and the chucking in of fainting dogs, and would grease the bearings of the Handle, and reduce the number of their working hours, and refuse to employ any dog that had not on the White Label, and would do and not do, many other things most astonishing to the fleas, the dogs would all take their White Labels and twist them all together into a most unbreakable rope, and therewith tie up the Handle with such unheard-of and untieable knots, that nobody on earth save the White Legs, would be able to release it. Whereupon the Mill would stop, and the Stream would dry up, and the fleas would collapse, and other great miseries would come upon them. Therefore it behooved them to listen to reason, and grant their reasonable requests ere it were too late, and the Handle were tied up.

But the fleas showed no alarm and went on filling themselves. They simply turned towards Pharaoh Phrique, and said: “Brother Phrique, thou art learned in all the learning of the Egyptian taskmasters. Thou art a skillful hide skinner and dog walloper, and well versed in the secret art of squelching insolence and ill behavior. Thou wast our trusty counsel in our late fight with these dogs, before they got this White Label craze, and thou didst bring us through it with honor and dividends. Thou wast our High Tower, our Shield and Hiding Place, whereunto we ran and were safe—all save our beloved Andronicus Carnivorous, who gat himself over the pond for hiding. We trust thee; deal with them as seemeth thee good.”

So Pharaoh hardened his heart as aforetime, and spake thus unto the dogs: “Dogs that ye are; insolent despisers of your precious privileges. I chastened you once before, thinking to bring your erring feet into the path of duty and wisdom. But ye are a stiff-necked and perverse generation. Ye have heaped sin upon sin. Not content with having tried to rob us before, ye have formed a Union, which is to commit the Unpardonable Sin. Get out of this, therefore; vamose the ranch; put; scoot; absquatulate; skedaddle, and make yourselves scarce; for I swear that even as our brother Webbfoot and Brother Gold Jay, and other of our brethren did chastise their dogs once, I will chastise you. Yea, I will so grind and crush you that the whole world shall hear the sound thereof, for I, Pharaoh Phrique, have said it. Tie up the Handle with your rope of White Labels; it shall be unto me as tow burnt with the fire; for I will dissolve your Union and scatter the members thereof, and give your heritage unto the Unlabeled and more obedient Black Legs. Git!” And he drove them from his presence.

But the dogs did tie up the Handle, and the Mill did stop, and some of the catastrophes foretold did happen. But Pharaoh Phrique whistled to the Black Legs to come and gnaw the rope. And he went by night down to a secret place in Canisville, called the Devil’s Cheap Bargain Counter, where certain lewd and ferocious dogs of the baser sort, which had Pink Eyes that could not bear the sunshine, did for a few scraps of dirty bread and meat, hire themselves out on foggy and moonless nights to worry and kill any other dogs that were objectionable to the fleas; and he paid them handsomely to go by night and secretly get behind the White Legs and tear them to pieces.

And there was a great fight. The hungry Black Legs fought to untie the Handle, and the Devil’s Pink Eyed Cheap Bargain Counter Dogs helped them. And so it came to pass that the White Legs were driven away; and some hastened to pull off the White Labels and mingle with the Black Legs, and scrambled to get back to the Handle.

And at the going down of the sun the rope was broken; and the handle, untied, was going like mad. And Pharaoh Phrique and the Brethren were holding a praise meeting around the Tank, and giving God thanks that He had so signally made bare His mighty arm and scattered their enemies, who had come so near breaking up the Foundations of Society.

So the poor dogs, with broken hearts and broken hopes, did grind on and on for many days, and the victory of the Monstrous Fleas seemed to be complete.

It came to pass, however, that a new hope sprang up among the toilers at the Handle. Owing to their incessant occupation during their long days, they had no leisure to think, but they gathered together during the short night to growl and snarl, and damn things in general and greedy fleas in particular. They schemed and plotted many remedies which all came to naught.

But one night, one of the dogs that had a big head and looked to have wisdom, got up and said: “Brethren, I do perceive that all these violent methods of rectifying our wrongs do fail. Now, I pray you, consider; we dogs be many and these fleas be few, why then are we not their masters? Why are we their slaves? I know that fleas have been divinely ordained to find us employment, and dogs to serve them, in the Fear of God, for even so hath the much-salaried barker in the Church of the Fleas,—the great Reverend Tee de Little Wit Blatherskite—told us, and he knoweth a thing or two about God’s purposes. But, as the same much-salaried barker also saith, they were ordained to be kind to us and treat us with justice and mercy. But, brethren, ye know that they do treat us most devilishly. Now, all this comes to pass because they do not know how many we are and what we think about them. There’s where it is, brethren; if we had some regular and orderly method of telling them how many we are, and what we think of them, they would surely give heed unto our cries and demands, for we are many—very many. If we could authoritatively—authoritatively, brethren,—state to them our Will, they would surely ameliorate our lot and treat us with generosity. And when they have once been made to know what is the Expressed Will of the Dogs, they will see that it is Public Opinion and will bow to it. Thus, my brethren, shall we be FREE.”

And all the other dogs arose on their hind legs and cried in a great chorus: “It is an Inspiration, it is an Inspiration: it cometh from Above.”

And the dog, seeing that his idea was well received, was encouraged and went on, “Brethren, this idea is far better than the White Label idea, or that of lengthening the Handle. Those methods are merely empirical nostrums and expedients, but this is a radical remedy and a perfect cure. Now behold the application of it. I have invented a device which I call the ‘Will of the Dogs Expresser.’ It is a little box with a little slot in the top thereof, and hath a bottom that openeth by way of a little trap door into a long shute. I propose to fix up the slotted box right near the Handle of the Mill (with the sanction, of course, of the owners thereof) so that the long shute shall reach right down to where the big fleas sit. And it shall be that on certain days (by permission of the fleas) every dog shall receive a little strip of paper on which he shall write his Will (if he have one), and shall fold it up and drop it through the little slot into the little box. And it shall be that when the little box is full some one shall pull down the little trap door in the bottom thereof, when the load of papers shall go in a thundering avalanche down the shute into the midst of the fleas around the Tank, and they shall know that the Will of the Dogs Expresser hath spoken. Then shall the fleas sort out the bits of paper, and it shall be that if there be more bits of paper that will one thing, than there are that will another thing, then the thing willed on the greater number shall be done. Thus ye see, my brethren, we may will whatsoever we will, and the greater will shall be done. Therefore brethren, whatsoever evils we suffer for the future, will be all due to our own fault.”

And all the dogs approved the plan, and sent a committee down next day to the fleas to see if they had any objections to the new invention. And to the delight of the dogs, the big fleas said they thought it an excellent idea, that reflected great credit on the inventor thereof, and he ought to be rewarded by appointment to the place of Chucker-in-in-Chief at the hopper, and they thought the plan would be a very healthy form of amusement for the dogs, and would tend to Good Order and the Stability of Institutions, and they wished all success to the Expresser. Furthermore, they graciously offered to do the counting of the papers at the bottom of the shute; and they even went so far as to graciously condescend to be the Public Servants of the dogs at the Handle, and do anything the dogs, by their Expresser, might order them to do, saying that, seeing fleas had all wealth and leisure and power and respectability, none could be so fit to carry out effectively the Will of the Dogs.

But what astounded the dogs with an astonishment that struck them blind and dumb, was that the fleas begged the dogs to allow them the privilege of becoming their Equals on the great Paper Dropping Day, and drop their little Wills into the little box with the little slot in it.

So the committee returned and reported the gracious way in which they had been received, the wonderful affability of the fleas, and their condescension in offering themselves as the Servants of the dogs.

Whereupon the dogs did rejoice with exceeding great joy that they had at last found a Sovereign Remedy for their sorrows.

CHAPTER IX.

How the Will of the Dogs Expresser Worked.—The Solemn Mummery Committee.—How it Inquired very Extensively into the Condition of the Dogs.—Quarrel Between the High Pressure Nighuntos and Low Pressure Faraways.—Wonderful Double Back Action of the Little Box with the Little Slot in it.

THEN did the dogs set up the little box with the little slot in it; and upon a day appointed they went every one and dropped into it little papers, upon some of which was written that the fleas must inquire into the hard condition of the dogs, with a view to ameliorating it; and on some it was written that the fleas need not inquire into their condition, with a view, etc., for there were some dogs that were afraid to have a Will, lest it should be known that they had expressed it and should be discharged from the Handle.

So when all the papers had been dropped through the slot and the box was full, the trap in the bottom thereof was pulled, and the load of papers went down in a thundering avalanche by the shute into the midst of the fleas. And the fleas sorted them and counted them, and one arose and said, “Oyez! Oyez! the Will of the Dogs Expresser hath spoken and there is a Great Majority; and the Great Majority commandeth that we, as their Public Servants, do forthwith inquire into the hard condition of the dogs at the Handle, with a view to ameliorating it. We must therefore bow to the Mandate, and look into their condition, with a view, etc.”

Thereupon the fleas did immediately appoint a Solemn Mummery Committee to take with them telescopes and microscopes, spectacles and eye-glasses to go and look into the condition of the dogs, with a view, etc. And when the dogs saw them coming they barked propitiatingly and wagged their tails delightedly to see the fleas come at the Mandate of the Expresser, and they prophesied great good things of comfort to come of it.

And the fleas did look into their condition. Some stood afar off and viewed the grinding dogs through their telescopes, and made notes of what they saw; and some, with their microscopes got quite near and closely examined their prominent ribs and sore backs and blood-shot eyes and their generally measly appearance, and made voluminous notes; while the rest made general surveys through their spectacles and eye-glasses, and made notes.

Thus did the Committee gather a huge Mass of Statistics which they promised the dogs they would Publish, which promise made the dogs to dance for joy.

And after many days the fleas rolled up what they called a Volume, bulky with Facts and Figures, and fat with Platitudes and Suggestions concerning the amelioration of the grievous condition of the Handle Turning Dogs, which the Volume called the Great Question of the Day.

And the fleas sent up a bill to the dogs which recited that this great Volume, gotten up for their benefit, had cost the fleas an enormous amount of time and labor which must be recouped unto them by the dogs, and that it would require the dogs to grind an hour a day more for one year.

So the dogs did grind and sigh an hour a day more, but had great faith in the Will Expresser which

“* * * Moved in a mysterious way,
Its wonders to perform.”

In process of time there came about a grave quarrel among the fleas around the Tank, and they began to call each other names. The quarrel began by those farthest away from the Spout getting jealous of those that sat nearest thereto, for they said those that sat nigh unto got a better chance to help themselves to the blood, and consequently got fatter than those that sat far away, which those sitting nearest declared to be all nonsense and a libel on their honors. Nevertheless, it so happened that they did get fatter and bigger than those that sat farther away; and though they disclaimed violently that their extra fatness was due to their proximity to the Spout they did not volunteer to change places with the farther off ones. Therefore the Faraways—who were nearly all Low Pressurists—began to push and shove to get up near to the Spout, and the Nighuntos—who were mostly High Pressurists—did push and shove to maintain their places, not, said they, because they wanted to sit nigh unto the Spout, but as a matter of Principle, because they were the lineal descendants of a Grand Old Party of High Pressure Suckers that had once, a many years before, rushed to the rescue and salvation of the Spout, when a lot of Low Pressure Suckers, the lineal ancestors of the present pesky Low Pressurists, had made a dastardly and traitorous attempt to break it off and cripple the Mill.

And there was a mighty shoving; and the Nighuntos indignantly said unto the Faraways, “Whom are ye a shoving of?” And much bad temper was shown, and upon several occasions divers of them got hurt.

Then did some of the acute Faraways hit upon a way of strengthening themselves to shove the Nighuntos away from the Spout and get there themselves. Said they, “Why not get the dogs to help us to shove?” So they sent secretly for the inventor of the Will of the Dogs Expresser and said unto him, “Lo! We be Dog Admirers, and believe that your hard condition should be ameliorated. It is quite plain to any thinking mind that your long days of grinding at the Handle and your bloodless condition are due to those cruelly greedy Nighuntos that sit close up to the Spout. They are never satisfied. The Tank does not require half the blood that flows into it. All the rest, these suckers deliberately appropriate for their own private fattening.

“Now if we sat near the Spout we would reduce the flow of blood to the requirements of the Tank, ‘economically administered,’ and would cause all that now unnecessarily flows into it to be given to the dogs at the Handle, to whom it rightfully belongs. Thus will the number of your hours of toil be reduced. Promise us therefore that the next time ye use your great and ever blessed Expresser, ye will send a thundering avalanche of papers down the shute ordering the Nighuntos to get away from the Spout, and us Faraways to take their places. So shall your hard condition be ameliorated indeed.”

And the Inventor, with his tail brandished on high, ran back to his fellow toilers at the Handle, crying, “Joy! Joy! Deliverance! Behold; the Faraways, who are our friends, have promised that if we will order the Nighuntos, by the Will of the Dogs Expresser, to give place at the Spout to the Faraways, they will administer the Tank and the Spout in our interest.”

But the Nighuntos got to hear that the Faraways had made a treaty of mutual help with the dogs. So they sent a delegation up to the grinders, saying, “Be not deceived; these Faraway Low Pressurists are frauds. Their love for you is all in our eye. They wish to get nigh unto the Spout only for to make themselves fat. And what is more, we know that they are traitors to dogs in general and to you Handle Turners in particular, for we have discovered that they have been engaged for a long time in a dastardly plot to break down this Infant Industry of dog grinding, in which you and we are mutually interested, and to uproot this whole Mill from its foundations, and sell it and the Handle—by the turning of which ye are maintained in constant employment at high wages—to your enemies the pauper dogs of Kyhidom, who will thus turn you out of employment, to wander about seeking for a Handle to turn and finding none. Therefore, do not listen to the plausible lies they tell; but remember that Dogs at the Handle and Fleas at the Tank are ONE and retain us close to the Spout—us, who are its Natural Guardians, and who were its Shield and Salvation in its Hour of Peril in the time past—and ye shall have more steady employment than ever. Be wise, and set your faces as flint against this conspiracy. Let your watchword be “High Wages and Protection to our Native Handle Turners.” They be liars and the party of immoral ideas, and are merely Dog Admirers. But we be the Only Original Truth Speakers and Dog Worshippers.”

And it was so that the words of the Only Original Truth Speakers sank deeply into the hearts of the Handle Turners; and great fear and discumfuzzlement fell upon many of them. And they were divided in opinion. Some said the Dog Worshippers spake wisely, for all knew that the dogs of Kyhidom had always been their enemies; and no doubt it was true that the dogs of Kyhidom had seduced the Faraway Low Pressure Dog Admirers to sell the Mill and take away the Handle. And others said that the Dog Worshippers must be a greedy, unconscionable lot of Suckers who made large pretenses of friendship and love to the Handle Turners simply to retain their fat positions at the Spout, since no one, under the most rigid scrutiny and cross-examination, had ever been able to adduce the twenty thousand millionth part of an instance where a High Pressure Sucker had ever sought anything other than the enlargement of his own private and particular paunch.

So when the great Paper Dropping Day came around there was much barking and snarling and wrangling as to who ought to be placed near the Spout; and the two sets of fleas were trembling between great hopes and great fears; and each set shouted its hardest to the dogs to be wise and to be faithful to their own best interests by dropping their papers for it in the slot of the little Expresser.

And there was much noise and confusion during the filling of the little box. And when the little trap door was pulled and the papers went in a thundering avalanche down the shute, each set of fleas tried to run away with the Great Majority regardless of what was written upon them. But after much fighting it was finally declared that the Great Majority of Wills was for the Faraways to sit up near the Spout, and for the Nighuntos to get far away. Then did both the Faraways and Nighuntos rise up and beautifully make obeisance to the Expressed Will of the Dogs, the heretofore Faraways bowing even to the ground; but the heretofore Nighuntos merely inclined their noses, and said “Damn” in soliloquial whispers.

So the Faraways got up close to the Spout and became the Nighuntos, and the Nighuntos were shoved to the lower end of the Tank and became the Faraways, and began in their turn to hustle and shove and charge the Nighuntos with selfishly using the Spout to make themselves fat.

And the dogs of the Majority were very happy, and took a day off (by gracious permission of the new Nighuntos) to bark and stand on their heads and burn fuel and make great smoke and stench, and do other idiotic things to show the great joy they felt at having put another set of suckers near the Spout.

Then they returned to diligently turn the Handle and hope for great good times. Which came not.

And after many days of the same old grind, being taunted by the dogs of the Minority who every morning said, “We told you so,” and every evening said, “Thus did we prophesy unto you,” the dogs of the Majority sent down to ask the new Nighuntos about what time the dogs at the Handle might expect the peep of the Better Day and the fruition of the Promises?

To which the Nighunto Dog Admirers solemnly made answer that they had made the fearful discovery that the tank was on two bases, one of gold and the other of silver, and that the Silver Basis had shrunk and got so dreadfully awry that the Tank had fallen all askew on that side, and was in danger of capsizing altogether, so that they were all in a dreadful stew, and had to give all their attention to the Great Question of getting it into position again on a Single Gold Basis that would command their Confidence, and never, never, never give way again, and that all mere dog starvation and trouble were trivialities compared to the great overshadowing need of saving the Tank from ruin. Besides, the Faraway Dog Worshippers were now in control of the lower end of the Tank, and had, previous to its slipping with its Silver Basis, wickedly bored a hole in it and drawn off the Surplus, and were in other ways most unpatriotically hampering the Dog Admirers in their efforts to economize and reduce the Stream; that there was a Great Deficiency to be made up, and that it would be some years at least before they would be in a Position to effect much Reform, and that for the present it was absolutely necessary for the dogs to make up the Great Deficiency in the Tank, and must grind an hour a day longer for at least a year.

Which caused the dogs to go sadly back to their hungry turning of the Handle, and to wonder why the great Will of the Dogs Expresser required so much eternity its wonders to perform.

CHAPTER X.

Dearth of Dogs.—The Blood Stream Begins to Fail.—Scheme to Recruit from Hungryland.—How it Worked to the Destruction of the White Leg Association, and the Little Box with the Little Slot in it.

AND it came to pass that there began to be visible a slackening of the Stream at the Spout, for the great greed of the fleas around the Tank was using up both the supply of dogs available for chucking in, and the strength of the weary toilers at the Handle.

Which caused a great fear to fall on the Brethren. But one of them, less blind, though not less greedy, than the others, called their attention to the State of Things.

“See ye not, my brethren,” said he, “that the Stream faileth? The arc it describeth is not so large as aforetime, which meaneth that the hopper above is not replenished to its full capacity, which further meaneth that either those rascally chuckers-in are not doing their full duty, or that the supply of dogs to chuck in is running low.”

This discovery filled the other Brethren with terror, and they looked first at their own big and bloated bodies—which by this time had become mere featureless blood bags—and then at the Stream, so visibly running low, and, trembling with a coward fear, cried out: “Oh, who will save us from perishing? For the Blood is our life and it faileth. Oh, pestilence, fury and plague, we shall grow less! Oh, we don’t mind bursting with bigness; but oh, to grow little again! Oh! all is vanity under the Sun! We did think that Providence, for whom we have done so much, would have given us this day our daily dogs to grind. But He has gone back on us. Us, brethren, who never went back on Him and never let his churches want for any good thing. All is lost! lost!! lost!!!”

And they bewailed and lamented sore; and one, at the contemplation of his possible shrinkage, went temporarily insane and waddled out and killed himself.

But the Discoverer spoke up and said: “Allay your fears, and assuage your grief, my brethren; all is not lost by a long chalk. I have excogitated a Scheme which I think will work. Behold! are there not more dogs on the earth than the dogs of Canisville? Yea, verily! dogs more weary, languid and sore distressed than they? I have heard that in Hungryland, over the pond, away beyond Kyhidom, are millions of dogs who are dreadfully flea-bitten and exhausted, who would think it getting verily to heaven if they could come here and get such bountiful wages as we allow to our grinding dogs.

“Go to, now. Let us send forth apostle dogs to Hungryland that shall tell the dogs there of the wonderful heaven of peace and joy and plenty in the West; of the Great Wages paid to honest toil, thrift and temperance; of the Boundless Opportunities open to honest ambition; of the Liberty there, and the Absolute Equality of the Rich and Poor before the Law; how in that wonderful land the Dogs and not the Fleas do the governing, and set up and pull down their Public Servants at their own sweet will and pleasure, by means of the little box with the little slot in it. And let the apostles hold up aloft the brilliant example of our dearly beloved brother, Saint Andronicus Carnivorous, who came over from North Kyhidom as mean a dog as any of them, and all by his own unaided Toil and Thrift and Temperance—without even the blessing of God, in whom he taketh no stock—put himself through the Great Transformation and became as big and bloated a flea as the most excellent of us, and wrote a Book. And let them say that he is not the only example by many thousands of the Illimitable Possibilities of this land; and they will come rushing over by thousands, and our chuckers-in shall seize them. Thus shall the hopper of our prosperity be replenished with an everlasting supply, and the former bigness of the Blood Stream be restored—aye, more than restored, for we will enlarge the Spout and widen and deepen the hopper and elongate the Handle, and the rushing thousands from Hungryland will fight for a chance to grind.

“Thus shall we have more dogs to be ground up and more dogs to grind them, and as there will always be standing around the Handle a vast multitude licking their chops in hope of seeing the grinders faint and fall, we shall be able to diminish our great expenses by reducing the great quantity of blood we are now compelled by cruel circumstances to put on the end of the needle—which is a great imposition. So shall the blood spurt out in great style, and we will have a larger Tank, so that more fleas can sit around it; and we will drink and drink and grow and grow and become so great as never was. And then will we put down the insolence of those white-legged dogs, who have so often troubled us by entering into unconstitutional conspiracies to hamper us and overthrow the liberties of free-born dogs to make free contracts with us to grind for the wages we offer. Having handy so many thousands of Black Legs, we will not need the White Legs any more, but will have them all chucked into the hopper. Moreover, I think, we will be able, with all this inexhaustible supply of blood coming in, to heal our internal disagreements and sink all our little superficial distinctions of Low Pressurists and High Pressurists, and truly appear what we really are—One Common Family of Blood Drinkers; for there will then be blood enough for each and all of us. Then will we, working together as One United Family abolish that infernal nuisance of the little box with the little slot in it. Ye all know, brethren, that the day off which the dogs, through the unbecoming schism amongst ourselves, take to work the Will of the Dogs Expresser, is a dead loss to us in the cessation of the grind. I appeal to you, brethren, to consider the great loss we suffer; calculate the number of dogs that might be chucked in during the twenty-four hours spent in the wicked and wasteful amusement of Paper Dropping, and the further loss accruing from the lazy turning of the Handle next day, owing to the enervating and mind distracting hilarity of the previous day. Let us then be wise and consult our best interest. Thus Brethren shall we have a time, times and half a time of fatness, ease and prosperity.”

These words brought joy and hope to the Brethren; and all said the suggestions of the Discoverer were as the turning inside out of the Dark Cloud to show its Silver Lining; some called them a Providential Relief; and some said they went to show that this world was run by the Creator on the principle of Universal Harmony and the Compensation Balance, in that what one part thereof lacked another supplied.

Saint Andronicus Carnivorous was the only one not entirely enthusiastic. He arose and cautiously said, “Brethren, the proposition of our dear brother, the Discoverer, lacketh nothing that is highly to be approved. No doubt it will be highly profitable to us, and therein I am heartily with him—especially in that part relating to the abolition of the wicked White Legs, and the unwholesome box with the little slot in it. But I want you to give me a guarantee that there will be no danger in it to me. You know I have a Reputation which is very dear to me; and if these Hungry Dogs come here and find the Truth is not as preached, they will reproach me as one of you, and so I and my Reputation and my Book will fall into contempt, and they may go even so far as to call me a Hypocrite. Therefore I would rather not be seen in the matter; and so, will hie me away until the reproach be over.”

To which the others made answer that there was very little danger or reproach in the scheme; that the Hungry Dogs would get all the disappointment, the apostles all the reproach, and the fleas all the profit; but that to be on the safe side Saint Andronicus had better go away over the pond and lie low, and they would find some one of a Don’t-care-a-d—— disposition, like Brother Pharaoh Phrique, to carry out the scheme, particularly the abolition of the White Legs and the flinging of them into the hopper.

And it was so that Carnivorous did go away and lie low; and the apostles did go out into all the world of the Hungry Dogs and preach the Gospel of Lies; and the Hungry Dogs were beguiled and came over and brought their great hunger with them, and by their great ferocity the White Legs were wrenched away from the Handle and thrown by the chuckers-in into the hopper.

And in that day the Low Pressure Dog Admirers and the High Pressure Dog Worshippers were made friends again and became One; and they ordered the Hungry Dogs to break up the box with the little slot in it and burn it with fire; and the Mill was enlarged; and the Stream was thicker and stronger than ever; and the Tank was enlarged; and the United Fleas sat around and drank themselves fuller, and grew so big that they shut out the sky and the light of the Sun; and by reason thereof a great and deadly darkness came over the land, and in the shadow thereof all plants of the light, such as Honesty, Truth, Liberty, and Municipal, State and National Rectitude, went mouldy and rotten; and the big, over-bloated fleas, by reason of their great gluttony, grew leprous and stank, and their evil odor filled the air; wherefore great sickness and plagues broke out everywhere, which carried off many dogs and some fleas.

And through all this evil time the dogs ground and fainted and sighed and howled, and sent up blasphemies and curses and prayers to a Heaven that was very deaf to them, but was apparently very good to the monstrosities that sat around the Tank.

CHAPTER XI.

Hell and Chaos in Canisville.—Tramp Dogs.—Rise of the Apologist Philosophers.—Whatsoever is is Right.—Their Proverb Foundry.

CHAOS reigned in Canisville. Hell seemed to have grown so hungry for victims that it had not patience to wait for the coming down of the dogs to it, in the natural course of time, but had gone up to devour them on earth. Dogs everywhere were the property of the fleas, either by direct settlement on their bodies or by deputy. All that were not struggling by serving the Monstrous Fleas at the Handle were wandering around carrying little fleas and hunting hard for bones and scraps. The only exceptions were a few obstinate headed and obdurate hearted dogs, who had said they would have freedom at any cost. They said they would not turn that infernal Handle, neither would they carry and maintain any fleas. So they defiantly went about picking up scraps, and when the little fleas came hopping onto them, and demanding as their right to suck out of them the nutriment the scraps gave them, those dogs did snarl and reach around for them with their teeth and violently shake them off.

Then did those little fleas complain unto McPoodle that there were certain wicked dogs that objected to be bled; and McPoodle said he would not stand it in his dominions; and the Monstrous Fleas when they heard about it, said it was Robbery of the Little Brethren, and a contagious Bad Example that might spread throughout Society; and they spake unto their salaried barker in the Church, Tee de Little Wit Blatherskite, that he speak over the big book that lay on the costly cushion, against the sin of dogs stealing their own bodies away from the bites of the fleas. And the barker did speak, and the good and well behaved dogs who carried their fleas and bore their hunger piously did regard with severity and high disapproval all those dogs that shook their fleas, insomuch that the flea shakers found themselves in ill odor and did withdraw themselves from dog society, and sought lonely places where meat was scarce and fleas scarcer.

Yet did not those dogs repine. They tramped and vagabondized and reposed in the sun and the dirt; they grew very hairy and very dirty and very hungry. But they said they were never hungrier than they would have been had they remained in Good Society, and spent their days hustling for fleas, which, they said, was on the whole an advantage, as it was much less awful to be idle and hungry than to work one’s life out for others and be hungry all the same; and as for Public Opinion, why, to be able to snooze in the sunshine, was worth any amount of Public Opinion that left one’s stomach insolvent. They also became covered with vermin, which the flea-covered and respectable dogs of Canisville shuddered at; but the vagabond dogs said that carrying vermin was not half as burdensome or half as injurious to the health as carrying fleas; and as for getting their living without work, why, the Monstrous Fleas did no work at all and were monstrously respectable, and they were going to be respectable too; all which reasoning the pious dogs said was Sophistry, and tended to lower them still further in the estimation of the big fleas and other Good Society.

Verily a chaotic state of things prevailed; and to the few sensible dogs that ever and anon bobbed up from out-of-the way places to bark a bark of protest, and then sink into oblivion or be stoned out of town, all things seemed upside down.

But as there never was a time in all the world’s history when to the Apologist Philosophers of the times things that were were not right, even so at this chaotic time in Canisville there arose the usual Apologist Philosophers who took things as they were, and out of them built a wonderful economic philosophy most beautiful to behold, the only trouble with which was that whenever anyone of the few sensible dogs would come out of his hole of hiding and prod it with a little weapon called Common Sense, the whole elaborate system would collapse and drop into dust. Wherefore the Apologist Philosophers were aggrieved, and appealed to the Authorities to make it a Felony for any unpopular dog to go about prodding philosophical systems with Common Sense, or to have about him any Common Sense, which was, they said, a carrying of concealed weapons.

These Apologist Philosophers were singular creatures and insufferably self-conceited, because they had “got on in the world” as they called it; that is, they were all lucky dogs who had managed to get fat by lying in wait for and catching what they called “Chances,”—that is, stray scraps of meat—and by always speaking a good word for the big fleas, who rewarded them by giving them a few of their fellow dogs to eat. Many of them made their faces smooth, and tied around their necks white bands called “Chokers,” which gave them a singular appearance of which they were very vain. But their most singular distinguishment was that they wore opaquely green spectacles and walked on their fore feet and the tips of their noses, with their hind legs and tails in the air. This uncommon way of walking enabled them, they said, to get a view of earthly things totally different from that obtainable by the ordinary degraded way of going on all fours, and enabled them more distinctly to see things as they appeared, which was, they said, the philosophical method, as contra-distinguished from the low, vulgar, altogether despicable and ought-to-be-prohibited Common Sense method of seeing things as they were.

The habit of these dogs was to promenade abroad by moonless and starless night and “observe” through their opaquely green spectacles, and then gather together by day in what they called a “School,” where, secluded from noise and light and air, they boiled down their observations and ran them into moulds, the results of which operation they called “Maxims,” “Apothegms” and “Proverbs” which when cold they handed out to other dogs to hawk about in the public places as free gifts to all dogs to hang up in the chambers of their memories.

This Proverb Foundry, the big fleas said, was an excellent Institution and was worthy of support as it did a vast amount of Good; for it provided good things for dogs everywhere to put in their mouths, which, as food was scarce, was a Blessed Charity, and, moreover, by giving the dogs plenty to do mumbling these Proverbs and Maxims over and over in their mouths, kept them out of the mischief of thinking, and preserved their minds in a wholesome state of imbecility which was conducive to Social Order and the Stability of Institutions.

These wise-appearing philosophers, seeing that bones were scarce and dogs many, urged upon every dog the importance of getting ahead of every other dog, by remembering that “The early bird gets the first worm.” Seeing that in a crowd of struggling dogs, all the strong and lusty ones came to the front and uppermost, they made that all right by inventing the heartless motto for the guidance of the unscrupulous, “There’s plenty of room at the top.” Observing that just through the gap in the fence there is food for five dogs which one hundred and fifty are biting and tearing to get at, they encouraged the dogs to bear in mind that “Success in life comes only by push and enterprise.” Having noted that he who gobbled up his meat the fastest got most into his inside in the same time, they urged them to racing speed by the proverbs, “Time is money,” “Procrastination is the thief of time,” and “Hurry Up is the fastest horse.” Noticing that when anyone throws a scrap of meat to a crowd of hungry dogs, the one which is first and smartest gets it, they put the rule for such cases thus: “Opportunity once gone never returns.” Having themselves got on by carefully watching when other dogs threw away stale and mouldy meat that was not exceedingly well worth eating, and hoarding the same in sly holes and corners, they glorified such mean conduct by saying, “Frugality is the Mother of Wealth;” and when they denied their hungry stomachs a scrap in order to have a larger hoard, they erected their mean stinginess into a Philosophy of Life by remarking that “A Penny saved is a Penny Earned.”

And so on and so on. In a thousand ways they taught that getting on in the world is by “carving one’s way,” “compelling success,” biting, scratching, crowding, knocking down and trampling on your fellows; and they taught that only the winner in the race is to be congratulated on his efforts; that he who grabs and gets the bone is the one rightly entitled to it; and that all who run and fall, and all who grab and miss, should be voted immoral and sent to perdition.

And never a one of them ever made a proverb or a maxim that had in it the remotest suggestion that there might be any other way for dogs to live and be happy, save that by which they were now so miserably perishing; for, as aforesaid, they were great philosophers.

CHAPTER XII.

The Arisers.—Chaos Menders.—Moral and Spiritual tinkers and cobblers.—Artificial piety.—Praise Convention.—A Holy One a Maker of Long Prayers and Short Wages, is very hopeful.

NOW as soon as the Apologist Philosophers and their Proverb Foundry arose it was as though they had opened the doors of a Bottomless Pit where were confined an infinite host of Arisers; for from that time on there arose, and arose, and arose an endless succession of until-then unknown and needless Chaos Menders who came forth equipped with moral saws and hammers and jack planes and set up shop all over Canisville and put out big flaring signs setting forth that all manner of Moral and Spiritual Cobbling and Repairing was done there on the shortest notice; special attention being given to the Production of Public Virtue amongst dogs, by a large corps of operators, in the highest degree skilled in the art of fitting all sorts, sizes and qualities of dogs to Standard Moral Measurement, by the use of the latest improved and perfected machinery, warranted to lengthen, shorten, flatten, puff out, square up, round off, expand or compress as required. Also Corrupt Trees carefully trained and made to bear the best of Good Fruit; thorns made to bear grapes, and thistles to bring forth figs; all under the able superintendency of their various agents.

First, there arose divers well-meaning dogs of prophets who imagined they could restore the fighting, squabbling community to a state of decency by schooling the dogs into a habit of compelling their brains to sever all relationship and connection with their stomachs.

So when they were ready with their Plan they sent one into the Public Place, crying, “Behold now, this fighting and bad temper is all wrong; ye ought to deal kindly with one another. Lo! I come to proclaim peace.”

And an infidel dog said, “How wilt thou bring peace when there are more hungry dogs than bones?”

And the prophet said, “Let us bear with one another; let us resolutely put away from us all malice and evil thoughts, and be kindly affectioned one to another; and when one of us has found a bone, let not the other one cast covetous and hungry eyes upon it, but let him meekly bear his lot; and when his belly rumbles through emptiness, and he be tempted to rush upon his neighbor’s bone, let him put up a little prayer to the Providence which hath wisely ordained our several lots, and howl a little hymn thus:

“This, my canine brethren, is all that we need—the spirit of meekness, resignation and contentment. Think, my beloved brethren, of all the glorious prospects that lie beyond this vale of tears, when, if we have been very humble and contented, and have not barked at the upper classes, nor scoffed at the well-paid ministers of the fleas’ gospel, we shall trot the streets of the New Canisville where the best food lies around in the greatest profusion, and poor dogs hunger no more, neither thirst any more.”

“And,” said a sceptic dog, “what shall we do for grub on earth until we reach the grubful Canaan?”

“My brother,” said the prophet, “thou must pray for grace to be content.”

Now, when the Church of the Fleas heard that there was a very holy dog of a prophet gone down amongst the wicked and discontented canines to preach unto them the doctrine of present contentment and future bellyfuls, they gathered themselves together in a great Praise Convention to give thanks and rejoice for the new Star of Hope that had risen on the land, and a Holy One, a Maker of long prayers and short wages, arose and addressed them.

The Honorable One a Maker of long prayers and short wages was a smooth and influential lay flea, who ran a large blood suckery six days of the week, and on the other a large snivelling prayery, and was reputed to be very rich in grace, but much richer in this world’s wealth, and was world-noted for his stinginess towards the dogs he drew his life blood from, and the prodigality of his gifts to churches and charities.

There was a very queer peculiarity about his eyes: One of them was turned permanently downward towards the earth, and was a very keen, bright eye of high microscopic power, which restlessly scanned every object, and by long practice had grown able to discern with a marvellous infallibility certain dirty looking little blood spots called pennies. This eye was what was known as his six-days-a-week eye, and was so powerfully developed that no matter how small these spots were, nor how deeply hidden—even deep down at the bottom of and beneath a hundred feet of dirt—he could see them and he would never rest until he had uncovered them, and gathered them in with his marvellously acquisitive blood sucker.

His other eye was known as his seventh-day eye, and was a very keen, bright eye of high telescopic power, which by persistent straining and practice had bulged outward and upward towards Heaven, and had developed a marvellous capacity for seeing mansions in the skies, harps and golden crowns of glory and immortality, laid up in particular for the Honorable One a Maker of long prayers and short wages.

So that what with the present riches his six-days-a-week eye enabled his marvellously acquisitive blood sucker to pick up, and the prospective riches his seventh-day eye enabled him to see was his, he was very wealthy indeed, very sleek and exceedingly well contented—as any one so well fixed for both worlds ought to be.

He said: “Brethren of the most ancient and honorable Church of the Suckers, it is evident that the great problem of sin and wickedness amongst the poor is about to be solved. I confess that, to me, the state of the poor has been for years past, a great burden of anxiety upon my heart, and a subject of agonizing prayer. I have remarked their pinched features, their hungry jaws, their woe-begone condition, and I have endeavored as far as in me lies, to alleviate their hard lot. What shall be done to lift them up? Let us remember that they are of our own blood. The poor brutes on which I live excite my compassion more than I can tell, and I have done everything I know of to lessen the hardness of their lot. I encourage my lady flea and our flea-lets—than whom there are not more holy ones between here and the seventh heaven—to go down and teach them. They take little tracts to them, showing them, in the most beautiful manner, how by more toil, more thrift, more temperance, more economy of time and little retrenchments in sleep and luxuries, and the lopping off here and there of sinful indulgences, and crucifixion of various ungodly lusts, they can with the help of God, come up to fatness, and even to a sleek condition. They have showed them that “Where there’s a will, there’s ALWAYS a way” to success in life, and they have shown them by various shining examples, how ANY dog may, by patient perseverance, lift himself out of the condition of being a blood-yielding dog and come up by Transformation into that of being an honored sucker himself and deacon of a church. And to encourage them, I have even sometimes remitted five per cent. of the blood they owe me. But nothing seems to come of it. They seem just as thriftless as ever and as full of vice. And really their idleness and shiftlessness cause me serious alarm as I perceive that their daily yield of blood is decreasing and I have suffered much loss. And brethren, no doubt I voice your experience. We know that godliness among these poor is economically profitable. A pious, contented dog works more faithfully than an ungodly one; and there is infinitely more pleasure in going to collect our monthly dues from amongst the pious, sober, well behaved and godly dogs, than amongst those who by their wicked idleness, insobriety and insolent barkings, give us trouble and anxiety. Let us remember that nice Scripture which says, ‘Godliness is profitable unto all things, having the promise not only of the life that now is, but of that which is to come.’ Let us then be not only good but wise, and not only support this good prophet in his work, but set apart others unto the good work; and let us call them City Missionaries. Will some one now move that we pass ’round the hat? And let the collection be a good big one brethren, for, recollect, this is to send the gospel to the poor, and ‘he that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord,’ and the Lord always pays good interest, brethren, good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over. So that we shall by this present sacrifice be eternal gainers and come out at the large end of the horn.”

And it was so. And they made up a big pot of money for the missionaries; and they stroked their paunches affectionately and departed, feeling that God ought to be very much obliged to them for having condescended to think on his poor.

And from that time on there was reported “great success” in the preaching of the Gospel of Content. At the end of the year the Church of the Suckers got together, and had the prophets tell them of the good work done during the year. And the good prophets made various long reports of their work. They had written down in books called “diaries” how many visits they had made among the poor dogs; how many they had induced by exhortation, to give up their fighting and quarreling; how many had thus been brought to sit in rows in certain bare-looking gospel houses called “Missions,” and howl out certain noises called “hymns,” and to declare at the end of meetings that they had “got religion” and “found grace” to bear their hunger and all their miseries, and even to put on a visage and a look that betokened that they rather enjoyed hunger and poverty and hankered for more. But the reports always wound up with the statement, that how much soever of good had been done, it was as nothing to the good that remained to be done; that the “fields were white unto the harvest,” and praying that “more laborers be sent into the harvest,” and, finally, that although they had got quite a number of hungry and poverty-stricken dogs to enter the ranks of the contented saints, the vast multitude were still discontented and quarrelsome and wicked, and would not come to the “Mission,” but loafed about the streets on Sunday, blind to their “privileges,” and deaf to the “gracious call.” And what was even more sad and pitiable, these loafers, who would not be gathered under the wing of the new gospel hen, not only made a mock at sin, but had made grievous faces at the missionaries. Then the speakers congratulated the “mission society” on the “good” they had done and urged the missionaries to bear their hard trials with meekness, and to put forth “greater efforts” in the future.

CHAPTER XIII.

The Moral and Spiritual Cobblers Adopt Physical Coercion.—Squads.—Dog-Flea-Monkey Officers.—Brain Embalming College.—Encouraging Success of the Gangs.

THEN did the numerous Chaos Straighteners and Moral and Spiritual Cobblers, seeing that they had the hearty appreciation of the Church of the Fleas, in their efforts to spiritually “save” the bodily starved dogs, feel much encouraged, and began to devise how they might improve, strengthen and enlarge their saving methods. Having religiously gone out of their way to coax and beguile the poor, depraved and rib-stripped dogs into becoming good—though having religiously remained in their way while all the fleas, big and little, had depraved them—it was naturally easy to go one step further and supplement their beguilements with a little coercion. They reasoned that if it was right to hold nice moral persuasives to the dogs’ noses to draw them onward and upward, it could not be wrong to club them in the same direction from behind. They said the “Getting to Heaven” was the main thing, and that even if a dog had to be taken by the tail and flung over the wall thereof, and landed inside with a flop that shook his bowels out, it was infinitely more merciful to him than allowing him to go easily to Hell.

So they divided themselves into groups and squads for the purpose of surrounding the dogs. To the churchy squads was assigned the duty of standing in a little narrow, dingy and very uninviting moral alley-way, which they euphemistically called the “Way to Heaven,” and with call whistles and Jews-harps and kazoos calling the dogs’ attention to pretty pictures at the far end of the alley-way, representing green fields and flowing streams, and big piles of very meaty bones, and fat and full dogs snoozing thereby, and other scenes supposed to be attractive to starving dogs. Another churchy band strewed lollipops, drops of gravy and other seducements along the alley-way.

These two bands called themselves “The Society of Strenuous Endeavorists,” because they “endeavored” to cajole and persuade flea-bitten and depraved dogs to go up the dingy alley-way.

Other squads planted themselves here and there at various strategic points, where dogs were likely to break away, and “endeavored” by more or less violent methods, to turn the faces of the dogs towards the dingy alley-way and force them, by goads and prods and clubs, to be persuaded by the Endeavorists and Lollipoppers. These squads proudly called themselves by various distinguishing names, such as the “Go to Church or be Clubbed Society;” “The Yanking Dogs Heaven-ward Association;” “The Order of Holy Whackers and Thwackers;” “The Compulsory Holiness Society;” “The A. A. U. S. G. B. & L,” which being interpreted, means “The Association for the Advancement of the Use of Sanctification Generating Billies and Locusts;” “The Society for the Promotion of Pious Poverty;” “The Society for the Suppression of Natural Consequences and the Sundering of Cause and Effect;” “The Gulp-a-Camel-and-Gag-at-a-Gnat Society,” and the “Dog Souling and Healing Association.”

These squads were all officered by fat and comfortable mongrel creatures, one third dog, one third flea, and the rest monkey, whose qualifications for the headship thereof were that while young they had graduated from a certain College of the fleas established to teach the doctrine that virtue in dogs had no relation to their living carcases, but could be arbitrarily produced in any dog by thrusting him into a certain conventional moral mould, and thumping, walloping, pounding and hammering him until he fit it. After several years of training in this School where they saw thousands of dogs broken and smashed and distorted, but never a one made to fit, and they themselves had laboriously tried to make dogs fit the mould, but never did, they were examined as to their proficiency in the science and art of achieving moral failure; and as to their belief in the Attainability of the Impossible; and if the examination was satisfactory they signed a solemn declaration that they were true believers in that self-same blessed doctrine.

Whereupon the Principals opened their heads to see if their brains were really full of that doctrine, and if so they poured therein a ladleful of an antiseptic compound called “Compound Concentrated Quintessence of Pig-Headed Bourbonism” that was warranted to keep sound and immovably fix that doctrine in their brains all their lives; then they hermetically sealed up the opening against the entrance of any displacing idea, and turned the creature abroad upon the earth with a diploma certifying that the holder thereof had been duly treated, and had had his brain properly embalmed, and was thereafter incapable of receiving any other idea if he lived a million years.

Now, all these gangs and squads had very “encouraging success” in their work. That is to say the success was not much—in truth it was very little—but what there was of it was very encouraging to them because they were incapable of perceiving failure. Not many dogs could be induced by the Strenuous Endeavorists and Lollipoppers to go up the dingy alley-way, and of the few who went to the far end thereof, most returned saying that, barring the lollipops and drops of gravy, the fullness and plenty was all wretchedly pictorial, and the air was so heavy and stagnant, and the surroundings so dull and dreary that they preferred to go back and be damned hungry, rather than be “saved” hungry. In fact they had got so used to being damned hungry that it hurt less than the hungry “salvation.”

But over the little few who stayed in the Way to Heaven the Strenuous Endeavorists made great rejoicings; they labelled them Spared Monuments, packed them carefully in wadding and toted them round to the churches of the fleas and exhibited them as fine samples of what could be accomplished by “never wearying in well doing,” and the Church applauded, and the Monstrous Fleas being appealed to for help in carrying on the work, sent down their blessing and a large fund to provide more lollipops and gravy, and an earnest appeal to the Strenuous Endeavorists to endeavor to devise some scheme of salvation for the poor unfortunate dogs that ground at the Handle of their Mill, and whose spiritual interests lay very near to their hearts.

CHAPTER XIV.

Delusion of the Dog-flea-monkeys.—The Portrait.—How it was Copied.

ALL these dog-flea-monkey Virtue Compulsionists had one peculiar delusion: They all imagined that they were exceedingly beautiful spiritually, and comely of complexion morally, and resembled in moral features a certain gloriously beautiful Person who had lived and died above 1800 years before; about whom the salaried barkers in the churches of the fleas were paid to bark one day in every seven.

It was a practice ordained by the Church that every barker, in the course of his regular barking, should draw on a gold and gem-studded, framed, marble slab, a Portrait of this Personage; for two reasons: First, to keep him in remembrance, because, they said, he was the Blessed Founder of the Church of the Fleas; and second, because it was obligatory both upon the reverend barker and upon every member of the Church to be conformed unto His Likeness, by diligently comparing themselves with the Portrait.

It was a Blessed Custom, and originated thus:—The Original Portrait was in the Holy Book that lay on the costly cushion, drawn there by certain brave but poor and persecuted dogs who knew and loved the Original Person. Their Church in those days was the Church of the Dogs, and was a very small and obscure church that was set up in out-of-the-way, damp and mouldy dens and caves and holes and corners of the earth; because the Church of the Fleas of those days had crucified the Founder of it, and did cruelly hunt and persecute and kill the dogs that belonged to it. But those dogs did the more love his memory, and did day by day copy out his Portrait from the Original and conform themselves to it.

But after a time, when they that knew the Founder were gathered into the heavenly garner, and there arose a succession of dogs that knew him not, the Church of the Dogs went acourting unto the respectable Church of the Fleas and asked to be united in Holy Wedlock unto it. And the Church of the Fleas corrupted with respectability the Church of the Dogs, and the dogs sold their brand-new religion to the fleas whose gods had become dilapidated and worm-eaten for lack of fresh paint. Whereupon the Church of the Fleas threw their rotten old gods on the rubbish heap, and adopted the worship of the Wonderful Personage and the practice of drawing his Portrait. But the practice of copying it from the Original in the Big Book was in time discarded, because many of the fleas, when called on by the barkers to compare themselves with the Portrait, said it reproached them, being too good, and made them ugly by comparison, and the conforming themselves thereto was too expensive and inconvenient. And when the barker insisted on compliance with the custom, they said he was an impertinent barker and didn’t know his place; and they called on the dogs to cast him out and worry him to death. Which terrible example and warning caused the succeeding barkers to be pertinent and know their places, and bark according to the desire of the fleas—which they had carefully done ever since.

So no more was the Seventh-daily copy copied from the Original but was copied from the preceding Seventh-daily copy—which gave the employers far less dissatisfaction.

But the barkers, diligently keeping the fear of the fleas and the fate of the cast out barkers before them, fell gradually into the habit of here and there adding to the Portrait a feature or two of the eminent fleas that sat and smiled before them; and as this gentle flattery of the fleas was received by them with great favor, the barkers—who had by this time very perspicaciously discerned on which side their bread was buttered—were encouraged; and soon the Portrait in no wise resembled the Original. But it gave very great satisfaction to the fleas, who found themselves growing more and more like unto the Blessed Person whom they worshipped; and the barkers found their basketfuls of meat growing ever larger as their reward; insomuch that in the latter days such barkers as Tee de Little Wit Blatherskite—who drew the Seventh-daily Portrait with great skill, and filled it fuller of flea features than any other barker—got very great basketfuls, and were held in the highest honor by the most eminent suckers, who said they were good dogs that they would not part with at any price. Therefore it was that when all the dog-flea-monkey dog coercionists and heads of the various Physical-Force Holiness Societies sat in the Church of the Fleas and looked upon the Features and Form of the Portrait, they lifted up their mouths to Heaven and gave loud thanks to God that they were the exact counterparts of the Ever Blessed Person, for their ugly mugs and ignorantly brutal and fanatical eyes were just like his.

CHAPTER XV.

Lovely Anthony’s Communion Service all by Himself.—How he Formed a Society for the Suppression of Vice, and the Propagation of the Gospel of the Club.—Their Vicious Methods of Promoting Virtue.—Their Success at Dog Catching.

EMINENT over all the crowd of Morality Cobblers and Dog Soulers and Healers who sat in the Church of the Fleas and looked upon the Portrait, was one whose brain had been particularly well embalmed and hermetically sealed against the entrance of any new idea. This was Lovely Anthony Thumpem Clubstock. He was a great admirer of the Portrait; and he went daily into the church to hold Holy Communion with himself before it. And thus he communed: “That is a most excellent likeness of the Blessed Personage for it is just like me. Like me, he was the All-Righteous, and, like me, he had but one desire—to suppress the vice of the world; but he lacked method, and unfortunately had not me with him to give him points. Oh, if it had pleased God to have sent me on earth along with him, what a team we should have made; he with his genius, and I with my method; why, we would have covered the earth with righteousness, even as the waters cover the sea. Of course he had his faults—as who has not? He was too much inclined to Mercy and Forgiveness and all that sort of thing. He had too much heart, and it ran away with him. Had I been with him—which, alas, I was not—I should have been a corrective. Heart might have been less objectionable in his time than now, but to-day nothing but the Strong Hand and the Heavy Club can drive the degenerate dogs of this day to Virtue and Righteousness; and I believe that were he on earth to-day his good sense would approve a sterner policy of cleansing the earth of sin. Dogs to-day are so fearfully depraved, so very vile, such dreadful despisers of Holy Religion, such malignant scoffers at our reverend salaried barkers, and are so viciously and stubbornly averse to going to heaven, that were they to be let alone, or pushed with mere kindness, they would become utterly evil and corrupt the earth.

“He seems to have had no nose for nastiness nor eye for discerning indecency. But I have a splendid buzzard smeller that detecteth the faintest taint afar off, and an eagle eye that instantaneously discerneth indecency, even where it is not. He lacked the natural taste to dabble with filth and scratch around cesspools. But I am not so. I with my little mop and pail will clean the earth of evil for him. I will suppress Vice and make the earth so lovely that were he to come back he would grasp my paw and say, ‘Well, done Good and Lovely Anthony; thou art unique; thou hast faithfully walloped and larruped the erring dogs of earth back into my Fold of Love; thou hast performed the hitherto impossible job of hammering virtue through their hides, and opening with a club the buds of Holiness in their hearts; henceforth thou art promoted; I will make thee Clubber Plenipotentiary to Hell, which no doubt thou canst reclaim for me.’”

And Lovely Anthony, having sharpened his buzzard smeller and polished his eagle eye, went and easily gathered together a gang of true believers in the Gospel of the Club—for the land was full of them, brain-embalmed and pig-headedly Bourbonish like himself—and he called them the “Society for the Suppression of Vice,” and said unto them, “Brethren, go ye out into the highways and the byways, and wheresoever ye espy any depraved dog, hale him before the Suppressors, the police dogs. But be very tender with the fleas that are on him, for they are our life. Let your zeal for God effervesce above all considerations. If any depraved and vicious dog hide himself away where it is difficult to get at him, remember that his suppression is the supreme aim of all your efforts, and act accordingly. If ye cannot lay hold of him openly and boldly, then transform yourselves, and garb yourselves like him and act in all respects as a vicious dog like him, to gain his confidence and draw him from his hole. Stick not at a lie or two, or at any breach of the law to trepan him, or at any damnable and vicious thing which may be necessary to suppress Vice and promote Virtue, for the bringing in of the Kingdom of Heaven is of such tremendous consequence, that if we have to borrow all the ordnance and weaponry of Hell to do it with, we will. Our motto is, ‘The End always justifies the Means,’ and when the vice of all dogs shall have been suppressed and the earth shall be pure again, ye shall all be forgiven.

“If a dog be hungry and howl, suppress his howl, for his noise is disturbing to the repose of the fleas; if he throw covetous glances at any scrap of food that is not his by gracious permission of the fleas, thump him, for covetousness is sin against God and the fleas. If he be measly and have scabs for want of nourishment, smite him severely, and tell him his scabs are an offense to respectable fleas, and such exhibitions are by law prohibited. If by reason of poverty he be ignorant, hit him a whack on the skull, and tell him that Ignorance is the parent of Vice, and cannot be permitted at all. If he be amusing himself with low and disreputable games, larrup him heavily and point him to the Church where God has provided an infinitely better Feast for the Soul than games, and cease not to batter him until ye have driven him there. And, finally, if he excuse himself that he is plundered and poor and wretched, and must do as he does, smite him on the mouth for those wicked excuses, for they are blasphemy.”

So the Suppressors of Vice went out, abundantly armed with clubs, and equipped with all manner of disguises and dog-catching devices and traps and snares; and they found many dogs that were measly and scabby, and were ignorant, and had dim moral eyesight, and stole, and amused themselves with low games and excused themselves. And the Suppressors exercised all their diligence, and all their arts and devices to suppress and catch those dogs; but the only effect they produced was to cause the dogs to use diligence and art and device to get out of their way and into dark corners.

Then did Lovely Anthony get mad and go out himself to set them an Example, and did set wonderfully complicated traps by which he had great dog-catching success. He would walk about pretending to be a scabby dog, and very ignorant and blind, and would amuse himself with low games, and would spread paper Laws before the dogs, and in their sight jump through them and burst great holes in them and play devil generally, all in order to encourage and tempt the vicious dogs to come out of their hiding places and do likewise, when he would suddenly pounce on them and hold them until he had called the police dogs, who would soundly thump and larrup them.

All this kept Lovely Anthony the Dog Catcher, and his assistant Dog Catchers, very busy and wonderfully well pleased and satisfied with themselves; but as the thumping and larruping never filled the poor dogs’ stomachs or lifted a solitary flea off their bodies, the dogs were only made worse; for in addition to all their other woes, they had the awful affliction of him and his on top. The only difference it made was that it stimulated the cunning of the depraved dogs who grew more expert at hiding away and fooling them.

As to Lovely Anthony the Dog Catcher, his brain having been properly embalmed and eternally fixed, he only waxed more zealous in his efforts; and he prophesied, with all the certainty of one that knew, that sometime during next Eternity all bad and vicious dogs will have been suppressed, and all others walloped into loving God; and all the relations between dogs and fleas will have been harmonized according to the eternal rights of fleas to suck blood.

CHAPTER XVI.

Joy Amongst the Salaried Barkers over Saint Anthony the Dog Catcher.—Apotheosis of Anthony.—Marvellous Efflorescence of His great Bump.—Receives Great Praise from the Monstrous Fleas.

NOW when the Church of the Fleas had diligently considered Lovely Anthony the Dog Catcher for awhile, they said one to another, “Lo! The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”

And the salaried barkers said amongst themselves, “Behold, a powerful helper in the Vineyard! Now shall our labors be easy and our burdens light. Now will it not be so hard to persuade dogs to come to the Means of Grace. No longer shall we have merely our labor and sweat for our pains. Now shall we gather in the erring by wholesale, for with Lovely Anthony to twist their tails for us they will more easily see the error of their sinful ways. No longer shall our ‘Missions’ be filled with empty benches. No longer will those depraved loafers dare to make grievous faces at our Missionaries. No longer shall Vice stalk abroad hindering and nullifying the irresistible Gospel; for God hath now the valuable help of the police. Things are as they should be, and the lines are fallen unto us in pleasant places. Thank God for Anthony.”

And the salaried barkers of the Church of the Fleas did send messengers unto the dwelling place of the Lovely Anthony, to reverently inquire of him when it would be convenient to him to come down and be made a god of. And Anthony the Dog Catcher was graciously pleased to appoint a day, and they brought him to the Sanctuary and set him on high and burnt incense and sang praises unto him and prostrated themselves before him and hailed him as their Dexter Bower and their Sinister Bower and their Great Labor Saver, the great Sin Killer and Bringer-in of the Millennium.

And they put upon his head a golden crown, and in his paws a hammer of iron and fetters of brass, crying “Hail! King of Depravity Squelchers! With these tools shalt thou bring in the Kingdom of Righteousness and Love!”

And Lovely Anthony the Dog Catcher and Depravity Squelcher was graciously pleased with their homage, and smiled and felt good, and held up his head; when lo! on the top thereof, on the spot marked on human skulls by creatures called phrenologists as the bump of Self-Conceit, there appeared an elevation which, throbbing and swelling like unto “rising” dough, grew and grew until it reached half a cubit in height and burst into flower; at which wonderful moment the sun did shine through the window full upon him. Whereupon there fell upon the adoring barkers a great awe; and they said these signs were Heaven’s seal set unto Lovely Anthony’s patent new method of bringing in the Kingdom of Heaven upon earth.

Then did the salaried barkers send around to the Monstrous Fleas and pray them to come along at once and see the great and divinely appointed Sin Killer and pay him their worshipful respects. But the Monstrous Fleas returned answer that they had a great work to do, and could not come around; that they exceedingly regretted that they were just then so excessively busy filling their paunches with blood, and trying to hold themselves up to the requisite standard of tight plethora, that they could not come down, and that they sent their highest regards to their Heaven-sent friend and Society Saviour, with their loftiest approval of and profoundest admiration for his new method of holding bad, depraved and vicious dogs with their noses towards Virtue and the open church doors—which was, they said, absolutely necessary to the Safety of Investments and the Regularity of Dividends, to say nothing of the saving of poor dogs’ precious and immortal souls which lay very near to their hearts—and that if the Lovely Anthony could spare a few moments and step around to see them as they sat about the Tank, why they would be very happy to worship him for a few moments.

And it was so. And Lovely Anthony did step around to see them, and the Monstrous Fleas inclined their heads as they drank, and gave him the assurances of their most distinguished consideration and promises of unlimited contributions of wealth to his great and noble work. And Anthony was much pleased with their homage and the blessed evidences of their love for him; and the elevation on the top of his head went up another half cubit and bore several flowers.

And the Monstrous Fleas showed him to the dogs that did grind at the Handle; who did droop their heads and tremble with awe of him, and make solemn resolutions within themselves to be good and nevermore think evil of the Monstrous Fleas that had been divinely appointed to drink the blood they had been divinely appointed to grind out for them.

CHAPTER XVII.

One-eyed Elder Berry is Jealous of Lovely Anthony.—His Philosophy and Logic.—His Plan to Save Little Bow-wows and How it Worked.—Remarkable Success of the Society in not Preventing Cruelty.

AMONGST the multitude that did gather to the worship of Saint Anthony the Lovely was one of the many Chaos Menders. He also had a well embalmed brain, and had but one eye which had the singular optical property of turning every visible object in the universe into the image of a poor, suffering little bow-wow. And when he smelt the incense and heard the hymns of adoration and saw the worshipful prosternation to Lovely Anthony, the bile of envy suffused his noble features and turned his little bow-wow-seeing solitary eye a green of emerald hue, that grew more green with envy with every moment’s duration of the adoration of Anthony. And one of the adoring barkers, who was less intent and absorbed in his devotions than the rest, observing him, said unto him:

“Brother Elder Berry, why are thy features suffused; and why is thine orb of vision so green? Art thou in an unsanitary state? Art thou sick? Hast thou a Crisis? Tell me, for thou alarmest me!”

And the One-eyed Elder Berry answered and said: “I am not sick; I am not in an unsanitary state; I am only grieved; grieved for the foolishness of these adoring simpletons in worshiping this illogical Anthony Thumpem Clubstock. Why all this idiotic fuss over his tom-fool trying to reform hardened old dogs who are eternally fixed in the ways of Vice and Sin? No one but a stark, stamping, staring fool would try to untwist a twisted old apple tree with screws and levers and chains. None but a supreme fool would try it. The only wise way is to train the little, growing, pliable sapling and shape it exactly as you want it. That is Wisdom’s way; that is the way; that is my way; that is the only adorable way; and were this assembly wise they would now be worshipping ME, the Sin Preventer, and not paying idolatrous adoration to this strange god of a Dog Catcher, for I am the only original and genuine Sin Curer; all others are bogus and counterfeit; my name is blown in on the bottle, and see that you get it, and take no other; protected by letters patent, and all infringers will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”

“And what wouldst thou do, dear Elder Berry?” asked the barker. “Thou speakest but in figure.”

“Do?” replied the One-eyed, “Seest thou not, thou two-eyed barker, that it is the depraved little bow-wows that need the Vice-Suppressor’s care rather than the old and hardened ones? Keep the young and tender ones from going wrong and there’ll be no old dogs going wrong, and no Vice to suppress. Let me trace the Genesis of Vice. I have applied mine Eye to the matter, and I find it begins with the horrible cruelty of those depraved and hungry dogs sending their little ones abroad from the parental kennels into the streets to scratch for bones and scraps. No old dogs with any heart would be so wicked as to drive out those tender and helpless little dears thus to scratch. It is mere hungry greed on their parents’ part; it is immoral; it is cruel; it is destructive to Society in every way. The little bow-wows thus get acquainted early with the wickedness of the streets; and in the fierce struggle of life their tender health, both of body and mind, is destroyed. Their dear little bodies are fatigued, and their desires after better things are chilled, benumbed and destroyed. Thus have they no mind to walk betimes in Wisdom’s ways and mind Religion young. And, more awful still, their constitutions being early undermined, they grow up puny, feeble, ill nourished and thin blooded; so that they are not properly capable of doing their full duty at the Handle of the Mill or of yielding their due amount of blood to the fleas God has appointed them to carry.

“This greed of their parents ought to be—must be—curbed, and this cruelty to the little bow-wows and wrong to Society brought to an end. Behold the fleas, now; they set a beautiful example; they do not greedily send out their little ones to help suck blood; they protect, nurture, watch over them, educate them and give them all advantages until they are big enough and strong enough to suck for themselves; and the consequence is they grow up to be honored and respected members of Society. All this hath mine eye seen.

“Here is the root of the evil. Now, this Lovely Anthony strikes not at the root of the evil; he strikes only at the fruit; and therein he is off his head and far removed from his base; and therefore are these barkers and Monstrous Fleas off their heads and far removed from their bases, in worshiping him. But when they see my method they will worship me instead, if they know a good thing when they see it.”

And when the adoration of Lovely Anthony was over, Brother Elder Berry, the One-eyed, and his friend the barker, did consult together, and did call in several of the other barkers to the consultation; and the proposed method of the One-eyed found favor in their eyes, and they helped him to form a Gang of Saviors, which they baptized with the name of “The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Little Bow-wows.” And they spake unto Pup McPoodle, and he gave police dogs unto the One-eyed Elder Berry, that he might have power to club and batter and hammer the heads of all such as might seek to prevent him preventing cruelty. And the Monstrous Fleas, hearing of this most praiseworthy attempt to improve the blood of dogs, and to add more vigor to those who turned the Handle, sent him their most sincere invocation of God’s blessing upon him, and the assurance of their most earnest desire to co-operate with him, by large donations of wealth, or any other form of assistance they might be able to render.

And the One-eyed Elder Berry and his gang did much infest the streets of Canisville; and they picked up many little bow-wows that did scratch in the streets, and spake austerely to them, and told them they mustn’t; and they made the little bow-wows tell who were the wicked parents that had, because of greed, sent them out; and they went and spake austerely unto those parents, and told them they mustn’t; and when those parents explained that they were very hungry and did themselves scratch for bones and scraps all day in the streets, and even then did not find enough to stay their hunger, and could not appease the hunger of the little bow-wows, they rebuked them austerely, and told them their hunger was all greed and cruelty to the little bow-wows, to whom they owed more affection and duty, and that really they mustn’t any more. So they made the little bow-wows stay within their holes and corners, where they hungered and perished, for the old bow-wows could not maintain them. Whereupon the little fleas and the big fleas and the Monstrous Fleas did give the One-eyed Elder Berry a hint that this kind of prevention of cruelty was not working well, and tended to diminish the supply of dogs and bring to pass the prevention of Dividends—which was a prevention they could not sanction under any consideration at all.

Therefore the One-eyed Elder Berry did desist from catching the poor little starving bow-wows in the street, in the day time; and his vision of being one day set on high and worshiped, as was Anthony the Dog Catcher, grew dim. But certain of his gang advised him that certain moderately plump and comfortable little bow-wows had been seen going at night to certain places, to dance for a few minutes for a good basketful of meat, to amuse certain of the Canisvillians.

“Ah! Say ye so?” exclaimed the One-eyed Berry, as his one eye bulged and lit up with the phosphorescent glow of hope of immortal fame, “dancing by little bow-wows, did ye say? Why, here is Sin, concentrated Iniquity, hydraulically pressed, rammed and condensed Wickedness, enough, under any favorably accidental expansion, to poison the whole moral atmosphere of Canisville, and kill us all. And to think that these tender and immature bow-wows are set to enact it all.”

And he diligently inquired where this evil might be found; and they told him, and he hied himself thither, and sat and saw the little bow-wows dance; and his eye bulged with horror as he perceived that the little bow-wows loved the dance, and were delighted with the large reward for the little work, which enabled them to take more to the kennels of their parents in one night than the parents could scratch up in the streets in a month.

And his horror grew still more when he found by visits to their kennels that these parent dogs were having much easier times than other dogs, through the efforts of these little bow-wows, which, on their part, grew plump and well-to-do.

This, said he, was cruelty of the cruellest sort, to turn these poor little tender innocents out at night—and worse—to dance, which was more exhausting to their vitality and—what was of infinitely more moment—their morals, than any amount of hungry scratching in the streets for bones and scraps.

But the parent dogs and others said it was not so; the little bow-wows were well nourished and well sheltered and protected from the storms and tempests, and hunger and wickedness of the streets, and were infinitely better off than the poor unfortunate bow-wows of the famishing wretches that did grind at the Handle of the Mill, that were thrown into the hopper to satisfy the blood greed of his dear friends, the Monstrous Fleas.

All which failed to move him to the right or left of his righteous determination to suppress cruelty to small bow-wows; for he set his police dogs to prevent these little ones dancing. Which they did.

And the little ones no more received good basketfuls for a little work, and they and the parent dogs did starve in their kennels, until compelled to go out into the wicked streets, and scratch from early morning until midnight for awfully meatless bones, or until the old dogs were compelled to fling them into the hopper of the Mill, as a fee to the Monstrous Fleas, to be allowed to grind and drop dead at the Handle.

Thus did the One-eyed Elder Berry prevent cruelty to little bow-wows.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Virtue and Victuals.—The Conductometer.—Terrible Fate of Those Who Teach Unrevealed Religion and Blasphemously Attempt to Save Bodies Rather Than Souls.

IN spite, however, of the efforts of the mighty crowd of Vice Suppressors, Sin Killers, and Depravity Squelchers, putters down of this, that and t’other, and preventers of t’other, that and this, the depravity of the dogs went on increasing. The poor dogs were harassed on all sides and suffered a grand battue, but the Church and the salaried barkers on whose behalf the battue was undertaken, bagged very little of the game; hundreds slipped through the well-organized ranks of the beaters and clubbers and got themselves away to out-of-the-way holes and corners where they perversely went down and down and down in the depths of depravity. They had grown utterly disheartened in the everlasting and ferocious struggle for a living; and in spite of the good missionaries who told them they must walk in the Fear of God, they grew reckless and said the Fear of God fills no bellies, that the Fear of God was all very well when you had a good pile of good victuals laid by in the kennel, but when you hadn’t, the Fear of Hunger was the only Fear it was incumbent upon a poor dog to fear.

The good missionaries were much shocked, of course, with such manifestation of disregard for what they called “higher things” and begged of them to read the little tract called the “Way of Life,” but these depraved dogs did grievously and irreligiously retort that Victuals was the only “Way of Life” they cared for, and did turn their tails and depart, and they were no more heard of in Good Society.

But there were divers perverse dogs that would neither walk in the “Way of Life” and the “Fear of God,” nor go down in the depths of depravity. By the merest good luck they managed to feed fairly well, and this, they said, was the only reason why they did not become as depraved as their fellow dogs.

These were very philosophical dogs in their way. They boldly declared that the foundation and nine tenths of the superstructure of all the virtue and good conduct in the world is plenty of good honest victuals; and that that particular form of irregular conduct in dogs called Crime is neither vice nor wickedness, necessarily, but is, mostly, Nature’s blind and instinctive rebellion and protest against the deprivation, by Law, of victuals and other natural rights. Therefore, said they, as the conduct called Crime is the direct creation and result of Law, it is very funny that the Law should disown and declare it illegal.

These philosophical dogs had constructed what they called a Conductometer, by which they illustrated the working of their theory.

This was an ordinary living dog whose stomach had been made visible through the said dog having accidentally, one day, got in line with a thing called a “gun” in the hands of an animal of the human species called a “Sport,” who had “touched it off” just for fun, and blown a hole in the poor dog’s ribs.

This dog these philosophers found writhing in pain; and they dragged him away and hid him to nurse and heal him.

And one said, “Why not utilize this Providential Opening through which to scientifically observe the relationship between Victuals and Virtue, about which there is so much dispute nowadays?”

And the proposition seemed good unto them; and it was so, that they stretched over the aperture a transparent membrane, on which they marked a graduated scale whose zero was located at half fullness of the stomach; and they called the instrument a “Conductometer.”

Into this stomach they injected, by means of a funnel, a specially prepared, nutritious food, and by means of the scale they observed the relationship of the dog’s behavior to the food in his stomach.

Now, it was observed that when the quantity of his food was at the zero line, he was just an ordinary dog, with just ordinary moral ideas; but for every degree above zero he improved, and for every degree below he deteriorated.

When they injected two or three above-zero degrees of food into him, his eye brightened, and his moral perceptions grew more acute. At this point they asked him, “What is thine opinion of the Commandment ‘Thou Shalt not Steal?’”

And he replied “It is an excellent one; no dog ought to steal.”

Then they filled him up one or two more degrees, and asked him the same question. “It is shocking to steal,” said he, “and the dog that does not know the difference between meum and tuum ought to be made to know it with a club.”

Then they filled him full up. And a glow of most beautiful intelligence came into his eye; a most reposeful calm came over his frame; a heavenly peace overspread his countenance, and he displayed a decided propensity to piety, and an irresistible tendency to hold forth like a fat-salaried barker, on the virtue of Contentment with one’s earthly lot, Trust in God and the beauties of Law and Order.

“What now is thine opinion of the Commandment?” they asked.

“Oh, the unutterable wickedness of Theft and Crime,” he replied, “it is abominable; it is damnable; no law can be too stringent and severe against it; and any one guilty of breaking the Law ought to be hanged, drawn and quartered, and fed to the beasts of the field and the buzzards and vultures of the air as a prey and as a warning to others. Oh! The very contemplation of Crime makes me shudder; do, oh do, change the painful subject;” and a strong spasm of pain thrilled his frame from nose to tail.

But when they allowed his supply of stomach furniture to run low, the glow of most beautiful intelligence went out of his eye, the most reposeful calm came off his frame, the heavenly peace went off his countenance, and the propensity to hold forth, like a fat-salaried barker, on Contentment and Trust in God, left him.

And when his supply registered one degree below zero, they asked him “What is thine opinion of the Commandment ‘Thou Shalt not Steal?’”

And he replied, absent-mindedly, “Steal? Steal? Well; it is not right—to be caught at it.”

But as it fell lower and lower, the dimness of his moral vision increased, until at the lowest—the starvation point—his eyes glared and bulged with a ferocious insanity; and when asked then, “Is it wrong to steal? What is the difference between meum and tuum?” he viciously cursed and snarled and snapped at his questioners, and replied that he did not comprehend their idiotic jargon, he wanted something to eat.

All which, these philosophers said, demonstrated that Vice, Crime and Sin (so called) are merely symptoms of Want and Poverty, and vacuity of the alimentary canal; and they boldly asserted that a good sound Gospel of Comfort and Plenty, earnestly preached would do more in five minutes to cleanse the earth of sin and fill it with righteousness, than all the barkings of all the salaried barkers, and all the sin suppressing machinery of clubs and ropes in the world would do in five thousand years.

And when these words came to the ears of the salaried barkers and the Sin Suppressors they were greatly scandalized, and said they had never heard such blasphemous and ungospel talk. It was actually bringing into contempt the sacred machinery of vice squelching, which had been incorporated by the State, hallowed by the Church, and had grown through long years and by the expenditure of great wealth and invention, to the proportions of a National Institution, and a great Vested Interest. It was actually insinuating, most wickedly, that there was a short, simple and direct way of attaining an object, which was a gross insult to the memory of the heaven-anointed Clubstocks, Elder Berrys, Blatherskites and other sanctified ones whose genius had invented the present elaborately involuted, convoluted, conglomerated and roundabout way of getting at it. But, above all, it was a direct blow at the livelihood of thousands of good and moral dogs who were given employment, at good feed, to operate the machinery, who would, if this new-fangled and highly irreligious Gospel of Victuals were adopted, be thrown completely—yes, completely, brethren—out of work.

So the Vice Squelchers and the barkers and the eminent fleas had some of these new gospellers arrested; and they set certain lewd Dogs of Belial to witness against them that they had blasphemed Religion, and had plotted a great plot to kill off the fleas, and inaugurate an awful Society and Civilization of Flealess Dogs.

Then the judges ordered horns and hoofs and spiked tails and dragons’ teeth to be fitted upon them, and that they be brought before the multitude; in whose sight they painted them blacker than hell, and told the mob that these dogs were dragons and devils. Whereupon the deceived and enraged multitude did set up a great cry “Hang them! Hang them! Hang them!”

So they were delivered over to the police dogs, who carried them away and hanged them.

Thus were they suppressed.

CHAPTER XIX.

Shows that Virtue is Much More a Matter of Victuals than is Commonly Imagined.—How the Reverend Doctor Immaculate Barkworst Went out to Save Sinners.—Some Kinds of Virtue More Vicious than Vice.

IN process of time it was noised abroad that there existed in Canisville a crowd of dissolute dogs, who, on the sly and in dark holes and corners of the town, smeared themselves all over with filth at night, and danced before other dirty dogs; which other dirty dogs would reward the dirty dancers with a few bones.

So the dancing dogs were able to live—which, the dancing dogs said, was the main thing in life; whereas as for Virtue, there was no wealth in it; they could get along very nicely without Virtue, but they must have Victuals. They said they had gone to every market and tried to exchange their Labor for something to eat, and all the fleas and all the salaried barkers, and even the missionary dogs, had laughed at them and uttered some jargon about the Labor Market being Glutted, which some dogs, well educated in foreign languages, had translated unto them to mean, that a very great deal of Labor would buy only a very little bone with a very little meat on it, and that all skin and gristle. They had tried to find a place at the Handle of the fleas’ Blood and Bones Grindery, but had with difficulty escaped being thrown into the hopper. And having nothing but Virtue to sell for Victuals they had sold that; and, strange as it might appear, that fetched a far better price than honest toil. So, if in the market Labor was held in such contempt, they did not see that they were bound to hold it in reverence, and if Society made it easier for poor dogs to be wicked than virtuous, that was Society’s look-out, not theirs.

So the dirty dogs lived with less discomfort than honest and virtuous dogs—that is, than those who passed for honest and virtuous; for there were multitudes of respected dogs that passed by daylight as good and proper dogs, that sneaked away at midnight to the haunts of the filthy dogs, to see them dance. And there were to be found there, too, very many of the most highly respected members of the Church of the Fleas, who took pleasure in the dances of the filthy dogs and paid good prices for admission thereto, who wouldn’t have had the fact known for the world.

Now, certain zealous members of the Church of the Fleas, who were gifted with very long and sharp noses, which they were eternally poking into business not their own, got to know of the existence and occupation of the filthy dogs; and they were greatly scandalized thereby; for these dogs were not only vile and depraved—which was bad—but were escaping the tribute all dogs were divinely appointed to pay to the support of the fleas—which was worse. Therefore, for these two reasons, were they determined to break up their business and drive them forth to earn their living by what they called honest toil, that is, by grinding and fainting at the Handle of the Blood and Bones Grindery.

These good suckers were awfully “concerned for the spiritual welfare” of these bad dogs—that is, they were awfully afraid they were going to Hell the wrong way; and they were determined to drive them into the right way. So they called upon the police dogs to suppress them, to drive them into the highways and make them “move on.” But they could not tell the police where they were to “move on” to; and the police didn’t know, and the comfortable dogs didn’t worry, and the rich fleas didn’t care, and everybody else said it was none of his business; and so everything was in a muddle, and nothing much was done, save that occasionally one of the dirty dogs got hit on the head.

But in process of time there arose a mighty dog of a prophet that got exceeding much meat and a great deal of soft comfort for ministering in one of the churches of the fleas. He was the Very Reverend Doctor Immaculate Barkworst, and he had a very much swollen head, with a bump of self-conceit upon it that stood up like a pinnacle. And he preached thus unto the sleek fleas:

“Brethren, ye know of this scandal of the filthy dogs in our midst, how it is corrupting our youth and deteriorating the quality of the honest dogs that labor; so that Labor—the noblest, the most sacred and God-blest occupation that dogs can be called unto, and which fleas are divinely not called unto—will fall into contempt, and the revenues of the fleas—your revenues, my dearly beloved masters—will begin to diminish.

“Oh, my dear masters! The strength and safety of our country lie in keeping our dogs virtuous and industrious, and cultivating within them the love of the sacred and healthily stimulating amusements of singing psalms and muttering credos.

“But, my brethren and beloved masters, it is well known that these scandalous dogs do mock at honest toil and Virtue, and have irreligiously set up Victuals as the great object of life; and have, moreover, blasphemously said that the only difference between us, the salaried barkers, and them, is the difference in Victuals—thus libellously and contumeliously insinuating that we do not love Virtue more than Victuals.

“Now, my dear masters, this evil must be driven out at any cost. We have laws to drive them out. We have every kind of driving out, moving on, and sin suppressing society to put them down. Why are they not driven out therefore? Because the police dogs are vile and corrupt, and “stand in” with the filthy dogs. I denounce these police dogs, and declare that we will drive out the filthy dogs, if they won’t.”

And all the sleek and unctuous fleas said the discourse was well spoken, and that if ever there was a true follower of the meek and lowly Jesus, this was he. And straightway the zealous fleas gathered themselves together and organized the “Filthy Dog Driving Out Society,” and they made the Very Reverend Doctor Immaculate Barkworst, the President thereof.

And Doctor Immaculate Barkworst again called on the police dogs in the name of the Law and the Lord and the Driving Out Society to drive out the filthy dogs. But the police dogs made excuses and said they were doing the best they could; and if they could not do more it was for want of Evidence. Whereupon the Very Reverend Immaculate waxed wroth and said, “Dogs that ye are; ye unzealous for souls; ye cowardly for Religion; I will get Evidence.”

So the Immaculate got himself up in slouchy raiment, and taking with him several soft-headed bow-wows, also got up in slouchy raiment, proceeded one moonless midnight, by divers dark and devious ways (which came natural to him), to the haunt of the filthy dogs, and having knocked at the door, waited for admission.

Whereupon the Inside Guard of the Haunt peered through the wicket of the door, and seeing strangers there, demanded of them, “Who are ye, and what want ye?”

To which demand the Immaculate replied, “We be Jays and Hayseeds from a far country, and seekers after midnight pleasures.”

“Are ye true and honest seekers?” asked the Inside Guard.

“In the name of honesty and all verity, we are,” answered the Immaculate.

“But, how shall I know that ye are not spies?” queried the Inside Guard.

“By our proving to you,” said the Immaculate, “that we are really and truly filthy dogs, like unto you.”

“But,” said the Inside Guard, “something about your garb seems to indicate that thou and thy fellows are not what thou sayest ye are; that ye are not really filthy dogs. Wilt thou swear to me that ye are what thou sayest ye are?”

“Yea, verily, will I,” replied the Immaculate Barkworst, “I do solemnly swear, that I am a dirty dog, a very dirty dog; that in spite of something in my garb, I am a low-down, filthy reveller from Filthville, and that these, my pals, are as filthy as I, if not filthier. Behold, also, we have the wherewithal to pay for seeing your sports.”

But the Inside Guard still suspiciously hesitated, and said, “Pardon me if I seem discourteous in keeping ye thus long in the cold; but we are such harassed and hunted dogs; there are so many Societies seeking our destruction and scatteration, that we are obliged to be very cautious and careful; and ye may be spies also seeking to betray us. Now, will ye swear unto us that if we deal faithfully with you, ye will also deal faithfully with us?”

And the Immaculate and the other sneaks replied, “We will,” and they swore.

But the Inside Guard said to the Immaculate, “There yet seems to be something about thee that betokens that thou hast been and lived somewhere where the Spirit of Christ is, and may have somewhat of a taint of that Spirit upon thee, in which case thou canst in no wise be admitted.”

And the Very Reverend Doctor Immaculate Barkworst was grieved to be kept so long at the door; and he said, “Before Heaven, I do solemnly swear that there is no taint of that objectionable Spirit on me. The Odor thou smellest on me is the real old honest one that belongs to an Old Frequenter, which I am. Search me, try me, examine me, smell of me, and thou shalt find not the slightest trace of that Spirit about me. And as with me, so it is with these, my pals.”

And the Inside Guard called assistants, and they examined him with strong magnifying glasses, and turned him over and inside out, and probed him and smelt of him, and tested him chemically, and finding no trace of the Spirit of Christ in him, and that he had told the Truth, they said, “Pass him in; he is a genuine dirty dog like unto the dirtiest of us, and no spy.”

So the Reverend Immaculate and the other dirty bow-wows had a high old time; and they saw all the sports and the dances; and they made themselves at home and hugely enjoyed the dirty revel; and never once did any of them betray the slightest sign that they had so much as heard of Jesus.

But afterwards, this dirty dog of a prophet got up in the Church of the Fleas, and boasted of the things he and his fellow dirty ones had done; of the dark and devious ways by which they had gone to the Haunt of the filthy dogs and got Evidence; of the lies they had told and acted to obtain an inside sight thereof; of the filth they had smeared themselves over with to identify themselves with the filthy ones; of the risk they had run of being caught by the police dogs and “run in,” as part of the ungodly crew, and of the terrible plight they would have been in—had the police dogs caught them—to explain to those undiscerning and thick-headed animals that they were rolling in the filth for a high and lofty moral purpose, and to the glory of God, and were breaking the law in order to get it enforced; how they had plighted their troth with them in order that they might gain their faith in order to violate it, and betray them to the police dogs, to be worried and mutilated and made to “move on.”

And all the Church of the Fleas applauded, and said he was a right lovely dog, who had given the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth a tremendous shove forward, and brought Society within measureable distance of the millennium, and had shown beyond doubt, that the only truly efficacious way of making the Blessed Gospel Chariot go, was to get the police to push behind; and asked a special blessing upon him, and made him up a special basketful of meat, and gave him a holiday to go across the pond and rest, and lick himself clean.

And at their next session, the “Filthy Dog Driving Out Society,” resoluted the following resolutions:

“Whereas: Our beloved and right morally lovely servant, the Very Reverend Doctor Immaculate Barkworst, has, at immense risk of, and peril to his own virtue, and with a great sacrifice of Truth and Honesty, explored the Haunt of Vice in our midst, and turned thereupon a great light, and has caused the vile inhabitants thereof to be chased out by Law, to “move on” and die and rot—as they do most richly deserve—and has given us a clean city once more;

“Resolved: That we approve his methods; and,

“Resolved: That we hold it to be an irrefragable truth, that the End always justifies the Means, and that any follower of Jesus may lie in the cause of Truth; may crawl through the foulest and most stenchful sewer in the interest of Purity; may break the Law to get Evidence of its breach by others; may break the most solemnly plighted faith with sinners in order to trap them into the meshes of the Law; may do all manner of evil that good may come of it. And finally be it

“Resolved: That the relentless infliction of the penalties of the Law is the only effective remedy for Sin, and the only sure way of making sinners love God; and that He who said, ‘Neither do I condemn thee; go and sin no more,’ was a good-hearted and very well-meaning person, and all very well for those antiquated days; but for these enlightened and progressive days, there is nothing like a well-organized police.”

But when the Very Reverend Doctor Immaculate Barkworst returned from over the pond, it was found that the fresh air of Heaven had not quite removed the evil odor of him; for some of the filth with which he had smeared himself still stuck to him and made him disagreeable to decent dogs and all save the fleas of the church and the multitudinous Societies like his own; and in their nostrils his stenchful odor was a sweet smelling savor.

And as for the bow-wows that smeared themselves with him, they never were able to wash themselves quite clean again; and it was afterwards found that one of them who had sworn that he was a dirty dog had sworn truly.

CHAPTER XX.

Shows How Hard it is to Establish Piety Amongst the Unregenerate; and also What Happens When the Irresistible Comes in Contact With the Immovable.—The Blue Thunderbolts.

EMINENT over all the gangs whose objects were the “saving” of dogs, was the “Society for the Protection of the Almighty.” This was the gang of gangs, the elite of the rest, the real and truly genuine born-blinds, live-blinds and die-blinds. It had its origin countless ages before the founding of Canisville, and had been in all those ages the ever-ready help of fleas in the bloody exploitation of dogs.

In the beginning did the very acute fleas discover that if dogs were to be thoroughly and easily bled, they must be taught to close their eyes and bow down and believe that over them stood a terrifically awful thing, called Almighty Wrath. And in those early times most dogs had closed their eyes and bowed down in fear of the Wrath that stood over them. And the fleas had prospered mightily thereby; for they had taken advantage of the dogs’ prostration to get on their backs in fearful numbers; and when the dogs had howled and grown restless, they had hired the salaried barkers of those times to bend over the dogs and pour into their ears that it was the Will of the Almighty that they lie quiet under the bleeding of the fleas, the penalty for disobedience of which Will was to be stricken with lightnings and everlasting destruction.

But in spite of all the terrors, divers dogs at divers times did venture with pitter-pattering hearts to slyly steal a look upward, and seeing nothing real there but fleas, and salaried barkers bending low and pouring tales of woe into the ears of prostrate dogs, did nudge their neighbors and tell them to look up and see for themselves that there was nothing there; which sometimes the neighbor timidly did, and was disillusionized; but more often the neighbor dog groaned with additional terror of the suggestion, and closed his eyes tighter than ever, and grovelled lower, and prayed that the Almighty would forgive the wickedness of the temptation and the audacity of the tempter.

However, in time quite a number got to furtively peeping up; and each dog, seeing others peeping up too, grew bold, and not only looked up, but stood up, and laughed at his own former folly and at the long lines of foolish dogs bowed down in fear of——Nothing.

Whereupon the fleas and the barkers were alarmed and counselled together as to what was best to be done; for they foresaw that if all the dogs got to looking up they would see that the Almighty Vengeance was a Fiction, and might also proceed to the impious length of casting the fleas off their backs.

So they agreed that something strong must be done, and done quickly, or the Almighty might be overthrown and perish. Some of the fleas counselled that the barkers increase their diligence in assuring the prostrate dogs of the reality of the Wrath, and use more Imagination in the recital of his terrors. And certain barkers of naturally gloomy minds, who loved to wander at midnight amongst the skulls and bones of dead dogs, and to meditate until their imaginations had grown lurid, voluntarily set themselves apart to invent more horrible attributes and diabolical features to be affixed to the Almighty.

But some of the barkers objected that this would involve much labor—which, as salaried barkers, they were on principle opposed to, ease and good feed being the main object of their lives—and they proposed to protect the Almighty by a more easy (to them) and more reliable method. They said that the horrible inventions would certainly be very good for the dogs which were still prostrate, and there were, no doubt, some good, conscientious barkers to whose gloomy minds the horrible inventions would be a labor of love; but they were sure the horrible inventions would be too late for the dogs which had already looked up and got to laughing. Why not turn the protection of the Almighty over to the police dogs? Themselves would make Blue Thunderbolts, and set the police dogs to launch them at every dog discovered holding his head up and laughing. Thus the Almighty would be protected, and the heavy labor of doing it would devolve on other dogs.

This proposition was received with great favor, and was deemed a worthy supplement to the Horrible Inventions.

And it was so, that the most gloomy-minded barkers with the lurid imaginations were set apart to invent the horrible attributes to attach to the already too horrible Fiction with which they terrified the prostrate dogs. These lurid-minded barkers set to with gusto and zest, and very soon had revised and re-created him into the most bloodily cruel, pitiless and unnatural monster of ferocity and hate towards those who did not want to bow down to him, that the theology-debauched canine mind had ever conceived. This they called, generically, the Character of God. They also formulated all the particulars of the manifestation of his imaginary cruel hate, which consisted of the most blood-freezing terrors, damnations and eternal pains, which they called by the generic name of Hell.

All these Horrible Inventions the other salaried barkers said were most glorious, blessed and eternal truths, which had the sanction of all true believers, and they were to be poured diligently into the ears of all prostrate dogs.

And they did pour these blessed truths into their ears, with great success; for many of the dogs at the recital thereof went into fits; many went insane, and most of the rest terrifiedly burrowed deeply in the earth in their desire to prostrate themselves still lower.

But, as had been prophesied, the up-looking dogs only laughed the more at the great Almighty Fiction, and the poor fools who bowed down to it; and they even barked out blasphemous words of contempt of the new woes and the lurid-minded inventors thereof.

Whereupon the lurid-minded barkers, at the request of the fleas, did call in more effectual help for the protection of the Almighty; for they called in the police dogs, and gave them the Blue Thunderbolts which the other barkers had invented, and ordered them to launch them at the contumelious dogs. Which the police dogs did. And many of those contumelious dogs got it heavily in the neck, and fell over dead or sore wounded; which caused the rest of them to laugh on the other side of their mouths; for they found that although the Almighty Vengeance might be a fiction, the Blue Thunderbolts were terrible facts.

And the Blue Thunderbolt launchers got to like the sport of keeling over contumelious dogs; for it gratified their brutal instincts which would otherwise have been wasted in torturing and killing other creatures, and at the same time gave them a great reputation for piety, and zeal for God; all which was very gratifying; for they found it exceedingly cheap and easy to be pious along the line of their strongest brutal impulses. And the salaried barkers liked it too; for it released them from the hard labor of persuading the dogs to bow down to the profitable Almighty Fiction.

But the lust of keeling over contumelious dogs grew so strong that it outran the supply of dogs to be keeled over; and it often happened that the dogs, being all prostrate and in fear, the police dogs, armed with Blue Thunderbolts, found no one to launch them against; which they looked upon as a most grievous grievance; and they thereupon reproached the barkers with giving them too little to do. So the gloomy barkers, thinking that a little extra terror might be a little extra protection to the Almighty, besides keeping the police dogs in a cheerful frame of mind, went about amongst the prostrate dogs, and arbitrarily picked out many whom they charged with thinking blasphemy and ridicule of the Almighty Fiction, and by force stood them up for the launchers of Blue Thunderbolts to knock over.

But as time went on there came from over the pond many new dogs to Canisville who did not know anything about the Almighty Fiction or Blue Thunderbolts, and they circulated amongst the prostrate dogs and hustled and jostled them and laughed at them, so that the former bold dogs, feeling encouraged, got up and laughed too; and many of the others got ashamed of their prostration, and took a little heart, and ventured to look up, and little by little, leg by leg, they got up and walked, and laughed surprisedly at seeing nothing to fear but Blue Thunderbolts; and the lazy barkers found it too much trouble to get them to lie down again; and the police dogs, being brutal and cowardly, slunk away ashamed and dropped their Blue Thunderbolts in dark holes and swamps where they rotted and rusted.

And that was how the great Almighty Fiction lost his almighty grip on the dogs and went under a cloud.

CHAPTER XXI.

The Sacred Order of Ancient Timers and Holy Retrogressionists, and Their Lugubrious Ritual.

THE barkers were all true and immovable believers in the musty and mouldy old doctrine that whatsoever was in the beginning ought to be now and forever, world without end, amen. So they still held themselves together as the Society for the Protection of the Almighty, as they had found by past sad experience that he could not be trusted to take care of himself.

And, oh! It was a solemn and sad society, that did nothing but weep and mourn for the “Good Old Days” of the past, when dogs were all kept with their noses heavenward (downward) by the wholesome administration of Blue Thunderbolts. And they formed themselves into a solemn Order, which they called the “Sacred Order of Ancient Timers and Holy Retrogressionists.” And they had a sacred ritual of mourning and a service of weeping, and ordinary, extraordinary and special days of moaning, lamentation and bewailment, and prayer for the resurrection of the dead past.

They met weekly in a damp and dead smelling catacomb, at the solemn hour of midnight, and by the darkling light of smoky torches, stuck in the eyeholes of skulls. In the center of the meeting place was a huge crape-covered, black lachrymatory or weeping pot, around which they gathered to moan, and into which they shed their tears.

To the north of the lachrymatory was stationed the Grand Lugubrious Lachrymator, supported by the Worthy Right Hand and the Worthy Left Hand Weepers; to the south was the Vice Grand Lugubrious Lachrymator, supported by the Worthy Eyerag Wringer, and his assistant, the Assistant Worthy Eyerag Wringer. To the east was the Past and Bygone Lugubrious Lachrymator, and opposite him was the Worthy Grand Exalted Moaner, who read the prayers.

And at the tap of a funeral bell, the Grand Lugubrious Lachrymator read from the Solemn Ritual these words:

“Oh mourning brethren of the Eternal Tear Drop: It hath been appointed unto us to bewail the good old days of Prostrate Piety and Blue Thunderbolts; when the glory of Simple Faith was as the sun in mid-heaven; when Reason—wicked Faith-upsetting Reason—was in chains; when our ever glorious Almighty Vengeance and beloved Hell reigned supreme, and blaspheming questioners were stricken dead; when dogs everywhere piously and in the fear of God, gave up their blood to their lawful and divinely appointed suckers, the fleas.

“These times are temporarily past; but our holy traditions, and the promises made by our Almighty Vengeance—who for some great, unfathomably wise and mysterious purpose, has suffered himself to be cast into the shade for a time—tell us that the ancient glory shall be re-established, the temporarily overthrown throne of our darksome God shall be again set up, and to him again shall the nose of every dog be held down in the dirt; the blasphemers and up-looking dogs shall perish out of the land, the Blue Thunderbolts shall be refurbished and shine with a latter-day glory, that shall be to the former glory as the midday sun is to the midnight star. How saith the Vice Grand Lugubrious Lachrymator?”

And the Vice Grand Lugubrious Lachrymator from his book of the Ritual read:

“Yea, Verily; and let all Ancient Timers and Holy Retrogressionists of the pure and genuine musty and mouldy odor, say Amen.”

At which all the assembly lifted up their noses and groaned “Amen.”

Then said the Grand Lugubrious Lachrymator: “The Worthy Grand Exalted Moaner will now put up the Solemn Wail. Let all bow the head.”

And all the Order bowed their heads while the Worthy Grand Exalted Moaner, from his book of the Ritual, recited:

“Oh, Almighty Vengeance, Fiction Eternal: Why art thou hidden from us? Why have we lost thee? Why hast thou suffered the clouds of unbelief to encompass thee? Why hast thou suffered the extinguisher of raillery to snuff thee out, so to speak? Oh, grief be unto us that adversity hath overtaken thee, and the blasphemer and the pesky sinful dog are on top! Oh, we did prosper by thee. Thou wast our daily bread. We had invested in thee. When thou wast the All-Powerful Terror, then were we in power; then were we held in awe and reverence, and many basketfuls of meat and a lazy life were ours. But, oh, Ichabod, the glory is departed and our house is left unto us desolate. Mirth and gladness are fled away from us; our meat is diminished, and our comfortable lazy life is turned into a daily hustle, and none but fools and simpletons esteem us reverend.

“Oh glorious Past! Oh departed Power, Greatness and Glory, come again from the dead to us. Oh, time of blessed dog ignorance, come, oh, come back again. Oh, shadow on the dial of time, turn back; oh, wheel of progress, revolve the hindward way. Oh, Almighty Fiction, if thou canst, re-establish thyself; set up thy discarded Hell again, and cause it to be respected. Blight and blast Thought, Reason, Progress and all other modern and wicked things, and cause thyself and us once more to prosper. Meanwhile we wait and weep and wail, and wail and weep and wait for thee, Amen.”

The Solemn Wail having been recited, all the Order, as the last act of the service, gathered around the lachrymatory, and shed therein all the tears of their sorrow, and when it was full to overflowing, they poured it out on the altar as a libation to their horrible God.

After which sad rite the service was adjourned, and the celebrants, in silence, filed home one by one.

CHAPTER XXII.

Rise and Progress of Bob the God-Stealer.—Omnipotence in Danger.—How the Valiant Blatherskite came to the Help of the Helpless Almighty.

IN the latter days of the sad existence of the Society for the Protection of the Almighty, there arose most strangely from nowhere, a huge, heavy-footed dog, that ran about scattering dismay and confusion amongst the salaried barkers, by encouraging the dogs to speak disrespectfully of the various societies in general, and of the Society for the Protection of the Almighty in particular.

A very independent and fearless dog was he. He was endowed with a voice of thunder and an eye of lightning, and he had a set of great sharp teeth that seemed to have been made especially and particularly to tear and worry the salaried barkers, and the pious dog thumpers and clubbers.

Wherever they gathered together, there he appeared in the midst of them to spoil their counsels, to frustrate their plans, and drive them crazy. Never did they meet save to devise some new way to harass the forlorn and hungry dogs, in the name of God and to the enrichment of the fleas, and never did they meet but they had to meet the lightning of his eye, the thunder of his voice, and the cutting snap of his gleaming teeth; which, after braving and enduring a few times, they learned to respect by tucking their tails snugly away between their legs and scattering with howls of pain and rage, to the accompaniment of the laughter of the poor dogs which gratefully recognized in him a friend.

All the pious dog thumpers, the virtue compellers, the morality cobblers hated him because he boldly told them that the Tree of Virtue could only grow up out of the ground of Good Victuals and healthy bodies, which they said was a wicked and damnable heresy and subversive of the good old Gospel of the Club; and all the salaried barkers hated him because he laughed at their Almighty Fiction, and called it the ugly creation of their own diseased brains.

So, not being able to face him in a stand-up fight, they went about seeking his destruction in sly and roundabout ways.

First, they tried their most powerful weapon—a nickname. His name was Robertus Robustus, for he was of great strength. Therefore they went about amongst the poor dogs calling him “Bob,” for it was a sacred religious principle with all salaried barkers to call everyone that was obnoxious to them, by a contemptuous nickname. They had discovered through long experience that heresies amongst dogs were more easily prevented than cured; that it was more efficacious to bring any one into contempt with them, than to let them see him, hear him and judge of him for themselves.

So they called him “Bob,” and sneered over his name whenever they spoke of him; and they tried to get the dogs to have a horror of him by describing him as a beast with horns, hoofs and a long spiked tail; and bore other false witness against him; “for,” said they, “the case is urgent; the very existence of our God is imperilled, and a little false witness to save him He will surely pardon, for all is fair in love and theological war.”

But what caused these salaried barkers to hate him so intensely was the fact that “Bob” was a very good and noble dog, and showed more real kindness of heart and love for the down-trodden and afflicted dogs than they. They reasoned amongst themselves, and boldly told the dogs that all God-despisers, all belittlers of the Almighty Fiction, always had been bad, must necessarily be bad, and therefore “Bob” the God despiser and ridiculer, must necessarily be bad too; that all contempt of the ever blessed Almighty Vengeance, and his ever glorious Hell and the benign eternal tortures, did and must proceed from a corrupt and wicked heart; that none but believers in the Unutterable Horror, were or could be good; therefore, “Bob’s” heart must be rotten and his life wicked. And when a dog objected that the fact that “Bob’s” life being good did not agree with and justify their theory, they said that was all the worse for the fact.

So they proclaimed abroad that “Bob’s” goodness was an irregular, unsanctified and wicked goodness, more wicked than immorality; a cloak “put on” to hide the devilishness of his purpose, which was to steal their God and leave the dogs Godless; which the salaried barkers all and unanimously declared was a great step to the next greatest misfortune—to leave the dogs flealess.

But “Bob” Robertus Robustus cared not. He went on showing himself and laughing at the Almighty Monstrosity, and pleading with the remaining prostrate dogs to lift up their heads, and generally making the many societies look silly.

So the salaried barkers, perceiving that this big dog had grown very dangerous, and that dogs everywhere were growing irreverent, and that instead of receiving with meekness and with the wide open mouth of Simple Faith, the large chunks of ancient and mouldy dogmas of Orthodox Religion, with which the barkers daily fed them, were falling into the wicked habit of shutting the mouth of Simple Faith, and opening the eye of Reason, and smelling, with an inquiring smeller, of the ancient and mouldy dogmas, and poking the nose of irreverence into the “why” and “wherefore” of all the sacred humbugs, resolved to call a conference to devise ways and means to stay the ravages this dangerous dog was working.

All the little and lesser salaried barkers came to the conference with fear and trembling, for their little souls were weighed down with the conviction that if something were not done soon to this irreverent dog, it was all up with them; but when they saw that the Reverend Tee de Little Wit Blatherskite was there, they took heart of hope, for they all knew him to be a most valiant defender of Simple Faith and enemy of Reason.

One of them therefore arose and said: “Brethren and fellow barkers; we to whom has been committed the care of the ever holy dogmas, upon which, up to the present, we have been enabled to preserve the blessed hoary mould and the ancient musty smell, are gathered here to-day by a common sense of a common peril. Ye know that there hath arisen amongst the dogs a fierce and wicked dog of large dimensions and great strength, who is teaching them to laugh at sacred things and bring us into contempt. Now, it follows that if we are brought into contempt, not only will our living be gone (which is the thing of greatest moment), but the divinely ordained relations between the dogs and our patrons and masters, the fleas, will be disrupted, and go to the dogs; and we, the divinely appointed guardians of those sacred relations, shall draw upon our heads the wrath of the Monstrous Fleas, who will regard us as unfaithful stewards of their interests.

“In this perilous hour, then, we need some one who will point a way out of our trouble. I am happy to say I see with us our valiant friend, the Reverend Tee de Little Wit Blatherskite.” (Immense and prolonged barking by the whole assembly.) “I need not say he is our champion. Ye all intuitively perceive that there is none so fit as he to grapple with this newly arisen terror of a dog.

“I propose, therefore, that he be appointed our standard bearer, our sword wielder, our lightning discharger, our thunderer against our enemy.” (Immense and prolonged acclaim.) “Is he not most fit, I say, to be our champion? Is he not most valorous of mouth? Pours there not therefrom the most undammed torrent of eloquence that ever tumbled from the lips of mortal barker? Is he not the tried and proven champion Reason destroyer? Yea, verily, brethren. How many times has my soul been exalted with pride, as I have seen him in battle with Reason, belt him over the head, give it him in the neck, upper and under cut him, roast him in the ribs, cross buttock him, overthrow him, kick him, kill him.” (Great barking.) “Yea, verily, brethren, there never was, in all this world, a barker so contrary to Reason, so deadly a foe to it as he. He is worthy to be our leader.” (Loud and prolonged acclaim, and cries of, “He is; he is; he is;” and calls of “Blatherskite, Blatherskite, Blatherskite.”)

Whereupon the great Reverend Tee de Little Wit Blatherskite arose and opened his mouth and spake:

“Brethren of the Most Holy Order of Divine Barkers: I feel proud of the high honor ye have conferred upon me in calling me to be your champion against this Goliath, who so impudently cometh forth to defy the armies of the living Almighty. Who is this dog that imagineth, with his great spear of Reason, to smite and slay our ancient Simple Faith? With my little sling and stone will I smite him, and he shall be no more. My brother, who proposed me to be your leader, was right in his generous eulogy of me; I do despise and hate Reason with all my soul. I hate it as a deadly snake and trample it under foot every time I get the chance—which is every time I speak. This wielder of the spear of Reason, this Bob, this God-stealer, is an infidel and a blasphemer, and will go straight down to Hell, like that friend of his, that dirty dog, that Tom who wrote the ‘Age of Reason,’ and was tormented of our God for it. Oh, my brethren, he suffered untold agonies in his conscience, and served him right, too. At least we barkers have always said he did, because he ought to have suffered if he didn’t. Some there are who say we lie when we say he suffered, but I don’t believe that our God would allow any one to preach Reason without making it all-fired hot for him; at least I know if I had been God, I would have made his soul shriek with pain; I would have tormented him, for there is nothing more fatal to our religion and our interests than Reason. Then down with Reason, I say, for it is the whole Devil, and every truly sanctified barker’s eternal enemy.

“As for this other Reasoner, this Bob, surely we can kill him, just as we killed his predecessor, Tom. Never call him by his respectable name of Robert; none but barkers and true believers are entitled to be called by their respectable names. That’s how we overthrew Thomas—by contemptuously calling him Tom. We got the world to deride him; that was far more easy than to refute his book. Call him ‘Bob,’ then; and brethren, in a cause so momentous and holy as this, ye may even lie about him; for the world will always believe anything evil about a dog with a bad name; but if by any miracle of grace he should ever be converted, then ye shall call him Robert, and esteem him respectable.

“This Bob is an awful public danger; if he be allowed to run around loose he will steal our God, he will overthrow the Almighty; he will deprive the dogs of the inestimable blessing of having something to worship. Already hath he somewhat loosened his eternal foundations, and shaken his immovable fixtures, and on several occasions, had it not been for us rushing to his rescue, our Almighty must have been overthrown.

“Now, brethren, this constant strain upon our minds, this perpetual anxiety to ward off this beast’s constant attacks upon our omnipotent God, is wearing us to skin and bone. Something ought to be done to restrain him. Have we not laws to imprison such as he? Yea, verily, have we. Have we not laws against blasphemy? Yea, we have. Then why is this dog allowed to go about putting our God in peril? Why is he allowed to go about sapping and mining under his feet with intent to make him fall? He has been caught many times boring holes in his anatomy and letting in the daylight; he has been convicted many times of exposing the mystery of his flaming eyes and his smoking mouth and nostrils, yet nothing has been done to him. Where are the police? Where are the good old Blue Thunderbolts? Alas! they rust and rot in the swampy places, where our cowardly police dogs dropped them when Unbelief reared its ugly head in our midst.

“Oh brethren, what we need is a great revival of the good old-fashioned Blue Laws and the Blue Thunderbolts. We need the re-erection of the good old safeguards wherewith our fathers surrounded our Almighty God, and preserved him, which the degenerate dogs of this day have allowed to fall into innocuous desuetude. Oh! we need the revival of the good old methods, by which Reason and Unbelief were held down by the strong hand of the Law, and the eternal, almighty and all-convincing truths of our only genuine and original Gospel were given a show.

“No wonder that True Religion and Simple Faith prospered and prevailed in those days; for the authorities were all holy and did their duty—the police were effective. And no wonder that Reason and Unbelief stalk haughtily abroad to-day and our omnipotent Almighty is despised, rejected and shoved to the rear; for our laws are obsolete, and our authorities careless and indifferent about helping him.

“Let us then, pray for a great outpouring of holy zeal upon the police, that they may be inspired to dig up the good old Thunderbolts and polish them for use again. Is not this Bob dog a public nuisance? Is he not endeavoring to make all dogs godless, and by so doing endeavoring to overthrow the country, even as his friend the Tom dog tried to do in his day, and perhaps would have done had not God caused him to die an infidel’s death?

“His suppression, then, ought to be the public concern, and I call on our police, our rulers, and all fleas big and little that have the love of God and Country in their hearts to put him down, imprison him, and forever shut his mouth.”

At the conclusion of this magnificent burst of oratory all the assembled barkers burst into loud and prolonged approbation, and some one moved, and another seconded, and another supported, and the assembly unanimously carried a Resolution; that

“Whereas, Our good old Almighty and fearful God and his blessed eternal Hell are menaced by a certain blasphemous dog, of the name of Bob, with utter destruction and overthrow, and

“Whereas, The said destruction and overthrow of the said Almighty would lead straight and swift to utter godlessness amongst dogs, and to the setting up of Thought and Reason in
his place, and

“Whereas, In the setting up of said Thought and Reason, all dogs everywhere would be led to shake off all allegiance they owe to the divinely appointed fleas, and with them us and all our vested worldly interests,

“Resolved, That we call upon Pup McPoodle, his counsellors, the police, and all who have the safety of the country and the welfare of dogs at heart to arise at once in their might and rescue our terribly beleaguered and imperilled God, by smiting this Bob and all his following with a great smiting greatly, and if necessary killing them all, and hand over their souls to us for damnation, which we undertake to do with all solemnity, neatness and despatch.”

And this resolution was signed by all the Society for the Protection of the Almighty, and all the other many Anti-Evil Societies, and all the eminent and Monstrous Fleas, and was carried by Tee de Little Wit Blatherskite and other choice-souled barkers to the authorities. And the authorities said it was a very fine resolution, and did great credit to the holy zeal and patriotism of all concerned; and nothing would give them greater pleasure than to make the poor dogs more miserable if it were possible; but just now there seemed to be no feasible way of doing it, and they were afraid that their Almighty would have to wag along as best he could, for the present. Anyhow, they would see about it—they would see about it.

CHAPTER XXIII.

Dogs Coming to Their Senses.—A Very Slow Process.—Marvellously Leather-headed Economic Reasoning, which Shows That Working Dogs are Almost as Pig-headed as Laboring Humans, in Discerning Self-Evident Facts.

NOW it was at this evil time, when the meagre, weak and bloodless misery of the dogs had reached its depth, and the burden upon them of the unasked-for means for their salvation was heaviest; and the fleas had reached the limit of their biggest and tightest expansibility, that a vague terror took possession of the fleas. This was occasioned by the strange behavior of the dogs at various times.

Sometimes a dog, right in the midst of his very insanest scratching for food, would flop suddenly down in the gutter and look up to heaven, and sigh and scratch his head as though he had a dark problem on his mind, the solution of which might be found up there. After a spell of this sort of contemplation the dog would as suddenly resume his insanity, apparently having concluded that his looking up there was in vain.

Then it was noticed that several insane dogs, when they met, would stop and all together look up to heaven, and sigh and then look into each other’s eyes, as though seeking therein for light on some dark conundrum; when, after a few moments of such contemplation, they would all simultaneously let off a bark of disappointment, resume their insanity and scatter.

On brilliant moonlight nights, some of the dogs that had looked up to heaven in the daytime and seen nothing, would stare up at the moon for a long time and wag their tails and heads with apparent satisfaction, and bark vociferously; but no one gave heed to them, as they were said to be lunatics.

Others meandered down to the edge of the pond, and after gazing in a distraught and far-away manner for a time, would shake their heads, and, suddenly turning tail, would scamper off and fall to their scratching more madly than ever.

Sometimes hundreds of them would gather in the open places and look, some towards the East, some towards the West, some towards the North, and some towards the South, and some towards the zenith, and each set would bark.

And it was told the eminent fleas, and the large fleas, and the Monstrous Fleas, how many of the dogs were behaving. And the fleas were much concerned, and called all the wise fleas that could be found, and diligently inquired of them what time this erratic behavior had broken out, and what it might mean?

And the wise fleas answered they didn’t know unless it was that some queer and unusual disease had broken out amongst them, and they were having spells of sanity, and might during those spells, be thinking and pondering and meditating, in which case it behooved the fleas to watch them closely and take steps to apply some remedy.

Some of the fleas said that was sound advice and ought to be taken at once, as thinking was the very worst disease a dog could have. Experience had shown that this disease was a most insidious one, whose first symptoms were very insignificant and unimportant, but in time developed into a most contagious, infectious and deadly plague, and they would advise that a Board of Health be organized at once, and a number of inspectors be appointed to make domiciliary visits amongst the dogs to ascertain and report on their mental condition. Thus, a possible epidemic of thinking might be checked in its incipiency, and a possibly great calamity avoided.

But most of the fleas said they didn’t think there was any cause for alarm—at least just now; for if the dogs had really caught the thinking infection, it was so slightly that it would amount to nothing; but if the case should really grow serious, they had great confidence that the police dogs were so good and faithful (being well fed), that any very serious case would be promptly quarantined; and if extreme measures should be called for, the dog so afflicted could be killed; which was, in the opinion of all eminent fleas, an infallible cure in the case of that dog, and an infallible preventive of the disease in any other.

So the fleas went on making themselves comfortable and did not form any Board of Health.

The dogs, however, got no better, and still went about staring at vacancy.

One day a dog that had flopped down in the gutter to sigh and scratch his head, and look up to heaven, seeing another dog looking up into heaven said unto him: “Why gazest thou so earnestly up into heaven?”

And the other dog said: “And why gazest thou so earnestly up into heaven?”

And the first dog replied: “Because I am convinced that it comes from above.”

And the second dog, encouraged, said: “That also is my conviction. I am sure we work hard enough to make a living, yet the harder we work the harder it is to make a living.”

“It is a mystery,” said the first dog.

“It is, indeed,” replied the second dog, “a great and deep mystery. It must be that Heaven is angry with us for our sins, and that this our everlasting hunger and defeat of the object of all our life-long scratching for food is Heaven’s chastisement, which, as the good missionaries and Tee de Little Wit Blatherskite have so often told us, though for the present it seemeth grievous, will at last work out for us a far more exceeding plenty in the grubful Canaan up there.”

Which far-away heavenly prospect made them both sigh tremendously, and bring their gaze back again to earth, where they saw, not many yards away, another dog looking up into heaven. He gazed thitherward for a long time, and sadly sighing, was about to resume his normal insanity and rush off, when he gave a terrible yelp, which was caused by an unusually venomous nip, by an unusually large and powerful flea, right in the region of the root of his tail. Turning to pay attention to the trouble there, he saw a lot of fleas skipping and scampering about, and having a most hilarious time, and some, he imagined, were laughing at him.

Why he paid especial regard to such a common phenomenon, he did not know and could not have told. Probably it was because he was afflicted with a more than usually bad spell of sanity and mental lucidity, and had what the other dogs called a “Jag” on, during the continuance of which he had visions of things as they really were. Whatever the reason, he stared at them even more fixedly and concentratedly than ever he had gazed up into heaven. His eyes grew big and bulged, and the longer he stared the bigger they grew and the more they bulged. Then slowly there came into them a strange and unaccustomed light, as of a consciousness that was returning after a prolonged absence from home. After a time he winked an eye and then rubbed both very hard with his paws, and ejaculated: “Blamed if I don’t think I have been looking in the wrong direction. I don’t think it comes from above, after all. I do believe it’s fleas.” And he wagged his head sapiently and looked at the fleas again, and wagged his head once more, which having done several times, as though to confirm himself in the surety that he had really made a great discovery, he trotted away; and the other two observing dogs followed him.

He trotted away to where some of the other dogs were gazing steadfastly up into heaven, and poking some of them in the ribs he cried, “Fleas, fleas;” then leaving them to growl and curse his disturbance of their meditations, he trotted down to a group that were gazing far away over the pond, and poking some of their ribs, he cried, “Fleas, ye blind! Fleas;” and leaving them to snarl and curse, he betook himself to the public places where sundry groups were gazing and barking towards the East and towards the West, and towards the North and towards the South, and cried aloud, “Fleas, ye fools! Fleas.” But most of the dogs, whose gazing was thus rudely disturbed, took umbrage thereat, and chased him, and demanded to know why he had thus violently and ill-behavedly broken in upon their meditations?

“Because,” said he, “I want you to look in the right direction; I have just found out what is amiss with us all—it is fleas; Fleas, and nothing but fleas.”

But the heavenward gazers said: “Not so; our troubles come from above; it is Heaven that hath mysteriously, but, no doubt, in infinite wisdom, afflicted us, as say the salaried barkers.”

“Heaven!” cried another crowd, “Nonsense; they do not; any fool can see they come from the East.”

“Yes, and none but fools can see they come from the East or from Heaven; all wise dogs know they come from the West, from the land of the almond-eyed, long-tailed Yellow Dog,” cried the Westward gazers, who themselves had come from the East.

“A fine lot of wise dogs ye are!” cried the Southward gazers, “since it’s as plain as daylight that our hunger and poverty are entirely from the South, in the shape of those inferior kinky-haired Black Dogs that are used to hunger and can bear it better than we.”

“Ha! Ha! Ha! He! He! He!” laughed the Northward gazers. “Come off, do. That is the silliest explanation yet. Anyone with the smallest and feeblest faculty of observation can see that the North is the only and all sufficient source of all our afflictions.”

“Bah! Fools and idiots that ye are!” yelled the pondward gazers. “Ye are all wrong; any one can see that our troubles are all due to the coming of those dirty dogs from over the pond, from Hungryland, Dirtland and Choleraland.”

“Yes,” cried a little crowd that had arrived but a short time from thence, “It’s a shame to allow so many in, filling up the country and snatching our bones. There ought to be a law passed.”

“And if it had not been for your coming,” screamingly replied a crowd that had arrived a long time before, “we would not be starving now. The gates ought to have been shut long ago.”

“Aye, Aye,” sneered a lot of the native born dogs, “the day after you got safe in, of course. For our part, we think it a wicked outrage on us that foreigners were allowed here at all, taking the bread out of the mouths of the rightful owners of the country. There ought to have been a law passed at first to keep out foreigners.”

“And where would your fathers have been then?” sneered back the foreigners.

And the contention waxed hot; each angrily vociferating that all the others were fools, idiots and liars, and they put out their tongues at one another, and snarled and growled; and at last they got into an awful fight; from which many of them emerged with torn ears and noses, broken legs, loosened teeth and amputated tails.

But as for the unfortunate dog that said “Fleas,” he was badly battered, for in the general fight every one of the combatants struck at him. But he got away at last and hid himself.

Nevertheless there were some of the far-away gazers that after the fight could not help thinking over the suggestive words he had let fall; and they thought that possibly their afflictions did come wholly and solely from their fleas.

The consequence was that these dogs took to regarding the fleas continually and very intently; and other dogs, wondering what they were looking at so much, began also to look at the fleas.

CHAPTER XXIV.

The Thinking Contagion Makes Alarming Progress.—Conference of Frightened Fleas.—Sage Counsel.—Efficacious Measures Devised.—How They Worked.—The Sacred Trusts.—The Holy Angel’s Book of Death.—The Plague Stayed.

AND it was told the fleas that a dog had arisen, that had said: “Fleas, ye fools, fleas,” and had drawn several other dogs after him, whom he had taught to say likewise.

And the eminent fleas, and the big fleas, and the Monstrous Fleas, gathered themselves together, and sent a quick flea unto certain wise fleas saying, “Haste ye, and come quickly to our aid, for the dread pestilence hath broken out; tarry not in all the way, for the matter is urgent.”

And the wise fleas came on the hop and the skip and the jump, and said: “We told you so; we did advise you not to despise the day of small symptoms; but ye heeded not our advice. Therein ye did err; for it is well known that we know a thing or two. We did advise you that that intent gazing of the dogs did betoken the outbreak of an epidemic of thinking amongst them, which, had it been grappled with then, would have been easy to stamp out; but now we fear the disease has made dangerous progress. This thinking of theirs has reached the stage of audible expression, which is the stage of most rapid contagion and infection.”

“True, true,” said a Monstrous Flea—Andronicus Carnivorous—pale with affright; “We are credibly informed that some of these dogs have even lifted up their voices in the public places, and boldly told the other dogs that if they had no fleas they need never be hungry; to which some of the listening dogs, it is reported, replied, ‘Down with the fleas.’ And we have been informed—but for the truth of it we cannot vouch—that quite a number of those suffering from this truly terrible thinking disease, have formed what they call the ‘Flealess Dog Club,’ which slyly meets at midnight, and dances with delirious joy over the prophesied coming of a most dreadful time when all dogs will be free from all fleas of every sort and size.”

And all the assembled fleas cried out in chorus, “Alas, what shall we do?”

But the wise fleas said, “Courage, brethren; all is not lost; there is a margin of safety left, which, if utilized properly, will, with God’s blessing, restore these poor dogs to their usual state of insanity, and avert the danger of our extinction. Ye ought, of course, to have grappled with this malady in its incipiency; nevertheless, with an extra effort, lost time may be made up, and the disease stamped out. A Board of Public Safety must be formed at once.”

“Had we not better pass a law,” said a Monstrous Flea—Pharaoh Phrique—“making it a capital offence for a dog to think, and have all the guilty ones executed with great tortures? There’s nothing like striking terror into the hearts of the dogs, if you want to keep them good and healthy.”

“Aye! Aye!” chorused all the others fiercely, “that’s the talk.”

“Pardon me, Brother Phrique,” replied a wise flea, “for dissenting from so eminent a dog killer as thyself; but all wise fleas have found that the only true and efficacious way is, not to kill the thinkers, but to discourage the breed; to let the thinkers die off naturally, and replace them with a breed of non-thinkers. To this end their brains must be watched, and where-ever possible no thought must ever be allowed to enter; and in those cases where we cannot prevent its entrance, we must give them amusements, distractions and other substitutes for thinking. We must use artifice, not force; we must lure, not compel; for force and compulsion would defeat our aim by causing them, through the grievance they would thereby have against us, to begin thinking most grievously; whereas, by fooling them into going, of their own accord, in the way we want them to go, we would accomplish our object, and at the same time leave them to feel that they are free and independent dogs—which is to be done every time.”

“Therefore we do advise that the Board of Public Safety devise all manner of anti-thinking devices, and put them in operation at once, for there is no time to lose. History shows that wherever the empire of fleas over dogs has been overthrown, it has always been due to the neglect of the fleas, of those times, to keep up to due efficiency the anti-thinking devices of those times. Remember, we beseech you, that eternal vigilance in keeping the dogs from thinking, is the price of your rule over them.

“Now, the most efficacious anti-thinking remedy, is hard work, and eternal plenty of it. Give the dogs plenty to do. Make the pace fast and furious, and cause them to hustle to stay their hunger, and take all means to make their hunger get ahead of their hustling; cause them to have to scratch from early morn to midnight, so that the moment they’ve done work for the night, they will fall asleep from fatigue, and never wake until it is high time to be at their scratching again. Make leisure impossible, and idleness synonymous with starvation, and we give you our word of guarantee, that the dogs will soon be on the way to recovery.

“But, as interminable work alone, although a most excellent—and the main—remedy for thinking, would in the end sour their minds and enfeeble their bodies, and so reduce their yield of blood—thus defeating the main purpose for which a wise Creator created them, and predisposing them to crime and wickedness—a certain amount of recreation must be allowed them. In this need of recreation lies their only danger. They must not be allowed much recreation; for much would give them time to think—which must be especially guarded against. They must have so little recreation that their exhaustion shall incline them only to amusements.

“But, in the reaction from the exhaustion of toil, they will be apt to seek mad, unhealthy, delirious and body-weakening amusements. Therefore, it behooveth you to provide that their amusements be both recuperative and anti-thinking. Lo! We have spoken.”

And this advice of the wise fleas seemed good and sage unto the other fleas; and the Monstrous Fleas (all but Pharaoh Phrique, who became sulky and declared that the wise fleas were a lot of old fogy fools not to see that to hang, shoot, choke and kill the pesky dogs was the shortest, quickest and altogether the most efficacious way of putting them down), said, that come to think of it, they believed that eternal work was the finest antidote to the thinking poison, that had been devised, for they had noticed that though their dogs that turned the great Handle had at various times displayed alarming symptoms of the thought disease, they were happy to say they, by the application of the perpetual-work remedy, were now almost cured; and they believed that with care in keeping them eternally at it, they would suffer no relapse.

So the fleas formed the Board of Public Safety. And the first thing they did was to send a committee unto McPoodle, commanding him to provide them gangs of police and other dogs, to go by night through all the highways and byways of Canisville, and rake up all the bones and scraps and broken victuals they could find, in order that the dogs in the morning might have to scratch long and furiously to find a mouthful.

And McPoodle did as he was commanded, and sent his well-fed police and other dogs out to make the working dogs hungry. And they raked and scraped the highways and the byways, and gathered up all the food there was to be seen, and sorted the various scraps into heaps, and carried every heap into a Corner by itself.

And the fleas commanded McPoodle, and he appointed a few of the most eminent fleas to be Trustees and custodians over each heap.

And on the day of appointment those Trustees and custodians did reverently lift up their eyes to heaven, and say they accepted the custody thereof, as a sacred Trust from God and McPoodle, and did solemnly vow that they would administer that Trust in the fear of God, and altogether in the interest of the dogs, to whom they had a deep and heartfelt desire to make victuals cheap. This, said they, not because they loved the dogs, but because they had the Corners and could afford to lie.

Then came to pass all that had been predicted by the wise fleas. The dogs hungrily ran about the bare streets, seeking food, but found nothing but a few chance scraps, that had escaped the vigilant diligence of McPoodle’s sweepers. So ravenous was their hunger, and so scarce the means of satisfying it, that the dogs’ noses were ever in the dirt, and grew sore and bloody with their eternal nosing after the Something that so seldom they found. As for their eyes, they grew, by reason of being ever strained towards the dirt, to be permanently near-sighted and microscopic, so that larger things, such as hills and trees and sky became indistinct and almost invisible to them. And as for their brains, they shrank and shrivelled until they could only receive one thought, and that was—Victuals.

So that the fleas rejoiced, and were glad, and the wise fleas were held in great honor for having devised so great a salvation from the threatened perils of the thinking plague.

And the wise fleas warned the eminent and the wealthy fleas, to be sure to retain the advantage they had gained, and keep the dogs well starved, for nothing kept a dog’s brain so thoroughly fortified against the invasion of uplifting and seditious thoughts, as perpetual hunger and tearing around to appease it. And the eminent and the wealthy fleas said they would see to it with pleasure.

But, by and by, after many dogs had dropped dead in their vain struggling search for victuals in the cleaned-out highways and byways, the hungry dogs were compelled to repair to the Corners, and beg of the fleas that held the heaps as a Sacred Trust from God, to give them a mouthful for God’s sake to keep them from dying.

But the lordly fleas that had the Sacred Trust, spake haughtily unto them, and said that as Heaven had most wisely seen fit, by means of the Sacred Trust, to give the fleas the Bulge on the dogs, they were determined to be faithful to Heaven, and use the said Bulge to the glory of Heaven, and the safety of Society which had but very recently been in peril of destruction, and, therefore, none but good and moral, lowly and obedient dogs, that had never held seditious thoughts, had never tried, or thought of trying, to shake off their fleas, had never doubted or been tempted to doubt, the divine and indisputable right of fleas to suck the blood of dogs, would receive any scraps from the heaps which had been committed to them—the Sacred Trustees.

And all the hungry dogs hastened to assure the Sacred Trustees that they were and always had been good and moral, obedient and unseditious dogs that had never doubted the divine rights of fleas.

But the Sacred Trustees said that was not so, for they had a Holy Angel who kept a Book of Death, in which was written with everlasting ink, the names of those undesirable dogs whom certain sneak dogs, called Detectives, had reported to them to have been guilty of thinking and speaking evil of fleas; and these had been Blacklisted, to be sent away into everlasting hunger.

Upon which they commanded the Angel to read out the names of the Accused; who were ignominiously driven shrieking away, by the police dogs who, being fat and well fed, did drive them away with pleasure, and club them with alacrity.

But the Blessed Ones, whose names were not written in the Book of Death, did cringingly wag their tails, and lick the feet of the police dogs, and reverentially pray their good lords, the Sacred Trustees, to give them something to push the walls of their stomachs apart with, for they were fallen together with hunger. Thereupon, the Sacred Trustees were graciously pleased to order certain servant dogs to throw over the fence just scraps enough not to be sufficient to go around, and to keep the dogs avidiously scrambling and savagely fighting for them.

This policy, said the wise fleas, would keep the dogs’ thoughts in their stomachs, where alone dogs’ thoughts ought to be; for when they mounted to their heads they rendered dogs bad citizens and of no good to the fleas.

And it was so that the dogs grew unable and unwilling to think of anything but the horrible and ever enlarging vacuum in their insides, and of what to fling into it.

So the plague was stayed.

CHAPTER XXV.

Demonstrates That All is Not Success That Succeeds, and That an Overdose of Physic is as Bad as a Disease.—All Work and No Play Makes the Dogs, Not Only Dull, But Ferocious.—Devising Bamboozlements.—Chancy Mountebank Dephool Flea and His Bamboozling Committee.

TRULY the plague of thinking was stayed, but a peril took its place which the over-jubilant fleas had overlooked. For the dogs, by reason of the intensifying of their hunger by the Cornering of all the means of life by the Sacred Trustees, began to develop a hunger madness that took on the form of blind and unthinking violence.

Now that the fleas had succeeded so well in keeping the dogs’ thoughts down in their stomachs, and out of their heads, the dogs acted from stomach alone, and in a way most disappointing and discouraging to the fleas. They had ceased to think, certainly, but what they lacked in thought they made up in feeling, and went blindly at anything that might appease their awful hunger. They tore and killed and ate one another, and, in their indiscriminating rage, ate even some fleas; and so meagre and skinny did they become that their yield of blood very sensibly diminished, insomuch that thousands of little fleas shrivelled up and died, and divers of the eminent and large fleas grew slack around the paunch.

In this extremity the fleas sent again for the wise fleas, and said: “Alas! what shall we do? for the remedy is worse than the disease; we have cured the dogs of thinking and seditiousness, but thereby our Dividends have shrunk, and many of our beloved friends have died. Better had we taken the risk of sedition than have brought on this state of things. Your advice was not good.”

But the wise fleas replied: “Ye did overdo the matter. Told we not you that ye must not quite kill the dogs that are your life? Ye ought to have given them food and rest and recreation enough to have kept up their blood-yielding efficiency. Ye have been great fools. Ye can only carry the keeping-busy remedy to a certain point; beyond that it must be supplemented by a wise bamboozlement. The two must be worked together in proper proportion. Neither alone is all-sufficient; ye can neither treat them altogether with perpetual toil and scramble, nor with perpetual bamboozlement; but the two combined and worked in concert will bring ye full salvation.

“Now, therefore, for the future be wise, and appoint ye a Bamboozling Committee, and let those who are by special fitness appointed to keep the dogs hungry and on the eternal trot note well the exact point at which they require a recuperating respite—that is, a holiday—and then let the Bamboozlers come on and take charge of them while they rest. Thus shall the dogs be beautifully passed alternately from the Hunger Makers to the Bamboozlers, and from the Bamboozlers to the Hunger Makers, and they shall beautifully be preserved in health and utter idiocy.”

And the fleas said: “How and where shall we find the Bamboozlers ye recommend?”

The wise fleas replied: “That is easy; there are lots of them about, of one sort or another. Let the Boards of Public Health and Safety seek out fleas that have large understanding of and are learned in the science and art of elegant fooling and beautiful lying, that are exceedingly skillful of mouth, and can be depended on at a moment’s notice at any time to demonstrate with all-convincing persuasiveness that black is white, that darkness is light, and evil good, and can do this most amusingly, and let these be appointed a Bamboozling Committee to devise all manner of amusements and bamboozlements for the dogs, that shall occupy their holiday moments and make them happy. Let your motto be: ‘Eternal bamboozlement is the price of Safety.’ We have spoken.”

And the advice of the wise fleas seemed good unto the other fleas, and they commanded the Board of Public Safety to diligently search out such as had great skill in bamboozlement. And the Board of Public Safety did so; and at the end of seven days the eminent and wealthy fleas gathered themselves together to hear how the Board of Public Safety had done.

And the Board of Public Safety made report thus: “Most eminent and wealthy fleas: According to your order and commandment we have gone through all Canisville and the country roundabout, and have sought diligently for those fleas that have the gift of elegant lying and bamboozling. For several days we sought without success. Truly, we found liars in plenty; in fact, we found most fleas were good all-round common liars; many of them proffered themselves for our service, and were exceedingly anxious to serve their country, but we told them that although we had the highest respect for their ability as common liars, and had the highest appreciation of their zealous desire to perform their duty on all common occasions, we were just now confronted with an uncommon peril which demanded uncommon and extraordinary liars that could rise to the level of the emergency and save the country. Some of them did even throw contempt on our mission, saying there was no necessity for all this nonsense of a Bamboozling Committee; that for their part they considered the good old-fashioned way of bleeding dogs to death quite good enough for the good-for-nothing, lazy things; that they would not condescend to bamboozle them at all, but would just have all the discontented and violent ones killed as a warning and example to the rest. But we told them that they knew not what manner of spirit they were of, and went our way; and with the blessing of God we at last found a most elegant flea, of very great modesty, that had in the very highest degree the very gifts we were in search of. This flea, we found, was burying his talents in a napkin, and hiding his light under a bushel, and wasting his skill of mouth at dinner parties, where he was frittering away his gifts, that ought to belong to the whole nation, on a small circle of friends whom he made to be merry and laugh. His name, we ascertained, is Chancy Mountebank Dephool Flea, and we found that he has the very highest reputation amongst those who know him as an amuser and speaker of buncombe, and we recommend that he be appointed head and president of the Bamboozling Committee, with power to select his own associates and co-workers.”

And the Board of Public Safety did according to the recommendation of the wise fleas, and appointed Chancy Mountebank Dephool Flea to be the organizer and president of the Bamboozling Committee, which position he was delighted to accept, he being, as he said, only too happy to do what he could towards saving Society.

And Chancy Mountebank called unto him immediately Andronicus Carnivorous: “For,” said he, “he is the most uncommon liar, bamboozler and hypocrite we have;” and Wilhelm Bunkum Mak Tinley: “For,” said he, “he is a very good dog fooler, although somewhat clumsy withal;” and Harry Bambuzle Grandadhat: “For,” said he, “he can say many fine and beautiful things that are not so.”

And the Committee met at once and proceeded to devise bamboozlements; but they had not proceeded far when Wilhelm Bunkum Mak Tinley Flea arose and said: “Respected President and Fellow Bamboozlers: we have committed a great omission and oversight; we have left out of the composition of this Committee the most transcendently glorious hifalutor, fictionist and bamboozler of all ages and of all countries. I mean our most eminent Canisvillian, the Reverend Tee de Little Wit Blatherskite. Of course he is only a barking dog, and as such may be technically disqualified from serving on a committee of fleas, but having regard to his extraordinary and astonishing gifts of mouth, and his tremendous abilities to dress up the plainest lies in the habiliments of the most gorgeous and resplendent truths, I think we ought by all means to have him made one of us, for no Bamboozling Committee can be complete without him. I submit that he is equal even to you, respected President.”

And President Chancy Mountebank Dephool Flea said: “It is indeed a most astounding piece of forgetfulness and stupidity on our part, not to have thought of our friend De Little Wit Blatherskite. I thank our good brother Mak Tinley Flea for reminding us.”

So the Committee went in a body to ask De Little Wit Blatherskite to be one of them, and they made profuse apologies for the slight they had unwittingly put upon him. And the Blatherskite was pleased to accept their apologies; and he went along with them.

CHAPTER XXVI.

The Bamboozling Committee Lays Out a Plan of Bamboozle.—Loud Noise and Great Show Relied on.—Every One to His Post.—Opening of the Bamboozle Assigned to Tee de Little Wit Blatherskite.—His Vision of Judgment.—Terrific Effect on the Dogs.

HAVING secured the invaluable Blatherskite, the Bamboozling Committee met very early in the morning, and President Chancy Mountebank Dephool Flea, in calling the Committee to order, said: “Brother Bamboozlers, it is laid upon us to save this our beloved land. As ye know, the Board of Public Safety has appointed us to work together with the Hunger Makers in keeping the dogs from thinking. To them, ye know, is appointed the duty of bleeding them within an inch of their lives, and keeping them so busy trying to catch up with their hunger that they will never have a moment to think a serious thought; and to us is appointed the duty of entertaining them during their moments of absolutely needful recreation, and keeping them so well amused that they shall have neither wish nor time to think.

“I need not tell you that the Hunger Makers are doing their duty con amore; so well that in their enthusiasm they are apt to overdo it. It behooves us therefore, to as well deserve our laurels as they do theirs. Where shall we begin, therefore?”

Then arose Wilhelm Bunkum Mak Tinley Flea, and said: “I move, respected President, that we recommend Pup McPoodle and the authorities to proclaim certain days to be legal holidays, and days of recreation for the dogs, and that on those days the dogs be gathered together, when we will each take a turn in amusing and edifying them. I will take one turn, and I flatter myself that during my turn, I can demonstrate to them then the moon is made of green cheese; then our much beloved brother, Andronicus Carnivorous, shall take another; my dear chum, Harry Grandadhat shall take a third; you, most excellent humbug, shall take a fourth, and our ever-ready old stand-by and reverend barker, Tee de Little Wit Blatherskite, who is always bursting big and full with gorgeous gush, and perennially on tap, shall fill up all other intervals.”

Andronicus arose and said: “I crave permission to second the motion of my brother Bunkum Mak Tinley Flea. It is good. I deprecate the ascription to me of any very great ability in the line of bamboozling. I have the highest pleasure in yielding the palm to you, dear Mountebank Dephool, and to the superlative Blatherskite, in having whom with us we are blessed and honored above measure. For my part I am but a superficial, transparent, and inferior sort of every-day liar, with no ability, like you, my dear colleagues, to palm off on the dogs a lie as the most sacred Gospel truth; but I do modestly claim that I possess a very creditable ability to play the hypocrite; I believe everyone who knows me admits that; but, be my talents what they may, I am willing to consecrate them all to the good of the dogs and the salvation of this, my adopted country.”

This motion was carried, and presented to the Board of Public Safety; and the Board carried it to McPoodle and the authorities, and they, with the acquiescence of the fleas—who had all been assured that they would be indemnified for any loss of blood they might suffer in case of failure of the experiment—proclaimed that on a certain few days of the year, the fleas should let up on the dogs and allow them to recover a little strength; and that on those days they should turn over the management of the dogs to the Bamboozling Committee.

And the Bamboozling Committee got together certain dogs that were lying around loose, and made them happy with meat and drink, and dressed them up in gaudy colored raiment; and to some of them they gave certain loud-noise-producing instruments, and to others, long poles with pretty cloths fluttering at the end thereof, and said unto them: “Go ye forth into all the streets and ways of Canisville, and the country roundabout, and blow ye and thump ye on the loud-noise-producing instruments, and wave ye on high the pretty cloths, and make a great shouting and hullabaloo with your throats; and it shall be that when the dogs of Canisville shall hear your hullabaloo, they will run out of their holes and kennels, and, forgetting all their troubles, they will howl with idiotic joy, and run after you whithersoever ye go. Go roundabout and encompass the town seven times, blowing and thumping and waving, and fetch up at the Public Place, where great miracles are to be wrought.”

So the blowing, thumping and cloth-waving dogs, quite intoxicated with the strange, glorious feeling of a full stomach, did as they were bid, and went and filled all the air with their sounding; and at the very first blast and thump and shout, all the dogs that heard came rushing out, barking, wagging their bony tails and rolling over and over in the dirt, with a frenzied joy, and followed in a great mob the blowers and thumpers and wavers, whithersoever they went.

Then when they had seven times gone roundabout the town, they came to the Public Place, where were gathered on an eminence the Bamboozling Committee, and around them, in their best raiment, all the Monstrous Fleas, who had ordered the Blood and Bones Grinding Mill to cease its bloody grind for a day; all the wealthy and eminent fleas, all the pious and holy fleas; and all the salaried barkers were there; the Holy One a Maker of long prayers and short wages, was there; and also Lovely Anthony the Dog Catcher, the One-eyed Elder Berry, and all the morality cobblers, dog thumpers and compulsionists of every society; and all were sleek and fat and well-to-do, and smiled most heavenly smiles, for they felt that God had blessed the very first part of their new scheme of salvation.

Then arose and whispered Chancy Mountebank Dephool Flea to the Reverend Tee de Little Wit Blatherskite, “Brother, this is a gorgeous success so far; thou art the gifted one; open thou the Bamboozle.”

And the Reverend Tee de Little Wit Blatherskite stepped briskly to the front, and with a voice of tragedy delivered himself thus:

“A vision, a vision, a vision of Judgment. It is the last day—the day of the final fruition of all things; the day when all the seed sowings of all the countless centuries since time was, have reached their harvest. With mine eye I can see a countless multitude of dogs gathered to the Judgment, rising tier on tier, from the lowermost valley to the topmost height of every hill and mountain. From every clime and country they come, swarm on swarm, mob on mob, gathered by a mighty trumpet summons there is no disobeying. They come from the East; they come from the West; they come from the North; they come from the South; from the frosty land of the midsummer midnight sun, where white death locketh all things in his eternal embrace, to the torrid equatorial regions of perpetual frizzle and fry; from the balmy lands of the fig and the olive, where the spicy snifters, and odoriferous breezes of the Southern seas gently woo both soul and body to gentle doziness, to the blizzard smitten lands of the Occidental North, where the circumvolutory cyclone whirligiggeth, and the domiciliary dwelling place fleeth violently away with all the inhabitants thereof; from the land of the azure firmament, the emerald sea and opalescent atmosphere, and the land of the perennial asthmatic brumosity—from everywhere they come, host on host, multitude on multitude.

“The Judgment call is heard; the Judgment is set; the books are opened. The sun goes out; the moon explodes and becomes blood; the omniflatulent wind roareth; the stars fall to earth in a fiery hail; the heavens shrivel up in an awful incandescence, as a burning scroll; the earth rocks, and quakes, and groans and cracks, and sends forth lurid and sulphureous flames and fumes and infernal stench. The comets, with their flaming tails, all snarled together, stagger like drunken celestials amongst their inextricably mixed aphelia, perihelia, and syzygy, and falling over the planetary orbits, drive their occupants to distractedly demand, ‘Where are we at?’”

“The ocean’s great breast heaves and throbs with huge conglomerate convulsions, and dashing o’er its divinely appointed bounds, engulfs the world. The rivers everywhere rear up on end, stiff with an infinite fright. The lengthy Mississippi, the breadthy, many-mouthed Amazon, the hoary Ganges, the unfiltered Missouri, the holy Jordan, swash and writhe together in mid-air in an amazed intertwining. The lightnings gleam, the thunders roar, the whole creation groaneth. The planets, breaking loose from the centripetal force that swung them around their solar center, clash and crash together in celestial smash and wreck. Crash, crash, crash, in answering reverberations, from utmost bound to utmost bound of the universe.

“And over all the din and rip and roar and clash and terror, cometh a clarion blast of an angelic trump, ‘Ho! Ho!! Ho!!! Attend, all ye dogs; for the end, the eternal end that shall never be cut off, cometh. Give ear unto the voice of the Eternal Verdict.’

“And there cometh forth from the infinite profundities of the tenebrious immensities, a Voice of ten thousand-million-thunder power, in direful proclamation, saying:

“‘All dogs to the Judgment. Crowns of glory, eternal joy and everlasting fullness unto all dogs that on earth have done righteously, have walked humbly in the fear of God, and reverenced His anointed ones, the fleas; and have paid unto them their just and Heaven-ordained dues; that have not blasphemed them, or called in question the righteousness of their doings; that have counted poverty their highest honor. Blessed are they that have hungered, that the fleas might be filled; that have gone naked, that the fleas might be clothed; that have died, that the fleas might live; that have grovelled in darkness and filth, that the fleas might dwell in honor and wealth. Great is now their reward, and they shall now themselves be lifted up on high and glorified for duty done.’

“‘But woe and desolation to the disobedient, discontented and unrighteous dogs that have growled against the divine ordination of their lives and lots; that have cursed their hunger and nakedness; that have spoken blasphemy against the fleas, and the Constitution and Laws of Canisville, and poked the blasphemous nose of Inquiry into the inscrutable and not-to-be-inquired-into wisdom of the divine ordination of dogs and fleas. No crowns for them, no joy, no fullness. It is decreed that they go down to Hell with Satan and Wilyumtwede.’

“At the pronouncement of this sentence the million-instrumented orchestra of the spheres crashes out a mighty ‘Amen.’ The morning stars clap their hands with joy; the evening and the midnight stars take up the cue, and flash it on from star to star; it rings from system to system, from universe to universe, until from farthest nebula to farthest nebula, the whole creation pulses and thrills and vibrates with the tintinnabulous acclaim. The heavens open, and amid a deluge of unapproachable light, the worthy dogs with pæans of victorious joy, are caught up thereto; while Hell beneath opens wide its yawning jaws, and the unrighteous and disobedient dogs, amid thunder and lightning, go howling down, down, down, in an everlasting and ever accelerating descent, to the place of unutterable torment and fiery woe.”

At this mighty outburst of luridly pyrotechnical eloquence, the great crowd of dogs turned deadly pale and faint; and they turned guiltily, each to his neighbor, and said, “He means us;” “Ain’t it awful?” “God forgive us, we must never repine or speak evil of fleas any more.”

And many of the dogs there, being wasted and weak for want of food, could not stand the terror of the Blatherskite’s portrayal, and several of the most famished and anæmic among them, trembled and tottered and fell dead, and had to be carried off to the morgue; which the bystanders declared must have been intended of Heaven, as a sample and small installment of the threatened Judgment.

And the assembled fleas nudged one another, and remarked unctuously that the Bamboozle was working very successfully so far, and was certainly being very much blessed of Heaven, to the touching up of the consciences of the dogs. The Holy One a Maker of long prayers and short wages, rolled up his seventh-day eye to heaven, and said: “We fleas have much to be thankful for in the gift to us of the Blatherskite.” Harry Grandadhat exclaimed: “Society is saved!” And President Chancy Mountebank Dephool Flea winked an eye at de Little Wit Blatherskite as he resumed his seat, and whispered to him: “Brother—dog only though thou art—I love thee; thou hast excellently done; this day—thanks to the might of thy facile and well lubricated jaw—is salvation come to the fleas of Canisville; thou hast in thine effort this day exceeded and more than justified the Committee’s highest expectation of thee; the Bamboozle prospereth.”

And the Blatherskite, with a reciprocating wink, said, “Yes, I flatter myself there are no flies on me.”

CHAPTER XXVII.

Chancy Mountebank Dephool Flea, the Prince of Bamboozlers.—His Wonderful Patriotism in Going Abroad Every Summer.—The Dogs Find Themselves Heirs to Greater Liberty Than They Thought For.—Great Success of the Bamboozle.

THEN arose President Chancy Mountebank Dephool Flea, and, after telling his flea friends in a cautionary whisper not to laugh or in any other way “give away” the Bamboozle, advanced with a hop, a skip and a jump to the front and ordered the loud-noise-producing instruments to play up, and the pretty cloths to be waved on high, which, having been done, quite took away the sadness of the dogs and put them in great good humor. Then he stood on his head, and danced on one leg, and turned several somersaults backwards and forwards, and grinned and smiled, and told the dogs some very facetious stories and jokes, which caused them to howl with delirious joy, and declare that that day was the happiest one they had known in many years, and that Chancy Mountebank was, without exception, the funniest fool of a flea they had ever seen, God bless him.

Then he walked upside down across the stage, which made the dogs howl still more, and then advanced to the front and said to the dogs:

“Fellow citizens of this great and prosperous country [great surprise amongst the dogs and much winking amongst the Bamboozlers and other fleas], the highly favored of heaven and the envy of the whole world [great astonishment of the dogs as the fact dawns upon them], land of the free and home of the brave [uncontrollable tittering amongst the Bamboozling Committee as they lower their heads to hide it, and remarks: “aint he a dandy?” “he’s away ahead of you, brother Blatherskite, in the art of dog fooling,” and “the Lord is with us,” from One a Maker of long prayers]. My theme to-day is Liberty, glorious Liberty. My dear fellow citizens, ye have no idea of the incomparable heritage of honor and glory and blessing ye have in the fact that ye have been born and are privileged to live in this wonderful free town and country [tremendous agitation and delight amongst the dogs at this new discovery, which, coming upon their empty stomachs, caused several of the more famished and attenuated to drop dead].

“The very fact that ye were born to freedom, and have been used to it all your lives, renders you unable to properly appreciate your incomparable blessing; for, as the proverbs have it, ‘The blessings we have we value not,’ and ‘We never value the water till the well runs dry.’ Our beloved fellow citizens there, who have just fallen dead, would have been alive now had they daily habituated themselves to thankfulness and the proper estimation of their privileges. But if ye had had the opportunities as I have had of comparing your lot in this highly favored land, with that of the dogs in the rest of the world beyond the pond, your hearts would swell to bursting with infinite gratitude, and your tongues, attuned to thankfulness, would wag with an everlasting Jubilate Deo. [Tears of remorse and penitence well up in the eyes of the dogs at this, and cries of “Lord, make us more thankful,” are heard everywhere, while Grandadhat and Mak Tinley snicker and tickle each other, and ask Carnivorous what he thinks of “Our Chancy,” to which Andronicus replies, “I envy him; his polished and elegant way of lying is as far above my coarse and clumsy way as the smoothness of velvet is above the roughness of sandpaper.” And One a Maker of long prayers, says, “It’s as good as a Means of Grace.”]

“Oh, my dear fellow citizens, ye know that I am the flea that goeth and cometh over the pond every year. For many years I have regarded it as a sacred duty I owe to God and my beloved native country, to go away over the pond every Summer, partly, and as a minor consideration, to recruit my health and obtain a little rest from my terribly exhausting duty of making myself and certain of my fellow fleas wealthy—oh, my beloved dogs, ye have not the slightest idea of what it is to bear the burdens and responsibilities of being rich [a voice far away to the rear: “True, true”], and the tremendous strain and wear and tear of brain and body it costs to make wealth. Be thankful that God has not called you to the task [the voice in the rear: “You’ll take care that God doesn’t call us to that!” Confusion, and cries of “Put him out!” and anxious looks on the countenances of the fleas.]

“As I was saying when that unseemly interruption took place, I go over the pond, partly, and as a minor consideration, for my health, but primarily, and as a major consideration, that I may look upon and impress upon my mind the horrible misery, poverty, destitution and enslavement of the masses of dogs in the foreign countries. Oh, how dreadful it is there! Hunger is the perpetual condition. Rapacious, cruel, merciless rulers tax them to death. Between rich and poor there is a great gulf fixed, so that those who are born poor dogs live and die poor. In those dark and enslaved countries a dog knows he is a dog, and can never rise to be anything higher. Such instances as that of our fellow citizen and friend, Andronicus Carnivorous, who began life here as a low-down dog, and by dint of industry, skill and the boundless opportunities which we in this country offer to all, lifted himself up from the rank in which he was born, and became transformed into as big a sucker as any of us, could never happen there, where opportunities of dogs to rise in the world and become Suckers are by infamous class laws denied them. But here in this enlightened land, where we have no kings, and by that ne plus ultra of all wisdom, the Constitution, fleas and dogs, rich and poor, black and white, are all equal; the opportunities for advancement are countless and open to each and all, and if any dog is poor and hungry, it is all the fault of his own incompetency and laziness.

“In this great free land there is not—there cannot be—any unrighteous wealth [a look of superlative virtue on Andronicus’ countenance, and a glory on the transfigured face of One a Maker of long prayers and short wages, as he rolls up his seventh-day eye towards heaven]. The very fact that one has wealth is proof absolute that the possessor thereof deserves it, since the opportunity to acquire is open equally to all. Every dog may in this free country, by dint of virtue and industry, become an eminent and wealthy sucker and have thousands of dogs for his nourishment [puzzled looks of hope and new encouragement on the faces of the dogs as they try, mentally, to comprehend the glorious possibility of every dog doing that; and Grandadhat mutters to De Little Wit Blatherskite: “My, but Chancy gave them a stiff ’un to swallow then,” and the Blatherskite replies: “Truly he did, my brother, but he is the joker that can do it.”]

“Yes, my noble fellow citizens, my whole object in going every year across the pond is, as I said, that I may see the hell of degradation dogs have over there, and become horrified, so that at the end of my sojourn I am so disgusted at the inequalities and class distinctions, and the brutal tyranny of the rich over the poor, that I am properly grateful to God for the precious privileges He has given us here, and am profoundly thankful to get back again to Home, Home, Sweet, Sweet Home, for there’s no place like Home, be it ever so humble, like Home, Sweet Home.

“Oh, my dear friends, you have not the slightest idea of the disgust with which those annual four months’ contemplation of foreign poverty, tyranny, aristocracy and royalty fill my soul, neither can ye conceive the agony of impatience that then takes possession of me to tread again the soil of my native land, this land, whose pure, sweet air of Freedom is instant death to every form of injustice and tyranny; where the inalienable right of every dog to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is guaranteed to him by the Constitution and equal laws; where, under the folds of the Flag that makes us free, every dog dwells in peace, plenty and safety, none daring to make him afraid; land where there are no kings, lords or castes of any sort; where dogs and fleas breathe the common air of Heaven; land of the pilgrim’s pride, land where our fathers died [the voice in the rear again: “Yes, and where their children are dying of starvation.” Confusion, and a spasm of fear amongst the fleas, and cries of “Put him out”], from every mountain side let Freedom ring.

“Oh, my fellow citizens, I advise every one of you to save up and perform the sacred duty of going over the pond every Summer and getting horrified with the sight of foreign poverty and tyranny, so that ye may come home loaded to the very muzzle with thankfulness to God that He has so mercifully chosen us from amongst the dogs of the earth to shower His infinite bounties on. Nothing has such a tendency to make noble, thankful citizens of this grandest of all grand republics as going abroad for a few months during the hot weather.”

At the close of this grand piece of bamboozling oratory, the dogs made a supreme effort, and gave a grand howl of acclaim that made the welkin ring, and caused several passing clouds to burst into rain by reason of the concussion. The loud-noise-producing instruments started up, the pretty cloths were waved on high, and everything proclaimed the mad delight of the dogs at the wonderful discovery by their lean and famine-devoured selves that they were all free and equal, and the particular pets of Heaven.

With the exception of a few growlers at the rear, who audibly remarked that “If God had given them less Freedom and more Victuals it would have looked better of Him,” and who were promptly hustled out of the crowd, all the dogs were delighted, and declared that Chancy Mountebank Dephool Flea was the finest and most elegant truth-teller in the world and should henceforth be honored as “Our Chancy.” And as he took his seat the whole Committee of Bamboozlers, and all the other fleas, congratulated him that there were no flies on him either, and One a Maker of long prayers and short wages, groaning within himself, lifted up his seventh-day eye and said: “Verily the Lord is this day blessing us with a great salvation,” to which De Little Wit Blatherskite responded: “Yea, verily, brother; blessing us copiously. And why not, brother? We are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.”

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Heaven Worketh With the Bamboozlers, Confirming Their Words, With Signs Following.—Great Experience Meeting Around the Flag.—Harry Granddadhat Tells What the Flag Hath Done for His Soul and Body.—Likewise Andronicus Carnivorous.—Wonderful Proofs of the Fact that God Helps Those Who are Not Slow at Helping Themselves.

WHEN Chancy Mountebank Dephool Flea had got through with his highly successful oration, he ordered the loud-noise-producing instruments to strike up their loudest, and the pretty cloths to be waved on high with the greatest vigor, in order to keep up the effect that had been produced, and to scare away from the doorways of the dogs’ brains, any sober reflections that might, perchance, be seeking entrance there; and at a given signal, a very large and pretty cloth—which until then, had been kept hidden—having on it a number of white spots and red streaks, was run up to the top of a tall pole and thrown to the breeze. Whereupon, the whole multitude of the fleas, rose up, and prostrated themselves to it, crying:

And there came a great darkness over all the land; and the atmosphere was suffused with ghostly green and yellow lights, that cast a lurid gloom over the whole assembly; and out of the darkness there came lightnings and a voice of thunder, saying:

And all the multitude of the fleas, cried out in chorus, “Amen.”

By this time, all the poor dogs were shaking like leaves in the breeze, and they cried out: “What shall we do? What shall we do?”

And the voice thundered again:

And all the multitude of the prostrate fleas, cried out again in chorus: “Aye! Bow down.”

And again the ghostly lights flashed, and all manner of solemn and awful noises were heard.

And the dogs being dazed and dazzled and confused with the awful sights and sounds, began everywhere to fall down and worship the Flag, and, catching the enthusiasm, they soon were shouting as loud as they could, which with many of them was not very loud; for they were so hungry and weak that their breath failed them, but they did the best they could.

Then was lifted up the voice of the Reverend Tee de Little Wit Blatherskite, proclaiming: “Let there now be a time of silent lifting up of the heart in thanksgiving to God for this our Flag, the most glorious on earth, and for these our liberties, the only real ones on earth.”

And it was so. And there came a solemn hush over all the bowed assembly, broken only by pious sighs, groans and ejaculations from the fleas, which, by contagion, was taken up by the dogs, who were soon sighing and groaning and ejaculating too, until the air was heavy with a solemn buzz. Then there blew a holy wind from Heaven, that lifted up the folds of the beautiful flag and caused it to wave with solemn flappings most beautifully; and the solemn darkness began to pass away, to the accompaniment of low, soft music, as of angel songs stealing down from Heaven; and the sun shone out in splendor, and cast his brilliant beams right on the beautiful Flag, that was transfigured in the glory of it.

Then proclaimed the Reverend Tee de Little Wit Blatherskite—who seemed to have naturally become the Master of Ceremonies—“Brethren, let us sing:

Then the whole assembly arose, and the loud-noise-producing instruments joined in. And the fleas being very vigorous, and fat and strong, lifted up their voices with tremendous energy; and all the salaried barkers, and the police dogs, and all the other dogs that were well-fed and rotund of belly, were in good voice, so that they all sent up a volume of glad sound that made the air shake and caused the great Flag to give an extra flap; but the other dogs, being very weak with hunger, and short of wind, could not do so well, but they, nevertheless, made a very respectable noise and were very happy.

When the singing was over, the Reverend Tee de Little Wit Blatherskite lifted up his right paw, commanding attention, and said: “Brethren, both dogs and fleas—I may call you brethren, for beneath the all-encompassing folds of this glorious Flag, we are all equal [mighty applause from the fleas, echoed by the dogs]—I think it would be very appropriate upon this occasion, and well pleasing to God, to turn this into an experience meeting; and let each of us testify to the blessings of Liberty, that our beloved Flag has conferred upon us. Let any dog or flea get up and speak, for all are equal here. Brother Grandadhat, suppose you cheer us with your experience.”

Brother Grandadhat, being thus exhorted, arose, and bowing low to the Flag, said: “I bless God for that Flag, and I bless God that under its protecting and blessing-scattering folds I was born, as were my father and my father’s father. I am proud to live under it. I am proud to boast that from the very first day, when our fathers first flung it to the breeze, and bade tyranny fly trembling, with its tail between its legs—which it did—it has been giving us more and more freedom every day, until now we are the freest, grandest and noblest nation on the face of the great round globe. Yea, I will go further, and declare that there is no freedom on earth, save here.

“Brethren, all, God gave us that Flag; it was designed in Heaven, and God has been ever with it, and acknowledged it for his own. Never, never, never has it floated—never, never, never can it float—over any wrong, injustice or tyranny. Under the effulgent splendor of its beautiful white spots and red streaks, wrong, injustice and tyranny wither and wilt as would toadstools before the midsummer midday sun. [Tremendous explosion of applause from the fleas, joined in by the dogs.] When God gave us that Flag, he, with it, threw wide open the windows and doors of Heaven, and poured out from his infinite cornucopiæ, such a deluge of blessings upon us as no nation on earth ever got or ever will get, and forthwith made us the pride of ourselves and the envy of the whole world. [A most awful burst of applause from the fleas, all the fleas rising up to give it. Several very weak, hungry and woe-begone dogs, carried away by the whirlwind of excitement, drop dead of heart failure.]

“‘The gifts of God to our people have been so abundant and so special, that the spirit of devout thanksgiving awaits but the appointment of a day when it may have a common expression. He has stayed the pestilence at our door,’ and caused all evil to turn aside from touching us. ‘He has given us a love for our free civil institutions,’ and grace to abhor and hang all who do not believe we are free, and dare to say so. ‘He has widened our philanthropy by calls to succor the distress in other lands; and he has given us’ such ‘a great increase in material wealth, and’ such ‘a wide diffusion of contentment and comfort in the homes of our’ dogs, that we are the wonder of the whole world, and the joy of ourselves. [Grand crescendo of applause from the fleas, and penitent ejaculations from the dogs of: “Lord, forgive our past repinings;” “Lord, help us to feel how full we are;” “Lord, take away our blindness, that our wealth may be disclosed to us;” and much winking amongst the Bamboozling Committee, at the satisfactory working of the Bamboozle.] Oh, beloved brethren, ours is the Flag, the only Flag in the world worth having, and we’ve got it, and don’t you forget it; [Screams, yells, and deliriums of applause.] the world envies us its possession; they would like it, but they shall not have it; for my part, I will never desert the Flag. No! I will never do it. It’s of no use asking me. That Flag has blessed me; it has given me and mine prosperity, so that I am comfortably rotund and fat; it is the object of my love, my adoration, and I never will desert it; no ne—ver. I will not live under any other; so it’s of no use asking me; I would not take the riches of the whole world for the daily sight of it; so it’s no use any one offering them to me. I am perfectly happy now, and I shall go to Heaven when I die. And when the death dew lies cold on my brow, may my last words be:

And making again obeisance to the emblem, he sat down amid a thunder of applause, and the hullabaloo of the loud-noise-producing instruments.

Then spake the Reverend Tee De Little Wit Blatherskite, “Brethren, that testimony must have done us all good, I am sure. Will some other good brother favor us with his experience?”

Then stepped forth Andronicus Carnivorous, and, making three very low obeisances to the Flag, said in a voice low and broken with emotion: “Brother dogs and fleas: This is the proudest and solemnest moment of my life. When I look on that glorious Flag, amongst whose bright spots and broad red streaks, I can, with my mind’s eye, see, traced in lines of refulgent brightness, ‘LIFE, LIBERTY, HAPPINESS, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY,’ my heart swells to bursting with gratitude, that some God, Providence or other beneficence, did, in boundless mercy, direct my wandering feet, when a young and poverty-stricken dog, to the shores of this glorious free land, so bountifully blest with the milk and honey of prosperity; and that I was privileged—for it was a privilege—to rest and dwell, and make my home under the great broad shadow of that grand old Flag [making obeisance thereto] of the Free [Flea applause].

“Oh, Brother dogs—for though that blessed Flag has prospered me immensely, and made me as corpulent a sucker as the most monstrous of your fleas, I am not puffed up with pride, but still deem it my highest honor to count myself as one of you, and to share with you the dignities of your citizenship. [Applause from the dogs and a mysterious voice from the rear, “Yes, but not the hunger of it,” and cries of “Put him out.”]

“Oh, brother dogs, if it is such a blessed privilege to come in as a ragged stranger, and with the brogue of a foreign dog on my tongue, under the folds of this Flag, Oh! what must it be to be born under it, of parents born under it, too! Oh! I cannot enough congratulate the dogs here, who were thus blessed, upon the unutterably precious heritage they have in that fact. Neither can I forgive the irreparable wrong—unintentional though it might have been—my parents did me, in having brought me into the world in a foreign land, in the midst of the darkness, heathenism, want, misery and tyranny that reign wheresoever that Flag fluttereth not. [Tumultuous applause from dogs and fleas.] Yet, though I cannot help that wrong, I yield to no dog and no flea in the width, length, depth and intensity of my love and adoration of that blessed emblem of the liberty, equality and fraternity that all enjoy that live under it. Yea, I believe that I, carrying about with me the agonizing consciousness of my foreign origin, am more acutely appreciative of the blessedness of living under it than they who are born under it, and can claim the Flag as their very own. Often and often am I amazed that so many of our native dogs seem so little to appreciate their blessings. Instead of living in a state of perpetual thankfulness, that they were born and live under this Flag, and participate in the wealth, protection and liberty it scatters over all that are worthy, they go about discontented and complaining of hunger and hard work; and I have often been shocked by hearing some of these very native dogs say, ‘Damn Flags when you’ve nothing to eat.’ I think all such dogs are blind and ungrateful, and should be punished as infidels and blasphemers. [Applause.]

“Oh, Brethren, I can testify that the Flag has abundantly blessed me, though a foreigner born. And what I say is, that what it has done for me, it stands ready to do for all. I love it. I live for it; I would die for it if need were, and I should happen to be in the country at the time. I would abide ever under its great, wide, brooding folds, but that an imperious and inevitable duty drives me to spend most of my time away over the pond.

“Like my dear friend, Dephool Flea here, it is with a high and lofty purpose I go abroad. Upon me is laid the solemn duty to go and testify to my old kin beyond the pond, what great things this glorious Flag hath done for my soul and body. Over there are divers cantankerous and evil-minded carpers and jibers against our glorious liberties, who allege that our dogocracy is all snide; our equality all fake; our fraternity all buncombe and gaseous boast; our liberty all a gorgeous mendacity. Therefore deem I myself charged with the responsibility of putting to silence and shame these calumniators, by frequently dropping myself amongst them, a visible, tangible, audible proof and specimen of the product of our Flag. It is laid on me to be the exponent of Triumphant Dogocracy under the Flag of the Free; and woe is me if I shirk to discharge this duty.”

“I can understand the pain it gives our beloved Chancy to be away from under his beloved Flag, three or four months every year, and the overwhelming joy he always feels in getting back again; for it is martyrdom to me to be expatriated so long; but I bear up under it as well as I can, cheered by the reflection that I have a mission that none but I can fulfill, and that I am performing the incalculably beneficent service of disseminating correct notions about this great country and its Flag, and creating friendly feeling towards it.”

“When this my duty shall be finally accomplished—as I pray it soon may be—and I shall be privileged to come home finally, and rest me forevermore under the proud flutter of its waving, and daily bathe my glad soul in the healing beams of its shining, then alone shall Andronicus Carnivorous be happy.” [Immense and prolonged applause, amid which the Bamboozling Committee get around him, and hug and kiss him. And the Holy One a Maker of long prayers, regretfully sighs and says to himself, “Oh, Andy, Andy! One thing only thou lackest. If thou wert only a Christian, thou wouldst be quite perfect.”]

CHAPTER XXIX.

The Spirit Irresistibly Moves Pharaoh Phrique to Testify of Freedom, Equality and Justice.—Which Shows that Satan Can Sometimes be Exceedingly Pious.—Phrique Overdoes His Part and Nearly Wrecks the Bamboozle.—Mak Tinley to the Rescue.

HARDLY had Carnivorous resumed his seat, when there was a great commotion among the fleas behind. It was caused by Pharaoh Phrique, upon whom the Spirit of Prophecy had just descended. Rising, he shouted, “I want to testify. Oh, I shall burst if I don’t testify.”

To whom De Little Wit Blatherskite said: “Brother, nothing hinders that thou testify. Come forward then, and testify, and the Lord be with thee.”

Then Pharaoh Phrique hasted and ran, and tumbled over several of the other fleas, and having made profound obeisance to the Flag, he opened his mouth to speak, but he could not; for a great emotion seized him and shook him, and he wept with a great weeping greatly. Whereat all the fleas sympathetically wept also, while all the dogs wondered.

After a short time, however, he found utterance, and in broken accents began: “Oh, Brethren, dogs and fleas; never did I fully realize until my beloved partner, Andronicus Carnivorous, was testifying as to what this, our glorious Flag, had done for his soul and body, the infinite blessings it brings to us all. I said to myself, while he was testifying, ‘Oh! If this poor God-forgotten foreigner, born under a bloody flag, where Liberty was never heard of, where equality and fraternity are words of incomprehensible jargon, could come here, and in the space of a few short years could have his mind so wonderfully enlarged and ennobled, and his soul so saturated with the sacred principles of freedom, as he has evidenced to us to-day, Oh! what a home of Liberty our country must be!’ And, I tell you, brethren (and it’s a fact we nativeborners may be justly proud of), this just shows that the very air here is Liberty, by which, the moment any one breathes it, he is made free. And, above all, let us remember, and never forget, that WE made this free air, and this free country; that is, OUR FATHERS and WE. They laid the foundations of Liberty, roughly and according to the light they had; but it was, by an all-wise Providence, who foreknew our coming, reserved unto US—with our more acute appreciation of, and more advanced education in, the principles of true freedom—to rear therefrom the finished superstructure, the biggest, grandest, and most gorgeously beautiful Temple of Liberty the world ever saw.

“And this was all perfectly natural. We are a free people, and a free people makes free institutions. Freedom with us is an instinct. It is born in us. It is our atmosphere, our food. It sticks out all over us. A true born Canisvillian takes to Liberty more naturally than a duck takes to water. Liberty is as much our attribute, as the odor is the attribute of the rose, and, like the rose, we diffuse it wherever we move; so that whosoever seeth us, smelleth us, or toucheth us, draweth virtue from us, and is made free. [Tempests, whirlwinds, cyclones of applause that nearly lift Pharaoh Phrique off his feet.]

“Thus it is, brethren, that in all this broad land there is no such thing as a slave, never was, and never can be. A slave, or an oppressed dog of any description here, is an anomaly we would not endure for a moment. [Much applause from the fleas and joy amongst the dogs.]

“The great reason why this is the cradle and home of Liberty is, that every true, native born Canisvillian—be he dog or be he flea—burns so brightly with the sacred fire of Liberty, that he acts as though he were the sole and only defender of his country’s rights and liberties. Here each citizen springs spontaneously to its defense. Not a flea of us but would spring with alacrity, at the first call of danger, to lend the Government, at six per cent., and good security, all the wealth he has; and I am sure that the noble patriotism of our citizen dogs is such that not a dog would shirk to go forth to fight and die for his Country and Flag. [Rampageous cheering by the dogs, marred by a voice, “At naught per cent. and no security.”]

“Oh! Brethren!” exclaimed Brother Phrique, ignoring the interruption, that made the Bamboozling Committee look uneasily at each other, “if there is one thing more than another that this Flag—my Flag, your Flag—has wrought into the very fibre of my soul, it is the love of Liberty, Justice and Fair Dealing. Oh, how my soul burns with indignation when I read of the injustice and brutal tyranny that are practised on the poor dogs in foreign lands—oppressions that our free and noble dogs would not endure for a moment! Oh! I wonder they do not rise and kill their oppressors. But they do the next best thing. They have heard that over here is the only genuine and original Flag of Liberty; and they come by hundreds and by thousands—escaped slaves—to rest them under its shadow, and dwell in peace and plenty forever more, where the oppressor ceases from troubling, and the weary are at rest.” [A voice from afar off: “How about your Blood and Bones Grindery, and your Devil’s Cheap Bargain Counter Dogs?” Great confusion, and a rush of police dogs to that part, with no result.]

Here the Bamboozling Committee cast anxious glances at each other, and hastily got together in a rear corner, and Brother Grandadhat said to Mountebank Dephool Flea, “Oh, Chancy, Brother Phrique will wreck this whole Bamboozle. What Evil Spirit from the Lord led that dog to ask him that unfortunate question? Oh! that we had not allowed him to come forward!”

And Chancy replied, “It is unfortunate, very. We must shut him off, somehow, or he will certainly render all our Bamboozle nugatory. There are evidently some of those thinking dogs present, damn ’em. If it had not been for them, this hocus-pocus would have gone off swimmingly.”

“Thinking dogs present, did you say, Brother Chancy?” exclaimed Carnivorous, shaking with fright. “Do you think there is danger of more trouble? Hadn’t I better get away over the pond? Is there any boat ready? Am I likely to get hurt? I have a Reputation to maintain. My Mission and the Voice of Duty——”

“Don’t be a fool, Andy,” broke in Wilhelm Bunkum Mak Tinley, “this Bamboozle is no failure by a long chalk. We will get Brother Phrique out of the way. It was a great folly and oversight on our part to let him be put forward at this juncture. But I will tickle these dogs’ ears, and pull wool over their eyes, and more than make up for this misadventure.”

“Canst thou save us, Brother Mak Tinley?” said Andronicus.

“You bet I can,” replied Mak Tinley. “Why, these Canisville dogs are the most gullible fools in all creation. They are a fish that can be caught with a bare hook every time, if only one has courage and address enough to know how to fling it. The secret lies in lying to them with the most tremendous sincerity and boldness. It is the triumph of mind over matter; of intellect over brute strength.”

“Then we will get Brother Phrique off and put thee on,” said President Dephool Flea.

So Chancy Mountebank whispered softly for a few moments unto Pharaoh Phrique, and advised him to slow down his speech, and taper off and wind up and retire as gracefully as he could, as he was jeopardizing the Bamboozle.

And Pharaoh took the hint, and perorated a few minutes about the beauty of brotherly love, of righteousness, Liberty, patriotism and the Flag; and having made exactly one dozen obeisances to the glorious Flag of the Free, and spent five minutes in silent and rapturous adoration of it, he slid away to the rear, and sank out of sight, and was no more seen or heard.

CHAPTER XXX.

Wilhelm Bunkum Mak Tinley Deals out to the Dogs Some Tremendous Doses of Bunkum, but the Dogs’ Swallow is Much More Tremendous and They Gulp it Easily.—He Treats Them to a Masterly Exhibition of His Art of Statistic and Average Juggling.—The Starving Dogs Delighted at Finding Themselves Proved so Wealthy.

THEN arose Wilhelm Bunkum Mak Tinley Flea and stepped forward, while all the assembled fleas cheered and applauded to the echo, which made all the dogs think that he must be some extraordinary prophet, either just arisen or just come down. He was a portly flea, of most benevolent aspect, and seemed to be the very embodiment of sincerity. He had a mild and beautiful God-Bless-You-My-Children eye, and a beautifully sympathetic O-How-I-Love-You mouth, which at once inspired respect. And when he opened his mouth to speak, his softly cadent voice floated o’er the vast assembly of dogs like angelic music, so that they—utter strangers to such delightful sounds—stood entranced, and the Bamboozling Committee beamed glances of perfect satisfaction on one another.

“Incline your ears unto me, O beautiful, dutiful dogs,” said he, “dogs of a goodly lineage, free born, noble and independent. Give ear unto my voice. I esteem it the proudest honor of my life to be permitted the precious privilege of standing before and addressing such a vast audience of free and intellectual dogs, as the one now before me. [Great straightening up of the dogs, and brightening of their eyes.] This is an audience whose intelligent eyes and noble brows show at once that nothing but TRUTH will go down with them, [Greater straightening up of the dogs.] that to fool them is an impossible task. And why? Because ye are Canisvillians, and that [pointing] is your Flag, the Flag of the Free. [Great cheering from the fleas and dogs too.]

“And not only is that the Flag of Freedom, but it is the Flag of Prosperity, too. [Fleas cheer, while dogs wonder.] Yes, fellow citizens, I repeat it, the Flag of Prosperity. Never was there a country so free or so prosperous; and I may say never was there a country so able to defend its freedom and prosperity. [Cheering.]

“I regret to say that there are certain unpatriotic dogs amongst us, who are so far lost to the sense of their duty to stick up for their country, right or wrong, as to wickedly assert that dogs in this country are hungry and poor; but we fling the calumny in their teeth; we brand it as a lie; we rejoin that it is the lie of our country’s old time enemy, Kyhidom, and for you dogs to believe it, were a libel upon your intelligence. [Great wonderment on the countenances of the dogs.]

“But, fellow free citizens, they cannot fool you thus; ye know that ye are neither hungry nor poor.

“What do Statistics tell us? What saith Average? What saith Protection? What saith the Great Hunkidori? What saith the Gospel of the Balance of Trade? What saith the Book of the Prophecy of the Exports and Imports? What is the voice of the ever blessed and adorable Gold Basis? All these Holy Scriptures teach us that there is neither hunger nor poverty in all this glorious land under the Flag of the Free; that we, as a country, are the fairest, fattest and wealthiest people God’s sun ever shone on. [Tempestuous applause from the fleas, and great mesmerism of the dogs, some, however, absent-mindedly stroking their flat bellies.]

“Fellow citizens, the Gospel of the Balance of Trade telleth us that the Balance is with us, and not agin us. Our god Protection, is as a wall of fire round about us, warming and comforting us within, and scorching and shrivelling all those without. The Book of the Prophecy of the Exports and Imports assureth us that our bread is certain and our water sure. The Great Hunkidori speaketh and saith that we are all right, and there is nothing the matter with us. And we have the precious promise of the ever blessed and adorable Gold Basis that no evil shall touch us while ever our feet are planted on its eternal foundation. And Statistics tell us that Our National Wealth is greater than that of any nation of dogs under heaven. [Lusty cheers from the fleas, and delighted expressions on the faces of the dogs.]

“Yes, fellow citizens, Statistics never lie. They are our infallible guide through the wilderness of assertion and counter-assertion. You may rest your weary feet on them every time. When heart and flesh fail you, and despondency taketh hold upon you; when ye walk through the valley of ghosts and spectres of Hunger and Poverty and Want, and ye are sore afraid they are upon you, then look ye to, and trust ye in Statistics, and ye shall be saved; the ghosts and spectres shall fly away and ye shall know that ye are full and happy. [Sobs and cries of joy from the dogs at this beautiful Free Salvation.]

“See, Brethren, See! Statistics tell us that the dogs of Canisville and country are 65,000. Statistics also tell us that our National Wealth Heaps, in charge of the Sacred Trustees, contain more than equal to 650,000 basketfuls of good, wholesome food, which, divided by 65,000, gives an Average of ten basketfuls Per Capita. [Ejaculations of surprise and astonishment from the dogs, who had no idea before that they were so wealthy.]

“Now, fellow citizens, this is a wonderful showing. Only think of it! Ten basketfuls to every dog in Canisville! Enough to make every dog quite corpulent and his ribs to bulge with fullness. It is marvellous. It is astounding. No other dogs in the whole wide world can show such an Average. I am told by our brother, Chancy Mountebank Dephool Flea, and by brother Andronicus Carnivorous, that over the pond, in the best countries there, the Average is not more than one basketful per capita; that in most it is less than that, and that in some it is nothing at all. [Sighs of sympathy from the dogs for those poor devils.]

“Should not our dogs then, instead of repining that they are not more wealthy, rejoice and be exceeding glad that they are so much better off than the poor oppressed dogs of other lands? Ought they not to thank God hourly for their great Average, and to bless him for Statistics that make such a wonderful Average possible?

“TEN BASKETFULS PER CAPITA!!! Think for a moment what that means. Statistics tell us that the average of mouthfuls to the basket, is, in round numbers, one hundred. This, multiplied by ten, equals one thousand mouthfuls per dog. Think of it! One thousand mouthfuls of GOOD VICTUALS per dog. [Sensation amongst the dogs; great watering of mouths and licking of chops.] The mind fails to grasp the immensity of the fact; it is stunned; it staggers; it reels. Imagination’s utmost stretch in wonder dies away. It is wealth incomprehensible. ONE THOUSAND MOUTHFULS PER DOG!!! It sounds like Fiction. It sounds like a lie, it is so incredible; and yet, there are the Statistics; there are the figures which are beyond disproof, beyond dispute. [Great cheering by the dogs over these facts.]

“Well may the true Canisville dog be proud of his country and his Flag; proud of his comfortable home and his sleek and fat condition; proud of the Statistics, and proud of the generous Average the Statistics give him to eat. [The dogs applaud and cry, “Three cheers for Mak Tinley.”]

“Shall we surrender, then, this our prosperity, to our Enemy? [Never, from the dogs.] Shall we haul down the Flag of Freedom that gives us this prosperity? [No, no, no, from the dogs, and Perish the thought, from the fleas.] Patriots, fellow citizens, brothers, let us ever cherish, down in our deepest hearts, the principles that have, under God, differentiated us from the rest of the world and lifted us to the highest pinnacle of wealth and greatness that dogs ever enjoyed. Let us never surrender them, but stick by the Holy Statistics and the Average; by our Protection and the Great Hunkidori; by the Gospel of the Balance of Trade, the Book of the Prophecy of the Exports and Imports, and the ever blessed and adorable Gold Basis. Abide by these; fight for them; if needs be, die for them; thus shall ye enjoy life and wealth, and glory and honor and blessing yourselves, and hand down intact your glorious heritage to your happy posterity.”

Making genuflexion to the flag, and bowing to the dogs, Mak Tinley retired, while storms of applause broke out from the dogs.

CHAPTER XXXI.

Unqualified Triumph of Bunkum, Statistics and Averages.—Everything and Everybody “All Right.”—Thin and Hungry Honest Labor Testifies.—His Head Swells.—Shows that a Great Deal of Rich Patriotism can be Raised on a Very Small Amount of Poor Victuals.

WILHELM Bunkum Mak Tinley’s oration made a profound impression. Upon assembled fleas there fell a peace as of an undisturbed sea, a sweet consciousness that at last, all danger from dog-thinking was safely over. The Bamboozling Committee beamed and winked at each other in silent ecstasy. And as for the dogs, nothing like their satisfaction ever was before seen. Mak Tinley’s magnificent effort had done the job. There was in it an array of facts and figures that carried conviction home to their hearts and consciences. Poetry, imagery and gush the others had given—which was all very delightful—but he had risen to the needs of the times. They were hungry and wasted, and he had opened the granary of his brilliant imagination, and had poured out upon them some real, genuine, solid, substantial, and stomach filling Statistics and Averages, that put new life and soul into them. They danced and howled with joy; they hugged and kissed each other, and blessed God for Mak Tinley, the Stomach Filler. One meagre and unkempt dog cried, “Three cheers for Mak Tinley, Statistics and Averages,” which all the dogs gave. Then another meagre dog yelled, “Hurrah for our Country and Flag, the finest in the world,” and all the dogs hurrahed, the pretty cloths were fluttered on high, the loud-noise-producing instruments were blown and banged and thumped, and at the word “Flag,” all the fleas arose and made prosternation.

Then a large, thin and lanky dog, with hungry eyes, jumped up and demanded that three cheers be rendered unto the Bamboozling Committee; which were no sooner given than he inquired with great and strident solicitude, “What is the matter with Harry Grandadhat?” And the whole assembly of dogs and fleas, before Grandadhat had time to reply on his own behalf, thundered out in one mighty chorus, “He’s all right;” to which some one, who had evidently not heard who was referred to, inquired, “Who’s all right?” to which again the whole assembly, very courteously and obligingly, responded in chorus: “Why, Harry Grandadhat.” All which catechism seemed, for some deep and inscrutable reason, to cause a perfect delirium of joy. And the delirium spread and waxed until nothing was heard or seen but the chorused catechism, three cheers for everything and everybody, the hubbub of the wind and thump instruments, the waving of the pretty cloths, and the dogs tearing madly around, howling, standing on their heads, rolling on the ground, and leaping over each other for joy and gladness.

At last the tempest lulled, and the Blatherskite stepped forward and said, “Brethren, now is the accepted time; now is the day of testimony. In this hour of softened splendor and outpouring upon us all of the holy spirit of patriotism, if there is any dog here that feels it borne in upon his soul to testify, let him step up, and the Lord be with him.”

Then stepped up the large and lanky dog of the hungry eyes, lolling out his tongue and panting with his recent great exertions, and feebly tottered up the eminence to testify. But before he commenced, Chancy Mountebank Dephool Flea got hold of him, and demanded of him his name, that he might introduce him. Then Dephool Flea stepped forward and said, “Dogs and fellow citizens: This respected citizen says his name is Honest Labor, and that he desires to say what the Flag has done for his soul. Oh, fellow citizens, I need not tell you that such as he are the pride and strength of our common country, that it is to him and the Lowly Toiler, that the grandeur, magnificence and superbity of our material prosperity are due. Let us all gratefully remember that without him and his unceasing toil, this country had not been; that to him are we beholden for a large part—if not the largest part—of our wealth; that our brain, without his diligent paw, would have been absolutely useless; that in the upbuilding of this great country, he was the greatest factor, and that to him we look for its defence, its perpetuity.

“And I may say that it is our pride that this is a country, this is THE country, this the ONLY country in the world, where Honest Labor is held in honor; yea, in reverence; yea, that is crowned with glory and honor, and given first place in our esteem, and——” Here a loud voice came from afar off in the crowd, “First place at the grub basket would suit him better,” followed by great confusion, alarm, and a great rush of police dogs that way, and a sound of thumped heads. The fleas looked anxious, and the Bamboozlers uneasy, and Andronicus Carnivorous, scenting danger, sidled off. Dephool Flea was much discumfuzzled, and nearly lost his cherubic smile; but he heroically held up his end, and continued:

“As I was saying, other effete countries have their kings and lords; but here we recognize no king, but Honest Labor [great cheers and restoration of confidence], no order of nobility but that of Humble Toil; and in no country does Honest Labor get so large a share of his own product, or hold his head so high with the conscious pride of his own worth. I have the proud honor and precious privilege of introducing him.”

During all this speech, it was noticed that poor Honest Labor was changing visibly. At first his hungry eye grew bright, and his nostrils distended; and as the eloquence waxed in tumidity and turgidity, his head was lifted up and began to swell and swell, and at the crowning reference to his coronation as a king, it took a sudden and mighty inflation that made his body and legs look ridiculously thin and small and spindling by comparison.

“What thinkest thou of our Chancy now?” said Harry Grandadhat, to his dear friend, the Holy One a Maker of long prayers, as he pointed to the Phenomenon.

“Called and chosen, called and chosen,” replied One a Maker of prayers, “God hath indeed given unto him great talents.”

“The Bamboozle prospereth indeed,” said Mak Tinley, and tipping the wink to the Monstrous Fleas, he whispered to one of the nearest of them, whose name was Shikago Pigsfoot, “Brother, merrily will go the Blood and Bones Mill after this.”

“Yes, yes,” replied Shikago Pigsfoot, “the last drop of blood shall be squeezed out of them. I am famishing to see the Mill going again, it seems an awful loss to waste a whole day when every tiny drop of blood is so precious to us; but I suppose this bamboozle is all for our ultimate good. Oh, that to-morrow were here and the Mill going!”

Then stepped forward Honest Labor, and having made obeisance to the Flag, as he had seen the flea speakers do, he spake:

“Feller dogs; this is the proudest moment of my life. Feller dogs, you mustn’t expect a fine speech from me, for as I was born poor and hungry, I had to turn out at eight months old to scratch for bones to eke out the family living. Consequently, I haint had no eddication. My father, whose name was Lowly Toil, and is dead now, having been taken off early by a mysterious epidemic called ‘Vacuity of the Alimentary Canal,’ that was going about at that time, was always too poor to give me any eddication; but, bless the Lord, he gave me what is far better—he early planted in my youthful breast the love of country. Says he to me, says he, he says, ‘Honny, this ’ere’s your Country and that there’s your Flag, and you’ll never get such another Country with such another Flag on it, if you sarch the earth over. It’s the finest Country and the finest Flag that ever was or ever will be, and don’t you forget it.’ [Burst of applause from the fleas and dogs too.] Says I to him, says I, I says, ‘Father, I never will; come dark, come light, come weal, come woe, come anything, I’ll never go back on my Country and my Flag.’ [Tempest of cheers.]

“And I never have. This is God’s country. [Cheers from the fleas.] It is a free country. [Cheers.] It is the poor dog’s country. [Cheers on cheers from the fleas and dogs too.] Everybody says so. The foreign dogs from over the pond say so. Where will you find a country that gives the honest worker so good a living? [Immense cheering by the fleas.] Where will you find a country that gives such ‘constant employment?’ And pays such ‘high wages?’ [Cheers from the fleas, and “Aye, that’s the question,” from the Bamboozlers.] Where so many dogs have snug bank accounts? Where Statistics give dogs such a high Average of victuals to eat? [Immense cheers and cries of “Hurrah for Mak Tinley.”] Where there is such a wide ‘diffusion of comfort and content?’ [Cheers, and “Hurrah for Grandadhat.”] Where will you find a country as gives such chances for poor and honest dogs to get on and come to the Great Transformation? [Great cheers.]

“Look at Carnivorous; he was poor and honest once, and now look at him. And he aint the only one. Look at our Gold Jays, our Rollefeckers, our Armorses, our Makkizes, our Bandervilts, our Pimples, our Carbuncles, our Corns, our Warts, our Bunions; all poor and honest once, and now see what they are. I tell you, feller dogs, there never was a Country and a Flag as gave the poor and honest such grand chances to get on and become something totally different. Look at our Blood and Bones Grindery! Why, I am told that if any of our free and happy Handle turners were to go over the pond, and get a job in them foreign pauper labor grinderies, they would be disgusted with the long hours and small pay. There the Monstrous Fleas actually demand that every dog give a whole leg to the hopper, before he can get a place at the Handle, and is, moreover, bound to serve seven years before he can leave his job. But here, in this free country, a dog has only got to contribute two or three toes, and is free to leave his job whenever he chooses. [Wonderful cheering.]

“Everything in this glorious country is away ahead of the old countries. Even the rags of the dogs here look more respectable than there; and as for poverty, such a thing is not known here, for if a dog have neither food, nor kennel, nor where to lay his head, he can look up and thank God that he has a Country and a Flag.

“I grind at the Handle nineteen hours a day, and I have given four toes to the hopper; but I thank God that I might be far worse off. Often I am hungry, very hungry, but I thank God that I might be hungrier. I am contented. It is the duty of dogs to be contented [applause from the Monstrous Fleas,] a dog that is always growling about his lot, is a nuisance to himself and everybody else. God don’t love him, the Church don’t respect him, and his employers hate him.”

Here all the Bamboozlers arose and patted him on the back, and the Blatherskite turned to the assembly and said, “Behold, a model citizen. Blessed are the contented, for when they die the gates of Heaven shall swing wide open to let them in.”

Continuing, Honest Labor said, “It is the duty of every dog to stick up for the country that gives him employment and keeps wages as high as they are. The only thing we have to fear, is that them foreign pauper dogs from over the pond, envious of our great prosperity, will come crowding over here, and tempt our employers to cut down our wages. But I am convinced that all our eminent, wealthy and Monstrous Fleas, led on and sustained by such friends of ours as Carnivorous, Phrique, Mak Tinley, Dephool Flea, Webbfoot, and others, would make a tremendous fight against that temptation before they would yield. Therefore, I say, three times three cheers for our Country, our Institutions, and our Flag, the freest, finest and grandest in the world.”

The burst of applause that followed this simple eloquence was deafening. The wind and bang instruments struck up, the dogs ranted and raved, the Bamboozling Committee stood on their heads with delight and all the fleas beamed with silent ecstasy.

CHAPTER XXXII.

Apotheosis of Honest Labor.—Gorgeous Ceremonies.—Beautiful Unanimity of the Mutually Inimical Fleas Around the Throne.—End of Bamboozle No. 1.—An Awful Find.—King Honest Labor Dead; Which Shows That Plenty to Eat Is Better Than to Be a Sham King.

A wonderful thing now happened. Exactly how it happened was a secret known only to the Bamboozling Committee and some of their intimates; but just as the delirium of the dogs’ joy was at its height, the whole assembly of the fleas arose as by one simultaneous impulse and cried: “Long live Honest Labor, son of Lowly Toil! He shall be our King. Bring forth the Royal Diadem and crown him Lord of all.”

And suddenly, beneath the great Flag of the Free, a great and gorgeous throne was set; and the Bamboozling Committee, gathering around and making genuflexion to poor Honest Labor—whose head by this time had grown to an enormous size—led him with every sign of homage and adoration, and amid the delighted admiration of the dogs, to the throne, and set him therein. And when he was set, a lot of the wealthy, eminent and Monstrous Fleas, headed by Grandadhat and Dephool Flea, ranged themselves up as a bodyguard of worshippers on either side of him; and another lot, headed by Bunkum Mak Tinley, fell at his feet as Homage Renderers. And Grandadhat, making a sign to the vast multitude of dogs, ostentatiously kissed him on the nose and on the right ear; and Dephool Flea, making another sign to the multitude, ostentatiously kissed him on the nose and on the left ear; and Mak Tinley, on behalf of the Homage Renderers generally, and on his own behalf particularly, kissed him on the feet; and all three, turning dramatically to the dogs, cried: “Behold our King!”

And all the assembled fleas cried out in chorus: “God save the King!”

Then cried aloud Dephool Flea: “The Royal Diadem, the Royal Diadem! Bring it forth, and crown him Lord of all.”

Then there stepped forth a very large flea, Grover Ponderous Flea by name, bearing a gorgeous looking regalia—a robe, a sceptre and a crown of very large diameter—followed by two small satellite fleas, named, the one Rosy Pretty Flower, the other Pennzy Pattyson, bearing between them a ponderous bowl filled to the brim with some golden liquid, around which flies buzzed. Whereupon all the dogs gave a great howl of delight, for they seemed to know them.

“Hurrah!” they cried, “for Grover Ponderous Flea, the new Nighunto; the tried and trusty friend and worshipper of Honest Labor. Hurrah! Hurrah!! Hurrah!!!”

And Grover Ponderous Flea, bowing graciously to the dogs, and smiling knowingly to the fleas, advanced to the throne, and lifting up his eyes to the Flag, thus addressed the occupant:

“Oh Honest Labor, whose very name is hallowed, hail! All hail! In this Land of the Free, whose very air is instantaneously deadly poison to tyranny and kings of the ancient sort, we, God’s own free-born, have learned that there is nothing truly noble but that which Nature has patented; that nothing deserves to reign but that which Nature has crowned King. Our fathers, the prophets, who gave us our Liberty and our Flag, taught us, and we, their children, have learned that Honest Labor is the Creator of all Wealth, our guide, preserver and friend, the Prop of our Republic, without whose support the bottom would fall out, and therefore the only true, rightful, Nature-ordained king, the only right sort of a king to reign over US, the finest race of dogs and fleas that God in his wonderful wisdom ever created.

“Therefore, in the name of all these dogs assembled here, and all the fleas, whose loyalty I voice, I invest thy sacred and large head, oh, Honest Labor, with this crown of large diameter. Thou art our Lord; thou art our King. We worship thee. We love thy dirty paws. We love thy smell. We proudly point to thine ungroomed and unwashen hide, for they are the insignia of thine inherent glory. Henceforth thou art our Lord, our god and King, and we thine ever-obedient subjects.” And with that he put the robe upon him, and put the sceptre in his right paw, and retired backward from the Royal Presence.

Then cried Dephool Flea again: “Bring forth the Royal Taffy Bowl and feed him royally full.”

Then did Grover Ponderous Flea advance again, this time preceded by his satellites, Rosy Pretty Flower and Pennzy Pattyson, bearing the ponderous bowl. He gave a sign, and all the Bamboozling Committee and a large number of fleas of all sorts, High Pressurists, Low Pressurists, Nighuntos and Faraways, smiling and smirking in most heavenly amicability upon one another, gathered around the Taffy Bowl.

Then Grover Ponderous Flea called upon Tee de Little Wit Blatherskite to say grace over the mess—which he did in his most blatherskitish and perfervid manner—and then lifting up his eyes to heaven, he muttered over it some words of a strange lingo, which none but the most learned of the Bamboozling Committee understood. Some said he was enraptured, and was in a trance, and was conversing with spirits who spoke a dialect of that part of heaven called Sherrycoblerland, which he understood. Some said it was not so; he was praying, which nobody there at all understood. But some very knowing fleas said Grover Ponderous Flea was a Great High Priest and had the gift of Transubstantiation, and was really muttering the Sacred Words over the Taffy, which transformed it into the real body and blood of the Everblessed Truth and Verity. Be it as it may, these were the words:

“There is one important aspect of the subject which especially should never be overlooked, at times like the present; when the evils of unsound finance threaten us, the speculator may anticipate a harvest gathered from the misfortune of others, the capitalist may protect himself by hoarding, or may even find profit in the fluctuation of values, but the wage earner—the first to be injured by a depreciated currency, and the last to receive the benefit of its correction—is practically defenceless. He relies for work upon the ventures of confident and contented capital; this failing him, his condition is without alleviation, for he can neither prey on the misfortunes of others, nor hoard his labor. One of the greatest statesmen our country has known, speaking more than fifty years ago, when a derangement of the currency had caused commercial distress, said: ‘The very man of all others who has the deepest interest in a sound currency and who suffers most by mischievous legislation in money matters, is the man who earns his daily bread by his daily toil.’ These words are as pertinent now as the day they were uttered, and ought to impressively remind us that a failure of the discharge of our duties at this time must especially injure those of our countrymen who labor, and who, because of their number and condition, are entitled to the most watchful care of their government.”

These words ended, all the fleas feeling sure that such beautiful words called for an Amen anyhow, said “Amen,” and then the Taffy Ladlers, led by Grover Ponderous Flea, Taffyist-in-Chief, passed reverently before King Honest Labor, and crying, “Oh, King, live forever,” poured each a spoonful down his throat, and poor Honest Labor, astonished at the unfamiliar tickling of something to swallow, eagerly opened his mouth its widest and hungriest.

It was noticed that the Taffy Ladlers, as they passed by and fed the King, shuddered with a disgust they tried laboriously to conceal. Some muttered to each other, “Confound this job; but it has to be done.” One said, “I don’t like his smell.” “Neither do I, but we must pretend we do,” replied another. Rosy Pretty Flower turned to his fellow satellite and asked: “Brother, why do we have to worship and taffy this dirty, lousy dog?” “Well, brother,” replied Pennzy Pattyson, “it is not given common mortals to solve the heavenly mysteries; all we know is, that the Bamboozling Committee, in their inscrutable wisdom, have decreed that we must. For my own private part, I’d rather shoot him.” “So would I,” briskly rejoined Rosy Pretty Flower, “but——”

His words were drowned, for the Taffy Ladlers, having finished their function, the whole multitude of the fleas broke out in a grand Ascription that rent the heavens with loudness, as prostrating themselves, they sang:

And the noise of the Ascription was heard afar off; insomuch that Andronicus Carnivorous, who, thinking he scented danger, had sidled off and was by this time some miles away, stopped and inquired what the noise might be, and whether it signified the outbreak of trouble. To which one made answer that there was a great Apotheosis on, and all the fleas were deifying Honest Labor, a well known but terribly scrawny and hungry dog that was almighty popular with the fleas on Bamboozle Day.

“God forgive me!” cried Andronicus, penitently, “that I should be derelict in duty on this auspicious occasion. Why, Honest Labor is my dearest love, to whom I owe my wealth, my life, my all. Oh, I would not be absent from his coronation for all the world.” And he hopped back as hard as he could hop.

And Mak Tinley, seeing him returned, said unto him: “Whence comest thou, Andronicus? We had chosen thee to officiate as Grand High Priest, to place the crown on Honest Labor’s head, but thou wert missing when wanted, and we were forced to give the job to brother Ponderous Flea, who, I must say, has acquitted himself in the sacred office most brilliantly, and as well as the best Bamboozler of us all could have done.”

“Alack and alas! Brother Mak Tinley,” replied Andronicus, “thou knowest that I am a somewhat timid flea; and I thought, when brother Pharaoh Phrique was speaking that there was going to be trouble; so I sidled off. I see now that my fears were unfounded. I am awfully sorry to have missed this coronation, but I’ll try to be on hand at the next crowning and taffying.”

And when the multitude of the dogs saw the multitude of the fleas fall prostrate to Honest Labor, and heard the shout of the great Ascription, they were astounded and delighted; and they said to one another that surely the fleas were their dearest friends; that surely they could have no wealth comparable to a Country and a Flag, and that surely in a land where Statistics and great Averages abounded on all sides, and where great crops of them could be reaped at any time, and where Honest Labor was held in such reverence as to be crowned King, it was sinful, it was positively wicked—to imagine for a moment that they were hungry, that Hunger was a Delusion and Unpatriotism, that every truly loyal Canisvillian was bound in duty to the Flag to deny the existence of and repudiate.

And their delirious joy did make them deaf to the rumblings of their empty bellies.

And all the multitude of the fleas arose, and, led by the Bamboozling Committee, formed and marched in Solemn Procession around and around King Honest Labor—whose head by this time was grown so big that it threatened to burst its crown.

Oh, they were a goodly crowd of infinitely varied hues and colors, and antagonistic opinions of each other, all blended together that day in one grand harmony of purpose and feeling. Low Pressurists, Medium Pressurists, High Pressurists, Nighuntos, Faraways, Petty Squabblers, Grand Squabblers, Eminent Fleas, Wealthy Fleas, Monstrous Fleas, all were Dog Worshippers then, and the most humble and obedient servants and subjects of His Grievously Hungry but Supernal Majesty, King Honest Labor; and as they marched past him each swung a censer of thickly fuming and heavily perfumed Flattery under his royal nose; and as they marched and swung, they sang:

And they shouted “God save the King!” and all the dogs to the waving of the pretty cloths and a crash of the wind, bang and thump instruments, cried “Amen.” And they swung the censers, and cried “Long Live the King!” and all the dogs answered “Amen,” and they prostrated themselves and cried, “All hail the King;” and all the dogs cried, “All hail!”

And right in the midst of the grand insanity the heavens were again darkened; the weird green and yellow lights flashed again; the heavenly breeze lifted up the proud and noble Flag, and flapped it with a great flapping; the fleas prostrated themselves again, and the dogs followed suit. The Bamboozling Committee, with Grover Ponderous Flea and his satellites, gathered around the throne and the Flag in a sacred circle, and the Reverend Salaried Barker Tee de Little Wit Blatherskite stepped forth, and turning to the dogs with outstretched paw, lifted up a voice of solemnity and cried:

“Hear ye, O dogs, O hear ye. Thus saith Heaven: This is the Flag of the Free, and this is the throne of King Honest Labor, our National Pride and Glory, the only real, genuine, and original Flag and throne; designed in Heaven and set up in the only spot on earth worth living in—Canisville—where God hath concentrated his blessings; the Flag, at the terror of whose shake slavery, ill-government, corruption, injustice, inequality run shrieking and terrified to hell; under whose blessed protection, virtue, honesty and industry always come to honor and wealth; and vice, idleness and dishonesty to want, shame and everlasting contempt [Solemn snickering and winking amongst the Bamboozling Committee; and the Holy One a Maker of long prayers, is heard to gently murmur, “True, all true; bless the Lord!”] a Flag under which all fleas are prosperous and all dogs are contented, and all things go on in divinely appointed order.

“Now therefore, seeing we have the grandest Country on earth, the grandest Throne, the grandest King, and the grandest Flag floating over us all, let us take these grand dispensations as Heaven’s bow of promise that God will evermore bless us and keep us. Where these are, no evil can touch us; no hunger, no poverty can ever come.

“Therefore, in the name of Heaven, whose secrets I am on familiar terms with, and to whom particularly God has revealed his will, I say poverty, hunger, want, begone! and to fullness, plenty and content, come and abide! Begone panic! begone lack of confidence! begone crisis! Let there be a conspiracy of cheerful sermons and words and talk. Let all dogs stop singing ‘Windham’ and sing ‘Coronation.’ Let them positively refuse to admit the existence of hunger amongst them. Conspire together to believe yourselves round and plump and fat and full. It is all a matter of confidence and faith; for the Blessed Book on the costly cushion, which it hath been given to me alone of Heaven to interpret, saith: “All things are possible unto them that believe!” Therefore have faith, and be ye full, contented and happy; and know ye that this is the grandest country in the world, and this the grandest moment of the grandest hour of the grandest year of the grandest century the world ever saw.”

Then the Blatherskite, lifting his eyes and paws to heaven, invoked upon them all an abundance of corn and wine and oil and bones and meat, and on top of them Heaven’s choicest spiritual blessings; all the Bamboozlers said “Amen,” the sun came out in dazzling splendor; the Flag fluttered once more; the pretty cloths were waved; the wind, bang and thump instruments made a final hubbub, and the great Bamboozle came to an end, and the delighted and happy dogs, with a final cheer, dispersed.

Then the Bamboozlers laughed and winked to each other, and hauled down the Flag of the Free and packed it away until wanted again.

But when they went to pull down the throne, they noticed that poor King Honest Labor was fallen over to one side, and when they went to tear his crown and robe off, they lifted him up, and with surprise noticed that he was stone dead and cold.

And one ran and fetched one of the curious creatures called “Emdees,” who looked the poor dog over, and gave it as his opinion that deceased had come by his decease by reason of heart failure, superinduced by the great excitement of the great Function, to which his constitution, etcetera, was inadequate, owing to chronic Vacuity of the Alimentary Canal, which was, no doubt, according to a previous statement of the deceased, an hereditary complaint, for which no one but deceased’s parents were to blame; and it was his opinion that parents ought not to have such complaints.

And some of the Bamboozlers said it was unfortunate that he should have died just then, as the pesky thinking dogs might hear of it, and do something to wreck the Bamboozle. But others confidently asserted that all dogs were fools anyhow, and that if they did get to hear that Honest Labor had died of starvation, they would forget all about it by next Bamboozle Day.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

Shows There’s Nothing Like Patriotism to Humbug, Starve and Swindle the Masses with; and Nothing Like Statistics to Lie with.—The Great Gee Whizz Appears, Seeking Some One to Sell Its Services to.—The Bamboozlers Hire It.

IT was many days before the force of the Great Bamboozle spent itself. Though the scramble and scratching for bones was even fiercer than ever; and though the infernal grind at the Handle of the Blood Mill grew daily more hellish, and the cruel greed of the bloated Monstrous Fleas grew daily more adamantine and pitiless; though robbery, murder, death by starvation and suicide grew daily more common, the dogs had been so thoroughly hypnotized that they perversely sought everywhere for a cause for all these things save in the right place.

They had graduated so well in the course of patriotism they had recently been put through that in their midnight meetings together, to bark and talk over their distressful condition, they put up a fac-simile of the great Flag of Canisville and ordered that every meeting be opened by genuflexion to the Flag of Freedom and Prosperity, and closed by prostration to the Flag of Liberty and Plethoric Stomach; and further ordered that all speeches, arguments and discussions should proceed upon certain indubitable and undiscussible premises called Sacred Truths. They were:

(1.) This is a Free Country.

(2.) Our Flag is the Flag of Liberty.

(3.) All Good is indigenous to Canisville.

(4.) All Evil comes from Abroad.

And they ordained that all doubt of these Sacred Truths was mortal sin that could never be atoned for, neither in this world nor in that which is to come; and that any dog who in any speech, argument or discussion should step off these premises, and by assertion, hint or insinuation, or even careless construction of his sentences, should convey or cause to be conveyed, the understanding or impression, in any degree, however faint, that this country was not or might not be a Free Country; that this Flag was not or might not be the Flag of Liberty; that all Good was not or might not be indigenous; and that all Evil did not or possibly might not come from Abroad, should be instantly killed or fearfully mutilated. And they furthermore proclaimed that they desired it to be known to all the world that the dogs and fleas of Canisville and their Common Flag were so unutterably sacred and superior to the rest of the world that any insult or ridicule to either would be regarded as a casus belli.

But in time the gnawings of their never ending hunger began to perplex them sorely. How it was that God had, according to the words of his prophets Grandadhat, Mak Tinley, Dephool Flea, De Little Wit Blatherskite and the rest, given them the greater blessing of a Country and a Flag, and had withholden from them the lesser one of Victuals, bothered them very much. Of course they were ready at a moment’s notice, when called on, to die for their Country and Flag when either was in danger, but why they were dying every day without any notice, without being called on, and when neither Country nor Flag was in danger, caused them to scratch their heads. And as for that Average of one thousand mouthfuls of good Victuals per dog that Mak Tinley’s Statistics incontrovertibly gave them, they couldn’t make it out at all; for to make the Average out they had to make the Victuals in, and that they could not do for the life of them.

This was how they would discuss the question. One hungry dog would meet another on the street and thus would they say:

First Dog. “Good morning, brother.”

Second Dog. “It is not a good morning.”

First Dog. “Whyfore, brother? Art thou not in health?”

Second Dog. “No dog in Canisville is in health. Art thou?”

First Dog. “Verily, no. I’m hungry.”

Second Dog. “That’s strange. So am I; and yet, the great prophet Mak Tinley, on Bamboozle Day, showed us incontrovertibly that Statistics give every dog of us an Average of one thousand mouthfuls of Good Victuals.”

First Dog. “He did, and we all know that he is the most truthful of the Only Original Truth Speakers; and yet I speak the truth, too, when I state that my Average is about one mouthful per every thousand days.”

Second Dog. “That’s about my Average, too. I have examined myself; I have felt of my stomach, and I cannot find those one thousand mouthfuls of mine. Lord, I wish I could, I do indeed.”

First Dog. “Well, brother, it may be there is some fault or sin in us that prevents the Blessed Statistics from giving us the blessing. It may be that there is some wicked way within us; some secret sin that hinders the entrance of the Average into our stomachs. As the blessed Blatherskite saith: ‘These things are received by Faith, not by Sight.’”

Second Dog. “That’s so, brother; it is certainly not by Sight in our case. I do believe we have not Faith enough.”

And so they would part, one praying to God to give him a larger Faith, and the other praying Him to never mind the Faith but to give him a larger Average.

So the demon, Doubt, again began to creep abroad in Canisville.

Therefore the Bamboozling Committee, carefully noting the perplexed headshakings and the other sure signs of another outbreak of the thinking contagion, did wisely take other precautions to forestall it.

And there was a day when they and some of the Monstrous Fleas were devising further bamboozlements for the dogs, and a Phenomenon came also among them.

And the Committee said unto the Phenomenon: “Who art thou, and whence comest thou?”

Then answered the Phenomenon, and said: “I am the Great Many Headed Daily Press with the Immense Circulation; I am four hundred square miles of nastiness; and I come from going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.”

And the Committee said: “And what doest thou here, Great Daily Press?”

And the Great Many Headed answered, and said: “I am the Great Gee Whizz, having a Larger Circulation than all the other Gee Whizzes combined. I am the bold, fearless, outspoken and independent champion of truth, honesty, uprightness and good government, and the terror of evil doers; and I am going about just now seeking an owner whom I may serve.”

“What are thy terms?” asked the Bamboozling Committee, seeing here a possibly great aid in the Cause.

“My terms are one only,” replied the Phenomenon, “and are that my master shall be the highest bidder for my services.”

“And what wilt thou do for us if we hire thee?” asked the Committee.

“Absolutely what ye ask me to do; for he that hireth me is my god until a higher bidder appeareth, when I instantly transfer my allegiance.”

“What we desire done now,” said the Bamboozlers, “is the invention of handy bamboozlements to fill up the time between one Bamboozle Day and another.”

“Good!” exclaimed the Great Gee Whizz. “Bid high and I am yours, and ye shall never regret your bargain.”

So the Bamboozling Committee asked the Monstrous Fleas present to put up great wealth and buy him for their service, which service, they reminded the Monstrous Fleas, was the Public Service.

And the Monstrous Fleas there and then bid enormously high for him, and bought him; and the Phenomenon did there and then contract himself, body and soul, unto the Bamboozling Committee and their backers, the Monstrous Fleas, to execute their will in all things until a higher bidder for his services should appear.

And they said: “O, thou Great Gee Whizz, wherewith wilt thou persuade the dogs and bamboozle them, for they be many?”

And the Phenomenon said: “Said I not unto you that I am the Great and Everlasting Gee Whizz, and have a Greater Circulation than all the other Gee Whizzes combined? Do I not employ a mighty army of invisible Circulators to go and be everywhere amongst the dogs? Behold! I will be a lying spirit in the mouths of all these my prophets, and they shall persuade the foolish dogs that they have found a Savior and a Deliverer in me.

“I will be their Champion. I will be everywhere about them, above and below, and will cluck-cluck with a most anxious solicitude over them, even as a hen cluck-clucketh over her chickens, or as Satan over them that are sealed unto him. I will be a Holy Shekinah unto them—a pillar of dust and cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night; and they shall march and halt obediently as I give them the sign. I will weep and ululate with them in their miseries and hunger, and none shall come within leagues of me in my denunciations of the cruel and unjust fleas that suck their blood. I will rage against you and enrage them, and then with sound of gong and big drum, and a raising of flags, I will give to eat unto the hungriest of them, and they shall know that I am the Great Many Headed Gee Whizz and Champion of the poor and the oppressed. Thus shall I be a god unto them, going before them, and they shall swear by me, and meekly follow whithersoever I go; and I will go your way every time.

“I will daily and eveningly point out to them that their woes are due not to fleas, but only to bad fleas; and every morning and evening I will announce that I, the Great Gee Whizz, having a Greater Circulation than all the other Gee Whizzes combined, have a brand-new great scheme on hand, that shall infallibly deliver them from all their woes; and every day I will astound them with a great new disclosure of some gigantic and overshadowing wickedness of the bad fleas, which I alone, the great Gee Whizz, have exclusively discovered; and I will keep them forever believing that they are just on the very point of having all their wrongs righted, and that by my engineering and the might of my power, a great avalanche of Good Victuals is about to fall upon them. Thus will I be their Champion and serve you.

“All the news of the day that is of no importance, and is not thought-provoking, I will give to them, clothed in the garb of Strict Truth; but all and any news that it may not be expedient unto you to give them, I will suppress or so garble it that its power to injure you shall be nullified; for you and I will own and guard all the avenues of information, and we will make them all converge to and pass through a sifter and a filter that I will devise, so that these fool dogs shall get nothing but nice, pure, wholesome, well-selected stuff.

“Moreover, my Bamboozle shall every day give them wholesome amusement. From the tropically fertile dunghills of my Circulators’ prostituted brains, I will gather and scatter amongst them every morning and evening, whole bouquets of the rankest literary toadstools, skunk cabbage and stinkweeds, which they will take, on the strength of their faith in me as the Great Gee Whizz, for the choicest of flowers. Thus will I pervert their noses and they shall utterly lose all discernment. Oh, I will pour trashy, sickly, foolish, unclean and horrific blood-and-thunder stories into their disordered brains until sober truth shall be insipid unto them, and they shall come to hate everything but that which raises their hair with horror and gives them the shivers and creeps and blood curdles. Thus will I soften their brains and imbecilitate their minds, so that they shall be as putty to your moulding.”

“Enough, enough,” cried Mountebank Dephool Flea. “Thou art my sort to a dot. If thou canst do only half what thou proposest, thou wilt be worth to us thy weight in gold.”

“Aye, aye,” cried all the rest of the Bamboozling Committee, and the Monstrous Fleas, in chorus, “thou art indeed a Flea Savior, sent of God in the nick of time to deliver us; perform but a tenth of these thy promises to us, and we will make thee as fat and wealthy as the most monstrous of us.”

“Aha!” laughed the Phenomenon, “ye know not the greatness and extent of my power. Ye have devised bamboozlements, which in the simplicity of your hearts, ye think are very fine; but they are transient and evanescent, and of themselves will surely fail; for they lack the essential conditions of successful bamboozlement, namely, semi-daily continuance. Bamboozlements, to be enduring, must be applied daily; and therein do I prove my inestimable value to you, for I am the Great Many Headed Semi-Daily Press, the Everlasting Three-Hundred-and-Sixty-five-Days-a-Year Gee Whizz, and the Immense Circulator.

“But I will do more than the things I have already promised. I will amuse them with foolish nonsense. I will every day give them something to guess. I will offer a basketful of rich grub to the dog that cometh nearest to solving a problem; like this, for instance: A dog, originally fifty pounds weight, that has had but one mouthful of meat per day for six months, and nothing at all for the last three days, is chucked into the hopper with an initial velocity of ten feet per second, and at an angle of forty-five degrees; how many somersaults will he describe before he is lost to sight, how much will he weigh, and how many hairs will there be on his body? Or I will offer to give a prize unto the lady flea, that in the opinion of the dogs, is the most beautiful and popular. Or I will get up a standing-on-one-leg-the-longest contest, with a nice meaty bone to reward the victor. Or I will offer a reward to the dog that shall come nearest to guessing which of all my contemporary Gee Whizzes is the biggest liar. All these diversions will keep them ever on the qui vive, to get prizes; and when every hungry dog sees there is a chance for a good big bone for a mere guess, he will never have time or inclination to think on the General Misery Question.

“But finally, I will teach them that their great and solemn duty is to be law abiding and that violence is wrong. Ye shall make all the laws; and I will teach them to be law abiding. Ye shall enact that all dogs are to be bitten and bled at the will and pleasure of the fleas, and I will teach them that to be law abiding is the highest duty of dogs; ye shall enact that no dog has rights which any flea is bound to respect; and I will teach the dogs that only by obeying the law can they obtain their rights. Ye may trample all laws in the mire, for ye have the police dogs to enforce your right of trampling; and I will teach them that no dog can hope to retain the love of God and the sympathy of the Great Public, if he goes to trampling on the law. Ye shall enact that it is illegal for dogs to eat, and I will teach them to be law abiding. Ye shall enact that hunger in dogs is illegal, that any dog who shall either legally or illegally ask for or try to obtain food or drink, or any other of his natural rights, shall be deemed guilty of a crime; and I will teach them that it is the first duty of dogs to be law abiding, as were the Fathers and Prophets of our country; and to obey the law, as all fleas and good citizens do.

“Thus will I keep all these dogs befooled, and fuddled and muddled, so that nothing short of the direst and most unforeseen accident will enable them to see the joke.

“And if any dog, by reason of these hard lines, shall growl and make a fuss, and go to illegally taking any of his natural rights, or in any other way make himself obnoxious to you, and ye grow weary and want him killed, all ye need do is to express your desire and it shall be done. I will promptly set my innumerable Circulators to prophesy falsely against him, to sneer him down, to ridicule him down, to write him down, and make Public Opinion ripe for the police dogs to grab him, and throttle him and extinguish him; for I, the Great I Am, am an Accuser, Judge and Jury, at your service.”

And all the Committee and all the Monstrous Fleas rejoiced and were glad, and said unto the Phenomenon: “Go forth and do as thou hast said; be a lying and bamboozling spirit unto all these dogs and Heaven bless thee.”

CHAPTER XXXIV.

The Great Daily Press Fulfills All its Promises.—Universal Idiocy.—More Liberty and a Bigger Flag.—Liberty Takes the Form of a Statue.—Police Exemplification of Liberty.—A New Song.

SO the Many Headed went forth and was a lying spirit, morning and evening, in the mouths of all its prophets. And it wrought well the will of the Bamboozlers and the Monstrous Fleas, in deceiving and fooling the dogs; for under its subtle ministrations as an Angel of Light, the dogs rapidly grew limp and idiotic in body and mind, and lost all power of discernment between right and wrong, and good and evil, and all taste for everything but idiotic pastimes, and silly, trashy and horrible stories, which it daily poured into their ears. Yea, so thoroughly were their minds debauched, enervated and enfeebled that when the few—the very few—surviving dogs of thought and sense, came unto them and begged them to give a thought or two now and then to their poor, miserable and lost condition, and the way to remedy it, the dogs said such talk was a great weariness, and forthwith rolled over and went to sleep.

And it was so that the Great Gee Whizz went up rapidly in the favor of the Monstrous Fleas, who, in gratitude to it as their Savior, gave it large quantities of blood to drink, so that it grew as big and bloated as any one of the most monstrous of them, and was given the place of honor in their assemblies when they and the Bamboozlers held special praise meetings to laugh and wink at each other.

And the Bamboozlers instructed the Great Gee Whizz to keep up the novelty of its dog befoolments, and be sure and never present the same trick twice over.

And the Great Gee Whizz was grieved because the Bamboozlers seemed to think it needed any suggestion to this end; and it suggested back to the Bamboozlers, that in fertility of resources in bamboozlements, it could give points to them. Therefore, the Bamboozlers did shut up, and did no more offer suggestions to the Great Gee Whizz, the Prince of Prestidigitateurs, Equilibrists and Acrobats.

For there was one trick it did present every day; a trick which in its mature judgment was all the more utterly bamboozling and confounding to the dogs, by its eternal sameness of repetition. It was this:

Every morning the Many Headed appeared on high, in full sight of the dogs and held a Solemn High Punch and Judy Show. Concealing its body from sight behind a draping which was figured with the Flag of the Free, it caused a few of the Bamboozlers, whom it had previously instructed, to pull certain strings attached to the necks of its various heads, when all the said heads went to hissing and spitting at and punching each other, and calling each other the vilest names. Each and every head called each and every other a liar, a coward, and a traitor to the ever blessed and beloved dogs, and a paid tool and toady of the bad fleas. Each one yelled that it alone was the Only Original Truth Speaker, and had an Immensely Greater Circulation than all the others combined.

Oh, it was a goodly show, and fooled the dogs mightily, and divided them up into sects and parties, and kept them eternally busy cursing each other, and swearing, each, by the particular head which each decided was the Genuine Friend and Champion of the dogs. And not one of the poor fools could see that all of the heads belonged to the same body.

So what with their much work and little food, and the daily bamboozlements of the Many Headed, and the brain-softening exercises of the Special Bamboozle Days, the dogs became a gaunt mob of skinny, drivelling idiots, of flea-covered bodies and eclipsed minds. So that when the noise of the bang and thump instruments, and the marching dogs, and the waving of the pretty cloths called them to the next Bamboozle day, they came with tottering steps, and lolling tongues, and wheezing breath, and protruding eyes. They did not run—they could not. They came from a sense of duty to the Flag of the Free, which the Bamboozlers had made of immense size; for they said a great and growing country could only be fittingly typified by a great and growing Flag, and as Freedom and Prosperity had increased under the fostering care of Heaven, until they had filled the whole earth about Canisville, it was meet and merely grateful to God that the Flag fill the whole heavens too. It was verily a heavens filling Flag, and it was raised on the tallest and stoutest pole that could be procured from all the country roundabout; for to-day was to be one of the maddest and gladdest days of all the mad and glad days.

For Liberty in Canisville had grown so large and universal, and the fame thereof had so gone over the pond, that a lot of Monstrous Fleas over there, had got a lot of idiotic dogs there to make them a great, hollow, copper idol of the form of a grotesque looking female of human kind, which the said Monstrous Fleas said was a Statue of Liberty, which they, in the name (they said), and with the compliments, of the free and hungry dogs of that land, had sent over to the Monstrous Fleas of Canisville, to be received in the name of the free and hungry dogs of Canisville, and set up at the gates of Canisville, as a great visible sign that there was one great Free Country in the world unto which the oppressed, hungry and flea-bitten dogs of all nations might run and be saved.

And it was a glorious time. The Greatest Gee Whizz of All had, with a great cyclone of noise and wind, got thousands of poor, hungry, fool dogs to pinch their bellies to raise wealth enough to buy a pedestal to put the great hollow copper idol on.

The wind and thump instruments made a mighty noise; the pretty cloths fluttered gaily; and the poor dogs, thrilled into enthusiasm by the sights and sounds, wagged their tails and cheered as much as their shortness of wind and contracted stomachs allowed. Then, at the sound of trumpet and booming of guns, the copper idol was borne along in a grand procession of fat, eminent, wealthy and Monstrous Fleas, and guarded by a large body of police dogs.

Now, the police dogs, it was noticed, had grown quite corpulent and greasy and consequential since the first Bamboozle Day, and presented quite a contrast to the rest of the dogs, for the fleas had found out that eternal good feeding is the price of police loyalty. True, they were only dogs, and were veritable slaves in the presence of Pup McPoodle, and the wealthy and Monstrous Fleas, who told them to distinctly understand that they were Public Servants, their servants, and not the servants of the dogs at all, as the Public meant fleas only, and they were not to give them any of their bark, on pain of being relegated to the ranks of the dogs that had to scratch for a living; but as they were rotund of belly, and sleek and large, and in all other respects quite different from the common mob of dogs, they regarded themselves as of a different caste, and their sleekness, rotundity, and well-to-do-ism as superior-holiness marks differentiating them from the other dogs; and although they knew that the victuals which fed them were all forcibly taken from the meagre supplies which the other dogs scratched up, they ignored the fact, and held their noses up as high and consequentially as ever they could, and mortally hated any other dog to touch them.

And the Jubilation was great; the great Flag of Liberty was floating its proudest; songs to Liberty were floating to Heaven; her Statue was being led gloriously along, rearing aloft her head to Heaven in magnificent symbolism of the majesty and freedom of the nation of dogs, over whom she was now erected to be Goddess, when a slight accidental crowding amongst the dogs, caused some of the dirty and ill-smelling ones to be crowded so close to the police dogs as actually to touch them.

Now, here was a dreadful occurrence. According to the holy religion of the police dogs, to be even looked at by an ordinary working, grub-hunting dog, is defilement that requires forty days of sequestration and purification, with much fasting and prayer; but to be touched by one—actually touched—involves the total and irreparable loss of Paradise beyond the grave.

Oh, here then, was a wholesale touching of these sacred animals, by an unsanctified and unwashen mob of beastly and measly working dogs of the lowest caste. Horror! Peste! Blood!! Thunder, Lightning and Death!!! For one paralyzing instant they stood petrified with horror and terror; and then the full realization that they had by this horrible defilement suddenly forfeited all hope of Heaven and eternal bliss, rushed over their brains, and, like demons, they fell on those dirty dogs, and began to club the life out of them. The unfortunates, shrieking and howling, fled with all the speed their diminished breath and vitality were capable of, with the police dogs in hot pursuit, laying about them right and left in self defence.

Having thus, in some slight degree, purged away their defilement, and left on the scalps of those dirty dogs, many bloody gashes, as souvenirs of Glorious Liberty, the police dogs, panting from their victory, returned to their places; and the songs, the procession and the worship of Liberty were resumed; the Goddess was stood up on her pedestal; the Bamboozlers ranted and raved about Freedom their rantingest and ravingest, the Great Many Headed Daily Press flitted hither and thither and everywhere, boosting up the hungry dogs to the proper pitch of Patriotic Pride; the Heavens opened, and Freedom as an Eagle, with specially wiped bill and claws, came down and perched on the Goddess’ uplifted arm; the assembled fleas gave a great shout, and, led by Tee de Little Wit Blatherskite, Dephool Flea, Grandadhat, and the rest of the Bamboozlers, gathered around the Flag, and sang:

CHAPTER XXXV.

Liberty, Lots of It.—But Victuals are Unfortunately in Inverse Proportion.—Mutual Congratulation of the Fleas on the Very Satisfactory State of Things.— A Point Overlooked; Which Proves that the Best Laid Schemes of Mice and Fleas Gang Aft Aglee.—Illegal Hunger.—Almighty Tommy.

THE Liberty Goddess consecrating was a perfect success; the dogs were delighted and happy, and as they staggered back, hungry and weary, to the holes and hiding places they called their homes, a sweet peace and content was upon them. Why they were content and peaceful they did not know and could not tell; but in a dazed and hypnotic way, they felt that though the fleas upon them and round about them were eating them up; though their poor bones were protruding through their skins, and disease, and anæmia were becoming universal, they had an intangible property they called a Free Country, a Glorious Flag, and a wonderful Statue that in some mysterious way made them a Great Nation.

And the Bamboozling Committee were delighted even unto delirium, and they reported unto the Board of Public Safety that God had prospered their efforts beyond their most sanguine expectations, and that the dogs were, with perhaps a few exceptions—whom they hoped the police would diligently make note of, with a view to their early, total and complete extirpation and extinction—now reduced to a very satisfactory state of drivelling idiocy, and law abiding patriotism, and that they could be led by the nose whithersoever the Board might desire; that the latest acquisition to their Committee—the Great Many Headed Daily Press, could not be too highly spoken of for its wonderful efficiency; in fact it had—though the latest—proved itself the greatest acquisition to their bamboozling forces; that in fact it was more than a whole Bamboozling Committee in itself, and could devise more and slicker dog bamboozlements in five minutes than the whole Committee could in five months; that its terms were very simple, being only that they it served should be the highest bidders, which of course meant that the dogs could never be “in it” at bidding with the fleas, and therefore it would be at the bidding of the fleas forever and forever, Amen. And finally they wished to accord the Crown and the Palm to the Great Many Headed Daily Press.

And the Board reported to the Government and the Monstrous Fleas that the Country was saved, bless the Lord; that the Period of Trouble was all safely past, thank God; that all dangerous combinations of White Labellers were broken up beyond all hope of future revival, Heaven be praised; that all contagious thinking and speaking dogs were known to the police and were marked for slaughter, with God’s help; that the right relationship between the dogs and the fleas had been properly defined and established, and that under Providence all danger of the natural, God-ordained right of fleas to live on dogs being again brought into question was passed away, praise God; and that peace, patriotism, good order, submission to authority, and ever-growing blood dividends, were now established on a firm and ever enduring basis, Hallelujah.

All which was quite true. But there was one thing that neither the Great Many Headed Daily Press nor the Bamboozling Committee, nor the Government, nor the Monstrous Fleas could devise; that no power on earth ever was able to devise; that no power on earth ever will be able to devise; and that is, how dogs can be starved forever and yet be made to yield the same amount of blood to the sucking of fleas. No power ever did it, but every power believes it can be done, and that it can do it. Therefore the Canisville fleas imagined they had made all arrangements to do it, and so settled themselves down in comfort and peace to the everlasting bliss of drinking themselves eternally fuller and tighter; every little flea seeing good prospects of becoming a big flea, and every big flea looking hopefully forward to becoming a Monstrous Flea, and every Monstrous Flea looking savagely gleefully forward to the glorious time when his paunch should measure miles and miles around, and he should be simply an immense reservoir of blood, blood, BLOOD, BLOOD.

But alas! The greed of the fleas in cornering the food of the dogs to reduce them to servility, along with their increased avidity for their blood, overreached itself, and dogs everywhere began to die; and as the dearth increased, the surviving ones went insane and more savagely than ever fought and killed one another for the odd scraps that were now to be found. And the dying off of so many dogs threw vast multitudes of fleas out of dog, and they began to starve too; and when they began to starve they went, for want of dog, to fighting and devouring one another; all which mightily pleased the Monstrous Fleas, which did own the Blood and Bones Grindery and the Government, and pretty nearly everything else by this time; and they chuckled and said, “Now shall the pesky little and middle sized fleas be starved out, and there will be all the more blood for us, and we shall possess the earth and dwell alone in it, and grow and grow and grow until none shall be so big as we, for we are surely the children of Heaven, and the favorites of the Most High; yes we are.”

And the famine increased in Canisville, and the dogs were sore distressed and cried aloud to Heaven for help. But the heavens were as brass and heard not; so, turning from that quarter, they turned to the Government and to the fleas, and got together great multitudes of the most hungry of their number and made unto themselves a large Flag of the Free, and several Flags of the Hungry, and marched in procession, bearing these on high, and also large legends such as “We want bread,” “We want work,” “We are hungry,” “Merciful fleas, do something for us,” “We are bloodless; oh fleas, give us blood.”

And the noise of their marching was disturbing to the peace and repose of the Monstrous Fleas, and they ordered Pup McPoodle to order the police dogs to order it stopped; and the chief of the police dogs, being very fat and sleek and plethoric of blood himself, and being utterly unable to understand what hunger meant, spake austerely unto them, and said: “By the almighty power in me vested, as Public Functionary of the Great Public (the fleas), this thing has got to stop right here. What the Satan you’ve got to march for, I ken not. What the Satan you mean by being hungry, I cannot for the life of me comprehend. I don’t know what the word ‘Hunger’ means, but I believe it’s an illegal word and contrary to the Constitution. [Voice in the crowd, “It is contrary to our constitutions, too.”] I have been told that it means Anarchy, which I don’t quite comprehend, but which, I know, is illegal; consequently disperse, get out, vamose, and go away, and don’t ever let me hear of this illegal business of getting hungry again, or by my holy williamstick I will make things red hot for you. I, the Almighty Tommy, have spoken.”

So the poor skinny dogs, withered by the red hot glance of the Almighty Tommy’s eye, and scorched by his burning words, and moreover having been thus so plainly caught, flagrante delicto, in the illegal state of being hungry and expressing the fact in words, did haul down their legends and their Flags of the Hungry, and lifting up the Flag of the Free as high as possible, in token of enhanced reverence for the Law and the Constitution, marched back and dispersed to their several holes and dens, where hundreds of them meekly lay down and legally and constitutionally died of starvation, but where they were not discovered until their poor festering corpses had raised an illegal and unconstitutional stench.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

Ding Dong Liberty Bell.—Liberty Bells Cheaper than Liberty.

RIGHT in the midst of all this universal starvation and death, when every scrap of liberty had been taken from the dogs, and not one dare open his mouth to say his soul or body was his own, the Board of Public Safety suggested to the Bamboozling Committee that now would be the most appropriate time, in the eternal fitness of things, to get up an extra special bamboozlement that should forever fix and clinch in the minds of the dogs the idiotic delusion that they were free.

So the ever-ready Bamboozling Committee ran together and summoned to their sitting all the glib-tongued fat fleas and salaried barkers they could find; and President Chancy Mountebank Dephool Flea arose and said, “Dear Friends: The state of our town and country is very satisfactory just now. Never in its whole history was there such a beautiful blending and harmony of the interests of dogs and fleas as now. Our upper class fleas are doing marvellously well. Thanks to God, dividends are large and frequent, owing to the fact that very many of the middle-class fleas, who alienated altogether too much blood that rightfully belonged to us, have died off. The dogs everywhere have been reduced to know their place, thanks to the efforts of our brethren, Carnivorous and Phrique—to whom our all-wise God gave the strength of his arm in the hour of their sore need—and of our friends, Rosy Pretty Flower, Pennzy Pattyson, Webbfoot, Gold Jay, and our faithful, paunch-bellied police dogs. And the efforts of these our brethren, have been most ably seconded by the preachments and ‘Thus-saith-the-Lords’ of our dearly beloved brother Tee de Little Wit Blatherskite and his fellow fat-salaried barkers, and, above all, by the subtle finesse of our most dearly beloved faithful servant the Great Many Headed Daily Press. Yes, brethren, we are indeed highly favored of God in having three such invaluable aids to the subjugation of the dogs as the police, the Church and the Great Daily Press—one to persuade them physically, and the others to blind them with spiritual dust, blandishments, seductions and lies.”

Here the Reverend Blatherskite and the Great Many Headed Daily Press both closed their eyes, and piously murmured, “To God be all the glory; we are unprofitable servants; we have only done that which it was our duty to do.”

“Yes, brethren,” continued Dephool Flea, “peace and plenty everywhere abound. Everywhere Liberty has been established on foundations that shall nevermore be shaken; and I think, as we owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to God for these manifold mercies, we could not show it better than by getting up to his glory a grand old final something or other in honor of Liberty, Freedom, Deliverance and all that—a regular sneezer, you know, a tip-top, ne plus ultra sort of bamboozle that shall beat all creation.”

Up jumped then the Great Many Headed Daily Press and said: “I have it. What these dogs need now, above all things, is more stuff about Liberty. Ye cannot work this theme too much. It is the liberty stealer’s and the tyrant’s best guise, you know——”

“I object,” interrupted a fat flea, excitedly, “to the use of the terms ‘liberty stealer’ and ‘tyrant’ as applied to us.”

“Order, order;” commanded President Dephool Flea. “Of course we all know well enough what we are after, but I suggest to our beloved servant, the Great Many Headed, that, all things considered, it would be better not to call ourselves by our right names even here in our privacy. It will subserve our great cause better to try to believe, ourselves, the bamboozling lies we tell the poor fool dogs. To bamboozle ourselves a little enables us to appear more sincere and serious to them. Therefore the Great Daily Press will please not tell the truth even here.”

“I beg leave to withdraw the offensive truth, then,” said the Great Gee Whizz. “As I was saying, that Statue business was a grand stroke of dog bamboozlement, over which ye fleas ought to laugh to your dying day. Then keep it up. Give these dogs plenty of Liberty talk, Liberty sentiment, and Liberty fakes to celebrate and shout over, and ye can bind them with as many slavish bonds as ye may choose to put upon them. Set them to make the heavens ring with Liberty’s acclaim, and while they are busy with that, ye can filch all their rights away. Do ye hear me?”

And all the Bamboozlers answered, “Aye, we hear.”

“Very good then,” said the Many Headed, “dogs have one great weakness, and that weakness is their silly love of noise and show. All history shows, and all our experience proves, that nothing fetches dogs so quick as noise, racket, din and gaudy show. Low, coarse, undiscerning simpletons, they are all animal sensibility, and have not yet developed the ability to pick truth from error, reality from show, and fraud out of its fine garments of honesty; gumps and boobies, they are pleased with a rattle and tickled with a straw.

“Work then, therefore, along the line of their strongest weakness. Give them noise to make, and plenty of it; something to make an idiotic din with; something to make them happy and shout. Let us make them a Bell, a big Bell, an enormous Bell; and we will call it a Liberty Bell. And so bewitched and superstitionized are they now with everything that is called Liberty that without more ado they will fall down and worship it. Then we will set them all to hammer on it, and the noise of the hammering thereof will please the poor idiots immensely; and then with our solemnest visages, we will call the noise the Proclamation of Liberty; at which bewitching words they will all fall down and worship again. So shall their befoolment, imbecilitation and enslavement be clinched and confirmed for ever, and ye fleas shall reign supreme, and suck their blood for ever and ever, Amen.”

“Bravo! Bravo!” cried all the fleas in chorus. “Good! Grand! give ’em a Bell, poor imbeciles; anything to please ’em; noise is cheap, and Liberty metal costs less than Liberty itself.”

And the suggestion of the Great Many Headed Gee Whizz seemed good unto the Committee, and they made him Minister Plenipotentiary in the matter. And he went and sent his Circulators abroad amongst the dogs, to tell them that a grand new pleasure had been devised for them; that their prosperity, their glory, their independence, their National Wealth, their unexampled LIBERTY, were all agoing to be celebrated with a Bell, a big Bell, a nonpareil Bell, that should weigh thirteen thousand pounds, and, with gorgeous ceremonies, should be baptized a LIBERTY BELL, to the honor of God and the glory of themselves; and the show would be worth going many miles to see; and every Tom, Dick, Harry and Jack was agoing to hammer on it, in honor of everything and everybody, at every hour of day and night; and the noise of it would be beau-u-u-tiful, and it would be so loud, and there would be such a lot of it that the heavens would be just full of it; that all the angels would knock off their regular business and make a great holiday to listen to it; and we should all prostrate ourselves and tell God what a wise thing he did when he passed by all the other dogs in the world and picked US out to be the recipients of such wealth and glory and Liberty as he had deluged us with.

And the dogs were delighted with the prospect of so much glory, and paid great attention to do as they were told.

Then in due time, the Great Daily Press announced that the Bamboozling Committee had appointed themselves, in the name of the dogs, to devise a Bell and to superintend all the ceremonies.

Then they proclaimed abroad that as all, both dogs and fleas, were the recipients of Heaven’s blessings of wealth and Freedom, and as this Bell was to be an emblematic Bell, all, both dogs and fleas, must contribute something towards the making of it; so that when its voice should be hammered out, it should be the voice of all. Therefore every one must bring a bit of metal of some sort and cast it into the fire.

And on a day appointed, the fleas and the dogs were gathered around the melting pot; and the fleas, being very wealthy, sent in, with much ostentation, gold and silver, and nickel, which they called Liberty Metal, and which with prayer was cast into the fire; and the dogs, being very poor, went about and scratched up old bits of junk tin, and iron and brass, and brought them, and with prayer cast them into the fire; then all the salaried barkers said grace over the melting mass; and the ever-ready Tee de Little Wit Blatherskite, explained that the emblematic meaning of this unifying fusion of all these heterogeneous elements, was that we all, though fleas and dogs, poor and rich, small and great, white and black, weak and strong, were really only one, having all interests in common, and that as in this grand composite Bell, the glory of each component part was merged in the glory of the whole, so the glory of each in this nation—poor and rich, top and bottom—was merged in the glory of the whole of us; in short, the E Pluribus Unum of the Bell typified the E Pluribus Unum of us.

And all the podgy and paunch-bellied fleas, at this lucky discovery of the beautiful hidden meaning of the fusing mass, set up a great asthmatic shout of praise, which contagious example caused the dogs to give out delirious howls of joy, too. For although it would have puzzled the smartest of them to discover the real actualities of the glorious things thus typified, they could see that the typification in the pot was all real and made a very fine show.

Then a herald came forth and proclaimed aloud that the potful was cooked enough, and was about to be solemnly poured out—the grandest libation to Liberty the world had ever seen—and that the Committee of Arrangements had decreed that as an appropriate ceremony, accompanying, all the dogs stand on their heads and kick their hind legs in the air, to signify Freedom and defiance to all the world.

And at a signal the great ladleful was tipped over, and the white hot stream ran into a great mould; the fleas shouted “Te Deum,” and fell down in as flat adoration as their rotund carcases allowed, the salaried barkers shed from their closed eyes great salt drops of ecstasy; the dogs stood on their heads and flourished their hind legs, and the Great Many Headed Gee Whizz stepped forth and announced that Liberty, glorious, heaven-born Liberty, had put on her metallic petticoat.

Now, some of the dogs who were so weak that they could not, and a few who were dull of comprehension and said they did not see the connection between standing on their heads and Liberty, objected to reverse themselves. Whereupon the police dogs drew their williamsticks and belabored them therewith, saying this was Liberty Day, and the beautiful show was not agoing to be spoilt by a lot of pesky dogs doing as they liked. They had got to stand on their heads and flourish; them was the orders, and, by Hokey, any dog that refused that day to honor Liberty, Freedom and Independence, was agoing to be made to; and what did they mean by refusing to be free, like everybody else?

And when those dogs replied that a Liberty that did not allow them to stand on their feet in a natural manner was tyranny, the police dogs smote them a smite on the jaw, and told them to shut up and do like the others; and on their refusal, they clubbed them out of the crowd, which hissed condemnation of their offence.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

More Liberty Bell.—Liberty Earth.—Liberty Tree.—Liberty Rope.—Liberty Tinklers.—Glorious End of Liberty.

THEN the herald proclaimed again that, the Creation being ended, all would adjourn for a week for the Bell to cool, the week to be spent in blowing up their patriotic fervor to the maximum incandescence, and filling their lungs for a fortissimo shout for Liberty on the seventh day.

And the poor dogs did as they were bid. And on the seventh day all gathered to the lifting up of the Bell. And when it was lifted up, the fleas, being very strong and vigorous, did most of the shouting, but the dogs, being very weak for lack of food, did shout very poorly. Nevertheless, the Great Daily Press shut all its eyes, and proclaimed abroad that the shout for Liberty that day was the Great United Shout of One Great United Nation of free, prosperous and happy dogs.

Then said the Bamboozling Committee unto the Great Daily Press, “Oh, thou Great Gee Whizz, on what sacred high place shall we hang this Sacred Vibrator, that its voice may be heard around the world?”

And the Great Gee Whizz answered and said, “The Eternal Fitnesses require that everything that can emblematize our glorious liberties be gathered around this central emblem. Therefore, let Liberty Earth be gathered, and a Liberty Tree be planted therein, to the baptism of Liberty Holy Water, and let the fairest limb thereof be selected as a Liberty Limb, and thereon hang the Liberty Bell, facing the Liberty Goddess, and from the top of the tree let the sacredest emblem of all—the Flag of Liberty—proudly and defiantly float, that Liberty may be complete and perfect.”

And the Bamboozling Committee said the conception was that of a master mind, and should be done. And they sent some very learned and paunchy fleas to a place where, according to tradition, several fighting dogs, eminent in the battle against the Kyhidom dogs, had lain down and scratched themselves and slept the night before, and which had smelt extraordinarily strong of patriotic dog for a long time after. There was also a spot where the great leader in that fight, having got a fly up his nose, had stood and sneezed tremendously; and the spot where his fore feet had stood during his convulsion had been marked with remembrance sticks from that day.

These spots, they said, were, therefore, Holy Ground; and they ordered several poor dogs, that had been specially fumigated and cleansed and consecrated for the occasion, to take Consecrated Shovels, and reverently and, to the accompaniment of solemn chanting by several solemn salaried barkers, dig up some of that Sacred Dirt and put it reverently in Consecrated Pots and Tins and carry it in solemn procession to the Sacred Spot, where the Liberty Tree was to be planted.

And they solemnly dumped it there, and the Holy-Dirt-touched Pots and Shovels were afterwards put away on a Consecrated Shelf in the Church of the Fleas. And it was so that in after days, many came to worship the Blessed Pots and Tins and Shovels that had been touched by the Liberty Earth on which the ancient dogs had lain and scratched and sneezed; and whosoever looked at them was made Free, and received power to make others Free; and whosoever touched them was made whole of any disease he had, and received power to heal anyone else.

Then the Bamboozling Committee sent another paunch-bellied and learned lot of fleas, to where was a tree, against which certain big dogs that had distinguished themselves in the said battle against the Kyhidom dogs, had rubbed themselves vigorously when they had the itch. Here, said they, was a tree whose bark had actually been rubbed by, and afforded relief to, those noble dogs whose teeth and claws had torn out the eyes and bowels of their enemies, and stopped the exactions of the foreign fleas of Kyhidom, and had established that glorious Liberty by which the interests of the native suckers of Canisville had been so gloriously compacted and built up. This, then, was the Tree of Liberty, on which the Blessed Bell of Liberty should hang.

And it was so. And they made the specially fumigated, consecrated dogs transplant it into the Liberty Earth. And on the day of the Solemn Hanging, The Holy Tintinnabulator was escorted with shouts of joy, and to the vociferous chanting of a magnificent Jubilate Deo, and set up on the Liberty Limb of the Liberty Tree.

And there was a great noise made with the blow, bang and thump instruments; and the dogs wept with a thankful joy for all the wondrous liberties which these things demonstrated unto them; and the salaried barkers went amongst them and gathered up their joyful tears, and poured them at the sacred roots of the Sacred Tree, and said a sacred grace over the pouring; and the fleas gathered around and snivelled with them, and made a right beautiful talk about “Our Common Liberties,” “Our National Glory,” “Our United Interests,” “Our Great Wealth,” and our everything else; and then the great Flag of the Free was run up on high, and a herald came forth and blew a trumpet, and proclaimed that if any dog knew of any just cause or impediment why all this gallant show and emblemism should not be considered proof irrefragable that they were the fairest, fattest, and freest lot of dogs and fleas that ever God Almighty’s sun shone on, or ever would shine on, he should now declare the same, or forever hold his peace; but, nevertheless, if any such measly and discreditable dog dare get up and deny it, he would instantly be strung up to the highest gallows as a traitor.

So no one accepting the challenge, the ceremonies proceeded and Chancy Mountebank Dephool Flea—with a solemn wink to the other Bamboozlers, who solemnly winked back to him—in the name of E Pluribus Unum, and countless thousands of free, united, fat, prosperous and happy dogs, pulled the mighty tongue of the Bell; and as the mighty tone of the hammered metal rose upon the trembling air, and went up in a majestic volume to Heaven, all the Bamboozlers and the Monstrous Fleas closed their eyes and turned their noses heavenward, and wept great copious tears of gratitude and joy; all the salaried barkers closed their eyes and turned their noses to heaven and wept likewise, and all the dogs prostrated themselves and wept with joy until all the earth around was wet. At which moment of solemn joy a Heavenly Voice from under the Bell pealed forth:

The pealing of this hymn held all the dogs entranced, and as the last beautiful note died away, they all wept, and said it was lovely poetry; too lovely for anything; especially where the life-knell of the Bell thrills the hearts of the dead dogs under the sod; and the Bell with its long and facile flaming tongue writes names on the sky.

Then President Dephool Flea, after waiting a few rapturous moments to let the beautiful words soak into their souls, announced that “our” liberties having now been duly established, and acknowledged of Heaven, the Blessed Bell was now open for every one to hammer his gratitude to God on, and that each would take a turn in order.

Which they did. All the fat, eminent and Monstrous Fleas gathered in single file, and passed before the Bell and hammered it, giving one blow for himself, and thirteen times and forty-four times and six times, on behalf of the all-glorious liberties, wealth, prosperity and happiness of the dogs. And everybody was delighted, especially the big fleas, who said it was the very best amusement they had ever had in their lives; and they begged the Bamboozling Committee to keep it up, for, far beyond all considerations of the amusement of it, it was the bulliest piece of dust throwing ever yet devised for blinding those d—— fool dogs.

So the Bamboozling Committee and the Great Many Headed Gee Whizz, put their wits together again; and the ever fertile Daily said that, as he had foretold, the Bell racket and show had pleased the dogs immensely, the Committee should go on giving them emblems to look at and noise to make. “But,” said he, “let us give them a chance to make the noise themselves. Ye and the other fleas have had all the hammering so far; let them do it now. I propose we get them to make an emblematic Rope, a long Rope, a strong Rope, and a Rope they can pull the old Bell clapper all together with.

“Set them to make a Rope that shall be emblematic of their common wealth, their common caninity, their common Liberty, their common dirt, their common itch, their common hunger—their common everything. Let each one strip a few hairs off his hide and his tail, and bring them as an offering to Liberty, and let all those hairy contributions be spun into a great Liberty Rope. Then one end thereof shall be attached to the great clapper, and as many of the dogs as can shall get hold and pull; and it shall be pull and bang, and bang and pull, and pull and bang, until the poor imbeciles will go mad and crazy with the delightful racket; and the noise shall fill their bellies—which, you know, is the cheapest kind of victuals.”

“Hurrah for the Great Gee Whizz!” cried the Bamboozlers, “Liberty Noise and Liberty Ropes are cheaper than Liberty.”

And, as before, The Great Daily Press, with awful solemnity, publicly announced that the dogs were agoing to have more emblems to celebrate their glorious liberties and privileges with.

And when the dogs heard the great emblematic Liberty Rope proposition, they wagged their tails and howled deliriously for joy, and went lachrymoniously drivelling to each other that Canisville was indeed the place where Freedom dwelt, and that no other dogs on the face of the earth had a Liberty Bell, Liberty Poetry and a Liberty Rope; no indeed.

And the dogs hasted and each stripped some hair off his tail and hide, and sent it to the Bamboozling Committee, who, in the privacy of their meeting place, had it spun, to the accompaniment of many a wink and many a hilarious laugh over the silly idiots that were so easily—oh, so very easily—buncoed and bamboozled out of Liberty, by Liberty emblems and shams.

And when the great common Rope was ready, they ordained another day of howling thanksgiving, and self laudation, and self glorification, and a solemn moment of attachment of the end thereof to the glorious Banger of the glorious Bell, and a solemn consecration and dedication of the Rope, and another grand hymn, which called all the angels from their most pressing engagements to crowd Heaven’s battlements, in admiration of their magnificently idiotic jubilation.

And the dogs were tickled to death with their Rope, and took turns of gangs at pulling it; and the eternal banging and clanging and jangling of the hammered metal was so delightful that they forgot their hunger even; and they danced around the Bell, and kissed it, and touched it reverently with their noses, and blessed God for Liberty, Liberty, Liberty.

And at the suggestion of the Great Gee Whizz, the Bamboozling Committee made a multitude of little tinkling bells, verisimilitudes of the Great Bell, and touched each one on the Great Bell, and it was so that virtue went out of the Great Bell and made a true Liberty Tinkler of the little one.

And the Committee ordained that each truly patriotic dog hang a Liberty Tinkler on the end of his nose, one in each of his ears, and a row of them on his tail, to the end that all the world and everybody else might hear the noise of Liberty, and that every dog, at every movement of his body and wag of his tail, might be a living, eternal Proclamation of Liberty throughout the land.

And it was so. And the dogs were delighted and hung little Liberty Tinklers upon themselves as ordered; and all Canisville rang with Liberty.

But in a short time the fat fleas, and the eminent fleas, and the Monstrous Fleas, seeing that the Blessed Bell and the Liberty ceremonies had quite served their purpose, and the poor fool dogs had been hypnotized into a very satisfactory state of forgetfulness of their wrongs and miseries, told the Bamboozling Committee that they might now with safety conclude the amusement and close up the show, as it was somewhat expensive.

So the Bamboozling Committee, ordering one grand final hammering, that made the startled angels jump, and a grand final yell for Liberty, which made the air tremble for a week after, and a benediction in chorus by all the salaried barkers, that sounded like the last tapering-off roll of distant thunder, declared the greatest and grandest show of the ages closed.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

The Times Out of Joint.—The Police Dogs Growl and Threaten Revolt.—The Salaried Barkers Awake and get up a “Revival.”—Great Conference of all the Great Lights of Pietydom.—A Long Pull and a Strong Pull, and a Pull Altogether, for the Salvation of the Dogs, Resolved on.

THE bamboozle of the Bell of Liberty had been a grand success while it lasted. As a dream, a stimulating mental narcotism, a beautiful period of sweet oblivion, into which the hard and cruel facts of the dogs’ daily lives had been thrown and temporarily buried, it was very restful and enjoyable to them. But starvation, disease and universal tyranny, though buried, were not decreed out of being; and scarcely had the last tones of sweet Liberty’s Bell died out and the show closed, ere those horrid realities began to creep and sneak from their graves and smite the yet dazed and dreaming dogs. With skeleton hands they smote them on the head and in the stomach, and with mercilessly cruel fingers poked open their hypnotized eyes, and with fiendish laughter mocked them, and bade them look and see that in spite of Liberty Shows of every sort, the times were somehow out of joint. Times were indeed bad. Gaunt Famine, gaunter than ever, stalked through the land, smiting down her victims more pitilessly than ever, as though in jealous revenge for the attentions they had lately lavished on her rival, Liberty. Of course the dogs did the starving—most of it; but as the dogs were the source of the fleas’ existence, why, even many of them fell sick of hunger and dwindled away and died. Even the police dogs, for whom Pup McPoodle and all the Monstrous Fleas made extra special strenuous efforts to keep in good flesh, seeing that their zeal for Order depended entirely on that, did suffer somewhat from the stringency. They did not always get their basketfuls punctually, and were several times delayed in their dining, and they began to grumble and complain that if this kind of outrage on their sacred carcases were not soon stopped, they would get up a riot on their own hook and club somebody, for they had never been used to being hungry, and by the great Holy Locust, they were not going to be, either, without knowing the reason why.

Irreligion, Vice, Crime and Immorality stalked abroad, and gave the multitudinous compulsory-virtue societies a tremendous rush of business, insomuch that they had to work overtime. But an evil of far more portentousness and gravity than all these combined ensued: the salaried barkers in the churches had their basketfuls diminished; their churches were sometimes empty and were never full.

Therefore, as the salaried barkers had, through long experience, come to observe that a famine was nearly always accompanied by what they called a “great outpouring of the spirit,” and the setting in of a great “revival,” and as a “revival” meant fuller churches, and consequently a revival of the supplies of meat, they determined to hump themselves with great energy, and bring about the revival that, according to the famine, was now about due. So they called a conference of all the fat fleas, the eminent fleas, and the most pious of the Monstrous Fleas, and the barking dogs, not only of Canisville, but of the country roundabout, to devise newer and better schemes for what they called “reaching the masses,”—or “them asses” as one totally depraved dog profanely remarked.

And it was a great time. For weeks all the lady fleas, and all other fleas who were in “sympathy” with the dogs, and had their “welfare” at heart, were busy every day in getting a place ready for the reception of the conference. It was fitted up “regardless of expense,” and decorated especially with costly flowers, and mottoed banners, and choice texts of “Holy Scripture,” exquisitely wrought in gold and silver, on expensive silks. The air was heavy with perfumes of the rarest sorts; the walls were resplendent with mirrors and pictures, loaned by the wealthiest suckers; and everything that could be done was done to minister to the “solemnity” of the occasion, and to the comfort of the most eminent and fat-salaried barkers—the D. D.’s, L.L. D.’s, B. A.’s, M. A.’s, Reverends, Very Reverends, Much Reverends, Right Reverends, Wrong Reverends, Right Reverend Fathers in God, His Grace, His Eminence, His Sacredness, His Holiness, who had been invited from far and near, to assist Heaven in bringing about the “revival.” And a great and shining galaxy of fat and Monstrous Fleas, with “Professor,” “Honorable,” “Right Honorable,” “His Nibs,” “His Nobs,” “His Jags,” “His Jiblets,” “His Joblots,” to their names were there also. Oh, they were a highly select and respectable and well-conditioned body of fleas and barkers that met together that day to devise the ways and means of making poor dogs happy.

Now it was remarked that to this great conference of the pious fleas and their salaried barkers to devise the salvation of dogs not a solitary poor working dog was invited, and no one even called to ask the opinion of any dog on the subject; but all the eminent and pious fleas there proceeded to make speeches, which were duly taken down and recorded in the book of the chronicles of the world’s eminent saints, who have spent their lives trying to lift up the poor, while riding on their backs.

And Tee de Little Wit Blatherskite, who had had a good breakfast and was more than usually full of divine zeal, said they were grieved beyond expression to find that, in spite of the efforts that had been expended for the benefit of poor dogs, their poverty, discontent and irreligion were on the increase. But not this alone; for lately it had come to their knowledge that far more alarming symptoms had broken out. In several quarters, it was rumored, there had appeared several strange dogs of uncouth visage and long hair, who had evidently determined to poison the minds of the whole community of dogs.

These abominable new comers—who they hoped for the honor of Canisville were from some foreign country—had spoken evil of religion, saying it was only a crafty dodge of the fleas to deceive dogs with and to hide from them the fact that the only thing that was amiss with dogs was FLEAS. And these same foreign dogs had even gone so far as to call fleas SUCKERS and other wicked epithets, and to tell the dogs that until they got rid of the fleas they would never get rid of their miseries. Now, brethren, here a real peril menaced them; here, brethren, were the hateful devils of Singletaxism, Anarchism, Communism, Socialism, Populism, Nationalism, and many other blasphemous anti-flea isms, shoving their noses in our midst, and God only knew what the end of it was to be. Here were certain lewd dogs of the baser sort—idle, good-for-nothing agitators, no doubt, who lived on their more simple, honest and law abiding fellow-dogs—going about preaching the pestilent doctrines of social discontent, and free thought, and equal rights, and setting class against class—yes, brethren, setting class against class; only think of it!—and was nothing to be done? Were they to sit there supinely looking on while those vile foreign agitators were undermining the very foundations of Religion and Social Order? Why, it might actually come to pass, if some energetic measures were not immediately undertaken, that the whole race of dogs would grow to hate the race of fleas, and even try to exterminate them as they once did in Frankoland, which would result in putting back the cause of Religion a hundred years, as it had done there. Oh, brethren, it was time to be up and doing. Oh, brethren, scepticism and infidelity were taking hold of dogs nowadays. Oh, brethren, could we not revive the laws against blasphemy, and the use of the Blue Thunderbolts with which to protect the Almighty? Had we no jails and gallows to protect us and keep these dogs in the paths of true religion? Oh, brethren, only a few days ago, as one of our most fat and pious pew holders was on his way to church, he was insulted by some dogs who, no doubt, had imbibed the pestilent heresies now being preached. They barked out at him: “There goes a sucker. That’s the son-of-a-gun what keeps us thin and poor;” and made other insolent and ungrammatical remarks, and one vile fellow slyly threw a gob of mud that hit him on the paunch. Oh, brethren, it needed great grace and entire sanctification for our brother to bear it. And no doubt, brethren, something was urgently needed to reach the masses.

Then the conference adjourned for recess and luncheon, which consisted of every sort of costly viands, served on costly plate; of rare and costly fruits, and wines of exquisite “bouquet,” all set out amid a display of the very rarest exotics, that cost exceeding much wealth, and to the accompaniment of an orchestra of very talented minstrels.

This over, and “thanks” having been rendered by His Grace, the Serene and Excessively Distinguished Archiepiscopus of the Diocese of Puliciania, who had travelled a thousand miles “to be present on this auspicious occasion,” the session was reopened with prayer by the Veriest Reverend Father in God, Sanguineous F. Plumpdog.

Now, His Grace, the Serene and Excessively Distinguished Archiepiscopus of the Diocese of Puliciania, was a very large, fat and wheezy dog who could hardly see out of his eyes for fatness. He had lived amongst, and ministered to a churchful of big fat fleas so long that he had come to regard himself as one of them, and always said “we” and “us” and “our.” So did all the rest of these wonderfully sleek and plump barkers; and so acceptable were these barkers to their various congregations of fat and Monstrous Fleas and so uniformly did they never preach any other than an “acceptable” gospel to them, that the fleas were pleased to regard them as of their caste.

The first speaker was the Most Reverend, Asthmatic and Holy Archdeacon, Suckerius P. Paunchiana Fatdog, F. L. U. N. K. E. Y., H. U. M. B. U. G., who made a few remarks thus: “Ladies and Gentlefleas—It seems to me that we, to whom has been committed, by the wisdom of Almighty God, the keeping of great wealth, ought first to guard against the danger of forgetting that we owe something to the poor dogs whom God, in His wisdom has put in a position beneath us. We ought never to forget that it is to us that God looks, as his chosen instruments, for the uplifting of the dogs. Why there are dogs and why there are fleas is one of those inscrutable mysteries that we ought not to pry into, but reverently accept. For my part, I reverently accept it, and I pray that I may ever be kept reverent. Certain it is, however, that if ever the dogs are to be made fat and happy, and uplifted to those things of the soul and Heaven, we fleas will have to do it. God always works through means, and we are the means. He has ordained the wealthy to minister to the poor, the strong to bear with the weak, the wise to lead the foolish, the enlightened to illumine the dark; we are the wealthy, the strong, the wise, and the enlightened, and woe to us if we shirk the duty thus laid upon us. Brethren, the one thing we are most apt to forget is the Spirit of Christ. He came down from his high estate to uplift the fallen, and it is this going down, going down, GOING DOWN, brethren, to those below us, that is going to save them.

“Let us then carry out this Spirit, and go down to these poor creatures. Let us walk amongst them; let us show ourselves to them; let us put on poor raiment and ask them how they do; let us teach them scientific economy in eating; let us with our own paws show them how one bone can be made to yield a good dinner for a large family and leave something over for the morrow; let us teach them how to accept in a proper spirit the cast-off garments of the “charitable,” and to seek to be clothed with the “garments of righteousness”; let us invite them to confide to us their trials and troubles; let us take a genuine interest in them, and get into their affections, and teach them toil, and thrift, and temperance, and so, by easy and natural methods—such as wrapping up pennies and candies in tracts and leaflets—gradually train their minds to those higher and eternal things and treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust break through and steal.”

And all the audience broke out into a storm of applause; and everybody said that was a most glorious gospel, the Gospel of GOING DOWN. And everybody looked anxious to get up and go down then and there. And an enthusiastic Monstrous Flea moved, and another enthusiastic one seconded, that “We do, here and now, all of us, form ourselves into an Association to be known as the ‘Going Down Organization Society,’” which was carried with immense enthusiasm.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

The Much Titled Archbishop Plethoric Dog Shows the Infallible Way of Going Down to the Dogs and Lifting them up to Church.—Music and Pictures.—Not so Stomach Filling as Victuals, but Very Discontent-Diverting.

AFTER a short interval, to enable the assembly to recover from the stunning effect of the great Gospel of Going Down, there stepped forward His Grace, the Veriest, Mostest, Reverendest Archbishop Plethoric Dog, L.I.C.K.F.O.O.T. £. s. d., $$$$$$, of the diocese of Upper Suckerdom and all Flunkeydom. He said: “Brethren, the called and chosen, the divinely-appointed almoners of Heaven’s bounty, I congratulate my most Reverend, Asthmatic and Holy Brother, Archdeacon Suckerius P. Paunchiana Fatdog, upon the very able manner in which he has presented before you the Gospel of Going Down, and you on the happiness and good fortune of listening to him. I can only support my brother by pointing out how we can apply his Going Down Gospel. It has struck me that we can make use of many means which may be sanctified to their good.

“My brethren, there is the means of Music, which may be used to uplift poor dogs. It is well known that even dogs have a love of Music quite as strong as the most cultivated of fleas. Why not give these dogs Cheap Music? Let us provide for them bands of music to play in the public places, say, one day in a week. Who knows what the fiddle and the bow, the trombone and piccolo, the cornet and oboe, the flute and violoncello, the cymbals and the banjo, the triangle and the drum, may accomplish, when handled with consecrated paws, and blown with sanctified breath? Let us show these degraded dogs that we love them, that we are blood of their blood, and are anxious to minister to their love of the beautiful in sight and sound. And, my brethren, we can make even music serve the cause of the church, and the means of drawing them to the sanctuary—which, of course, should be the aim and the object of all our efforts. We need not discourse unto them unsanctified jigs, and profane waltzes, and blasphemous schottisches, by which Satan beguiles the ungodly. No, no! There is a great multitude of beautiful pieces of music that have an upward and churchward tendency, that may be discoursed unto them, such as, ‘I am so happy I’m going to heaven’; ‘I desire to be an angel’; ‘My home is not here, it is over there’; ‘I am looking above to the heaven of love’; ‘There is a happy land, far, FAR away’; and many others; and all these have a very good tendency to keep the minds of dogs fixed on things above and away from their sordid poverty and wicked trifling with the vain nonsense of trying to make this poor sin-stricken world any better.

“Oh, brethren, there is nothing more entrancing, more uplifting, more heartmelting, than to hear ‘Go bury thy troubles’ piously rendered by the cornet, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of music. I have seen dogs melted to tears under it; and I make no doubt that many souls will be drawn to Church by it; and above all, in the present alarming state of dog-scepticism, it will have a good effect in drawing away their minds from the discussion of what they wickedly call their ‘wrongs.’

“Then there is the love of art that may be appealed to. Dogs love to look at beautiful pictures. Why not open a picture gallery free for them all to come and gaze their fill? Of course, God, in his wisdom, has given us, alone, the power to buy pictures, but he did not intend us to be hoggish with them; He no doubt intended that we should share these our gifts with our inferior fellow creatures. Did not our great Master teach us to share our gifts with them? Yea, verily; and just as He, by coming down and imparting his gifts to us, has uplifted us, and made us to sit in heavenly places, so we by the same conduct can uplift those who, by natural and divine ordination, are very wisely placed beneath us. Of course, we cannot hope ever to abolish their poverty, and put them on to our plane; for it is evident that the Almighty, in his wisdom, made dogs to be inferior, just as he made fleas to be superior. And it is just as evident that he ordained dogs to support fleas, in return for the inestimable benefits, both moral and spiritual, that fleas confer on dogs. Ye can easily see, my brethren, that fleas are absolutely necessary to the well being of dogs. Fancy a community of dogs without fleas! Who would lead them? Who would watch for their souls’ welfare? Who would ameliorate their condition of want and ignorance? Who would have the leisure to go about amongst them, visiting them in their kennels, soothing their sorrows, binding up their sore places, calming their discontent with their divinely appointed lot, and pointing them to a Better Land, when they kick the bucket?

“Brethren, what I meant to say before I digressed, is, that as one means of grace—a very great means of very great grace—I rank sanctified pictures and sanctified song very high. Yes, brethren, let us open a picture gallery, FREE as salvation, ‘without money and without price,’ open every day and evening in the year, except Sundays and during Lent, and the Saints’ days, and solemn feasts and solemn fasts, and Thanksgiving and holidays and other solemn occasions, when infinitely higher matters—matters of eternal interest—than mere music and pictures, should engage the attention of dogs. Bearing in mind that pictures should be an aid to religion—not a substitute —let us put some of our best pictures on loan; nice soul-uplifting, truly sanctified pictures, such as ‘Little Samuel’s Waking,’ ‘Daniel in the Lion’s Den,’ ‘the Prodigal’s Return,’ etc., etc. Such pictures as these fill the mind with pure and holy thoughts, and when properly administered will, without interfering with their more imperative duty of attending church, do them a great amount of good. Of course I do not mean that we should throw open these our precious treasures of art without restriction, to the gaze and handling of the whole breed of dogs without distinction. Oh, no, the dogs must be made to recognize that these are our pictures, and that their owners have rights to be protected. We must duly impress upon these dogs’ minds that ‘It is of grace, not of debt’ that they look upon them. We must impress upon them that we, the fleas, so loved the world of dogs that we gave the loan of our art treasures, that whosoever would might look upon them, and be a better and more contented dog. Well, not exactly ‘whosoever’; it stands to sense that we must exclude all dirty dogs, for some of us will be there sometimes; and we must exclude dogs with sore eyes and bad breath, as we should not like any of our refined lady visitors to be offended by such unwholesomenesses; and it will certainly not do to let in profane and vulgar dogs, as bad manners corrupt the pious dogs. And as for those dogs who have been known to express subversive sentiments—sentiments inimical to fleas—that would lead to the overthrow of the present divinely appointed order of things, why, they must not be admitted at any price or on any pretense. All others should be allowed, if properly provided with an admission ticket and vouched for by two respectable members of flea society. With these trifling but judicious exceptions and restrictions, I think pictures may, under the divine blessing, be made an incalculably blessed means to the uplifting of poor, sinful and fallen caninity.”

This big bug of a barker sat down amid thunders of applause. And the President, rising, advanced to the front of the platform, and when the applause had abated, said, in a voice of emotion: “Friends, Heaven does, indeed, bless us, for as I stand here I see that one whom we all love and revere has just entered the doorway. [Here the whole assembly turned to see who it was, and broke again into rapturous vociferation on beholding enter the very Honorable and Holy One a Maker of long prayers and short wages]. We have with us our beloved John, rich, pious, patriotic, humble, holy, and altogether lovely, and I shall have the exalted pleasure of asking him to address us now.”

CHAPTER XL.

The Holy One a Maker of Long Prayers and Short Wages Discourses on the Blessedness of Charity to Poor Dogs, and Shows how it Incidentally Pays the Blood-Suckers who Dispense it.—Lady Vanderbillion Flea Suggests a Charity Ball.

THE Honorable and Holy One a Maker was in especially good fettle to-day. To his usual rotundity of paunch and rubicundity and sleekness of visage, the warmth of his complimentary-adjectived reception had added a glow of self-complacency, which gave his countenance the shine and sheen of transfiguration. Having dined well of this earth’s bounties, and afterwards in silent communion quaffed deep quaffs of the “Wine of Holiness” of the oldest and rarest vintage, he was overflowingly full of beaming sanctimoniousness and charity, and his seventh-day eye was more highly enlarged and heavenward-lifted than usual; insomuch that all the lady fleas were enraptured, and said he was an angel, and too beautiful for anything, bless him.

In accents low and mellifluously cadent, he said: “Dear friends: It would ill become me to attempt to emulate the magnificent eloquence of the reverend barkers who have addressed you. Unseen of you, I have heard their addresses, and I trust I may be pardoned if I try to supplement their suggestions by the suggestion that in our magnificent efforts for the spiritual bettering of the canine race, we forget not their corporeal needs.

“Oh, my friends, I mingle with dogs more, perhaps, than any of ye, and my heart is torn and bleeds for their poverty and sorrow and suffering, and I would suggest that we, who have the means, do something for their corporeal wants. My suggestion is that we do something larger in Charity for them.

“Oh, my friends, think of the great gifts Heaven has given to us, and then think of the return we owe to Heaven for the profitable use of them. As I tell the poor dogs in my blood suckery and in my Sunday snivelling prayery, we ought to do all we do to the glory of God; for, God, He counts all our actions.

“Now, my friends, I tell you Charity is the finest investment ye can go in for. It yields the largest dividends. Not only do we please God by it, and so secure mansions and harps and crowns above, which will come in very handy, when we can make no more out of this world, but by giving much in Charity to these dogs, we win their affection and their veneration, and by soothing their stomachs a little, we soothe their restlessness and their inclinations to sedition, and so preserve them in a meek, pious and subservient frame of mind which is conducive to low wages. Thus you see, my friends, a large Charity fund is putting wealth where it will do the most good.”

Great applause greeted this suggestion of the Honorable One a Maker of long prayers and short wages, as he resumed his seat.

Then there arose, with great diffidence, a very elegant lady flea. She was the consort of one of the Monstrous Fleas, Lady Vanderbillion Flea by name, and with much modesty spake thus:

“Most honorable assembly of fleas: the suggestion of the very Holy One a Maker of long prayers, touched my heart. The word Charity is the most holy and tender one in all our language. It is a grace peculiarly feminine, and it has been reserved by God to lady fleas, as their highest prerogative, to give it its proper expression, and I would modestly suggest that all the lady fleas here present give shape and form to the Charity which our dear brother has, in the fullness of his heart, recommended.

“I have an idea; I believe it is an inspiration from God: Why not get up a Charity Ball of the Fleas for the dogs’ benefit?

“Now, we all have one great gift; we are all great on the hop, both male and female. Then why not sanctify this gift by arraying ourselves in our very best, and, putting on our bravest and most gorgeous panoply of gold and silver, and our most resplendent gems, to the sound of the psaltery, cornet, harp, sackbut, dulcimer and all kinds of music, make a grand hop, and let the proceeds thereof go for the founding of a hospital for the care of broken-down dogs?”

Here the speaker was interrupted by applause from all the lady fleas, and tumultuous ejaculations of “Good, good,” “Splendid,” “Oh, wouldn’t that be just lovely!” “Oh, oh, a grand dressing and hop for Charity.”

But the Honorable One a Maker arose and said it was perhaps a very good suggestion; but as dancing was to him not the highest form of piety, and as he always made it a practice never to keep any but the very best quality of goods in his stock of piety, he would have to decline to be a contributing party to the matter, but if the ladies present thought that the Ball could be so managed as to be unobjectionable from a religious point of view, and to advertise his name abroad to the world, he would esteem it a favor.

Lady Vanderbillion Flea, resuming, said: “I am proud to see my humble suggestion so well received. Oh, my dear fellow godly ones, ye know that we dearly love to hop; we dearly love to bedeck ourselves in gorgeous ornaments, and we dearly love to be seen one of another in all our glory; and I suggest that all this love of legitimate display, this beautiful amusement of ours, which has hitherto been only a pastime, be for the future put to some holy use and profit.

“Let us bring our whole selves and our amusements as a precious gift, and lay it as a sacrifice on the altar. Let us sanctify ourselves wholly in the sight of Heaven. Let us prayerfully and with a contrite heart put upon us our most costly and resplendent raiment. Let us, with reverence and all humility, and in the fear of God, fetch out our bushels of diamonds and rubies and pearls and corals and sapphires and amethysts and topazes and chalcedonies; our leagues of golden chains, and piles of bracelets, wristlets, anklets, tiaras and coronets, and in our most gorgeous equipages, attended by our troops of lackeys, flunkeys, lickspittles and slaves, repair to some magnificent and brilliantly appointed hall, and there let us hop with a holy hop unto the glory of God and the honor of Charity, pure and holy, meek and lowly, chief of all the graces three. Thus, my friends, shall we combine our own enjoyment and the benefit of the poor dogs. And the Great Gee Whizz, the Many Headed Daily Press, will be there, and will write it all down to tell it all abroad for the amusement and edification of the dogs; and next morning our left hands shall know all that our right hands have done, and the whole world shall know how we ‘Danced for Sweet Charity,’ and how the ladies looked and what each one wore, and all about it.

“Oh, my friends, how sweet is the contemplation of the blessedness of helping God’s poor, of doing good, and in our humble way, helping to bring in the Kingdom of God. But, above all, we shall have the blissful assurance in our hearts that we are pleasing God; for we have the word of Scripture for it that they who give to the poor lend to the Lord; and the Lord is in great need of loans just now. And think what a comfort it will be in our dying hour, that for one poor night’s sacrifice for His poor, we shall have an eternity of reward.

“Of course there will be no dogs admitted, for the admission fee to see us hop will be so high that none but the rich will be able to afford it; but as the proceeds are to go to the dogs, this will be a blessing rather than otherwise. And of course, too, to admit a lot of unkempt, musty and ill-smelling dogs would mar the harmonies of the picture; would not consort with the brilliance and beauty of our paraphernalia, and would offend the delicate sensibilities of our sister saints. They would assuredly keep away the very rich and æsthetic elite, whom we wish to come to see us hop. In fact, deeply and intensely as I love the poor, in their proper sphere, I should not care to come myself.

“This, my friends, is my suggestion; and I think that with charity balls and picture galleries, and free music, and free gospel, the problem of canine discontent and infidelity and poverty will be pretty nearly solved. And I think too, that if the dogs are not thankful for all this great provision that we have made for their temporal and eternal welfare, they are a most ungrateful set.”

And Lady Vanderbillion Flea sat down amid renewed applause.

CHAPTER XLI.

A Messenger of Evil Tidings.—The Conference Alarmed.—The Old Disease Revived.—The Conference in Confusion.—Mutual Recriminations.—Invaded by Unwelcome Dogs.—The Big Dog’s Fearful Indictment of the Fleas.—Tells How the Dogs Came to Their Senses.

SCARCELY had the air, agitated with the acclamations following Lady Vanderbillion Flea’s happy suggestion, recovered its tranquillity, when a large flea was seen to enter by a side door, near the platform, and, in evident agitation, present a little note to the presiding angel of the assembly, His Grace, the Serene and Excessively Distinguished Archiepiscopus of the Diocese of Puliciania, who, as he perused, was noticed to turn very pale and shake, while all the fleas looked on with nervous apprehension. He had scarcely finished, when he beckoned to some of the most eminent, wealthy and Monstrous Fleas to come with him into a corner, as he had a matter of vital import to speak to them about.

Whereupon, the assembly of the fleas, always apprehensive of trouble, could not contain themselves, but cried out to know what was the matter. So, His Grace, the Serene, etc., etc., in faltering accents made answer and said: “Alas, Brethren and Sisters, this messenger hath brought us evil tidings of great grief. He reports that a most virulent, infectious and contagious epidemic of the thinking disease has broken out amongst the dogs, infinitely worse than anything heretofore known; yea, so virulent is it that it seems to defy all the remedies known to the Bamboozlers’ Pharmacopœia, which, with God’s help, were always until now so efficient. So violent and rapid is this plague, this messenger says, that the victim seems to be taken utterly without warning. One minute, he is, to all appearances, in the very best and most satisfactory state of idiocy and drivelling devotion to Country and Flag, and the next, he is in the throes of the most dreadful and dangerous sanity. He says the Board of Public Safety, the Bamboozling Committee and the Great Many Headed Daily Press, have been hastily summoned, but are gaping at each other in dumb and helpless bemuddlement; and all the Emdees are in consultation, but are quite puzzled, for they never knew or heard of such a sudden and widespread outbreak. He says they say they think it is the recurrence of an old, and supposed-to-have-been-extinct disease—but which evidently travels in an elliptical orbit of such immense elongation, that its point of intersection with the orbit of canine revolution gives the disease about an every-ten-centuries periodicity of conjunction.

“He says they say it is a disease that attacks the optic nerve of each eye simultaneously, and is caused by the abnormal intensification and æsthetization of the anonymous gastric thingumybob, at its point of junction with the visual organs, and is primarily due to intense and prolonged hunger and abuse. This disease is known in common language as “Eye-opening,” and is regarded as a very fatal malady; not, singular to say, to the dog attacked, but only to the fleas on him, as he immediately begins to sever those sacred relations which God has established between him and his fleas, so that they begin to wither and perish for lack of nourishment.”

And at these ominous words, great fear and trembling came upon all the assembly, and they began to bewail, and to charge that an ungrateful Providence had gone back on them, in the very hour when they had gathered to do something to help him in his work of blessing the dogs; and they grew bitter in denouncing Pup McPoodle as an incompetent and unfaithful Executive, and the Boards of Public Health and Safety as a lot of antiquated old duffers, and the Bamboozling Committee as a lot of noodles, and not half as smart as they were cracked up to be, and the Great Many Headed Daily Press, as a fraud and a false prophet, and everybody and everything else, for betraying them.

And when His Grace, the Serene, etc., etc., proposed that they sing a Hymn of Faith and put their trust in Heaven, they gruffly replied that Hymns of Faith were utterly inadequate as compensation for the utter loss of dogs to bleed, and as for putting trust in Heaven, that was all very well, provided one was on the spot to look after things. And when Tee de Little Wit Blatherskite arose, and, with idiotically histrionic gestures, began to vociferate that in vision he saw the Lord as a man of war, coming with chariots of fire, lightning, thunderbolt and tempest, to the rescue of His Anointed and the discomfiture of the infidel and irreligious dogs, they rudely told him he was a bag of windy words, whose fine God didn’t even deliver him in his hour of need; for when he fell once, lately, into a hundred-foot debt hole, his fellow dogs had to fill up seventy-seven hundredths of it, before he could scramble out.

And at the very height of this confusion, a great commotion occurred amongst those near the door, and a Big Dog, followed by a whole troop of dogs, boldly entered. “What impudence!” said some of the highly perfumed and delicate lady fleas. “What a disagreeable smell of dog,” said others. The Charity-Ball enthusiasts, at sight of the dirty mob, fainted dead away; the fattest of the salaried barkers sneaked out by the side door; while the eminent, wealthy and Monstrous Fleas, to hide their terror, grew truculent and made a great hubbub and threatening; but the Big Dog in a voice of thunder, bade them be silent. The terror-stricken fleas fell flat, and the Big Dog advancing, extended his huge paw, and thus addressed them: “Listen, most eminent and respectable representatives of the most eminent and respectable order of pimps, barnacles and blood-suckers; I and my gang of fellow-sufferers have been at the door of your convention for some time past, and we have heard all your elaborate schemes which you have concocted for our welfare.

“About the time you fat, full-blooded and comfortable suckers called this convention to take into consideration the miserable condition of us dogs, a number of us dogs had the (to you) sublime impudence to call a convention to take into consideration _our own_ condition; and we pride ourselves that we have reached a far broader and more practical conclusion than your worshipful body has come to. As you well know, there has been brewing amongst us a very deep discontent with our condition, and a very decided conviction that we knew exactly what was the matter with us, and how to mend it.

“Some of us had fathers who could remember the honored chieftain, Bull McMastiff, and the good times dogs had then, and they told us that old Mastiff used daily to say and repeat: “My dear dogs, beware of the fleas,” and he prophesied that so surely as they abated their hatred of fleas, they would sink into poverty, meagreness and misery.

“And so it has been. When Bull McMastiff gave up the ghost, McPoodle, a bad-for-everything ruler, who, like most other beastly pests and nuisances, has lived to a most unconscionably great age, relaxed the stringency of our laws, and allowed the missionaries of the fleas to settle amongst us, and these missionaries went about amongst us preaching that McMastiff was an imbecile old fool, who did not know what was good for dogs; that the fleas were a much maligned and misrepresented class; that a few fleas—a nice judicious selection—on a dog, were not only no detriment, but a positive advantage to him; that they helped his general and particular health; that they purified a dog’s blood, and enriched it with certain valuable elements, which all truly healthy dogs need, and that the few drops of blood they took as dividend, were a mere nothing in comparison to the service they rendered, that they could assure them that no dog could be said to be really and truly healthy and complete without at least some fleas upon him; yea, they went so far as to declare by Heaven and Holy Scripture, that fleas were divinely appointed to give life and joy and peace to dogs, and that the race of dogs would die off the face of the earth, if it were not for them; and they told of very many terrible instances where whole nations of dogs had utterly perished for want of a few fleas.

“And we dogs were idiots enough to believe the pious lies they told us, and we allowed you to become a part of our community; and, very soon, it fell out that ye became the real, actual community, and we became your feeders, your providers, your most humble and obedient servants. We took you to our bodies and very soon ye made them your own, and, puffed up with pride, ye came to imagine that ye only were the people, ye were the republic; ye called yourselves on all occasions, ‘the country,’ ‘the nation.’ Ye made war and peace, and did everything and got everything but the fighting and the paying. Ye got up centennials, bi, tri and quadri, of this, that and the other, which we poor starving dogs were bled to pay for and allowed to look at from a great distance. And the overgrown suckers of other nations sent their ‘greetings’ to you; and when they, to vary the monotony of their centennials and anniversaries of this, that and the other, got up a grand Jubilee Jamboree to commemorate the fiftieth year of the efforts of a fat and fuzzy old lady sucker, Queen flea of Kyhidom, and her prolific brood to bleed their dogs to death, ye sent your greetings and prayers for God Almighty’s blessings on their efforts; and all this pious snobbery and robbery and jobbery, ye called ‘drawing closer the bonds of international comity.’

“But us dogs, whom ye condescendingly permit to pay for all this, and allow to look at the glory of afar off, whom ye permit to read of the forty-course banquets ye feast at in our name, ye taught that we owed our very life to you, and that it was our duty to give up our daily blood to you, and give thanks to Almighty God that He had in boundless mercy so bountifully blessed us with fleas. And we dogs did so deeply fall into the idiocy and supineness generated by immemorial usage and custom, that we came to regard this division of us into masses and classes, sucked and suckers, robbed and robbers, workers and idlers, starved and overfed, as of natural order and divine appointment.

“That is, most of us did. There were a few who refused to wag the adulatory tail of approval of this system. We ceased not to howl and bark day and night our discontent. And for this ye called in dogs of Belial to witness against some of us, saying, they did blaspheme God and the Law, and then ye carried them forth and stoned them with stones, or hanged them with ropes till they died. And ye threw mud at us in the name of the Lord, and went and told the hungriest and leanest and foolishest dogs amongst us that we were ‘Socialists,’ ‘Seditionists,’ and ‘Anarchists;’ and they, not knowing in their heart what those words meant, did therefore hound us and mob us and persecute us for endeavoring to restore to them the liberty they had lost. Oh, they accused us of disturbing their rest; of trying to make them discontented; of imperilling their positions with their natural superiors, the fleas; of trying to subvert the natural order of suckers and sucked, and of trying to bring on the day of judgment and the destruction of the universe. Poor fools!

“But one day, two or three of the hungriest of us wandered away out of town, and lay down under a tree in a solitary place to think and weep out the sadness of our hearts; and as we wept and meditated, behold an Angel appeared unto us and saluted us. And we, shaking with terror, said, ‘Who art thou?’ and he said, ‘I am Plain Common Sense, the rarest Angel of all that visit the earth; Heaven hath appointed me Messenger-in-Particular to the hungriest of the hungry.

“‘I never visit fleas, and seldom do I come to fat and comfortable dogs. I am a lonely Angel, and I have a tremendously long beat to patrol, which I cannot, even if I make haste, complete in less than ten hundred years; therefore, ye are very lucky in being here just as I was passing. But whosoever entertaineth me receiveth always a blessing.’

“So saying, he drew from a pocket in his toga, a little phial containing a thin and colorless fluid, and bidding us hold up our faces, he, with his finger, moistened our eyes with the fluid. Instantly, our eyes were endowed with a marvellous seeing power, and our brains seemed to be filled with lightning flashes. ‘See ye any better now?’ said he. ‘Infinitely,’ said we; ‘why, we see what a lot of unspeakable idiots, and wooden-headed fools we are, not to have seen what a lot of utterly useless, superfluous and ruinously exhausting fleas we have been carrying all these years.’ ‘Just so,’ said the Angel. ‘Now, take this phial, and what hungry dog’s eyes soever ye shall moisten with the fluid, shall instantly receive power to see through a ladder.’

“We thanked him, and implored him to tarry with us and abide and take something; but he was grieved, and said he was no police dog, and had several stars to visit before midnight. And he vanished from our sight.

“So we took the little phial, which was labelled, ‘Dilute Solution of Plain Common Sense; one drop, applied to the eyes of a very hungry dog, warranted to make him see through a flea,’ and tried it on every hungry dog we met; and the result was, as the Angel foretold, that every one was instantly restored to the most exalted sanity, and saw clear through the humbug of the whole dirty useless gang of you, your Bamboozling Committee, your Flags, Statues, and lying Patriotism, your blasphemy of Liberty, and cant of Freedom, and everything else that there is of you.

“All these dogs with me have had their eyes touched with the Solution, and the epidemic, as your fool Bamboozlers and Emdees call it, has run through three-fourths of Canisville, and the country roundabout.

“Now, therefore, we have come hither to propose a new modus vivendi, some way of living without you; but before we do that we desire to express to you our gratitude for all the kind things you have done and have this night proposed to do.

“We thank you for having sent us the Gospel of Earthly Contentment and Future Reward. As ye were the first, efficient and only cause of our discontent, the robbers of all our means of growth, physical comfort and intelligence, ye owed us something as a set-off; but seeing that ye offered us only a very far distant and uncertain intangibility of future recompense—that ye yourselves had no power to grant—while what ye took from us by FRAUD and mental chloroforming was something real, actual and of present tangible value, we have decided not to accept your promissory note that is to be redeemed some indefinite time in next eternity. We believe that NOW is the accepted time for those who toil to get their reward, and that NOW is the accepted time for all idlers and suckers to starve to death. We believe that it is blasphemy to neglect the earth that IS for a heaven that MAY BE.

“We believe that God is the God of JUSTICE and that he has punished us for doing ourselves the injustice of being robbed, and for doing you the unkindness and injustice of helping you to live in demoralizing idleness on unearned wealth.

“Therefore, out of pure love for ourselves, and a consuming anxiety for your welfare, we will take the full reward of our labor NOW, and turn over to you all the hopes and realities of future reward and glory which ye make so much of. Ye have taught us the ineffable blessedness of poverty and trust in God; of empty bellies and the contemplation of other-world bliss.

“Therefore, be it enacted, and it is hereby enacted, by us dogs now restored to our senses, that from the passage of this Act, i.e. NOW, ye fleas, suckers, robbers and poisoners, shall have all your privileges as idle drags upon our prosperity taken away from you, and ye shall henceforth be endowed and crowned with all those sacred and inalienable rights to starve and die, to sink or swim, which are now the great and particular endowment of dogs throughout the world.

“But in lieu thereof, and as a set-off, we make over to you in fee simple, and to your heirs and assigns forever, all those mansions in the sky, and the grounds thereto appertaining; all those sweet fields of Eden and the sweet rest to be found there; all those harps and crowns of gold, the robes and palms and glories and pleasures forever more, and all the sweetness and light and satisfaction, etc., etc., etc. These we give, grant and convey to you in the same disinterested spirit as that in which you bequeathed them to us.

“Go, then, in peace, and, rich in all the wealth of future hope, may you be happy. Heretofore, ye have taken our earthly things and pretended to give us in exchange heavenly things. We will now re-exchange them, and while ye are enjoying the strange new bliss of earning your earthly things, so there is nothing to prevent us, while enjoying our earthly rights, from looking forward to the good things of the future.”

And the fleas, at the pronunciation of this sentence, fell into a grievous terror, and bewailed the hard fate that had overtaken them; and said that life without wealth and leisure would be but penal servitude; and none of them seemed to take any comfort in this Heavenly Inheritance. Yea, some of them, at this reversal of fortune, went insane, and many of them saying, that if a “title clear to mansions in the skies” was all that was left of the wreck of their fortunes, they might as well be dead, took one tremendous jump and went out and drowned themselves.

CHAPTER XLII.

The Big Deliverer Pours Out on the Fleas an Awful Stream of Scorching Truths, Which are as Much an Indictment of the Dogs as of the Fleas.—The Police Dogs Go in Out of the Wet.—Desperate Last Effort of the Fleas to Regain Their Lost Power.—End of the Fleas.—Establishment of Pure Dogogracy Under a Cleaned and Purified Flag of the Truly Free.

BUT in spite of the consternation amongst the fleas, the big dog remorselessly continued: “Furthermore, ye meanest and hatefullest suckers of blood; ye enterprising, industrious and pushing ABSORBERS OF THE PRODUCTS OF OTHERS’ INDUSTRY; ye thieves, hear me! Ye have broken down the natural and just system of society, under which each dog got the full reward of his own industry.

“And it was all our fault that ye did it. By the ignorant consent of the fools amongst us, ye got on our backs and we FOOLS made it legal for you to be RASCALS and suck our blood. We idiots made it compulsory on ourselves to carry you, feed you, fatten you, pamper you. We starved ourselves to make you rotten with overfeeding; and these two unnatural extremes we made to meet and form a sickening spectacle for High Heaven to spue over. We flattered you, we worshipped, praised, lauded and magnified you. We made you our gods, and taught ourselves to shake and tremble in the unapproachable light and glory of your infinite divinity. And ye were but fleas—little dirty insects, made great only by our stupid suffrage.

Oh, the infinite marvel of it! that the world of dogs should ever have gone so blind, imbecile and demented as to have lifted you dirty pests into the throne of the world, and made you the lords of all power and might. How many million yards of the sackcloth, and tons of the ashes of repentance will this, our mighty sin, need for its expiation! Dogs, dogs, that we were ever to have done it! But we did it; and for our reward ye drove us, ye bled us, ye tortured us, ye killed us and made merry over our corpses. Oh, shame and everlasting contempt be on us that we—without whose permission ye never could have existed one minute—should, in our fathomless stupidity, have created you, and then have abdicated the throne of our sovereignty and put you despicable, infinitesimal cusses into it!

“This was our sin; and ye, our creation, have been our just punishment. This is always Heaven’s judgment on those who sin against themselves by giving up their self respect, and surrendering their natural rights. We reap as we have sowed. We stripped ourselves of our God-given and inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—things that were NOT OURS To GIVE AWAY—and sinfully gave them over to you, and lo! ye were the very ones who mocked and scourged our nakedness. We became your slaves and thereby gave you the right to despise us. We invested you with the whip and the spur, and thereby invested you with the right to drive us to the devil. And ye have driven us to the devil. And we have had the added misery of seeing you trying to amuse us while driving us there.

“Ye stole all we had, and when thousands of us died of want your compassion was touched, and ye sent down for our relief quite a lot of good things, accompanied by tracts and choice extracts of Scripture, and a few requests that we be thankful and love the givers. But some of us, nosing amongst these gifts, recognized them as the same ones ye had stolen from us; and while the poor fools amongst us were trotting around thankfully licking their chops, and wagging their little tails, and tearfully and prayerfully invoking God’s choicest blessings upon you, we walked off disgusted that there should live fools so God-forsaken as to be thankful for the return of a crumb from the thief who stole his loaf. Ye called it CHARITY, and the poor fools sent up a request to God to remember you in love for it. We called it the small articles the thief is obliged to drop because Nemesis is after him; and we prayed God to send a time when we could remember you—WITH AN EXTINGUISHER.

“And this time has come now. We came here and heard you devising new schemes to divert us from our discontent. Ye knew that discontent is the precursor of investigation and the knowledge of what is amiss. We heard you propose everything but the only thing needful, viz: TO GET OFF OUR BACKS. Ye would make us believe that ye sought OUR GOOD; but the real motive of your conduct was YOUR OWN SAFETY. Your blood sucking franchise being your very life, ye could not, of course, think of giving it up; so ye proposed to throw a meatless bone to the dogs in the shape of Free Gospel, Free Music, Free Pictures and CHARITY BALLS—which are nothing less than a damnable endeavor to palm off on God and us your love of display and riotous pleasure as CHARITY. Ye must have your hops anyhow. Ye must have your ostentatious displays of pride and property, and your nights of dissipation; but the happy thought struck you that you might kill two birds with one stone, and have your unrestricted, selfish, fleshly pleasures, and by garbing them in the disguise of Charity, get also by means of them into Heaven’s good book. But we have found you out, and concluded that if we have our own freedom we can get our own gospel and music and pictures and do our own dancing.

“Therefore, we, in our plenary power to enforce this decision, do enact that we will do without fleas, and we do hereby resume the control of our own bodies; and therewith we resume all our self-alienated rights and powers; and at the same time we give, grant and convey to you, for your behoof and benefit, all that gospel, that music and those pictures ye have provided for us. We shall not need them now; ye may, for, lo! your doom is sealed.”

“What doom? What dog insolence is this?” cried one of the eminent fleas, in a bold tone. “Dost thou not know, dog, that this is sedition, anarchy and a breach of the peace? Begone! thou and thy low-born, dirty and ill-smelling crew, or by the Law we will turn you over to the police dogs.” And all the other fleas, plucking up heart at these words, cried out too; “Yes, begone!”

But the dogs laughed, and their leader said: “The day of dogs’ obedience to the commands of fleas is gone. Said I not unto you that their eyes had been moistened with the Dilute Solution of Common Sense, and that they can now see through fleas? Ye have not heard; but I and these my fellow dogs were commissioned by the other dogs of Canisville to come here and tell you that a new Will of the Dogs Expresser hath been set up, a very much bigger, better and more effective one than that which ye commanded your slaves and imported beasts to destroy and burn with fire. This Expresser hath the novel but righteous provision for dogs to sit at the bottom of the shute thereof and do the counting. This hath been set up in the Public Place and all the dogs have this day dropped their little wills into the slot thereof, and when the trap in the bottom was pulled and the wills were counted it was found that there was a Great Majority, and the Great Majority said that both the fraudulent Nighuntos and the swindling Faraways should get away from the Tank, that the Blood and Bones Mill should be broken down and the Handle sold to the devil; that the lying Bamboozling Committee and the Great Many Headed Daily Press should be branded as frauds, and that all dogs, big, little and whatsoever, should be absolutely forbidden to contribute in any degree to the maintenance of fleas, and any dog found guilty of having the smallest flea on him should be treated as a public enemy and driven out of the city into the wilderness.

“The police dogs, alarmed at this universal coming of the dogs to their senses, have retired to their kennels, to watch the weathercock, and some very impulsive ones, being quite confident that the dogs are now on top, have very ostentatiously clubbed several eminent fleas; and the Bamboozlers and the Monstrous Fleas, after calling in vain on the prudent and non-committal police dogs to club back to slavery the newly self-enfranchised dogs, have run away. Bones and meat are coming out of their hiding places, and flesh is beginning to grow over the poor dogs’ bones; and we are here to tell you to depart peaceably and find some other community of fools to live on, or live on one another, we care not which.”

But the fleas flew into a great rage, and cried out: “To Hades with your infernal Expresser! Fleas always have been on top, and will be forever!” and, yelling “Down with Sedition,” they with one accord jumped upon the backs of the dogs, and knowing it was now a case of victory or death, they beset them sorely, saying they would teach the miserable, thankless curs who was master. There were many fleas to each dog, and they were very fierce and savage, but not a dog whined or scratched. With tail erect and a noble light in his intelligent eye, the leader turned and departed, followed in like manner by all the others. They passed a place where a lot of timber had been cut and each seized a big chip in his mouth as he trotted along. Soon they came to where flowed a considerable stream of water, on the bank of which they formed in reverse order. Then, with tails trailed in the very dust, and to the murmuring music of the moving waters, they waded in backwards as far as they could until nothing but the chips and the very tip of each nose was above the water. This caused the fleas to drop all thoughts but those of self-preservation, and in a scrambling panic they scampered from dry point to dry point till the chip was the only resting place for their feet. Then, holding each nose upright and each chip well aloft, each dog sank, until nothing but the chip, black with a cursing mob of outwitted and dethroned blood-suckers, was to be seen above the water. A moment more and each dog let go his chip and came to the surface a little way up stream, giving the widest possible berth to any chips floating away from his fellow dogs. Farther up the stream they took to the banks, on which they gathered together and from which they exhorted the drowning fleas to practice the virtue of content, and to look above to that Heaven to which they had so often pointed the dogs. But as the mob of erstwhile powerful tyrants floated away into the dim, forgotten Past, there came for answer only a wail of despair and a dying prayer that God would avenge them some day on a wicked and thankless race of dogs. The dogs, however, with humble and contrite hearts, burst forth into a dog song of deliverance, which ran:

And the dogs with songs and joy marched back to the city, and Pup McPoodle and all his gang of wicked and cowardly courtier dogs, hearing of their coming, were seized with terror, and “put” with such rapidity that the momentum of their going carried them far out of sight, and it is supposed they are going still.

And the free and happy dogs called the Big Dog Retriever, “for,” said they, “he hath retrieved our lost prosperity,” and they cried aloud that he be elected chief; but the Big Dog would not consent, and he said unto them: “No; I will not be your chief. Be ye your own chief; let this, for the future, be a government of the dogs, by the dogs, and for the dogs; delegate not your power to anyone, be he never so wise and good, for the dogs that do that commit treason against themselves, and if their chief sell them to the fleas, they are but justly punished, as ye have been by Pup McPoodle.” And all the dogs, having still the influence of the Dilute Solution in their eyes, cried out with one accord: “That is Plain Common Sense; we will be the government, and no one shall have the power.”

And it was so. And they set up and kept up all the year round a great, big, free Will of the Dogs Expresser, and through it they passed a law that whatsoever law should henceforth be made should be ratified by the dogs through the Will Expresser. And it was so. And all laws whatsoever which they had were ratified through it and without its ratification was no law made that was made. And their laws were very few and very good; for they found that the wisdom of all the dogs was greater than the wisdom of any one dog or of any few dogs; and there being very few laws, they were simple and easy to understand, for the object sought thereby was Justice and not to fatten fleas.

They also made what they called a Constitution—a Solemn League and Covenant—which they ratified seven times through the Will Expresser, that provided that fleas and suckers of any description should be regarded as Unconstitutional insects, to be arrested on sight and driven ignominiously out of town, and that any law to allow them an existence amongst dogs should be Unconstitutional, and that any dog who should ever propose such a law should be declared a traitor to the community, and condemned to abide by himself in the wilderness, and that any dog who even spoke with any favor of fleas should be deemed insane and be locked up out of sight.

So peace, good order and freedom abounded, and with these came more to eat than they ever needed.

And having true Freedom in the land they pulled down the Liberty Bell, and the grotesque copper Lie that disfigured the prospect at the gates of the city, and broke them both up for old junk, for they said they could not endure the sight of emblems that were lies when they were put up, and only reminded them of the days when they were bamboozled and cheated; and anyway, they said, real true Freedom was seen and felt everywhere, and needed no clangor of metal to proclaim its existence; for a Freedom that needed such an infernal din and racket and oratory and show to make itself known was evidently not self-evident.

And as for the old Flag of the Free, they hardly knew what to do with it. Some said that the fleas and the Bamboozlers had made such a lie of it, had so blasphemed Liberty in its name, and had so defiled it by hoisting it over so many damnable and bloody iniquities that, really, the only proper thing to do was to burn it and devise a new one. But some said that as it was originally devised by fairly honest dogs who had had no education concerning and experience with fleas, such as the expensive and terrible one they had just gone through, they thought if the old Flag were well fumigated to take away the sickening smell of fleas that clung to it, and were well scrubbed and scoured, and had all the dirt washed out of it, it would do very well. So they cleansed and purified it, and set it up; and under it they lived perfectly happy ever after.

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