Transcriber’s Note: Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
[Illustration]
THE DOGS AND THE FLEAS
BY
ONE OF THE DOGS
ILLUSTRATED
PUBLISHED BY
DOUGLAS MCCALLUM
90 WASHINGTON ST. CHICAGO ILL.
1893
COPYRIGHT 1893
BY
DOUGLAS McCALLUM
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
ELECTROTYPED BY THE
LIBBY & SHERWOOD PRINTING CO.
CHICAGO.
CONTENTS
Chapter Page
PREFACE. 1
CHAPTER I. 5
CHAPTER II. 8
CHAPTER III. 18
CHAPTER IV. 24
CHAPTER V. 28
CHAPTER VI. 32
CHAPTER VII. 38
CHAPTER VIII. 42
CHAPTER IX. 48
CHAPTER X. 57
CHAPTER XI. 63
CHAPTER XII. 69
CHAPTER XIII. 76
CHAPTER XIV. 80
CHAPTER XV. 83
CHAPTER XVI. 88
CHAPTER XVII. 91
CHAPTER XVIII. 97
CHAPTER XIX. 103
CHAPTER XX. 111
CHAPTER XXI. 117
CHAPTER XXII. 121
CHAPTER XXIII. 130
CHAPTER XXIV. 137
CHAPTER XXV. 144
CHAPTER XXVI. 149
CHAPTER XXVII. 156
CHAPTER XXVIII. 162
CHAPTER XXIX. 171
CHAPTER XXX. 175
CHAPTER XXXI. 180
CHAPTER XXXII. 187
CHAPTER XXXIII. 197
CHAPTER XXXIV. 206
CHAPTER XXXV. 214
CHAPTER XXXVI. 220
CHAPTER XXXVII. 227
CHAPTER XXXVIII. 235
CHAPTER XXXIX. 243
CHAPTER XL. 249
CHAPTER XLI. 254
CHAPTER XLII. 264
PREFACE.
Henry Ward Beecher, in a sermon shortly before his death, said America
was going through a period of disgrace. This was true; for there had
come to pass, what the prophetic Lincoln had foretold, that, as the
result of the war, monopolies had been enthroned, that had filled the
land with corruption and imperilled the liberties of the people.
To-day the period of disgrace is worse than then, for the corrupt tree
which was then bearing so luxuriant a crop has had several years more in
which to develop its fruit-bearing capacity.
On every hand Mammon reigns. His throne has been set up in the very
place of sovereignty. His rule is universal and absolute. The price of
his favor is the sacrifice of all truth, virtue and honor. Honest, hard
work has become the synonym of poverty; and it has become the fixed
rule of our civilization—rule with absolutely no exception—that
no one can come to great wealth except by some of the many forms of
legal stealing. At his feet all organized institutions bow and worship.
Politics are corrupt to the core. Our legislatures—as Beecher used
to declare of that of New York—are everywhere the shambles where
legislators are bought and sold like sheep. Political “bosses” possess,
and lord it over, the souls and bodies of the chattel voters of the
“parties” with as brutal a despotism as ever Czar or Kaiser wielded.
Legislation-favored monopolists of the various means of the people’s
“life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” are openly and commonly
termed “Kings,” “Lords,” “Barons,” as though in undisguised contempt of
the thinly veiled pretense that this is a republic.
To-day is fulfilled that which thirty-six years ago was prophesied by
Lord Macauley, that, America’s public lands being all gone, England’s
poverty would be reproduced in our cities. It is literally true as he
foretold, that in Chicago there is a multitude of people none of whom
has had more than half a breakfast, or expects to have more than half a
dinner.
Our daily crop of common theft, murder, suicide and insanity is probably
greater than that of any other country; while the crop of respectable,
pious and educated scoundrelism, embezzlement, fraud and crime was
probably never paralleled in the worst days of the worst monarchy that
ever existed, for the thousands of our daily newspapers the country over
have little else than the records of the universally abounding venality,
corruption and wickedness with which to fill their columns.
Business, trade and commerce are nothing less than a chaos of clashing,
discordant self-interests; a universal war; a pandemonium of noisy
lying, overreaching, cheating and stealing.
Patriotism, too—especially with our so called upper classes—has
become almost universally a “livery of Heaven to serve the devil in,”
and is the particular characteristic of the hypocritical scoundrels
whose whole business in life it has been to trade on the necessities
of the Government, and to make money out of the wholesale theft of
the public domain, the sale of the liberties of the people, and the
bonding and mortgaging of the future products of their labor—even unto
those of the grandchildren of generations yet unborn—to the leeches
and loafing non-producers of every foreign country. The land is full
of such worse than Benedict Arnolds. Blatant hypocrites they are,
who—Judas-like—ostentatiously kiss the Flag and worship the republic
to-day, but are ready at any convenient moment to haul down the one and
overthrow the other for an extra five per cent. dividend on the bondage
of the people.
The Church, as always, is the willing handmaid of the oppressor
everywhere; and to suit the wealthy lords who are her chief support,
preaches a Mammonized God and an insipid, harmless, garbled and
un-Christlike Christ; and in all her wide domain, has no real hope or
help for the groaning millions but a shadowy future world.
For this universal degeneracy the people themselves are wholly to blame.
Was it not Montesquieu who said “all governments are as bad as the
people will let them be?” They are the masters whensoever they will so
to be. But they do not will, because they are ignorant and asleep. When
they shall awake and come to a knowledge of their wrongs, they will have
but to command through the ballot box, and they shall cease.
We need a new race of Whittiers, Lowells, Phillipses, Lincolns and
Garrisons to arouse the people from their lethargy and inspire them
to take back their stolen heritage of rights, before their one last
peaceful remedy, the ballot, shall be stolen away too.
To help open their eyes, and help on that blessed time when this shall
really be a government of the people, by the people, and for the people,
this little book was written.
THE AUTHOR.
DECEMBER, 1893.
THE DOGS AND THE FLEAS.
CHAPTER I.
CANISVILLE.—FOUNDED BY REBEL DOGS FROM
KYHIDOM.—PROSPERITY AND HAPPINESS OF THE EARLY
CANISVILLIANS.
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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.
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