PIETY’S PHILOSOPHY OF POVERTY.—ANDRONICUS CARNIVOROUS
AND HIS GLORY.
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration]
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.