DELUSION OF THE DOG-FLEA-MONKEYS.—THE PORTRAIT.—HOW IT
WAS COPIED.
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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.
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