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.
[Illustration]
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.