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