SHOWS THERE’S NOTHING LIKE PATRIOTISM TO HUMBUG, STARVE
AND SWINDLE THE MASSES WITH; AND NOTHING LIKE STATISTICS
TO LIE WITH.—THE GREAT GEE WHIZZ APPEARS, SEEKING SOME
ONE TO SELL ITS SERVICES TO.—THE BAMBOOZLERS HIRE IT.
IT was many days before the force of the Great Bamboozle spent itself.
Though the scramble and scratching for bones was even fiercer than ever;
and though the infernal grind at the Handle of the Blood Mill grew
daily more hellish, and the cruel greed of the bloated Monstrous Fleas
grew daily more adamantine and pitiless; though robbery, murder, death
by starvation and suicide grew daily more common, the dogs had been so
thoroughly hypnotized that they perversely sought everywhere for a cause
for all these things save in the right place.
They had graduated so well in the course of patriotism they had recently
been put through that in their midnight meetings together, to bark and
talk over their distressful condition, they put up a fac-simile of
the great Flag of Canisville and ordered that every meeting be opened
by genuflexion to the Flag of Freedom and Prosperity, and closed by
prostration to the Flag of Liberty and Plethoric Stomach; and further
ordered that all speeches, arguments and discussions should proceed upon
certain indubitable and undiscussible premises called Sacred Truths.
They were:
(1.) This is a Free Country.
(2.) Our Flag is the Flag of Liberty.
(3.) All Good is indigenous to Canisville.
(4.) All Evil comes from Abroad.
And they ordained that all doubt of these Sacred Truths was mortal sin
that could never be atoned for, neither in this world nor in that which
is to come; and that any dog who in any speech, argument or discussion
should step off these premises, and by assertion, hint or insinuation,
or even careless construction of his sentences, should convey or cause
to be conveyed, the understanding or impression, in any degree, however
faint, that this country was not or might not be a Free Country; that
this Flag was not or might not be the Flag of Liberty; that all Good was
not or might not be indigenous; and that all Evil did not or possibly
might not come from Abroad, should be instantly killed or fearfully
mutilated. And they furthermore proclaimed that they desired it to be
known to all the world that the dogs and fleas of Canisville and their
Common Flag were so unutterably sacred and superior to the rest of the
world that any insult or ridicule to either would be regarded as a
_casus belli_.
But in time the gnawings of their never ending hunger began to
perplex them sorely. How it was that God had, according to the words
of his prophets Grandadhat, Mak Tinley, Dephool Flea, De Little Wit
Blatherskite and the rest, given them the greater blessing of a Country
and a Flag, and had withholden from them the lesser one of Victuals,
bothered them very much. Of course they were ready at a moment’s notice,
when called on, to die for their Country and Flag when either was in
danger, but why they were dying every day without any notice, without
being called on, and when neither Country nor Flag was in danger,
caused them to scratch their heads. And as for that Average of one
thousand mouthfuls of good Victuals per dog that Mak Tinley’s Statistics
incontrovertibly gave them, they couldn’t make it out at all; for to
make the Average _out_ they had to make the Victuals _in_, and that they
could not do for the life of them.
This was how they would discuss the question. One hungry dog would meet
another on the street and thus would they say:
_First Dog._ “Good morning, brother.”
_Second Dog._ “It is not a good morning.”
_First Dog._ “Whyfore, brother? Art thou not in health?”
_Second Dog._ “No dog in Canisville is in health. Art thou?”
_First Dog._ “Verily, no. I’m hungry.”
_Second Dog._ “That’s strange. So am I; and yet, the great prophet Mak
Tinley, on Bamboozle Day, showed us incontrovertibly that Statistics
give every dog of us an Average of one thousand mouthfuls of Good
Victuals.”
_First Dog._ “He did, and we all know that he is the most truthful of
the Only Original Truth Speakers; and yet I speak the truth, too, when I
state that _my_ Average is about one mouthful per every thousand days.”
_Second Dog._ “That’s about _my_ Average, too. I have examined myself; I
have felt of my stomach, and I cannot find those one thousand mouthfuls
of mine. Lord, I wish I could, I do indeed.”
_First Dog._ “Well, brother, it may be there is some fault or sin in us
that prevents the Blessed Statistics from giving us the blessing. It
may be that there is some wicked way within us; some secret sin that
hinders the entrance of the Average into our stomachs. As the blessed
Blatherskite saith: ‘These things are received by Faith, not by Sight.’”
_Second Dog._ “That’s so, brother; it is certainly _not_ by Sight in our
case. I do believe we have not Faith enough.”
And so they would part, one praying to God to give him a larger Faith,
and the other praying Him to never mind the Faith but to give him a
larger Average.
So the demon, Doubt, again began to creep abroad in Canisville.
Therefore the Bamboozling Committee, carefully noting the perplexed
headshakings and the other sure signs of another outbreak of the
thinking contagion, did wisely take other precautions to forestall it.
And there was a day when they and some of the Monstrous Fleas were
devising further bamboozlements for the dogs, and a Phenomenon came also
among them.
And the Committee said unto the Phenomenon: “Who art thou, and whence
comest thou?”
Then answered the Phenomenon, and said: “I am the Great Many Headed
Daily Press with the Immense Circulation; I am four hundred square miles
of nastiness; and I come from going to and fro in the earth, and from
walking up and down in it.”
And the Committee said: “And what doest thou here, Great Daily Press?”
And the Great Many Headed answered, and said: “I am the Great Gee Whizz,
having a Larger Circulation than all the other Gee Whizzes combined.
I am the bold, fearless, outspoken and independent champion of truth,
honesty, uprightness and good government, and the terror of evil doers;
and I am going about just now seeking an owner whom I may serve.”
“What are thy terms?” asked the Bamboozling Committee, seeing here a
possibly great aid in the Cause.
“My terms are one only,” replied the Phenomenon, “and are that my master
shall be the highest bidder for my services.”
“And what wilt thou do for us if we hire thee?” asked the Committee.
“Absolutely what ye ask me to do; for he that hireth me is my god until
a higher bidder appeareth, when I instantly transfer my allegiance.”
“What we desire done now,” said the Bamboozlers, “is the invention of
handy bamboozlements to fill up the time between one Bamboozle Day and
another.”
“Good!” exclaimed the Great Gee Whizz. “Bid high and I am yours, and ye
shall never regret your bargain.”
So the Bamboozling Committee asked the Monstrous Fleas present to put up
great wealth and buy him for their service, which service, they reminded
the Monstrous Fleas, was the Public Service.
And the Monstrous Fleas there and then bid enormously high for him, and
bought him; and the Phenomenon did there and then contract himself,
body and soul, unto the Bamboozling Committee and their backers, the
Monstrous Fleas, to execute their will in all things until a higher
bidder for his services should appear.
And they said: “O, thou Great Gee Whizz, wherewith wilt thou persuade
the dogs and bamboozle them, for they be many?”
And the Phenomenon said: “Said I not unto you that I am the Great and
Everlasting Gee Whizz, and have a Greater Circulation than all the
other Gee Whizzes combined? Do I not employ a mighty army of invisible
Circulators to go and be everywhere amongst the dogs? Behold! I will be
a lying spirit in the mouths of all these my prophets, and they shall
persuade the foolish dogs that they have found a Savior and a Deliverer
in me.
“I will be their Champion. I will be everywhere about them, above and
below, and will cluck-cluck with a most anxious solicitude over them,
even as a hen cluck-clucketh over her chickens, or as Satan over them
that are sealed unto him. I will be a Holy Shekinah unto them—a pillar
of dust and cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night; and they shall
march and halt obediently as I give them the sign. I will weep and
ululate with them in their miseries and hunger, and none shall come
within leagues of me in my denunciations of the cruel and unjust fleas
that suck their blood. I will rage against you and enrage them, and then
with sound of gong and big drum, and a raising of flags, I will give to
eat unto the hungriest of them, and they shall know that I am the Great
Many Headed Gee Whizz and Champion of the poor and the oppressed. Thus
shall I be a god unto them, going before them, and they shall swear by
me, and meekly follow whithersoever I go; and _I will go your way every
time_.
“I will daily and eveningly point out to them that their woes are due
not to _fleas_, but only to _bad_ fleas; and every morning and evening I
will announce that I, the Great Gee Whizz, having a Greater Circulation
than all the other Gee Whizzes combined, have a brand-new great scheme
on hand, that shall infallibly deliver them from all their woes; and
every day I will astound them with a great new disclosure of some
gigantic and overshadowing wickedness of the bad fleas, which I alone,
the great Gee Whizz, have exclusively discovered; and I will keep them
forever believing that they are just on the very point of having all
their wrongs righted, and that by _my_ engineering and the might of _my_
power, a great avalanche of Good Victuals is about to fall upon them.
Thus will I be their Champion and serve you.
“All the news of the day that is of no importance, and is not
thought-provoking, I will give to them, clothed in the garb of Strict
Truth; but all and any news that it may not be expedient unto you to
give them, I will suppress or so garble it that its power to injure you
shall be nullified; for you and I will own and guard all the avenues of
information, and we will make them all converge to and pass through a
sifter and a filter that I will devise, so that these fool dogs shall
get nothing but nice, pure, wholesome, well-selected stuff.
“Moreover, my Bamboozle shall every day give them wholesome amusement.
From the tropically fertile dunghills of my Circulators’ prostituted
brains, I will gather and scatter amongst them every morning and
evening, whole bouquets of the rankest literary toadstools, skunk
cabbage and stinkweeds, which they will take, on the strength of their
faith in me as the Great Gee Whizz, for the choicest of flowers.
Thus will I pervert their noses and they shall utterly lose all
discernment. Oh, I will pour trashy, sickly, foolish, unclean and
horrific blood-and-thunder stories into their disordered brains until
sober truth shall be insipid unto them, and they shall come to hate
everything but that which raises their hair with horror and gives them
the shivers and creeps and blood curdles. Thus will I soften their
brains and imbecilitate their minds, so that they shall be as putty to
your moulding.”
“Enough, enough,” cried Mountebank Dephool Flea. “Thou art my sort to a
dot. If thou canst do only half what thou proposest, thou wilt be worth
to us thy weight in gold.”
“Aye, aye,” cried all the rest of the Bamboozling Committee, and the
Monstrous Fleas, in chorus, “thou art indeed a Flea Savior, sent of God
in the nick of time to deliver us; perform but a tenth of these thy
promises to us, and we will make thee as fat and wealthy as the most
monstrous of us.”
“Aha!” laughed the Phenomenon, “ye know not the greatness and extent
of my power. Ye have devised bamboozlements, which in the simplicity
of your hearts, ye think are very fine; but they are transient
and evanescent, and of themselves will surely fail; for they lack
the essential conditions of successful bamboozlement, namely,
_semi-daily continuance_. Bamboozlements, to be enduring, must be
applied daily; and therein do I prove my inestimable value to you,
for I am the Great Many Headed Semi-Daily Press, the Everlasting
Three-Hundred-and-Sixty-five-Days-a-Year Gee Whizz, and the Immense
Circulator.
“But I will do more than the things I have already promised. I will
amuse them with foolish nonsense. I will every day give them something
to guess. I will offer a basketful of rich grub to the dog that cometh
nearest to solving a problem; like this, for instance: A dog, originally
fifty pounds weight, that has had but one mouthful of meat per day for
six months, and nothing at all for the last three days, is chucked into
the hopper with an initial velocity of ten feet per second, and at an
angle of forty-five degrees; how many somersaults will he describe
before he is lost to sight, how much will he weigh, and how many hairs
will there be on his body? Or I will offer to give a prize unto the
lady flea, that in the opinion of the dogs, is the most beautiful and
popular. Or I will get up a standing-on-one-leg-the-longest contest,
with a nice meaty bone to reward the victor. Or I will offer a reward to
the dog that shall come nearest to guessing which of all my contemporary
Gee Whizzes is the biggest liar. All these diversions will keep them
ever on the _qui vive_, to get prizes; and when every hungry dog sees
there is a chance for a good big bone for a mere guess, he will never
have time or inclination to think on the General Misery Question.
“But finally, I will teach them that their great and solemn duty is to
be _law abiding_ and that violence is wrong. Ye shall make all the laws;
and I will teach them to be _law abiding_. Ye shall enact that all dogs
are to be bitten and bled at the will and pleasure of the fleas, and I
will teach them that to be _law abiding_ is the highest duty of dogs; ye
shall enact that no dog has rights which any flea is bound to respect;
and I will teach the dogs that only by _obeying the law_ can they obtain
their rights. Ye may trample all laws in the mire, for ye have the
police dogs to enforce your right of trampling; and I will teach them
that no dog can hope to retain the love of God and the sympathy of the
Great Public, if he goes to trampling on the law. Ye shall enact that it
is illegal for dogs to eat, and I will teach them to be _law abiding_.
Ye shall enact that hunger in dogs is illegal, that any dog who shall
either legally or illegally ask for or try to obtain food or drink, or
any other of his natural rights, shall be deemed guilty of a crime; and
I will teach them that it is the first duty of dogs to be _law abiding_,
as were the Fathers and Prophets of our country; and to _obey the law_,
as all fleas and good citizens do.
“Thus will I keep all these dogs befooled, and fuddled and muddled,
so that nothing short of the direst and most unforeseen accident will
enable them to see the joke.
“And if any dog, by reason of these hard lines, shall growl and make a
fuss, and go to illegally taking any of his natural rights, or in any
other way make himself obnoxious to you, and ye grow weary and want him
killed, all ye need do is to express your desire and it shall be done. I
will promptly set my innumerable Circulators to prophesy falsely against
him, to sneer him down, to ridicule him down, to write him down, and
make Public Opinion ripe for the police dogs to grab him, and throttle
him and extinguish him; for I, the Great I Am, am an Accuser, Judge and
Jury, at your service.”
And all the Committee and all the Monstrous Fleas rejoiced and were
glad, and said unto the Phenomenon: “Go forth and do as thou hast said;
be a lying and bamboozling spirit unto all these dogs and Heaven bless
thee.”
[Illustration]