LIBERTY, LOTS OF IT.—BUT VICTUALS ARE UNFORTUNATELY IN
INVERSE PROPORTION.—MUTUAL CONGRATULATION OF THE FLEAS
ON THE VERY SATISFACTORY STATE OF THINGS.—A POINT
OVERLOOKED; WHICH PROVES THAT THE BEST LAID SCHEMES OF
MICE AND FLEAS GANG AFT AGLEE.—ILLEGAL HUNGER.—ALMIGHTY
TOMMY.
THE Liberty Goddess consecrating was a perfect success; the dogs were
delighted and happy, and as they staggered back, hungry and weary, to
the holes and hiding places they called their homes, a sweet peace and
content was upon them. Why they were content and peaceful they did not
know and could not tell; but in a dazed and hypnotic way, they felt
that though the fleas upon them and round about them were eating them
up; though their poor bones were protruding through their skins, and
disease, and anæmia were becoming universal, they had an intangible
property they called a Free Country, a Glorious Flag, and a wonderful
Statue that in some mysterious way made them a Great Nation.
And the Bamboozling Committee were delighted even unto delirium, and
they reported unto the Board of Public Safety that God had prospered
their efforts beyond their most sanguine expectations, and that the dogs
were, with perhaps a few exceptions—whom they hoped the police would
diligently make note of, with a view to their early, total and complete
extirpation and extinction—now reduced to a very satisfactory state of
drivelling idiocy, and law abiding patriotism, and that they could be
led by the nose whithersoever the Board might desire; that the latest
acquisition to their Committee—the Great Many Headed Daily Press,
could not be too highly spoken of for its wonderful efficiency; in
fact it had—though the latest—proved itself the greatest acquisition
to their bamboozling forces; that in fact it was more than a whole
Bamboozling Committee in itself, and could devise more and slicker dog
bamboozlements in five minutes than the whole Committee could in five
months; that its terms were very simple, being only that they it served
should be the highest bidders, which of course meant that the dogs could
never be “in it” at bidding with the fleas, and therefore it would be
at the bidding of the fleas forever and forever, Amen. And finally they
wished to accord the Crown and the Palm to the Great Many Headed Daily
Press.
And the Board reported to the Government and the Monstrous Fleas that
the Country was saved, bless the Lord; that the Period of Trouble was
all safely past, thank God; that all dangerous combinations of White
Labellers were broken up beyond all hope of future revival, Heaven be
praised; that all contagious thinking and speaking dogs were known to
the police and were marked for slaughter, with God’s help; that the
right relationship between the dogs and the fleas had been properly
defined and established, and that under Providence all danger of the
natural, God-ordained right of fleas to live on dogs being again brought
into question was passed away, praise God; and that peace, patriotism,
good order, submission to authority, and ever-growing blood dividends,
were now established on a firm and ever enduring basis, Hallelujah.
All which was quite true. But there was one thing that neither the
Great Many Headed Daily Press nor the Bamboozling Committee, nor the
Government, nor the Monstrous Fleas could devise; that no power on
earth ever was able to devise; that no power on earth ever will be
able to devise; and that is, how dogs can be starved forever and yet
be made to yield the same amount of blood to the sucking of fleas. No
power ever did it, but every power believes it can be done, and that
_it_ can do it. Therefore the Canisville fleas imagined they had made
all arrangements to do it, and so settled themselves down in comfort
and peace to the everlasting bliss of drinking themselves eternally
fuller and tighter; every little flea seeing good prospects of becoming
a big flea, and every big flea looking hopefully forward to becoming
a Monstrous Flea, and every Monstrous Flea looking savagely gleefully
forward to the glorious time when his paunch should measure miles and
miles around, and he should be simply an immense reservoir of blood,
_blood_, BLOOD, BLOOD.
But alas! The greed of the fleas in cornering the food of the dogs to
reduce them to servility, along with their increased avidity for their
blood, overreached itself, and dogs everywhere began to die; and as the
dearth increased, the surviving ones went insane and more savagely than
ever fought and killed one another for the odd scraps that were now
to be found. And the dying off of so many dogs threw vast multitudes
of fleas _out of dog_, and _they_ began to starve too; and when they
began to starve they went, for want of dog, to fighting and devouring
one another; all which mightily pleased the Monstrous Fleas, which did
own the Blood and Bones Grindery and the Government, and pretty nearly
everything else by this time; and they chuckled and said, “Now shall
the pesky little and middle sized fleas be starved out, and there will
be all the more blood for us, and we shall possess the earth and dwell
alone in it, and grow and grow and grow until none shall be so big as
we, for we are surely the children of Heaven, and the favorites of the
Most High; yes we are.”
And the famine increased in Canisville, and the dogs were sore
distressed and cried aloud to Heaven for help. But the heavens were as
brass and heard not; so, turning from that quarter, they turned to the
Government and to the fleas, and got together great multitudes of the
most hungry of their number and made unto themselves a large Flag of
the Free, and several Flags of the Hungry, and marched in procession,
bearing these on high, and also large legends such as “We want bread,”
“We want work,” “We are hungry,” “Merciful fleas, do something for us,”
“We are bloodless; oh fleas, give us blood.”
And the noise of their marching was disturbing to the peace and repose
of the Monstrous Fleas, and they ordered Pup McPoodle to order the
police dogs to order it stopped; and the chief of the police dogs, being
very fat and sleek and plethoric of blood himself, and being utterly
unable to understand what hunger meant, spake austerely unto them, and
said: “By the almighty power in me vested, as Public Functionary of
the Great Public (the fleas), this thing has got to stop right here.
What the Satan you’ve got to march for, I ken not. What the Satan
you mean by being hungry, I cannot for the life of me comprehend. I
don’t know what the word ‘Hunger’ means, but I believe it’s an illegal
word and contrary to the Constitution. [Voice in the crowd, “It is
contrary to _our_ constitutions, too.”] I have been told that it means
Anarchy, which I don’t quite comprehend, but which, I know, is illegal;
consequently disperse, get out, vamose, and go away, and don’t ever let
me hear of this illegal business of getting hungry again, or by my holy
williamstick I will make things red hot for you. I, the Almighty Tommy,
have spoken.”
[Illustration]
So the poor skinny dogs, withered by the red hot glance of the Almighty
Tommy’s eye, and scorched by his burning words, and moreover having
been thus so plainly caught, _flagrante delicto_, in the illegal state
of being hungry and expressing the fact in words, did haul down their
legends and their Flags of the Hungry, and lifting up the Flag of the
Free as high as possible, in token of enhanced reverence for the Law
and the Constitution, marched back and dispersed to their several
holes and dens, where hundreds of them meekly lay down and legally
and constitutionally died of starvation, but where they were not
discovered until their poor festering corpses had raised an illegal and
unconstitutional stench.