THE TIMES OUT OF JOINT.—THE POLICE DOGS GROWL AND
THREATEN REVOLT.—THE SALARIED BARKERS AWAKE AND GET UP
A “REVIVAL.”—GREAT CONFERENCE OF ALL THE GREAT LIGHTS
OF PIETYDOM.—A LONG PULL AND A STRONG PULL, AND A PULL
ALTOGETHER, FOR THE SALVATION OF THE DOGS, RESOLVED ON.
THE bamboozle of the Bell of Liberty had been a grand success while it
lasted. As a dream, a stimulating mental narcotism, a beautiful period
of sweet oblivion, into which the hard and cruel facts of the dogs’
daily lives had been thrown and temporarily buried, it was very restful
and enjoyable to them. But starvation, disease and universal tyranny,
though buried, were not decreed out of being; and scarcely had the last
tones of sweet Liberty’s Bell died out and the show closed, ere those
horrid realities began to creep and sneak from their graves and smite
the yet dazed and dreaming dogs. With skeleton hands they smote them on
the head and in the stomach, and with mercilessly cruel fingers poked
open their hypnotized eyes, and with fiendish laughter mocked them,
and bade them look and see that in spite of Liberty Shows of every
sort, the times were somehow out of joint. Times were indeed bad. Gaunt
Famine, gaunter than ever, stalked through the land, smiting down her
victims more pitilessly than ever, as though in jealous revenge for the
attentions they had lately lavished on her rival, Liberty. Of course the
dogs did the starving—most of it; but as the dogs were the source of
the fleas’ existence, why, even many of _them_ fell sick of hunger and
dwindled away and died. Even the police dogs, for whom Pup McPoodle and
all the Monstrous Fleas made extra special strenuous efforts to keep in
good flesh, seeing that their zeal for Order depended entirely on that,
did suffer somewhat from the stringency. They did not always get their
basketfuls punctually, and were several times delayed in their dining,
and they began to grumble and complain that if this kind of outrage on
their sacred carcases were not soon stopped, they would get up a riot on
their own hook and club somebody, for they had never been used to being
hungry, and by the great Holy Locust, they were not going to be, either,
without knowing the reason why.
Irreligion, Vice, Crime and Immorality stalked abroad, and gave the
multitudinous compulsory-virtue societies a tremendous rush of business,
insomuch that they had to work overtime. But an evil of far more
portentousness and gravity than all these combined ensued: the salaried
barkers in the churches had their basketfuls diminished; their churches
were sometimes empty and were never full.
Therefore, as the salaried barkers had, through long experience, come to
observe that a famine was nearly always accompanied by what they called
a “great outpouring of the spirit,” and the setting in of a great
“revival,” and as a “revival” meant fuller churches, and consequently a
revival of the supplies of meat, they determined to hump themselves with
great energy, and bring about the revival that, according to the famine,
was now about due. So they called a conference of all the fat fleas, the
eminent fleas, and the most pious of the Monstrous Fleas, and the
barking dogs, not only of Canisville, but of the country roundabout, to
devise newer and better schemes for what they called “reaching the
masses,”—or “them asses” as one totally depraved dog profanely
remarked.
And it was a great time. For weeks all the lady fleas, and all other
fleas who were in “sympathy” with the dogs, and had their “welfare” at
heart, were busy every day in getting a place ready for the reception of
the conference. It was fitted up “regardless of expense,” and decorated
especially with costly flowers, and mottoed banners, and choice texts of
“Holy Scripture,” exquisitely wrought in gold and silver, on expensive
silks. The air was heavy with perfumes of the rarest sorts; the walls
were resplendent with mirrors and pictures, loaned by the wealthiest
suckers; and everything that could be done _was_ done to minister to the
“solemnity” of the occasion, and to the comfort of the most eminent and
fat-salaried barkers—the D. D.’s, L.L. D.’s, B. A.’s, M. A.’s,
Reverends, Very Reverends, Much Reverends, Right Reverends, Wrong
Reverends, Right Reverend Fathers in God, His Grace, His Eminence, His
Sacredness, His Holiness, who had been invited from far and near, to
assist Heaven in bringing about the “revival.” And a great and shining
galaxy of fat and Monstrous Fleas, with “Professor,” “Honorable,” “Right
Honorable,” “His Nibs,” “His Nobs,” “His Jags,” “His Jiblets,” “His
Joblots,” to their names were there also. Oh, they were a highly select
and respectable and well-conditioned body of fleas and barkers that met
together that day to devise the ways and means of making poor dogs
happy.
Now it was remarked that to this great conference of the pious fleas and
their salaried barkers to devise the salvation of dogs _not a solitary
poor working dog was invited_, and no one even called to ask the opinion
of any dog on the subject; but all the eminent and pious fleas there
proceeded to make speeches, which were duly taken down and recorded in
the book of the chronicles of the world’s eminent saints, who have spent
their lives trying to lift up the poor, while riding on their backs.
And Tee de Little Wit Blatherskite, who had had a good breakfast and
was more than usually full of divine zeal, said they were grieved
beyond expression to find that, in spite of the efforts that had been
expended for the benefit of poor dogs, their poverty, discontent and
irreligion were on the increase. But not this alone; for lately it had
come to their knowledge that far more alarming symptoms had broken out.
In several quarters, it was rumored, there had appeared several strange
dogs of uncouth visage and long hair, who had evidently determined to
poison the minds of the whole community of dogs.
These abominable new comers—who they hoped for the honor of Canisville
were from some foreign country—had spoken evil of religion, saying it
was only a crafty dodge of the fleas to deceive dogs with and to hide
from them the fact that _the only thing that was amiss with dogs was_
FLEAS. And these same foreign dogs had even gone so far as to call fleas
SUCKERS and other wicked epithets, and to tell the dogs that until
they got rid of the fleas they would never get rid of their miseries.
Now, brethren, here a real peril menaced them; here, brethren, were
the hateful devils of Singletaxism, Anarchism, Communism, Socialism,
Populism, Nationalism, and many other blasphemous anti-flea isms,
shoving their noses in our midst, and God only knew what the end of
it was to be. Here were certain lewd dogs of the baser sort—idle,
good-for-nothing agitators, no doubt, who lived on their more simple,
honest and law abiding fellow-dogs—going about preaching the pestilent
doctrines of social discontent, and free thought, and equal rights,
and setting class against class—yes, brethren, _setting class against
class_; only think of it!—and was nothing to be done? Were they to
sit there supinely looking on while those vile foreign agitators were
undermining the very foundations of Religion and Social Order? Why,
it might actually come to pass, if some energetic measures were not
immediately undertaken, that the whole race of dogs would grow to hate
the race of fleas, and even try to exterminate them as they once did in
Frankoland, which would result in putting back the cause of Religion a
hundred years, as it had done there. Oh, brethren, it was time to be
up and doing. Oh, brethren, scepticism and infidelity were taking hold
of dogs nowadays. Oh, brethren, could we not revive the laws against
blasphemy, and the use of the Blue Thunderbolts with which to _protect
the Almighty_? Had we no jails and gallows to protect us and keep these
dogs in the paths of true religion? Oh, brethren, only a few days ago,
as one of our most fat and pious pew holders was on his way to church,
he was insulted by some dogs who, no doubt, had imbibed the pestilent
heresies now being preached. They barked out at him: “There goes a
sucker. That’s the son-of-a-gun what keeps us thin and poor;” and made
other insolent and ungrammatical remarks, and one vile fellow slyly
threw a gob of mud that hit him on the paunch. Oh, brethren, it needed
great grace and entire sanctification for our brother to bear it. And no
doubt, brethren, something was urgently needed to reach the masses.
[Illustration]
Then the conference adjourned for recess and luncheon, which consisted
of every sort of costly viands, served on costly plate; of rare and
costly fruits, and wines of exquisite “bouquet,” all set out amid a
display of the very rarest exotics, that cost exceeding much wealth, and
to the accompaniment of an orchestra of very talented minstrels.
This over, and “thanks” having been rendered by His Grace, the
Serene and Excessively Distinguished Archiepiscopus of the Diocese
of Puliciania, who had travelled a thousand miles “to be present on
this auspicious occasion,” the session was reopened with prayer by the
Veriest Reverend Father in God, Sanguineous F. Plumpdog.
Now, His Grace, the Serene and Excessively Distinguished Archiepiscopus
of the Diocese of Puliciania, was a very large, fat and wheezy dog who
could hardly see out of his eyes for fatness. He had lived amongst, and
ministered to a churchful of big fat fleas so long that he had come to
regard himself as one of them, and always said “we” and “us” and “our.”
So did all the rest of these wonderfully sleek and plump barkers; and so
acceptable were these barkers to their various congregations of fat and
Monstrous Fleas and so uniformly did they never preach any other than an
“acceptable” gospel to them, that the fleas were pleased to regard them
as of their caste.
The first speaker was the Most Reverend, Asthmatic and Holy Archdeacon,
Suckerius P. Paunchiana Fatdog, F. L. U. N. K. E. Y., H. U. M. B. U. G.,
who made a few remarks thus: “Ladies and Gentlefleas—It seems to me
that we, to whom has been committed, _by the wisdom of Almighty God_,
the keeping of great wealth, ought first to guard against the danger
of forgetting that we owe something to the poor dogs whom God, _in His
wisdom has put in a position beneath us_. We ought never to forget
that it is to us that God looks, _as his chosen instruments_, for the
uplifting of the dogs. Why there are dogs and why there are fleas is
one of those inscrutable mysteries that we ought not to pry into, but
reverently accept. For my part, I reverently accept it, and I pray
that I may ever be kept reverent. Certain it is, however, that if ever
the dogs are to be made fat and happy, and uplifted to those things
of the soul and Heaven, we fleas will have to do it. God always works
through means, _and we are the means_. He has ordained the wealthy to
minister to the poor, the strong to bear with the weak, the wise to lead
the foolish, the enlightened to illumine the dark; we are the wealthy,
the strong, the wise, and the enlightened, and woe to us if we shirk
the duty thus laid upon us. Brethren, the one thing we are most apt to
forget is THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST. He came _down_ from his high estate to
uplift the fallen, and it is this going down, _going down_, GOING DOWN,
brethren, to those below us, that is going to save them.
“Let us then carry out this Spirit, and go _down_ to these poor
creatures. Let us walk amongst them; let us show ourselves to them;
let us put on poor raiment and ask them how they do; let us teach them
scientific economy in eating; let us with our own paws show them how one
bone can be made to yield a good dinner for a large family and leave
something over for the morrow; let us teach them how to accept in a
proper spirit the cast-off garments of the “charitable,” and to seek to
be clothed with the “garments of righteousness”; let us invite them to
confide to us their trials and troubles; let us take a genuine interest
in them, and get into their affections, and teach them toil, and thrift,
and temperance, and so, by easy and natural methods—such as wrapping up
pennies and candies in tracts and leaflets—gradually train their minds
to those higher and eternal things and treasures in heaven where neither
moth nor rust break through and steal.”
And all the audience broke out into a storm of applause; and everybody
said that was a most glorious gospel, the Gospel of GOING DOWN. And
everybody looked anxious to get up and go down then and there. And
an enthusiastic Monstrous Flea moved, and another enthusiastic one
seconded, that “We do, here and now, all of us, form ourselves into an
Association to be known as the ‘Going Down Organization Society,’” which
was carried with immense enthusiasm.
[Illustration]