A MESSENGER OF EVIL TIDINGS.—THE CONFERENCE
ALARMED.—THE OLD DISEASE REVIVED.—THE CONFERENCE
IN CONFUSION.—MUTUAL RECRIMINATIONS.—INVADED BY
UNWELCOME DOGS.—THE BIG DOG’S FEARFUL INDICTMENT OF THE
FLEAS.—TELLS HOW THE DOGS CAME TO THEIR SENSES.
SCARCELY had the air, agitated with the acclamations following Lady
Vanderbillion Flea’s happy suggestion, recovered its tranquillity, when
a large flea was seen to enter by a side door, near the platform, and,
in evident agitation, present a little note to the presiding angel
of the assembly, His Grace, the Serene and Excessively Distinguished
Archiepiscopus of the Diocese of Puliciania, who, as he perused, was
noticed to turn very pale and shake, while all the fleas looked on with
nervous apprehension. He had scarcely finished, when he beckoned to some
of the most eminent, wealthy and Monstrous Fleas to come with him into a
corner, as he had a matter of vital import to speak to them about.
Whereupon, the assembly of the fleas, always apprehensive of trouble,
could not contain themselves, but cried out to know what was the
matter. So, His Grace, the Serene, etc., etc., in faltering accents
made answer and said: “Alas, Brethren and Sisters, this messenger
hath brought us evil tidings of great grief. He reports that a most
virulent, infectious and contagious epidemic of the thinking disease
has broken out amongst the dogs, infinitely worse than anything
heretofore known; yea, so virulent is it that it seems to defy all the
remedies known to the Bamboozlers’ Pharmacopoeia, which, with God’s
help, were always until now so efficient. So violent and rapid is this
plague, this messenger says, that the victim seems to be taken utterly
without warning. One minute, he is, to all appearances, in the very
best and most satisfactory state of idiocy and drivelling devotion
to Country and Flag, and the next, he is in the throes of the most
dreadful and dangerous sanity. He says the Board of Public Safety, the
Bamboozling Committee and the Great Many Headed Daily Press, have been
hastily summoned, but are gaping at each other in dumb and helpless
bemuddlement; and all the Emdees are in consultation, but are quite
puzzled, for they never knew or heard of such a sudden and widespread
outbreak. He says they say they think it is the recurrence of an old,
and supposed-to-have-been-extinct disease—but which evidently travels
in an elliptical orbit of such immense elongation, that its point of
intersection with the orbit of canine revolution gives the disease about
an every-ten-centuries periodicity of conjunction.
“He says they say it is a disease that attacks the optic nerve of each
eye simultaneously, and is caused by the abnormal intensification and
æsthetization of the anonymous gastric thingumybob, at its point of
junction with the visual organs, and is primarily due to intense and
prolonged hunger and abuse. This disease is known in common language as
“Eye-opening,” and is regarded as a very fatal malady; not, singular
to say, to the dog attacked, but only to the fleas on him, as he
immediately begins to sever those sacred relations which God has
established between him and his fleas, so that they begin to wither and
perish for lack of nourishment.”
And at these ominous words, great fear and trembling came upon all the
assembly, and they began to bewail, and to charge that an ungrateful
Providence had gone back on them, in the very hour when they had
gathered to do something to help him in his work of blessing the dogs;
and they grew bitter in denouncing Pup McPoodle as an incompetent and
unfaithful Executive, and the Boards of Public Health and Safety as a
lot of antiquated old duffers, and the Bamboozling Committee as a lot
of noodles, and not half as smart as they were cracked up to be, and
the Great Many Headed Daily Press, as a fraud and a false prophet, and
everybody and everything else, for betraying them.
[Illustration]
And when His Grace, the Serene, etc., etc., proposed that they sing a
Hymn of Faith and put their trust in Heaven, they gruffly replied that
Hymns of Faith were utterly inadequate as compensation for the utter
loss of dogs to bleed, and as for putting trust in Heaven, that was all
very well, provided one was on the spot to look after things. And when
Tee de Little Wit Blatherskite arose, and, with idiotically histrionic
gestures, began to vociferate that in vision he saw the Lord as a man of
war, coming with chariots of fire, lightning, thunderbolt and tempest,
to the rescue of His Anointed and the discomfiture of the infidel and
irreligious dogs, they rudely told him he was a bag of windy words,
whose fine God didn’t even deliver _him_ in his hour of need; for when
he fell once, lately, into a hundred-foot debt hole, his fellow dogs had
to fill up seventy-seven hundredths of it, before he could scramble out.
And at the very height of this confusion, a great commotion occurred
amongst those near the door, and a Big Dog, followed by a whole troop
of dogs, boldly entered. “What impudence!” said some of the highly
perfumed and delicate lady fleas. “What a disagreeable smell of dog,”
said others. The Charity-Ball enthusiasts, at sight of the dirty mob,
fainted dead away; the fattest of the salaried barkers sneaked out by
the side door; while the eminent, wealthy and Monstrous Fleas, to hide
their terror, grew truculent and made a great hubbub and threatening;
but the Big Dog in a voice of thunder, bade them be silent. The
terror-stricken fleas fell flat, and the Big Dog advancing, extended his
huge paw, and thus addressed them: “Listen, most eminent and respectable
representatives of the most eminent and respectable order of pimps,
barnacles and blood-suckers; I and my gang of fellow-sufferers have been
at the door of your convention for some time past, and we have heard all
your elaborate schemes which you have concocted for our welfare.
[Illustration]
“About the time you fat, full-blooded and comfortable suckers called
this convention to take into consideration the miserable condition of
us dogs, a number of us dogs had the (to you) sublime impudence to call
a convention to take into consideration _our own_ condition; and we
pride ourselves that we have reached a far broader and more practical
conclusion than your worshipful body has come to. As you well know,
there has been brewing amongst us a very deep discontent with our
condition, and a very decided conviction that we knew exactly what was
the matter with us, and how to mend it.
“Some of us had fathers who could remember the honored chieftain, Bull
McMastiff, and the good times dogs had then, and they told us that old
Mastiff used daily to say and repeat: “My dear dogs, beware of the
fleas,” and he prophesied that so surely as they abated their hatred of
fleas, they would sink into poverty, meagreness and misery.
“And so it has been. When Bull McMastiff gave up the ghost, McPoodle, a
bad-for-everything ruler, who, like most other beastly pests and
nuisances, has lived to a most unconscionably great age, relaxed the
stringency of our laws, and allowed the missionaries of the fleas to
settle amongst us, and these missionaries went about amongst us
preaching that McMastiff was an imbecile old fool, who did not know what
was good for dogs; that the fleas were a much maligned and
misrepresented class; that a few fleas—a nice judicious selection—on a
dog, were not only no detriment, but a positive advantage to him; that
they helped his general and particular health; that they purified a
dog’s blood, and enriched it with certain valuable elements, which all
truly healthy dogs need, and that the few drops of blood they took as
dividend, were a mere nothing in comparison to the service they
rendered, that they could assure them that no dog could be said to be
really and truly healthy and complete without at least _some_ fleas upon
him; yea, they went so far as to declare by Heaven and Holy Scripture,
that fleas were _divinely appointed_ to give life and joy and peace to
dogs, and that the race of dogs would die off the face of the earth, if
it were not for them; and they told of very many terrible instances
where whole nations of dogs had utterly perished for want of a few
fleas.
“And we dogs were idiots enough to believe the pious lies they told us,
and we allowed you to become a part of our community; and, very soon, it
fell out that _ye_ became the real, actual community, and _we_ became
your feeders, your providers, your most humble and obedient servants.
We took you to our bodies and very soon ye made them your own, and,
puffed up with pride, ye came to imagine that ye only were the people,
_ye_ were the republic; _ye_ called yourselves on all occasions, ‘the
country,’ ‘the nation.’ _Ye_ made war and peace, and did everything
and got everything but _the fighting and the paying_. _Ye_ got up
centennials, bi, tri and quadri, of this, that and the other, which
_we_ poor starving dogs were bled to pay for and allowed to look at
from a great distance. And the overgrown suckers of other nations sent
their ‘greetings’ to you; and when they, to vary the monotony of their
centennials and anniversaries of this, that and the other, got up a
grand Jubilee Jamboree to commemorate the fiftieth year of the efforts
of a fat and fuzzy old lady sucker, Queen flea of Kyhidom, and her
prolific brood to bleed _their_ dogs to death, _ye_ sent your greetings
and prayers for God Almighty’s blessings on their efforts; and all this
pious snobbery and robbery and jobbery, ye called ‘_drawing closer the
bonds of international comity_.’
[Illustration]
“But us dogs, whom ye condescendingly permit to pay for all this, and
allow to look at the glory of afar off, whom ye permit to read of the
forty-course banquets ye feast at _in our name_, ye taught that we owed
our very life to you, and that it was our duty to give up our daily
blood to you, and give thanks to Almighty God that He had in boundless
mercy so bountifully blessed us with fleas. And we dogs did so deeply
fall into the idiocy and supineness generated by immemorial usage and
custom, that we came to regard this division of us into masses and
classes, sucked and suckers, robbed and robbers, workers and idlers,
starved and overfed, as of natural order and divine appointment.
“That is, most of us did. There were a few who refused to wag the
adulatory tail of approval of this system. We ceased not to howl and
bark day and night our discontent. And for this ye called in dogs
of Belial to witness against some of us, saying, they did blaspheme
God and the Law, and then ye carried them forth and stoned them with
stones, or hanged them with ropes till they died. And ye threw mud
at us in the name of the Lord, and went and told the hungriest and
leanest and foolishest dogs amongst us that we were ‘Socialists,’
‘Seditionists,’ and ‘Anarchists;’ and they, not knowing in their
heart what those words meant, did therefore hound us and mob us and
persecute us for endeavoring to restore to them the liberty they had
lost. Oh, they accused us of disturbing their rest; of trying to make
them discontented; of imperilling their positions with their natural
superiors, the fleas; of trying to subvert the natural order of suckers
and sucked, and of trying to bring on the day of judgment and the
destruction of the universe. Poor fools!
“But one day, two or three of the hungriest of us wandered away out
of town, and lay down under a tree in a solitary place to think and
weep out the sadness of our hearts; and as we wept and meditated,
behold an Angel appeared unto us and saluted us. And we, shaking with
terror, said, ‘Who art thou?’ and he said, ‘I am Plain Common Sense,
the rarest Angel of all that visit the earth; Heaven hath appointed me
Messenger-in-Particular to the hungriest of the hungry.
“‘I never visit fleas, and seldom do I come to fat and comfortable dogs.
I am a lonely Angel, and I have a tremendously long beat to patrol,
which I cannot, even if I make haste, complete in less than ten hundred
years; therefore, ye are very lucky in being here just as I was passing.
But whosoever entertaineth me receiveth always a blessing.’
“So saying, he drew from a pocket in his toga, a little phial containing
a thin and colorless fluid, and bidding us hold up our faces, he, with
his finger, moistened our eyes with the fluid. Instantly, our eyes
were endowed with a marvellous seeing power, and our brains seemed to
be filled with lightning flashes. ‘See ye any better now?’ said he.
‘Infinitely,’ said we; ‘why, we see what a lot of unspeakable idiots,
and wooden-headed fools we are, not to have seen what a lot of utterly
useless, superfluous and ruinously exhausting fleas we have been
carrying all these years.’ ‘Just so,’ said the Angel. ‘Now, take this
phial, and what hungry dog’s eyes soever ye shall moisten with the
fluid, shall instantly receive power to see through a ladder.’
“We thanked him, and implored him to tarry with us and abide and take
something; but he was grieved, and said he was no police dog, and had
several stars to visit before midnight. And he vanished from our sight.
“So we took the little phial, which was labelled, ‘Dilute Solution of
Plain Common Sense; one drop, applied to the eyes of a very hungry dog,
warranted to make him see through a flea,’ and tried it on every hungry
dog we met; and the result was, as the Angel foretold, that every one
was instantly restored to the most exalted sanity, and saw clear through
the humbug of the whole dirty useless gang of you, your Bamboozling
Committee, your Flags, Statues, and lying Patriotism, your blasphemy of
Liberty, and cant of Freedom, and everything else that there is of you.
“All these dogs with me have had their eyes touched with the Solution,
and the epidemic, as your fool Bamboozlers and Emdees call it, has run
through three-fourths of Canisville, and the country roundabout.
“Now, therefore, we have come hither to propose a new _modus vivendi_,
some way of living without _you_; but before we do that we desire to
express to you our gratitude for all the kind things you have done and
have this night proposed to do.
“We thank you for having sent us the Gospel of Earthly Contentment and
Future Reward. As ye were the first, efficient and only cause of our
discontent, the robbers of all our means of growth, physical comfort
and intelligence, ye owed us something as a set-off; but seeing that ye
offered us only a very far distant and uncertain intangibility of future
recompense—_that ye yourselves had no power to grant_—while what ye
took from us by FRAUD and _mental chloroforming_ was something real,
actual and of present tangible value, we have decided not to accept your
promissory note that is to be redeemed _some indefinite time in next
eternity_. We believe that NOW is the accepted time for those who toil
to get their reward, and that NOW is the accepted time for all idlers
and suckers to starve to death. We believe that it is blasphemy to
neglect the earth that IS for a heaven that MAY BE.
“We believe that God is the God of JUSTICE and that he has punished us
for doing ourselves _the injustice of being robbed_, and for doing you
the unkindness and injustice of helping you to live in demoralizing
idleness on unearned wealth.
“Therefore, out of pure love for ourselves, and a consuming _anxiety
for your welfare_, we will take the full reward of our labor NOW, and
turn over to you all the hopes and realities of future reward and glory
which ye make so much of. Ye have taught us the ineffable blessedness
of poverty and trust in God; of empty bellies and the contemplation of
other-world bliss.
“Therefore, be it enacted, and it is hereby enacted, by us dogs now
restored to our senses, that from the passage of this Act, i.e. NOW, ye
fleas, suckers, robbers and poisoners, shall have all your privileges
as idle drags upon our prosperity taken away from you, and ye shall
henceforth be endowed and crowned with all those sacred and inalienable
rights to starve and die, to sink or swim, which are now the great and
particular endowment of dogs throughout the world.
“But in lieu thereof, and as a set-off, we make over to you in fee
simple, and to your heirs and assigns forever, all those mansions in the
sky, and the grounds thereto appertaining; all those sweet fields of
Eden and the sweet rest to be found there; all those harps and crowns of
gold, the robes and palms and glories and pleasures forever more, and
all the sweetness and light and satisfaction, etc., etc., etc. These we
give, grant and convey to you in the same disinterested spirit as that
in which you bequeathed them to us.
“Go, then, in peace, and, rich in all the wealth of _future hope_, may
you be happy. Heretofore, ye have taken our earthly things and pretended
to give us in exchange heavenly things. We will now re-exchange them,
and while ye are enjoying the strange new bliss of _earning_ your
earthly things, so there is nothing to prevent _us_, while enjoying our
earthly rights, from looking forward to the good things of the future.”
And the fleas, at the pronunciation of this sentence, fell into a
grievous terror, and bewailed the hard fate that had overtaken them;
and said that life without wealth and leisure would be but penal
servitude; and none of them seemed to take any comfort in this Heavenly
Inheritance. Yea, some of them, at this reversal of fortune, went
insane, and many of them saying, that if a “title clear to mansions in
the skies” was all that was left of the wreck of their fortunes, they
might as well be dead, took one tremendous jump and went out and drowned
themselves.