THE BIG DELIVERER POURS OUT ON THE FLEAS AN AWFUL STREAM
OF SCORCHING TRUTHS, WHICH ARE AS MUCH AN INDICTMENT OF
THE DOGS AS OF THE FLEAS.—THE POLICE DOGS GO IN OUT OF
THE WET.—DESPERATE LAST EFFORT OF THE FLEAS TO REGAIN
THEIR LOST POWER.—END OF THE FLEAS.—ESTABLISHMENT OF
PURE DOGOGRACY UNDER A CLEANED AND PURIFIED FLAG OF THE
TRULY FREE.
BUT in spite of the consternation amongst the fleas, the big dog
remorselessly continued: “Furthermore, ye meanest and hatefullest
suckers of blood; _ye enterprising, industrious and pushing_ ABSORBERS
OF THE PRODUCTS OF OTHERS’ INDUSTRY; ye thieves, hear me! Ye have broken
down the natural and just system of society, under which each dog got
the full reward of his own industry.
“And it was all _our_ fault that ye did it. By the ignorant consent of
the fools amongst us, ye _got on our backs_ and _we_ FOOLS _made it
legal for you to be_ RASCALS and suck our blood. _We_ idiots made it
compulsory on ourselves to carry you, feed you, fatten you, pamper you.
We starved ourselves to make you rotten with overfeeding; and these two
unnatural extremes we made to meet and form a sickening spectacle for
High Heaven to spue over. We flattered you, we worshipped, praised,
lauded and magnified you. We made you our gods, and taught ourselves to
shake and tremble in the unapproachable light and glory of your infinite
divinity. And ye were but _fleas_—little dirty insects, made great only
by our stupid suffrage.
[Illustration]
Oh, the infinite marvel of it! that the world of dogs should ever have
gone so blind, imbecile and demented as to have lifted you dirty pests
into the throne of the world, and made you the lords of all power
and might. How many million yards of the sackcloth, and tons of the
ashes of repentance will this, our mighty sin, need for its expiation!
Dogs, dogs, that we were ever to have done it! But we did it; and for
our reward ye drove us, ye bled us, ye tortured us, ye killed us and
made merry over our corpses. Oh, shame and everlasting contempt be on
us that we—without whose permission ye never could have existed one
minute—should, in our fathomless stupidity, have created you, and then
have abdicated the throne of our sovereignty and put you despicable,
infinitesimal cusses into it!
“This was our sin; and ye, our creation, have been our just punishment.
This is always Heaven’s judgment on those who sin against themselves by
giving up their self respect, and surrendering their natural rights.
We reap as we have sowed. We stripped ourselves of our God-given and
inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—things
that were NOT OURS TO GIVE AWAY—and sinfully gave them over to you,
and lo! ye were the very ones who mocked and scourged our nakedness.
We became your slaves and _thereby gave you the right to despise us_.
We invested you with the whip and the spur, and thereby invested you
with the right to drive us to the devil. And ye _have_ driven us to the
devil. And we have had the added misery of seeing you trying to amuse us
while driving us there.
“Ye stole all we had, and when thousands of us died of want your
compassion was touched, and ye sent down for our relief quite a lot of
good things, accompanied by tracts and choice extracts of Scripture,
and a few requests that we be thankful and love the givers. But some of
us, nosing amongst these gifts, recognized them as the same ones ye had
stolen from us; and while the poor fools amongst us were trotting around
thankfully licking their chops, and wagging their little tails, and
tearfully and prayerfully invoking God’s choicest blessings upon you, we
walked off disgusted that there should live fools so God-forsaken as to
be thankful for the return of a crumb from the thief who stole his loaf.
_Ye_ called it CHARITY, and the poor fools sent up a request to God to
remember you in love for it. _We_ called it the small articles the thief
is obliged to drop because Nemesis is after him; and we prayed God to
send a time when we could remember you—WITH AN EXTINGUISHER.
[Illustration]
“And this time has come now. We came here and heard you devising new
schemes to divert us from our discontent. Ye knew that discontent is
the precursor of investigation and the knowledge of what is amiss. We
heard you propose everything but the only thing needful, viz: TO GET
OFF OUR BACKS. Ye would make us believe that ye sought OUR GOOD; but
the real motive of your conduct was YOUR OWN SAFETY. Your blood sucking
franchise being your very life, ye could not, of course, think of giving
it up; so ye proposed to throw a meatless bone to the dogs in the shape
of Free Gospel, Free Music, Free Pictures and CHARITY BALLS—which
are nothing less than a damnable endeavor to palm off on God and us
your love of display and riotous pleasure as CHARITY. Ye _must_ have
your hops anyhow. Ye _must_ have your ostentatious displays of pride
and property, and your nights of dissipation; but the happy thought
struck you that you might kill two birds with one stone, and have your
unrestricted, selfish, fleshly pleasures, and by garbing them in the
disguise of Charity, get also by means of them into Heaven’s good book.
But we have found you out, and concluded that if we have our own freedom
we can get our own gospel and music and pictures and do our own dancing.
“Therefore, we, in our plenary power to enforce this decision, do enact
that _we will do without fleas_, and we do hereby resume the control of
our own bodies; and therewith we resume all our self-alienated rights
and powers; and at the same time we give, grant and convey to you, for
your behoof and benefit, all that gospel, that music and those pictures
ye have provided for us. We shall not need them now; ye may, for, lo!
your doom is sealed.”
“What doom? What dog insolence is this?” cried one of the eminent fleas,
in a bold tone. “Dost thou not know, dog, that this is sedition, anarchy
and a breach of the peace? Begone! thou and thy low-born, dirty and
ill-smelling crew, or by the Law we will turn you over to the police
dogs.” And all the other fleas, plucking up heart at these words, cried
out too; “Yes, begone!”
But the dogs laughed, and their leader said: “The day of dogs’ obedience
to the commands of fleas is gone. Said I not unto you that their eyes
had been moistened with the Dilute Solution of Common Sense, and that
they can now see through fleas? Ye have not heard; but I and these my
fellow dogs were commissioned by the other dogs of Canisville to come
here and tell you that a new Will of the Dogs Expresser hath been set
up, a very much bigger, better and more effective one than that which ye
commanded your slaves and imported beasts to destroy and burn with fire.
This Expresser hath the novel but righteous provision for _dogs_ to sit
at the bottom of the shute thereof and _do the counting_. This hath been
set up in the Public Place and all the dogs have this day dropped their
little wills into the slot thereof, and when the trap in the bottom was
pulled and the wills were counted it was found that there was a Great
Majority, and the Great Majority said that both the fraudulent Nighuntos
and the swindling Faraways should get away from the Tank, that the Blood
and Bones Mill should be broken down and the Handle sold to the devil;
that the lying Bamboozling Committee and the Great Many Headed Daily
Press should be branded as frauds, and that all dogs, big, little and
whatsoever, should be absolutely forbidden to contribute in any degree
to the maintenance of fleas, and any dog found guilty of having the
smallest flea on him should be treated as a public enemy and driven out
of the city into the wilderness.
“The police dogs, alarmed at this universal coming of the dogs to their
senses, have retired to their kennels, to watch the weathercock, and
some very impulsive ones, being quite confident that the dogs are now
on top, have very ostentatiously clubbed several eminent fleas; and
the Bamboozlers and the Monstrous Fleas, after calling in vain on the
prudent and non-committal police dogs to club back to slavery the newly
self-enfranchised dogs, have run away. Bones and meat are coming out of
their hiding places, and flesh is beginning to grow over the poor dogs’
bones; and we are here to tell you to depart peaceably and find some
other community of fools to live on, or live on one another, we care not
which.”
But the fleas flew into a great rage, and cried out: “To Hades with
your infernal Expresser! Fleas always have been on top, and will be
forever!” and, yelling “Down with Sedition,” they with one accord jumped
upon the backs of the dogs, and knowing it was now a case of victory or
death, they beset them sorely, saying they would teach the miserable,
thankless curs who was master. There were many fleas to each dog, and
they were very fierce and savage, but not a dog whined or scratched.
With tail erect and a noble light in his intelligent eye, the leader
turned and departed, followed in like manner by all the others. They
passed a place where a lot of timber had been cut and each seized a big
chip in his mouth as he trotted along. Soon they came to where flowed
a considerable stream of water, on the bank of which they formed _in
reverse order_. Then, with tails trailed in the very dust, and to the
murmuring music of the moving waters, they waded in backwards as far as
they could until nothing but the chips and the very tip of each nose was
above the water. This caused the fleas to drop all thoughts but those
of self-preservation, and in a scrambling panic they scampered from dry
point to dry point till the chip was the only resting place for their
feet. Then, holding each nose upright and each chip well aloft, each dog
sank, until nothing but the chip, black with a cursing mob of outwitted
and dethroned blood-suckers, was to be seen above the water. A moment
more and each dog let go his chip and came to the surface a little way
up stream, giving the widest possible berth to any chips floating away
from his fellow dogs. Farther up the stream they took to the banks, on
which they gathered together and from which they exhorted the drowning
fleas to practice the virtue of content, and to look above to that
Heaven to which they had so often pointed the dogs. But as the mob of
erstwhile powerful tyrants floated away into the dim, forgotten Past,
there came for answer only a wail of despair and a dying prayer that
God would avenge them some day on a wicked and thankless race of dogs.
The dogs, however, with humble and contrite hearts, burst forth into a
dog song of deliverance, which ran:
Sound the loud timbrel o’er Misery’s dark sea,
The Suckers are gone, the enslaved ones are free;
Their power and their pride are gone down in the wave,
And the curse is removed, of Master and slave.
And the dogs with songs and joy marched back to the city, and Pup
McPoodle and all his gang of wicked and cowardly courtier dogs, hearing
of their coming, were seized with terror, and “put” with such rapidity
that the momentum of their going carried them far out of sight, and it
is supposed they are going still.
[Illustration]
And the free and happy dogs called the Big Dog Retriever, “for,” said
they, “he hath retrieved our lost prosperity,” and they cried aloud that
he be elected chief; but the Big Dog would not consent, and he said unto
them: “No; I will not be your chief. Be ye your own chief; let this, for
the future, be a government of the dogs, by the dogs, and for the dogs;
delegate not your power to anyone, be he never so wise and good, for the
dogs that do that commit treason against themselves, and if their chief
sell them to the fleas, they are but justly punished, as ye have been
by Pup McPoodle.” And all the dogs, having still the influence of the
Dilute Solution in their eyes, cried out with one accord: “That is Plain
Common Sense; _we_ will be the government, and no one shall have the
power.”
And it was so. And they set up and kept up all the year round a great,
big, free Will of the Dogs Expresser, and through it they passed a law
that whatsoever law should henceforth be made should be _ratified by the
dogs_ through the Will Expresser. And it was so. And all laws whatsoever
which they had _were_ ratified through it and without its ratification
was no law made that was made. And their laws were very few and very
good; for they found that the wisdom of _all_ the dogs was greater than
the wisdom of any one dog or of any few dogs; and there being very few
laws, they were simple and easy to understand, for the object sought
thereby was Justice and not to fatten fleas.
They also made what they called a Constitution—a Solemn League and
Covenant—which they ratified seven times through the Will Expresser,
that provided that fleas and suckers of any description should be
regarded as Unconstitutional insects, to be arrested on sight and driven
ignominiously out of town, and that any law to allow them an existence
amongst dogs should be Unconstitutional, and that any dog who should
ever propose such a law should be declared a traitor to the community,
and condemned to abide by himself in the wilderness, and that any dog
who even spoke with any favor of fleas should be deemed insane and be
locked up out of sight.
So peace, good order and freedom abounded, and with these came more to
eat than they ever needed.
And having true Freedom in the land they pulled down the Liberty Bell,
and the grotesque copper Lie that disfigured the prospect at the gates
of the city, and broke them both up for old junk, for they said they
could not endure the sight of emblems that were lies when they were put
up, and only reminded them of the days when they were bamboozled and
cheated; and anyway, they said, real true Freedom was _seen_ and _felt_
everywhere, and needed no clangor of metal to proclaim its existence;
for a Freedom that needed such an infernal din and racket and oratory
and show to make itself known was evidently _not self-evident_.
And as for the old Flag of the Free, they hardly knew what to do with
it. Some said that the fleas and the Bamboozlers had made such a lie
of it, had so blasphemed Liberty in its name, and had so defiled it by
hoisting it over so many damnable and bloody iniquities that, really,
the only proper thing to do was to burn it and devise a new one. But
some said that as it was originally devised by fairly honest dogs who
had had no education concerning and experience with fleas, such as the
expensive and terrible one they had just gone through, they thought if
the old Flag were well fumigated to take away the sickening smell of
fleas that clung to it, and were well scrubbed and scoured, and had all
the dirt washed out of it, it would do very well. So they cleansed and
purified it, and set it up; and under it they lived perfectly happy ever
after.
[Illustration]
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES.
1. Silently corrected simple spelling, grammar, and typographical
errors.
2. Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed.
3. A list of contents has been created by the transcriber.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Dogs and the Fleas, by Frederic Scrimshaw