CHAPTER XLI.
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.
Illustration: DECORATIVE LETTER ‘S’.
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, infectiousand 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’ Pharmacopœia, 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 thevery 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: A BIG DOG, FOLLOWED BY A WHOLE TROOP OF DOGS, BOLDLY ENTERED.
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 theinfidel and irreligious dogs, they rudely told him he was a bag of windy words, whose fine God didn’t even deliverhimin 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: THE FATTEST OF THE SALARIED BARKERS SNEAKED OUT BY THE SIDE DOOR.
“About the time you fat, full-blooded and comfortable suckers called this convention to take into considerationthe 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 leastsomefleas upon him; yea, they went so far as to declare by Heaven and Holy Scripture, that fleas weredivinely appointedto 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 instanceswhere 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 thatyebecame the real, actual community, andwebecame 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,yewere the republic;yecalled yourselves on all occasions, ‘the country,’ ‘the nation.’Yemade war and peace, and did everything and got everything butthe fighting and the paying.Yegot up centennials, bi, tri and quadri, of this, that and the other, whichwepoor 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 bleedtheirdogs to death,yesent 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: A FAT AND FUZZY OLD LADY SUCKER, QUEEN FLEA OF KYHIDOM.
“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 atin 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 toAlmighty 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 tremendouslylong 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 newmodus vivendi, some way of living withoutyou; 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 andmental chloroformingwas something real, actual and of present tangible value, we have decided not to accept your promissory note that is to be redeemedsome indefinite time in next eternity. We believe thatNOWis 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 thatMAY BE.
“We believe that God is the God ofJUSTICEand that he has punished us for doing ourselvesthe 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 consuminganxiety 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 offuture 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 ofearningyour earthly things, so there is nothing to preventus, 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.