CHAPTER XXIV.
The Thinking Contagion Makes Alarming Progress.—Conference of Frightened Fleas.—Sage Counsel.—Efficacious Measures Devised.—How They Worked.—The Sacred Trusts.—The Holy Angel’s Book of Death.—The Plague Stayed.
Illustration: DECORATIVE LETTER ‘A’.
AND it was told the fleas that a dog had arisen, that had said: “Fleas, ye fools, fleas,” and had drawn several other dogs after him, whom he had taught to say likewise.
And the eminent fleas, and the big fleas, and the Monstrous Fleas, gathered themselves together, and sent a quick flea unto certain wise fleas saying, “Haste ye, and come quickly to our aid, for the dread pestilence hath broken out; tarry not in all the way, for the matter is urgent.”
And the wise fleas came on the hop and the skip and the jump, and said: “We told you so; we did advise you not to despise the day of small symptoms; but ye heeded not our advice. Therein ye did err; for it is well known that we know a thing or two. We did advise you that that intent gazing of the dogs did betoken the outbreak of an epidemic of thinking amongst them, which, had it been grappled with then, would have been easy to stamp out; but now we fear the disease has made dangerous progress. This thinking of theirs has reached the stage of audible expression, which is the stage of most rapid contagion and infection.”
“True, true,” said a Monstrous Flea—Andronicus Carnivorous—pale with affright; “We are credibly informed that some of these dogs have even lifted up their voices in the publicplaces, and boldly told the other dogs that if they had no fleas they need never be hungry; to which some of the listening dogs, it is reported, replied, ‘Down with the fleas.’ And we have been informed—but for the truth of it we cannot vouch—that quite a number of those suffering from this truly terrible thinking disease, have formed what they call the ‘Flealess Dog Club,’ which slyly meets at midnight, and dances with delirious joy over the prophesied coming of a most dreadful time when all dogs will be free from all fleas of every sort and size.”
And all the assembled fleas cried out in chorus, “Alas, what shall we do?”
But the wise fleas said, “Courage, brethren; all is not lost; there is a margin of safety left, which, if utilized properly, will, with God’s blessing, restore these poor dogs to their usual state of insanity, and avert the danger of our extinction. Ye ought, of course, to have grappled with this malady in its incipiency; nevertheless, with an extra effort, lost time may be made up, and the disease stamped out. A Board of Public Safety must be formed at once.”
“Had we not better pass a law,” said a Monstrous Flea—Pharaoh Phrique—“making it a capital offence for a dog to think, and have all the guilty ones executed with great tortures? There’s nothing like striking terror into the hearts of the dogs, if you want to keep them good and healthy.”
“Aye! Aye!” chorused all the others fiercely, “that’s the talk.”
“Pardon me, Brother Phrique,” replied a wise flea, “for dissenting from so eminent a dog killer as thyself; but all wise fleas have found that the only true and efficacious way is, not to kill the thinkers, but to discourage the breed; to let the thinkers die off naturally, and replace them with a breed of non-thinkers. To this end their brains must be watched, and where-ever possible no thought must ever be allowed to enter; and in those cases where we cannot prevent its entrance, we must givethem amusements, distractions and other substitutes for thinking. We must use artifice, not force; we must lure, not compel; for force and compulsion would defeat our aim by causing them, through the grievance they would thereby have against us, to begin thinking most grievously; whereas, by fooling them into going, of their own accord, in the way we want them to go, we would accomplish our object, and at the same time leave them to feel that they are free and independent dogs—which is to be done every time.”
“Therefore we do advise that the Board of Public Safety devise all manner of anti-thinking devices, and put them in operation at once, for there is no time to lose. History shows that wherever the empire of fleas over dogs has been overthrown, it has always been due to the neglect of the fleas, of those times, to keep up to due efficiency the anti-thinking devices of those times. Remember, we beseech you, that eternal vigilance in keeping the dogs from thinking, is the price of your rule over them.
“Now, the most efficacious anti-thinking remedy, is hard work, and eternal plenty of it. Give the dogs plenty to do. Make the pace fast and furious, and cause them to hustle to stay their hunger, and take all means to make their hunger get ahead of their hustling; cause them to have to scratch from early morn to midnight, so that the moment they’ve done work for the night, they will fall asleep from fatigue, and never wake until it is high time to be at their scratching again. Make leisure impossible, and idleness synonymous with starvation, and we give you our word of guarantee, that the dogs will soon be on the way to recovery.
“But, as interminable work alone, although a most excellent—and the main—remedy for thinking, would in the end sour their minds and enfeeble their bodies, and so reduce their yield of blood—thus defeating the main purpose for which a wise Creator created them, and predisposing them to crime and wickedness—a certain amount of recreationmustbe allowedthem. In this need of recreation lies their only danger. They must not be allowed much recreation; for much would give them time to think—which must be especially guarded against. They must have so little recreation that their exhaustion shall incline them only to amusements.
“But, in the reaction from the exhaustion of toil, they will be apt to seek mad, unhealthy, delirious and body-weakening amusements. Therefore, it behooveth you to provide that their amusements be both recuperative and anti-thinking. Lo! We have spoken.”
And this advice of the wise fleas seemed good and sage unto the other fleas; and the Monstrous Fleas (all but Pharaoh Phrique, who became sulky and declared that the wise fleas were a lot of old fogy fools not to see that to hang, shoot, choke and kill the pesky dogs was the shortest, quickest and altogether the most efficacious way of putting them down), said, that come to think of it, they believed that eternal workwasthe finest antidote to the thinking poison, that had been devised, for they had noticed that though their dogs that turned the great Handle had at various times displayed alarming symptoms of the thought disease, they were happy to say they, by the application of the perpetual-work remedy, were now almost cured; and they believed that with care in keeping them eternally at it, they would suffer no relapse.
So the fleas formed the Board of Public Safety. And the first thing they did was to send a committee unto McPoodle, commanding him to provide them gangs of police and other dogs, to go by night through all the highways and byways of Canisville, and rake up all the bones and scraps and broken victuals they could find, in order that the dogs in the morning might have to scratch long and furiously to find a mouthful.
And McPoodle did as he was commanded, and sent his well-fed police and other dogs out to make the working dogs hungry. And they raked and scraped the highways and the byways, and gathered up all the food there was to be seen, and sorted thevarious scraps into heaps, and carried every heap into a Corner by itself.
And the fleas commanded McPoodle, and he appointed a few of the most eminent fleas to be Trustees and custodians over each heap.
And on the day of appointment those Trustees and custodians did reverently lift up their eyes to heaven, and say they accepted the custody thereof, as a sacred Trust from God and McPoodle, and did solemnly vow that they would administer that Trust in the fear of God, and altogether in the interest of the dogs, to whom they had a deep and heartfelt desire to make victuals cheap. This, said they, not because they loved the dogs, but because they had the Corners and could afford to lie.
Then came to pass all that had been predicted by the wise fleas. The dogs hungrily ran about the bare streets, seeking food, but found nothing but a few chance scraps, that had escaped the vigilant diligence of McPoodle’s sweepers. So ravenous was their hunger, and so scarce the means of satisfying it, that the dogs’ noses were ever in the dirt, and grew sore and bloody with their eternal nosing after the Something that so seldom they found. As for their eyes, they grew, by reason of being ever strained towards the dirt, to be permanently near-sighted and microscopic, so that larger things, such as hills and trees and sky became indistinct and almost invisible to them. And as for their brains, they shrank and shrivelled until they could only receive one thought, and that was—Victuals.
So that the fleas rejoiced, and were glad, and the wise fleas were held in great honor for having devised so great a salvation from the threatened perils of the thinking plague.
And the wise fleas warned the eminent and the wealthy fleas, to be sure to retain the advantage they had gained, and keep the dogs well starved, for nothing kept a dog’s brain so thoroughly fortified against the invasion of uplifting and seditious thoughts, as perpetual hunger and tearing around to appease it.And the eminent and the wealthy fleas said they would see to it with pleasure.
But, by and by, after many dogs had dropped dead in their vain struggling search for victuals in the cleaned-out highways and byways, the hungry dogs were compelled to repair to the Corners, and beg of the fleas that held the heaps as a Sacred Trust from God, to give them a mouthful for God’s sake to keep them from dying.
But the lordly fleas that had the Sacred Trust, spake haughtily unto them, and said that as Heaven had most wisely seen fit, by means of the Sacred Trust, to give the fleas the Bulge on the dogs, they were determined to be faithful to Heaven, and use the said Bulge to the glory of Heaven, and the safety of Society which had but very recently been in peril of destruction, and, therefore, none but good and moral, lowly and obedient dogs, that had never held seditious thoughts, had never tried, or thought of trying, to shake off their fleas, had never doubted or been tempted to doubt, the divine and indisputable right of fleas to suck the blood of dogs, would receive any scraps from the heaps which had been committed to them—the Sacred Trustees.
And all the hungry dogs hastened to assure the Sacred Trustees that they were and always had been good and moral, obedient and unseditious dogs that had never doubted the divine rights of fleas.
But the Sacred Trustees said that was not so, for they had a Holy Angel who kept a Book of Death, in which was written with everlasting ink, the names of those undesirable dogs whom certain sneak dogs, called Detectives, had reported to them to have been guilty of thinking and speaking evil of fleas; and these had been Blacklisted, to be sent away into everlasting hunger.
Upon which they commanded the Angel to read out the names of the Accused; who were ignominiously driven shrieking away, by the police dogs who, being fat and well fed, did drive them away with pleasure, and club them with alacrity.
But the Blessed Ones, whose names were not written in the Book of Death, did cringingly wag their tails, and lick the feet of the police dogs, and reverentially pray their good lords, the Sacred Trustees, to give them something to push the walls of their stomachs apart with, for they were fallen together with hunger. Thereupon, the Sacred Trustees were graciously pleased to order certain servant dogs to throw over the fence just scraps enoughnot to be sufficient to go around, and to keep the dogs avidiously scrambling and savagely fighting for them.
This policy, said the wise fleas, would keep the dogs’ thoughts in their stomachs, where alone dogs’ thoughts ought to be; for when they mounted to their heads they rendered dogs bad citizens and of no good to the fleas.
And it was so that the dogs grew unable and unwilling to think of anything but the horrible and ever enlarging vacuum in their insides, and of what to fling into it.
So the plague was stayed.