CHAPTER XXVI.
The Bamboozling Committee Lays Out a Plan of Bamboozle.—Loud Noise and Great Show Relied on.—Every One to His Post.—Opening of the Bamboozle Assigned to Tee de Little Wit Blatherskite.—His Vision of Judgment.—Terrific Effect on the Dogs.
Illustration: DECORATIVE LETTER ‘H’.
HAVING secured the invaluable Blatherskite, the Bamboozling Committee met very early in the morning, and President Chancy Mountebank Dephool Flea, in calling the Committee to order, said: “Brother Bamboozlers, it is laid upon us to save this our beloved land. As ye know, the Board of Public Safety has appointed us to work together with the Hunger Makers in keeping the dogs from thinking. To them, ye know, is appointed the duty of bleeding them within an inch of their lives, and keeping them so busy trying to catch up with their hunger that they will never have a moment to think a serious thought; and to us is appointed the duty of entertaining them during their moments of absolutely needful recreation, and keeping them so well amused that they shall have neither wish nor time to think.
“I need not tell you that the Hunger Makers are doing their dutycon amore; so well that in their enthusiasm they are apt to overdo it. It behooves us therefore, to as well deserve our laurels as they do theirs. Where shall we begin, therefore?”
Then arose Wilhelm Bunkum Mak Tinley Flea, and said: “I move, respected President, that we recommend Pup McPoodle and the authorities to proclaim certain days to be legal holidays, and days of recreation for the dogs, and that on thosedays the dogs be gathered together, when we will each take a turn in amusing and edifying them. I will take one turn, and I flatter myself that during my turn, I can demonstrate to them then the moon is made of green cheese; then our much beloved brother, Andronicus Carnivorous, shall take another; my dear chum, Harry Grandadhat shall take a third; you, most excellent humbug, shall take a fourth, and our ever-ready old stand-by and reverend barker, Tee de Little Wit Blatherskite, who is always bursting big and full with gorgeous gush, and perennially on tap, shall fill up all other intervals.”
Andronicus arose and said: “I crave permission to second the motion of my brother Bunkum Mak Tinley Flea. It is good. I deprecate the ascription to me of any very great ability in the line of bamboozling. I have the highest pleasure in yielding the palm to you, dear Mountebank Dephool, and to the superlative Blatherskite, in having whom with us we are blessed and honored above measure. For my part I am but a superficial, transparent, and inferior sort of every-day liar, with no ability, like you, my dear colleagues, to palm off on the dogs a lie as the most sacred Gospel truth; but I do modestly claim that I possess a very creditable ability to play the hypocrite; I believe everyone who knows me admitsthat; but, be my talents what they may, I am willing to consecrate them all to the good of the dogs and the salvation of this, my adopted country.”
This motion was carried, and presented to the Board of Public Safety; and the Board carried it to McPoodle and the authorities, and they, with the acquiescence of the fleas—who had all been assured that they would be indemnified for any loss of blood they might suffer in case of failure of the experiment—proclaimed that on a certain few days of the year, the fleas should let up on the dogs and allow them to recover a little strength; and that on those days they should turn over the management of the dogs to the Bamboozling Committee.
And the Bamboozling Committee got together certain dogs that were lying around loose, and made them happy with meatand drink, and dressed them up in gaudy colored raiment; and to some of them they gave certain loud-noise-producing instruments, and to others, long poles with pretty cloths fluttering at the end thereof, and said unto them: “Go ye forth into all the streets and ways of Canisville, and the country roundabout, and blow ye and thump ye on the loud-noise-producing instruments, and wave ye on high the pretty cloths, and make a great shouting and hullabaloo with your throats; and it shall be that when the dogs of Canisville shall hear your hullabaloo, they will run out of their holes and kennels, and, forgetting all their troubles, they will howl with idiotic joy, and run after you whithersoever ye go. Go roundabout and encompass the town seven times, blowing and thumping and waving, and fetch up at the Public Place, where great miracles are to be wrought.”
So the blowing, thumping and cloth-waving dogs, quite intoxicated with the strange, glorious feeling of a full stomach, did as they were bid, and went and filled all the air with their sounding; and at the very first blast and thump and shout, all the dogs that heard came rushing out, barking, wagging their bony tails and rolling over and over in the dirt, with a frenzied joy, and followed in a great mob the blowers and thumpers and wavers, whithersoever they went.
Then when they had seven times gone roundabout the town, they came to the Public Place, where were gathered on an eminence the Bamboozling Committee, and around them, in their best raiment, all the Monstrous Fleas, who had ordered the Blood and Bones Grinding Mill to cease its bloody grind for a day; all the wealthy and eminent fleas, all the pious and holy fleas; and all the salaried barkers were there; the Holy One a Maker of long prayers and short wages, was there; and also Lovely Anthony the Dog Catcher, the One-eyed Elder Berry, and all the morality cobblers, dog thumpers and compulsionists of every society; and all were sleek and fat and well-to-do, and smiled most heavenly smiles, for they felt that God had blessed the very first part of their new scheme of salvation.
Then arose and whispered Chancy Mountebank Dephool Flea to the Reverend Tee de Little Wit Blatherskite, “Brother, this is a gorgeous success so far; thou art the gifted one; open thou the Bamboozle.”
And the Reverend Tee de Little Wit Blatherskite stepped briskly to the front, and with a voice of tragedy delivered himself thus:
“A vision, a vision, a vision of Judgment. It is the last day—the day of the final fruition of all things; the day when all the seed sowings of all the countless centuries since time was, have reached their harvest. With mine eye I can see a countless multitude of dogs gathered to the Judgment, rising tier on tier, from the lowermost valley to the topmost height of every hill and mountain. From every clime and country they come, swarm on swarm, mob on mob, gathered by a mighty trumpet summons there is no disobeying. They come from the East; they come from the West; they come from the North; they come from the South; from the frosty land of the midsummer midnight sun, where white death locketh all things in his eternal embrace, to the torrid equatorial regions of perpetual frizzle and fry; from the balmy lands of the fig and the olive, where the spicy snifters, and odoriferous breezes of the Southern seas gently woo both soul and body to gentle doziness, to the blizzard smitten lands of the Occidental North, where the circumvolutory cyclone whirligiggeth, and the domiciliary dwelling place fleeth violently away with all the inhabitants thereof; from the land of the azure firmament, the emerald sea and opalescent atmosphere, and the land of the perennial asthmatic brumosity—from everywhere they come, host on host, multitude on multitude.
“The Judgment call is heard; the Judgment is set; the books are opened. The sun goes out; the moon explodes and becomes blood; the omniflatulent wind roareth; the stars fall to earth in a fiery hail; the heavens shrivel up in an awful incandescence, as a burning scroll; the earth rocks, and quakes, andgroans and cracks, and sends forth lurid and sulphureous flames and fumes and infernal stench. The comets, with their flaming tails, all snarled together, stagger like drunken celestials amongst their inextricably mixed aphelia, perihelia, and syzygy, and falling over the planetary orbits, drive their occupants to distractedly demand, ‘Where are we at?’”
“The ocean’s great breast heaves and throbs with huge conglomerate convulsions, and dashing o’er its divinely appointed bounds, engulfs the world. The rivers everywhere rear up on end, stiff with an infinite fright. The lengthy Mississippi, the breadthy, many-mouthed Amazon, the hoary Ganges, the unfiltered Missouri, the holy Jordan, swash and writhe together in mid-air in an amazed intertwining. The lightnings gleam, the thunders roar, the whole creation groaneth. The planets, breaking loose from the centripetal force that swung them around their solar center, clash and crash together in celestial smash and wreck. Crash, crash, crash, in answering reverberations, from utmost bound to utmost bound of the universe.
“And over all the din and rip and roar and clash and terror, cometh a clarion blast of an angelic trump, ‘Ho! Ho!! Ho!!! Attend, all ye dogs; for the end, the eternal end that shall never be cut off, cometh. Give ear unto the voice of the Eternal Verdict.’
“And there cometh forth from the infinite profundities of the tenebrious immensities, a Voice of ten thousand-million-thunder power, in direful proclamation, saying:
“‘All dogs to the Judgment. Crowns of glory, eternal joy and everlasting fullness unto all dogs that on earth have done righteously, have walked humbly in the fear of God, and reverenced His anointed ones, the fleas; and have paid unto them their just and Heaven-ordained dues; that have not blasphemed them, or called in question the righteousness of their doings; that have counted poverty their highest honor. Blessed are they that have hungered, that the fleas might be filled; that have gone naked, that the fleas might be clothed; that havedied, that the fleas might live; that have grovelled in darkness and filth, that the fleas might dwell in honor and wealth. Great is now their reward, and they shall now themselves be lifted up on high and glorified for duty done.’
“‘But woe and desolation to the disobedient, discontented and unrighteous dogs that have growled against the divine ordination of their lives and lots; that have cursed their hunger and nakedness; that have spoken blasphemy against the fleas, and the Constitution and Laws of Canisville, and poked the blasphemous nose of Inquiry into the inscrutable and not-to-be-inquired-into wisdom of the divine ordination of dogs and fleas. No crowns for them, no joy, no fullness. It is decreed that they go down to Hell with Satan and Wilyumtwede.’
“At the pronouncement of this sentence the million-instrumented orchestra of the spheres crashes out a mighty ‘Amen.’ The morning stars clap their hands with joy; the evening and the midnight stars take up the cue, and flash it on from star to star; it rings from system to system, from universe to universe, until from farthest nebula to farthest nebula, the whole creation pulses and thrills and vibrates with the tintinnabulous acclaim. The heavens open, and amid a deluge of unapproachable light, the worthy dogs with pæans of victorious joy, are caught up thereto; while Hell beneath opens wide its yawning jaws, and the unrighteous and disobedient dogs, amid thunder and lightning, go howling down, down, down, in an everlasting and ever accelerating descent, to the place of unutterable torment and fiery woe.”
At this mighty outburst of luridly pyrotechnical eloquence, the great crowd of dogs turned deadly pale and faint; and they turned guiltily, each to his neighbor, and said, “He means us;” “Ain’t it awful?” “God forgive us, we must never repine or speak evil of fleas any more.”
And many of the dogs there, being wasted and weak for want of food, could not stand the terror of the Blatherskite’s portrayal, and several of the most famished and anæmic amongthem, trembled and tottered and fell dead, and had to be carried off to the morgue; which the bystanders declared must have been intended of Heaven, as a sample and small installment of the threatened Judgment.
And the assembled fleas nudged one another, and remarked unctuously that the Bamboozle was working very successfully so far, and was certainly being very much blessed of Heaven, to the touching up of the consciences of the dogs. The Holy One a Maker of long prayers and short wages, rolled up his seventh-day eye to heaven, and said: “We fleas have much to be thankful for in the gift to us of the Blatherskite.” Harry Grandadhat exclaimed: “Society is saved!” And President Chancy Mountebank Dephool Flea winked an eye at de Little Wit Blatherskite as he resumed his seat, and whispered to him: “Brother—dog only though thou art—I love thee; thou hast excellently done; this day—thanks to the might of thy facile and well lubricated jaw—is salvation come to the fleas of Canisville; thou hast in thine effort this day exceeded and more than justified the Committee’s highest expectation of thee; the Bamboozle prospereth.”
Illustration: YES, I FLATTER MYSELF THERE ARE NO FLIES ON ME.
And the Blatherskite, with a reciprocating wink, said, “Yes, I flatter myself there are no flies onme.”