CHAPTER XXXVI.
Ding Dong Liberty Bell.—Liberty Bells Cheaper than Liberty.
Illustration: EVERY SCRAP OF LIBERTY HAD BEEN TAKEN FROM THE DOGS.
RIGHT in the midst of all this universal starvation and death, when every scrap of liberty had been taken from the dogs, and not one dare open his mouth to say his soul or body was his own, the Board of Public Safety suggested to the Bamboozling Committee that now would be the most appropriate time, in the eternal fitness of things, to get up an extra special bamboozlement that should forever fix and clinch in the minds of the dogs the idiotic delusion that they were free.
So the ever-ready Bamboozling Committee ran together and summoned to their sitting all the glib-tongued fat fleas and salaried barkers they could find; and President Chancy Mountebank Dephool Flea arose and said, “Dear Friends: The state of our town and country is very satisfactory just now. Never in its whole history was there such a beautiful blending and harmony of the interests of dogs and fleas as now. Our upperclass fleas are doing marvellously well. Thanks to God, dividends are large and frequent, owing to the fact that very many of the middle-class fleas, who alienated altogether too much blood that rightfully belonged to us, have died off. The dogs everywhere have been reduced to know their place, thanks to the efforts of our brethren, Carnivorous and Phrique—to whom our all-wise God gave the strength of his arm in the hour of their sore need—and of our friends, Rosy Pretty Flower, Pennzy Pattyson, Webbfoot, Gold Jay, and our faithful, paunch-bellied police dogs. And the efforts of these our brethren, have been most ably seconded by the preachments and ‘Thus-saith-the-Lords’ of our dearly beloved brother Tee de Little Wit Blatherskite and his fellow fat-salaried barkers, and, above all, by the subtle finesse of our most dearly beloved faithful servant the Great Many Headed Daily Press. Yes, brethren, we are indeed highly favored of God in having three such invaluable aids to the subjugation of the dogs as the police, the Church and the Great Daily Press—one to persuade them physically, and the others to blind them with spiritual dust, blandishments, seductions and lies.”
Here the Reverend Blatherskite and the Great Many Headed Daily Press both closed their eyes, and piously murmured, “To God be all the glory; we are unprofitable servants; we have only done that which it was our duty to do.”
“Yes, brethren,” continued Dephool Flea, “peace and plenty everywhere abound. Everywhere Liberty has been established on foundations that shall nevermore be shaken; and I think, as we owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to God for these manifold mercies, we could not show it better than by getting up to his glory a grand old final something or other in honor of Liberty, Freedom, Deliverance and all that—a regular sneezer, you know, a tip-top,ne plus ultrasort of bamboozle that shall beat all creation.”
Up jumped then the Great Many Headed Daily Press and said: “I have it. What these dogs need now, above all things,is more stuff about Liberty. Ye cannot work this theme too much. It is the liberty stealer’s and the tyrant’s best guise, you know——”
“I object,” interrupted a fat flea, excitedly, “to the use of the terms ‘liberty stealer’ and ‘tyrant’ as applied to us.”
“Order, order;” commanded President Dephool Flea. “Of course we all know well enough what we are after, but I suggest to our beloved servant, the Great Many Headed, that, all things considered, itwouldbe better not to call ourselves by our right names even here in our privacy. It will subserve our great cause better to try to believe, ourselves, the bamboozling lies we tell the poor fool dogs. To bamboozle ourselves a little enables us to appear more sincere and serious to them. Therefore the Great Daily Press will please not tell the truth even here.”
“I beg leave to withdraw the offensive truth, then,” said the Great Gee Whizz. “As I was saying, that Statue business was a grand stroke of dog bamboozlement, over which ye fleas ought to laugh to your dying day. Then keep it up. Give these dogs plenty of Liberty talk, Liberty sentiment, and Liberty fakes to celebrate and shout over, and ye can bind them with as many slavish bonds as ye may choose to put upon them. Set them to make the heavens ring with Liberty’s acclaim, and while they are busy with that, ye can filch all their rights away. Do ye hear me?”
And all the Bamboozlers answered, “Aye, we hear.”
“Very good then,” said the Many Headed, “dogs have one great weakness, and that weakness is their silly love of noise and show. All history shows, and all our experience proves, that nothing fetches dogs so quick as noise, racket, din and gaudy show. Low, coarse, undiscerning simpletons, they are all animal sensibility, and have not yet developed the ability to pick truth from error, reality from show, and fraud out of its fine garments of honesty; gumps and boobies, they are pleased with a rattle and tickled with a straw.
“Work then, therefore, along the line of their strongest weakness. Give them noise to make, and plenty of it; something to make an idiotic din with; something to make them happy and shout. Let us make them a Bell, a big Bell, an enormous Bell; and we will call it a Liberty Bell. And so bewitched and superstitionized are they now with everything that is called Liberty that without more ado they will fall down and worship it. Then we will set them all to hammer on it, and the noise of the hammering thereof will please the poor idiots immensely; and then with our solemnest visages, we will call the noise the Proclamation of Liberty; at which bewitching words they will all fall down and worship again. So shall their befoolment, imbecilitation and enslavement be clinched and confirmed for ever, and ye fleas shall reign supreme, and suck their blood for ever and ever, Amen.”
“Bravo! Bravo!” cried all the fleas in chorus. “Good! Grand! give ’em a Bell, poor imbeciles; anything to please ’em; noise is cheap, and Liberty metal costs less than Liberty itself.”
And the suggestion of the Great Many Headed Gee Whizz seemed good unto the Committee, and they made him Minister Plenipotentiary in the matter. And he went and sent his Circulators abroad amongst the dogs, to tell them that a grand new pleasure had been devised for them; thattheirprosperity,theirglory,theirindependence,theirNational Wealth, their unexampled LIBERTY, were all agoing to be celebrated with a Bell, a big Bell, a nonpareil Bell, that should weighthirteen thousand pounds, and, with gorgeous ceremonies, should be baptized a LIBERTY BELL, to the honor of God and the glory of themselves; and the show would be worth going many miles to see; and every Tom, Dick, Harry and Jack was agoing to hammer on it, in honor of everything and everybody, at every hour of day and night; and the noise of it would be beau-u-u-tiful, and it would be so loud, and there would be such a lot of it that the heavens would be just full of it; that all theangels would knock off their regular business and make a great holiday to listen to it; and we should all prostrate ourselves and tell God what a wise thing he did when he passed by all the other dogs in the world and picked US out to be the recipients of such wealth and glory and Liberty as he had deluged us with.
And the dogs were delighted with the prospect of so much glory, and paid great attention to do as they were told.
Then in due time, the Great Daily Press announced that the Bamboozling Committee had appointed themselves, in the name of the dogs, to devise a Bell and to superintend all the ceremonies.
Then they proclaimed abroad that as all, both dogsandfleas, were the recipients of Heaven’s blessings of wealth and Freedom, and as this Bell was to be an emblematic Bell, all, both dogsandfleas, must contribute something towards the making of it; so that when its voice should be hammered out, it should be the voice ofall. Therefore every one must bring a bit of metal of some sort and cast it into the fire.
And on a day appointed, the fleas and the dogs were gathered around the melting pot; and the fleas, being very wealthy, sent in, with much ostentation, gold and silver, and nickel, which they called Liberty Metal, and which with prayer was cast into the fire; and the dogs, being very poor, went about and scratched up old bits of junk tin, and iron and brass, and brought them, and with prayer cast them into the fire; then all the salaried barkers said grace over the melting mass; and the ever-ready Tee de Little Wit Blatherskite, explained that the emblematic meaning of this unifying fusion of all these heterogeneous elements, was that we all, though fleas and dogs, poor and rich, small and great, white and black, weak and strong, were really onlyone, having all interests in common, and that as in this grand composite Bell, the glory of each component part was merged in the glory of the whole, so the glory of each in this nation—poor and rich, top and bottom—was merged inthe glory of the whole of us; in short, the E Pluribus Unum of the Bell typified the E Pluribus Unum ofus.
Illustration: PROCLAIMED ALOUD THAT THE POTFUL WAS COOKED ENOUGH.
And all the podgy and paunch-bellied fleas, at this lucky discovery of the beautiful hidden meaning of the fusing mass, set up a great asthmatic shout of praise, which contagious example caused the dogs to give out delirious howls of joy, too. For although it would have puzzled the smartest of them to discover the real actualities of the glorious things thus typified, they could see that the typification in the pot was all real and made a very fine show.
Then a herald came forth and proclaimed aloud that the potful was cooked enough, and was about to be solemnly poured out—the grandest libation to Liberty the world had ever seen—and that the Committee of Arrangements had decreed that asan appropriate ceremony, accompanying, all the dogs stand on their heads and kick their hind legs in the air, to signify Freedom and defiance to all the world.
And at a signal the great ladleful was tipped over, and the white hot stream ran into a great mould; the fleas shouted “Te Deum,” and fell down in as flat adoration as their rotund carcases allowed, the salaried barkers shed from their closed eyes great salt drops of ecstasy; the dogs stood on their heads and flourished their hind legs, and the Great Many Headed Gee Whizz stepped forth and announced that Liberty, glorious, heaven-born Liberty, had put on her metallic petticoat.
Now, some of the dogs who were so weak that they could not, and a few who were dull of comprehension and said they did not see the connection between standing on their heads and Liberty, objected to reverse themselves. Whereupon the police dogs drew their williamsticks and belabored them therewith, saying this was Liberty Day, and the beautiful show was not agoing to be spoilt by a lot of pesky dogs doing as they liked. They had got to stand on their heads and flourish; them was the orders, and, by Hokey, any dog that refused that day to honor Liberty, Freedom and Independence, was agoing to be made to; and what did they mean by refusing to be free, like everybody else?
And when those dogs replied that a Liberty that did not allow them to stand on their feet in a natural manner was tyranny, the police dogs smote them a smite on the jaw, and told them to shut up and do like the others; and on their refusal, they clubbed them out of the crowd, which hissed condemnation of their offence.