CHAPTER XXXVIII.
The Times Out of Joint.—The Police Dogs Growl and Threaten Revolt.—The Salaried Barkers Awake and get up a “Revival.”—Great Conference of all the Great Lights of Pietydom.—A Long Pull and a Strong Pull, and a Pull Altogether, for the Salvation of the Dogs, Resolved on.
Illustration: DECORATIVE LETTER ‘T’,
THE bamboozle of the Bell of Liberty had been a grand success while it lasted. As a dream, a stimulating mental narcotism, a beautiful period of sweet oblivion, into which the hard and cruel facts of the dogs’ daily lives had been thrown and temporarily buried, it was very restful and enjoyable to them. But starvation, disease and universal tyranny, though buried, were not decreed out of being; and scarcely had the last tones of sweet Liberty’s Bell died out and the show closed, ere those horrid realities began to creep and sneak from their graves and smite the yet dazed and dreaming dogs. With skeleton hands they smote them on the head and in the stomach, and with mercilessly cruel fingers poked open their hypnotized eyes, and with fiendish laughter mocked them, and bade them look and see that in spite of Liberty Shows of every sort, the times were somehow out of joint. Times were indeed bad. Gaunt Famine, gaunterthan ever, stalked through the land, smiting down her victims more pitilessly than ever, as though in jealous revenge for the attentions they had lately lavished on her rival, Liberty. Of course the dogs did the starving—most of it; but as the dogs were the source of the fleas’ existence, why, even many ofthemfell sick of hunger and dwindled away and died. Even the police dogs, for whom Pup McPoodle and all the Monstrous Fleas made extra special strenuous efforts to keep in good flesh, seeing that their zeal for Order depended entirely on that, did suffer somewhat from the stringency. They did not always get their basketfuls punctually, and were several times delayed in their dining, and they began to grumble and complain that if this kind of outrage on their sacred carcases were not soon stopped, they would get up a riot on their own hook and club somebody, for they had never been used to being hungry, and by the great Holy Locust, they were not going to be, either, without knowing the reason why.
Irreligion, Vice, Crime and Immorality stalked abroad, and gave the multitudinous compulsory-virtue societies a tremendous rush of business, insomuch that they had to work overtime. But an evil of far more portentousness and gravity than all these combined ensued: the salaried barkers in the churches had their basketfuls diminished; their churches were sometimes empty and were never full.
Therefore, as the salaried barkers had, through long experience, come to observe that a famine was nearly always accompanied by what they called a “great outpouring of the spirit,” and the setting in of a great “revival,” and as a “revival” meant fuller churches, and consequently a revival of the supplies of meat, they determined to hump themselves with great energy, and bring about the revival that, according to the famine, was now about due. So they called a conference of all the fat fleas, the eminent fleas, and the most pious of the Monstrous Fleas, and the barking dogs, not only of Canisville, but of the country roundabout, to devise newer and better schemes for what theycalled “reaching the masses,”—or “them asses” as one totally depraved dog profanely remarked.
And it was a great time. For weeks all the lady fleas, and all other fleas who were in “sympathy” with the dogs, and had their “welfare” at heart, were busy every day in getting a place ready for the reception of the conference. It was fitted up “regardless of expense,” and decorated especially with costly flowers, and mottoed banners, and choice texts of “Holy Scripture,” exquisitely wrought in gold and silver, on expensive silks. The air was heavy with perfumes of the rarest sorts; the walls were resplendent with mirrors and pictures, loaned by the wealthiest suckers; and everything that could be donewasdone to minister to the “solemnity” of the occasion, and to the comfort of the most eminent and fat-salaried barkers—the D. D.’s, L.L. D.’s, B. A.’s, M. A.’s, Reverends, Very Reverends, Much Reverends, Right Reverends, Wrong Reverends, Right Reverend Fathers in God, His Grace, His Eminence, His Sacredness, His Holiness, who had been invited from far and near, to assist Heaven in bringing about the “revival.” And a great and shining galaxy of fat and Monstrous Fleas, with “Professor,” “Honorable,” “Right Honorable,” “His Nibs,” “His Nobs,” “His Jags,” “His Jiblets,” “His Joblots,” to their names were there also. Oh, they were a highly select and respectable and well-conditioned body of fleas and barkers that met together that day to devise the ways and means of making poor dogs happy.
Now it was remarked that to this great conference of the pious fleas and their salaried barkers to devise the salvation of dogsnot a solitary poor working dog was invited, and no one even called to ask the opinion of any dog on the subject; but all the eminent and pious fleas there proceeded to make speeches, which were duly taken down and recorded in the book of the chronicles of the world’s eminent saints, who have spent their lives trying to lift up the poor, while riding on their backs.
And Tee de Little Wit Blatherskite, who had had a good breakfast and was more than usually full of divine zeal, said they were grieved beyond expression to find that, in spite of the efforts that had been expended for the benefit of poor dogs, their poverty, discontent and irreligion were on the increase. But not this alone; for lately it had come to their knowledge that far more alarming symptoms had broken out. In several quarters, it was rumored, there had appeared several strange dogs of uncouth visage and long hair, who had evidently determined to poison the minds of the whole community of dogs.
These abominable new comers—who they hoped for the honor of Canisville were from some foreign country—had spoken evil of religion, saying it was only a crafty dodge of the fleas to deceive dogs with and to hide from them the fact thatthe only thing that was amiss with dogs wasFLEAS. And these same foreign dogs had even gone so far as to call fleas SUCKERS and other wicked epithets, and to tell the dogs that until they got rid of the fleas they would never get rid of their miseries. Now, brethren, here a real peril menaced them; here, brethren, were the hateful devils of Singletaxism, Anarchism, Communism, Socialism, Populism, Nationalism, and many other blasphemous anti-flea isms, shoving their noses in our midst, and God only knew what the end of it was to be. Here were certain lewd dogs of the baser sort—idle, good-for-nothing agitators, no doubt, who lived on their more simple, honest and law abiding fellow-dogs—going about preaching the pestilent doctrines of social discontent, and free thought, and equal rights, and setting class against class—yes, brethren,setting class against class; only think of it!—and was nothing to be done? Were they to sit there supinely looking on while those vile foreign agitators were undermining the very foundations of Religion and Social Order? Why, it might actually come to pass, if some energetic measures were not immediately undertaken, that the whole race of dogs would grow to hate the race of fleas, and even try to exterminate them as they once did inFrankoland, which would result in putting back the cause of Religion a hundred years, as it had done there. Oh, brethren, it was time to be up and doing. Oh, brethren, scepticism and infidelity were taking hold of dogs nowadays. Oh, brethren, could we not revive the laws against blasphemy, and the use of the Blue Thunderbolts with which toprotect the Almighty? Had we no jails and gallows to protect us and keep these dogs in the paths of true religion? Oh, brethren, only a few days ago, as one of our most fat and pious pew holders was on his way to church, he was insulted by some dogs who, no doubt, had imbibed the pestilent heresies now being preached. They barked out at him: “There goes a sucker. That’s the son-of-a-gun what keeps us thin and poor;” and made other insolent and ungrammatical remarks, and one vile fellow slyly threw a gob of mud that hit him on the paunch. Oh, brethren, it needed great grace and entire sanctification for our brother to bear it. And no doubt, brethren, something was urgently needed to reach the masses.
Illustration: THREW A GOB OF MUD THAT HIT HIM ON THE PAUNCH.
Then the conference adjourned for recess and luncheon, which consisted of every sort of costly viands, served on costly plate; of rare and costly fruits, and wines of exquisite “bouquet,” all set out amid a display of the very rarest exotics, that cost exceeding much wealth, and to the accompaniment of an orchestra of very talented minstrels.
This over, and “thanks” having been rendered by His Grace, the Serene and Excessively Distinguished Archiepiscopus of the Diocese of Puliciania, who had travelled a thousand miles “to be present on this auspicious occasion,” the session was reopened with prayer by the Veriest Reverend Father in God, Sanguineous F. Plumpdog.
Now, His Grace, the Serene and Excessively Distinguished Archiepiscopus of the Diocese of Puliciania, was a very large, fat and wheezy dog who could hardly see out of his eyes for fatness. He had lived amongst, and ministered to a churchful of big fat fleas so long that he had come to regard himself as one of them, and always said “we” and “us” and “our.” So did all the rest of these wonderfully sleek and plump barkers; and so acceptable were these barkers to their various congregations of fat and Monstrous Fleas and so uniformly did they never preach any other than an “acceptable” gospel to them, that the fleas were pleased to regard them as of their caste.
The first speaker was the Most Reverend, Asthmatic and Holy Archdeacon, Suckerius P. Paunchiana Fatdog, F. L. U. N. K. E. Y., H. U. M. B. U. G., who made a few remarks thus: “Ladies and Gentlefleas—It seems to me that we, to whom has been committed,by the wisdom of Almighty God, the keeping of great wealth, ought first to guard against the danger of forgetting that we owe something to the poor dogs whom God,in His wisdom has put in a position beneath us. We ought never to forget that it is to us that God looks,as his chosen instruments, for the uplifting of the dogs. Why there are dogs and why there are fleas is one of those inscrutable mysteries that we ought not to pry into, but reverently accept. For my part, I reverentlyaccept it, and I pray that I may ever be kept reverent. Certain it is, however, that if ever the dogs are to be made fat and happy, and uplifted to those things of the soul and Heaven, we fleas will have to do it. God always works through means,and we are the means. He has ordained the wealthy to minister to the poor, the strong to bear with the weak, the wise to lead the foolish, the enlightened to illumine the dark; we are the wealthy, the strong, the wise, and the enlightened, and woe to us if we shirk the duty thus laid upon us. Brethren, the one thing we are most apt to forget isthe Spirit of Christ. He camedownfrom his high estate to uplift the fallen, and it is this going down,going down,GOING DOWN, brethren, to those below us, that is going to save them.
“Let us then carry out this Spirit, and godownto these poor creatures. Let us walk amongst them; let us show ourselves to them; let us put on poor raiment and ask them how they do; let us teach them scientific economy in eating; let us with our own paws show them how one bone can be made to yield a good dinner for a large family and leave something over for the morrow; let us teach them how to accept in a proper spirit the cast-off garments of the “charitable,” and to seek to be clothed with the “garments of righteousness”; let us invite them to confide to us their trials and troubles; let us take a genuine interest in them, and get into their affections, and teach them toil, and thrift, and temperance, and so, by easy and natural methods—such as wrapping up pennies and candies in tracts and leaflets—gradually train their minds to those higher and eternal things and treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust break through and steal.”
And all the audience broke out into a storm of applause; and everybody said that was a most glorious gospel, the Gospel of GOING DOWN. And everybody looked anxious to get up and go down then and there. And an enthusiastic Monstrous Flea moved, and another enthusiastic one seconded, that “We do,here and now, all of us, form ourselves into an Association to be known as the ‘Going Down Organization Society,’” which was carried with immense enthusiasm.
Illustration: ONE BONE CAN BE MADE TO YIELD A GOOD DINNER FOR A LARGE FAMILY.