CHAPTER XL.
The Holy One a Maker of Long Prayers and Short Wages Discourses on the Blessedness of Charity to Poor Dogs, and Shows how it Incidentally Pays the Blood-Suckers who Dispense it.—Lady Vanderbillion Flea Suggests a Charity Ball.
THE Honorable and Holy One a Maker was in especially good fettle to-day. To his usual rotundity of paunch and rubicundity and sleekness of visage, the warmth of his complimentary-adjectived reception had added a glow of self-complacency, which gave his countenance the shine and sheen of transfiguration. Having dined well of this earth’s bounties, and afterwards in silent communion quaffed deep quaffs of the “Wine of Holiness” of the oldest and rarest vintage, he was overflowingly full of beaming sanctimoniousness and charity, and his seventh-day eye was more highly enlarged and heavenward-lifted than usual; insomuch that all the lady fleas were enraptured, and said he was an angel, and too beautiful for anything, bless him.
In accents low and mellifluously cadent, he said: “Dear friends: It would ill become me to attempt to emulate the magnificent eloquence of the reverend barkers who have addressed you. Unseen of you, I have heard their addresses, and I trust I may be pardoned if I try to supplement their suggestions by the suggestion that in our magnificent efforts for the spiritual bettering of the canine race, we forget not their corporeal needs.
“Oh, my friends, I mingle with dogs more, perhaps, than any of ye, and my heart is torn and bleeds for their poverty and sorrow and suffering, and I would suggest that we, who have the means, do something for their corporeal wants. My suggestion is that we do something larger in Charity for them.
“Oh, my friends, think of the great gifts Heaven has given to us, and then think of the return we owe to Heaven for the profitable use of them. As I tell the poor dogs in my blood suckery and in my Sunday snivelling prayery, we ought to do all we do to the glory of God; for, God, He counts all our actions.
“Now, my friends, I tell you Charity is the finest investment ye can go in for. It yields the largest dividends. Not only do we please God by it, and so secure mansions and harps and crowns above, which will come in very handy, when we can make no more out of this world, but by giving much in Charity to these dogs, we win their affection and their veneration, and by soothing their stomachs a little, we soothe their restlessness and their inclinations to sedition, and so preserve them in a meek, pious and subservient frame of mind which is conducive to low wages. Thus you see, my friends, a large Charity fund is putting wealth where it will do the most good.”