“He says they say it is a disease that attacks the optic nerve of each eye simultaneously, and is caused by the abnormal intensification and æsthetization of the anonymous gastric thingumybob, at its point of junction with the visual organs, and is primarily due to intense and prolonged hunger and abuse. This disease is known in common language as “Eye-opening,” and is regarded as a very fatal malady; not, singular to say, to the dog attacked, but only to the fleas on him, as he immediately begins to sever those sacred relations which God has established between him and his fleas, so that they begin to wither and perish for lack of nourishment.”
And at these ominous words, great fear and trembling came upon all the assembly, and they began to bewail, and to charge that an ungrateful Providence had gone back on them, in the very hour when they had gathered to do something to help him in his work of blessing the dogs; and they grew bitter in denouncing Pup McPoodle as an incompetent and unfaithful Executive, and the Boards of Public Health and Safety as a lot of antiquated old duffers, and the Bamboozling Committee as a lot of noodles, and not half as smart as they were cracked up to be, and the Great Many Headed Daily Press, as a fraud and a false prophet, and everybody and everything else, for betraying them.
And when His Grace, the Serene, etc., etc., proposed that they sing a Hymn of Faith and put their trust in Heaven, they gruffly replied that Hymns of Faith were utterly inadequate as compensation for the utter loss of dogs to bleed, and as for putting trust in Heaven, that was all very well, provided one was on the spot to look after things. And when Tee de Little Wit Blatherskite arose, and, with idiotically histrionic gestures, began to vociferate that in vision he saw the Lord as a man of war, coming with chariots of fire, lightning, thunderbolt and tempest, to the rescue of His Anointed and the discomfiture of the infidel and irreligious dogs, they rudely told him he was a bag of windy words, whose fine God didn’t even deliver him in his hour of need; for when he fell once, lately, into a hundred-foot debt hole, his fellow dogs had to fill up seventy-seven hundredths of it, before he could scramble out.
And at the very height of this confusion, a great commotion occurred amongst those near the door, and a Big Dog, followed by a whole troop of dogs, boldly entered. “What impudence!” said some of the highly perfumed and delicate lady fleas. “What a disagreeable smell of dog,” said others. The Charity-Ball enthusiasts, at sight of the dirty mob, fainted dead away; the fattest of the salaried barkers sneaked out by the side door; while the eminent, wealthy and Monstrous Fleas, to hide their terror, grew truculent and made a great hubbub and threatening; but the Big Dog in a voice of thunder, bade them be silent. The terror-stricken fleas fell flat, and the Big Dog advancing, extended his huge paw, and thus addressed them: “Listen, most eminent and respectable representatives of the most eminent and respectable order of pimps, barnacles and blood-suckers; I and my gang of fellow-sufferers have been at the door of your convention for some time past, and we have heard all your elaborate schemes which you have concocted for our welfare.
“About the time you fat, full-blooded and comfortable suckers called this convention to take into consideration the miserable condition of us dogs, a number of us dogs had the (to you) sublime impudence to call a convention to take into consideration _our own_ condition; and we pride ourselves that we have reached a far broader and more practical conclusion than your worshipful body has come to. As you well know, there has been brewing amongst us a very deep discontent with our condition, and a very decided conviction that we knew exactly what was the matter with us, and how to mend it.
“Some of us had fathers who could remember the honored chieftain, Bull McMastiff, and the good times dogs had then, and they told us that old Mastiff used daily to say and repeat: “My dear dogs, beware of the fleas,” and he prophesied that so surely as they abated their hatred of fleas, they would sink into poverty, meagreness and misery.
“And so it has been. When Bull McMastiff gave up the ghost, McPoodle, a bad-for-everything ruler, who, like most other beastly pests and nuisances, has lived to a most unconscionably great age, relaxed the stringency of our laws, and allowed the missionaries of the fleas to settle amongst us, and these missionaries went about amongst us preaching that McMastiff was an imbecile old fool, who did not know what was good for dogs; that the fleas were a much maligned and misrepresented class; that a few fleas—a nice judicious selection—on a dog, were not only no detriment, but a positive advantage to him; that they helped his general and particular health; that they purified a dog’s blood, and enriched it with certain valuable elements, which all truly healthy dogs need, and that the few drops of blood they took as dividend, were a mere nothing in comparison to the service they rendered, that they could assure them that no dog could be said to be really and truly healthy and complete without at least some fleas upon him; yea, they went so far as to declare by Heaven and Holy Scripture, that fleas were divinely appointed to give life and joy and peace to dogs, and that the race of dogs would die off the face of the earth, if it were not for them; and they told of very many terrible instances where whole nations of dogs had utterly perished for want of a few fleas.
“And we dogs were idiots enough to believe the pious lies they told us, and we allowed you to become a part of our community; and, very soon, it fell out that ye became the real, actual community, and we became your feeders, your providers, your most humble and obedient servants. We took you to our bodies and very soon ye made them your own, and, puffed up with pride, ye came to imagine that ye only were the people, ye were the republic; ye called yourselves on all occasions, ‘the country,’ ‘the nation.’ Ye made war and peace, and did everything and got everything but the fighting and the paying. Ye got up centennials, bi, tri and quadri, of this, that and the other, which we poor starving dogs were bled to pay for and allowed to look at from a great distance. And the overgrown suckers of other nations sent their ‘greetings’ to you; and when they, to vary the monotony of their centennials and anniversaries of this, that and the other, got up a grand Jubilee Jamboree to commemorate the fiftieth year of the efforts of a fat and fuzzy old lady sucker, Queen flea of Kyhidom, and her prolific brood to bleed their dogs to death, ye sent your greetings and prayers for God Almighty’s blessings on their efforts; and all this pious snobbery and robbery and jobbery, ye called ‘drawing closer the bonds of international comity.’