And all the dogs gnashed their newly sharpened teeth and howled again, “Down with the Canisvillians,” “God save our Noble Fleas,” and “Long live King Gorgeous Littlehead Flea.”
But when they arrived in the land of the Canisvillians, and proceeded, with the Blessing of God, to tear out their eyes and their bowels, those Canisville dogs also showed surprisingly large teeth and dreadfully sharp and strong claws; whereupon the blessing of God did go over to their side, and they did amazingly wallop the life out of the Kyhidom dogs, insomuch that all that were not dead ran howling down to the pond and swam away home, and did no more venture to come back.
Then did the dogs of Canisville feel highly elated at having walloped the dogs of Kyhidom, and kept on barking and barking about their victory, and saying they could do it again, and they wished some of those Kyhis would come back again to be walloped. All which great joy and elation their own native fleas, being fleas of subtlety, did turn to their own profit; for they, seeing that dogs always like to be pushed in the way they want to go, ordained certain Remembrance Days to be observed through all the land, on which days the dogs should have flattering looking glasses held up to them, should be sung to and made poetry to, and orated at, and have incense burned for the gratification of their nostrils. There was “Defiance to Kyhidom Day,” and “The Awful Walloping Day,” and “Kyhi Skedaddle Day,” and “Get-Along-all-by-Ourselves Day,” and “Slain Dogs Day” and a host of other Days on which the dogs told one another and the fleas told them what grand, noble and gloriously independent dogs they were, that would never, no never, endure the tyrant on their soil, or suffer any bobtailed, measly, foreign dog to boss it over them.
And it was so that they grew so ineffably conceited and vain, by reason of eternally Remembering themselves and admiring their own features, that they quite forgot the fleas on their own backs. So the fleas had good fat times and were little disturbed; and in the inmost sanctuary of their own private gatherings they did knowingly wink the eye and say that for enabling dogs to Forget their own Rights the Remembrance Days beat all Creation.
CHAPTER III.
Unprofitable Victory.—Plague of Fleas.—Desperate Condition of the Dogs.
NOW the poor fool dogs of Canisville had been told by their own fleas that victory over the wicked dogs of Kyhidom meant Freedom, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Prosperity, Universal Wealth, Heaven, to themselves; and they believed them. But it did not. On the contrary, Freedom, Liberty, Equality, etc., etc., gradually vanished like a setting sun, and a great plague of itch, came upon all the dogs; and from the rising of the sun until the going down thereof, and until his rising again, the dogs scratched and scratched and abraded themselves against walls and posts, and howled and barked and barked and barked about the “Good old times” when all dogs were healthy and lustrous of coat.