But it was several times noticed that no “inquest” was ever held over a flea. When a flea died he was always in bed, surrounded by a coming and going host of his sorrowing pulician friends, and attended by a peculiar set of creatures called “Emdees.” who did all they could to retard his death. And when he was dead they all signed an elaborately ornamented paper called a “certificate,” which set forth that the “late lamented” sucker had “deceased” and “passed away” and “gone to Heaven” by reason of the highly respectable complaint known as “Abnormal Enlargement of the Paunch,” and recommended him to the gracious notice and distinguished consideration of the angels.
CHAPTER IV.
Piety’s Philosophy of Poverty.—Andronicus Carnivorous and his Glory.
THINGS went from bad to worse among the dogs. It became the universal thing for dogs to be hungry and coatless and to go about weary, languid and sore distressed.
But what was worst of all, there was arising in the community a sentiment that for dogs to be hungry, coatless, weary, languid and sore distressed was the natural and normal condition; that this condition was ordained and fixed by some higher power against which it was blasphemy to contend or even to murmur. Yea, one poor fool of a dog, who said he had been to a place called a “Church,” where the fleas got together one day in every seven to hear a renegade dog bark to them for a good basketful of meat, got up and told them that he had seen the said barking dog, whose name he thought, if he remembered rightly, was Tee de Little Wit Blatherskite, turn over the leaves of some big book or other that lay on a costly cushion, and then tell the fleas, in a very loud voice, that inside that big book it was written, in big letters, that some very great person, called Jesus, or some such name, did in a far-away country, a very many hundreds of years ago, once say to some friends of his “the poor ye have always with you,” and that that meant that it was and always would be God’s will that dogs should be poor, and lank, and hungry, and covered with fleas. And he said that it was the evident design of God himself that dogs were created expressly for the purpose of carrying and nourishing fleas. That God, who had done all things well, had seen fit in his wisdom to create for his own glory both dogs and fleas, in order that the fleas, having sucked nearly all the blood out of the dogs, might show their “Charity” in giving back to them a few drops now and then.
And he told them a most beautiful and touching story of how one Andronicus Carnivorous, a certain well-known sucker, who, originally, came over the pond from North Kyhidom and settled amongst them, had grown monstrously big and strong on the blood of poor dogs, after having sucked some scores of millions of drops out of thousands of them, had on a certain day before high heaven and the assembled priesthood, and with the burning of incense and the applause of a great mob whose voice was as the sound of many waters, most generously and magnificently given fifty thousand drops back again to be distributed by a committee of lady fleas, amongst the “most worthy and deserving poor,” and five hundred thousand drops more to the “Church” to be expended on a new organ, a new, big, golden cross on top of the steeple, and some windows of stained glass, and a big brass plate in the most prominent part of the “Church” stating for all posterity, the name of the great sucker who gave it. All of which showed that the said eminent sucker, although he did not, alas, and unfortunately, believe in the God of the fleas, was a most pious saint, who humbly regarded his great wealth as a trust, and was endeavoring to give a good account of his stewardship.