And through all this evil time the dogs ground and fainted and sighed and howled, and sent up blasphemies and curses and prayers to a Heaven that was very deaf to them, but was apparently very good to the monstrosities that sat around the Tank.
CHAPTER XI.
Hell and Chaos in Canisville.—Tramp Dogs.—Rise of the Apologist Philosophers.—Whatsoever is is Right.—Their Proverb Foundry.
CHAOS reigned in Canisville. Hell seemed to have grown so hungry for victims that it had not patience to wait for the coming down of the dogs to it, in the natural course of time, but had gone up to devour them on earth. Dogs everywhere were the property of the fleas, either by direct settlement on their bodies or by deputy. All that were not struggling by serving the Monstrous Fleas at the Handle were wandering around carrying little fleas and hunting hard for bones and scraps. The only exceptions were a few obstinate headed and obdurate hearted dogs, who had said they would have freedom at any cost. They said they would not turn that infernal Handle, neither would they carry and maintain any fleas. So they defiantly went about picking up scraps, and when the little fleas came hopping onto them, and demanding as their right to suck out of them the nutriment the scraps gave them, those dogs did snarl and reach around for them with their teeth and violently shake them off.
Then did those little fleas complain unto McPoodle that there were certain wicked dogs that objected to be bled; and McPoodle said he would not stand it in his dominions; and the Monstrous Fleas when they heard about it, said it was Robbery of the Little Brethren, and a contagious Bad Example that might spread throughout Society; and they spake unto their salaried barker in the Church, Tee de Little Wit Blatherskite, that he speak over the big book that lay on the costly cushion, against the sin of dogs stealing their own bodies away from the bites of the fleas. And the barker did speak, and the good and well behaved dogs who carried their fleas and bore their hunger piously did regard with severity and high disapproval all those dogs that shook their fleas, insomuch that the flea shakers found themselves in ill odor and did withdraw themselves from dog society, and sought lonely places where meat was scarce and fleas scarcer.
Yet did not those dogs repine. They tramped and vagabondized and reposed in the sun and the dirt; they grew very hairy and very dirty and very hungry. But they said they were never hungrier than they would have been had they remained in Good Society, and spent their days hustling for fleas, which, they said, was on the whole an advantage, as it was much less awful to be idle and hungry than to work one’s life out for others and be hungry all the same; and as for Public Opinion, why, to be able to snooze in the sunshine, was worth any amount of Public Opinion that left one’s stomach insolvent. They also became covered with vermin, which the flea-covered and respectable dogs of Canisville shuddered at; but the vagabond dogs said that carrying vermin was not half as burdensome or half as injurious to the health as carrying fleas; and as for getting their living without work, why, the Monstrous Fleas did no work at all and were monstrously respectable, and they were going to be respectable too; all which reasoning the pious dogs said was Sophistry, and tended to lower them still further in the estimation of the big fleas and other Good Society.
Verily a chaotic state of things prevailed; and to the few sensible dogs that ever and anon bobbed up from out-of-the way places to bark a bark of protest, and then sink into oblivion or be stoned out of town, all things seemed upside down.