The Dogs and the Fleas / By One of the Dogs

by Frederic Scrimshaw

“My brother,” said the prophet, “thou must pray for grace to be content.”

Now, when the Church of the Fleas heard that there was a very holy dog of a prophet gone down amongst the wicked and discontented canines to preach unto them the doctrine of present contentment and future bellyfuls, they gathered themselves together in a great Praise Convention to give thanks and rejoice for the new Star of Hope that had risen on the land, and a Holy One, a Maker of long prayers and short wages, arose and addressed them.

The Honorable One a Maker of long prayers and short wages was a smooth and influential lay flea, who ran a large blood suckery six days of the week, and on the other a large snivelling prayery, and was reputed to be very rich in grace, but much richer in this world’s wealth, and was world-noted for his stinginess towards the dogs he drew his life blood from, and the prodigality of his gifts to churches and charities.

There was a very queer peculiarity about his eyes: One of them was turned permanently downward towards the earth, and was a very keen, bright eye of high microscopic power, which restlessly scanned every object, and by long practice had grown able to discern with a marvellous infallibility certain dirty looking little blood spots called pennies. This eye was what was known as his six-days-a-week eye, and was so powerfully developed that no matter how small these spots were, nor how deeply hidden—even deep down at the bottom of and beneath a hundred feet of dirt—he could see them and he would never rest until he had uncovered them, and gathered them in with his marvellously acquisitive blood sucker.

His other eye was known as his seventh-day eye, and was a very keen, bright eye of high telescopic power, which by persistent straining and practice had bulged outward and upward towards Heaven, and had developed a marvellous capacity for seeing mansions in the skies, harps and golden crowns of glory and immortality, laid up in particular for the Honorable One a Maker of long prayers and short wages.

So that what with the present riches his six-days-a-week eye enabled his marvellously acquisitive blood sucker to pick up, and the prospective riches his seventh-day eye enabled him to see was his, he was very wealthy indeed, very sleek and exceedingly well contented—as any one so well fixed for both worlds ought to be.

He said: “Brethren of the most ancient and honorable Church of the Suckers, it is evident that the great problem of sin and wickedness amongst the poor is about to be solved. I confess that, to me, the state of the poor has been for years past, a great burden of anxiety upon my heart, and a subject of agonizing prayer. I have remarked their pinched features, their hungry jaws, their woe-begone condition, and I have endeavored as far as in me lies, to alleviate their hard lot. What shall be done to lift them up? Let us remember that they are of our own blood. The poor brutes on which I live excite my compassion more than I can tell, and I have done everything I know of to lessen the hardness of their lot. I encourage my lady flea and our flea-lets—than whom there are not more holy ones between here and the seventh heaven—to go down and teach them. They take little tracts to them, showing them, in the most beautiful manner, how by more toil, more thrift, more temperance, more economy of time and little retrenchments in sleep and luxuries, and the lopping off here and there of sinful indulgences, and crucifixion of various ungodly lusts, they can with the help of God, come up to fatness, and even to a sleek condition. They have showed them that “Where there’s a will, there’s ALWAYS a way” to success in life, and they have shown them by various shining examples, how ANY dog may, by patient perseverance, lift himself out of the condition of being a blood-yielding dog and come up by Transformation into that of being an honored sucker himself and deacon of a church. And to encourage them, I have even sometimes remitted five per cent. of the blood they owe me. But nothing seems to come of it. They seem just as thriftless as ever and as full of vice. And really their idleness and shiftlessness cause me serious alarm as I perceive that their daily yield of blood is decreasing and I have suffered much loss. And brethren, no doubt I voice your experience. We know that godliness among these poor is economically profitable. A pious, contented dog works more faithfully than an ungodly one; and there is infinitely more pleasure in going to collect our monthly dues from amongst the pious, sober, well behaved and godly dogs, than amongst those who by their wicked idleness, insobriety and insolent barkings, give us trouble and anxiety. Let us remember that nice Scripture which says, ‘Godliness is profitable unto all things, having the promise not only of the life that now is, but of that which is to come.’ Let us then be not only good but wise, and not only support this good prophet in his work, but set apart others unto the good work; and let us call them City Missionaries. Will some one now move that we pass ’round the hat? And let the collection be a good big one brethren, for, recollect, this is to send the gospel to the poor, and ‘he that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord,’ and the Lord always pays good interest, brethren, good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over. So that we shall by this present sacrifice be eternal gainers and come out at the large end of the horn.”

And it was so. And they made up a big pot of money for the missionaries; and they stroked their paunches affectionately and departed, feeling that God ought to be very much obliged to them for having condescended to think on his poor.

And from that time on there was reported “great success” in the preaching of the Gospel of Content. At the end of the year the Church of the Suckers got together, and had the prophets tell them of the good work done during the year. And the good prophets made various long reports of their work. They had written down in books called “diaries” how many visits they had made among the poor dogs; how many they had induced by exhortation, to give up their fighting and quarreling; how many had thus been brought to sit in rows in certain bare-looking gospel houses called “Missions,” and howl out certain noises called “hymns,” and to declare at the end of meetings that they had “got religion” and “found grace” to bear their hunger and all their miseries, and even to put on a visage and a look that betokened that they rather enjoyed hunger and poverty and hankered for more. But the reports always wound up with the statement, that how much soever of good had been done, it was as nothing to the good that remained to be done; that the “fields were white unto the harvest,” and praying that “more laborers be sent into the harvest,” and, finally, that although they had got quite a number of hungry and poverty-stricken dogs to enter the ranks of the contented saints, the vast multitude were still discontented and quarrelsome and wicked, and would not come to the “Mission,” but loafed about the streets on Sunday, blind to their “privileges,” and deaf to the “gracious call.” And what was even more sad and pitiable, these loafers, who would not be gathered under the wing of the new gospel hen, not only made a mock at sin, but had made grievous faces at the missionaries. Then the speakers congratulated the “mission society” on the “good” they had done and urged the missionaries to bear their hard trials with meekness, and to put forth “greater efforts” in the future.