These squads were all officered by fat and comfortable mongrel creatures, one third dog, one third flea, and the rest monkey, whose qualifications for the headship thereof were that while young they had graduated from a certain College of the fleas established to teach the doctrine that virtue in dogs had no relation to their living carcases, but could be arbitrarily produced in any dog by thrusting him into a certain conventional moral mould, and thumping, walloping, pounding and hammering him until he fit it. After several years of training in this School where they saw thousands of dogs broken and smashed and distorted, but never a one made to fit, and they themselves had laboriously tried to make dogs fit the mould, but never did, they were examined as to their proficiency in the science and art of achieving moral failure; and as to their belief in the Attainability of the Impossible; and if the examination was satisfactory they signed a solemn declaration that they were true believers in that self-same blessed doctrine.
Whereupon the Principals opened their heads to see if their brains were really full of that doctrine, and if so they poured therein a ladleful of an antiseptic compound called “Compound Concentrated Quintessence of Pig-Headed Bourbonism” that was warranted to keep sound and immovably fix that doctrine in their brains all their lives; then they hermetically sealed up the opening against the entrance of any displacing idea, and turned the creature abroad upon the earth with a diploma certifying that the holder thereof had been duly treated, and had had his brain properly embalmed, and was thereafter incapable of receiving any other idea if he lived a million years.
Now, all these gangs and squads had very “encouraging success” in their work. That is to say the success was not much—in truth it was very little—but what there was of it was very encouraging to them because they were incapable of perceiving failure. Not many dogs could be induced by the Strenuous Endeavorists and Lollipoppers to go up the dingy alley-way, and of the few who went to the far end thereof, most returned saying that, barring the lollipops and drops of gravy, the fullness and plenty was all wretchedly pictorial, and the air was so heavy and stagnant, and the surroundings so dull and dreary that they preferred to go back and be damned hungry, rather than be “saved” hungry. In fact they had got so used to being damned hungry that it hurt less than the hungry “salvation.”
But over the little few who stayed in the Way to Heaven the Strenuous Endeavorists made great rejoicings; they labelled them Spared Monuments, packed them carefully in wadding and toted them round to the churches of the fleas and exhibited them as fine samples of what could be accomplished by “never wearying in well doing,” and the Church applauded, and the Monstrous Fleas being appealed to for help in carrying on the work, sent down their blessing and a large fund to provide more lollipops and gravy, and an earnest appeal to the Strenuous Endeavorists to endeavor to devise some scheme of salvation for the poor unfortunate dogs that ground at the Handle of their Mill, and whose spiritual interests lay very near to their hearts.
CHAPTER XIV.
Delusion of the Dog-flea-monkeys.—The Portrait.—How it was Copied.
