“Ah! Say ye so?” exclaimed the One-eyed Berry, as his one eye bulged and lit up with the phosphorescent glow of hope of immortal fame, “dancing by little bow-wows, did ye say? Why, here is Sin, concentrated Iniquity, hydraulically pressed, rammed and condensed Wickedness, enough, under any favorably accidental expansion, to poison the whole moral atmosphere of Canisville, and kill us all. And to think that these tender and immature bow-wows are set to enact it all.”
And he diligently inquired where this evil might be found; and they told him, and he hied himself thither, and sat and saw the little bow-wows dance; and his eye bulged with horror as he perceived that the little bow-wows loved the dance, and were delighted with the large reward for the little work, which enabled them to take more to the kennels of their parents in one night than the parents could scratch up in the streets in a month.
And his horror grew still more when he found by visits to their kennels that these parent dogs were having much easier times than other dogs, through the efforts of these little bow-wows, which, on their part, grew plump and well-to-do.
This, said he, was cruelty of the cruellest sort, to turn these poor little tender innocents out at night—and worse—to dance, which was more exhausting to their vitality and—what was of infinitely more moment—their morals, than any amount of hungry scratching in the streets for bones and scraps.
But the parent dogs and others said it was not so; the little bow-wows were well nourished and well sheltered and protected from the storms and tempests, and hunger and wickedness of the streets, and were infinitely better off than the poor unfortunate bow-wows of the famishing wretches that did grind at the Handle of the Mill, that were thrown into the hopper to satisfy the blood greed of his dear friends, the Monstrous Fleas.
All which failed to move him to the right or left of his righteous determination to suppress cruelty to small bow-wows; for he set his police dogs to prevent these little ones dancing. Which they did.
And the little ones no more received good basketfuls for a little work, and they and the parent dogs did starve in their kennels, until compelled to go out into the wicked streets, and scratch from early morning until midnight for awfully meatless bones, or until the old dogs were compelled to fling them into the hopper of the Mill, as a fee to the Monstrous Fleas, to be allowed to grind and drop dead at the Handle.
Thus did the One-eyed Elder Berry prevent cruelty to little bow-wows.
