The Dogs and the Fleas / By One of the Dogs

by Frederic Scrimshaw

“Pardon me, Brother Phrique,” replied a wise flea, “for dissenting from so eminent a dog killer as thyself; but all wise fleas have found that the only true and efficacious way is, not to kill the thinkers, but to discourage the breed; to let the thinkers die off naturally, and replace them with a breed of non-thinkers. To this end their brains must be watched, and where-ever possible no thought must ever be allowed to enter; and in those cases where we cannot prevent its entrance, we must give them amusements, distractions and other substitutes for thinking. We must use artifice, not force; we must lure, not compel; for force and compulsion would defeat our aim by causing them, through the grievance they would thereby have against us, to begin thinking most grievously; whereas, by fooling them into going, of their own accord, in the way we want them to go, we would accomplish our object, and at the same time leave them to feel that they are free and independent dogs—which is to be done every time.”

“Therefore we do advise that the Board of Public Safety devise all manner of anti-thinking devices, and put them in operation at once, for there is no time to lose. History shows that wherever the empire of fleas over dogs has been overthrown, it has always been due to the neglect of the fleas, of those times, to keep up to due efficiency the anti-thinking devices of those times. Remember, we beseech you, that eternal vigilance in keeping the dogs from thinking, is the price of your rule over them.

“Now, the most efficacious anti-thinking remedy, is hard work, and eternal plenty of it. Give the dogs plenty to do. Make the pace fast and furious, and cause them to hustle to stay their hunger, and take all means to make their hunger get ahead of their hustling; cause them to have to scratch from early morn to midnight, so that the moment they’ve done work for the night, they will fall asleep from fatigue, and never wake until it is high time to be at their scratching again. Make leisure impossible, and idleness synonymous with starvation, and we give you our word of guarantee, that the dogs will soon be on the way to recovery.

“But, as interminable work alone, although a most excellent—and the main—remedy for thinking, would in the end sour their minds and enfeeble their bodies, and so reduce their yield of blood—thus defeating the main purpose for which a wise Creator created them, and predisposing them to crime and wickedness—a certain amount of recreation must be allowed them. In this need of recreation lies their only danger. They must not be allowed much recreation; for much would give them time to think—which must be especially guarded against. They must have so little recreation that their exhaustion shall incline them only to amusements.

“But, in the reaction from the exhaustion of toil, they will be apt to seek mad, unhealthy, delirious and body-weakening amusements. Therefore, it behooveth you to provide that their amusements be both recuperative and anti-thinking. Lo! We have spoken.”

And this advice of the wise fleas seemed good and sage unto the other fleas; and the Monstrous Fleas (all but Pharaoh Phrique, who became sulky and declared that the wise fleas were a lot of old fogy fools not to see that to hang, shoot, choke and kill the pesky dogs was the shortest, quickest and altogether the most efficacious way of putting them down), said, that come to think of it, they believed that eternal work was the finest antidote to the thinking poison, that had been devised, for they had noticed that though their dogs that turned the great Handle had at various times displayed alarming symptoms of the thought disease, they were happy to say they, by the application of the perpetual-work remedy, were now almost cured; and they believed that with care in keeping them eternally at it, they would suffer no relapse.

So the fleas formed the Board of Public Safety. And the first thing they did was to send a committee unto McPoodle, commanding him to provide them gangs of police and other dogs, to go by night through all the highways and byways of Canisville, and rake up all the bones and scraps and broken victuals they could find, in order that the dogs in the morning might have to scratch long and furiously to find a mouthful.

And McPoodle did as he was commanded, and sent his well-fed police and other dogs out to make the working dogs hungry. And they raked and scraped the highways and the byways, and gathered up all the food there was to be seen, and sorted the various scraps into heaps, and carried every heap into a Corner by itself.

And the fleas commanded McPoodle, and he appointed a few of the most eminent fleas to be Trustees and custodians over each heap.

And on the day of appointment those Trustees and custodians did reverently lift up their eyes to heaven, and say they accepted the custody thereof, as a sacred Trust from God and McPoodle, and did solemnly vow that they would administer that Trust in the fear of God, and altogether in the interest of the dogs, to whom they had a deep and heartfelt desire to make victuals cheap. This, said they, not because they loved the dogs, but because they had the Corners and could afford to lie.