Then came to pass all that had been predicted by the wise fleas. The dogs hungrily ran about the bare streets, seeking food, but found nothing but a few chance scraps, that had escaped the vigilant diligence of McPoodle’s sweepers. So ravenous was their hunger, and so scarce the means of satisfying it, that the dogs’ noses were ever in the dirt, and grew sore and bloody with their eternal nosing after the Something that so seldom they found. As for their eyes, they grew, by reason of being ever strained towards the dirt, to be permanently near-sighted and microscopic, so that larger things, such as hills and trees and sky became indistinct and almost invisible to them. And as for their brains, they shrank and shrivelled until they could only receive one thought, and that was—Victuals.
So that the fleas rejoiced, and were glad, and the wise fleas were held in great honor for having devised so great a salvation from the threatened perils of the thinking plague.
And the wise fleas warned the eminent and the wealthy fleas, to be sure to retain the advantage they had gained, and keep the dogs well starved, for nothing kept a dog’s brain so thoroughly fortified against the invasion of uplifting and seditious thoughts, as perpetual hunger and tearing around to appease it. And the eminent and the wealthy fleas said they would see to it with pleasure.
But, by and by, after many dogs had dropped dead in their vain struggling search for victuals in the cleaned-out highways and byways, the hungry dogs were compelled to repair to the Corners, and beg of the fleas that held the heaps as a Sacred Trust from God, to give them a mouthful for God’s sake to keep them from dying.
But the lordly fleas that had the Sacred Trust, spake haughtily unto them, and said that as Heaven had most wisely seen fit, by means of the Sacred Trust, to give the fleas the Bulge on the dogs, they were determined to be faithful to Heaven, and use the said Bulge to the glory of Heaven, and the safety of Society which had but very recently been in peril of destruction, and, therefore, none but good and moral, lowly and obedient dogs, that had never held seditious thoughts, had never tried, or thought of trying, to shake off their fleas, had never doubted or been tempted to doubt, the divine and indisputable right of fleas to suck the blood of dogs, would receive any scraps from the heaps which had been committed to them—the Sacred Trustees.
And all the hungry dogs hastened to assure the Sacred Trustees that they were and always had been good and moral, obedient and unseditious dogs that had never doubted the divine rights of fleas.
But the Sacred Trustees said that was not so, for they had a Holy Angel who kept a Book of Death, in which was written with everlasting ink, the names of those undesirable dogs whom certain sneak dogs, called Detectives, had reported to them to have been guilty of thinking and speaking evil of fleas; and these had been Blacklisted, to be sent away into everlasting hunger.
Upon which they commanded the Angel to read out the names of the Accused; who were ignominiously driven shrieking away, by the police dogs who, being fat and well fed, did drive them away with pleasure, and club them with alacrity.
But the Blessed Ones, whose names were not written in the Book of Death, did cringingly wag their tails, and lick the feet of the police dogs, and reverentially pray their good lords, the Sacred Trustees, to give them something to push the walls of their stomachs apart with, for they were fallen together with hunger. Thereupon, the Sacred Trustees were graciously pleased to order certain servant dogs to throw over the fence just scraps enough not to be sufficient to go around, and to keep the dogs avidiously scrambling and savagely fighting for them.
This policy, said the wise fleas, would keep the dogs’ thoughts in their stomachs, where alone dogs’ thoughts ought to be; for when they mounted to their heads they rendered dogs bad citizens and of no good to the fleas.