This motion was carried, and presented to the Board of Public Safety; and the Board carried it to McPoodle and the authorities, and they, with the acquiescence of the fleas—who had all been assured that they would be indemnified for any loss of blood they might suffer in case of failure of the experiment—proclaimed that on a certain few days of the year, the fleas should let up on the dogs and allow them to recover a little strength; and that on those days they should turn over the management of the dogs to the Bamboozling Committee.
And the Bamboozling Committee got together certain dogs that were lying around loose, and made them happy with meat and drink, and dressed them up in gaudy colored raiment; and to some of them they gave certain loud-noise-producing instruments, and to others, long poles with pretty cloths fluttering at the end thereof, and said unto them: “Go ye forth into all the streets and ways of Canisville, and the country roundabout, and blow ye and thump ye on the loud-noise-producing instruments, and wave ye on high the pretty cloths, and make a great shouting and hullabaloo with your throats; and it shall be that when the dogs of Canisville shall hear your hullabaloo, they will run out of their holes and kennels, and, forgetting all their troubles, they will howl with idiotic joy, and run after you whithersoever ye go. Go roundabout and encompass the town seven times, blowing and thumping and waving, and fetch up at the Public Place, where great miracles are to be wrought.”
So the blowing, thumping and cloth-waving dogs, quite intoxicated with the strange, glorious feeling of a full stomach, did as they were bid, and went and filled all the air with their sounding; and at the very first blast and thump and shout, all the dogs that heard came rushing out, barking, wagging their bony tails and rolling over and over in the dirt, with a frenzied joy, and followed in a great mob the blowers and thumpers and wavers, whithersoever they went.
Then when they had seven times gone roundabout the town, they came to the Public Place, where were gathered on an eminence the Bamboozling Committee, and around them, in their best raiment, all the Monstrous Fleas, who had ordered the Blood and Bones Grinding Mill to cease its bloody grind for a day; all the wealthy and eminent fleas, all the pious and holy fleas; and all the salaried barkers were there; the Holy One a Maker of long prayers and short wages, was there; and also Lovely Anthony the Dog Catcher, the One-eyed Elder Berry, and all the morality cobblers, dog thumpers and compulsionists of every society; and all were sleek and fat and well-to-do, and smiled most heavenly smiles, for they felt that God had blessed the very first part of their new scheme of salvation.
Then arose and whispered Chancy Mountebank Dephool Flea to the Reverend Tee de Little Wit Blatherskite, “Brother, this is a gorgeous success so far; thou art the gifted one; open thou the Bamboozle.”
And the Reverend Tee de Little Wit Blatherskite stepped briskly to the front, and with a voice of tragedy delivered himself thus:
“A vision, a vision, a vision of Judgment. It is the last day—the day of the final fruition of all things; the day when all the seed sowings of all the countless centuries since time was, have reached their harvest. With mine eye I can see a countless multitude of dogs gathered to the Judgment, rising tier on tier, from the lowermost valley to the topmost height of every hill and mountain. From every clime and country they come, swarm on swarm, mob on mob, gathered by a mighty trumpet summons there is no disobeying. They come from the East; they come from the West; they come from the North; they come from the South; from the frosty land of the midsummer midnight sun, where white death locketh all things in his eternal embrace, to the torrid equatorial regions of perpetual frizzle and fry; from the balmy lands of the fig and the olive, where the spicy snifters, and odoriferous breezes of the Southern seas gently woo both soul and body to gentle doziness, to the blizzard smitten lands of the Occidental North, where the circumvolutory cyclone whirligiggeth, and the domiciliary dwelling place fleeth violently away with all the inhabitants thereof; from the land of the azure firmament, the emerald sea and opalescent atmosphere, and the land of the perennial asthmatic brumosity—from everywhere they come, host on host, multitude on multitude.
“The Judgment call is heard; the Judgment is set; the books are opened. The sun goes out; the moon explodes and becomes blood; the omniflatulent wind roareth; the stars fall to earth in a fiery hail; the heavens shrivel up in an awful incandescence, as a burning scroll; the earth rocks, and quakes, and groans and cracks, and sends forth lurid and sulphureous flames and fumes and infernal stench. The comets, with their flaming tails, all snarled together, stagger like drunken celestials amongst their inextricably mixed aphelia, perihelia, and syzygy, and falling over the planetary orbits, drive their occupants to distractedly demand, ‘Where are we at?’”
“The ocean’s great breast heaves and throbs with huge conglomerate convulsions, and dashing o’er its divinely appointed bounds, engulfs the world. The rivers everywhere rear up on end, stiff with an infinite fright. The lengthy Mississippi, the breadthy, many-mouthed Amazon, the hoary Ganges, the unfiltered Missouri, the holy Jordan, swash and writhe together in mid-air in an amazed intertwining. The lightnings gleam, the thunders roar, the whole creation groaneth. The planets, breaking loose from the centripetal force that swung them around their solar center, clash and crash together in celestial smash and wreck. Crash, crash, crash, in answering reverberations, from utmost bound to utmost bound of the universe.
“And over all the din and rip and roar and clash and terror, cometh a clarion blast of an angelic trump, ‘Ho! Ho!! Ho!!! Attend, all ye dogs; for the end, the eternal end that shall never be cut off, cometh. Give ear unto the voice of the Eternal Verdict.’