CHAPTER XXIX.
The Spirit Irresistibly Moves Pharaoh Phrique to Testify of Freedom, Equality and Justice.—Which Shows that Satan Can Sometimes be Exceedingly Pious.—Phrique Overdoes His Part and Nearly Wrecks the Bamboozle.—Mak Tinley to the Rescue.
HARDLY had Carnivorous resumed his seat, when there was a great commotion among the fleas behind. It was caused by Pharaoh Phrique, upon whom the Spirit of Prophecy had just descended. Rising, he shouted, “I want to testify. Oh, I shall burst if I don’t testify.”
To whom De Little Wit Blatherskite said: “Brother, nothing hinders that thou testify. Come forward then, and testify, and the Lord be with thee.”
Then Pharaoh Phrique hasted and ran, and tumbled over several of the other fleas, and having made profound obeisance to the Flag, he opened his mouth to speak, but he could not; for a great emotion seized him and shook him, and he wept with a great weeping greatly. Whereat all the fleas sympathetically wept also, while all the dogs wondered.
After a short time, however, he found utterance, and in broken accents began: “Oh, Brethren, dogs and fleas; never did I fully realize until my beloved partner, Andronicus Carnivorous, was testifying as to what this, our glorious Flag, had done for his soul and body, the infinite blessings it brings to us all. I said to myself, while he was testifying, ‘Oh! If this poor God-forgotten foreigner, born under a bloody flag, where Liberty was never heard of, where equality and fraternity are words of incomprehensible jargon, could come here, and in the space of a few short years could have his mind so wonderfully enlarged and ennobled, and his soul so saturated with the sacred principles of freedom, as he has evidenced to us to-day, Oh! what a home of Liberty our country must be!’ And, I tell you, brethren (and it’s a fact we nativeborners may be justly proud of), this just shows that the very air here is Liberty, by which, the moment any one breathes it, he is made free. And, above all, let us remember, and never forget, that WE made this free air, and this free country; that is, OUR FATHERS and WE. They laid the foundations of Liberty, roughly and according to the light they had; but it was, by an all-wise Providence, who foreknew our coming, reserved unto US—with our more acute appreciation of, and more advanced education in, the principles of true freedom—to rear therefrom the finished superstructure, the biggest, grandest, and most gorgeously beautiful Temple of Liberty the world ever saw.
“And this was all perfectly natural. We are a free people, and a free people makes free institutions. Freedom with us is an instinct. It is born in us. It is our atmosphere, our food. It sticks out all over us. A true born Canisvillian takes to Liberty more naturally than a duck takes to water. Liberty is as much our attribute, as the odor is the attribute of the rose, and, like the rose, we diffuse it wherever we move; so that whosoever seeth us, smelleth us, or toucheth us, draweth virtue from us, and is made free. [Tempests, whirlwinds, cyclones of applause that nearly lift Pharaoh Phrique off his feet.]
“Thus it is, brethren, that in all this broad land there is no such thing as a slave, never was, and never can be. A slave, or an oppressed dog of any description here, is an anomaly we would not endure for a moment. [Much applause from the fleas and joy amongst the dogs.]