CHAPTER XXXIII.
Shows There’s Nothing Like Patriotism to Humbug, Starve and Swindle the Masses with; and Nothing Like Statistics to Lie with.—The Great Gee Whizz Appears, Seeking Some One to Sell Its Services to.—The Bamboozlers Hire It.
IT was many days before the force of the Great Bamboozle spent itself. Though the scramble and scratching for bones was even fiercer than ever; and though the infernal grind at the Handle of the Blood Mill grew daily more hellish, and the cruel greed of the bloated Monstrous Fleas grew daily more adamantine and pitiless; though robbery, murder, death by starvation and suicide grew daily more common, the dogs had been so thoroughly hypnotized that they perversely sought everywhere for a cause for all these things save in the right place.
They had graduated so well in the course of patriotism they had recently been put through that in their midnight meetings together, to bark and talk over their distressful condition, they put up a fac-simile of the great Flag of Canisville and ordered that every meeting be opened by genuflexion to the Flag of Freedom and Prosperity, and closed by prostration to the Flag of Liberty and Plethoric Stomach; and further ordered that all speeches, arguments and discussions should proceed upon certain indubitable and undiscussible premises called Sacred Truths. They were:
(1.) This is a Free Country.
(2.) Our Flag is the Flag of Liberty.
(3.) All Good is indigenous to Canisville.
(4.) All Evil comes from Abroad.