Second Dog. “That’s about my Average, too. I have examined myself; I have felt of my stomach, and I cannot find those one thousand mouthfuls of mine. Lord, I wish I could, I do indeed.”
First Dog. “Well, brother, it may be there is some fault or sin in us that prevents the Blessed Statistics from giving us the blessing. It may be that there is some wicked way within us; some secret sin that hinders the entrance of the Average into our stomachs. As the blessed Blatherskite saith: ‘These things are received by Faith, not by Sight.’”
Second Dog. “That’s so, brother; it is certainly not by Sight in our case. I do believe we have not Faith enough.”
And so they would part, one praying to God to give him a larger Faith, and the other praying Him to never mind the Faith but to give him a larger Average.
So the demon, Doubt, again began to creep abroad in Canisville.
Therefore the Bamboozling Committee, carefully noting the perplexed headshakings and the other sure signs of another outbreak of the thinking contagion, did wisely take other precautions to forestall it.
And there was a day when they and some of the Monstrous Fleas were devising further bamboozlements for the dogs, and a Phenomenon came also among them.
And the Committee said unto the Phenomenon: “Who art thou, and whence comest thou?”
Then answered the Phenomenon, and said: “I am the Great Many Headed Daily Press with the Immense Circulation; I am four hundred square miles of nastiness; and I come from going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.”
And the Committee said: “And what doest thou here, Great Daily Press?”