And the Phenomenon said: “Said I not unto you that I am the Great and Everlasting Gee Whizz, and have a Greater Circulation than all the other Gee Whizzes combined? Do I not employ a mighty army of invisible Circulators to go and be everywhere amongst the dogs? Behold! I will be a lying spirit in the mouths of all these my prophets, and they shall persuade the foolish dogs that they have found a Savior and a Deliverer in me.
“I will be their Champion. I will be everywhere about them, above and below, and will cluck-cluck with a most anxious solicitude over them, even as a hen cluck-clucketh over her chickens, or as Satan over them that are sealed unto him. I will be a Holy Shekinah unto them—a pillar of dust and cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night; and they shall march and halt obediently as I give them the sign. I will weep and ululate with them in their miseries and hunger, and none shall come within leagues of me in my denunciations of the cruel and unjust fleas that suck their blood. I will rage against you and enrage them, and then with sound of gong and big drum, and a raising of flags, I will give to eat unto the hungriest of them, and they shall know that I am the Great Many Headed Gee Whizz and Champion of the poor and the oppressed. Thus shall I be a god unto them, going before them, and they shall swear by me, and meekly follow whithersoever I go; and I will go your way every time.
“I will daily and eveningly point out to them that their woes are due not to fleas, but only to bad fleas; and every morning and evening I will announce that I, the Great Gee Whizz, having a Greater Circulation than all the other Gee Whizzes combined, have a brand-new great scheme on hand, that shall infallibly deliver them from all their woes; and every day I will astound them with a great new disclosure of some gigantic and overshadowing wickedness of the bad fleas, which I alone, the great Gee Whizz, have exclusively discovered; and I will keep them forever believing that they are just on the very point of having all their wrongs righted, and that by my engineering and the might of my power, a great avalanche of Good Victuals is about to fall upon them. Thus will I be their Champion and serve you.
“All the news of the day that is of no importance, and is not thought-provoking, I will give to them, clothed in the garb of Strict Truth; but all and any news that it may not be expedient unto you to give them, I will suppress or so garble it that its power to injure you shall be nullified; for you and I will own and guard all the avenues of information, and we will make them all converge to and pass through a sifter and a filter that I will devise, so that these fool dogs shall get nothing but nice, pure, wholesome, well-selected stuff.
“Moreover, my Bamboozle shall every day give them wholesome amusement. From the tropically fertile dunghills of my Circulators’ prostituted brains, I will gather and scatter amongst them every morning and evening, whole bouquets of the rankest literary toadstools, skunk cabbage and stinkweeds, which they will take, on the strength of their faith in me as the Great Gee Whizz, for the choicest of flowers. Thus will I pervert their noses and they shall utterly lose all discernment. Oh, I will pour trashy, sickly, foolish, unclean and horrific blood-and-thunder stories into their disordered brains until sober truth shall be insipid unto them, and they shall come to hate everything but that which raises their hair with horror and gives them the shivers and creeps and blood curdles. Thus will I soften their brains and imbecilitate their minds, so that they shall be as putty to your moulding.”
“Enough, enough,” cried Mountebank Dephool Flea. “Thou art my sort to a dot. If thou canst do only half what thou proposest, thou wilt be worth to us thy weight in gold.”
“Aye, aye,” cried all the rest of the Bamboozling Committee, and the Monstrous Fleas, in chorus, “thou art indeed a Flea Savior, sent of God in the nick of time to deliver us; perform but a tenth of these thy promises to us, and we will make thee as fat and wealthy as the most monstrous of us.”
“Aha!” laughed the Phenomenon, “ye know not the greatness and extent of my power. Ye have devised bamboozlements, which in the simplicity of your hearts, ye think are very fine; but they are transient and evanescent, and of themselves will surely fail; for they lack the essential conditions of successful bamboozlement, namely, semi-daily continuance. Bamboozlements, to be enduring, must be applied daily; and therein do I prove my inestimable value to you, for I am the Great Many Headed Semi-Daily Press, the Everlasting Three-Hundred-and-Sixty-five-Days-a-Year Gee Whizz, and the Immense Circulator.
“But I will do more than the things I have already promised. I will amuse them with foolish nonsense. I will every day give them something to guess. I will offer a basketful of rich grub to the dog that cometh nearest to solving a problem; like this, for instance: A dog, originally fifty pounds weight, that has had but one mouthful of meat per day for six months, and nothing at all for the last three days, is chucked into the hopper with an initial velocity of ten feet per second, and at an angle of forty-five degrees; how many somersaults will he describe before he is lost to sight, how much will he weigh, and how many hairs will there be on his body? Or I will offer to give a prize unto the lady flea, that in the opinion of the dogs, is the most beautiful and popular. Or I will get up a standing-on-one-leg-the-longest contest, with a nice meaty bone to reward the victor. Or I will offer a reward to the dog that shall come nearest to guessing which of all my contemporary Gee Whizzes is the biggest liar. All these diversions will keep them ever on the qui vive, to get prizes; and when every hungry dog sees there is a chance for a good big bone for a mere guess, he will never have time or inclination to think on the General Misery Question.
“But finally, I will teach them that their great and solemn duty is to be law abiding and that violence is wrong. Ye shall make all the laws; and I will teach them to be law abiding. Ye shall enact that all dogs are to be bitten and bled at the will and pleasure of the fleas, and I will teach them that to be law abiding is the highest duty of dogs; ye shall enact that no dog has rights which any flea is bound to respect; and I will teach the dogs that only by obeying the law can they obtain their rights. Ye may trample all laws in the mire, for ye have the police dogs to enforce your right of trampling; and I will teach them that no dog can hope to retain the love of God and the sympathy of the Great Public, if he goes to trampling on the law. Ye shall enact that it is illegal for dogs to eat, and I will teach them to be law abiding. Ye shall enact that hunger in dogs is illegal, that any dog who shall either legally or illegally ask for or try to obtain food or drink, or any other of his natural rights, shall be deemed guilty of a crime; and I will teach them that it is the first duty of dogs to be law abiding, as were the Fathers and Prophets of our country; and to obey the law, as all fleas and good citizens do.