The Dogs and the Fleas / By One of the Dogs

by Frederic Scrimshaw

And it was so that the Great Gee Whizz went up rapidly in the favor of the Monstrous Fleas, who, in gratitude to it as their Savior, gave it large quantities of blood to drink, so that it grew as big and bloated as any one of the most monstrous of them, and was given the place of honor in their assemblies when they and the Bamboozlers held special praise meetings to laugh and wink at each other.

And the Bamboozlers instructed the Great Gee Whizz to keep up the novelty of its dog befoolments, and be sure and never present the same trick twice over.

And the Great Gee Whizz was grieved because the Bamboozlers seemed to think it needed any suggestion to this end; and it suggested back to the Bamboozlers, that in fertility of resources in bamboozlements, it could give points to them. Therefore, the Bamboozlers did shut up, and did no more offer suggestions to the Great Gee Whizz, the Prince of Prestidigitateurs, Equilibrists and Acrobats.

For there was one trick it did present every day; a trick which in its mature judgment was all the more utterly bamboozling and confounding to the dogs, by its eternal sameness of repetition. It was this:

Every morning the Many Headed appeared on high, in full sight of the dogs and held a Solemn High Punch and Judy Show. Concealing its body from sight behind a draping which was figured with the Flag of the Free, it caused a few of the Bamboozlers, whom it had previously instructed, to pull certain strings attached to the necks of its various heads, when all the said heads went to hissing and spitting at and punching each other, and calling each other the vilest names. Each and every head called each and every other a liar, a coward, and a traitor to the ever blessed and beloved dogs, and a paid tool and toady of the bad fleas. Each one yelled that it alone was the Only Original Truth Speaker, and had an Immensely Greater Circulation than all the others combined.

Oh, it was a goodly show, and fooled the dogs mightily, and divided them up into sects and parties, and kept them eternally busy cursing each other, and swearing, each, by the particular head which each decided was the Genuine Friend and Champion of the dogs. And not one of the poor fools could see that all of the heads belonged to the same body.

So what with their much work and little food, and the daily bamboozlements of the Many Headed, and the brain-softening exercises of the Special Bamboozle Days, the dogs became a gaunt mob of skinny, drivelling idiots, of flea-covered bodies and eclipsed minds. So that when the noise of the bang and thump instruments, and the marching dogs, and the waving of the pretty cloths called them to the next Bamboozle day, they came with tottering steps, and lolling tongues, and wheezing breath, and protruding eyes. They did not run—they could not. They came from a sense of duty to the Flag of the Free, which the Bamboozlers had made of immense size; for they said a great and growing country could only be fittingly typified by a great and growing Flag, and as Freedom and Prosperity had increased under the fostering care of Heaven, until they had filled the whole earth about Canisville, it was meet and merely grateful to God that the Flag fill the whole heavens too. It was verily a heavens filling Flag, and it was raised on the tallest and stoutest pole that could be procured from all the country roundabout; for to-day was to be one of the maddest and gladdest days of all the mad and glad days.

For Liberty in Canisville had grown so large and universal, and the fame thereof had so gone over the pond, that a lot of Monstrous Fleas over there, had got a lot of idiotic dogs there to make them a great, hollow, copper idol of the form of a grotesque looking female of human kind, which the said Monstrous Fleas said was a Statue of Liberty, which they, in the name (they said), and with the compliments, of the free and hungry dogs of that land, had sent over to the Monstrous Fleas of Canisville, to be received in the name of the free and hungry dogs of Canisville, and set up at the gates of Canisville, as a great visible sign that there was one great Free Country in the world unto which the oppressed, hungry and flea-bitten dogs of all nations might run and be saved.

And it was a glorious time. The Greatest Gee Whizz of All had, with a great cyclone of noise and wind, got thousands of poor, hungry, fool dogs to pinch their bellies to raise wealth enough to buy a pedestal to put the great hollow copper idol on.