The Dogs and the Fleas

BY

ONE OF THE DOGS

ILLUSTRATED

PUBLISHED BY
Douglas McCallum
90 WASHINGTON ST. CHICAGO ILL.
1893

COPYRIGHT 1893
BY
DOUGLAS McCALLUM
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

ELECTROTYPED BY THE
LIBBY & SHERWOOD PRINTING CO.
CHICAGO.

CONTENTS

PREFACE.

Henry Ward Beecher, in a sermon shortly before his death, said America was going through a period of disgrace. This was true; for there had come to pass, what the prophetic Lincoln had foretold, that, as the result of the war, monopolies had been enthroned, that had filled the land with corruption and imperilled the liberties of the people.

To-day the period of disgrace is worse than then, for the corrupt tree which was then bearing so luxuriant a crop has had several years more in which to develop its fruit-bearing capacity.

On every hand Mammon reigns. His throne has been set up in the very place of sovereignty. His rule is universal and absolute. The price of his favor is the sacrifice of all truth, virtue and honor. Honest, hard work has become the synonym of poverty; and it has become the fixed rule of our civilization—a rule with absolutely no exception—that no one can come to great wealth except by some of the many forms of legal stealing. At his feet all organized institutions bow and worship. Politics are corrupt to the core. Our legislatures—as Beecher used to declare of that of New York—are everywhere the shambles where legislators are bought and sold like sheep. Political “bosses” possess, and lord it over, the souls and bodies of the chattel voters of the “parties” with as brutal a despotism as ever Czar or Kaiser wielded. Legislation-favored monopolists of the various means of the people’s “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” are openly and commonly termed “Kings,” “Lords,” “Barons,” as though in undisguised contempt of the thinly veiled pretense that this is a republic.

To-day is fulfilled that which thirty-six years ago was prophesied by Lord Macauley, that, America’s public lands being all gone, England’s poverty would be reproduced in our cities. It is literally true as he foretold, that in Chicago there is a multitude of people none of whom has had more than half a breakfast, or expects to have more than half a dinner.

Our daily crop of common theft, murder, suicide and insanity is probably greater than that of any other country; while the crop of respectable, pious and educated scoundrelism, embezzlement, fraud and crime was probably never paralleled in the worst days of the worst monarchy that ever existed, for the thousands of our daily newspapers the country over have little else than the records of the universally abounding venality, corruption and wickedness with which to fill their columns.

Business, trade and commerce are nothing less than a chaos of clashing, discordant self-interests; a universal war; a pandemonium of noisy lying, overreaching, cheating and stealing.

Patriotism, too—especially with our so called upper classes—has become almost universally a “livery of Heaven to serve the devil in,” and is the particular characteristic of the hypocritical scoundrels whose whole business in life it has been to trade on the necessities of the Government, and to make money out of the wholesale theft of the public domain, the sale of the liberties of the people, and the bonding and mortgaging of the future products of their labor—even unto those of the grandchildren of generations yet unborn—to the leeches and loafing non-producers of every foreign country. The land is full of such worse than Benedict Arnolds. Blatant hypocrites they are, who—Judas-like—ostentatiously kiss the Flag and worship the republic to-day, but are ready at any convenient moment to haul down the one and overthrow the other for an extra five per cent. dividend on the bondage of the people.

The Church, as always, is the willing handmaid of the oppressor everywhere; and to suit the wealthy lords who are her chief support, preaches a Mammonized God and an insipid, harmless, garbled and un-Christlike Christ; and in all her wide domain, has no real hope or help for the groaning millions but a shadowy future world.

For this universal degeneracy the people themselves are wholly to blame. Was it not Montesquieu who said “all governments are as bad as the people will let them be?” They are the masters whensoever they will so to be. But they do not will, because they are ignorant and asleep. When they shall awake and come to a knowledge of their wrongs, they will have but to command through the ballot box, and they shall cease.

We need a new race of Whittiers, Lowells, Phillipses, Lincolns and Garrisons to arouse the people from their lethargy and inspire them to take back their stolen heritage of rights, before their one last peaceful remedy, the ballot, shall be stolen away too.

To help open their eyes, and help on that blessed time when this shall really be a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, this little book was written.

THE AUTHOR.

December, 1893.

THE DOGS AND THE FLEAS.

CHAPTER I.

Canisville.—Founded by Rebel Dogs from Kyhidom.—Prosperity and Happiness of the Early Canisvillians.

THERE was once a time when dogs were dogs and dwelt together respectably in the respectable town of Canisville. Canisville was situated on the west side of a big fish pond, from the east side of which the forefathers and foremothers of the dogs had come, driven out by the dogs of Kyhidom, the great city of those parts, because they had dared to say many most grievous things about the folly of dogs allowing fleas to settle on them, to boss them and suck their blood.

For be it known, the dogs of Kyhidom were great idolaters with very small heads, who had been easily taught to reverence and worship fleas in general, and their own in particular, as having been ordained of God to suck their blood; and when these rebel dogs with preposterous, new fangled notions about the rights of dogs, got loud-mouthed in their remarks, the good, orthodox, divine-right-of-fleas dogs were scandalized and said that the rebel dogs were committing the sin of doubting the wisdom of things that were and had been, and were flying in the face of Providence; and as they were there to protect Providence at all hazards, those dogs must either cease flying in the face of Providence or fly from the country. So the rebel dogs, not being able to stop flying in the face of Providence aforesaid, did fly from the country and paddled their own canoe to the other side of the pond, where they founded the new town of Canisville.

Nevertheless, this same Providence, who, on that side of the pond, apparently could not bear to have his face flown in, did seem to mightily bless and prosper them on this side thereof; and they became a well-to-do community and were guided, ruled and advised by a wise and venerable patriarchal chief of the name of Bull McMastiff, who taught them various wise maxims and laws. Every morning he would call them to a conversazione, and after admonishing them of their sins, faults, mistakes and transgressions of the day before, would advise them of the way wherein they should trot to-day; and he always dismissed them with this particular bit of advice: “My children, your enemy the flea goeth about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. He loveth dogs, and neglecteth no opportunity to take possession of one, particularly the lazy one. But remember, I pray ye, your forefathers and foremothers; how they refused to hump the back for fleas to ride upon; how they gat themselves up out of Kyhidom, out of the House of Bondage, and came into this land flowing with milk and honey, where ye have grown to be a mighty, prosperous and free people undevoured of fleas. Therefore I say unto you, be vigilant, and diligently beware of the flea.”

And so it was that while they continued to hearken unto the barks of the good chief McMastiff, they dwelt in safety and put away from amongst them all those who had the itch and the mange and the scab and the botch.

And they searched diligently all through the camp, and whomsoever they found scratching with the hind leg, or viciously biting himself, they incontinently hauled up before the judge and made confess where he had caught his flea, or rather where his flea had caught him; and when they had taken the flea and caused it to be put to death, they sentenced the culprit to be cleansed every day for a month; but if the offender offended again, they worried him to death and cast out his carcass.

CHAPTER II.

MEPHISTOPHELES. (Sings.)

There was a king once reigning,

Who had a big black flea—

FROSCH.

Hear, hear! A flea! D’ye rightly take the jest?

I call a flea a tidy guest.

MEPHISTOPHELES. (Sings.)

There was a king once reigning,

Who had a big black flea,

And loved him past explaining,

As his own son were he.

He called his man of stitches;

The tailor came straightway:

Here, measure the lad for breeches,

And measure his coat, I say!

BRANDER.

But mind, allow the tailor no caprices:

Enjoin upon him, as his head is dear,

To most exactly measure, sew and shear,

So that the breeches have no creases!

MEPHISTOPHELES.

In silk and velvet gleaming

He now was wholly drest—

Had a coat with ribbons streaming,

A cross upon his breast.

He had the first of stations,

A minister’s star and name;

And also all his relations,

Great lords at court became.

And the lords and ladies of honor

Were plagued, awake and in bed;

The queen she got them upon her,

The maids were bitten and bled.

And they did not dare to crush them,

Or scratch them, day or night:

We crack them and we crush them,

At once, whene’er they bite.

CHORUS, (Shouting.)

We crack them and we crush them,

At once, whene’er they bite!

FROSCH.

Bravo! Bravo! That was fine.

SIEBEL.

Every flea may it so befall.

—Goethe.

Death of Bull McMastiff.—Accession of Pup McPoodle.—His Evil Reign.—Trouble With the Dogs of Kyhidom and How it Ended.—National Debt.—A Fleas’ War and a Dogs’ Fight.—How the Victorious Dogs Became National Pets.

NOW all the inhabitants of Canisville walked righteously all the days of Bull McMastiff, and the blessing of Heaven was upon them. They kept his statutes and judgments and laid up his commandments in their hearts, and were blessed in their uprising, and their downsitting, in their going out, and in their coming in. Plenty crowned their years, and full were always their basket and their store; their bread was certain and their water sure; peace and everlasting joy were in all their borders, and want and poverty and plague were far away and unknown, save as by stories of travelers in strange and heathen lands.

But it came to pass that Bull McMastiff died and was gathered to his fathers, full of days, full of honors, and toothless, and Pup McPoodle reigned in his stead. And Pup McPoodle did evil in the sight of all the community, and walked not in the ways of Bull McMastiff. In the cussedness of his heart, he caused the whole community of dogs to turn aside from following the wise maxims and counsels of Bull McMastiff, in keeping of which they had grown fat and strong and sleek and well-to-do. He scoffed when certain good old conservative canines reminded him of McMastiff’s vigilant care of the community, and when they quoted his maxims, he barked and said “Rats.”

And the canines turned aside from following Bull McMastiff. And it came to pass that they neglected to haul up for punishment those who scratched with the hind leg; and soon it was found that many were with flea.

In those days other trouble fell on the inhabitants of Canisville; for the fleas of Kyhidom, who had ordered the dogs of Kyhidom to drive out the rebellious dogs that flew in the face of Providence, felt the loss of the driven-out dogs; and although they hated much their heretic doctrines, they hated more to lose the tribute of blood they had been accustomed to get out of them. So they sent some delegate fleas over the pond to beg of the outlawed and exiled dogs, to be good enough not to forget the fleas of their own beloved native land, but to send over at stated times a little of their blood to keep them from starving. And the delegates pleaded so hard in the names of religion, patriotism, the old country, the old ties of blood, and for old acquaintance’ sake that the exiled dogs relented and repented, and consented to bleed themselves so much a month and send the blood over in a bowl for the sustenance of the Kyhidom fleas, who were content to receive it thus, although they grumbled at the quantity which they said ought to have been at least two bowlfuls.

In process of time, however, when the fleas of Kyhidom had grown accustomed to receiving regularly the monthly bowlful, and the dogs of Canisville had become accustomed to being bled, the appetite of the fleas began to grow, and they grew fretful and began to say that the dogs over the pond were growing mean and unmindful of the duty they owed to their mother country.

So they sent over another delegation to tell the dogs of Canisville that the appetite of the fleas of Kyhidom had very much improved, and that it was very necessary unto their health that the dogs send over a double tribute of blood, and that in case of refusal the fleas would feel very much hurt in their feelings; and above all, that the refusal would be very displeasing to Gorgeous Littlehead Flea, the King of Kyhidom, who was the especial friend and protector of fleas; in fact, so dearly and devotedly did he love them that they were to him as the apples of his eyes, and any insult to them he would regard as tantamount to treason against him. But the dogs made reply that they could not conscientiously comply with the new request; that they themselves were not doing as well as formerly; that they had fleas of their own to support now, and that really, while holding the very highest regard and reverence for the fleas of their beloved old Kyhidom (having forgiven the outrage perpetrated there upon their forefathers), they hoped the fleas would kindly excuse any additional contribution, and try to rest content with the usual monthly bowlful.

Certain of the dogs, however, who were known as “Advanced,” very disrespectfully spoke up and said that this sending of blood away over the pond was all wrong; it was contrary to sound sense, and was detrimental to the interests of the community to send blood away to fleas that didn’t live in the country; that this was “Absenteeism” and absenteeism was the ruin of any country; that the first duty of dogs was to their own native fleas and not to foreigners, and that their advice was to refuse to send any more blood over the pond, and to drive the whole pesky lot of foreign fleas out of the land.

And all the native fleas cried out that that was well spoken, and displayed the true Spirit of Independence. And they violently urged all the other dogs to take up that Spirit and make a firm and decided Stand for Liberty, and refuse to send any more blood over the pond to the Kyhidom fleas, but to remember their own who were brought up with them, and were blood of their blood. And it was so that these words prevailed, and the Canisville dogs did refuse to send any more blood.

So the Kyhidom fleas went home and reported the gross insult and grievous injury they had received, which moved the whole of Kyhidom to anger; and the fleas told the dogs of the insolence and wickedness of their cousins beyond the pond; and the dogs were even more angry than the fleas, for they had been for many generations schooled and drilled by the fleas in the sound and profitable (to the fleas) doctrine that an injury to one flea is the concern of all dogs.

Therefore the dogs got on their Dignity—which was all in their hind legs—and cried aloud that the National Honor had been insulted, and the National Flag had been dirtied, and the face of Providence had been flown in, and His Majesty, King Gorgeous Littlehead Flea, had been treasoned against; and some fleas cried “Down with the Canisvillians,” which cry was taken up by the dogs, who howled “Down with the Canisvillians,” until they were hoarse, though who the Canisvillians were and where they dwelt, few of the dogs knew, and what they had done still fewer had any idea; but all knew it felt good to shout, and was, withal, well pleasing to the fleas. So they all ran and asked the fleas to lend them files to sharpen their teeth and claws with, and demanded that the fleas pick out the most valiant dogs to lead them across the pond, that they might tear out the eyes and bowels of the vile Canisville dogs, who had dared to insult and rob their dearly beloved fleas, and treason against His Superbly Serene and Supersacred Majesty, Gorgeous Littlehead Flea, by the Grace of God King of Kyhidom and defender of All Wrong and Bad Faith.

And the fleas said the conduct and high spirit of the dogs were exceedingly commendable and showed the highest Patriotism. And they gave sanction for the dogs to sharpen their teeth and claws, and to go over the pond to tear out the eyes and bowels of the Canisville dogs. The fleas, moreover, said thus unto them: “Good dogs; brave dogs; it is a grand and glorious thing to fight and die for our Hearths and Homes, as ye are about to go and do by ripping up those of the dogs beyond the water; it is meet that ye take our National Honor and our National Flag and go wash out their stains in the blood of their insulters, as your forefathers and foregrandfathers have done thousands of times before. Bear with you and ever jealously guard those sacred Junk, for it takes so very, very little to dirty them, and so very, very much blood to cleanse them. Ours is a Just Cause and will command the blessing of Heaven, which has never failed to bless the strong claws and teeth of the dogs of Kyhidom, to the discomfiture of weaker dogs. But, dear dogs, we must ALL do our duty; an occasion like the present calls for sacrifice from every one. In this solemn hour, and face to face with DUTY, let no one shirk to do his uttermost share in aid of the Common Cause. In this solemn Crisis, we cannot all go to the field; some must remain at home; but whether we go to the field or remain at home, each can nobly bear his part. We are not equally gifted; some have the teeth and the claws, and some have the Means; we need both equally; the Means without the teeth and claws, is utterly useless, the teeth and claws without the Means can do but little, but with both united and the Blessing of God, all things are possible. We have the Means and you have the teeth and claws; let us then, with an eye single to the glory of Our Common Country, join our gifts in a Common Sacrifice and lay them both on our Country’s Altar; ye shall, with your teeth and claws, go to the fight, and we will stay home and find the Means to send you and maintain you in the fight; and ye can repay us when ye come back; but if ye come not back, why then, your children, and your children’s children can repay us. We will not be hard upon you, we will Loan the Means, we will Advance it, and we will call it your DEBT which ye may owe forever and ever, provided ye or your children pay us a little for it every year.

“Then go to the war, good dogs, and the Lord be with you, and we will stay home with the Lord and Manage the country for you.”

And all the dogs gnashed their newly sharpened teeth and howled again, “Down with the Canisvillians,” “God save our Noble Fleas,” and “Long live King Gorgeous Littlehead Flea.”

But when they arrived in the land of the Canisvillians, and proceeded, with the Blessing of God, to tear out their eyes and their bowels, those Canisville dogs also showed surprisingly large teeth and dreadfully sharp and strong claws; whereupon the blessing of God did go over to their side, and they did amazingly wallop the life out of the Kyhidom dogs, insomuch that all that were not dead ran howling down to the pond and swam away home, and did no more venture to come back.

Then did the dogs of Canisville feel highly elated at having walloped the dogs of Kyhidom, and kept on barking and barking about their victory, and saying they could do it again, and they wished some of those Kyhis would come back again to be walloped. All which great joy and elation their own native fleas, being fleas of subtlety, did turn to their own profit; for they, seeing that dogs always like to be pushed in the way they want to go, ordained certain Remembrance Days to be observed through all the land, on which days the dogs should have flattering looking glasses held up to them, should be sung to and made poetry to, and orated at, and have incense burned for the gratification of their nostrils. There was “Defiance to Kyhidom Day,” and “The Awful Walloping Day,” and “Kyhi Skedaddle Day,” and “Get-Along-all-by-Ourselves Day,” and “Slain Dogs Day” and a host of other Days on which the dogs told one another and the fleas told them what grand, noble and gloriously independent dogs they were, that would never, no never, endure the tyrant on their soil, or suffer any bobtailed, measly, foreign dog to boss it over them.

And it was so that they grew so ineffably conceited and vain, by reason of eternally Remembering themselves and admiring their own features, that they quite forgot the fleas on their own backs. So the fleas had good fat times and were little disturbed; and in the inmost sanctuary of their own private gatherings they did knowingly wink the eye and say that for enabling dogs to Forget their own Rights the Remembrance Days beat all Creation.

CHAPTER III.

Unprofitable Victory.—Plague of Fleas.—Desperate Condition of the Dogs.

NOW the poor fool dogs of Canisville had been told by their own fleas that victory over the wicked dogs of Kyhidom meant Freedom, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Prosperity, Universal Wealth, Heaven, to themselves; and they believed them. But it did not. On the contrary, Freedom, Liberty, Equality, etc., etc., gradually vanished like a setting sun, and a great plague of itch, came upon all the dogs; and from the rising of the sun until the going down thereof, and until his rising again, the dogs scratched and scratched and abraded themselves against walls and posts, and howled and barked and barked and barked about the “Good old times” when all dogs were healthy and lustrous of coat.

And the dogs grew thin and lank and mangy looking. Their eyes grew lustreless, and their ribs could be counted by the naked eye at quite a distance. Their ears hung down; their spirit departed; and only when some specially venomous flea gave a dog a specially venomous nip did he awake from his listlessness; with a quick explosive yelp he would suddenly flop on the ground and cause his hind leg to vibrate with the rapidity of a suddenly released spring.

But as for the fleas they prospered in an inverse ratio to the dogs. All the qualities of the dogs seemed to be transferred to them. As the dogs grew thin the fleas grew fat and plump. As the dogs grew listless the fleas grew lively. As a total aggregate of dog and flea there seemed to be no loss of volume; for what one lost the other seemed to gain. The average of blood, vitality and energy seemed about as before; and to the outside spectator, it made no difference; but it was another matter entirely with the constituent parts; for the only part of this society that was abundantly satisfied was the fleas, and the only part that was not at all satisfied was the dogs.

And it came to pass that the dogs became possessed, seemingly, of a desire to work harder. Everyone now frenziedly tore around, scratching in gutters for any kind of dirty eatables, nosing in garbage barrels and keeping up an incessant trot in search of something to eat. Moreover they seemed to become possessed of the devil. Their tempers went sour, and they seemed to be perpetually on the hunt for a fight. Let but one dog be found munching a bone, and instantly half-a-dozen others, with growls, would rush upon him and compel him to let go, only to snarl, and rage and battle for it amongst themselves; from which conflict several would emerge bleeding, torn and ragged. And the more they fought and squabbled for bones and scraps, the scarcer the bones and scraps seemed to grow. The dogs were always hungry, and in spite of their utmost efforts many fell by the wayside and died of starvation; and the wail of the hungry ones nightly went up to heaven.

Why was all this? Nobody seemed to know, save a few old fogy dogs who remembered the good time of the reign of the departed chieftain, Bull McMastiff. They said that there were as many bones and scraps in the community as ever there were; yea, that there were more than ten times as many as in McMastiff’s reign. They said that the real reason was that every dog had become so thickly settled with fleas, that, no matter how hard and how many hours a day he hunted for food, he could never get enough to nourish himself, because the fleas he carried ate him up and so continually sucked his blood, that they kept him always thin and on the very edge of starvation. Said they: “Behold the fleas; they toil not, neither do they spin, neither do they hunt after bones, nor do any manner of work on the Sabbath, nor on any other day, for a living; and yet, verily, not a dog in all his plumpness in the good old times, was half so plump as one of these. Behold how easy be the times these suckers have; the body which maintains them carries them around, and is, in all respects, their most humble and obedient servant.”

But the bare-ribbed, hungry and flea-ridden mob of dogs derided these wise old stagers and mockingly cried out to them, “Go up, ye bald heads; what do ye know about these things?” “Shut up your jaw!” “Pull down your vest!” “Shoot them teeth!” and other such ribald remarks. Therefore the wise old dogs did shut up, and did no more try the impossible job of teaching fools. And in a few more years they drew up their feet and gave up the ghost; and the community had rest from their unwelcome prophesying.

But the miseries of the dogs did not abate with the death of those who told them what the matter was. Every day the police dogs reported that they had discovered another one either dying or dead of starvation; and then the dogs ran together and called a confab, which they named an “inquest.” And the “inquest” was a solemn ceremony where a dozen or more dogs, each blind in one eye, headed by another dog called a “Coroner”—also blind in one eye and weak in the other—looked the dead dog all over and then said: “Natural causes;” “Visitation of God;” “Anæmia;” “Atrophy;” “Cardialgia;” “Vacuity of the Alimentary Canal,” and then ordered somebody to bury him in the sacred place of dogs called the “Field of the Potter.”

But it was several times noticed that no “inquest” was ever held over a flea. When a flea died he was always in bed, surrounded by a coming and going host of his sorrowing pulician friends, and attended by a peculiar set of creatures called “Emdees.” who did all they could to retard his death. And when he was dead they all signed an elaborately ornamented paper called a “certificate,” which set forth that the “late lamented” sucker had “deceased” and “passed away” and “gone to Heaven” by reason of the highly respectable complaint known as “Abnormal Enlargement of the Paunch,” and recommended him to the gracious notice and distinguished consideration of the angels.

CHAPTER IV.

Piety’s Philosophy of Poverty.—Andronicus Carnivorous and his Glory.

THINGS went from bad to worse among the dogs. It became the universal thing for dogs to be hungry and coatless and to go about weary, languid and sore distressed.

But what was worst of all, there was arising in the community a sentiment that for dogs to be hungry, coatless, weary, languid and sore distressed was the natural and normal condition; that this condition was ordained and fixed by some higher power against which it was blasphemy to contend or even to murmur. Yea, one poor fool of a dog, who said he had been to a place called a “Church,” where the fleas got together one day in every seven to hear a renegade dog bark to them for a good basketful of meat, got up and told them that he had seen the said barking dog, whose name he thought, if he remembered rightly, was Tee de Little Wit Blatherskite, turn over the leaves of some big book or other that lay on a costly cushion, and then tell the fleas, in a very loud voice, that inside that big book it was written, in big letters, that some very great person, called Jesus, or some such name, did in a far-away country, a very many hundreds of years ago, once say to some friends of his “the poor ye have always with you,” and that that meant that it was and always would be God’s will that dogs should be poor, and lank, and hungry, and covered with fleas. And he said that it was the evident design of God himself that dogs were created expressly for the purpose of carrying and nourishing fleas. That God, who had done all things well, had seen fit in his wisdom to create for his own glory both dogs and fleas, in order that the fleas, having sucked nearly all the blood out of the dogs, might show their “Charity” in giving back to them a few drops now and then.

And he told them a most beautiful and touching story of how one Andronicus Carnivorous, a certain well-known sucker, who, originally, came over the pond from North Kyhidom and settled amongst them, had grown monstrously big and strong on the blood of poor dogs, after having sucked some scores of millions of drops out of thousands of them, had on a certain day before high heaven and the assembled priesthood, and with the burning of incense and the applause of a great mob whose voice was as the sound of many waters, most generously and magnificently given fifty thousand drops back again to be distributed by a committee of lady fleas, amongst the “most worthy and deserving poor,” and five hundred thousand drops more to the “Church” to be expended on a new organ, a new, big, golden cross on top of the steeple, and some windows of stained glass, and a big brass plate in the most prominent part of the “Church” stating for all posterity, the name of the great sucker who gave it. All of which showed that the said eminent sucker, although he did not, alas, and unfortunately, believe in the God of the fleas, was a most pious saint, who humbly regarded his great wealth as a trust, and was endeavoring to give a good account of his stewardship.

And he told them what a great and brilliant light this Saint Andronicus had shed over all the town and country of the Canisvillians, and how, by his illustrious example he had shown the only true and honorable way of getting up from nothing to the highest pinnacle of wealthy comfort—which was by “organizing” great bodies of dogs to build him a high pyramid of dying dogs for him to climb up and feed on as he climbed; how by his enormous diligence and ability in “acquiring” he had come to own many mansions and palaces here below; how by strict methodical habits and careful husbanding of time he had been able to snatch a few moments from his arduous duties of trotting around from mansion and palace to palace and mansion enjoying himself, to write beautiful sermons on the true way of distributing the results of dog phlebotomy—it was, he said, to take the blood of the dogs he had exhausted, and carry it many miles away (from three to ten thousand) and there pour it out into a long trough, and whistle to any and all dogs living thereabouts to come, without money and without price and lap it up. “Thus,” said he, “do I fulfill the great Natural Law of the Circulation of the Blood; the dogs who yield it see it no more, and strange dogs who yield it not get it all—save the tribute I take from it for the maintenance of me and mine. Thus do I make brethren of all the world of dogs and all is well, and Saint Andronicus is glorified.”

He had also so far descended from his high glory as to write by proxy a beautiful book of trashy platitudes, entitled “Triumphant Dogocracy” which set forth and proved that the dogs of Canisville were the fattest, freest, happiest and most prosperous dogs in all the world, and that their fatness, freedom and prosperity were all owing to the fact that, since the driving out of the dogs of Kyhidom and the abolition of the sending of blood over the pond to nourish the Absentee Fleas, and the destruction of the system of not allowing dogs to consent to being bled by the fleas, they had established the self governing system of permitting them to consent, and allowing the fleas to go over the pond and take the dogs’ blood with them. All which demonstrated the glorious advantage of having abolished the system of Tweedledum and of having established that of Tweedledee.

Nevertheless the said most estimable Andronicus had been unfortunately compelled to allow sundry of his own dogs to receive fatherly chastisement because they had become restive under several extra bites he had proposed to give them for their good.

And the barking dog in peroration said, “Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth; even so hath Saint Andronicus done unto those he loved, that they may not again err from the path of duty.”

And all the little dogs, who sat on the “free seats” all around the “Church,” wagged their little tails and barked pleasantly; and all the assembled fleas stroked their fat paunches contentedly, and said that they had heard that morning a most powerful gospel sermon, and that their salaried barker was a true prophet of God.

CHAPTER V.

The “Battle of Life.”—Pup McPoodle’s Wicked Reign.—Invention of the Protectivtarif.—How it was Worked.—Construction of the Blood and Bones Grindery.—Singular Blood.

AT last it came to pass by reason of having forgotten that there ever had been better days than they now saw that the dogs grew to believe that the state of things they lived under was the only true and natural one. True, they grew bad tempered and fierce and bit and tore one another in their daily “Battle of Life.” True, every dog tried to snatch the meat out of every other dog’s mouth, and true, many a dog was murdered for the sake of any scrap of food he had succeeded in “saving up” and had “put by for a rainy day.” True, canine society had become a hell upon earth, where every dog took for his motto, “Every dog for himself, and the devil take the hindmost,” but not one among them ever dreamed of doubting that their state was according to natural pre-ordination. Thus they came to regard the rule of strength, craft, cunning and good luck as the proper one, because the only one; and to this they squared their lives and their philosophy.

Their chief, Pup McPoodle, “stood in” with the fleas, and on condition that his own body should be free, he undertook to use his power as chief to make it easier for them to suck the blood of the rest of the community. He walked in more evil ways than any evil dog that ever reigned before him. He revived all the abominations of the heathen whom the Lord cast out, and burnt incense unto strange gods and worshipped devils, and being tempted of these, he called a council of the hungriest and thirstiest of the fleas, and they did devise and invent a wicked instrument of torture called a “Protectivtarif.” It was a machine having a nice bed on which a dog was laid, and an upper portion called a “dooty” which was worked with a long handle called a “government,” which was invisible to all but the operators, but which when properly operated brought down the “dooty” upon the dog with variously regulated degrees of squeeze and crush, ranging from twenty-five to one hundred and fifty pounds per square inch, and which caused the dog to howl and his blood to squirt out far more rapidly than the fleas could extract it by ordinary suction.

But over the use of this instrument the fleas got to disagreement and bickering. For there were those who said that the higher pressures were destructive of profit to the fleas, as they nearly killed the dog and prevented him making new blood; that the lower pressures alone were profitable economically. But the others said, “No, the higher the pressure the better for the dog;” for they had invented a Rule-of-Contrary Magnifying Glass that had a most astonishing property, when looked through, of making a dog appear bigger and plumper and more prosperous, the more he was flattened out. Argufy as they might, the Low Pressure fleas could not get the High Pressure fleas to look at the squeezed dogs with the naked eye. For answer the High Pressurists rolled up their eyes most piously and said that the invention of the Glass was the Gift of God, sent down from Heaven to look at dogs with, and it would never do to despise the Gift by blasphemously doing without it, and looking at facts with sinful natural eyes. And the High Pressurists did prevail in argument, for they were more powerful than the Low Pressurists, and kept up the high pressure against the protests of the Low Pressurists, so that many dogs had the ghost squeezed out of them and died.

And then with the help of this instrument the fleas went off and invented another called a “Trust,” the wickedness of which can only be fully expressed in Satanese. And other base dogs seeing that the only way to get freedom themselves was to help the fleas to suck the rest, went and licked the feet of McPoodle, and became his courtiers and aided and abetted him in bringing their fellow dogs under the power of the fleas.

Then did some of the biggest and fattest of the fleas gather themselves together, and put their wits together to devise a most wondrous scheme of prosperity to themselves. Said they, “Lo! These dogs be jackasses most foolish. They act not together, neither bark they in unison. Though they be exceeding strong and we be but weak, we can do just as we please with them, for we have wit and they have strength which they know not how to use. We will put on them therefore ‘as much as they will bear.’ We know how far we dare go; and if any out-of-date fool, with such a piece of antiquated old furniture as a heart within him, shall dare to remonstrate with us we will say, ‘The dogs be damned.’”

And it was so that they ordered McPoodle to order his slaves to build them a big Mill with a great, wide, deep hopper to it, which Mill was turned with a long Handle that went exceedingly hard and creaky for want of oil. And McPoodle set a lot of his courtier and lickspittle dogs called “Chuckers-in” to catch and chuck other dogs into the hopper; and got a lot of very hungry dogs for a promise of reward to turn the Handle so that the poor dogs thrown in were ground up body and bones, and their blood ran out by a big Spout into a big Tank below, around which sat a large company of big fleas—who called themselves “The Brethren,” chief of whom was Andronicus Carnivorous—drinking blood by wholesale; a method which they said was a great improvement over the slow one of boring for it with the old-fashioned stiletto, and raising it with the suction pump, and was much less laborious and more reliable.

This blood was of a very peculiar appearance, for its corpuscles were very large and quite visible to the naked eye. They were disk shaped, and when held up to the light showed most singular markings on both sides. On one side there seemed to be the figure of a head and bust of a female of the human species, having on a ridiculous looking night cap, on which was the word “Liberty,” and on the other side of the disk were some words that the learned said were “In God we Trust,” the meaning of which nobody was able to make out. How the corpuscles came to have those strange markings nobody knew, but a few of the more daring hazarded the conjecture that they were due to a surviving taint in the blood of some old time religion that had gone out of fashion and been forgotten. But the greedy drinkers of the blood said these peculiarities did not at all derogate from the goodness of the flavor of it.

CHAPTER VI.

Weariness of the Grinders.—Growing Greed of the Monstrous Fleas.—Conundrums.—The Sanguinometer.—Pharaoh Phrique.—Strike of the Dogs.—Their Defeat.—Groaning for a Savior.

NOW the dogs did grind and sweat eighteen hours a day at the Mill, and the fleas around the Tank at the bottom had high old times, and said that the lines had fallen unto them in pleasant places and they had a goodly heritage. But they were very considerate of the dogs at the Handle, and to reward them for their grinding, did smear a little spoon quite liberally with the Blood in the Tank, and did send up the spoon for them to lick, but with strict injunctions that they were to regard the gift as something to be thankful for, in that Capital had condescended to set up a Mill in their midst and had vouchsafed to give them employment at the Handle thereof; and they added the further injunction that they were not to stop turning the Handle, but to lick the spoon as they turned.

But the dogs did frequently grow weary, and often one would fall down fainting: whereupon the fleas ordered the chuckers-in to chuck him into the hopper and run for another to take his place at the Handle, which caused the other Handle turners to turn with double diligence, in the deadly fear of being thrown in themselves. But the fleas who sat below and drank the Blood grew bigger and bigger and bigger, until they were all paunch; so big and fat and full did they become that their skins glistened with very tightness; and had some one pricked them with a pin, they would have exploded with a loud report. But the fuller and tighter they grew the more savagely and ferociously hungry did they grow; and when the dogs grew weary at the Handle and the Stream of Blood slowed down slightly, they sent up fierce messages to them wanting to know why the Satan they didn’t turn, and what in the Everlasting Profundo they meant by it, and did they not know that they were cheating and robbing their masters; and what were dogs coming to nowadays, anyway?

To all of which deep conundrums the dogs could find no answer but to wake up and grind with hysteric fury; and the more furious grinding gave a temporarily thicker stream of Blood below, which only whetted the appetite of the fleas, so that the thicker Stream had then to be kept up, otherwise the fleas did send up the savage conundrums to the dogs at the Handle.

At last, however, the dogs became so faint with the unrequited turning that the Stream very greatly slowed down, which very greatly quickened up the anger of the Brethren, who not only sent up doubly savage conundrums, but an announcement that they were losing terribly in their income; that instead of being very full and very tight, they were merely full, and were going rapidly down hill to bankruptcy and ruin; and that they really, out of simple justice to themselves, could not afford to smear the little spoon so liberally; but would be compelled in future to smear it according to an instrument called a “Sliding Scale Readjuster,”—a new Sanguinometer, the invention of Saint Andronicus Carnivorous and Pharaoh Phrique, two very eminent Brethren—which, when put under the Stream, showed with the utmost accuracy, when and how much the allowance to the Handle turners must be reduced.

This marvelous and unique instrument had two faces, one of which was towards the Brethren around the Tank and the other towards the grinders at the Handle. On that facing the fleas was registered only the rise of the stream, and on that facing the grinders were registered only the downward fluctuations of the rise. The readings of this impartial instrument, said the fleas, should determine the rise and fall of the allowance to the Handle turners; whenever the reading showed a rise, the wages should go up, but whenever the reading showed a fall the wages should go down. But as the register of the rise was always invisible to the dogs, and the fleas were scrupulously dumb as to what they saw, the Sanguinometer never showed a rise, but always the downward fluctuations; therefore the licks at the spoon were always reduced. So the dogs did groan by reason of the Sanguinometer.

Moreover, the fleas, having given ear unto the wise counsel of Pharaoh Phrique and Saint Andronicus (who said, however, that he was a modest flea and a flea of reputation, and did not want the honor of appearing in the matter), issued an edict that henceforth each and every dog that had the gracious privilege of being allowed to help turn the Handle must, on entering the service, cut off two toes and throw them into the hopper, as an initiation fee and an evidence of good faith towards the company below, said two toes or their equivalent to be returned to the depositor when he left the service at the Handle—if he ever did.

At which the dogs lifted up their voices and wept sore; but weeping did not save them; for the fleas told the chuckers-in to tell the grinders that there were crowds of hungry dogs around the corner, standing ready and anxious to take their places at the Handle and willing to give three toes for the privilege. Which was all true; for in spite of the awful hunger of the dogs at the Handle, and their common fate of dropping down faint and being thrown into the hopper, there were hundreds of pinched and meagre dogs, who sat around on their haunches casting covetous and envious glances at the workers, and hoping to see some fall; yea, so eagerly anxious were they for a chance at the Handle, to earn a little lick at the spoon, that when they saw one growing faint and ready to fall, they would all rush forward and fight amongst themselves to be first to be taken on by the chuckers-in; and it became the common practice of almost everyone to creep up behind any fainting dog and slyly pinch his tail or bite his leg, in order to make him faint quicker and let go of the Handle.

So the grinding dogs, finding themselves helpless, did cut off two toes and fling them into the hopper, and ground and groaned and wept, and got their little lick at the smeared spoon, and fainted by scores, and were mercilessly flung into the hopper. And the Brethren around the Tank grew bigger and fuller and tighter every day; and as the Stream grew thicker and thicker, they grew more querulous and angry at the pesky laziness of good-for-nothing dogs that could not be encouraged to diligence, no, not by “good wages” and a steady position at the Handle; and they sent up more savage conundrums, wanting to know why the two Satans they didn’t turn, and what in the two Everlasting Profundos they meant by robbing and cheating their masters and driving them to bankruptcy?

To all of which the dogs at the Handle replied that they had reached the limit of canine endurance, and would stop the turning of the Handle unless the company of Brethren would raise their allowance of blood to the standard of the old liberal smearing of the little spoon, and abolish the requisition of two toes to the hopper. To which the fleas angrily made reply that the dogs at the Handle might all go to the bottom of the Everlastingist Profundo, for they would put other more docile and appreciative dogs at the Handle.

Whereupon the dogs struck, and the Handle came to rest, and the Blood Stream stopped. But the fleas sat patiently around the Tank and leisurely drank themselves full, and sent for the other hungry dogs that anxiously sat around; and the other dogs did come, and were set upon and worried and wounded by the original grinders. But the chuckers-in and the police dogs did help the new dogs and slew divers of the first Handle turners and finally routed them. Then did the first Handle turners go meekly crawling on their bellies to the company of the fleas, and humbly confess their sins and beg to be reinstated at the Handle. But the company deigned not to speak unto them, but sent out unto them Brother Pharaoh Phrique, who lifted up his nose high in the air, and said unto them: “Well; what will ye?” And the dogs cast down their eyes and hugged the dust with their bellies and answered: “That thy bondservants may find favor in thy sight and be reinstated at the Handle.” But Pharaoh’s heart was hardened like unto armor plate, and he said: “Not so, ye wicked dogs; faithless and perverse generation of dogs, despisers of our goodness and mercy; ye shall in no wise return to your positions at the Handle, save and unless ye shall be content to receive as wages no more Blood than can be carried upon the point of a needle, and shall first contribute five toes to the hopper, and execute a contract to fling into the Mill all the little bow-wows that shall henceforth be born unto you.”

And all the dogs, with sighs and wailing and grievous lamentations, did consent, and went and turned the Handle and groaned for a Savior.

CHAPTER VII.

The Great Idea.—Combination to Agree.—The White Label.—“Lengthen the Handle.”—Formation of the White Leg Association.—Gracious Reception of the Idea by the Monstrous Fleas.

IT came to pass one day when the Handle went more heavily than usual, that one dog was seen to jump up from his work with a yelp as though bitten by ten thousand fleas all at once. His eyes rolled in a fine frenzy; he rolled over and over on the ground and turned somersaults by the dozen. All the dogs at the Handle were temporarily paralyzed with consternation, and dropped work to inquire what was amiss. “What’s the matter?” said one of the crowd to him; but he only yelped the harder and turned more somersaults. “He’s gone crazy with hunger,” said they; “we must put him in the madhouse;” and they seized him by the ears and the tail for to take him there; which caused him suddenly to come back to sobriety.

“Brethren,” said he, “while turning at that infernal Handle I was suddenly seized with an Idea. It is a grand Idea; it is none other than how we may ameliorate the cruel lot of the grinders at the Handle and raise our wages.”

“Raise our wages?” they all cried in astonishment, letting go of the Handle. “Oh tell us how, and tell us quickly.”

“Well,” said he, “you see, it stands to Common Sense that if all dogs would combine and agree not to turn that Handle for less than so much a day, those big bloats would have to give it us or suffer the cessation of the Stream.”

“That’s so; so it is,” cried the other dogs in astonishment; “we never thought of that; why, that must be one of those Revelations, those deep abstrusities which the philosophers call ‘Axioms’—self-evident truths. And only to think it was given to a common dog to make the discovery! But canst thou tell us, oh wonderful discoverer, how we may all combine, with all those other dogs around us who cannot get a chance at the Handle? That is a problem, beside the complexity of which the Great Truth is simplicity itself.”

“Oh, ye simpletons,” said the dog with the Idea, “these things are hidden from the wise and prudent and are revealed unto pups. The thing is self-evidently simple. All we require is simply that all dogs shall agree.”

“But,” said the other dogs, “how art thou going to get the outside dogs to agree not to turn except for so much, when now they neither turn nor get a lick; it is simply asking a dog to abstain from doing what he hasn’t done, and is not going to do. The agreement can only interest those at the Handle, while it does not interest the others who want to be there but cannot get there.”

“Well,” said the dog with the Idea, “we at the Handle must keep up our wages, anyhow; so I propose that we make the agreement and that, as a mark to be known by, each dog that agrees, have a white label bound on his right hind leg; and we will further agree that whomsoever has not on the ‘White Label’ shall be called a Black Leg and be worried and cast away from the Handle.”

But there arose another dog, and said he had an Idea, too, that was much better. Said he: “Suppose all of us do adopt the White Label, and do live up to the solemn agreement—which is not probable—what will it avail us to worry and cast away from the Handle all those that have not the White Label, when there are so many more dogs who through hunger will jump in to take their places? We can’t worry them all. My Idea is to lengthen the Handle so that all the unemployed dogs can catch on and help to turn.”

But some said, “What good would that do? You could not make it long enough to give every dog a place; and besides, the Handle belongs to the Mill, and the Mill belongs to the fleas, and they won’t permit it to be lengthened, so that settles it.”

“Well, then,” replied the other dog, “let us agree to work fewer hours so as to put some of the unemployed at the Handle; average things, as to speak.”

“Bow-wow wow-wow!” barked all the other dogs in chorus. “What! Put ourselves on half time for unemployed dogs! Why, we don’t make a living as it is on full time. Thou art no friend of ours. Want us to reduce our wages, do you? Out with him!” And they worried him and cast him out.

And it was so that they did agree; and each dog did bind on his right hind leg a White Label and they called themselves the Great United Order of White-Legged Handle Turners, and called themselves “White Legs” for short.

By this time the big bloats around the Tank, having perceived that the Mill was going very slowly on account of the grinders’ attention being taken up with the Agreement, sent up to them a terrible conundrum wanting to know why the half-a-dozen Satans they didn’t grind, and what in half-a-dozen Everlasting Profundos they meant by robbing their employers by such laziness.

But when it was told them that the grinders had been taking a recess to hold a mysterious confab, and that all the Handle Turners had white badges on their right hind legs, they called down several of the dogs and demanded of them what this new thing should mean? And one of the dogs meekly answered that they had formed an Association of White Legs, and that the purpose of the said Association was to petition the big fleas at the Tank to raise their allowance of blood to the old standard of the good licks at the liberally smeared spoon, when they first began to turn the Handle.

And the big fleas said that was all right, and it did them great credit to wish to better their condition, and that provided they confined their efforts to mutual help, and to making their members more honest, industrious and well behaved, and to improving their minds in their leisure hours, and didn’t go to demanding more blood, but left the raising of their allowance entirely to the good judgment and good-heartedness of their employers, and didn’t go to violating the inalienable rights of their employers to shove away from the Handle any objectionable dog, or the inalienable rights of the unlabelled dogs to take their places at the Handle and to make free contracts as free-born dogs should, and didn’t conspire to incite to breaches of the Blood and Bones Grinding Laws, but confined themselves to peaceful methods and the use of moral suasion, why, they would have their hearty good wishes for their prosperity, and everything would be lovely.

So the dogs returned to their fellows and reported the gracious reception they had met with, and all the White Legs rejoiced and went back to their grinding with a will and with new hopes in their hearts. But though the dogs turned for many days, they found things go on just as usual; they turned and ground and fainted and were thrown into the hopper, but their allowance was not raised, although they sent down many humble petitions to the fleas to raise it.

CHAPTER VIII.

Barren Hopes.—The Handle Tied up.—Defeat of the White Legs by the Black Legs and the Pink Eyed Dogs.—Invention of the Will of the Dogs Expresser.—The Invention Graciously Accepted by the Fleas.—Sanguine Hopes.

SO at last the White Leg dogs, weary unto death with waiting for the fruit which came not on the barren fig tree of the big fleas’ “hearty good wishes,” resolved that they would demand a larger allowance.

Therefore they sent down some of the big and bold dogs, to tell the fleas around the Tank that unless they would restore their allowance to what it was at first, and abolish the contribution of toes, and the chucking in of fainting dogs, and would grease the bearings of the Handle, and reduce the number of their working hours, and refuse to employ any dog that had not on the White Label, and would do and not do, many other things most astonishing to the fleas, the dogs would all take their White Labels and twist them all together into a most unbreakable rope, and therewith tie up the Handle with such unheard-of and untieable knots, that nobody on earth save the White Legs, would be able to release it. Whereupon the Mill would stop, and the Stream would dry up, and the fleas would collapse, and other great miseries would come upon them. Therefore it behooved them to listen to reason, and grant their reasonable requests ere it were too late, and the Handle were tied up.

But the fleas showed no alarm and went on filling themselves. They simply turned towards Pharaoh Phrique, and said: “Brother Phrique, thou art learned in all the learning of the Egyptian taskmasters. Thou art a skillful hide skinner and dog walloper, and well versed in the secret art of squelching insolence and ill behavior. Thou wast our trusty counsel in our late fight with these dogs, before they got this White Label craze, and thou didst bring us through it with honor and dividends. Thou wast our High Tower, our Shield and Hiding Place, whereunto we ran and were safe—all save our beloved Andronicus Carnivorous, who gat himself over the pond for hiding. We trust thee; deal with them as seemeth thee good.”

So Pharaoh hardened his heart as aforetime, and spake thus unto the dogs: “Dogs that ye are; insolent despisers of your precious privileges. I chastened you once before, thinking to bring your erring feet into the path of duty and wisdom. But ye are a stiff-necked and perverse generation. Ye have heaped sin upon sin. Not content with having tried to rob us before, ye have formed a Union, which is to commit the Unpardonable Sin. Get out of this, therefore; vamose the ranch; put; scoot; absquatulate; skedaddle, and make yourselves scarce; for I swear that even as our brother Webbfoot and Brother Gold Jay, and other of our brethren did chastise their dogs once, I will chastise you. Yea, I will so grind and crush you that the whole world shall hear the sound thereof, for I, Pharaoh Phrique, have said it. Tie up the Handle with your rope of White Labels; it shall be unto me as tow burnt with the fire; for I will dissolve your Union and scatter the members thereof, and give your heritage unto the Unlabeled and more obedient Black Legs. Git!” And he drove them from his presence.

But the dogs did tie up the Handle, and the Mill did stop, and some of the catastrophes foretold did happen. But Pharaoh Phrique whistled to the Black Legs to come and gnaw the rope. And he went by night down to a secret place in Canisville, called the Devil’s Cheap Bargain Counter, where certain lewd and ferocious dogs of the baser sort, which had Pink Eyes that could not bear the sunshine, did for a few scraps of dirty bread and meat, hire themselves out on foggy and moonless nights to worry and kill any other dogs that were objectionable to the fleas; and he paid them handsomely to go by night and secretly get behind the White Legs and tear them to pieces.

And there was a great fight. The hungry Black Legs fought to untie the Handle, and the Devil’s Pink Eyed Cheap Bargain Counter Dogs helped them. And so it came to pass that the White Legs were driven away; and some hastened to pull off the White Labels and mingle with the Black Legs, and scrambled to get back to the Handle.

And at the going down of the sun the rope was broken; and the handle, untied, was going like mad. And Pharaoh Phrique and the Brethren were holding a praise meeting around the Tank, and giving God thanks that He had so signally made bare His mighty arm and scattered their enemies, who had come so near breaking up the Foundations of Society.

So the poor dogs, with broken hearts and broken hopes, did grind on and on for many days, and the victory of the Monstrous Fleas seemed to be complete.

It came to pass, however, that a new hope sprang up among the toilers at the Handle. Owing to their incessant occupation during their long days, they had no leisure to think, but they gathered together during the short night to growl and snarl, and damn things in general and greedy fleas in particular. They schemed and plotted many remedies which all came to naught.

But one night, one of the dogs that had a big head and looked to have wisdom, got up and said: “Brethren, I do perceive that all these violent methods of rectifying our wrongs do fail. Now, I pray you, consider; we dogs be many and these fleas be few, why then are we not their masters? Why are we their slaves? I know that fleas have been divinely ordained to find us employment, and dogs to serve them, in the Fear of God, for even so hath the much-salaried barker in the Church of the Fleas,—the great Reverend Tee de Little Wit Blatherskite—told us, and he knoweth a thing or two about God’s purposes. But, as the same much-salaried barker also saith, they were ordained to be kind to us and treat us with justice and mercy. But, brethren, ye know that they do treat us most devilishly. Now, all this comes to pass because they do not know how many we are and what we think about them. There’s where it is, brethren; if we had some regular and orderly method of telling them how many we are, and what we think of them, they would surely give heed unto our cries and demands, for we are many—very many. If we could authoritatively—authoritatively, brethren,—state to them our Will, they would surely ameliorate our lot and treat us with generosity. And when they have once been made to know what is the Expressed Will of the Dogs, they will see that it is Public Opinion and will bow to it. Thus, my brethren, shall we be FREE.”

And all the other dogs arose on their hind legs and cried in a great chorus: “It is an Inspiration, it is an Inspiration: it cometh from Above.”

And the dog, seeing that his idea was well received, was encouraged and went on, “Brethren, this idea is far better than the White Label idea, or that of lengthening the Handle. Those methods are merely empirical nostrums and expedients, but this is a radical remedy and a perfect cure. Now behold the application of it. I have invented a device which I call the ‘Will of the Dogs Expresser.’ It is a little box with a little slot in the top thereof, and hath a bottom that openeth by way of a little trap door into a long shute. I propose to fix up the slotted box right near the Handle of the Mill (with the sanction, of course, of the owners thereof) so that the long shute shall reach right down to where the big fleas sit. And it shall be that on certain days (by permission of the fleas) every dog shall receive a little strip of paper on which he shall write his Will (if he have one), and shall fold it up and drop it through the little slot into the little box. And it shall be that when the little box is full some one shall pull down the little trap door in the bottom thereof, when the load of papers shall go in a thundering avalanche down the shute into the midst of the fleas around the Tank, and they shall know that the Will of the Dogs Expresser hath spoken. Then shall the fleas sort out the bits of paper, and it shall be that if there be more bits of paper that will one thing, than there are that will another thing, then the thing willed on the greater number shall be done. Thus ye see, my brethren, we may will whatsoever we will, and the greater will shall be done. Therefore brethren, whatsoever evils we suffer for the future, will be all due to our own fault.”

And all the dogs approved the plan, and sent a committee down next day to the fleas to see if they had any objections to the new invention. And to the delight of the dogs, the big fleas said they thought it an excellent idea, that reflected great credit on the inventor thereof, and he ought to be rewarded by appointment to the place of Chucker-in-in-Chief at the hopper, and they thought the plan would be a very healthy form of amusement for the dogs, and would tend to Good Order and the Stability of Institutions, and they wished all success to the Expresser. Furthermore, they graciously offered to do the counting of the papers at the bottom of the shute; and they even went so far as to graciously condescend to be the Public Servants of the dogs at the Handle, and do anything the dogs, by their Expresser, might order them to do, saying that, seeing fleas had all wealth and leisure and power and respectability, none could be so fit to carry out effectively the Will of the Dogs.

But what astounded the dogs with an astonishment that struck them blind and dumb, was that the fleas begged the dogs to allow them the privilege of becoming their Equals on the great Paper Dropping Day, and drop their little Wills into the little box with the little slot in it.

So the committee returned and reported the gracious way in which they had been received, the wonderful affability of the fleas, and their condescension in offering themselves as the Servants of the dogs.

Whereupon the dogs did rejoice with exceeding great joy that they had at last found a Sovereign Remedy for their sorrows.

CHAPTER IX.

How the Will of the Dogs Expresser Worked.—The Solemn Mummery Committee.—How it Inquired very Extensively into the Condition of the Dogs.—Quarrel Between the High Pressure Nighuntos and Low Pressure Faraways.—Wonderful Double Back Action of the Little Box with the Little Slot in it.

THEN did the dogs set up the little box with the little slot in it; and upon a day appointed they went every one and dropped into it little papers, upon some of which was written that the fleas must inquire into the hard condition of the dogs, with a view to ameliorating it; and on some it was written that the fleas need not inquire into their condition, with a view, etc., for there were some dogs that were afraid to have a Will, lest it should be known that they had expressed it and should be discharged from the Handle.

So when all the papers had been dropped through the slot and the box was full, the trap in the bottom thereof was pulled, and the load of papers went down in a thundering avalanche by the shute into the midst of the fleas. And the fleas sorted them and counted them, and one arose and said, “Oyez! Oyez! the Will of the Dogs Expresser hath spoken and there is a Great Majority; and the Great Majority commandeth that we, as their Public Servants, do forthwith inquire into the hard condition of the dogs at the Handle, with a view to ameliorating it. We must therefore bow to the Mandate, and look into their condition, with a view, etc.”

Thereupon the fleas did immediately appoint a Solemn Mummery Committee to take with them telescopes and microscopes, spectacles and eye-glasses to go and look into the condition of the dogs, with a view, etc. And when the dogs saw them coming they barked propitiatingly and wagged their tails delightedly to see the fleas come at the Mandate of the Expresser, and they prophesied great good things of comfort to come of it.

And the fleas did look into their condition. Some stood afar off and viewed the grinding dogs through their telescopes, and made notes of what they saw; and some, with their microscopes got quite near and closely examined their prominent ribs and sore backs and blood-shot eyes and their generally measly appearance, and made voluminous notes; while the rest made general surveys through their spectacles and eye-glasses, and made notes.

Thus did the Committee gather a huge Mass of Statistics which they promised the dogs they would Publish, which promise made the dogs to dance for joy.

And after many days the fleas rolled up what they called a Volume, bulky with Facts and Figures, and fat with Platitudes and Suggestions concerning the amelioration of the grievous condition of the Handle Turning Dogs, which the Volume called the Great Question of the Day.

And the fleas sent up a bill to the dogs which recited that this great Volume, gotten up for their benefit, had cost the fleas an enormous amount of time and labor which must be recouped unto them by the dogs, and that it would require the dogs to grind an hour a day more for one year.

So the dogs did grind and sigh an hour a day more, but had great faith in the Will Expresser which

“* * * Moved in a mysterious way,
Its wonders to perform.”

In process of time there came about a grave quarrel among the fleas around the Tank, and they began to call each other names. The quarrel began by those farthest away from the Spout getting jealous of those that sat nearest thereto, for they said those that sat nigh unto got a better chance to help themselves to the blood, and consequently got fatter than those that sat far away, which those sitting nearest declared to be all nonsense and a libel on their honors. Nevertheless, it so happened that they did get fatter and bigger than those that sat farther away; and though they disclaimed violently that their extra fatness was due to their proximity to the Spout they did not volunteer to change places with the farther off ones. Therefore the Faraways—who were nearly all Low Pressurists—began to push and shove to get up near to the Spout, and the Nighuntos—who were mostly High Pressurists—did push and shove to maintain their places, not, said they, because they wanted to sit nigh unto the Spout, but as a matter of Principle, because they were the lineal descendants of a Grand Old Party of High Pressure Suckers that had once, a many years before, rushed to the rescue and salvation of the Spout, when a lot of Low Pressure Suckers, the lineal ancestors of the present pesky Low Pressurists, had made a dastardly and traitorous attempt to break it off and cripple the Mill.

And there was a mighty shoving; and the Nighuntos indignantly said unto the Faraways, “Whom are ye a shoving of?” And much bad temper was shown, and upon several occasions divers of them got hurt.

Then did some of the acute Faraways hit upon a way of strengthening themselves to shove the Nighuntos away from the Spout and get there themselves. Said they, “Why not get the dogs to help us to shove?” So they sent secretly for the inventor of the Will of the Dogs Expresser and said unto him, “Lo! We be Dog Admirers, and believe that your hard condition should be ameliorated. It is quite plain to any thinking mind that your long days of grinding at the Handle and your bloodless condition are due to those cruelly greedy Nighuntos that sit close up to the Spout. They are never satisfied. The Tank does not require half the blood that flows into it. All the rest, these suckers deliberately appropriate for their own private fattening.

“Now if we sat near the Spout we would reduce the flow of blood to the requirements of the Tank, ‘economically administered,’ and would cause all that now unnecessarily flows into it to be given to the dogs at the Handle, to whom it rightfully belongs. Thus will the number of your hours of toil be reduced. Promise us therefore that the next time ye use your great and ever blessed Expresser, ye will send a thundering avalanche of papers down the shute ordering the Nighuntos to get away from the Spout, and us Faraways to take their places. So shall your hard condition be ameliorated indeed.”

And the Inventor, with his tail brandished on high, ran back to his fellow toilers at the Handle, crying, “Joy! Joy! Deliverance! Behold; the Faraways, who are our friends, have promised that if we will order the Nighuntos, by the Will of the Dogs Expresser, to give place at the Spout to the Faraways, they will administer the Tank and the Spout in our interest.”

But the Nighuntos got to hear that the Faraways had made a treaty of mutual help with the dogs. So they sent a delegation up to the grinders, saying, “Be not deceived; these Faraway Low Pressurists are frauds. Their love for you is all in our eye. They wish to get nigh unto the Spout only for to make themselves fat. And what is more, we know that they are traitors to dogs in general and to you Handle Turners in particular, for we have discovered that they have been engaged for a long time in a dastardly plot to break down this Infant Industry of dog grinding, in which you and we are mutually interested, and to uproot this whole Mill from its foundations, and sell it and the Handle—by the turning of which ye are maintained in constant employment at high wages—to your enemies the pauper dogs of Kyhidom, who will thus turn you out of employment, to wander about seeking for a Handle to turn and finding none. Therefore, do not listen to the plausible lies they tell; but remember that Dogs at the Handle and Fleas at the Tank are ONE and retain us close to the Spout—us, who are its Natural Guardians, and who were its Shield and Salvation in its Hour of Peril in the time past—and ye shall have more steady employment than ever. Be wise, and set your faces as flint against this conspiracy. Let your watchword be “High Wages and Protection to our Native Handle Turners.” They be liars and the party of immoral ideas, and are merely Dog Admirers. But we be the Only Original Truth Speakers and Dog Worshippers.”

And it was so that the words of the Only Original Truth Speakers sank deeply into the hearts of the Handle Turners; and great fear and discumfuzzlement fell upon many of them. And they were divided in opinion. Some said the Dog Worshippers spake wisely, for all knew that the dogs of Kyhidom had always been their enemies; and no doubt it was true that the dogs of Kyhidom had seduced the Faraway Low Pressure Dog Admirers to sell the Mill and take away the Handle. And others said that the Dog Worshippers must be a greedy, unconscionable lot of Suckers who made large pretenses of friendship and love to the Handle Turners simply to retain their fat positions at the Spout, since no one, under the most rigid scrutiny and cross-examination, had ever been able to adduce the twenty thousand millionth part of an instance where a High Pressure Sucker had ever sought anything other than the enlargement of his own private and particular paunch.

So when the great Paper Dropping Day came around there was much barking and snarling and wrangling as to who ought to be placed near the Spout; and the two sets of fleas were trembling between great hopes and great fears; and each set shouted its hardest to the dogs to be wise and to be faithful to their own best interests by dropping their papers for it in the slot of the little Expresser.

And there was much noise and confusion during the filling of the little box. And when the little trap door was pulled and the papers went in a thundering avalanche down the shute, each set of fleas tried to run away with the Great Majority regardless of what was written upon them. But after much fighting it was finally declared that the Great Majority of Wills was for the Faraways to sit up near the Spout, and for the Nighuntos to get far away. Then did both the Faraways and Nighuntos rise up and beautifully make obeisance to the Expressed Will of the Dogs, the heretofore Faraways bowing even to the ground; but the heretofore Nighuntos merely inclined their noses, and said “Damn” in soliloquial whispers.

So the Faraways got up close to the Spout and became the Nighuntos, and the Nighuntos were shoved to the lower end of the Tank and became the Faraways, and began in their turn to hustle and shove and charge the Nighuntos with selfishly using the Spout to make themselves fat.

And the dogs of the Majority were very happy, and took a day off (by gracious permission of the new Nighuntos) to bark and stand on their heads and burn fuel and make great smoke and stench, and do other idiotic things to show the great joy they felt at having put another set of suckers near the Spout.

Then they returned to diligently turn the Handle and hope for great good times. Which came not.

And after many days of the same old grind, being taunted by the dogs of the Minority who every morning said, “We told you so,” and every evening said, “Thus did we prophesy unto you,” the dogs of the Majority sent down to ask the new Nighuntos about what time the dogs at the Handle might expect the peep of the Better Day and the fruition of the Promises?

To which the Nighunto Dog Admirers solemnly made answer that they had made the fearful discovery that the tank was on two bases, one of gold and the other of silver, and that the Silver Basis had shrunk and got so dreadfully awry that the Tank had fallen all askew on that side, and was in danger of capsizing altogether, so that they were all in a dreadful stew, and had to give all their attention to the Great Question of getting it into position again on a Single Gold Basis that would command their Confidence, and never, never, never give way again, and that all mere dog starvation and trouble were trivialities compared to the great overshadowing need of saving the Tank from ruin. Besides, the Faraway Dog Worshippers were now in control of the lower end of the Tank, and had, previous to its slipping with its Silver Basis, wickedly bored a hole in it and drawn off the Surplus, and were in other ways most unpatriotically hampering the Dog Admirers in their efforts to economize and reduce the Stream; that there was a Great Deficiency to be made up, and that it would be some years at least before they would be in a Position to effect much Reform, and that for the present it was absolutely necessary for the dogs to make up the Great Deficiency in the Tank, and must grind an hour a day longer for at least a year.

Which caused the dogs to go sadly back to their hungry turning of the Handle, and to wonder why the great Will of the Dogs Expresser required so much eternity its wonders to perform.

CHAPTER X.

Dearth of Dogs.—The Blood Stream Begins to Fail.—Scheme to Recruit from Hungryland.—How it Worked to the Destruction of the White Leg Association, and the Little Box with the Little Slot in it.

AND it came to pass that there began to be visible a slackening of the Stream at the Spout, for the great greed of the fleas around the Tank was using up both the supply of dogs available for chucking in, and the strength of the weary toilers at the Handle.

Which caused a great fear to fall on the Brethren. But one of them, less blind, though not less greedy, than the others, called their attention to the State of Things.

“See ye not, my brethren,” said he, “that the Stream faileth? The arc it describeth is not so large as aforetime, which meaneth that the hopper above is not replenished to its full capacity, which further meaneth that either those rascally chuckers-in are not doing their full duty, or that the supply of dogs to chuck in is running low.”

This discovery filled the other Brethren with terror, and they looked first at their own big and bloated bodies—which by this time had become mere featureless blood bags—and then at the Stream, so visibly running low, and, trembling with a coward fear, cried out: “Oh, who will save us from perishing? For the Blood is our life and it faileth. Oh, pestilence, fury and plague, we shall grow less! Oh, we don’t mind bursting with bigness; but oh, to grow little again! Oh! all is vanity under the Sun! We did think that Providence, for whom we have done so much, would have given us this day our daily dogs to grind. But He has gone back on us. Us, brethren, who never went back on Him and never let his churches want for any good thing. All is lost! lost!! lost!!!”

And they bewailed and lamented sore; and one, at the contemplation of his possible shrinkage, went temporarily insane and waddled out and killed himself.

But the Discoverer spoke up and said: “Allay your fears, and assuage your grief, my brethren; all is not lost by a long chalk. I have excogitated a Scheme which I think will work. Behold! are there not more dogs on the earth than the dogs of Canisville? Yea, verily! dogs more weary, languid and sore distressed than they? I have heard that in Hungryland, over the pond, away beyond Kyhidom, are millions of dogs who are dreadfully flea-bitten and exhausted, who would think it getting verily to heaven if they could come here and get such bountiful wages as we allow to our grinding dogs.

“Go to, now. Let us send forth apostle dogs to Hungryland that shall tell the dogs there of the wonderful heaven of peace and joy and plenty in the West; of the Great Wages paid to honest toil, thrift and temperance; of the Boundless Opportunities open to honest ambition; of the Liberty there, and the Absolute Equality of the Rich and Poor before the Law; how in that wonderful land the Dogs and not the Fleas do the governing, and set up and pull down their Public Servants at their own sweet will and pleasure, by means of the little box with the little slot in it. And let the apostles hold up aloft the brilliant example of our dearly beloved brother, Saint Andronicus Carnivorous, who came over from North Kyhidom as mean a dog as any of them, and all by his own unaided Toil and Thrift and Temperance—without even the blessing of God, in whom he taketh no stock—put himself through the Great Transformation and became as big and bloated a flea as the most excellent of us, and wrote a Book. And let them say that he is not the only example by many thousands of the Illimitable Possibilities of this land; and they will come rushing over by thousands, and our chuckers-in shall seize them. Thus shall the hopper of our prosperity be replenished with an everlasting supply, and the former bigness of the Blood Stream be restored—aye, more than restored, for we will enlarge the Spout and widen and deepen the hopper and elongate the Handle, and the rushing thousands from Hungryland will fight for a chance to grind.

“Thus shall we have more dogs to be ground up and more dogs to grind them, and as there will always be standing around the Handle a vast multitude licking their chops in hope of seeing the grinders faint and fall, we shall be able to diminish our great expenses by reducing the great quantity of blood we are now compelled by cruel circumstances to put on the end of the needle—which is a great imposition. So shall the blood spurt out in great style, and we will have a larger Tank, so that more fleas can sit around it; and we will drink and drink and grow and grow and become so great as never was. And then will we put down the insolence of those white-legged dogs, who have so often troubled us by entering into unconstitutional conspiracies to hamper us and overthrow the liberties of free-born dogs to make free contracts with us to grind for the wages we offer. Having handy so many thousands of Black Legs, we will not need the White Legs any more, but will have them all chucked into the hopper. Moreover, I think, we will be able, with all this inexhaustible supply of blood coming in, to heal our internal disagreements and sink all our little superficial distinctions of Low Pressurists and High Pressurists, and truly appear what we really are—One Common Family of Blood Drinkers; for there will then be blood enough for each and all of us. Then will we, working together as One United Family abolish that infernal nuisance of the little box with the little slot in it. Ye all know, brethren, that the day off which the dogs, through the unbecoming schism amongst ourselves, take to work the Will of the Dogs Expresser, is a dead loss to us in the cessation of the grind. I appeal to you, brethren, to consider the great loss we suffer; calculate the number of dogs that might be chucked in during the twenty-four hours spent in the wicked and wasteful amusement of Paper Dropping, and the further loss accruing from the lazy turning of the Handle next day, owing to the enervating and mind distracting hilarity of the previous day. Let us then be wise and consult our best interest. Thus Brethren shall we have a time, times and half a time of fatness, ease and prosperity.”

These words brought joy and hope to the Brethren; and all said the suggestions of the Discoverer were as the turning inside out of the Dark Cloud to show its Silver Lining; some called them a Providential Relief; and some said they went to show that this world was run by the Creator on the principle of Universal Harmony and the Compensation Balance, in that what one part thereof lacked another supplied.

Saint Andronicus Carnivorous was the only one not entirely enthusiastic. He arose and cautiously said, “Brethren, the proposition of our dear brother, the Discoverer, lacketh nothing that is highly to be approved. No doubt it will be highly profitable to us, and therein I am heartily with him—especially in that part relating to the abolition of the wicked White Legs, and the unwholesome box with the little slot in it. But I want you to give me a guarantee that there will be no danger in it to me. You know I have a Reputation which is very dear to me; and if these Hungry Dogs come here and find the Truth is not as preached, they will reproach me as one of you, and so I and my Reputation and my Book will fall into contempt, and they may go even so far as to call me a Hypocrite. Therefore I would rather not be seen in the matter; and so, will hie me away until the reproach be over.”

To which the others made answer that there was very little danger or reproach in the scheme; that the Hungry Dogs would get all the disappointment, the apostles all the reproach, and the fleas all the profit; but that to be on the safe side Saint Andronicus had better go away over the pond and lie low, and they would find some one of a Don’t-care-a-d—— disposition, like Brother Pharaoh Phrique, to carry out the scheme, particularly the abolition of the White Legs and the flinging of them into the hopper.

And it was so that Carnivorous did go away and lie low; and the apostles did go out into all the world of the Hungry Dogs and preach the Gospel of Lies; and the Hungry Dogs were beguiled and came over and brought their great hunger with them, and by their great ferocity the White Legs were wrenched away from the Handle and thrown by the chuckers-in into the hopper.

And in that day the Low Pressure Dog Admirers and the High Pressure Dog Worshippers were made friends again and became One; and they ordered the Hungry Dogs to break up the box with the little slot in it and burn it with fire; and the Mill was enlarged; and the Stream was thicker and stronger than ever; and the Tank was enlarged; and the United Fleas sat around and drank themselves fuller, and grew so big that they shut out the sky and the light of the Sun; and by reason thereof a great and deadly darkness came over the land, and in the shadow thereof all plants of the light, such as Honesty, Truth, Liberty, and Municipal, State and National Rectitude, went mouldy and rotten; and the big, over-bloated fleas, by reason of their great gluttony, grew leprous and stank, and their evil odor filled the air; wherefore great sickness and plagues broke out everywhere, which carried off many dogs and some fleas.

And through all this evil time the dogs ground and fainted and sighed and howled, and sent up blasphemies and curses and prayers to a Heaven that was very deaf to them, but was apparently very good to the monstrosities that sat around the Tank.

CHAPTER XI.

Hell and Chaos in Canisville.—Tramp Dogs.—Rise of the Apologist Philosophers.—Whatsoever is is Right.—Their Proverb Foundry.

CHAOS reigned in Canisville. Hell seemed to have grown so hungry for victims that it had not patience to wait for the coming down of the dogs to it, in the natural course of time, but had gone up to devour them on earth. Dogs everywhere were the property of the fleas, either by direct settlement on their bodies or by deputy. All that were not struggling by serving the Monstrous Fleas at the Handle were wandering around carrying little fleas and hunting hard for bones and scraps. The only exceptions were a few obstinate headed and obdurate hearted dogs, who had said they would have freedom at any cost. They said they would not turn that infernal Handle, neither would they carry and maintain any fleas. So they defiantly went about picking up scraps, and when the little fleas came hopping onto them, and demanding as their right to suck out of them the nutriment the scraps gave them, those dogs did snarl and reach around for them with their teeth and violently shake them off.

Then did those little fleas complain unto McPoodle that there were certain wicked dogs that objected to be bled; and McPoodle said he would not stand it in his dominions; and the Monstrous Fleas when they heard about it, said it was Robbery of the Little Brethren, and a contagious Bad Example that might spread throughout Society; and they spake unto their salaried barker in the Church, Tee de Little Wit Blatherskite, that he speak over the big book that lay on the costly cushion, against the sin of dogs stealing their own bodies away from the bites of the fleas. And the barker did speak, and the good and well behaved dogs who carried their fleas and bore their hunger piously did regard with severity and high disapproval all those dogs that shook their fleas, insomuch that the flea shakers found themselves in ill odor and did withdraw themselves from dog society, and sought lonely places where meat was scarce and fleas scarcer.

Yet did not those dogs repine. They tramped and vagabondized and reposed in the sun and the dirt; they grew very hairy and very dirty and very hungry. But they said they were never hungrier than they would have been had they remained in Good Society, and spent their days hustling for fleas, which, they said, was on the whole an advantage, as it was much less awful to be idle and hungry than to work one’s life out for others and be hungry all the same; and as for Public Opinion, why, to be able to snooze in the sunshine, was worth any amount of Public Opinion that left one’s stomach insolvent. They also became covered with vermin, which the flea-covered and respectable dogs of Canisville shuddered at; but the vagabond dogs said that carrying vermin was not half as burdensome or half as injurious to the health as carrying fleas; and as for getting their living without work, why, the Monstrous Fleas did no work at all and were monstrously respectable, and they were going to be respectable too; all which reasoning the pious dogs said was Sophistry, and tended to lower them still further in the estimation of the big fleas and other Good Society.

Verily a chaotic state of things prevailed; and to the few sensible dogs that ever and anon bobbed up from out-of-the way places to bark a bark of protest, and then sink into oblivion or be stoned out of town, all things seemed upside down.

But as there never was a time in all the world’s history when to the Apologist Philosophers of the times things that were were not right, even so at this chaotic time in Canisville there arose the usual Apologist Philosophers who took things as they were, and out of them built a wonderful economic philosophy most beautiful to behold, the only trouble with which was that whenever anyone of the few sensible dogs would come out of his hole of hiding and prod it with a little weapon called Common Sense, the whole elaborate system would collapse and drop into dust. Wherefore the Apologist Philosophers were aggrieved, and appealed to the Authorities to make it a Felony for any unpopular dog to go about prodding philosophical systems with Common Sense, or to have about him any Common Sense, which was, they said, a carrying of concealed weapons.

These Apologist Philosophers were singular creatures and insufferably self-conceited, because they had “got on in the world” as they called it; that is, they were all lucky dogs who had managed to get fat by lying in wait for and catching what they called “Chances,”—that is, stray scraps of meat—and by always speaking a good word for the big fleas, who rewarded them by giving them a few of their fellow dogs to eat. Many of them made their faces smooth, and tied around their necks white bands called “Chokers,” which gave them a singular appearance of which they were very vain. But their most singular distinguishment was that they wore opaquely green spectacles and walked on their fore feet and the tips of their noses, with their hind legs and tails in the air. This uncommon way of walking enabled them, they said, to get a view of earthly things totally different from that obtainable by the ordinary degraded way of going on all fours, and enabled them more distinctly to see things as they appeared, which was, they said, the philosophical method, as contra-distinguished from the low, vulgar, altogether despicable and ought-to-be-prohibited Common Sense method of seeing things as they were.

The habit of these dogs was to promenade abroad by moonless and starless night and “observe” through their opaquely green spectacles, and then gather together by day in what they called a “School,” where, secluded from noise and light and air, they boiled down their observations and ran them into moulds, the results of which operation they called “Maxims,” “Apothegms” and “Proverbs” which when cold they handed out to other dogs to hawk about in the public places as free gifts to all dogs to hang up in the chambers of their memories.

This Proverb Foundry, the big fleas said, was an excellent Institution and was worthy of support as it did a vast amount of Good; for it provided good things for dogs everywhere to put in their mouths, which, as food was scarce, was a Blessed Charity, and, moreover, by giving the dogs plenty to do mumbling these Proverbs and Maxims over and over in their mouths, kept them out of the mischief of thinking, and preserved their minds in a wholesome state of imbecility which was conducive to Social Order and the Stability of Institutions.

These wise-appearing philosophers, seeing that bones were scarce and dogs many, urged upon every dog the importance of getting ahead of every other dog, by remembering that “The early bird gets the first worm.” Seeing that in a crowd of struggling dogs, all the strong and lusty ones came to the front and uppermost, they made that all right by inventing the heartless motto for the guidance of the unscrupulous, “There’s plenty of room at the top.” Observing that just through the gap in the fence there is food for five dogs which one hundred and fifty are biting and tearing to get at, they encouraged the dogs to bear in mind that “Success in life comes only by push and enterprise.” Having noted that he who gobbled up his meat the fastest got most into his inside in the same time, they urged them to racing speed by the proverbs, “Time is money,” “Procrastination is the thief of time,” and “Hurry Up is the fastest horse.” Noticing that when anyone throws a scrap of meat to a crowd of hungry dogs, the one which is first and smartest gets it, they put the rule for such cases thus: “Opportunity once gone never returns.” Having themselves got on by carefully watching when other dogs threw away stale and mouldy meat that was not exceedingly well worth eating, and hoarding the same in sly holes and corners, they glorified such mean conduct by saying, “Frugality is the Mother of Wealth;” and when they denied their hungry stomachs a scrap in order to have a larger hoard, they erected their mean stinginess into a Philosophy of Life by remarking that “A Penny saved is a Penny Earned.”

And so on and so on. In a thousand ways they taught that getting on in the world is by “carving one’s way,” “compelling success,” biting, scratching, crowding, knocking down and trampling on your fellows; and they taught that only the winner in the race is to be congratulated on his efforts; that he who grabs and gets the bone is the one rightly entitled to it; and that all who run and fall, and all who grab and miss, should be voted immoral and sent to perdition.

And never a one of them ever made a proverb or a maxim that had in it the remotest suggestion that there might be any other way for dogs to live and be happy, save that by which they were now so miserably perishing; for, as aforesaid, they were great philosophers.

CHAPTER XII.

The Arisers.—Chaos Menders.—Moral and Spiritual tinkers and cobblers.—Artificial piety.—Praise Convention.—A Holy One a Maker of Long Prayers and Short Wages, is very hopeful.

NOW as soon as the Apologist Philosophers and their Proverb Foundry arose it was as though they had opened the doors of a Bottomless Pit where were confined an infinite host of Arisers; for from that time on there arose, and arose, and arose an endless succession of until-then unknown and needless Chaos Menders who came forth equipped with moral saws and hammers and jack planes and set up shop all over Canisville and put out big flaring signs setting forth that all manner of Moral and Spiritual Cobbling and Repairing was done there on the shortest notice; special attention being given to the Production of Public Virtue amongst dogs, by a large corps of operators, in the highest degree skilled in the art of fitting all sorts, sizes and qualities of dogs to Standard Moral Measurement, by the use of the latest improved and perfected machinery, warranted to lengthen, shorten, flatten, puff out, square up, round off, expand or compress as required. Also Corrupt Trees carefully trained and made to bear the best of Good Fruit; thorns made to bear grapes, and thistles to bring forth figs; all under the able superintendency of their various agents.

First, there arose divers well-meaning dogs of prophets who imagined they could restore the fighting, squabbling community to a state of decency by schooling the dogs into a habit of compelling their brains to sever all relationship and connection with their stomachs.

So when they were ready with their Plan they sent one into the Public Place, crying, “Behold now, this fighting and bad temper is all wrong; ye ought to deal kindly with one another. Lo! I come to proclaim peace.”

And an infidel dog said, “How wilt thou bring peace when there are more hungry dogs than bones?”

And the prophet said, “Let us bear with one another; let us resolutely put away from us all malice and evil thoughts, and be kindly affectioned one to another; and when one of us has found a bone, let not the other one cast covetous and hungry eyes upon it, but let him meekly bear his lot; and when his belly rumbles through emptiness, and he be tempted to rush upon his neighbor’s bone, let him put up a little prayer to the Providence which hath wisely ordained our several lots, and howl a little hymn thus: