Читать книгу The Dogs and the Fleas - Frederic Scrimshaw - Страница 7

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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.