Читать книгу The Dogs and the Fleas - Frederic Scrimshaw - Страница 8

Table of Contents

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.