Chapter XIV (Delusion Of The Dog-Flea-Monkeys) (Delusion Of The Dog-Flea-Monkeys). Delusion Of The Dog-Flea-Monkeys. - The Portrait. - How It Was Copied.

Lthesedog-flea-monkey Virtue Compolsion-ists had one peculiar delusion: They all imagined that they were exceedingly beautiful spiritually, and comely of complexion morally, and resembled in moral features a certain gloriously beautiful Person who had lived and died above 1800 years before; about whom the salaried barkers in the churches of the fleas were paid to bark One day in every seven.

It was a practice ordained by the Church that every barker, in the course of his regular barking, should draw on a gold and gem-studded, framed, marble slab, a Portrait of this Personage; for two reasons: First, to keep him in remembrance, because, they said, he was the Blessed Founder of the Church of the Fleas; and second, because it was obligatory both upon the reverend barker and upon every member of the Church to be conformed unto His Likeness, by diligently comparing themselves with the Portrait.

It was a Blessed Custom, and originated thus: - The Original Portrait was in the Holy Book that lay on the cosily cushion, drawn there by certain brave but poor and persecuted dogs who knew and loved the Original Person. Their Church in those days was the Church of the Dogs, and was a very small and obscure church that was set up in out-of-the-way,' damp and mouldy dens and caves and holes and corners of the earth; because the Church of the Fleas of those days had crucified the Founder of it, and did cruelly hunt and persecute and kill the dogs that belonged to it But those dogs did the more love his memory, and did day by day copy out his Portrait from the Original and conform themselves to it.

But after a time, when they that knew the Founder were gathered into the heavenly garner, and there arose a succession of dogs that knew him not, the Church of the Dogs went acourt-ing unto the respectable Church of the Fleas and asked to be united in Holy Wedlock unto it. And the Church of the Fleas corrupted with respectability the Church of the Dogs, and the dogs sold their brand new religion to the fleas whose gods had become dilapidated and worm-eaten for lack of fresh paint Whereupon the Church of the Fleas threw their rotten old gods on the rubbish heap, and adopted the worship of the Wonderful Personage and the practice of drawing his Portrait. But the practice of copying it from the Original in the Big Book was in time discarded, because many of the fleas, when called on by the barkers to compare themselves with the Portrait, said it reproached them, being too good, and made them ugly by comparison, and the conforming themselves thereto was too expensive and inconvenient And when the barker insisted on compliance with the custom, they said he was an impertinent barker and didn't know his place ; and they called on the dogs to cast him out and worry him to death. Which terrible example and warning caused the succeeding barkers to be pertinent and know their places, and bark according to the desire of the fleas - which they had carefully done ever since.

So no more was the Seventh-daily copy copied from the Original but was copied from the preceding Seventh-daily copy - which gave the employers far less dissatisfaction.

But the barkers, diligently keeping the fear of the fleas and the fate of the cast out barkers before them, fell gradually into the habit of here and there adding to the Portrait a feature or two of the eminent fleas that sat and smiled before them; and as this gentle flattery of the fleas was received by them, with great favor, the barkers - who had by this time very perspica ciously discerned on which side their bread was buttered - were encouraged; and soon the Portrait in no wise resembled the Original. But it gave very great satisfaction to the fleas, who found themselves growing more and more like unto the Blessed Person whom they worshipped; and the barkers found their basketfuls of meat growing ever larger as their reward; insomuch that in the latter days such barkers as Tee de Little Wit Blatherskite - who drew the Seventh-daily Portrait with great skill, and filled it fuller of flea features than any other barker - got very great basketfuls, and were held in the highest honor by the most eminent suckers, who said they were good dogs that they would not part with at any price. Therefore it was that when all the dog-flea-monkey dog coercionists and heads of the various Physical-Force Holiness Societies sat in the Church of the Fleas and looked upon the Features and Form of the Portrait, they lifted up their mouths to Heaven and gave loud thanks to God that they were the exact counterparts of the Ever Blessed Person, for their ugly mugs and ignorantly brutal and fanatical eyes were just like his.