And this advice of the wise fleas seemed good and sage unto the other fleas; and the Monstrous Pleas (all but Pharaoh Phrique, who became sulky and declared that the wise fleas were a lot of old fogy fools not to see that to hang, shoot, choke and kill the pesky dogs was the shortest, quickest and altogether the most efficacious way of putting them down), said, that come to think of it, they believed that eternal work was the finest antidote to the thinking poison, that had been devised, for they had noticed that though their dogs that turned the great Handle had at various times displayed alarming symptoms of the thought disease, they were happy to say they, by the application of the perpetual-work remedy, were now almost cured; and they believed that with care in keeping them eternally at it, they would suffer no relapse.

So the fleas formed the Board of Public Safety. And the first thing they did was to send a committee unto McPoodle, com-mauding him to provide them gangs of police and other dogs, to go by night through all the highways and byways of Canis-ville, and rake up all the bones and scraps and broken victuals they could find, in order that the dogs in the morning might have to scratch long and furiously to find a mouthful.

And McPoodle did as he was commanded, and sent his well-fed police and other dogs out to make the working dogs hungry. And they raked and scraped the highways and the byways, and gathered up all the food there was to be seen, and sorted the Various scraps into heaps, and carried every heap into a Corner by itself.

And the fleas commanded McPoodle, and he appointed a few of the most eminent fleas to be Trustees and custodians over each heap.

And on the day of appointment those Trustees and custodians did reverently lift up their eyes to heaven, and say they accepted the custody thereof, as a sacred Trust from God and McPoodle, and did solemnly vow that they would administer that Trust in the fear of God, and altogether in the interest of the dogs, to whom they had a deep and heartfelt desire to make victuals cheap. This, said they, not because they loved the dogs, but because they had the Corners and could afford to lie.

Then came to pass all that had been predicted by the wise fleas. The dogs hungrily ran about the bare streets, seeking food, but found nothing but a few chance scraps, that had escaped the vigilant diligence of McPoodle's sweepers. So ravenous was their hunger, and so scarce the means of satisfying it, that the dogs' noses were ever in the dirt, and grew sore and bloody with their eternal nosing after the Something that so seldom they found. As for their eyes, they grew, by reason of being ever strained towards the dirt, to be permanently nearsighted and microscopic, so that larger things, such as hills and trees and sky became indistinct and almost invisible to them. And as for their brains, they shrank and shrivelled until they could only receive one thought, and that was - Victuals.

So that the fleas rejoiced, and were glad, and the wise fleas were held in great honor for having devised so great a salvation from the threatened perils of the thinking plague.

And the wise fleas warned the eminent and the wealthy fleas, to be sure to retain the advantage they had gained, and keep the dogs well starved, for nothing kept a dog's brain so thoroughly fortified against the invasion of uplifting and seditious thoughts, as perpetual hunger and tearing around to appease it And the eminent and the wealthy fleas said they would see to it with pleasure.

But, by and by, after many dogs had dropped dead in their vain struggling search for victuals in the cleaned-out highways and byways, the hungry dogs were compelled to repair to the Corners, and beg of the fleas that held the heaps as a Sacred Trust from God, to give them a mouthful for God's sake to keep them from dying.

But the lordly fleas that had the Sacred Trust, spake haughtily unto them, and said that as Heaven had most wisely seen fit, by means of the Sacred Trust, to give the fleas the Bulge on the dogs, they were determined to be faithful to Heaven, and use the said Bulge to the glory of Heaven, and the safety of Society which had but very recently been in peril of destruction, and, therefore, none but good and moral, lowly and obedient dogs, that had never held seditious thoughts, had never tried, or thought of trying, to shake off their fleas, had never doubted or been tempted to doubt, the divine and indisputable right of fleas to suck the blood of dogs, would receive any scraps from the heaps which had been committed to them - the Sacred Trustees.

And all the hungry dogs hastened to assure the Sacred Trustees that they were and always had been good and moral, obedient and unseditious dogs that had never doubted the divine rights of fleas. But the Sacred Trustees said that was not so, for they had a Holy Angel who kept a Book of Death, in which was written with everlasting ink, the names of those undesirable dogs whom certain sneak dogs, called Detectives, had reported to them to have been guilty of thinking and speaking evil of fleas; and these had been Blacklisted, to be sent away into everlasting hunger.

Upon which they commanded the Angel to read out the names of the Accused ; who were ignominiously driven shrieking away, by the police dogs who, being fat and well fed, did drive them away with pleasure, and club them with alacrity.

But the Blessed Ones, whose names were not written in the Book of Death, did oringingly wag their tails, and lick the feet of the police dogs, and reverentially pray their good lords, the Sacred Trustees, to give them something to push the walls of their stomachs apart with, for they were fallen together with hunger. Thereupon, the Sacred Trustees were graciously pleased to order certain servant dogs to throw over the fence just scraps enough not to be sufficient to go around, and to keep the dogs avidiously scrambling and savagely fighting for them.

This policy, said the wise fleas, would keep the dogs' thoughts in their stomachs, where alone dogs' thoughts ought to be ; for when they mounted to their heads they rendered dogs bad citizens and of no good to the fleas.

And it was so that the dogs grew unable and unwilling to think of any thing but the horrible and ever enlarging vacuum in their insides, and of what to fling into it.

So the plague was stayed.