[Pg 18] And Jericho was left alone—alone in bed? Not alone. He had desperately fitted his night-cap to his head, and resolute upon sleep, had punched his head deep, deep into his pillow. Mrs. Jericho would have doubted her eyes had she seen the creatures in her house; but standing upon a ridge of her husband’s night-cap, and looking wisely down upon her husband’s dreaming face, were two fleas. An elder and a younger flea. Their ancestors had come from the far East, and carried the best royal blood within them. It would be no difficult matter to trace them up to the court of king Crœsus, whither they were first brought in the cloak of Æsop. Let it suffice, that from this Lydian stock descended the two fleas, at the time of our story, perched—like ruminating goats upon a ledge of rock—upon the night-cap of Jericho. Their progenitors had not come in, like many others, with the Conquest; but were brought to England in the train of a Persian Ambassador. After a wandering life, the race remained for some forty years comfortably settled in a lodging-house at Margate, bringing up a multitudinous family. From this stock came our two fleas, travelling, cosily enough, to London. How from the Apollo Tavern, where they first put up on their arrival in the metropolis, they made their way to the home of Jericho, passes our knowledge to declare. Very sure we are, that Mrs. Jericho believed she had no such creatures in her house. Well, the two fleas having jumped upon the brow of Jericho, we shall, without any scruple, make use of them. They stand above the brain of the sleeper, and—being descended from the fleas of Æsop—shall, for the nonce, be made to narrate to the reader the vision of the dreaming victim. [Pg 19] [Pg 19] “Miserable race!”—said the father flea, with its beautiful bright eye shining pitifully upon Jericho—“Miserable craving race! You hear, my son; man, in his greed, never knows when he has wherewithal. He gorges to gluttony, he drinks to drunkenness; and you heard this wretched fool, who prayed to heaven, to turn him—heart, brain and all—into a lump of money. Happily, it is otherwise with fleas. We take our wholesome, our sufficient draught, and there an end. With a mountain of enjoyment under our feet, we limit ourselves to that golden quantity—enough.” “Therefore, oh, my sire, let us not, for our temperance, be gluttonous of self-praise. Seeing that fleas are the crowning work of the world; seeing that as sheep,
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