Page:Dickens - A Child s History of England, 1900.djvu/533

Rh brilliant concourse of those lovely and elegant women for Which Mudfog is justly acknowledged to be without a rival in the whole world. The contrast between their fair faces and the dark coats and trowsers of the scientific gentlemen I shall never cease to remember while memory holds her seat.

"Time having been allowed for a slight confusion, occaisioned by the falling down of the greater part of the platforms, to subside, the president called on one of the secretaries to read a communication entitled, ' Some remarks on the industrious fleas, with considerations on the importance of establishing infant schools among that numerous class of society; of directing their industry to useful and practical ends; and of applying the surplus fruits thereof, toward providing for them a comfortable and respectable maintenance in their old age."

"The author stated, that, having long turned his attention to the moral and social condition of these interesting animals, he had been induced to visit an exhibition in Regent Street, London, commonly known by the designation of "The Industrious Fleas." He had there seen many fleas, occupied certainly in various pursuits and avocations, but occupied, he was bound to add, in a manner which no man of well-regulated mind could fail to regard with sorrow and regret. One flea, reduced to the level of a beast of burden, was drawing about a miniature gig, containing a particularly small effigy of his Grace the Duke of Wellington; while another was staggering beneath the weight of a golden model of his great adversary Napoleon Bonaparte. Some, brought up as mountebanks and ballet-dancers, were performing a figure-dance (he regretted to observe that, of the fleas so employed, several were females); others were in training, in a small card-board box, for pedestrians—mere sporting characters —and two were actually engaged in the cold-blooded and barbarous occupation of dueling; a pursuit from which humanity recoiled with horror and disgust. He suggested that measures should be immediately taken to employ the labor of these fleas as part and parcel of the productive power of the country, which might easily be done by the establishment among them of infant schools and houses of industry, in which a system of virtuous education, based upon sound principles.