the dupe is an honest creature, and such honesty is the noblest work of god. the dupe is not the servant of the knave, but his ally. the dupe does not, as too simple a political philosophy would have it, serve only for a material on which the knave shall work; he is also the moral support of the knave, strengthening and comforting the knave's most inward soul and lending lubrication to the friction of public falsehood. for the knave is of many sorts, and the dupe helps them all.
the plumb knave, or knave absolute, finds in the dupe such an honest creature as does not revile him, and it is good to know that one is loved by some few honest souls. thus the knave absolute is foolish indeed when he lets the dupe see by gesture or tone that he thinks[pg 214] him a fool, for the dupe is very sensitive and touchy in all weathers.
the knave qualified (in his many incarnations) must have the dupe about him or perish. thus the knave who would save his soul by self-deception feeds, cannibal-like, upon the straightforwardness of the dupe, and says to himself: "how can i be such a knave after all, since these good dupes here heartily agree with me?"
the knave cowardly props himself upon that sort of courage in the dupe which always accompanies virtue. "i run a risk," says he, "in proposing the state purchase of this or that at such and such a price. my friend the old knave went under thus in 1895; but the good dupe is a buckler in the fight; he will dare all because his heart is pure."
the knave slovenly looks to the dupe to see to details and to meet men in ante-chambers, and to have kind, honest eyes in bargaining. this sort of knave will have two or even three dupes for private secretaries, and often one for a brother-in-law.
[pg 215]
the dupe is in god's providence very numerous, for his normal rate of breeding is high in the extreme, his normal death-rate low. on this account those curious in this part of natural history may watch the dupes going about in great herds, conducted and instructed by the knave; nor is the one to be distinguished from the other by the coat, but rather by the snout and visage, the eyes and, if one be old enough to open the mouth, by the teeth. the dupe, upon the other hand, will not be of great service in any physical struggle and must not be depended upon for this. it is his delight to browse and when disturbed he scatters rather than flies. here and there a rogue dupe will turn upon his pursuers, in which case he is invariably devoured.
the dupe has his habitat, but that not easily defined, as in the suburbs of great cities, and in those towns called residential, where the leisured and the inane make their lives seem so much longer than those of others. but there are exceptions also to this, and the dupe will [pg 216]sometimes migrate in vast numbers from one spot to another in such few years as wholly to discomfit the calculations of the knaves. some of these have been found to stand up in public halls before numbers whom they had thought to be dupes (seeing that the locality was little partington) but only to discover a great boiling of anti-dupes, men working with their hands or what-not, quite undeceivable, as often as not atheist, and ready to storm the platform and tear the knave alive.
the dupe loves courtesy and, as has been said above, will tolerate no hint of impatience. on the other hand, he needs no breaking in and will carry upon the back from his earliest years. it is incredible to travellers when they first come across the dupe what burdens he will bear in this fashion, so that sometimes the whole plain appears to be a moving mass of gold bags, public salaries, contracts, large houses, yachts, motor-cars, opera houses, howdahs sheltering masters and mistresses, cases of wine, rich foods, and charitable institutions, all as it[pg 217] were endowed with a motion of their own until you stoop down and perceive that the whole of this vast weight sways securely upon the backs of an enormous migratory body of dupes upon the trek for a better land.
the dupe also differs from other creatures in that he will sleep comfortably with such things upon his back, nor ever roll over upon them, and that he will bear them to a great old age and even to death itself without dispute. indeed the dupe unburdened has about him a forlorn and naked feeling to which it were a pity to condemn him. his food must be ample, but there is no need to prepare it carefully, and he will eat almost anything that is given him, except a leek, which he will not touch unless he be told that it is an onion. of wheat he takes very little, but he insists that a great portion be put before him, that he may munch and trample upon it. why he manifests this appetite is not known, but upon any attempt to lessen the ration he will kick, buck, and rear,[pg 218] and behave in a manner altogether out of his nature.
the dupe must be given drink at irregular intervals, but he loves to treat it shyly, and to flirt with it as it were. there is no prettier sight than to see a number of dupes met together arching and curvetting, side-glancing and denying, before they plunge their heads and manes into the life-giving liquid.
it is the reward of the dupe that he is all his life very consistently happy, and on this account many not born dupes, imitate the dupes and would be of them, in which they fail, for the dupe is god's creature and not man's, and proceeds by moral generation as has already been affirmed.
