Last week, the telephone-device in my bed-chamber sounded, and I nearly jumped out of my desiccated, paper-like skin. No-one ever summons me in my own bed-chamber via the telephone-device! I had my nurse pick up the ear-receiver and put it against my prosthetic brass ear, but that proved to be a bad idea, as the voice emanating from the receiver reverberated endlessly through the metal ear canal, causing blood to shoot out of my ear in a scarlet jet.
Later that day, I finally came to, only to find my head swathed in yards of bandages. My scribe, Braintree, was in the bed-chamber, quietly awaiting the dictation of this week’s Publisher’s Message. I asked him if he knew anything about the telephone-summons.
“That was the opinion-page editor,” Braintree said. “He wanted to know if you would be interested in devoting this week’s Message to advice for the young people who are graduating from high-school this month.”
I was aghast that a lowly up-start hack would instruct me in the writing of the column I have authored since 1897. But I was even more appalled when Braintree explained to me what a “high-school” was. Evidently, now-a-days, they keep the molly-coddles in school until the age of 17 or 18, filling their minds with such trivial nonsense as isosceles triangles and who won the Battle of the Boyne. An out-rage!
When I was a lad, we had no such fripperies as public education, at least not out in the frontier where I was raised. I learned my letters and ciphering at my father’s knee. The rest of my time was devoted to ploughing the sun-scorched earth, tanning buffalo hides, and fighting off grizzled-bears with my trusty bowie-knife! But my thirst for adventure knew no quenching, and when I was 10, I jumped a train bound for New-York.
Still of a tender age, I found that rogues and fiends lurked at every corner, eager to exploit a young run-away. So I joined a gang of young roughs in the Tender-loin District. Our trade was embroidery; in fact, we were the toughest embroidery gang in the East. We had a virtual strangle-hold on all embroidery operations in New-York. But our gang was eventually vanquished by a stronger, even younger gang who dealt in crocheting. So I returned to the family home-stead and worked the printing-press until taking over the editorship in 1896.
As for advice for the young graduates, I have none. It’s every man for him-self!
T. Herman Zweibel, the great grandson of Onion founder Friedrich Siegfried Zweibel, was born in 1868, became editor of The Onion at age 20, and persisted in various editorial posts until his launching into space in 2001. Zweibel’s name became synonymous with American business success in the 20th century. Many consider him the “Father Of American Journalism,” also the title of his well-known 1943 biography, written by Norman Rombauer.
