Standish! Standish! Make sure the Swiss Guard are on full alert tonight, with reinforcements! I received another death threat in to-day’s mails!
I showed the note to the village constable, who insisted that I print it in my column, in the hopes that some-one might be able to identify the murderous thug and lead a posse of law-men to his hide-out. The constable said a similar tactic was helpful in apprehending a deranged gentle-man who sent home-made explosives in the mails because he was opposed to child-powered looms and the other wondrous industrial machinery of our day. So here, in its entirety, is the assassin’s note:
Zweibel
U old fart who cares what u have to say Stop writing that column of you’res or Ill make u stop but good u old buzard Ill slit youre throat
I guess some people just can’t stand the fact that I am still alive and have written the same column, day in, day out, for over a century. Indeed, my enemies are legion, and not even the thickest dictionary could contain their names.
Readers may recall my struggles with the villainous Black Scarlet, rogue highway-man and hero to the destitute and shoe-less. Then, of course, there was Mr. Tin, my ro-bot nurse, who once tried to wage war against me with an invincible army of mechanical men he created. The latest scoundrel is Li Ming, an inscrutable Chinee and my chief rival for the title of World’s Oldest Man. After my attempt to eliminate him was thwarted, the mysterious Society Of 800 Avenging Fists vowed revenge against me.
Assassins! Assassins every-where! Assassins in my pantry! Assassins in my armoire! In my carpet slippers! In my best meerschaum pipe! Assassins!
My weak-headed son U. Fairfax believes this latest threat is simply from a drunkard armed with nothing more than a poison pen. Experience, however, tells me that a far more cunning knave is at work here. Could he be a pirate captain, eager to hang my severed head from the bow of his corsair? A fellow robber-baron and plutocrat who covets my mighty news-paper empire? A woman driven mad with love for a man she can never have?
Who-ever this assassin may be, he should best beware! No assassin has yet claimed T. Herman Zweibel as his trophy, and those who have tried have met macabre ends! Beware, assassin, beware!
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.
