Rejoice, O readers! Let there be songs of praise sung throughout the press-rooms! Bedeck the rooms of my estate with the merry-buntings, and polish my court-yard statue! Truly this is a day for hosannas, for an 8-year-old girl has perished beneath the wheels of a bull-dozer!
Perhaps I should back up a bit for my more ignorant readers. Since the early days of the McKinley Administration, I have been without a liver. The stress of being the publisher of the world’s greatest news-paper, in addition to my advanced years, has taken its toll on my sweet-meats, and my liver in particular is susceptible to the corrosive humors of my time-blasted carcass. Even for a man of my stature, a liver is not easy to procure, especially now that my scullery-maids have been emancipated.
But this morning, Doc McGillicuddy greeted me with the happy news that a young slip of a girl had apparently pursued a gaily painted inflated pig’s bladder into a field where earthworks were being constructed. She chased her toy beneath the steel carriage of a great bull-dozer, which quickly made an example of her by propelling itself over her brain-pan. My joy only increased when I was told she shared my rather rare Prusso-Bavarian blood-type, and that her still-pulsating liver could be placed into my thorax!
Huzzah! Once more I shall be able to eat the oats-meal, drink the delicious formaldehyde which gives such a sheen to my prosthetic silver ears, and void only urine of a pure golden hue! No more shall I rely on bile-transfusions from my sons G. Talmadge and R. Buckminster to maintain my energy! I am informed that the girl’s liver has been torn from her ribcage by my own chirurgeons and placed in an ice-chest, and is at this very moment on its way to my bed-chamber. Open the dove-cotes and release the ceremonial flock!
Such joy is upon me, I find myself considering the installation of bull-dozers wherever little children congregate. It would cost thousands of dollars, I am sure, but if it assures me of a constant supply of fresh young liver-flesh, it is well worth it!
Affix the Zweibel family empennage to the highest mountain-tops! Ignite the fatted-calf! Drape the servants in their most splendorous chains! Engage the calliope-bellows! It will be a merry two or three weeks before I shit this new liver into my golden bedpan, choked and corrupted with my body’s vile excrescences, and I mean to enjoy them!
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.
