Another infant New-Year, bless its heart, is fast a-suckling upon the teat of its wet nurse. And I predict great things for this Year Of Our Lord 1913! For it is a great time to be an American and a plutocrat: The Zweibel coffers are full to bursting; I am the most respected and beloved gentleman in the Republic; and the Onion news-paper is selling like hotcakes, largely thanks to our new comical-strip-story feature, L’il Foodhole & His Billy Goat Juniper. That Juniper is always up to mischief, eating Mrs. O’Riley’s laundry and such-like!
The publishing world yearly awaits my predictions for the New-Year. As so they should! I need not remind you that in years past I predicted the increased use of the combustible-engine motor-car, the shortening of women’s skirt hems by one-half inch, and the beastly attack of the Ungabunga Island savages upon the Christian missionaries sent to save their heathen souls. Curse them!
In this New-Year 1913, I predict:
The entire city of Cincinnati will plummet into the Ohio River, with nary a man left to tell the tale.
The sinful fox trot dance, all the rage back East, will corrupt our chaste young maidens, turning them into rouge-wearing, opium-smoking vampires, draining the life from American manhood with their poisonous kisses.
At the college pigskin matches, Harvard will lick Eli but good, and the St. Louis Browns will challenge and defeat the New York Knickerbockers in the World Series base-ball competition.
I will continue to profit handsomely from extensive investment in the burgeoning German munitions industry.
The most popular song of the year will be “Won’t You Share a Strawberry Bromide With Me, Sweet Pollybelle Of Mine?” The second most popular song of the year will be “Float, Float, Float On My Merry Little Boat.”
Our Lord Jesus Christ will descend from heaven in a flaming chariot, separating saint from sinner.
And, finally, Brickton Atlas-Trumpet Editor In Chief P. Oliver Gummidge will die, because I will have killed him.
A toast to the New-Year 1913! And may there be many more following!
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.
