To-day’s Message concerns the importance of maintaining the gold standard, which has long been the bed-rock of monetary policy in our Great Republic. The printing of more green-backs would only prompt inflation and severely under-mine the Republic’s over-all prosperity…
AAAAAGH! Help! There’s a mule in my room! Help! Murder! Poison! Nurse! Standish! Help!
The wretched beast is leaving his dirty hoof-prints upon my tastefully appointed Persian rug. Help, nurse, help!
Oh, would you look at this. Now he is kicking his hind legs against my armoire, over and over. He will upset the jars of urine I keep within! Some-one please bridle this infamous brute, before it is too late! Help!
AIEEEEEE! Oh, horrors! Now the creature has the audacity to climb upon my death-bed and is craning his enormous head toward me! Spare me, Mr. Mule, I beg of you! I will build you an emerald-encrusted stable, and you shall dine on the finest carrots and sugar-lumps! Please, do not harm the Republic’s greatest news-paper-man!
What’s this? Why, of all the blasted cheek! The animal has snatched my night-cap off my head and is proceeding to eat it! Abhorrent pest, how I detest you! Making a fool out of a helpless old plutocrat! Where is that incompetent nurse and man-servant of mine?
Now the beast is loudly braying, as though in mocking laughter. The foul fiend! I am aghast at the insolence of this mule-beast. Once there was a time in which mules thought twice before defying a Zweibel. Why, mules used to tremble as I promenaded down the street, wearing my mule-skin suit and bowler-hat! Be assured that I took no guff from a mule or any other living thing! To think I have lived to see the day in which a lowly mule has made a laughing-stock of me!
The presence of this mule is undoubtedly the work of those street-urchins who live in the small village near my immense estate. When they are not busy showing up rich and stuck-up folks in the neighborhood, they are busy putting on noisome amateur variety shows or dodging the village constable! I have had it with those little rascals! I shall have them locked up in the county orphanage, where they will eat mush until they keel over from old age!
In the mean-time, I must contend with this ruthless mule, who continues to run amok. Miserable beast! Nurse, Standish, help! Helllllp!
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.
