This Column Is A 'Re-run'
Doc McGillicuddy ordered me not to write my column this week because I am just getting over a bout of the pleurisy, and I need my bed-rest. McGillicuddy suggested I consent to what he called a "re-run," or a printing of a previously published column.
Every tendril of my body is dead-set against such a practice. But since I am given no choice, I must relent. I had my man-servant Standish sift through dozens of bound volumes of past Onion issues for a worthy re-run. The following column, which represents the culmination of that search, was recently published in 1932:
I hear that our great Republic is in the throes of what is being called the Great Depression. Evidently, there is great unemployment and hard times for many because of a Wall Street stock crash of several years ago. I myself have not experienced any financial troubles: I'm still as fat as a Christmas goose, because I keep all my money wrapped in an old union-suit inside a secret cubby-hole behind a false panel in my armoire.
I am sure a lot of you need some cheering up, lowly and destitute as you now are. Many of you already waste your time at the picture-house watching the anthropomorphic movable drawings anyway. As luck would have it, I recently came across an old volume of humorous jokes, stories and pictures in my study, and I spent the better part of an evening sipping brandy and chortling over this light-hearted tome. I will share one of the witty exchanges with you.
Wife: What is that you are taking?
Husband: Quinine and whiskey for my cold.
Wife: Do you take the whiskey to hide the quinine?
Husband: Yes, that's just it.
Wife: But you always say you dislike the taste of whiskey.
Husband: So I do. I take the quinine to disguise the taste of the whiskey—don't you see?
Is that not the most side-splitting thing you have ever read? I would also include an absolutely hysterical exchange between two Esquimaus, but I am out of space.
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