Reprinted without permission from the March 13, 1909 issue of The Merry Fornicator.

Despite appearances I, Pershing F. Gooseberry III, am no fool. I am well aware that those who scuttle a copy of the venerable gentleman’s publication, The Merry Fornicator, into their domiciles, past the penetrating gaze of their wives or mothers, rarely peruse my ramblings on this, the back page. No, most are too busy furtively violating themselves in closets or washrooms to the delightful pictorials of our pale and wan ladies, their delicious forelimbs shockingly on display for just that purpose. When exposed, the mistress of the house brandishing the soiled pages at you like a warrant for your arrest, naturally you claim to read The Merry Fornicator ‘for the articles,’ citing contributors such as Scott Fitzgerald or Steve Crane so as to sound a more sophisticated self-abuser than a mere, well, lowwhat-brow self-abuser, I suppose. For all one knows yes, you may actually read those aforementioned modern bards, but let us not kid ourselves - you do so only as a safeguard should your loyal Fornicator readership be revealed, so that you can, as the low men of the West say, ‘bullshit’ your way out of it.

But heaven knows you are not reading my column, which for myself is both distressing and liberating. Not even my editor, Tom Samson, who is in actuality a Hebrew by the name of Abraham Jewbromowicz, knows of what I write. But for the both of you who have followed my many wastes of paper, you know of what I have stolen away with. From my travails in the opium dens of west Boston to my discussion of where to pick up - and naturally fornicate with toot sweet - an anarchist woman on the Lower East Side, I have been given free reign in such ways that no pen pusher has ever been afforded. Which is why, gentle, lonely reader, I shall today give you what the Harlemites call the “down-low” on some visions I have seen through the aide of a chinaman. Granted, it was a chinaman helping me chase a certain white dragon, but that is neither here nor there.

THE FIRST - As our police force continues to be overrun with whiskey-soaked potato-chewers, so soon will our government be run by the greasy Eyetalians. These tomato-fornicators will turn our beloved Constitution into a pizza box, a pizza box of socialism. Yes sir, we shall be a full-blown Bolsheviki state by the year of our Lord nineteen and twenty-nine. So purchase yourself a watch cap and grow unruly facial hair and prepare to pass this magazine around the neighborhood, because the godless Knights of Columbus will soon rule us all.

THE SECOND - The medical device known only today as the Female-Neurosis-Cure-All or Vibrating-Nether-Region-Surveyor will replace fornication for the fairer sex. This is distressing as it will stop pro-creation entirely, leaving our generation to be known not only as the greatest, but also the last. Do not be entirely distressed, gentle reader, for I have word that a modern-era Da Vinci, Thomas Edison, is fast at work on patenting a male apparatus known as the “Demon-Releasing-Member-Cure-All.” He provided me with the proto-type a fortnight ago, and I can happily report that I haven’t left my quarters since acquiring the item.

THE THIRD - Speaking of the fairer sex, I can assure you that women’s suffrage shall never come to pass. But it doesn’t take a fortune teller to see through that one. Socialism is one thing, but women in voting booths? Don’t be absurd! With that said, I was inclined to vote for one certain mustachioed presidential candidate upon receiving a female-administered-relief in the voting booth last election go round…

THE FOURTH - There will be a Son of Africa in the White House in the next hundred years or so. He will not be paid as much as the white cleaning staff, naturally.

That is all for now, my solitary reader. You can return to gandering at ankles and wrists while I return to testing the indestructibility of Edison’s latest invention. Ta for now, and remember: Fornication is only filthy if it is thrust upon an unwed Protestant!

Pershing F. Gooseberry III (1878-?) is famous for his writings in the classic turn-of-the-century men's magazine The Merry Fornicator. During the Depression, when The Merry Fornicator went bankrupt, Gooseberry was believed to have smuggled himself aboard a ship headed for Thailand, never to be heard from again.