What is to be done for the people?
Who's who in 1853?
What next?—
we have resolved on considerable improvements in the Prophetic department of our publication.
This feature indeed may be said to have been (in proof of which we are going to say it) hitherto the only unsatisfactory one of our otherwise complete work—having been confined to the prediction (in six neatly printed pages at the commencement of the yearly volume) of the particular week-days on which each day of the month would fall; the number of days to be contained in each month; the periodical changes of the moon, &c., &c.—predictions which have invariably been verified; but, from the comparatively uninteresting nature of the events foretold—considered as a supply to the enormous demand for Prophetic Intelligence alluded to above—may be open to a charge of inadequacy.
For the Future we intend to be more explicit as to it; and will foretell events of a more general nature, calculated to set at rest all the throbbing questions of the day, to which an answer will oblige—only stipulating that, in the case of any prediction not appearing to be satisfactorily fulfilled, the reader will withhold his judgment till such time as he shall have purchased our next number.
Our extra amount of foresight has enabled us to present the reader with sixteen pages of matter more than he has been in the habit of receiving. The usual blank pages for the purposes of journal and cash entries will be no longer necessary, the accounts of the year being already made up for him by ourselves.
JANUARY.
On the 1st of January, two elderly gentlemen (having dined together on the previous day) will meet in New Oxford Street. One will poke the other in the stomach, and remark that he has not seen him since last year. The other will reply that it is very odd; but that he is glad to find his friend so little altered. Both elderly gentlemen will laugh and adjourn for something to drink.