GEORGE ADE AWAITS
THE PROPER GIRL.
SAYS "HAVEN'T FOUND RIGHT
ONE," WHEN ASKED WHY
HE DOESN'T WED.
Sight of Jeffries Recalls the
Days When He Was a
Newspaper Man.
GEORGE ADE, HUMORIST FROM INDIANA.
Now, girls, take notice. George Ade is looking for a wife.
George -- you all know George -- does not say so in as many plain, everyday words, but he intimates his inclination to move up that way, as the lady said when she jabbed the fat man with her hatpin in the aisle of a Vine street car.
But before you put in your application, don't get the idea that life with the humorist, as his wife, would be a never-ending scream of comedy. Professional humorists are a glum lot, and Ade is not more joyous than a bowl of glue. A professional humorist has to think it all you -- you'd never believe it, reading it over afterwards -- and the thinking process, to a humorist, comes hard. For George Ade, it has put a sprinkle of gray hairs all over his head, tracing what once was black with a presage of an early winter.
LOOKS REAL, SMILING.
Of course, you'll all want to know how he looks. Mr. Ade is a man of undoubted length of legs. He has a considerable breadth of shoulder when his overcoat is on, not much to go wild over when it is off. He has a countenance turned to the cynical cast when he doesn't smile, looking lie a chap that would, or might, at least pinch your arm if you didn't move over. His visage is thin and his nose is long, coming to a little hook at thee ends, like a pod of a kidney bean. When he smiles he looks read.
Mr. Ade was in Kansas City yesterday. He didn't come right out and say that he was in the matrimonial market. He, being a humorist, wouldn't be taken seriously if he did. In answer to the question, "Mr. Ade, why don't you marry?" he said: "Because I haven't found the right one."
So now, as the man with a house to build says, he is open to proposals.
Mr. Ade looks young, younger than he would have looked by this time if he had kept on doing prize fights for the Chicago paper with which he was connected ten years ago, when fame came along one day and put the shining mark upon him. The sight of the Hon. James J. Jeffries in the grill room of the Hotel Baltimore yesterday afternoon brought it all back to him.
JEALOUSY NOTICED.
"There's a crowd of gaping men around Jeffries down there," said he, "unable to breathe for admiration and awe." It may be excused the humorist if there was a tinge of professional jealousy in the tone. "It makes me think of the time, away back in '92, when I was writing newspaper stories about such fellows. I wasn't the sporting editor. Oh, no, I was just a reporter."
Mr. Ade is resting from the humorist business just now. He isn't even writing a play. Just taking things easy, and kind of hanging around, waiting for the right girl. No photographs exchanged.
When Mr. Ade talks, he talks English. It's only when he writes that he is picturesque. Yesterday afternoon he went to the Orpheum theater and sat through the programme, not even smiling when a big man in a little play took what he meant to be a humorous shot at him. Mr. Ade looks real good when he his dressed up. Tramping through the snow yesterday he wore a long ulster, buttoned to the chin, the high collar almost covering his ears. He carries a bit of a stick with a silver knob, with all the abandon and familiarity of an actor.
MODERN TRAGEDY.
Mr. Ade says the great American tragedy will be written about modern conditions. "There's lots of good stuff being written now," said he, "and lots of good stuff being staged. Some of this season's new pieces are exceptionally good."
Mr. Ade registers from Brook, Ind. "I live there in the summer and fall," he said, "and in winter I lock up the place and live in a trunk."
