Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 36, Number 115, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 October 1904 — HOW ADE GETS HIS MEAT. [ARTICLE]

HOW ADE GETS HIS MEAT.

John T. McCutcheon, the great cartoonist, recently visited his special friend and college chum, George Ade, the celebrated writer, at his country home near Brook, and now te la this story about Ade’s game rooster: **l was met at the station by an English coachman and a smart trap and driven to Ade’s place, which is a duplicate of a first-class English country estate. But 1 hadn’t been there long before 1 noticed that chicken was a staple article of diet and that the fowls seemed to be a little—well, slightly mature. “After dinner one day I discovered the reason for all this. Two farmers called, asked for Ade, and pointed significantly to the small sacks which they had brought. Ade nodded, led the way to the chicken bouse, and invited me to follow. Tliere he brought out a black and-red game rooster. One of the young farmers also took a rooster of a large breed from bis sack, -

“ ’Of course,’ said Ade, ‘if your rooster should meet sudden death I shall expect to have him served for dinner to-morrow.’ " ‘That’s all right,’ replied the farmer; ‘but you’d better order some beefsteak just the same.’ "Inside of ten minu'es both the fowls of the challengers were dead, and I understood the n ason why we had been served with so many muscular "broilers.” " ‘You see,’ explained Ade, 'the boys around here started the game —saw my little rooster and decided that they’d just take me down a peg. Of course, looking at it one way, fighting chickens is wicked sport-very—but I couldn’t very well take a dare and be set down by my neighbors as a coward So I told them to come on. As a result, that little rooster has kept me in meat right along. The quality might be a little better, but the quantity’s all right. Besides, there’s nothing cruel about it. My little fellow makes just one jump and it’s all over. As a means of banding out painless death to ambitious roosters he beats the family hatchet clear off the chopping block.’ ”