Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 November 1908 — A Story on Himself by George Ade. [ARTICLE]

A Story on Himself by George Ade.

I cannot recall that I ever did anything in the dramatic lir-e until about ten years ago, when I submitted to May Irwin a little one act play entitled “Mrs. Peckham’s Carom e.” Much to my surprise she accepted the play and sent me a check for S2OO. It seemed wrong to accept such a large sum for such a small manuscript, but I needed the two hundred and kept it. Miss Irwin put the manuscript into her trunk and forgot all about it. Occasionally during the last ten years I have been tempted to return the money to her, feeling that I had obtained it under false pre'enses. Last winter she was in violent need of a one act play to fill in an evening's entertainment, so she fished out my first effort and played it. Much to her surprise and much to mine, the little play was highly successful. I had always regarded it as the crude and amatuerish attempt of a beginner, but the critics, who supposed that it had been writtin the week before, recognized in it the ripening improvement in technique.con t ucti n subplot, etc., (which are unde sto:d only by critics) over certain other plays. - “Mrs. Peckham’s Carouse” seemed to excite so little enthusiasm on the part of Miss Irwin that it was five vears before I had the courage to take a sdcond dip into the troub el waters of dramatic authorship, with the “Sultan of Sulu.”