George Ade (1866-1944) was an American writer, newspaper columnist, and playwright. While attending Purdue University, he became a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity. He also met and started a lifelong friendship with fellow cartoonist and Sigma Chi brother John T. McCutcheon and worked as a reporter for the Lafayette Call. In 1890, he joined the Chicago Morning News, which later became the Chicago Record, where McCutcheon was working. He wrote the column, Stories of the Streets and of the Town. His literary reputation rests upon his achievements as a great humourist of American character during an important era in American history: the first large wave of migration from the countryside to burgeoning cities like Chicago, where, in fact, Ade produced his best fiction. He was a playwright as well as an author, penning such stage works as Arti: A Story of the Streets and Town (1896), The College Widow (1904) and The Fair Co-ed (1909). His other works include: Verses and Jingles (1911), Knocking the Neighbors (1913), Marse Covington (1918), Hand- Made Fables (1920), and Thirty Fables in Slang (1933).