his early literary characters, which included Artie, an office boy; Doc Horne, a "gentlemanly liar"; and Pink Marsh, an African American shoeshine boy who worked in a barbershop. Collections of Ade's columns were subsequently published as books, such as Artie (1896), Pink Marsh (1897), and Doc' Horne (1899), which also helped to increase the popularity of his column. Ade's newspaper columns also included dialog and short plays containing his humorous observations of everyday life. Ade first introduced his fables in slang in the Chicago Record in 1897. "The Fable of Sister Mae, Who Did As Well As Could Be Expected" appeared on September 17, 1897; the second one, "A Fable in Slang," appeared a year later; others followed in a weekly column. These humorous stories, complete with morals, featured vernacular speech and Ade's idiosyncratic capitalization of the characters' dialog. Ade left the Chicago Record in 1899 to work on nationallysyndicated newspaper column of his fables in slang. Fables in Slang (1900), the first in a series of book of Ade's fables, was popular with the public and for nearly twenty years more collections of his fables were compiled into additional books, ending with Hand-Made Fables (1920). Ade's fables also appeared in periodicals, the Essanay Film Manufacturing Company produced them as motion-picture shorts, and Art Helfant also turned them into comic strips. Playwright and author After Ade's newspaper columns went into syndication in 1900, he began writing plays. His first play produced for the Broadway stage was The Sultan of Sulu, a comic opera about the American military's efforts to assimilate natives of the Philippines into American culture. Written in 1901 with composer Nathaniel D. Mann and lyricist Alfred George Whathall, it was produced on Broadway in 1902. His other works for Broadway include Peggy from Paris (1903), a musical comedy; The County Chairman (1903), a piece about small-town politics; The Sho-Gun (1904), a musical set in Korea; and The College Widow (1904), a comedy about college life and American collegiate football. Not all of Ade's theatrical productions were successes, such as The Bad Samaritan (1905), but three of his plays (The College Widow, The Sho-Gun, and The County Chairman) were simultaneously appearing on Broadway in 1904. The best known and among the most successful of Ade's Broadway plays are The County Chairman and The College Widow, which were also adapted into motion pictures. Ade's final Broadway play before he retired