Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SHIFTED HIS IDEAL A" A. D. T. Kid carrying a Death Message marked " Rush" stopped in front of a Show Window containing a Picture of James J. Jeffries and began to weep bitterly. A kind-hearted Suburbanite happened to be passing along on his Way to the 5:42 Train. He was carrying a Dog Collar, a Sickle, a Basket of Egg Plums and a Bicycle Tire. The Suburbanite saw the A. D. T. Kid in Tears and it struck him that here was a Bully Chance to act out the Kind-Hearted Pedestrian who is alwaysplayed up strong in the Sunday School Stories about Ralph and Edgar. "Why do you weep?" he asked, peering at the Boy through his concavo- convex Nose Glasses. "Oh, gee! I was just Thinking," replied the Urchin, brokenly. "I was just Thinking what chance have I got to grow up and be the Main Stem, like Mr. Jeffries." "What a perverted Ambition!" exclaimed the Suburbanite. "Why do you set up Mr. Jeffries as an Ideal? Why do you not strive to be like Me? Is it not worth a Life of Endeavor to command the Love and Respect of a Moral Settlement on the Outskirts? All the Conductors on our Division speak pleasantly to Me, and the Gateman has come to know my Name. Last year I THE KID had my Half-Tone in the Village Weekly for the mere Cost of the Engraving. When we opened Locust avenue from the Cemetery west to Alexander's Dairy, was I not a Member of the Committee appointed to present the Petition to the Councilmen? That's what I was! For Six Years I have been a Member of the League of American Wheelmen and now I am a Candidate for Director of our new four-hole Golf Club. Also I play Whist on the Train with a Man who once lived in the same House with T. DeWitt Talmage." Hearing these words the A. D. T. Kid ceased weeping and cheerfully proceeded up an AJley, where he pla...
Fables in Slang (Annotated)
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Editorial Reviews
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Ade followed in the footsteps of his idol Mark Twain by making expert use of the American language. In his unique "Fables in Slang," which purveyed not so much slang as the American colloquial vernacular, Ade pursued an effectively genial satire notable for its scrupulous objectivity. Ade's regular practice in the best fables is to present a little drama incorporating concrete, specific evidence with which he implicitly indicts the object of his satire--always a type (e.g., the social climber). The fable's actual moral is nearly always implicit, though he liked to tack on a mock, often ironic moral (e.g., "Industry and perseverance bring a sure reward").
As a moralist who does not overtly moralize, who is all too aware of the ironies of what in his day was the modern world, George Ade was perhaps our first modern American humorist. Through the values implicit in the fables, Ade manifests an ambivalence between the traditional rural virtues in which he was raised (the virtues of Horatio Alger and the McGuffey Readers) and the craftiness he saw all around him in booming Chicago.
The United States, in Ade's lifetime, underwent a great population shift and transfer from an agricultural to an industrial economy. Many felt the nation suffered the even more agonizing process of shifting values toward philistinism, greed, and dishonesty. Ade's prevalent practice is to record the pragmatic efforts of the little man to get along in such a world.
source: Wikipedia
--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
appreciating george ade,
By mad at I pod "jgor" (arlington,, va United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Fables in Slang (Classics of Modern American Humor Series) (Hardcover)
The first thing you have to tackle with this book is the title, since these stories are not fables and there is little "slang". Ade was not a fantasist. These are very short, realistic, and sometimes very funny stories. He called them fables because they all have a moral, but the moral is ironic, meant to underline the hypocracy and narrow vision of small town mid-west America in the turn of the Century (19th-20th Century). By slang he meant these are stories in the vernacular, written in a conversational tone. Ade was a Drieser in miniature, and one of our best humorists, and his fans included Edmund Wilson and fellow Hoosier Jean Shephard (another underappreciated humorist, remembered for the film The Christmas Story).
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Lots of Short Stories,
This review is from: FABLES IN SLANG (Kindle Edition)
Note: I downloaded this free from the Gutenberg Project rather than Amazon, so there may be a few differences between this version and the one I have.This was written in 1899 and the English has not been updated. Once you get used to the style though, the stories become amusing. They seem more like accounts of people learning life's lessons rather than fables. Some are funny, some are sad and a few I didn't get. As I read them, I realize even though much has changed between 1899 and today, people are much the same. Many of us make the same dumb mistakes as our ancestors did: trusting those we shouldn't, expecting too much or too little, etc. The illustrations are also cool.
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