Signs in the store windows of Brook, Ind. (pop. 888) said simply: "Gone to the Funeral." No one had to ask whose. Indiana was burying its great Hoosier humorist, George Ade.
Farmers in their Sunday best filed past the casket, in the front room of Ade's rustic nine-room house. They saw his study, piled high with curios—including a life-sized cardboard figure of his friend, Will Rogers, which had once stood in front of a theatre. The neighbors strolled out past the hickory tree where James Whitcomb Riley used to sit. They sat on...
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