Daily capital journal. (Salem, Oregon) 1903-1919, 1909-11-27


irascible, public man now in the gov
ernment service. Another Boswell
will be needed adequately to chroni-
Gle his career. No man in Washing
ton is productive of more stories than
A. A. Adee-a new one crops up ev-
cry day-and all of them are good.
Personally he is a slight wisp of
man, with a gray imperial beard and
mustache stained by devotion to My
LAZY Nicotine. His shoulders are
stopped and he walks nervously in
short, SLOPPY steps, his feet turned
out like a drum majors. He has a
quizzical, kindly face, and looks at
his interviewers from underneath
scruby eyebrows, with his head bent
forward. He has the French trick of
Struggling his shoulders. The Adee
laugh is characteristic. No one ever
heard anything like it. 1t starts with
chuckle, increase in volume to a
cachinnation, and subsidies to series
of sly tee hees."
Born with congenial throat defect
that deprived him of the power of his
vocal chords, and with only rudi-
mentaTy ear drums that have forced
him to go through life deaf, Adee
triumphed through sheer force of will
and oVermastering intellectual abili-
ties. He taught himself to speak, al
though lacking the hard palate which
in the average throat is the sounding
board, so to speak, of the human
voice. He was educated as an ar
chitect, but abandoned that profess
sion to enter the diplomatic service
as secretary of the legation at Madrid,
Spain, in 1870, having already mas
tered the language of the Dons. Since
that time, incidentally, he has "picked
up as he modestly puts it, French,
German, Italian and a smattering of
several other tongues.
He has been in the state depart
ment as an under secretary since
1886; he will be there until he dies.
No one can take his place. He is alb
solutely unique.
If Secretary of State Knox wants
to write letter to Ambassador So
and-So impressing a bald and brutal
fact, it is Secretary Adee who takes
that fact, blunts it's sharpness with
the punctilious persiflage demanded
by international etiquette and enve-
lopes it in a foliage of choice diplo
matte phraseology. Then Knox signs
it.
If President Taft is giving a re-
ception to the members of the diplo
matte corps, it is Alvey A. Adee who
can reel off without an instant's hes
itation the exact position every for
eign representative should occupy in
the line, according to his rank and
the procedure of his nation.
He knows international law, court
ceremonials, world politics, the Mon
roe Doctrine, all the treaties, econo-
mic conditions in every civilized ma
ton, and the history of every indi-
vidual who amounts to anything in
every quarter of the globe. He's the
official who's Who" as we'll as
What's What"
Adee began studying early in life,
and now at the age of siXty-seven,
still burns the midnight incandescent.
He is a bicycle crank-incidentall
even his vacations are mixture of
business and pleasure, bicycle ride
through Europe every summer-an
amateur photographer of no mean
ability, botanist, a scientist, archae-
ologist, and artist in sympathy at
least
His room at the state departments
is the most wonderful mixture of
conglomerate odds and ends imagine
able A microscope rests on one ta-
BILE; Photographic apparatus on an
other; books on his desk, the floor
in shelves-everywhe He bTews
and drinks tea necessarily and smokes
little black cigars in discolored
meerschaum and amber holder. He
keeps two brands of cigars in his
desk-a box of good ones for himself
and some ten for fifteen cents for
visitors. However, when he offers
you one he remarks naively, "YoW
needn't smoke it if you don't like it. ="
He is subject to irascible brain
storms" and has even been known to
throw books at those who particularly
tried his temper; but an hour or 50
later invariably becomes repentent
and makes peace with the offender by
present of one of the good cigars,
and a funny story.
To woman stenographer who had
presented to him letter for sigma
ture with the word "the" written
three" Adee addressed the written
memorandum the not thee, too
much e's."
A department clerk once crossed
Adee's path with a corncob pipe in
his mouth. The second assistant sec
retary stopped him and looked quiz
zically at the pipe.
II see you are a baseball fiend,
he observed.
"Why no. Mr.. Adee," replied the
clerk.
Aren't you smoking Cobb piper"
retOrted Adee, chuckling.
In a letter to Mr.. Ou, of the Chi
nese legation, Adee pinned a slip OF
paper with the facetious comment
"Oh you Ou."
To a crowd of newspapermen one
day, when in a particularly fine hui
NOR he remarked that he understood