BACKFIRE

By Daniel Chase '14. Bobbs Merrill Co. Indianapolis.

A year ago, he ran the hurdles at Dartmouth; now he runs liquor along the Massachusetts coast. Quite a contrast for Chan Mather, spoiled, pampered, now left to shift for himself. Infantile paralysis had kept him from finishing college; he had been sent out to a sleepy New England village where he could recuperate and where his crippled leg would be less of a drawback to him. But the solitary life was too much for him—nothing doing. Thus we find him seeking secret adventure as a truck driver with a group of rumrunners operating in the Boston area.

Chan is forever aware of his physical infirmity. This is an underlying thread of the whole story. He looks for pity, and when he gets it, he resents it. Only when the proverbial heroine enters the story and changes his mental attitude, does Chan cease his morose aspect of the world-who-makes-it-tough-forguys-like-me.

He and She spend a June day at the beach. "Bully day," she says. "What? You don't know what day this is? Commencement Day at Hanover."

"So it is. And all the boys are marching up and receiving their licenses to set the world on fire . . . Lame leg and all, I'm about seven parasangs ahead of them." His cynicism is broken.

The action of "Backfire" is fairly conventional, ending in Chan's desperate struggle to get clear of the liquor ring, during which a cinematic array of motorcycle police, blocked roads and speeding automobiles is flashed before the reader's eyes. But the action is only half of it. The struggle to break the young man's sensitive complex is a bass note which gives depth to the whole adventuresome melody.

There's a fine moral in this tale. It's good for that now prevalent depression feeling. Read it and quit weeping.