In an incidental way, Mr. Broun’s often-exercised delight in making Harvard appear superior to Yale comes into the story. Father and son help vanquish Yale. We mustn’t mind that, if it pleases him! Besides, occasionally Mr. Broun achieves an amusing paragraph by his obsession—as when the father, unable to recall the words of a lullaby, sings the baby to sleep with Harvard’s song ending:
“And if any Eli—”
The song had to be cut short; the baby must not learn Harvard men’s words of profanity at such an early age!
Whatever faults the assiduous critic may find, “The Boy Grew Older” is an amusing story—and that’s the greatest reason for buying new novels, anyway!
C. G. P.
Command. By William McFee. (Doubleday, Page & Co.)
In writing a review of a sea story it is customary to hail in the names of several other sea-writers—either for laudatory, or for defamatory, purposes; or for no purpose whatever—but to hail them in, nevertheless. The process usually proves little more than the truth of the ancient observation that comparisons are odious—and odiousness is associated with reviewing quite enough as it is.
The name of William McFee is great enough to stand alone, in the world of books. He writes of the sea with a sureness born of first-hand knowledge, for he was a sailor before he was an author.
“Command” is a story of the life aboard a ship in wartime. Spokesley, the hero, a British second officer, is called to duty in the Aegean immediately after becoming engaged to a girl in England. There was little love wasted in the betrothal, and therefore Mr. Spokesley has few qualms when he becomes really, passionately enamoured of a girl of the South. This is the barest hint of the thread of the plot. “Command” offers a great deal more—pictures of the torpedoing of a ship in mine-strewn waters, of a collision with a warship at night, of the surging life in sea-ports along the Mediterranean—so many that the story is in danger of growing tedious with too long sustained excitement.