John Adams High School - Clipper Yearbook (Ozone Park, NY)

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I0 biplane. From their conversation he learned that the boxes contained ex- plosives, destined to break up a mine cave-in that had occurred in a coal field not many miles distant. The plane was being refueled for its scheduled departure at midnight. For five long hours Menson crouched be- side the plane laying his plans with hendish calculation while the plane was made ready for flight. At last preparations were completed. The pilot and crew went in to refresh themselves with one last cup of coffee. A single bound carried Men- son to the plane. Hastily he clawed at the door, then jerked it open and clambered in. The idling motors sprang to life. The air was lit by the exhaust. As he easily rolled the sleek machine down the runway, Arthur Menson was glad for the first time in his life that he had been a pilot in 1917. And now, he circled a mile above the city he had loved. The city that housed the men who had taken everything from him-stripped him of all he held dear. In his warped brain, the plan that had been grow- ing, assumed? bizarre proportions. True, he would have gained great satisfaction from battering at the buildings of the city with his bare lists in his futile rage. But no, he had something better than that. He had nearly a ton of explosive death at his finger tips. Lazily he circled over the unwary city. There was the building he had worked in short, short days ago. There, the bank he had traded at, the docks he had visited with his two boys, the streets he had sped along on his way home! The utter futility of the whole thing! His wife's face as it had been be- fore the fatal crash arose before him. His boys stretched out their arms to him. Savagely he shoved the wheel down. The well-loaded plane nosed over. Down, down, faster, faster the powerful motors urged the ship on to its destruction. The air rushed past the slim nose of the ship with terrible rapidity. The propellor was a flat blue against the earth. Fas- cinated, Menson watched the earth come rapidly up to meet him. His grotesquely-twisted face grew more ghastly as he realized the plane was headed for the river that flowed through the heart of the city. Maddened, he pulled frantically at the wheel. He must turn aside. He would not be cheated of his revenge. Witli super human strength he wrenched at the wheel. Wars it giv- ing? It must. It must! The plane dashed ever closer to the smooth flat surface of the water. The wings were shreds of tattered fabric, wav- ing wildly in the slipstream. Sud- denly there were no wings. Still the plane continued its death plunge. In the morning, curious folk might gather by the quiet river. Rumors of a boat explosion would be noised through the city. Perhaps they would be substantiated by a few scraps of charred wood. The slight fervor would soon be quieted and news that really affected the city would take its place. Tomorrow the inhabitants of the magnificent metropolis would re- sume their lethargic plodding through life. But at the exact moment of the crash, a few weary men awoke, swore terribly, and then lapsed into the depths of a drugged sleep. Tomor- row, the weather would be hne for fishing, but now--night stood sentinel.

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quently the lives of scions of the city's oldest and most important families. Pride and social standing when disturbed, frequently have a curious effect upon human nature. Bankers, financiers, merchants, shrewd business men all, were reduced to cowering children. First came fright, then hate, and lastly, the despair and discoui-agement which make absolute human derelicts out of formerly strong men. But it was in the second stage, hate, that the ruined stockholders sought someone who could bear the stigma of having caused the crash. Guilty or not, a man, upon whom they could vent ther anger, must be found, they decided. And Arthur Menson, the only one in that section connected with the fallen stocks, was the selection of these hate-driven men. Mad with the lust for vengeance they forced him to bundle his horrified family into his small sedan, and es- corted them to the city limits. There they warned Menson never to return to the city for violence would be used in his second ejection. Menson continued along the dismal, wet road, mentally trying to excuse the men who had driven him from his home. The gloomy quiet was broken only by an occasional sob from his wife and the steady throbbing of the powerful engine. Five miles along the highway, hid- den by a bend in the road and the ghostly silhouette of the forest, was stretched a thick cable, taut above the road between two great trees. With an audible grunt of satisfaction, the shadowy figure had tightly secured the cable barely four feet above the paved road. The hgure had hardly darted behind a clump of shrubbery, when a pair of headlights pierced the gloom. The motor was purring steadily as the car rounded the fatal curve. There was a sickening thud and a woman's scream knifed the air as the automobile struck the cable and careened off the road. It rolled into the ditch, then lay still, a crushed and broken thing. The sinis- ter figure crept from behind the shel- tering bushes and unfastened the cable. Witliout so much as a glance at the wrecked machine, it moved off into the concealing darkness. Two hours dragged by on leaden feet, and still all was quiet. Then a weak moan could be detected com- ing from the ditch which hid the car. The form of Arthur Menson crawled slowly from under the wreck- age. Miraculously, he had escaped death and serious injury but at a ter- rible price. The shock of the crash had thrown his wife across him, thus shielding his body with her own. Now, fervently, the man would have welcomed the release denied him. He had seen enough of the bodies of his other children to realize that the mangled flesh was beyond hu- man repair. Although unharmed physically, Menson had not completely escaped the vengeance of his fellow men. The succession of shocks had taken their toll of him, and he was no longer a sane being. His mind had snapped leaving him with but one thought, he must have revenge. Then, and only then, could he die. For two days he wandered through the dense brush, living like a wild animal, sleeping in trees, eating noth- ing but berries and thinking only of his anticipated revenge. Then one day, towards sunset, he had come to a large field in the center of which a group of men were carefully load- ing small boxes into a rakish little 9

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Maxwell Anderson QESTHETIC beauty is immortal! Michaelangelo's fresco, The Last judgment, is one of the most magnificent pictures, both in conception and execution the world has ever seen. It will never die. Milton, Shakespeare, Wagner, Bee- thoven, Van Gogh, Rembrandt and their works will live through eternity. Tut, tut! How we go on! However, let us not concern our- selves with the ancient Florentine School, Elizabethan drama, or with aestheticism of the past. Our con- cern directs itself toward a contem- porary playwright, Maxwell Ander- son and his plays. Perhaps it was an inherent quality that prompted Mr. Anderson to write a satire on corrupt political machines. This quality if inherent stands him in good stead for Both Your Houses was a Pulitzer prize win- ner. Mr. Atkinson says Both as a play and a performance 'Both Your Houses' is real and stimulating. Al- though it is propaganda, it asks no quarter from the complacent playgo- er. Realizing the burden of proof is upon him, Mr. Anderson has worked his material into robust dra- matic style. In this three act play, depicting the appropriations commit- tee in the act of fattening the pork barrel and cheerfully swindling the country, he is circumstantial enough to show how such things are done in the ordinary course of human frail- ties, and he is prophet enough to shout that the day of complacent piracy in politics is drawing to a close. Let us again return to Anderson. We find that before he turned play- NI'l.l.lM WVHVHSV wright, he was a newspaper man, and wrote his first play, White Desert, while an editorial writer on the old New York l-World. As a playwriter Mr. Anderson is workmanlike and discerning. His dialogue in the vernacular has a humorous tang and a rare vividness. In his characters, Mr. Anderson re- veals himself as a man who knows people and relishes both their weak- nesses and aspirations. Anderson is vehement, but a level-headed enemy of evil, he is poet enough to write Elizabeth the Queen, propagandist enough to collaborate in Gods of the Lightning' 'and What Price Glory ? and to realize and report the poorer qualities of his fellow men. Born on December 15, 1888, Max- well Anderson has grown to six feet and 200 pounds. He has a crop of wavy brown hair, which true to cus- tom, always looks as if it needed a combing. He doesn't do much talking and has never been interviewed. He be- lieves all one should know about him is in his plays.