The New York herald., 1921-03-06
THIS WORLD OF OURS. BY J. H.
George II. Doran Company.

George II. Doran Company.
Reviewed by ELEANOR HAYDEN.
81 HAVE only one life; then am liable
to be a long time dead. But before
/ die there Is this beautiful world
to see." With these words Mr.. Curle opens
his story Of life filled with wanderings up
and down continents, over wide oceans and.
incidentally up and down some 500 mines
curious record this of man who has
travelled in his day nearly a million miles
and yet who has found the world a vast,
glamourous, sometimes beautiful, sometimes
horrible. yet always meaningless pageant!
Countries and races have passed by his
present day in the most populous cities of
the globe. He has seen the hinterland, where
only the fringes of our much vaunted civli-
zation have hung. He has seen the whole
wide world, where ancient civilizations have
risen, had their being and drifted into an
tiquity, leaving only a few broken bits of
pottery, fallen temples, shattered pillars.
curious relics of day that is dead, to in
terpret to posterity the meaning of their
thousands and millions of human souls have
remained to this traveller merely the pictur-
esque and pathetic strivings of futile hu-
manity.
To have dedicated ones life to wandering
over the earth, to have decided as a youth
10 seize from the fleeting moment as much
OF Joy and color and beauty as the world can
offer. to have renounced all gods and creeds
except a sort of blind faith in nature and
kna IT,,
wandered far and wide, seeing the passing
show in every corner of the globe, and still
to find It utterly illegible-that is what life
has meant to this Scotch traveller
One cannot help feeling a little sorry for
a man who wanders most of the years OF
his life without coming any nearer reality
than to believe that all thinkers" arrive
at agnosticism and to admit on the last page
OF his record: "I have done what set out
as a boy to do seen everything. travelled
nearly million miles-ard lost my way.
have seen the Whole World and have no
notion what II all means. Two things 1
grasp. The one is the beauty and glamour
OF the World; II I could live in that glamour
Life would be what 1t Is sometimes in
dreams. The other Is the horror-the crazy,
meaningless horror-of the same World;
like the beauty and glamour II is part OF the
very scheme OF things" Is 1t worth travel
ling n million miles to come to this con-
clusion?
Whatever one may think OF Mr.. Curle as
an interpreter of what he has seen. as a
narrator ne holds ones interest consistently.
Starting as a youth TO wander. he found that
mining was a key that would unlock the
doors he wanted to open. Vowing to go
down every important mine in the world. he
did go down hundreds in some thirty-eight
countries. Having made enough money In
his mining work he continued to voyage
over the earth. A fascinating pageant he
spreads out before our eyes.
The romance Of Africa, spring in the
Transvaal, with Its blending Of willow trees
and peach blossoms, has for the moment
filled his soul with peace. He makes us see
the weld. Kaffir boys. the lonely kraals and
the mystery of the Zulus and their weird
rites. All these he brings before us. with
occasionally such bits as this description of
native drivers sitting about d dying fire:
Music steals on the night-a minor re-
petitive. formless, without beginning end.
II is a mournful drawing in OF breath. "A