Here is another rolling-stone's auto- biography. Mr. Soden followed more
or less the same bumpy but by now well-defined track across the world as his fellow adventurers, for all are impelled by the same motives—or lack of them—and the only variations in their adventures are due to difference in speed and toughness. The author of It's A Great Life (Skeffmgton, 8s. 6d.) ran away from school and became cabin- boy on a small freighter, and though his romantic notions were very soon knocked out of him on his first voyage, he went to sea again, this time to America. He rolled to Baltimore and joined a touring circus which took so little money that the members were reduced to eating the performing pig. From San Francisco ..he, rolled to China, and in Kowloon found work in a steel- works. Via - Cairo, Port Said and Naples, he landed into a job as train- brakesman in Canada and then, half- starving, rolled through doss-houses and very odd jobs, till he found himself - in. Ypres with ,the ,Canadian Expedition- ary Force. After a little,more fighting in the Mexican army and crowd-work in Hollywood he went to Australia, married, and has now settled down in a comparatively mossy job in Sydney. His book gives the impression that he rolled too quickly to see very much.
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