A WORLD RACER.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1837, 25 August 1913, Page 11

A WORLD RACER.

REPORTER'S RECORD CIRCLE OP THE GLOBE. Jules Verne's ancient but highly 10manjtio record of round ■ tho world in eighty days is being halved (with something over) this week by a very demure younef American, who is "hustling the globe' in five-and-thirtv clays. His name is John Ifenry Hears, and he is the very newest of now journalists from tho States—a roporter on tho "New York Evening Sun." .He arrived in London at dawn, had three hours' sleop, awoke to bo interviewed and fed, sped Citywards from Arundel Street to pay Iris compliments to the Lord Mayor, and was away again by tea-time, en routo for tho Trans-Siberian and the Steppes and all tho rest of it.

Mr. Hears is a vory unobtrusive, gentlo young man, mild as milk, and with none of that brazen effrontery which the York "stunt merchant" is supposed to possess. Like the distinguished authof at t.ho garden party, ho has next to nothing to say for himself; ho is saving his pearls for his own journal when ho gets home.

The Mauretania, on which ho arrived, was late, and that threw him back a bit. Ho had onlj[ timo to breathe a brief fraternal greeting to a "Daily News" man who called to wish him luck.

Tired and dull-eyed, as though ho liad already had enough of it, he 'emarked with a yawn that he had intended to fly from Fishguard to Calais on a British monoplane. But the lingering liner which brought him to our shores had killed that arrangement, and after a quick lunch and a lightning glance at somo of our most easily approachable lions (including the Cheshire Cheese, tho cathedrals, and tho larger monuments), Mr. Mears jammed his straw hat on his aohing head, and whispering a lender farewell to his friends in Fleet Street, dashed off for Paris—Berlin—St. Petersburg—and Vladivostok. Beforo the end of tho month ho hopes to bo in Yokohama, and after that his fate is on the knees of the gods. His sudden view of London, did not move him to much enthusiasm. Tho beef steak and kidney pudding at the "Cheese," and tho policemen regulating tho traffic interested him most. But ho thought London a very quiet, well-ordered city, nico and clean,-and polite to strangers.