THIRTEEN YEARS OF A BUSY WOMAN'S LIFE.f IF an inhabitant
of another planet were to be curious as to the doings of a typical, public-spirited, active-minded woman of the most modern views, living in London in the early twentieth century, but in a sense a citizen of the world, he could not do better than study the varied reminiscences of Mrs. Alec Tweedie. To her country-people, of course, they are not so far beyond the ordinary experience of womankind ; this is the age of woman's work, and there are plenty of women who, taken separately, could thrill our ears with a record quite as brilliant. But the fact remains that by the inhabitant of Mars Mrs. Alec Tweedie and her many activities might well be taken as typical. There are few possible careers open to an Englishwoman of which she does not know something, few aspects of life that she has not encountered, few distinguished people, especially in the worlds of art and travel, whom she has not met, few subjects of which, in the course of the journalistic career lately closed, she has not gained some knowledge. We leave her "just been elected to the Council of the Eugenic Society, and the only woman to sit on the Council of the Cremation Society of England." At which point " Spy " has sketched her, beautifully dressed, walking away into the next "baker's dozen" of eventful, philanthropic years.
Mrs. Alec Tweedie is a Londoner by birth, and the account here given of her early life shows that tile necessity of earning her living only arose about sixteen years ago. Luckily, by education and temperament she was well equipped for it. It is impossible to read her lively pages without seeing that she found a certain joy even in the hardest hours of journalistic work. The brightness and fluency we find in her books ensured the success of her journalism ; but we must add that the books—including the present volume—would have been all the better for more of that care and literary finish to which only the highest journalism can give leisure or space. Still, A Girl's Ride in Iceland, Mexico as I Saw It, Porfirio Diaz,
• Photography of To-Day. By IL Chapman Jones. London : Seeley, Service and Co. (5a. net.) Thirteen Years of a Busy Woman's Life. By Mrs. Alen Tweedie. London John Lane. {16e. net.]
were specimens of fresh, first-hand work which ought long to remain popular.
The book is full of entertaining stories and scenes painted with dash and colour. Among more recent experiences one of the most picturesque is "Buried in Parcels." Mrs. Alec Tweedie describes the response to her appeal in the papers for supplies of clothing for the sufferers at Messina, in the winter of 1908-9. Twenty-seven thousand garments were left at her house. The actual blockade of the house, the packing and sending of the two hundred great cases, the confusion, the worry, the fatigue, all the comic and tragic elements of such an effort in philanthropy do not, our readers may believe, lose much in the telling.
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