A Biography, a Diary, and a Volume of Business Memories

THESE windows are not the rectangular apertures of light that mount endlessly each on each to the twilight skyline of a great city. Rather are they, as the jacket represents them, windowns of various shapes, patterns, and sizes, in a jumbled and overlapping mass. For, although Mrs. Woodward's volume deals with the business world, it does so in an autobiographical manner which puts quite out of mind the simulated order of mahogany desks. The authoresa, has found in her business career a succession of human ontacts and exhibitions of ingenuity which suggests that the day of standardization in pay, promotion, and practice still lies in an indefinite future. In this adventurous outlook she has one definite bias; she has grown up with the modern advertising business and undoubtedly shares its delight in glamour.

Thus freed from shackles, the book presents a number of appeals. The dependence of advancement upon chance and friendship and the thesis that executives make their own jobs according to their personal character will interest even the casual student of business or economics. To feminists and others interested in the problems of women in business, the apparent ease and pleasure with which Mrs. Woodward passed through her colorful adventures may appear to prove the case of doctrinaires on the subject. Her few remarks on her transition from school to business, besides being really and intentionally humorous, bear on the education of other children of similar fortunes. On all these topics, here remarks are vigorous but not dogmatic.

Yet the most striking feature of Mrs. Woodward's story is by all odds her manner of depicting people. In the first place she observed them carefully. In the second, perhaps because she herself came from the environment of poverty, she tried to see them in their respective environments. In the third place, she narrates copious anecdotes with an evident zest. From the tyrannical Mrs. Johnson who played the lady of better days with tempestuous zeal before her awestricken secretary to the down-hearted young man who found his salvation in the little known occupation, of goldfish expert, many odd and enticing characters flood the pages. There is the demeure girl of many lovers. There is the quiet old gentleman whose wife proved to be a dope flend. There is the tender-hearted but masterful young lady whose happiness, which consisted in reforming others, was inevitably followed by tragedy when some untoward incident broke her spell and the convert, be it lover or friend or fellow employee, backslid. It is in the retailing of these experiences that Mrs. Woodward can lay a claim to the attention of people generally. Her book is written with a certain ardor which seems to go always with some carelessness of phrase and structure. Her training moreover, having been that of a copywriter, leads to some boldness of diction. Yet here poignant portrayals are well worth the leisure of a sympathetic mind