TELLING THE TIME.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 170, 20 July 1935, Page 14

TELLING THE TIME.

GOLDEN-VOICE GIRL.

THE "TALKING CLOCK."

GOLDEN-HAIRED AND BLUEEYED. (Special.—By Air Mail.) LONDON, June 29. The golden-voiced girl of England has been selected by a jury of tho Poet Laureate (Mr. John Masclield), Dame Sybil Tliorndike, Lord llill'e, the chief 8.8-C. announcer and Mrs. E. D. Atkinson, who was recently chosen as the perfect woman telephone subscriber. The golden voice belongs to Miss E. W. Cain, aged 20, a goklcn-haired, blue-eyed girl, who lives at West Croydon, and works at tlie Victoria Exchange, London. Records will be taken of her voice, and when you are in London and you dial T.I.M. on your automatic 'phone you will hear the "golden voice" telling you the time. This is how she was selected.

The judges sat in the King George V. Hall at the General Post Ollice, with gold-coloured telephone receivers in their hands, and listened while nine girls who had emerged finalists from among 15,000 operators spoke from another room. At the Poet Laureate's suggestion, the tests included 31 lines from Milton's "L'Allegro" and a passage from Kobert Louis Stevenson's "Treasure Island." One after another the unseen girls recited: "Mirth, admit me of thy crew . . . " ending with "And every shepherd tells his tale, under the hawthorn in the dale."

The Poet Laureate enjoyed this part of the competition, but it must have been a trial for him to lend his sensitive ear to repetitions of: "At the third stroke it will be one twenty-four and fifty seconds. At the third stroke it will be three o'clock precisely." Afterwards Miss Cain said that she had been playing in amateur theatricals for some years, and had been trained in elocution.

The Poet Laureate said: "Beauty of voice docs not always go with beauty of face, but I think you will find that whore there is a very beautiful voice there is always intelligence. Also, I think it will be found that the possessor of a beautiful voice has a keen sense of beauty and a naturally quick appreciation of delicacy of sound. I have had considerable experience of verse reading competitions at Oxford, and I must say that Miss Cain's is one of the most beautiful voices I have ever heard."

Miss Cain's rewards are £10 10/ and the honour of making the record which will be used for the Post Office ''talking clock."