The telephone is bursting out in new enterprise. The "girl with the golden voice" who gives us the correct time when we dial TIM is by now a commonplace: by the way, it was rather hard on Miss Cain, ihe original Chrysostom, that the Post Office would not allow her dim to a royalty on this use of her voice. To this convenience now is to be added the "morning call," the function performed in humbler working-class circles by the "knocker-up, who goes round routing out those who have to be early at the mill There is also to be the "engagement-reminder" The absent-minded husband, desperately afraid of forgetting his wife's birthday, the crowded businessman with a vital appointment that he must not forget, can put these matters in the care. of the telephone and it will never forget to send him a reminder at the right moment.
These are conveniences indeed. The only snag I can see is that one may forget to ask the telephone to remind one of what one mustn't forget. Then there are storms, such as that Jast night which blew down 40 telephone wires in our village, our own included. But these are things which can't be helped.
What the Post Office should concentrate on is a telephone which fill refuse to make a call when the Cullee is at dinner or lunch. It is "extraordinary how—bad-mannered the telephone has made us all Feople who would apologize profoundly if they had to come to the front door and interrupt a neighbour st a meal, will call him away from table to the telephone without a word of excuse. Perhaps as subscribers to the telephone are going up by hundreds of thousands yearly, the Post Office will see to this.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.