ALWAYS FIRST

Evening Post, Volume CXIV, Issue 91, 14 October 1932, Page 15

ALWAYS FIRST

LOVE FOR EXAMINATIONS

The story is told by the "Evening News" of a London girl who simply revels in examinations and loves the law. Her name is Mabel Clark. She lives at Dford, and worka at Somerset House. Life for her the last six years or so may be said to have been just one examination after another.

Now that she is just twenty-one, Miss Clark has been given an honour which has fallen to no woman before. After passing the LLJ3. with honours she has been recommended by the London University authorities for a law scholarship in the university. Whether she will be the first woman ever to gain this scholarship will be decided by the Senate of the university.

Miss Clark discovered that she had the examination temperament at school. While others quaked and failed she won "in a canter." And, according to her friends, she showed a taste for the law when quite a child. In the school examinations Miss Clark ■was always expected to be top. And when she decided to seek the fulfilment of her legal aspirations through the Civil Service she passed the entrance examination with equal facility. Just as a "try out," she took, in October, 1926, the examination for female telegraphists. She,.secured first place. Two months later she tried the female sorting assistants' examination, and again was placed at the head of the list. But the Post Office did not look like providing scope enough for law study, and Miss Clark, within three months, was one of the 850 candidates in the writing assistants' examinations. She again woe the. first position. ■ EXAMINEE AT 18. Miss Clark started her Civil Service career with the Board of Trade. Within two months she was in the examination room again. This time she was eleventh in the clerical class examination—a success which took her from the Board of Trade to the Public Trustee Office. Here she stayed for more than a year, reading law books in her spare time. In October, 1928, this remarkable girl took the executive class examination. She was second, beaten "by a head" by a man. She was easily first among the girl entrants. This meant another move—to the estate duty office in Somerset House. At the age of eighteen she was. an. examiner, spending her days delving into the intricacies of duty liabilities, and her even: ings among her law books at her llford home.

• This year Miss Clark achieved one of her cherished ambitions—the LL.B. And if she gets that scholarship as well, it will be a golden opportunity for her,.but she does not intend .to give up the Civil Service. "She really loves her job,?' a friend said of Miss Clark, "though some people might think it a, bit dry. There can be few girls with such an interest in law. As for examinations, she enjoys them. She believes that candidates should, compete, as Individuals rather than as men and women, striving against each other. »• She is' an only child. '