Betty B.
speaker
3,598 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 2 Jul
Betty B.’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
We have 15,000 incandescent bulbs that shine every night, and there are great golden globes set into the ceilings of the palm court, the ballroom, and the dining room.
A city of 40,000 people could be supplied with lights by our dynamos
and almost every one of these golden golf balls gives out more light rays than all the grease pots or lamps of fish oil which tried vainly to conquer the darkness of the santa maria electricity is the slave of the lamp on the majestic it makes the sun shine at midnight it does also the cooking and the heating it runs the elevators from deck to deck and in case we strike an iceberg or collide with another ship it will drop the lifeboats down to the sea
it will close in an instant the many watertight doors of the vessel.
This electricity even penetrates the waters of the swimming tank, turning their emerald green into the richest of gold, and making the pretty girl bathers look like so many ivory mermaids as they play about in its rays.
Indeed, excepting the lifeboats, there's hardly a thing aboard this vessel that suggests the ships of Columbus.
The huge monster is made of steel, and its armor is a steel shell about as thick as your thumb
which keeps out the water.
At the level of the sea and below, this shell is double, with an airspace between so large that a big dog could crawl through it.
But higher up there is only the single steel skin enclosing the vast complexity of machinery and furnishings.
There is nothing on the steamer that recalls the bluff old skipper and the sailors of the days of John and Sebastian Cabot and Americus Vespucius.
the captain of this ship is a retired commodore of the british navy who has been knighted by his king notwithstanding his titles he is more simple and unpretentious than the steward who takes care of my room i have chatted with sir bertram on the bridge and in the chart-room and he has no more fuss and feathers about him than any of the other efficient captains i have met in a lifetime of travel and now let us look at the parlors when one walks up the gangway of the modern liner he comes into a floating hotel
with elevators that glide noiselessly up and down with walls of ivory whiteness and with frescoed and decorated ceilings upheld by great columns like marble on b deck eight stories above the steel keel there are three spacious rooms that run the width of the steamer and cover the length of a short city block they are walled with plate-glass windows looking out upon the wide sea these rooms are from twenty-six to thirty feet high
and are fitted up with furniture worth a king's ransom at one end is the palm court filled with real palms whose fronds kiss the ceiling they are set in tubs as big as hogsheads and are bedded in flowers growing out of the earth around their roots indeed columbus might sit among these tropical trees and imagine himself in the west indies beyond the palm court is a restaurant where if he is not satisfied with the table dote in the dining-room three decks below
One can dine at a dollar a bite.
Opposite, across a wide lobby, is the lounge, which is almost as long as was the deck of the Santa Maria.
At one end of the lounge is a stage large enough to accommodate a dozen musicians, and there the orchestra plays for the dances that we have every evening.
It is for all the world like the supper room of a New York hotel, with a big dancing space in the center.
At night, three or four hundred people sit in the upholstered chairs on the red velvet carpet that surrounds the dance floor, and men in evening dress and richly clad women move over the floor.
That is one of the scenes I should like to show to Columbus.
Showing 61–80 of 3,598 · page 4 of 180
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