W. H. D. Rouse
speaker
2,788 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 8 Aug
W. H. D. Rouse’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 — 2 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.
Appearances
of the patois of Geneva, Luxembourg, or Naples.
A singular survival, this restaurant.
Moreover, the man was justified in his triumphant air.
Not only had he most intelligently brought me a fresh ice, but he had brought the particular kind of rusk for which I had asked.
There were over thirty dishes on the emblazoned menu, and of course, I had wanted something that was not on it a peculiar rusk, a rusk recondite and unheard of by my fellow diners.
The man had hopefully said that he would see, and here lay the rusk magically obtained.
I felicitated him as an equal, and then, having consumed the ice and the fruits of the hot house, I arose and followed in the path of the lion breasted woman, and arrived at an elevator, and was wafted aloft by a boy of sixteen who did nothing else from six AM till midnight, so he said, but ascend and descend in that elevator.
By the discipline of this inspiring and jokund task, he was being prepared for manhood and the greater world.
And yet what would you?
Elevators must have boys and even men.
Civilization is not so simple as it may seem to the passionate reformer and lover of humanity.
Later, in the vast lounge above the restaurant, I formed one of a group of men, most of whom had acquired fame, and had the slight agreeable self consciousness that fame gives, and I listened against a background of the ever insistent music, to one of those endless and multifarious reminiscent conversations that are heard only in such places.
The companion of the
On my right would tell how he had inhabited a house in Siam, next to the temple, in front of which the corpses of people too poor to be burned were laid out, after surgical preliminaries to be devoured by vultures, and how the vultures, when gorged, would flap to the roof of his house and sit there in contemplation.
And the companion on my left would tell how, when he was unfamous and on his beam ends, he would stay in bed with a sham attack of influenza, and on the day when a chance offered itself, would get up and don his only suit, a glorious one,
and fitting an eyeglass into his eye, because it made him look older, would go forth to confront the chance.
And then the talk might be interrupted in order to consult the morning paper, and so settle a dispute about the exact price of Union Pacifics.
And then an Italian engineer would tell about sport in the woods of Maine, a perfect menagerie of wild animals, where it was advisable to use a revolver lest the excessive noise of a fowling piece should disturb the entire forest, and how once he had shot seven times at an imperturbable partridge showing its head over a tree, and missed seven times.
times, and how the partridge had at last flown off with a flicker of plumage that almost said aloud,
Well, I really can't wait any longer.
Showing 521–540 of 2,788 · page 27 of 140
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