W. H. D. Rouse
speaker
684 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Aug 2026
last heard 1 Aug
W. H. D. Rouse’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
PART I THE CHRISTMAS GHOST UNEMPLOYMENT IN ONE OF OUR OLDEST INDUSTRIES by Stephen Leacock
the other night i was sitting up late way after nine o'clock thinking about christmas because it was getting near at hand and like everybody else who muses on that subject i was thinking of the great changes that have taken place in regard to christmas
i was contrasting christmas in the old country house of a century ago with the fires roaring up the chimneys and christmas in the modern apartment on the ninth floor with the gasoline generator turned on for the maid's bath
i was thinking of the old stage-coach on the snowy road with its roof piled high with christmas turkeys and a rosy-faced guard blowing on a key bugle and the passengers getting down every mile or so at a crooked inn to drink hot spiced ale and i was comparing all that with the upper berth number six car to twenty train number fifty three
i was thinking of the christmas landscape of long ago when night settled down upon it with a twinkle of light from the houses miles apart among the spruce trees and contrasting the scene with the glare of motor lights upon the highways of to-day
i was thinking of the lonely highwayman shivering round with his clumsy pistols and comparing the poor fellow's efforts with the high-class bandits of to-day blowing up a steel express car with nitroglycerine and disappearing in a roar of gasoline explosions in other words i was contrasting yesterday and to-day and on the whole yesterday seemed all to the good
nor was it only the warmth and romance and snugness of the old christmas that seemed superior to our days but christmas carried with it then a special kind of thrill with its queer terrors its empty heats its lonely graveyards and its house that stood alone in a wood haunted
and thinking of that it occurred to me how completely the ghost business seems to be dying out of our christmas literature not so very long ago there couldn't be a decent christmas story or christmas adventure without a ghost in it whereas nowadays
and just at that moment i looked and saw that there was a ghost in the room i can't imagine how he got in but there he was sitting in the other easy chair in the dark corner away from the firelight he had on my own dressing-gown and one saw but little of his face
are you a ghost i asked yes he said worse luck i am i noticed as he spoke that he seemed to wave and shiver as if he were made of smoke i couldn't help but pity the poor fellow he seemed so immaterial do you mind he went on in the same dejected tone if i sit here and haunt you for a while by all means i said please do
thanks he answered i haven't had anything decent to work on for years and years this is christmas eve isn't it yes i said christmas eve used to be my busiest night the ghost complained best night of the whole year and now
say he said would you believe it i went down this evening to that dinner dance they have at the ritz-carlton and i thought i'd haunt it thought i'd stand behind one of the tables as a silent spectre the way i used to in king george the third time
well i said they put me out groaned the ghost the head waiter came up to me and said they didn't allow silent spectres in the dining-room i was put out he groaned again you seem i said rather down on your luck
can you wonder said the ghost and another shiver rippled up and down him i can't get anything to do talk of the unemployed listen he went on speaking with something like animation let me tell you the story of my life can you make it short i said i'll try a hundred years ago oh i say i protested
i committed a terrible crime a murder on the highway you'd get six months for that nowadays i said i was never detected an innocent man was hanged i died but i couldn't rest i haunted the house beside the highway where the murder had been done it had happened on christmas eve and so every year on that night
oh i know i interrupted you were heard dragging round a chain and moaning and that sort of thing i've often read about it precisely said the ghost and for about eighty years it worked out admirably people became afraid the house was deserted trees and shrubs grew thick around it the wind whistled through its empty chimneys and its broken windows
and at night the lonely wayfarer went shuddering past and heard with terror the sound of a cry scarce human while a cold sweat quite so i said a cold sweat and what next well the days of the motor-car came and they paved the highway and knocked down the house and built a big garage there with electricity as bright as day
you can't haunt a garage can you i tried to stick on and do a little groaning but nobody seemed to pay any attention and anyway i got nervous about the gasoline i'm too immaterial to be around where there's gasoline a fellow would blow up wouldn't he he might i said so what happened
well one day somebody in the garage actually saw me and he threw a monkey wrench at me and told me to go to hell out of that garage so i went after that i haunted around i've kept on haunting around but it's no good there's nothing in it houses hotels i've tried it all
once i thought that if i couldn't make a hit any other way at least i could haunt children you remember how little children used to live in terror of ghosts and see them in the dark corners of their bedrooms well i admit it was a low-down thing to do but i tried that and it didn't work
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