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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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.
Appearances
it is sheer selfishness on our part to hope that some such expression may come soon we are jealous for the credit of this generation we are proud to have lived in days when men suffered so hideously and yet did and said and wrote great things we would like it to be said of this generation that it recognized greatness in its own time that would be an honorable thing to be able to say
have we erected from our imagination a figure that is not really there we think not and so with humility and hesitation but impelled by a motive we cannot resist we would like to say to woodrow wilson that there are many who gratefully wish him merry christmas
part v of a christmas miscellany twenty twenty three by various authors a christmas soliloquy from the powder of sympathy by christopher morley
i in the most peaceful spot known to american life a railroad train we had several hours of that pleasure which offices are devised to prevent viz meditation or even if we may dare so high thought
our thoughts or whatever they are that go round inside you when you are sitting passively in a train were tinged by the approach of christmas there was evidently something in the bright air and pre christmas feeling of that december afternoon that even softened the heart of the news butcher for we noticed as the train hastened along the connecticut shore his manner became more and more fond
he began at grand central in a mood of formality even austerity lots of nice reading matter here gentlemen he cried got a nice short story book by book he meant of course magazine to kill time for a couple of hours
we thought perhaps a little sadly of the irony of begging men to annul time when they had happily reached almost the only place in america where it can be enjoyed examined taken apart and looked at
but perhaps due to a niggardly spirit among his congregation in the smoker the agent gradually became more fraternal his manner was almost bedside by the time we had got to new rochelle chocolate peppermints figs and lemon drops fellows and at stamford he was beginning to despair peanuts they're delicious boys we made up our mind by the way as to the correct answer to our old question where does new england begin
the frontier is at south norwalk for there we saw a sign the new england cereal company and just about there also begin the billboards urging codfish surely the authentic image and superscription of new england of course there is a great deal to think about in the signs you see along the track there is that notice dangerous live wires keep away
which is a good advice socially as well as electrically but we thought that these warnings were a bit unfair to new england where there are fewer human live wires than there are south of the harlem strait we remembered a certain club in philadelphia of which the bitter-minded used to say it was the only organization in the world whose membership was one hundred per cent live wires regular fellows and go-getters
as we went through greenwich riverside westport we admired the blue shore of long island lying so placidly across the sound and it struck us almost with a sense of shock that there are a great many people to whom long island is only a dim unreal haze on the horizon
yes foreign travel is of brisk appearance to the mind we remembered as we always do when traveling on the new haven robert louis stevenson's delight when he first went that way in one of his letters he speaks of the succession of beautiful rocky coves that saluted his eye why he wrote have americans been so unfair to their own country
it would be impossible to tell you all the things we thought about they have already faded we did not forget our duty as a travelling mandarin to be a little magisterial when occasion seemed to require it in the station at new haven for instance there is a young woman most remarkably coiffed who presides at the tobacco counter
she seemed of a notably cheerful and lenient disposition and we ventured a remark upon the weather she said she wished it would snow so that she could have some real fun by which she meant we dare say a little bobsledding with the youths of yale college we thought that this showed a dangerous inappreciation of her general opulent good fortune in being young comely and attached to a tobacco traffic
we looked at her quite sternly and said young women can always have a good time no matter what the weather to our regret as we hastened on toward the springfield train we heard her squeaking with mirth but the starting-point of our meditation was an attempt to describe and dissect this curious pre-christmas feeling which is one of the most subtle and genuine adventures of the whole year
when we try to examine it in its components we see that the whole thing is too delicate and pervasive for analysis what are its ingredients we said to ourselves we thought of the little shrill tingling bells of the salvation army we thought of the warm juicy smell of roasting chicken that outgushes from a certain rotisserie in jamaica long island
we thought of the bright colors and toys in the windows of that glorious main street in jamaica which is where we do our christmas shopping we thought of all the sparkle the chill clear air the general bustle of the streets that one associates with the christmas season
and of the undercurrent of dumb and troubled realisation of human misery and stupidity and frustration that comes to some more clearly now than at any other time and we thought also of the mockers and the cheerful sceptics to whom any candid expression of a simple human emotion is cause for nipping laughter
never mind we said to ourselves there is at least one time of year when they can all afford to put away their shining paradoxes and their gingerbread cynicism like the gilded circus wagons we saw shut up in winter quarters at bridgeport probably the most sensitive and complex of human sensations is the pre christmas feeling because it is not merely personal but communal
not merely communal but national not merely national but even international we know then that for a few weeks a great part of the world is busily thinking of the same things how it can surprise its friends how it can encourage the miserable how it can amuse the harmless
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