"Ragtime" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... everybody seemed to know. Passing tugs, motor-boats, ferry-boats blew their whistles—every kind of a boat that had a whistle blew it—and there was an excursion boat loaded down with women and children. Her band had been playing ragtime, but it suddenly stopped and broke into "Good-by, Good Luck, God Bless You," to the ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... shrewdly studied the face of the young policeman who was quietly listening to the furious fusillade of the ragtime musicians. ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... but, as it was only a beginner's class, I consented—upon her solemn promise to "cut out all ragtime classics and teach plain cats and dogs, ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... building was used for store purposes. This second floor was evidently a series of apartments. Lights from within the rooms crept over the curtained transoms. Voices sounded; glasses clinked. A piano banged out ragtime ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... trimming of ribbons, coquetted in groups as yet unbroken by the larking young men. Over these ceremonial white dresses of the Sunday picnic, they wore coats and even furs against the damp, penetrating morning—rather late in the season it was for picnics. In the rests of the ragtime, rose the aggressive crackle of that flat, hard accent, with its curious stress on the "r," which would denote to a Californian in Tibet the native of South of Market, ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... be impressed by this contagious character of our dancing habits. But this means that the movement carries in itself the energy to spread farther and farther, and to fill the daily life with increased longing for the ragtime. We are already accustomed to the dance at the afternoon tea; how long will it take before we are threatened by the dance at the ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... right to conclude from this that only the merits and excellences are the true causes of their success. A caustic critic would probably suggest that just the opposite traits are responsible. He would say that the average American is a mixture of business, ragtime, and sentimentality. He satisfies his business instinct by getting so much for his nickel, he enjoys his ragtime in the slapstick humor, and gratifies his sentimentality with the preposterous melodramas which fill the program. This is quite true, and yet it is not true ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... festival. They did not have opportunity to be enthralled by the throaty, vibrant melodies—at once so lovingly seductive and harshly compelling—by which Chinese poets and lovers have revealed their thoughts and won their quest for centuries. The stirring tom-tom, if not the ragtime which sets the occidental capering to-day, was common to the Chinese three or four hundred years ago. They heard it from the wild Tartars and Mongols—heard it and rejected it, because it was primitive, ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... music began again, and now the familiar "Ragtime" beat fascinatingly upon the air. Those who lined the walls took up the measure, and, with foot and clapping hands, marked the time for the dancers. Those who competed leapt to the fray, and soon the reeking ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... the influence of foreign stimuli. Take the published hula songs, such as "Tomitomi," "Wahine Poupou" and a dozen others that might be mentioned, to say nothing about the words—the music is no more related to the genuine Hawaiian article of the old times than is "ragtime" to a Gregorian chant. ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... a pleasant, soothing, hearty place—a restful temple of food. No strident orchestra forces the diner to bolt beef in ragtime. No long central aisle distracts his attention with its stream of new arrivals. There he sits, alone with his food, while white-robed priests, wheeling their smoking trucks, move to and fro, ever ready ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse |
