"Ragtime" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gent, Mr. Jarvis. But what got me was the careless way he juggled the reins over those two bob-tailed nags that was doin' a ragtime runaway, and him usin' only three fingers, and touchin' 'em up with the whip. It was his lucky day, though, and we got ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... 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 ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... first two of these are the Uncle Remus stories, collected by Joel Chandler Harris, and the Jubilee songs, to which the Fisk singers made the public and the skilled musicians of both America and Europe listen. The other two are ragtime music and the cake-walk. No one who has traveled can question the world-conquering influence of ragtime, and I do not think it would be an exaggeration to say that in Europe the United States is popularly known better by ragtime than ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... gone Sue went into the workroom and cried a Japanese napkin to a pulp. Then she swaggered into Johnsy's room with her drawing board, whistling ragtime. ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... Meagher's Select Board for Select People establishment, far out in the western addition. He was star boarder, and as such made free with Mrs. Meagher's little private parlor. A fire always burned there on cool evenings, and moreover, he escaped the ragtime that nightly filled the community room where the piano was, the interminable arguments anent the European war, and the coy ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... troupe of jubilee singers who had been imported from the States for the delectation of French audiences. At night, after their work at a vaudeville theater was done, the members of their company were paired off and sent about to the cafes to earn their keep by singing ragtime songs and dancing buck dances. These two were desperately, pathetically homesick. One of them blinked back the tears when he told us, with the plaintive African quaver in his voice, how long they had been away from their own country and how happy they ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... happened that Fred knew this fact, for he had many a time seen the butcher's boy going and coming. Gabe had a big whistle, and used to amuse himself as he walked to and from home in trying to get the airs from the popular ragtime songs of the day. ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... performance in Chicago, and induced him to play one week's engagement. Thus Ned Wayburn made his first professional appearance at Hopkins' Theatre, State Street, Chicago, being billed as "Chicago's Leading Amateur"—a singing and dancing "black-faced" comedian, doing a "ragtime piano" specialty, and dancing act. This led to other engagements. The "piano specialty," which he originated, started the "ragtime" craze. He played in and around Chicago and the middle west. He came East to New York, and was booked by the late Phil Nash, on the Keith ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... had eventually been straightened out by Miss Edna May and her fellow missionaries of the Belle of New York Company, since which time there had been no more trouble. Of American cocktails he had a fair working knowledge, and he appreciated ragtime. But of the other great American institutions ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... cheerful, melodious and sweet; we hear them sung and whistled all day upon the street. Some lilting ragtime ditty that's rollicking and gay will gain the public favor and hold it—for a day. But when the day is ended, and we are tired and worn, and more than half persuaded that man was made to mourn, how soothing then the music our fathers used ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... have had a special success, and most of these cling fondly to that epoch. Lady Kellynch never got away from 1887 and the time of Queen Victoria's first Jubilee. All the fads of the hour seemed to have passed over her since then, from bicycling to flying, from classical dancing or ragtime to enthusiasm about votes for women; the various movements had passed over her without leaving any hurt or effect. Lady Kellynch had had a success in 1887; she cherished tenderly a photograph of herself in an enormous bustle, ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... apparently possessed by some high secret; her eyes shone, and when she crossed the room she whistled bars of ragtime and executed mincing steps of the maxixe. Fumbling in the upper drawer for a pair of white gloves (also new), she knocked off the corner of the bureau her velvet bag; it opened as it struck the floor, and out of it rolled a lilac vanity case and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... each and let their poems speak for them as writers. Both of them have received notice in the best magazines and favorable criticism elsewhere. Both owe their distinction mainly to their work in dialectic verse which, I fear, is too much like the "ragtime" music, considered quite the proper dressing for Negro distinction ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... 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 ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... for the joy of living. But after a few peaceful days there was a lull, and it was then that Monty gained the nickname of Aladdin, which clung to him. From somewhere, from the hold or the rigging or from under the sea, he brought forth four darkies from the south who strummed guitars and sang ragtime melodies. More than once during the voyage they ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... Leigh presided at the piano and appeared to have complete command of the instrument; she could read anything at sight, no matter how it bristled with sharps and accidentals; her repertoire ranged from Beethoven, Bach, Grieg, Chopin, to the latest ragtime, and her playing had a crisp ringing ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... girl murmured in explanation to Steve, and something had gone from her voice and left it conventionally impersonal. "She's riding Ragtime, and isn't he a beauty—almost as much a beauty as ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans |
