Ragtime Quotes

Children died of mild colds or slight rashes. Children died on beds made from two kitchen chairs pushed together. They died on floors. Many people believed that filth and starvation and disease wer...

When the entire house was asleep he came to her room in the darkness. He was solemn and attentive as befitted the occasion. Mother shut her eyes and held her hands over her ears. Sweat from Father'...

Their first night in the Schloss he pulled off her robe, threw her across the bed and applied a dog whip to her buttocks and the backs of her thighs. [...] She cried and whimpered all night. In the...

The tenements glowed like furnaces and the tenants had no water to drink. The sink at the bottom of the stairs was dry. Fathers raced through the streets looking for ice. [...] Horses exploded in t...

Women were stouter then. They visited the fleet carrying white parasols. Everyone wore white in summer. [...] Across America sex and death were barely distinguishable. Runaway women died in the rig...

She had no joy. She looked into the mirror and saw the unmistakable lineaments of womanhood coming into her girlish face. Her long beautiful neck seemed to her like an ungainly stalk upon which was...

Father watched the prow of the scaly broad-beamed vessel splash in the sea. Her decks were packed with people. Thousands of male heads in derbies. Thousands of female heads covered with shawls. It...

Tracks! Tracks! It seemed to the visionaries who wrote for the popular magazines that the future lay at the end of parallel rails. (13.1)