Ragtime

“ Now she did not need such reassurance, when her lips were tremulous.
Rest? Pressing steadily into the north that afternoon, first at a gallop, then more and more slowly until Ragtime was picking his own gait, the girl smiled in pity for Miss Sarah and her day which had never dawned. But there was scant room for sadness in her present mood. Tomorrow? She let herself be afraid for an instant, to tremble in delicious mock-terror, because there was nothing for her to fear now in the whole wide world. ”

“ It is to be noted that whereas the chief characteristic of Ragtime is rhythm, the chief characteristic of the "spirituals" is melody. The melodies of "Steal Away to Jesus," "Swing Low Sweet Chariot," "Nobody Knows de Trouble I See," "I Couldn't Hear Nobody Pray," "Deep River," "O, Freedom Over Me," and many others of these songs possess a beauty that is—what shall I say? poignant. In the riotous rhythms of Ragtime the Negro expressed his irrepressible buoyancy, his keen response to the sheer joy of living; in the "spirituals" he voiced his sense of beauty and his deep religious feeling. ”

“ It is 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. ”

“ Ragtime deserves serious attention. There is a lot of colorless and vicious imitation, but there is enough that is genuine. In one composition alone, "The Memphis Blues," the musician will find not only great melodic beauty, but a polyphonic structure that is amazing.
It is obvious that Ragtime has influenced, and in a large measure, become our popular music; but not many would know that it has influenced even our religious music. ”

“ Even a great pig does not fright him until he sees the snout bear down upon his little paws, to lift him up and off and away!
This is why Raggety is loved. He was born a little trusting dog and he has made himself the companion of scholars and sages.
You, dear Raggety, are one of the Dog-stars in my firmament of loves. Along with Balribbie and Teddy and Jeems, you will greet your slower, earth-plodding Mistresses in some far-off Heaven. We shall see you wagging your long tail of welcome and tinkling your little silver bell, ushering us into that Kingdom of Love. ”

“ Even Raggedy Ann, with all her wisdom, did not really know how long Raggedy Andy and she had been rag dolls.
If Raggedy Ann had a pencil in her rag hand and Marcella guided it for her, Raggedy Ann could count up to ten—sometimes. But why should one worry one's rag head about one's age when all one's life has been one happy experience after another, with each day filled with love and sunshine? ”

“ A dozen times a day the big stranger came creeping up to where he slept, but each time the watchful Rag awoke in time to escape. To escape yet not to escape. He saved his life indeed, but oh! what a miserable life it had become. How maddening to be thus helpless, to see his little mother daily beaten and torn, as well as to see all his favorite feeding-grounds, the cosy nooks, and the pathways he had made with so much labor, forced from him by this hateful brute. Unhappy Rag realized that to the victor belong the spoils, and he hated him more than ever he did fox or ferret. ”

“ But you are wonderfully complete as you are!"
"That is so true!" acquiesced Raggie, with perfect complacency. "I am very beautiful. And you, Fustian, you are so energetically inert. Are you going to blow up to-night? You are so brilliant when you blow up."
"I have not decided either way. I never do. It will depend upon how I feel in the bonfire. I let it come if it will. The true impromptu is invariably premeditated."
"Isn't that rather self-contradictory?" said Raggie, with his pretty quick smile.
"Of course it is. Does not consistency solely consist in contradicting oneself? ”

“ I think great rages work thus upon some natures. Their competence is suddenly made manifold. They live, for a brief space, the life of giants. Rage is destruction active. Whenever anything in this world needs to be destroyed, nature makes somebody wrathful. Another thing that I recall is that I had not the slightest doubt of my ability to kill Forister. There were no more misgivings: no quakings. I thought of the impending duel with delight. ”

“ Stunned, astonished, surprised, Raggety remained passive. Then The Great Man came to him and took him by the collar to pull him ignominiously from the room. Now neither a well-bred dog nor man allows fingers to be inserted under his collar without protest. ”

“ Almost the last message from The Dear Man before He Passed was to Raggety. I give it to you as it stands to-day, and on the reverse of the card is a colored picture of the blooming orchards of Montana.
Master Raggety:
I’m thinking of a far-away dog, a companion even as he seeks companionship, who has a mind of his own, interests of his own, an independence of his own, but who gives his little heart away to those whom it elects, and who look upon him to love him. ”

“ As for the shadows you have seen, they are those of the rivals and enemies of Ragotte whom she has deprived of life for a century or so, and who will afterwards return to the world. The young slave I spoke of is amongst them. I have seen her several times with great pleasure, although she did not speak to me, and on approaching her I had the vexation to find it was but her shade; finding however that one of my sheep was very attentive to this little phantom, I discovered that he was her lover, and that Ragotte, out of jealousy, had taken him from her. ”

“ For Rags did not live a life calculated to fit young men for sudden trials of speed.
He stumbled back down the narrow stairs, and, with a vivid recollection of the bucket he had already fallen upon, felt his way cautiously with his hands and with one foot stuck out in front of him. If he had been in his own bailiwick, he would have rather enjoyed the tense excitement of the chase than otherwise, for there he was at home and knew all the cross-cuts and where to find each broken paling in the roof-fences, and all the traps in the roofs. ”

“ Then on the floor, beside my chair, that little cock-eared dog was sitting up, quietly begging.” Mr. Great Man opened his eyes to find Raggety sitting up on his haunches, waving entreating paws. Nor would he get down until The Great Man stretched out a forgiving hand, took his paw, and there was peace between them. As The Great Man says, “When [Pg 44] one gentleman asks pardon of another whom he has hurt, what can the latter do but forgive him generously?” So The Great Man and Raggety have been firm friends ever since. ”

“ A rag is a beggarly fellow, but that will make little better sense here. Associated as the phrase is, I think it must mean rages, and I find the word used for ragings in the compound bard-rags, border-ragings or incursions, in Spenser's Fairy Queen, ii. x. 63., and Colin Clout, v. 315."
Having on one occasion found that a petty larceny committed on the received text of the poet, by taking away a superfluous b, made all clear, perhaps I may be allowed to restore the abstracted letter, which had only been misplaced and read brags, with, I trust, the like success? ”

“ The Donahues, The Great Man, His Lovely Lady, Belle, Black Henry, the four Brooklyn Aunties of those delicious [Pg 59] chocolate crackers, Jeems, Brother-in-Law, all have place in his heart without reference to their place in the social edifice. Happy Raggety, to be free to choose and to refuse! For he will not accept those whom he does not desire. No amount of caressing or blandishment can fix his affections. I have discovered, however, that food and an interest in outdoor exercise attract him, but there must be some personal quality beyond to make this attraction permanent. ”

“ And there to this day lives Rag. He is a big, strong buck now and fears no rivals. He has a large family of his own, and a pretty brown wife that he got no one knows where. There, no doubt, he and his children's children will flourish for many years to come, and there you may see them any sunny evening if you have learnt their signal code, and choosing a good spot on the ground, know just how and when to thump it. ”

“ Fustian Flitters, with his peculiar smile of inscrutable obviousness.
"Beautiful rose-coloured children!" murmured Lord Raggie, dreamily; "how sad to think that they will all grow up and degenerate into pork-butchers, and generals, and bishops, and absurdly futile persons of that sort! But listen; it is so sweet of them—they are going to sing an exquisite little catch I composed expressly for them, a sort of mellifluously raucous chant with no tune in particular. That is where it is so wonderful. ”

“ Lark’s song comes up to you from other people’s heaven. You are in upper mountain country among glaciers and scarred rocks, amid frogs, amid storms. You dance in the air with the snowflakes. The soul plumbs the depth of the [Pg 213] world with a sad thought dropped from the height. Listen—the little avalanches—a crack, a rumble, a thudding, a whispering. You reach and stand astride the pass between two countries. God divided up the world, and you are a pair of compasses in His hand.
The first tramp left Eden many years ago. They say he died. But to my mind he is still wandering. ”

“ Ragnarök, rag′na-rōōk′, n. the end of the world when the gods (Odin, Thor, &c.) shall be overcome by their enemies and the world burnt up. [Ice. ragna rökr, twilight of the gods—rögn, régin, the gods, rökr, darkness; but orig. ragna rök, the history of the gods—rök, reason, judgment.]
Ragout, ra-gōō′, n. a stew of meat with kitchen herbs, the French equivalent of Irish stew: any spicy mixture or combination, even of persons. ”

“ A blow or a harsh word would cause him to limp in an alarming manner; but a few caresses would set matters all straight again.
Rag had been a frantic ratter, and often roused the whole family by his savage yells after rats that he heard gambolling quite out of his reach behind the partitions in the china closet. He would crouch his head on his fore-paws, and lie watching at rat-holes, in hopes of intercepting some transient loafer; and one day he actually broke the back and bones of a gray old thief whom he caught marauding in the china closet. ”

“ That divine mechanics should thus, through selfishness and avarice, be leagued with filth and squalor and ugliness! When one looks upon Raglan, indignation rises—not at the storm of iron which battered its walls to powder, hardly even at the decree to level them with the dust, but at the later destroyer who could desecrate the beauty yet left by wrath and fear, who with the stones of my lady's chamber would build a kennel, or with the carved stones of chapel or hall a barn or cowhouse! ”

“ Raggety is not built for an athlete. His general proportions are those of a very fat sausage mounted on four tooth-picks, “with a head on before and a tail on behind” (see rhapsody entitled “The Mintie”) . Nevertheless like many a man of athletic instinct and corporate incapacity, he considers himself “an all-round one,” which perhaps is as true as it sounds!
First of all, he loves to walk. The mere fact that you are a biped and can walk wins Raggety’s interest. He even knows the word “walk” in a general conversation and the magic of it waves his tail. ”

“ Those ears cause an endless amount of surmise and conjecture. A person sits in my room enjoying stereotyped conversation and invariably says, “What do you suppose makes one of Raggety’s ears stand up and the other flop over?” Now here are the three theories with which I invariably entertain my questioner in stereotyped form. The first is my own [Pg 47] theory, which is that when Raggety was a baby-puppy, his mother or one of his baby-brothers bit him through the ear, just in play and broke the muscles. But when I once advanced this theory to a Doctor-friend of Raggety, he scoffed at it. ”

“ Mynheer van Ragevoort did not like the dark! There were things he could not see in the dark, but which he knew were there. But there were also things that he knew did not exist, which the darkness nevertheless conjured before his eyes. Faces! Spectral figures that floated and threatened and mocked! Many faces, many figures! And those of women chiefly, and girls! Of course, they had been witches and he had condemned them to the torture, to the stake, to the rope. But why should they trouble him, dance about him, beckon him? ”

“ Sez I, "Who is it that you are willin' to make such a extraordinary outlay for?"
"The Rager," sez he.
"The Rager," sez I dreamily; "who's that?"
"Why, the Rager from India. I spoze," sez he, "that he is one of the raginest men that you ever see. He took his name from that, most likely, and to intimidate his subjects. Now, King or Emperor don't strike the same breathless terror; but Rager—why, jest the name is enough to make 'em behave."
"Wall," sez I, "if the Monarch of Ingy is here I must see him, and git him not to burn any more widders with their dead pardners." ”

“ The Dear Man lived among Books, and about his Book House stood tall oaks inhabited by bands of quite tame squirrels. They were tame because they were loved by The Man and fed from his hands. I have seen Raggety sit in twitching self-control watching the squirrels feed, divided painfully between his desire to pursue those virtuous squirrels and his love of The Dear Man whose heart he could not grieve by the vain pursuit. When The Book Man wrote his noble tribute to The Dear Man, Raggety appropriately ran into the pages. ”