"Motley" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wear, my son," he cried gaily. "In this cap and bells, I see life under a different aspect. Never has it appeared to me sweeter and more irresponsible. Don't you feel it? But I forgot. You haven't any motley. I apologise for my want of tact. Blanquette," he added in French, "why haven't you found a costume ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... composition made by the boors, which becomes excessively hard in time; after which it is whitewashed. The roof was thatched with a hard sort of rushes, more durable and less likely to catch fire than straw. There was no ceiling under the roof, but the rafters overhead were hung with a motley assemblage of the produce of the chase and farm, as large whips made of rhinoceros-hide, leopard and lion skins, ostrich eggs and feathers, strings of onions, rolls of ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... jousting on the greensward, when the religious observances of the day were over. Pilgrims thronged from all parts, attracted both by the presence of the court and the unusual tranquillity of Wales; and for nearly a mile around the Holy-well it was like one great motley fair, resorted to by persons of all stations. Beggars of course were there in numbers, and among them the unfailing blind beggar of Bethnal Green, who always made a pilgrimage in the summer to some station of easy access from London, but whom some ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... we turn the mind in upon itself, and make it our object, the very act of earnest reflection obscures the idea, or destroys the emotion we desire to contemplate. This is especially the case in the present instance. The ludicrous, when we attempt to grasp it, shows off its gay and motley garb, and appears in grave attire. It is only by abstracting our mind from the inquiry, and throwing it into lighter considerations, that we can at all retain the illusion. A clever sally appears brilliant when it breaks suddenly upon the mental vision, but when ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... wish to sit apart from the crowd, just under the shadow of the tree, or in some favourite corner where you can smoke, and contemplate the motley guests, formed into calm and solemn groups, who wish to hold no communion with the Giaour. There is ample food here for the observer of character, costume and pretension: the tradesman, the mechanic, the soldier, the gentleman, the dandy, the grave old man, looking ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... Three Horses. Arriving there, Arnold was asked to dress the wound of a man that had been shot through the breast in the fight along Fort Street. While he was working over his patient, who lay on a table surrounded by a motley crowd of onlookers, Levake walked in. He nodded to the surgeon and drawing a pocket knife, while Arnold was cleansing the wound, sat down beside him ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... others were well-knit studies of evil, with health still hanging on, more or less, and much deviltry to do. A blue blouse, or a bit of khaki; British puttees and a flare of crimson; Russian boots and a glimpse of sodden gray; or an American campaign-hat crowning a motley of many services,—explained that the soldiers of the world found Equatoria desirable in not a few cases for finishing enlistments. It was quite as evident, too, that the criminal riff-raff of this world and hour ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... grows stranger. Suddenly in eerie harmonies of newest French or oldest Tartar, here are the tricks and traits where meet the extremes of latest Romantic and primeval barbarian. In this motley cloak sounds the typical Yankee tune, first piping in piccolo, then grunting in tuba. Here is Uncle Sam disporting himself merrily in foreign garb and scene, quite as if at home. If we wished, we might see a political ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... was supposed to connect with the passenger train and carry forward its human freight to Superior City was filled to overflowing, I determined to take advantage of the construction train, and travel on it as far as it would take me. A very motley group of lumberers, navvies, and speculators assembled for breakfast at five o'clock a.m. at Tom's table, and although I cannot quite confirm the favourable opinion of my friend the express agent as to the ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... blissful, and the enduring mighty! Lo there! the soldier, rapid architect! Builds his light town of canvas, and at once The whole scene moves and bustles momently. With arms, and neighing steeds, and mirth and quarrel The motley market fills; the roads, the streams Are crowded with new freights; trade stirs and hurries, But on some morrow morn, all suddenly, The tents drop down, the horde renews its march. Dreary, and solitary as a churchyard; The meadow and down-trodden seed-plot lie, And ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... of Genoa, the violet in granite of Catalonia, the mourning-hued corridor veined black and white in slate of Murviedro, the pink corridor in cipolin of the Alps, the pearl corridor in lumachel of Nonetta, and the corridor of all colours, called the courtiers' corridor, in motley. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... Berkeley, with the motley crowd of sailors, longshoremen, freed slaves, and such as he could collect, sailed for Jamestown and reached it safely September 7th, 1676. The news of his approach reached Jamestown long before he did, and Colonel Hansford, one of Bacon's youngest ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... resembling the rovers and adventurers in the Caribbean or representing some of the many activities prevalent in England at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Thomas Weston, former ally of the Pilgrims, settled with a motley crew of rude fellows at Wessagusset (Quincy) and there established a trading post in 1622. Of this settlement, which came to an untimely end after causing the Pilgrims a great deal of trouble, only a blockhouse and stockade remained. Another irregular trader, Captain Wollaston, ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... series of letters, published first in the "Friend," afterwards in his "Biographia Literaria," is to be found a description of his passage to Germany, and short tour through that country. His fellow passengers as described by him were a motley group, suffering from the usual effects of a rolling sea. One of them, who had caught the customary antidote to sympathy for suffering, to witness which is usually painful, began his mirth by not ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... very recently bestowed, had ever constituted a serious problem for the neighboring states as well as for the central government. It was with the Confederacy as with the old Union. The Reserve Indians were a motley horde, fragments of many tribes that had seen better days. They were all more or less related, either geographically or linguistically. Some of them, it is difficult to venture upon what proportion, had been induced to enter into negotiations ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... the sheep-washers, a smaller and less regarded force, file up. They number some forty men. Nothing more than fair bodily strength, willingness and obedience being required in their case, they are more easy to get and to replace than shearers. They are a varied and motley lot. That powerful and rather handsome man is a New Yorker, of Irish parentage. Next to him is a slight, neat, quiet individual. He was a lieutenant in a line regiment. The lad in the rear was a Sandhurst cadet. Then came two navvies ...
— Shearing in the Riverina, New South Wales • Rolf Boldrewood
... the steps they were assailed by a motley crowd, half of whom struggled to get near them to hold out their hands for alms, while the other half struggled and fought for the right of carrying their baggage. Accustomed to such scenes, Harry at once seized upon two of them, gave them ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... and halted at the pit edge. My outfit were whites—Russians, French, Germans. But the others were black, brown, yellow—all the motley aggregation of races that formed the Red cohorts, the backbone of the Great Uprising. As the "At ease" order snapped out a babel of tongues rose on the air. Every language of Earth was there save English. The Anglo-Saxons had chosen tortured death rather than submission ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... room like a monkey. It was very common for his companions to make bets with him: for example, that he would not be able to climb up the ceiling of a room, or scramble over a certain house-top. Grimaldi, the famous clown, used to say, "Colonel Mackinnon has only to put on the motley costume, and ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... Perhaps an even greater conflict than these two has been her never-ending war with the sea. Holland has been called a land enclosed in a fortress reared against the sea. For generations her people have warred with angry waves; but, as Motley has said, they gained an education for a struggle "with the still more savage despotism of man." Let me not forget here Holland's great school of art—comparable only to that of Spain, or even to that ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... themselves are kings. At times glad, beautiful images, airy forms, move by you, graceful, harmonious;—at times the glaring, wild-looking fancies, chained together by hyphens, brackets, and dashes, brave and base, high and low, all in their motley dresses, go sweeping down the dusty page, like the galley-slaves, that sweep the streets of Rome, where you may chance to see the nobleman ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... little effort to save their sons; they concentrated on the daughters. It was pitiful to see how in their ignorance they were unaware of the strongest forces working against them. The talk of all this motley humanity—of "good" no less than "bad" women, of steady workingmen, of political heelers, thieves and bums and runners for dives—was frankly, often hideously, obscene. The jammed together way of living made modesty impossible, or scantest decency—made ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... a hundred times over. Alone, helpless, conscious of guilt, and abandoned by every better thought, my mind was one motley scene of terror, confusion, and remorse. A thousand expedients suggested themselves, and a thousand fears told me they would be vain: at last, in an agony of despair, I packed up a few clothes, took what money and trinkets were in the house, ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... left the Governor, to rest upon the woman beside me; had he pointed to her with his hand, he could not have more surely drawn upon her the regard of that motley throng. By degrees the crowd had fallen back, leaving us three—the King's minion, the masquerading lady, and myself—the centre of a ring of staring faces; but now she became the sole target at which all ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... adventurers. There life rolls on in the refined corruption of fashionable society amidst sports and amusements, scandals and intrigues, every race and every tongue contributing its share of good and evil. A motley crowd swarms their streets, presenting to the eye of an onlooker the picturesque spectacle that the contrast of costumes always produces. They are people of different colours, dress and education, attracted ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... other folk upon the busy highways,—an endless procession that went and came. Pack-horses, war chariots, slaves and soldiers, nobles, merchants, and artificers, men with goods to sell and men without,—a motley throng from many lands. Nicanor, shy and fierce-eyed and of shaggy hair, tramping steadily southward in the wake of the swift-footed soldiers, felt that the world was a very mighty place, and never had he dreamed of such great people. ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... Corso. So utterly had the Carnival with all its gay follies vanished from her mind, that she was for a moment astonished at finding herself entangled in a motley crowd, so dense that the coachman was obliged to rein in his horses and ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... across Union Square with a pitying look at the hundreds that lolled upon the park benches. They were a motley lot, he thought; the men with stolid, animal, unshaven faces; the women wriggling and self-conscious, twining and untwining their feet that hung four ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... garden of Europe; the queer inflections of the American's quiet drawl are heard everywhere as he strolls round the tables; Roumanian boyards, Parisian swindlers, Austrian soldiers, Hungarian plutocrats, flashy and foolish young Englishmen—all gather in a motley crowd; and the British bookmaker's interesting presence is obtrusive. His very accent—strident, coarse, impudent, unspeakably low—gives a kind of ground-note to the hum of talk that rises in all places ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... and woman, at their heels a motley following of brats and curs, trailed disconsolately by. They came to a halt beyond the house, and, after much irresolution, sat down in the sand. A few minutes later another family trailed in from the opposite direction, ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... has been urged to such extreme measures and such motley self-stultification by the pressure of the South, if every downward step has been only the more likely to be taken because it seemed impossible six months before, what are we not to look for, now that its leaders are emboldened by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... devoted to a few men, who were smoking; the other was the one from which Trenholme had descended. Its seats, upholstered in red velvet, were dusty from the smoke and dirt of the way; its atmosphere, heated by a stove at one end, was dry and oppressive. It would have been impossible, looking at the motley company lounging in the lamplight, to have told their relations one to another; but it was evident that an uncertain number of young people, placed near the lady who held the baby, were of the same party; they slept in twos and threes, leaning on one another's shoulders ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... nickname for a jester (Chapter XX), from his motley clothes, is also sometimes a variant of Pash. And the dim. Patchett has become confused with Padgett, from Padge, a rimed form of Madge. Pentecost is recorded as a personal name in Anglo-Saxon times. Michaelmas ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... quick to understand the situation and both realized that it meant danger. But Stubbs was the first to shake himself free. He recognized the crew at the head of the motley army. It roused his ire as nothing else could. Instantly he felt himself again their master. They were still only so many mutinous sailors. He turned upon them with the same fierceness which once had sent ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... men as Ruskin, Froude, Hamerton, Matthew Arnold, Macaulay, De Quincey, Thackeray, Bagehot, John Morley, James Martineau, Cardinal Newman, J. R. Green, and Lecky in England; and Hawthorne, Curtis, Prof. W. D. Whitney, George P. Marsh, Prescott, Emerson, Motley, Prof. Austin Phelps, Holmes, Edward Everett, Irving, and Lowell in America. When in the pages following we anywhere quote usage, it is to the authority of such men ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... of those who scold at us When we would read in bed? Or, wanting victuals, make a fuss If we buy books, instead? And what of those who've dusted not Our motley pride and boast? Shall they profane that sacred spot?" Says ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... dawns overhead. Elsewhere Agrippa, with favouring winds and gods, proudly leads on his column; on his brows glitters the prow-girt naval crown, the haughty emblazonment of the war. Here Antonius with barbarian aid and motley arms, from the conquered nations of the Dawn and the shore of the southern sea, carries with him Egypt and the Eastern forces of utmost Bactra, and the shameful Egyptian woman goes as his consort. All at once rush ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... modern and everyday speech, admitting at times even Latin and French terms, such as res scibilis and citrouille. The mixture startled the critics and carpers to whom its object had not been explained; but my conviction still remains that it represents, with much truth to nature, the motley suit of the Arabo-Egyptian. And it certainly serves one purpose, too often neglected by writers and unnoticed by reviewers. The fluent and transparent styles of Buckle and Darwin (the modern Aristotle who has transformed the face of Biological Science) are instruments admirably fitted for their ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... conciliate the back country; but before they became operative, Governor Tryon's militia, about twelve hundred men, largely from the lowlands, and led by the gentry whose privileges were involved, met the motley army of the Regulators, who numbered about two thousand, in the battle of the Alamance (May, 1771). Many were killed and wounded, the Regulators dispersed, and over six thousand men came into camp and took the oath of submission to the colonial authorities. ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... have witnessed carnivals. Here are all our harlequins and columbines of the spoken and written drama. They flash to and fro, they thrill us with expectancy. Then, presto! What a dreary lot they are when the revellers lay aside the motley! ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... I had spent in India I had seen a good deal of both sides of that motley, amazing fabric which we call life. I had felt the throbbing of its great loom. I had touched with my own shrinking hand the closeness of the texture, had marked the interweaving of the alien strands, had ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... a new and original idea of the celebrated Ladvocat, was just beginning to blossom out upon the walls. In no long space Paris was to wear motley, thanks to the exertions of his imitators, and the Treasury was to discover a new ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... which the doors were opened. The figure and box are the property of the man who plays on a violin, close to the box; and who is selling little mass books, supposed to be rendered more sacred by having been passed across the feet and hands of the waxen Christ. Such a mongrel occupation, and such a motley group, must strike you with ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... into the verandah outside, he seated himself in a long chair and proceeded to sip it slowly, as if it were some elixir whose virtue would be lost by haste. Some people might have been amused by the motley crowd that passed along the street beyond the verandah-rails, but Gideon Hayle, for such was his name, took no sort of interest in it. He had seen it too often to find any variety in it. As a matter of fact the mere ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... peculiarly the people's service, and the ringers were ringing in the one service of the year at which the parishioners supplanted the Vicar, and appropriated the old parish church. In spite of the weather, the church was crowded with a motley throng, chiefly of young folks, the young men being in the nave, and the girls (if I remember rightly) in the little loft at the west end. Most of the men carried tallow dips, tied about with bits ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... her shoulders impatiently. I think I was a little disappointed in her. I expected then people to be more of a piece than I do now, and I was distressed to find so much vindictiveness in so charming a creature. I did not realise how motley are the qualities that go to make up a human being. Now I am well aware that pettiness and grandeur, malice and charity, hatred and love, can find place side by side in ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... genealogical investigation, the name Van Dyke might have recalled to this descendant of many hidalgos that foggy battle-field in the Netherlands on which her ancestor and his took pot-shots at each other with the primitive cross-bow. Motley records that on that day far-gone Holland laid low the Spaniard. The present historian is forced to chronicle the final triumph of Spain. The only bow used in this last encounter was in the hands of a mythological person whose existence is ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... Isabella, perceiving in this conduct only a further proof of the hypocrite's villainy, breaks out once more into a tempest of agonised despair. Upon her cry for immediate revolt against the scoundrelly tyrant, the people collect together and form a motley and passionate crowd. Luzio, who also returns, counsels the people with stinging bitterness to pay no heed to the woman's fury; he points out that she is only tricking them, as she has already tricked him—for he still believes in her shameless infidelity. Fresh confusion; ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... ere the hot, fiery sun has left his crimson bed behind the cold grey horizon, we are out on our favourite horse, the wiry, long-limbed syce or groom trotting along behind us. The mehter or dog-keeper is also in attendance with a couple of greyhounds in leash, and a motley pack of wicked little terriers frisking and frolicking behind him. This mongrel collection is known as 'the Bobbery Pack,' and forms a certain adjunct to every assistant's bungalow in the district. I had one very noble-looking kangaroo hound that I had brought from Australia ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... the motley crowd. "This is a place where you need only to be introduced properly," he whispered to me, "to have any kind of ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... unselfish, part in the varied field of administrative work from the days of Strafford downwards, there was none more industrious, none more loyal, and none less selfish than he. It was all to his credit that he was unlikely to consort on easy terms with the motley crew that ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... Four-fifths of the French army were national troops, speaking the same language, animated by the same feelings, accustomed to the same discipline, and the most of whom had been accustomed to act together. The Allies, on the other hand, were a motley assemblage, like Hannibal's at Cannae, or Wellington's at Waterloo, composed of the troops of many different nations, speaking different languages, trained to different discipline, but recently assembled together, and under the orders of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... certain estate with slaves and cattle, but not equal; to some more, to others less. The King goes the round of these farms at will, and lives upon their produce. Any day you may see hosts of slaves bringing fruits of all sorts to the King, as he goes through the country with his motley following, all ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... of Volunteers for the Discovery of the West fell into line in front of the stone fortress of old St. Louis. A motley crew they looked in their half-savage garb. They were veterans, fit for any difficult undertaking in the wilderness. Shoulder to shoulder they had labored in the great enterprise. ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... there for the Volucella to disguise herself as a wasp? Any fly, whether clad in drab or motley, is admitted to the burrow directly she makes herself useful to the community. The mimicry of the bumblebee fly, which was said to be one of the most conclusive cases, is, after all, a mere childish notion. Patient observation, continually face to face with facts, will ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... Caesar had been serving his apprenticeship as a soldier. The motley forces which Mithridates had commanded had not all submitted on the king's surrender to Sylla. Squadrons of pirates hung yet about the smaller islands in the Aegean. Lesbos was occupied by adventurers who ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... Henry A. Wise uttered "a motley compound of eloquence and folly, of braggart impudence and childish vanity, of self-laudation and Virginian narrow-mindedness." After him Hubbard, of Alabama, "began grunting against the tariff." Three days later ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... He plunged into active life, and became what is termed in this age of little names a distinguished and noted man. But what was mainly remarkable in his future conduct was his impatience of rest. He eagerly courted all occupations, even of the most varied and motley kind,—business, letters, ambition, pleasure. He suffered no pause in his career; and leisure to him was as care to others. He lived in the world, as the worldly do, discharging its duties, fostering its affections, and fulfilling its career. But there was a deep and wintry ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the incidental characters. Guido, Caponsacchi, Pompilia, the Pope, and, in a lesser degree, Violante and Pietro, are the chief characters, and the main interest contracts around them. But, through all they say and do, as a motley crowd through a street, a great number of minor characters move to and fro; and Browning, whose eye sees every face, and through the face into the soul, draws them one by one, some more fully than others in perhaps a hundred lines, some only in ten. Most of them are types of a class, a ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... motley garb, with a face of scarlet and white, sitting on a blue half-barrel near the flap which indicated the entrance to the men's section of the dressing-tent, caught sight of an arm and hand lying limp under the edge of the canvas. He stared hard for a moment and then, attracted by ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... motley throng of soldiers, in soiled uniforms, traders, voyageurs, pale-faced women, and wondering children, streamed to the narrow beach beyond the water gate, all could see the approaching boats as, in long-extended line and with flashing oars, one after another rounded the last wooded ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... new regiments came a motley mixture of veterans of volunteer organizations, newly released slaves, and some freedmen of several years' standing but without military experience. They were eager to learn, and soon showed the same traits ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... form, each in thy mite, the vast And countless chaos of humanity, Named, as of use, "The Public," I dispute No term as base or just, but join thereto An atom with the motley crowd, resigned, Of kings, and lords, and people, all as one, Who hold no claim as critic, seer, or sage, And spurn the name of Sloth as loathsome to The ear; who dwell within the pale, and breathe The air of this delirious age, ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... tent flies, oilcloths and clothing, the men being forced to free themselves of all surplus incumbrances in order to keep up with the moving mass. At one place we passed General Early, sitting on his horse by the roadside, viewing the motley crowd as it passed by. He looked sour and haggard. You could see by the expression of his face the great weight upon his mind, his deep disappointment, his unspoken disappointment. What was yesterday a proud, well-disciplined army that had accomplished during ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... our juvenile amusements? The Twelfth-night King and Queen might plant such a one in their royal domain, and graciously conclude their merry reign by distributing amongst those who have served them as liege subjects for the evening, the motley fruits that grace it. Each should be previously marked to correspond with the character to be drawn, which would secure a token of their majesties' favour for each ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 478, Saturday, February 26, 1831 • Various
... to this motley scene was by the principal gate, where the carriages set down their company, and at a short distance along the bank of the river, the steam-boat in like manner contributed its visiters. On entering the park, I was first struck with a long row of boxes, (somewhat ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 330, September 6, 1828 • Various
... of the Macedonian brutal; but the crew was made up of a motley class of human beings of every ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... of a hundred pounds lay at the feet of the voyageurs awaiting De la Verendrye's command. A dozen soldiers in the plumed hats, slashed buskins, the brightly colored doublets of the period, joined the motley company. Priests came out to bless the departing voyageurs. Chapel bells rang out their God-speed. To the booming of cannon, and at a word from De la Verendrye, the gates opened. Falling in line with measured tread, the soldiers marched out from Mount ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... of intense activity followed. The differences between Governor Shirley and the commander, Colonel William Johnson, were composed, and the motley army would soon march forward to the head of Andiatarocte to meet Dieskau and the French. It was evident that the beautiful lake which both English and French claimed, but which really belonged to the Hodenosaunee, had become one of two keys to the North American lock, the other being ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... to poor enough advantage at first, and was almost afraid to speak in the curious and motley society which thronged our rooms. The quick wit, the ready epigram and squib, the oppressive and multitudinous puns in every language,—all served to stun and confuse me, fixed as I was in grave and quiet habits of mind and thought. It was amazing to me at first ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... chorus, to converse with the public in a general way, but also to point the finger at certain individual spectators, was essential to this species of poetry. As Tragedy delights in harmonious unity, Comedy flourishes in a chaotic exuberance; it seeks out the most motley contrasts, and the unceasing play of cross purposes. It works up, therefore, the most singular, unheard-of, and even impossible incidents, with allusions to the well-known and special circumstances of the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... nine at night when he marshalled his motley party into the dining-room at Sacramento and they were made glad by substantial, well-cooked food, with abundant hot coffee. They thanked him gratefully, did many of the young fellows, and hoped they might meet more ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... ends. Her arms were bare to the elbows, and gay with bracelets; her hair fell from her forehead and temples, dropping over her shoulders in two ribbon bound braids. A tall, gray-cowled monk, whose military bearing gave the lie to his cassock, a Spanish grandee, and a fool in motley saw her at the same moment and hurried to intercept her, but with a slide which carried him a quarter of the way across the floor the Bedouin arrived first, and before the others had come up he was drifting away with her in the tide of ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... the capital in front of him. Just before entering it, a glittering carriage came out to meet him, in which was seated a young lady as beautiful as the day, but with a very solemn and serious expression. But no sooner had she perceived the motley crowd fastened to the swan's tail than she burst into a loud fit of laughter, in which she was joined by all her servants and ladies ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... questions of the day, were the philosophers, in the garb of their several sects, ready for any new question on which they might exercise their subtlety or display their rhetoric." If there were any in that motley group who cherished the principles and retained the spirit of the true Platonic school, we may presume they felt an inward intellectual sympathy with the doctrine enounced by Paul. With Plato, "philosophy was only another name for religion: ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... the coronation of the Emperor and Empress of Austria, as King and Queen of Hungary. Through the courtesy of Mr. Motley, then Minister to Austria, he received from the Prime Minister of the empire every facility for ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... meaneth to sputter and prate anything without judgment or wit; that his invention is very barren, his fancy beggarly, craving the aid of any stuff to relieve it? One would think a man of sense should grudge to lend his ear, or incline his attention to such motley ragged discourse; that without nauseating he scarce should endure to observe men lavishing time, and squandering their breath so frivolously. 'Tis an affront to good company to pester it ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... Natal. A smaller portion, including the district about Natal, was to be his own immediate property. Dingarn was perfectly in earnest, and thus intended to make him responsible for the conduct of every individual of the motley population of Natal, declaring that he should receive no trader who did not bring credentials from him. It was as curious a situation as ever commander in the navy was placed in. All he could do was to return to Durban, explain matters ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... motley traits, Half gay, half sad, half false, half real, Half every-day, yet half ideal, The careless fruit of idle days, Of sleepless nights; slight inspirations Of unripe years, of wasted art— The reason's frigid observations, And sad conclusions ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... be received on a Saturday at eleven. We went in the prescribed costume, black silk, with the picturesque Roman veil thrown over the head. From the foot of the Scala Regia, (Royal Staircase) one of the papal guard, in a motley suit which seemed one glare of black and yellow, escorted us to the door of a long corridor, known as the Loggia of Raphael, where we were received by a higher official in rich array of crimson velvet. About seventy persons were seated in rows, facing each ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... that the motley character of Rome, of which all writers speak in one way or another, had its first cause in that second building of the city. Rome without ruins would hardly seem Rome at all, and all was ruined in that first ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... Turks, smoking their nargiles in front of the cafes that open on the Marina, turned their chairs round to look at us without stopping their hubble-bubbling; and all about us, where nothing else was, a line of motley humanity—Greek, Turk, Egyptian, Nubian, Abyssinian, under hats, caps, tarbouches, turbans, hats Persian and ecclesiastical, and no hats at all—half circled us with mute and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... least from suffering; but this was not the case. All our food appeared to be damaged. As for the pork, we were cheated out of it more than half the time; and when it was obtained, one would have judged from its motley hues, exhibiting the consistence and appearance of variegated fancy soap, that it was the flesh of the porpoise or sea-hog, and had been an inhabitant of the ocean rather than of the stye. The pease were generally damaged, and, from the imperfect manner ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... youth now, but while I am still in its flower, and Nicias appears fortunate, avail yourselves to the utmost of the services of us both. Neither rescind your resolution to sail to Sicily, on the ground that you would be going to attack a great power. The cities in Sicily are peopled by motley rabbles, and easily change their institutions and adopt new ones in their stead; and consequently the inhabitants, being without any feeling of patriotism, are not provided with arms for their persons, ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... The motley forces drawn up on the bank of the Cumberland for review and instruction made up in fantastic variety for what they lacked in number. There was much of the grotesque and somewhat of the pitiful in the spectacle presented by the straggling ranks of boatmen and backwoods ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... visibly apparent on that first Sunday after what many had called his apostasy. Instead of the orderly, sprucely-dressed groups of people which were wont to linger in greetings before the doors of St. John's, a motley crowd thronged the pavement and streamed into the church, pressing up the aisles and invading the sacred precincts where decorous parishioners had for so many years knelt in comfort and seclusion. The familiar figure of Gordon Atterbury was nowhere to be seen, and the Atterbury ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... motley crowd; soldiers, serving maids, boys, girls, children, students, work girls, gendarmes, etc. It is evening. The shops are decked with tiny lamps; a huge lantern lights up the entrance to the Cafe Momus. The ...
— La Boheme • Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica
... chiefs or caliphs of Bagdad. He sees their actions conditioned and to some extent controlled by the influences of majestic inhuman powers, the genii of eastern tales, huge, cloud-girt spirits of oppressive solemnity. In reality most people wear motley all day long and the fairy powers are leprechauns, tricksy, irresponsible sprites, willing enough to make merry with those who can laugh with them; but players of all Puck's tricks on "wisest aunts telling ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... divisions; and the success or the pleasure of yesterday becomes of very small account when a certain (albeit uncertain) morrow is in view, about which all of us must some day or other be speculating. O brother wearers of motley! Are there not moments when one grows sick of grinning and tumbling, and the jingling of cap and bells? This, dear friends and companions, is my amiable object—to walk with you through the Fair, to examine the shops and the shows there; ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... ran, ran—ran! And who was that, that stood before him now—that golden-haired woman beside an empty wheel-chair, whose face was radiant, who cried aloud that she was cured! And who were these others of later days, this motley crowd of old and young, that passed before him in procession, that cried out the same words that golden-haired woman by the wheel-chair had cried—and ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... narrow whitewashed streets lined with little shops, gaily decorated with gold and bright colours, form a fitting background to the smartly dressed groups moving about among them. We did not pause to make any purchases, but stopped the carriage at many points to admire the motley crowd and the curious and beautiful mosques ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... as guide, proceeded across the street, to the group of dirty, disreputable-looking buildings containing the saloons, gambling houses and dance halls. He had little need of a guide, for, before the shabbiest and most disreputable of the entire lot, was gathered a motley crowd, gazing with awestruck curiosity at the building in which had been enacted the tragedy of the night before. It was a saloon with gambling rooms in the rear. Here Morgan had played his last game,—just to see what luck he would have,—as ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... in their modern dress, were imported by French and Provencal knights, who, on their way to Jerusalem, came to stay at the castles of their German allies, the first poets who ventured to imitate these motley compositions were priests, not laymen. A few short extracts from Konrad's "Roland" and Lamprecht's "Alexander" are sufficient to mark this period of transition. Like Charlemagne, who had been changed into a legendary hero by French poets before he ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... "while an image of the Virgin half smothered under the weight of flowers was borne aloft, and, as the procession climbed the steps of the temple, was deposited above the altar.... The impressive character of the ceremony and the passionate eloquence of the good priest touched the feelings of the motley audience, until Indians as well as Spaniards, if we may trust the chronicler, were melted ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... was apprised of the situation. It was the intention of the mate and crew to murder him and the Captain and put the vessel about for a piratical cruise in the Indian Ocean. They were a motley gang of foreigners, low bred and capable of any crime when led by a man like the mate, fresh from a career of lawlessness on the ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... statutes, and administered throughout by functionaries of various grades, who received their orders from Babylon or Susa, according as the chances of war favoured the ascendency of Chaldaea or Elam. It was in reality a motley assemblage of tribes and principalities, whose sole bond of union was ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... statement of American grievances and a just demand for compensation. The British Government, too, in view of the action of the Senate and the indiscreet utterances of the new American Minister in London, John Lothrop Motley, believed that President Grant favored an aggressive policy. Further negotiations were dropped. Both Governments, nevertheless, were desirous of coming to an understanding, though neither wished to take the ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... 2. We have a rather motley-looking set. A good many look like broken-down schoolmasters or ministers who have excellent dispositions but not much talent. As the kind of talent required where we are going is rather peculiar, the men may be useful, but I don't believe there will be ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... the case. In regard to the idea of communism we do not find this infinite variety of opinion. We find, on the contrary, a definite and irreconcilable duality of thought. Human souls are divided on this matter not, as they are on other matters, into a motley variety of convictions but into two opposite and irreconcilable convictions, unfathomably ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... Grosvenor rushed out, and with the aid of sjamboks soon quelled the disturbance and brought their motley pack into subjection, the animals having made a general dash at the intruders, when the latter arrived within some fifty yards of the wagon, while Leo, the lion cub, excited by the disturbance, had broken the rein which usually ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... fain have had regular uniforms, similar to those worn by the Sepoys in the service of the European powers, provided for the men; but Charlie strongly urged him not to do so. He admitted that the troops would look immensely better, if clad in regular uniform; than as a motley band, each dressed according to his own fancy. He pointed out, however, that while the news that the rajah was having some of his men drilled by European deserters would attract but little attention among his neighbours, the report that ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... acquaintance as long as he and they lived, and was ever ready to shew them acts of kindness. He for a considerable time used to frequent the Green Room, and seemed to take delight in dissipating his gloom, by mixing in the sprightly chit-chat of the motley circle then to be found there. Mr. David Hume related to me from Mr. Garrick, that Johnson at last denied himself this amusement, from considerations of rigid virtue; saying, 'I'll come no more behind your scenes, David; for ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... latter, leaped on Hurry, and fled away in front of us. Before we had accomplished one-quarter of the distance, we heard the thundering tread of many feet galloping down the avenue, and presently espied our motley troop of steeds being driven furiously toward us. Storm, Lightfoot, Swift, Grumble, Stentor, Arrow and Dart were there, with Jack, on his fleet two-legged courser, at their heels. At his saddle-bow hung a cluster of saddles and ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... was crowded with the usual motley polyglot gathering—sailors of all nations, soldiers of the garrison, Spanish peasants from the neighbouring villages, native scorpions, policemen, ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... very lustrous lacquered boots that rose high above his knees. A cavalry sabre of ordinary dimensions hung from a military belt, and a pistol-butt, peeping from his sash, completed the astonishing motley of his appearance. For the rest, he was the same tall and well-knit fellow; but there was more strength in his square chin, more intelligence in the keen blue eyes, and, alas! more coarseness in the mouth, which bristled with a reddish beard ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... the American generalissimo mustered was a motley array: twenty-five cannoneers of uncertain nationality, thirty-eight Greeks, Hamet and his ninety followers, and a party of Arabian horsemen and camel-drivers—all told about four hundred men. The story of their march across the desert is a modern Anabasis. ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... ride? She had not cared to go out. Though the papers had suppressed all details of the cowardly assassination, the glare of publicity had been focussed too keenly on her for comfort by that explosion of the old frontiersman in the court room. She had remained in all morning watching the motley crowds of a frontier town surge past the hotel windows down the dusty hot main street, with its medley of fine brick blocks, and poor shacks, and saloons, and false fronts—little unpainted restaurants and cigar stands and ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... motley stories; here and there instructive, but mostly absurd. I shall now endeavour to sift out the rubbish from this patristic and legendary heap, and perhaps we shall find more of value than at ...
— Simon Magus • George Robert Stow Mead
... grand people there were employes of the mines of less note, clerks of the comerciantes, young farmers of the valley, gambucinos, vaqueros, ciboleros, and even "leperos" of the town, shrouded in their cheap serapes. A motley throng was ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... deposited. The noises as from a great city swelled strident: shouts, hammerings, laughter, rumble of vehicles, cracking of lashes, barkings of dogs innumerable—betokening a thriving mart of industry. But although pedestrians streamed to and fro, the men in motley of complexions and costumes, the women, some of them fashionably dressed, with skirts eddying furiously; and wagons rolled, horses cantered, and from right and left merchants and hawksters seemed to be calling ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... once wrote of the hand being subdued to what it works in. The man who wrote that surely never tramped along the Haworth road as the bell rang for twelve o'clock. From out the factories poured a motley mob of men, women and children, not only with hands dyed, but with clothing, faces and heads as well. Girls with bright-green hair, and lemon-colored faces, leered and jeered at me as they hastened pellmell with hats ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... after much delay that he found himself at last, under the escort of a slave-party, on the way to Ujiji. Mr. Waller has graphically described the situation. "At last he makes a start on the 11th of December, 1868, with the Arabs, who are bound eastward for Ujiji. It is a motley group, composed of Mohamad and his friends, a gang of Unyamwezi hangers-on, and strings of wretched slaves yoked together in their heavy slave-sticks. Some carry ivory, others copper, or food for the march, while ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... business it was to crack the best joke, and sing the best song,—he could. Unluckily, however, this functionary was for the present obliged to absent himself from St. Ronan's; for, not recollecting that he did not actually wear the privileged motley of his profession, he had passed some jest upon Captain MacTurk, which cut so much to the quick, that Mr. Meredith was fain to go to goat-whey quarters, at some ten miles' distance, and remain there in a sort of concealment, until the affair should be made up through the mediation of his ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... base of the cliffs for a considerable distance. The ground was rolling and tree-dotted and covered with grazing animals, alone, in pairs and in herds—a motley aggregation of the modern and extinct herbivore of the world. A huge woolly mastodon stood swaying to and fro in the shade of a giant fern—a mighty bull with enormous upcurving tusks. Near him grazed an aurochs bull with a cow and a calf, close beside ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... newcomer, who looked with evident interest at the twisted columns of the high altar, at the vast mosaics in the dome, at the red damask hangings of the nave, at the Swiss guards, the chamberlains in court dress and at all the mediaeval-looking, motley figures that moved about within the space kept ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... within a brief period after the time of which the history is required. The historians of this day write of the past; and the historian of our present civil war is not yet born, who shall emulate the completeness and conciseness of Irving's Columbus, or Prescott's Ferdinand and Isabella, or Motley's Dutch Republic. Nor can we expect an early solution to the 'Fremont question,' which shall be full and satisfactory, though the length of time involved be but one hundred days. But it is different with Gen. Patterson. ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... their household in the old Penn mansion (long since torn down) on a scale of magnificence in no way warranted by Arnold's means. Their great coach-and-four was seen thundering back and forth through the streets of the quiet little town, and a motley throng of guests, Whig and Tory, were entertained at a table where nothing was thought too choice and costly for their delectation. Matters were carried with such extravagance that debt soon pressed upon the thoughtless pair, and prudent people began to inquire curiously ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... corner of this singular hall, rose a motley pile of musketry, rifles, hand-grenades, basket and cross-hilted swords, steel cuirasses, which, from their rude and sullied condition, appeared to have suffered much and hard service; buff and other coloured doublets, breast-plates, shoulder-belts with gilt and plain buckles; ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... and Levin pushed through the motley crowd on the little porch into the bar, where Mrs. Cannon administered, she set before them ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... Betty Cofer. Her frail body stoops under the weight of four-score years but her bright eyes and alert mind are those of a woman thirty years younger. A blue-checked mob cap covers her grizzled hair. Her tiny frame, clothed in a motley collection of undergarments, dress, and sweaters, is adorned by a clean white apron. Although a little shy of her strange white visitors, her innate dignity, gentle courtesy, and complete self possession indicate long association with ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... time I saw the entry of the new king, William Frederick, of the new kingdom of the Netherlands.(274) Tapestry, or branches of trees, were hung out at all the windows, or, in their failure, dirty carpets, old coats and cloaks, and even mats-a motley display of proud parade or vulgar poverty, that always, to me, made processions on ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... Ferrago on board a brig, followed by four small vessels conveying about 1,000 men—French, Poles, Corsicans, Neapolitans, and natives of Elba. On the 1st of March the expedition anchored off the town of Cannes, in Provence, where these heterogeneous forces were landed. The small and motley force of filibusters was forthwith marched on Grenoble, which was reached on the 8th. The seventh regiment of the line, under Colonel Labedoyere, had meanwhile joined the adventurer; the rest of the garrison opened their gates, delivered ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... group the motley scene discloses, False wits, false wives, false virgins, and false spouses.—Goldsmith's Epilogue to the Comedy of ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... or sermon. For the clerical virus was strong in Emerson, and it was not for nothing that he was descended from eight generations of preachers. His concern was primarily with religion and ethics, not with the tragedy and comedy of personal lives, this motley face of things, das bunte Menschenleben. Anecdotes and testimonies abound to illustrate this. See him on his travels in Europe, least picturesque of tourists, hastening with almost comic precipitation past galleries, cathedrals, ancient ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... drove along, to remarks about the people they passed, the doings of the Newport summer, concerning which he had heard all the gossip during the last few hours, the prospect of Madame Patti in opera during the coming season, horses, dogs, and mutual friends—all the motley array of subjects permissible, desultory, and amusing. Suddenly, as they bowled out on an open road by ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... be done in ten days, when a man knew what he was after. It was exactly ten days later. Bruce Gordon stood in the motley crowd inside the barnlike room where Fats ran a bar along one wall, and filled the rest of the space with assorted tables—all worn. Gordon was sweating slightly as he stood at the roulette table, where both zero and double-zero were ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... window she espied dusty flat barrens, low squat mud houses, and queer-looking little people, children naked or extremely ragged and dirty, women in loose garments with flares of red, and men in white man's garb, slovenly and motley. All these strange individuals stared apathetically as the train ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... since famous, who graduated from this school, are John Lathrop Motley, the historian, and George William Curtis, the elegant writer and able editor. The scenes and characters in Mr. Curtis's novel "Trumps" were drawn from our village. Dr. Randall, of Roxbury, but recently ...
— Annals and Reminiscences of Jamaica Plain • Harriet Manning Whitcomb
... blare of the big brass band is cheering to my heart And I like the smell of the trampled grass and elephants and hay. I take off my hat to the acrobat with his delicate, strong art, And the motley mirth of the chalk-faced clown drives all my ...
— Main Street and Other Poems • Alfred Joyce Kilmer
... the Mermaid Inn, One dark May night, Fiddling a tune that quelled our motley din, With quaint delight, It haunts me yet, as old lost airs will do, A phantom strain: Look for me once, lest I should look for you, And look ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... the priest's more philosophic pleasures. He seemed to know a great deal both about the fishing and the books, though of these not the most edifying; he spoke five or six languages, though chiefly the slang of each. He had evidently lived in varied cities and very motley societies, for some of his cheerfullest stories were about gambling hells and opium dens, Australian bushrangers or Italian brigands. Father Brown knew that the once-celebrated Saradine had spent his last few years in almost ceaseless travel, but ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... stores close, and their thousand of employees turn out into the streets. They form a motley yet effective feature among the wayfarers. The Malay girls are usually very pretty, with languishing eyes, shaded by long lashes, and supple figures, whose graceful lines are revealed by their thin clothing. In fine weather their bare feet are thrust ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... So the motley band came streaming into town. "Now tag, rag and bobtail carry a high hand." Bacon drew up a double line before the State House and demanded that some members of the Council come out to confer with him. When Colonel Spencer and Colonel Cole appeared he told them he had ...
— Bacon's Rebellion, 1676 • Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker
... like a sans-culotte was guillotined four days before Robespierre, whose death would have saved him. His young widow left prison, reduced to extreme want, and took refuge with her father-in-law, at Fontainebleau; then she made her appearance in the motley society which, first showed itself in the drawing-room of Madame Tallien, then at the Luxembourg under Barras. Rivalling Madame Tallien and Madame Recamier in popularity, she smiled through her tears, like Andromache in Homer. ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... I am at Charleston, South Carolina, and I see how hard it will be for an American to understand the possibility of such a motley assembly being reasonable or even proper. It seems to me down here that there must have been odd feelings sometimes in those days. I can only say, however, that I never personally even thought of it. East London is so democratic that one's standards are simply those of the value of the ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... sheered into the other channel and anchored. Here I was, then, fairly at anchor in the stream, Half a mile from any land but the bottom, and burning to see the ocean. That afternoon the crew came on board, a motley collection, of lately drunken seamen, of whom about half were Americans, and the rest natives of as many different countries as there were men. Mr. Marble scanned them with a knowing look, and, to my surprise, he told the captain there was good stuff among them. It ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... taste; while on the men an occasional damaged silk hat topped off a coat that would have made Joseph's of old look plain; with ironclad army shoes; or a half-worn wedding swallow-tail, eked out by a plantation broad-brim, and boots too much worn for either comfort or beauty. This motley band, led by a gentle and spiritual-faced woman, will not soon be forgotten by those who saw it depart. Leaving a few at one depot, and a few at another, to be met at the journey's end by their employer, Mrs. Griffing ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Capua, and took the command of the motley besieging force. One thousand of the best men in the fleet were sent to assist in the siege. Just at this time Nelson received a peremptory order from Lord Keith to sail with the whole of his force for the protection of Minorca; or, ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... does not enhance, ought not, we think, to diminish from the reputation of its author; but as a mannerism becomes increasingly disagreeable by repetition, we suspect that, without having less merit, this work will have less popularity than its predecessors. The style is the same "motley wear," and has the same jerking movement—seems at times a thing of shreds and patches hung on wires—and is so full of brief allusions to his own previous writings, that to a reader unacquainted with these it would be scarce intelligible. With all this it has the same vigour, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... and knew just how to avoid the patrolling guards, and he was back in the narrow chouk of the town that was a struggling stream of swaggering Pindaris, and darker skinned Marwari bunnias and shopkeepers. Hunsa pushed his way through this motley crowd and continued on to ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... On one of Motley's most glowing pages, we are told how, after the frightful siege and fall of Haarlem, and with Alkmaar closely invested by the Duke of Alva, when the cause of the Netherlands seemed in direst straits, Diedrich Sonoy, the lieutenant governor ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... are the motley systems framed, Of right transferred, of power reclaimed; Distinctions weak and vain. Wise nature mocks the wrangling herd; For unreclaimed, and untransferred, Her powers ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... ran the length of the beach, shaded by trees, and crossing a gentle stream. Along this avenue was all the life and commerce of Tai-o-hae. Two traders' shops, empty offices, a gendarme, a handful of motley half-castes lounging under the trees—this was all that was left of former greatness. Only nature had not changed. It flung over the broken remnants of the glory and the dream its lovely cloak of verdure and of flower. Man had almost ceased to be a figure in the scene ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... common council, was presiding justice, with an alderman of the city, a black man, as his associate. At a table below them sat the superintendent of police, a white man, and two white attorneys, with their huge law books and green bags before them. The bar was surrounded by a motley assemblage of black, colored, and white faces, intermingled without any regard to hue in the order of superiority and precedence. There were about a dozen cases adjudged while we were present. The court was conducted with order and dignity, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... I say when you don't get your chow you don't miss much only it kills a little time and everybody is sick in tired of doing nothing and 1 of the boys was saying tonight he wished the Dutchmens would attack so as to break the motley and Alcock said that if they did attack he hoped they would do it with gas as his nose needed a change ...
— The Real Dope • Ring Lardner
... thunder of their coming, had escaped in a fishing-boat and made his way to his other seat of Roseneath on the Clyde; but Inverary and all Argyleshire round it lay at Montrose's mercy. And, from the middle of December 1644 to about the 18th of the January following, his motley Highland and Irish host ranged through the doomed domain in three brigades, dancing diabolic reels in their glee, and wreaking the most horrible vengeance. No one knows what they did. One sees Inverary in flames, the smoke of burning huts and villages for miles and miles, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... standing behind a certain stout lady who was overshadowed by rose-coloured feathers. The magnificence of her dress reminded me of the times of the farthingale, and the motley hue of her by no means smooth skin, of the happy epoch of the black taffeta patch. An immense wart on her neck was covered by a clasp. She was saying to her cavalier, a ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... often thought that Havana might be made a dangerous rival of Monte Carlo under the one-man power, exercising its despotism with benignant intelligence and spending its income honestly upon the development of both the city and the island. The motley populace would probably be none the worse for it. The Government could upon a liberal tariff collect not less than thirty-five millions of annual revenue. Twenty-five of these millions would suffice for its own support. Ten millions a year laid out upon ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... devotion to duty. That so young a soldier was selected to conduct such an undertaking proved how surely he had deserved and won the confidence of his superior officers. In those days railroad travelling was far from pleasant. The train upon which Lieutenant Chalaron embarked at Knoxville was a motley affair,—perhaps a single passenger-car, rough and dilapidated (crowded with those who, though ill, made shift to sit up or recline upon the seats), box-cars and cattle-cars filled with suffering men helplessly sick. In ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... University of Berlin. Since his return to America he has been connected with the publishing house of Charles Scribner's Sons. His first volume, "The Human Fantasy", 1911, attracted attention by the faithfulness with which it depicted the motley life of New York. His second was "The Beloved Adventure", 1912; followed by "Love and Liberation", 1913, and "Dust and Light", 1919. The last volume, from which the selections in this anthology are taken, contains some of ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... ridges—contesting stubbornly every inch of position lost. And gray Roger knew that the planetoid was doomed. His supposedly impregnable screen was failing in spite of its utmost measure of energy, and, that defense down, the citadel would not last a minute. Therefore he summoned a chosen few of his motley crew of renegade scientists and issued brief instructions. For minutes a host of robots toiled mightily, then a portion of the shield bulged out, extended into a tube beyond the attacking layers of force, and from it there erupted a beam of violence incredible. A beam behind which was every ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... instantly be abolished without compensation to their owners; that slavery should be destroyed with like disregard of the claims (for rights he would allow none) of the proprietors, and a multitude of extravagances of the same sort. Therefore say I, Vive la Bagatelle; motley is ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... against their dazzling background. The town was snow-covered, too, and the frozen river, and wherever one went, the air was full of the gay jingle-jangle of countless sleighbells, while the streets were thronged with a motley collection of equipages, from the luxuriously upholstered double sleigh with its swaying robes and floating plumes, down to the shapeless home-made "pung" with its ragged, unlined buffalo skin snugly tucked in about the shawled and veiled grandma, who smilingly awaited her ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... be but a momentary protection, for I think in the first mile the last one went overboard, all having their covers burnt off from the frames, when a general melee took place among the deck passengers, each whipping his neighbour to put out the fire. They presented a very motley appearance on arriving at the first station." Here, "a short stop was made, and a successful experiment tried to remedy the unpleasant jerks. A plan was soon hit upon and put into execution. The three links in the couplings of the cars ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... length by the influence of books upon men, did to a certain degree really become so. Abuses of this kind were imported from one nation to another, and with the progress of refinement this diction became daily more and more corrupt, thrusting out of sight the plain humanities of Nature by a motley masquerade of tricks, quaintnesses, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... upper end of the runway a motley band of Indians were engaged in some weird worship. Harry started his horse up the steep in the shelter of the woods. When he came to a spot where a huge tree limb crossed the runway, he remembered ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... gazeth evermore at the stage below; Noteth well the players as they quickly come and go; Queens and kings and maidens fair, motley fools and friars, Lords and ladies, stately dames, mounted knights ...
— The Miracle and Other Poems • Virna Sheard
... confidence, will take the command, whatever his position. Hope, as well as timidity and fear, is infectious, and one cheery voice will revive the drooping spirits of a multitude. Paul had already established his personal ascendency in that motley company of Roman soldiers, prisoners, sailors, and disciples. Now he stands forward with calm confidence, and infuses new hope into them all. What a miraculous change passes on externals when faith looks at them! The circumstances were the same as they had been for many days. The wind was howling ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... homes to gaze on kings, queens, knights, and ladies dressed in their utmost splendor. Beggars, itinerant minstrels, venders of provisions and small luxuries, mixed with wagoners, ploughmen, laborers, and the motley troop of camp-followers, crowded round, or stretched themselves beneath the summer's sun on bundles of straw and grass, in drunken idleness. No better lodging awaited many a gay knight and lady who had travelled far to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... the Greek dramatists, if we would not lose the form and balance which are of the essence of Greek art. It is necessary also to preserve as much as possible the simplicity of diction, and to avoid words and phrases suggestive of very modern ideas. After all, it is difficult, with a material so motley and irregular as the English language, to produce anything like the pure marble of the Greek. There are translations of Greek tragedies or parts of them by writers of high poetic reputation, which are no doubt poetry, but ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... his day; Clarendon was Lord Chancellor; Burnet was a bishop and favorite of William III.; Thiers and Guizot both were prime ministers; while Gibbon, Hume, Robertson, Macaulay, Grote, Milman, Froude, Neander, Niebuhr, Mueller, Dahlman, Buckle, Prescott, Irving, Bancroft, Motley, have all been men of wealth or position. Nor do I remember a single illustrious historian who ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... and rubbings; The varying madness of the crew, The anthill's ravings bring to view; But thou shalt see all this express'd, As though 'twere in a magic chest. Write these things down for folks on earth, In hopes they may to wit give birth."— Then she a window open'd wide, And show'd a motley crowd outside, All kinds of beings 'neath the sky, As in his writings ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... that was one way of seeing Venice: but I would much rather sit at a little table on the Riva degli Schiavoni, with a plate of bread and cheese and a mezzo of Chianti before me, watching the motley crowd in the street and the many-coloured sails in the harbour; or spend a lazy afternoon in a gondola, floating through watery alley-ways that lead nowhere, and under the facades of beautiful palaces whose names I did not even care to know. Of course I should like to see a fine picture ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... Should the gas-light show to you the comely features of the Grand Senior Obadiah Jackson, Jr. Esq., on his pilgrimage upward, you would scarcely be willing to believe that he was the presiding genius of the room in the upper regions, and bound to dispense light and wisdom to the motley crowd who would so soon be filling the hall with fumes of cheap tobacco and the poorest quality of whiskey, mingled with the fragrance of onions, borne by gentle zephyrs from yonder open vestibule. ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... guns. (I was going to say the "long greens," as they and battle-ships always go together, no matter who pays the taxes.) But still it charms the visitor with its fine climate and gay people. It was Carnival Day when we arrived, and the motley crowds in the street, in variegated raiment, pelted the "Corks" with all kinds of flowers ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... And on a sudden, like leaves by the wind, all these were driven before the silent throngs of the oppressed; and they were innumerable as the sands of the sea. Their thin faces were earthy with want and cavernous from disease, and their eyes were dull with despair. They passed in their tattered motley, some in the fantastic rags of the beggars of Albrecht Duerer and some in the grey cerecloths of Le Nain; many wore the blouses and the caps of the rabble in France, and many the dingy, smoke-grimed weeds of English poor. And they surged onward like a riotous crowd in narrow streets ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... satisfied that he consented to let Mr. Marsden go out and arrange the new settlement, to which he presented two cows and a bull. These, with three horses, and some sheep and poultry, were embarked on board the Active, with a motley collection of passengers, the eight Maories, the three missionaries with their wives and children, a sawyer, a smith, Mr. Marsden, and another gentleman named John Lydiard Nicholas, the master ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... disinterested friendship. It was a fine morning: before him lay the whole scenery of the town, in its great variety of clay houses, huts, sheds, green open places affording pasture for oxen, horses, camels, donkeys, and goats, in motley confusion, with many beautiful specimens of the vegetable kingdom—the slender date-palm, the spreading alleluba, and the majestic silk-cotton tree— the people in all varieties of costume, from the almost naked ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston |
