"Motley" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... crown-pieces; butchers' boys, on stout little nags, could not get near enough to deliver the legs of mutton which had been ordered; the lumbering coal-carts 'still stopped the way.' A crowd—the easiest curiosity in the world to collect—soon gathered round the motley mob of butchers, bakers, candlestick-makers, and makers and sellers of everything else that mortal can want; the mob thronged the pavement, the carts filled the road, and soon the carriages of the noble of the land dashed up in all the panoply of state, and ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... 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 ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... his command were, as was the rule in the Papal armies, composed of motley companies of alien mercenaries and forced levies, but, in addition, very many soldiers of fortune, attracted by his fame, rallied to his banner. Very soon the "Bande Nere," as Giovanni's force was called, ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... motley throng the unoccupied and observant man will easily pick out many individuals of gaunt outline, a bilious aspect and a staid sober demeanour, each carrying a small valise, a carpet-bag, a long Boston coat or ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... picture. Then over against the crenellated wall, under the tablet bearing the quaint inscription picked out in choice Latin, Ferval saw a tall girl. Her bare head would not have marked her in a crowd where motley prevailed; it was her pose that attracted him,—above all, her mediaeval face, with its long, drooping nose which recalled some graven image of Jean Goujon. Her skin was tanned; her hair, flame-coloured, was confined by a classic fillet; her eyes, Oriental in fulness, ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... for some moments with fixed gaze upon the royalist fugitive, who with the felt hat of an insurgent, the jacket of an infantry soldier, and the pantaloons of a dragoon officer, presented a somewhat motley appearance. ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... "And yet a fool—a motley fool! Poor old Samp—kept it up to the end! I take it from the guarded way the paper refers to his faults, 'as who of us have not,' that he died of the tremens or something like that." The Colonel paused and smiled just perceptibly, and went on: "Yet I see ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... and Tom went into the beer hall. At the far end was a stage, and on it stood the minstrel, dimmed by intervening tobacco smoke. The floor was covered with damp saw-dust. The place was thronged with a motley crowd, sailors, gamblers, with here and there a sprinkle of wayward respectability. Painted girls attended the tables and everywhere was the slopping of beer and ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... said, "Where is the life which late we led?" That motley clown in Arden wood, Whom humorous Jaques with envy viewed, Not even that clown could amplify, On this trite text, so long as I. Eleven years we now may tell, Since we have known each other well; Since, riding side by side, our hand, First drew the voluntary ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... I have gone here and there, And made myself a motley to the view; Gor'd mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear, Made old offences of ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... other peoples is hardly yet appreciable So it happens, that whilst the history of a small state in Europe like Holland, Belgium, or Denmark, may win a writer a world-wide reputation, as was the case with Motley, on the other hand, the history of a colonial community is only associated in the minds of the foreign public with petty political conflicts, and not with those great movements of humanity which have affected so deeply the political and social ...
— The Intellectual Development of the Canadian People • John George Bourinot
... great and mystic brotherhood of mountain worshippers. We are a motley crowd drawn from all lands and all ages, and we are certainly a peculiar people. The sight and smell of the mountain affect us like nothing else on earth. In some of us they arouse excessive physical energy and lust of conquest in a manner not unlike that which suggests itself to the terrier ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... on brighter fields afar Has walked among the daisies, and has breathed The glory of the mountain winds, and sheathed The stubborn sword of Night's last-shining star. In Bathrolaire when Day's old doors unbar The motley mask, fantastically wreathed, Pass through a strong portcullis brazen teethed, And enter glowing mines of cinnabar. Stupendous prisons shut them out from day, Gratings and caves and rayless catacombs, And the unrelenting rack and tourniquet Grind death in cells where ...
— Forty-Two Poems • James Elroy Flecker
... at the hatchway of the Black Eagle, checking the cargo as it was hoisted out of her, while McPherson and his motley assistants, dock labourers, seamen, and black Kroomen from the coast, worked and toiled in the depths below. The engine rattled and snorted, and the great chain clanked as it ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and beneath it, of course, the everlasting black silk handkerchief, with the corners dangling over the neck behind. Following him was his servant, in slouched hat and spangled garters, carrying an old Spanish musket over his shoulder, and casting somewhat timid looks at the motley assemblage of Indians and trappers, who every now and then jostled against him. Beyond these, there were a score or two of go-ahead Yankees—"gentlemen traders," I suppose they called themselves—with a few pretty Californian women, who are on their way with their husbands to the mines. I noticed ...
— California • J. Tyrwhitt Brooks
... Where the funeral once took its slow and solemn way, rouged processions pass, tinsel heroes strut, and vapour. Thousand-tinted garlands supplant the pale immortelles that decked the graves; the sable cloak is doffed, and motley's the only wear. Surely actors must be bold men to tread a stage covering so many mouldering relics of mortality. Not for Potosi, and the Real del Monte to boot, would we do it, lest, at the witching hour, some ghastly skeleton array should rise and drive us from the Golgotha, or ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... Gottingen and during 1910 at the 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 Mr. Wheelock's ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... up the sands of time, "loll out its large tongue, lick the whole labor flat" The work has prospered so far only because nobody but its promoters has taken it seriously. It has not engaged attention from those having the knowledge and the insight to discern beneath its cap-and-bells and the motley that is its only wear a serious menace to all that civilized men hold precious in woman. It is of the nature of men—themselves cheerful polygamists, with no penitent intentions—to set a high value upon chastity in woman. (We need not ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... any three men tackle this crowd, that's what!" he went on to remark, as he swept his eye proudly over the motley array of weapons; for even Allan had armed himself, having a stout stick, with which he doubtless felt able to render a good account of himself in ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... treason was a moot question which admitted of no partisan treatment. But Schiller's genius triumphed splendidly over the difficulties inherent in the subject. In the Camp we get a picturesque view of the motley soldatesca which was the basis of Wallenstein's power and prestige. In The Piccolomini we see the nature of the dangerous game he is playing, and in Wallenstein's Death the unheroic hero becomes very ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... these things work themselves into my mind and feed me, without a power of satiating me. The wonder of these sights impels me into night-walks about her crowded streets, and I often shed tears in the motley Strand from fulness of joy at so much life.' There, surely, is the poem of London, and it has almost more than the rapture, in its lover's catalogue, of Walt Whitman's poems of America. Almost to the end, he could say (as he does again ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... ashore, but finally, not appreciating the appearance of the motley crowd, we pushed on until we reached Plank Lane, where, the crowd of idlers being a little less dense, we summoned up pluck enough ...
— Through Canal-Land in a Canadian Canoe • Vincent Hughes
... 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 gambling places of one-story, with a false timber wall ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... all was in sad, sober, and solemn array, contrasting with the motley concourse in the court. Little Arthur, dressed in black, stood by the side of his uncle, to receive the greetings of his yeoman vassals, as they came in, one by one, with clownish courtesy, but hearty respect and affection, and great satisfaction ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... one to the other of the passers-by who had crowded in, and the grave gentlemanly Turks bowed and left in the most courteous manner, while the others, a very motley assembly, showed some disposition to stay, but were eventually persuaded to go outside, ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... with benches round them. Here we took our meals; which, although sufficient, were not too delicate,—salt pork being the chief dish. Rough as were the men, too, they were tolerably well-behaved; but quarrels occasionally took place, as might have been expected among such a motley crowd. ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... churl or ruffian, that in wealth has thriven, May match his offspring with the proudest race: Thus everything is mix'd, noble and base! If then in outward manner, form, and mind, You find us a degraded, motley kind, Wonder no more, my friend! the cause is plain, And to lament the ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... tassel. Max came next, and placed beside the cap a small silver watch, his last birthday gift, with a bright steel chain attached. Otto brought a great picture-book, just sent him by his godmother; Rudolph a tiny marble vase, richly sculptured; and so on, until a still more motley collection than before lay upon ...
— The Big Nightcap Letters - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... dotted with crimson and gold; expanses of zinnias like great daisies; expanses of petunias with petals like soft cambric through which rosy flesh tints gleamed; and other fields, with flowers they could not recognise spreading in carpets beneath the sun, in a motley brilliance that was softened by the ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... with the motley throng, my ears alert for any spoken opinions. I had seen the flying-belt thrown from the machine and the stoppage of the engine. I wanted now to learn something of the hot breath of the people who had set it in motion eleven months and ten ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... of the fifty-fourth regiment showed a kindly spirit of comradeship by sending their band from Colberg. Otherwise, as is usually the case in the country, we were confined to our family circle; only Motley, the former American Ambassador in London, a friend of my early youth, happened to be here on a visit. Besides her Majesty the Queen, his Majesty the King of Bavaria, and their Royal Highnesses Prince Carl and Friedrich Carl, and his Imperial ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... bewildering to unaccustomed eyes than the motley crowd which business or pleasure daily collects at some of our much-frequented railway stations? To the two girls, whose ideas of a crowd were for the most part associated with the quiet, orderly gatherings in the kirk-yard on the Sabbath-day, the ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... and around them all, a hideous concourse of vagabonds, male and female, in uncounted thousands, armed with every conceivable weapon, yelling, blaspheming, and crowding against the carriages so that they surged to and fro like ships in a storm. This motley multitude kept up an incessant discharge of fire-arms loaded with bullets, and the balls often struck the ornaments of the carriages, and the king and queen were often almost suffocated with the smoke of powder. ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... drunk, and spends the greater part of the year carrying the tribute either to the Abyssinian Lion, or to his other master the Pasha of Khartoum. A few days after our arrival at Metemma he returned from Abyssinia, and politely paid us a visit, accompanied by a motley and howling train of followers. We returned his call; but he had got drunk in the interval, and was at least uncivil, if ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... small trading place, where trappers, half-breeds, gay, frivolous Canadian boatmen, &c., &c., congregated and revelled, with that lightness and buoyancy of spirit inherited from their French forefathers; the indolent Creole of St. Louis caring for little more than the enjoyment of the present hour; a motley population, half-civilized, half-barbarous, thrown, on his canvas, into one general, confused (I allow highly picturesque) mass, without respect of persons: but it is fair to say, with due homage to the talent of the sketcher, who has verged slightly on caricature ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... dishes because she was lunching with "Streff," he became again his old whimsical companionable self. Once or twice she tried to turn the talk to his altered future, and the obligations and interests that lay before him; but he shrugged away from the subject, questioning her instead about the motley company at Violet Melrose's, and fitting a droll or malicious anecdote to each of the people ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... perches over the great stone gateway on Ellis Island, as he watches the procession that files through it into the United States day after day, and never ends. He looks out of his grave, unblinking eye at the motley crowd, but gives no sign. Does he ask: "Where are the Pilgrim Fathers, the brave Huguenots, the patient Puritans, the sturdy priests, and the others that came for conscience' sake to build upon this continent a home for freedom? ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... incontinently go down with all hands. A fool is generally the wisest person out. The wise man must shut his eyes to all the perils and horrors that lie round him; but the cap and bells can go bobbing along the most slippery ledges and the bauble will not stir up sleeping lions. Hurray! for motley, for a good sound insouciance, for a healthy ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... which I had left so dull and quiet, was full of strangers, traffic, and noise. The neat little Moravian church was filled by a motley crowd each Sunday, in which the few Christians were distinguishable by their clean faces and clothes and their devout air; and the Medical Mission Hospital and Dispensary, which in winter have an average attendance of only a hundred patients a month, were daily thronged ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)
... detail of this warlike experiences—and the absurd grimaces which he made in order to enforce his story, provoked not only the risibility of Charles, but even of the statesmen around him, and added absurdity to the motley complexion of the scene. The King terminated this dispute, by ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... You must take up with blue now; blue is the only wear for a Fairfax. Most men might wear motley for a sign of their convictions. Let us return to the octagon parlor; it is cheerful with a fire after dinner. At Abbotsmead there are not many evenings when a fire is not ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... public squares seemed to be full of motley, ill-clad, ill-nourished, but formidable multitudes. Towards evening the tradesmen began to shut up their shops, and a regiment of cavalry paraded the principal streets with a band that played ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... 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 confined him to the wagon at nighttime, and ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... relations. It is easily earned repetition to state that Josephine St. Auban's was a presence not to be concealed. Even such a boat as the Mount Vernon offered a total deck space so cramped as to leave secrecy or privacy well out of the question, even had the motley and democratic assemblage of passengers been disposed to accord either. Yet there was something in the appearance of this young woman and her companion which caused all the heterogeneous groups of humanity to make way for them, as presently they ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... acquaintance as long as he and they lived, and was ever ready to show them acts of kindness. He for a considerable time used to visit 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. But at last—as Mr. David Hume related to me from Mr. Garrick—he denied himself this amusement ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... This motley crew, who formed the first superior court, had but one trait in common: they belonged to the clique who controlled the patronage; and as it began so it continued to the end, for Hutchinson, the last chief justice but one, was a merchant; yet he was also probate judge, lieutenant-governor, councillor, ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... is described by W.E. Motley, R.F.A. "Things became very warm for us," he says, "when the Germans found the range. In fact it became so hot that an order was passed to abandon the guns temporarily. This is the time when our men don't obey orders, so they ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick
... almost its solid membership, were a motley crew. Every negro type was there, from the genteel butler to the clodhopper from the cotton and rice fields. Some had on second-hand seedy frock-coats their old master had given them before the war, glossy and threadbare. Old stovepipe ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... would have found it difficult to believe that this was the fleet which had just fought the greatest sea fight in the history of the world. Yet the decks of the seaplane carrier Engadine were covered with men in motley clothes, a grim reminder of the severity of the ordeal, for they were the survivors from the thousands who had manned the Princess Royal and Invincible. On the high poop a fleet chaplain was surrounded by figures in ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... little China Coast steamer marched up Manila Bay, Trask stood under the bridge on the skimpy "promenade deck" and waited impatiently for the doctor's boat to come alongside. He was the only white passenger among a motley lot of Chinese merchants and half-castes of varied hues, and he was glad the passage ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... 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 which distinguish the black regiments to-day,—loyalty to their ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... the commercial relations of England draw representatives of trading committees or subject races from all parts of the globe, and the faces and costumes of the Hindu, the Parsee, the Lascar and the ubiquitous Chinaman mingle in the motley crowd with the merchants of Europe and America. The streets of London are, in this respect, to the modern what the great Palace of Tyre must have been to the ancient world. But pile Carthage on Tyre, Venice on Carthage, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... close behind; but so rapid was the flight along the wide avenue, that the astonished citizens, as they poured forth from their dwellings to learn the cause of alarm, were only able to comprehend the nature of the case in time to fall in with the motley mass in pursuit (as many a one did that night), to raise an anxious prayer to heaven, as they refused to join in the pursuit, that the panting fugitive might escape, and the merciless soul dealer for once be disappointed of his prey. And now with the speed of ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... eagerly enough, and ranged themselves before the bunks, the faces mostly those of northern Europe, although a negro or two was among them. As the Swede ceased calling, six or seven yet remained clustered in front of me, a motley lot, one of them an Indian, the others mostly half-breeds. I glanced from face to ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... in no colder latitude, the cosy breakfasts that prefaced days of real enjoyment—the midnight revels of the bal masque! And then the carnival!—those wild weeks when the Lord of Misrule wields his motley scepter—leading from one reckless frolic to another till Mardi Gras culminates in a giddy whirl of delirious fun on which, at midnight, Lent drops ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... his universal scepticism, and for the unsettled notions he drew out on his motley page, which has been attributed to his incapacity of forming decisive opinions. "Que scais-je?" was his motto, The same accusation may reach the gentle ERASMUS, who alike offended the old catholics and the new reformers. The real source of their vacillations we may discover ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... wing, and hurled him into the ocean. At the noise of his fall, the dying Powers sat up in their beds of pain; and stealthily advancing with furtive tread, the royal spiders made partition of Europe, and the purple of Caesar became the motley of Harlequin. ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... Sterne's latest letters might have infused so much pity into the polite audience that they, like his own Recording Angel, might have blotted out his faults with a tear. But that was not Thackeray's way. Charlotte Bronte found "a finished taste and ease" in the Lectures, a "something high bred." Motley describes their style as "hovering," and their method as "the perfection of lecturing to high-bred audiences." Mr. Marzials quotes this expression "hovering" as admirably descriptive. It is. By judicious selection, by ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... paths which led to the Palace of Princely Pleasure; for so the travelling minstrels had termed Kenilworth in the songs which already had come forth in anticipation of the revels which were there expected. In the midst of this motley show, mendicants were exhibiting their real or pretended miseries, forming a strange though common contrast betwixt the vanities and the sorrows of human existence. All these floated along with the immense tide of population ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... thousands, and the field presents a gay picture framed in a quadrangle of equipages. It is sometimes difficult, even by charging large admission-fees, to keep the number of spectators within convenient limits. Notwithstanding the motley assemblage which a match always attracts, so unobjectionable are the associations of the cricket-field that clergymen do not feel it unbecoming to participate in the diversion, either as ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... employments. Not to mention the strong probability, that the lawfulness of taking oaths may be revealed to the Quakers, who then will stand upon as good a foot for preferment, as any other loyal subject. It is easy[5] to imagine, under such a motley administration of affairs, what a clashing there will be of interests and inclinations, what puttings and haulings backwards and forwards, what a zeal and bias in each religionist, to advance his own tribe, and depress the others. For, I suppose nothing will be readier ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... loose, Cal!" cried Eddring, suddenly. "Open the gates! Let 'em out! I want to hear 'em holler!" The pack poured out, motley, vociferous, eager for the chase, filling the air with their wild music, with a riot of primeval, savage life. "Get me a horse saddled, Cal, quick," cried Eddring. "I want to feel leather under me again. I want to feel the air in my ears. I've got to ride, to ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... presenting it with a motley-coloured hand; "it's for you to take to London town and not ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 7th, 1920 • Various
... a student at Goettingen, and the man of whom he spoke with warm affection all his life, was the American historian Motley. ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... its few signatures of antiquity, have lost that little and almost only strength and support which they derived from ancient phrases. "Such alterations, even if executed with prudence and judgment, only corrupt what they endeavour to explain; and exhibit a motley performance, belonging to no character of writing, and which contains more improprieties than those which it professes to remove." This forcible criticism is worthy of our poetical antiquary; the same feeling was experienced by Pasquier, when Marot, in his Rifacciamento ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... from Mr M'Lean may be allowed, as embodying the descriptions often given by Dr Burton of the motley crew of competitors for the scholarships and bursaries dispensed by the university: "Gazing round the room, I noted that my competitors consisted of raw-boned red-haired Highlandmen, fresh from their native hills, with all their rusticity about them. All the northern ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... Art Patrons discovered applying their eyes to peepholes, through which a motley collection of coloured lithographs of the Crimean Campaign, faded stereoscopic-views, Scriptural engravings, and daubed woodcuts from the "Illustrated Police News," ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 3, 1892 • Various
... of success, had certainly given the lady's complexion a fine tint. Her dainty profile offered a striking contrast to the motley crew of negroid Arabs who surrounded her. And she came to meet them in a buoyant spirit, though the fierce sun was scorching her delicate skin through the thin fabric ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... went up to the gate and rattled the latch. Within arose the barking of dogs; but the motley-haired pack ran back, wagging their tails when they saw the well-known face. Ivan Ivanovitch traversed the courtyard, in which were collected Indian doves, fed by Ivan Nikiforovitch's own hand, melon-rinds, vegetables, broken ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... Latin books, in motley row, Invite us to the task— Gay Horace, stately Cicero; Yet there's one verb, when once we know, No higher skill we ask: This ranks all other lore above— We've learned ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... buckles, and a lawn neckcloth of many folds. His hair was innocent of powder, and cut short in what the period supposed to be the high Roman fashion. It was his chief touch of the Republican. In the matter of dress he had not his leader's courage. Abhorring slovenliness and the Jacobin motley, he would not affect them. He was dressed in his best for this evening; and if his attire was not chosen as Ludwell Cary would have chosen, it was yet the dress of a gentleman, and it ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... the most 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 slave up to the most ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... and men alike lose all self-control. They run to escape the fearful storm. They leave arms, ammunition, tents, blankets, trunks, clothes, books, letters, papers, pictures,—everything. They pour out of the intrenchments into the road leading to Dover, a motley rabble. A small steamboat lies in the creek above the fort. Some rush on board and steam up river with the utmost speed. Others, in their haste and fear, plunge into the creek and sink to rise no more. All fly except a brave little ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... motley variety of subjects a couple of people will casually rake over in the course of a day's tramp! There being no constraint, a change of subject is always in order, and so a body is not likely to keep pegging at a single topic until it grows tiresome. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... most distant from each other, and whose languages, customs and ceremonies are quite dissimilar. If any proof were wanted to shew the power of European influence in removing prejudices or effecting a total revulsion of their former habits and customs, a stronger one could scarcely be given than this motley assembly of "all nations and languages." In their primitive state such a meeting could never take place; the distant tribes would never have dreamt of attempting to pass through the country of the intermediate ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... partially hid the groundwork of dusty matting, taken over with the bungalow from its former occupant, and in places revealing the stone floor beneath. The broad mantel-shelf was given over to books, a motley crowd in divers stages of dilapidation. 'The Master of Ballantrae' shouldered 'The Queen's Regulations,' one would fancy with a swaggering hint of scorn; a battered copy of the 'Pilgrim's Progress' stood resignedly between Bogle's ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... decayed. She was clad in a russet gown, much the worse for the wear, and a scarlet cloak, or rather a cloak that had once been scarlet, but was now completely faded from its original color. It had been broken here and there, but was pieced with different colored cloths, so as to appear a motley and strange garment; and her bony feet were bare and unprotected. Nanny, from different circumstances, was unanimously elected the witch or bugbear of the village; and though the brats were then so busy annoying her, at night, or in a lonesome place, they ...
— Ellen Duncan; And The Proctor's Daughter - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... had come up with the furnace men, a motley crew in all stages of Sunday-morning dishevelment, and armed only as a mob may arm itself at a moment's notice. Caleb, the veteran, looked the squad over with a slow smile gathering the wrinkles at the corners of ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... Texans—for so Jean at once classed them—had ever seen Jean, but they knew him and knew that he was expected in Grass Valley. All but the one who had spoken happened to have their faces in shadow under the wide-brimmed black hats. Motley-garbed, gun-belted, dusty-booted, they gave Jean the same impression of latent force that he had encountered ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... the page Charles with a cudgel, John the cook with his longest spit, Red Swire the aged man-at-arms with a formidable ax swung over his snowy head, and Weathercote the minstrel with a boar-spear. Yet this motley array was fired with the spirit of the house, and under the lead of the fierce old soldier they would certainly have flung themselves upon the ready swords of the archers, had the Lady Ermyntrude not swept ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... with a prologue, but it is spoken by one of the people of the play; whether in his character as Tonio of the tragedy or Pagliaccio of the comedy there is no telling. He speaks the sentiments of the one and wears the motley of the other. Text and music, however, are ingeniously contrived to serve as an index to the purposes of the poet and the method and material of the composer. In his speech the prologue tells us that the author of the play is fond of the ancient custom of such ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... yellowish-grey and greyish-lilac houses, covered with stucco, which was peeling off, with their sunken windows, gaudy sign-boards, iron canopies over steps, and wretched little green-grocer's shops; the facades, inscriptions, sentry-boxes, troughs; the golden cap of St. Isaac's; the senseless motley Bourse; the granite walls of the fortress, and the broken wooden pavement; the barges loaded with hay and timber; the smell of dust, cabbage, matting, and hemp; the stony-faced dvorniks in sheepskin coats, with high collars; the cab-drivers, huddled up dead asleep on their decrepit cabs—yes, ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... now eager to strike the blow. Once clear of Montreal and its gang of parasites, he soon had his motley army in hand, in spite of all kinds of difficulties. In May Bourlamaque had begun rebuilding Ticonderoga. In July Lake Champlain began to swarm with boats, canoes, and sailing vessels, all moving south towards the doomed fort on Lake George. Montcalm's whole force numbered ...
— The Passing of New France - A Chronicle of Montcalm • William Wood
... a motley crowd of young men of all ages from seventeen to thirty or more. Students of the everlasting type, sent here by their parents as a last resource, for—"he can always be an engineer"; young sparks who paid more ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... the junks, flags flying from every mast. On the dark green, which is the dominant shade around, stand out these thousand scraps of bunting, emblems of the different nationalities, all displayed, all flying in honor of far-distant France. The colors most prevailing in this motley assemblage are the white flag with a red ball, emblem of the Empire of the Rising Sun, where ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... moving down one of the gulches in the rear of the extreme right. This proved to be the rear guard of Joseph's outfit. The wily savage had outwitted the troops. He had left a few men to skirmish with Rawn's pickets, and while the command was expecting an assault in front he, with his motley band, had filed up and down through the gulches and woods, past the line of works, and was now well on his way down the creek. Rawn at once deployed his forces and pursued the fugitives, but did not overtake them until they had reached ...
— The Battle of the Big Hole • G. O. Shields
... 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 ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... began to swarm and whirl and quiver with the motley life of a huge city: beggars and jugglers, dancers and musicians, gilded youths in their chariots, and daughters of joy looking out from their windows, all intoxicated with the mere delight of living ...
— The Lost Word - A Christmas Legend of Long Ago • Henry Van Dyke
... The sun was shining out already through the wind-driven bright rain. Jewels of blue had begun to star the black and white and golden clouds. A strange white light-ghost of Spring passing in this last violent outburst-painted the leaves of every tree; and a hundred savage hues had come down like a motley of bright ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... bridge of boats, across the Rhine, and changed horses at Ogersheim and Spire, sleeping at Germezsheim. The Rhine flows along the meadows which skirt the town of Spire; and while the horses were changing, we took a stroll about the cathedral. It is large, but of a motley style of architecture—and, in part, of a Moorish cast of character. Nothing but desolation appears about its exterior. The roof is sunk, and threatens to fall in every moment. No service (I understood) was performed within—but in a contiguous ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... memory of the Americans? Our cause has lost an ardent supporter in Mrs. Browning; and did we dare rebel against God's will, we should grieve deeply that she was not permitted to glorify the Right in America as she has glorified it in Italy. Among the last things that she read were Motley's letters on the "American Crisis," and the writer will ever hold in dear memory the all but final conversation had with Mrs. Browning, in which these letters were discussed and warmly approved. In referring to the attitude taken ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... in the outer office, but he walked through them as though the place were empty. Rumours sprang up behind him of which he was unconscious; the long-expected quarrel had come; Austen had joined the motley ranks of the rebels under Mr. Crewe. Only the office boy, Jimmy Towle, interrupted the jokes that were flying by repeating, with dogged vehemence, "I tell you it ain't so. Austen kicked Ham downstairs. Ned Johnson saw him." Nor ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... guns on the cliffs of Cape Diamond. Along the foot of the precipice was a row of unsightly and unsubstantial buildings, where the scant population lived, carried on their few handicrafts, and stored their winter provisions. It was a motley crowd which, in the dreary days, sheltered itself here from the cold blasts that blew along the river channel. There was the military officer, who sought to give some color to the scene in showing as much of his brilliant garb as the cloak ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... of overland express and freight line, styled the Market Wagon, ran in and out of the town from several directions. One or more of these conveyances started from as far east as the Housatonic River, and they frequently crowded passengers in amongst their motley wares. ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... despiser of cant, an advocate of right, a hater of shams,—a hale, hearty old gentleman, whose notions are not dyspeptic croakings, but healthful opinions of good digestion, and who, though he wear motley and indulge in drolleries without measure, is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... retreating host, to hear the beat of their invisible wings, the sound of their mocking laughter, or the swell of angel music dying away in the distance. Far otherwise is it with the savage. To his imagination the world still teems with those motley beings whom a more sober philosophy has discarded. Fairies and goblins, ghosts and demons, still hover about him both waking and sleeping. They dog his footsteps, dazzle his senses, enter into him, harass and deceive and torment him in a thousand ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... describe minutely the appearance of the motley crowd through which our adventurers elbowed their way, gazing curiously on the strange scene, which seemed to them more like a dream than reality, after their long sojourn in the solitudes of the forest. Processions headed by long-robed priests with flambeaux and crucifixes; young girls ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... 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 has been poor ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... whose volume of sketches, "A Motley," is now in process of being reviewed, is just finishing another novel, which will no doubt be published in the autumn. That novels have to be finished is the great disadvantage of the novelist's career—otherwise, as every one knows, a bed of roses, a velvet cushion, a ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... amphibious breed, Motley fruit of mongrel seed; By the dam from lordlings sprung. By the sire exhaled from dung: Think on every vice in both, Look on him, and see their growth. View him on the mother's side,[2] Fill'd with falsehood, spleen, and pride; Positive and overbearing, Changing still, and still adhering; Spiteful, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... "It was a motley crowd that I was the means of bringing to your table," said Stanton, with an oath; "and I've no doubt you have wished us all ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... splendid steel-clad horses, marched through the town. The bishops and clergymen in gorgeous robes made a more solemn, but not less attractive show. The trade-guilds were out in their best clothing, bearing the tools of their trades instead of arms. Clowns in motley, merry-makers of all kinds, great city dignitaries, lords and commons—everybody, in short, made a mad and merry holiday; and at night the houses were illuminated, and great bonfires were ...
— Strange Stories from History for Young People • George Cary Eggleston
... a Rhenish knight and the ablest of his class, speedily took advantage of the emperor's absence from Germany in 1522 to precipitate a Knights' War. In supreme command of a motley army of fellow-knights, Franz made an energetic attack upon the rich landed estates of the Catholic prince-bishop of Trier. At this point, the German princes, lay as well as ecclesiastical, forgetting their religious predilections ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... pleasanter to us to be remembered by the friends we still have, as with each year they grow fewer. We have lost Agassiz and Sumner from our circle, and I found Motley stricken with threatening illness (which I hope is gradually yielding to treatment), in the profoundest grief at the loss of his wife, another old and dear friend of mine. So you may be assured that I feel most sensibly your kind attention, and send you my heartfelt ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... loved him tenderly despite his worth. Prompted by what caprice I cannot say, He called the Fool before the throne one day And to that jester seriously said: "I'll abdicate, and you shall reign instead, While I, attired in motley, will make sport To entertain your Majesty ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... white, belonging to rebels, provided they would take up arms and join the royal troops." The governor again came on shore at Norfolk, where some hundreds of loyalists and negroes joined the governor. With this motley force, aided by two hundred soldiers of the line, he made an unsuccessful attack on the provincials on the 9th of December. He again repaired on board of one of the ships, and on the first of January, 1776, the frigate Liverpool, two corvettes and the governor's ...
— An Account of Some of the Principal Slave Insurrections, • Joshua Coffin
... wheezed and puffed like a fat old woman in a tight frock, we reached Tampakan, and anchored as near the shore as was practicable, blowing our whistle to attract the attention of the villagers. In a few moments several praus and bancas were poled out to the ship by a motley array of half-clad Moros, big, brown, lithe fellows, each with a turban or fez topping off his black hair, and all armed with a goodly array of sharp knives. Over the side of the launch they swarmed, talking excitedly with ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... foreigners from most nations, several of her majesty's subjects we had on board being tinkers, tailors, haymakers, pedlars, fiddlers, and the like, with one negro and ten boys; yet we hoped to be well manned with this motley crew, when they had got their sea-legs and had learnt the use of arms. We had double the number of officers usual in privateers, which was meant to prevent mutinies, so usual in long voyages, and to secure a succession in case of deaths. Our holds were so full of provisions, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... he made to the motley and their friends last Monday night? That was as fine an interpretation of the ethics involved in the enforcement of law as I have ever heard or read—delivered to simple minds unversed in the science ethical. He landed hot shot into the very stronghold of the enemy and his ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... 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 of public resort, and he recruits his delicate ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... circuit to the left, to get round the village. I could not pass through it, the streets were so crowded, but meeting on this detour Major McKinley, of Crook's staff, he spread the news of my return through the motley ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... proprietor's name, Luigi Poggi; as he drove past he saw an old Italian woman bargaining with smiles and lively gestures over the open counter. Farther on, from an improvised wooden booth, the raucous voice of the phonograph was jarring the night air and entertaining a motley group gathered in front of it. Across the street a flaunting poster announced "Moving Picture Show for a Nickel." Vehicles of all descriptions, from a Maine "jigger" to a "top buggy," were stationary along the village thoroughfare, their various steeds hitched to every available stone post. In ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... intemperate of Maggie, and by the time Bidwell came clattering up the trail with a big freight-wagon the whole gulch was aroused, and a dozen men encircled the heap of motley bags on which Mrs. Delaney sat, ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... or little group of persons in this mass of human beings seemed almost unaware of the presence of the rest. You would see a family party of peasants gathered round their ox cart and making a meal of bread and raw red wine without so much as a glance at the motley thousands streaming by at their elbows; a soldier would strip off his wet clothes on the road's edge to change them for some that he had looted from a wayside store with no apparent perception of the women trudging past; nor did they seem ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... where I used to buy boot-laces on Saturday nights, and saw the corner where I once sat down on a stool to have a pair of ready-made half-boots fitted on. I have been seduced more than once, in that street on a Saturday night, by a show-van at a corner; and have gone in, with a very motley assemblage, to see the Fat-pig, the Wild-indian, and the Little-lady. There were two or three hat-manufactories there then (I think they are there still); and among the things which, encountered anywhere or under any circumstances, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... richer collection of love-songs than Scotland. We have a song for every phase of the motley-faced passion,—from its ludicrous aspect to its highest and most rapturous form. Every pulsation of the heart, as moved by love, has had its poetic expression; and we have lovers pouring out the depths of their souls to all kinds of maids, and in all kinds of situations. And maids are ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... type of vacant head, with vacant face, The Proteus Hill[17] put in his modest plea,— Let Favour speak for others, Worth for me.— For who, like him, his various powers could call Into so many shapes, and shine in all? 110 Who could so nobly grace the motley list, Actor, Inspector, Doctor, Botanist? Knows any one so well—sure no one knows— At once to play, prescribe, compound, compose? Who can—but Woodward[18] came,—Hill slipp'd away, Melting, like ghosts, before the rising day. With that low cunning, which in fools[19] ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... not long to wait to test old Gilsey's advice. He was sitting in the public room of the Windsor, a few evenings later, among the motley crew that thronged that popular resort, who were discoursing of many things, from J. Quincy Plume's last editorial on "The New Fanny Elssler," to the future of Gumbolt, when Mr. Plume himself entered. His appearance was the signal for some humor, for Mr. Plume had long passed the time when ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... fugitive from justice; the man who has elected to try life with another mate; the wandering hobo who means to come back some sweet day but not now; the cowardly pregnancy deserter; the low-grade irresponsible—a motley crew. They are grouped together here for convenience, since they constitute those with whom coercive measures have ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... in the walls of the houses, and open at the front. In these shops the few Moorish industries are carried on, such as embroidery in gold and silver thread, the making of kid slippers of every kind and colour, the manufacture of gold and silver ornaments. To European eyes the native city, with its motley throng of Moors, Arabs, Jews and negroes, is the most interesting sight in Algiers. Various squares are set apart for markets, and here are to be witnessed scenes of the greatest ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... falls. The men have lived and are dead. La Noue, the Huguenot Bayard, now exists only in a dusty memoir and a page of Motley. Madame de Montpensier is forgotten; all of her, save her golden scissors. Mayenne, D'Aumale, a verse preserves their names. Only Henry—the "good King," as generations of French peasants called him—remains a living figure: his strength and weakness, his sins and virtues, as well known, as thoroughly ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... 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 a lone ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... A motley company have here performed their parts: Savages of the mound-building age, rearing upon these banks curious earthworks for archaeologists of the nineteenth century to puzzle over; Iroquois war-parties, silently swooping upon sleeping villages ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... strange looking place it is!" she thought, as the motley collection of board shanties and canvas houses came in sight;—for the famous Chloride District had been discovered but a few months before, and the Pacific Railroad was only four weeks open. "I wish Jack had come to meet me! I'm sure I don't see how I am to find ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... enough line. Two such examples in real life as Rousseau and Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, one such demonstration of the same moral in fiction as Werther, were enough to discourage the man of feeling. Therefore, when he still exists, he takes to motley, the only wear for the human race in troublesome circumstances which beset it with unpleasant recurrence. When you cannot exactly believe anything in religion, in politics, in literature, in art, and yet neither wish nor know how to do without it, the safe ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... spacious gambling apartments directly above. It was a monstrous ugly building, constructed entirely of wood most hastily prepared; the stage was utilized both night and day for continuous variety entertainments of the kind naturally demanded by the motley gathering. These, however, were occasionally suspended to make room for some adventurous travelling company to appear in the legitimate drama, but at the close of every evening performance the main floor was promptly cleared, the rows of chairs pushed ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... to 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, at least, ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... motley variegations of the East and West, the main feature of the town was the street car. It was an open-air structure of spacious dimensions, as though benches and a canopy had been erected rather haphazard on a small dancing platform. The track ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... sharply by leaps and bounds, the yellow road swerving to right and left, deep tilted meadows on one side with a screen of birches beyond, and on the other a sloping rabble of timber, whose foliage made up a tattered motley, humble and odd and bastard, yet, with it all, so rich in tender tones and unexpected feats of drapery that Adele cried that it was a slice of fairyland and sat with her chin on her shoulder, till the road ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... battle of Vittoria. The French were making for the Pyrenees, laden with the loot of a kingdom and encumbered with a motley crowd of non-combatants—the wives and families of French officers, fair senoritas flying with their lovers, and traitorous Spaniards, who, by taking sides with the invaders, had exposed themselves to the vengeance of the patriots. So overwhelming was the defeat of the French, that they were forced ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... in the great city of the Caesars and of the Popes which has caused me to choose the spot where even the corners speak of a secular past, there to evoke some representatives of the most modern, as well as the most arbitrary and the most momentary, life. You, who know better than any one the motley world of cosmopolites, understand why I have confined myself to painting here only a fragment of it. That world, indeed, does not exist, it can have neither defined customs nor a general character. It is composed of exceptions and of singularities. We are so naturally creatures of custom, our continual ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... less than two emperors, and the responsibility falling on captain, crew, red trousers, and gilt eagles—He bien, what then? Neither were they cunning with their dark warnings of outlawry and violence. Dreadfulest horrors might lurk in the motley Gulf town held by force against bloodthirsty Mexicans. But croaking like that only gave brighter promise of the ecstatic shiver. ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... the niceties of truth nor the observations of astrology come within the range of its fanciful vagaries; nor have geometrical measurements or refutations of the arguments used in rhetoric anything to do with it; nor does it mean to preach to anybody, mixing up things human and divine, a sort of motley in which no Christian understanding should dress itself. It has only to avail itself of truth to nature in its composition, and the more perfect the imitation the better the work will be. And as this piece of yours aims at nothing more than to destroy the authority and influence which ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... races. Among them were incomparable voltigeurs of the best blood of the North African Moors, Tartar bowmen, Negro wrestlers, Indian divers, and Turks, who generally accompanied the Cardinal on his hunting expeditions. When he was overtaken by an early death (1535), this motley band carried the corpse on their shoulders from Itri to Rome, and mingled with the general mourning for the open-handed Cardinal their medley of ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... room, and, taking the dog's-eared volume from its shelf, glide off into an enchanted realm, where there were no lessons to get and no boys to smash my kite. In a lidless trunk in the garret I subsequently unearthed another motley collection of novels and romances, embracing the adventures of Baron Trenck, Jack Sheppard, Don Quixote, Gil Blas, and Charlotte Temple—all of which I ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... company were gathered together at this spot, for, besides the officers in attendance to enforce the proclamation, there was a motley crowd of lookers-on of various degrees, who raised from time to time such shouts and cries as the circumstances called forth. A spruce young courtier was the first who approached: he unsheathed a weapon of burnished steel that shone and glistened in the sun, and handed ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... This motley collection of foreign mercenaries composed ordinarily the body-guard of the king or of his barons, the permanent nucleus round which in times of war the levies of native recruits were rallied. Every Egyptian soldier received from the chief ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... from the grass His thought must follow where they pass; The penitent with anguish bow'd 155 His thought must follow through the crowd. Yes! all this eddying, motley throng That sparkles in the sun along, Girl, statesman, merchant, soldier bold, Master and servant, young and old, 160 Grave, gay, child, parent, husband, wife, He follows home, and lives ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... with Odo riding pillion at his back. Good fortune loosened the poor soprano's tongue, and as soon as the canonesses' litter was a safe distance ahead he began to beguile the way with fragments of reminiscence and adventure. Though few of his allusions were clear to Odo, the glimpse they gave of the motley theatrical life of the north Italian cities—the quarrels between Goldoni and the supporters of the expiring commedia dell' arte—the rivalries of the prime donne and the arrogance of the popular comedians—all these peeps into a tinsel world of mirth, cabal and folly, enlivened by the ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... loud organ" and the tramp of charging squadrons were heard rising anew from the distant mountains of Sclavonia. The Turks, in violation of their treaty of peace, were again on the march, ascending the Danube along its southern banks, through the defiles of the Sclavonian mountains. In a motley mass of one hundred and fifty thousand men they had passed Belgrade, crossed the Save, and were ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... under way in several divisions under the leadership of Peter the Hermit,[129] and of Walter the Penniless and other humble knights. Many of the crusaders were slaughtered by the Hungarians, who rose to protect themselves from the depredations of this motley horde. Part of them got as far as Nica, only to be slaughtered by the Turks. This is but an example, on a large scale, of what was going on continually for a century or so after this first great catastrophe. Individual pilgrims and adventurers, and sometimes considerable ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson |
