"Motley" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... aware of her unsteadiness; anger and fear and relief in quick succession had left her rather weak. Once through the motley crowd of loungers, she saw an old gray stage-coach and four lean horses. A grizzled, sunburned man sat on the driver's seat, whip and reins in hand. Beside him was a younger man with rifle across his knees. Another man, young, ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... contemplated the motley mass of humanity that presented itself with such eagerness for the attainment of so degrading an office; and as he listened to their vulgar boastings and brutal language, he blushed to think that ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... troops, had resisted all her endeavours to raise such a body; Paget had laboured loyally for a fortnight, and at the end he assured the queen on his knees that he had not been allowed to enlist a man.[219] Divided on all other points, the motley group of ministers agreed to keep Mary powerless; with the exception of Gardiner and Paget, they were all, perhaps, unwilling to check too soon a demonstration which, kept within bounds, might prove the justice of their ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... of the launch, with a touch of his forelock, handed over the discharge notes and certificates of such of the motley group that came up the side that had these documents, which the second lieutenant, a knowing fellow, who was in charge of our shipping office that morning, had pocketed when he engaged the men; doing this as a sort of preventative ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... and the annoyance of passengers, who were fain to make their way, as they best could, among carts, baskets, barrows, trucks, casks, bulks, and benches, and to jostle with porters, hucksters, waggoners, and a motley crowd of buyers, sellers, pick-pockets, vagrants, and idlers. The air was perfumed with the stench of rotten leaves and faded fruit; the refuse of the butchers' stalls, and offal and garbage of a hundred kinds. It was indispensable to most public conveniences in ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... princely fortune. The flower garden and lawn comprised fifteen acres, and the subdivisions were formed entirely by hedges, save that portion of the park surrounded by a tall iron railing, where congregated a motley menagerie of deer, bison, a Lapland reindeer, a Peruvian llama, some Cashmere goats, a chamois, wounded and caught on the Jungfrau, and a large white cow from Ava. This part of the inclosure was thickly studded with large oaks, groups of beech and elm, and a few enormous cedars which would not ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... fire and from flaring pine-knots played fitfully over the motley throng, now bringing out in strong relief some one face or figure, then plunging it into profoundest shadow. It burnished the high forehead and scalp lock of the Indian, and made to gleam intensely the gold earring in the ear of the mulatto. The scarlet cloth wound ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... country to the village of San Antonio del Norte, finely situated on a grassy plain, of considerable extent, a dependency of the valley of the Goascoran. We had intended stopping here for the night; but the cabildo was already filled with a motley crowd of arrieros and others on their way to San Miguel. A tall mestizo, covered with ulcers, sat in the doorway, and two or three culprits extended their claw-like hands towards us through the bars of their cage and invoked alms in the name of the Virgin ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... arrived at Quebec. In the colony of New York Sir William Johnson, the rough and cheery Irishman, much loved of the Iroquois, was gathering forces to attack Canada. Early in July, 1755, Johnson had more than three thousand provincial troops at Albany, a motley horde of embattled farmers, most of them with no uniforms, dressed in their own homespun, carrying their own muskets, electing their own officers, and altogether, from the strict soldier's point of view, a rabble rather than an army. To meet this force and destroy it if he ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... undertaking, and exposed himself to ridicule: but now, when he was going to commence the war a second time, taught by experience he concentrated his powers in a real and effectual preparation. Rejecting those motley numbers and many-tongued threats of the barbarians, and arms ornamented with gold and precious stones, which he considered to be the spoils of the victors, and to give no strength to those who possess them, he set about having Roman swords made, and heavy shields ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... any other whatever), if he had listened and laid his ear close to himself and he did so no doubt—would have heard some jarring note of human mixture, but faint and only perceptible to himself. Man is wholly and throughout but patch and motley. Even the laws of justice themselves cannot subsist without mixture of injustice; insomuch that Plato says, they undertake to cut off the hydra's head, who pretend to clear the law ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... which place I was myself going. We stopped at Tarifa in order to perform quarantine, which, however, turned out a mere farce, as we were all permitted to come on shore; the master of the felouk having bribed the port captain with a few fowls. We formed a motley group. A rich Moor and his son, a child, with their Jewish servant Yusouf, and myself with my own man Hayim Ben Attar, a Jew. After passing through the gate, the Moors and their domestics were conducted by the master to the house of one of his acquaintance, where he intended ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... down, and Brother Shoveller conducted his young companions between the overhanging houses, with stalls between serving as shops, till they reached the open space round the Market Cross, on the steps of which women sat with baskets of eggs, butter, and poultry, raised above the motley throng of cattle and sheep, with their dogs and drivers, the various cries of man and beast forming an incongruous accompaniment to the bells of the churches that surrounded ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Sonnets as a record of his personal feeling, his new profession as an actor stirred in him only the bitterness of self-contempt. He chides with Fortune "that did not better for my life provide than public means that public manners breed"; he writhes at the thought that he has "made himself a motley to the view" of the gaping apprentices in the pit of Blackfriars. "Thence comes it," he adds, "that my name receives a brand, and almost thence my nature is subdued to that it works in." But the application of the words is a more than doubtful one. In spite of petty squabbles ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... at that moment it happened that the Court Tailor came into the room to measure the King for a new mantle of ermine. Forthwith the grinning Jester began shrieking with laughter, so that the bells upon his motley cap ...
— The Gate of the Giant Scissors • Annie Fellows Johnston
... 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
... A motley throng of women were in the outer room—fat black women with waists two yards around, canary-colored women laced into low-cut European evening dresses, brown women in native dress; a babel of voices, chattering in curious French, Arabic, Turkish, and Greek. All the women were terribly out of ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... fight the enemy, and proceed up the lake; but, having no one to command the 'Niagara,' and only one commissioned lieutenant and two acting lieutenants, whatever my wishes may be, going out is out of the question. The men that came by Mr. Champlin are a motley set—blacks, soldiers, and boys. I cannot think you saw them after they were selected. I am, however, pleased to see any thing in ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... landing lay beneath his glance, a vivid exposition of the vast, half-tamed valley's bounty, spoils, and promise; of its motley human life, scarcely yet to be called society, so lately and rudely transplanted from overseas; so bareboned, so valiantly preserved, so young yet already so titanic; so self-reliant, opinionated, and uncouth; so strenuous and materialistic ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... of glasses on tables, heralding all too plainly the hypocrisy of the landlord, and possibly that of the city fathers also. Tom knew what company was gathered there: gamblers, truckmen, drunken farmers, men from the river steamers making riot while their boats lay at the wharf, with a motley gathering of good-for-nothings of the back-alleys, and tippling clerks from the Main Street stores. There came loud cries for a song, and, in answer, the voice of Crailey rose over the general din, somewhat hoarse, and never so musical when he sang as when he spoke, yet so touching ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... the smoke was explained. With the word at Big Salmon that the trail was broken to Pelly, there was no longer any need for the smoke wreath to linger in his wake; and Rasmunsen, crouching over lonely fire, saw a motley string of sleds go by. First came the courier and the half-breed who had hauled him out from Bennett; then mail-carriers for Circle City, two sleds of them, and a mixed following of ingoing Klondikers. Dogs and men were fresh and fat, while Rasmunsen and ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... charming egotism took literary America by storm; the "Professor" and the "Poet at the Breakfast-Table" followed in after years, and remain his most widely popular works; "Elsie Venner," a novel dealing with the problem of heredity, "The Guardian Angel," "Songs of Many Seasons," "Memoirs of Motley and of Emerson," are some of his many works, all of which have the impress of his bright, engaging ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... hung with flags and cedar boughs, and the benches down the long uncovered tables were crowded. The men's attire was motley—broadcloth and duck; white shirts, starched or limp, and blue ones; shoes with the creeper-spikes filed down, and long boots to the knees. There were women present also, and they wore anything from light print, put together for the occasion, to ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... 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 ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... equipped in the way of weapons, although it is safe to say that each of us had a firearm of some sort; but it seemed to give Sergeant Corney the fidgets to see us carrying such a motley collection of guns, and he insisted on making a quantity of wooden muskets to be used in the drill, to the end that we might present a more soldierly appearance when lined up ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... an obligation I didn't feel myself able to return,' said Miss Motley, the English governess, who had spent her holidays amidst the rank and fashion of Margate. 'When I go to the sea-side with my sister and her family, I pay my own expenses, and I feel I've a ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... "Fret not thyself because of evil-doers" (Psa. 37:1) "Be not thou afraid when one is made rich, when the glory of his house is increased" (Psa. 49:16). But go thou into the sanctuary of thy God, read His Word, and understand the end of these men-(Mason). Often, as the motley reflexes of my experience move in long processions of manifold groups before me, the distinguished and world-honoured company of Christian mammonists appear to the eye of my imagination as a drove of camels heavily laden, yet all at full speed; and each in the confident expectation ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... assails, And gain and grandeur load the tainted gales: Few know the toiling statesman's fear or care, Th' insidious rival, and the gaping heir. [h]Once more, Democritus, arise on earth, With cheerful wisdom and instructive mirth, See motley life in modern trappings dress'd, And feed with varied fools th' eternal jest: Thou, who could'st laugh where want enchain'd caprice, Toil crush'd conceit, and man was of a piece; Where wealth, unlov'd, ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... Jorian! Let not thy love of mirth do thee any injury. For thou art a good comrade, and fools were ever apt to divert thee too much. I have seen thee at this before—that time we went to Wilna, and the fellow in motley gave thee griping spasms with ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... far the most interesting portion of the exercises had been concealed from view. The butterflies, while naturally the most conspicuous element, were now seen to be in a small minority among the insect gathering, the bramble leaves being peopled with a most motley and democratic assemblage of insects. Class distinctions were apparently forgotten in the common enthusiasm; the plebeian bluebottle and blowfly now consorted with Aphrodite and sipped at the same drop. Many a leaf was begemmed with the blue bodies ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... 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 doubted only ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... portal there was a constant ingress and egress of men—a motley crowd—business men, politicians, professionals and men perhaps of shady character, for a great hotel cannot discriminate, and hundreds pass in and out who are not guests and have no connection with ...
— Chester Rand - or The New Path to Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr
... when the business of the day is usually transacted. Soon I discovered the cause. The militia of the place were out on parade. Preceded by a colored band, playing national airs—in doleful keeping with the occasion—and followed by a motley collection of negroes of all sexes and ages, the company was entering the principal thoroughfare. As it passed me, I could judge of the prowess of the redoubtable captain, who, according to Pompey, will hang the President "so ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... 1524 first ten new dialogues, afterwards four, and again six, were added to the Formulae, and at last in 1526 the title was changed to Familiarium colloquiorum opus. It remained dedicated to the boy Froben and went on growing with each new edition: a rich and motley collection of dialogues, each a masterpiece of literary form, well-knit, spontaneous, convincing, unsurpassed in lightness, vivacity and fluent Latin; each one a finished one-act play. From that year on, the stream of editions and translations ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... middle of the last century not only in Boston and Cambridge, but in Paris, Rome, Florence, and other European cities. He was descended from one of the oldest and wealthiest families of Boston, and graduated from Harvard in 1831, together with Wendell Phillips and George Lothrop Motley. He was not distinguished in college for his scholarship, but rather as a wit, a bon vivant, and a good fellow. Yet his companions looked upon him as a strong character and much above the average in intellect. After taking his degree of Bachelor of Arts he went ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... him down with the embalmed dead, and felt within their dust the expectation of another life, mingled with cold and suffocating doubts—the children born of long delay. He has walked the ways of mighty Rome, has seen the great Caesar with his legions in the field, has stood with vast and motley throngs and watched the triumphs given to victorious men, followed by uncrowned kings, the captured hosts and all the spoils of ruthless war. He has heard the shout that shook the Coliseum's roofless walls ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... face, sullen as a dean's, Buck Mulligan came forward, then blithe in motley, towards the greeting of their smiles. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... unimpassioned, and his knowledge made him profound. He was a great historical authority, like Ranke, but was more admired fifty years ago than he is at the present day, when dramatic writings like those of Motley and Froude have spoiled ordinary readers for profundity allied with dulness. He resembles Hallam more than Macaulay. But it is life rather than learning which gives immortality to historians. It is the life and the individuality of Gibbon which preserve his fame and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... of the Town Guard mustered—Kaffirs, Parsees, Jews, Arabians, Englishmen, Dutchmen, nearly every sort and nationality of men—and when the Mayor read an address expressing in the conventional terms of such compliments the emotions of this motley crowd, one asked oneself what it was that had held these very ordinary-looking people to so heroic an intention. Remember that the defence of Mafeking had been one big bluff, that there was nothing to prevent the Boers, with determination and ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... large seraglios of native women. Captain Woodes Rogers, who touched at Madagascar for slaves, sixteen years after Every's time, described those he met as having been on the islands above twenty-five years, with a motley crowd of ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... mother, he could do this, and sin not. Solemn indeed, my dear children, and beautiful to behold, must have been that picture,—that little fort, so far away in the heart of the lonely wilderness, with its motley throng of painted Indians and leather-clad backwoodsmen gathered round their young commander, as, morning and evening, he kneeled in prayer before the Giver of all good, beseeching aid and protection, ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... on the morning of Neykia's wedding, a motley mass of natives clothed in many colours crowded about the little church, which, for lack of space, they could not enter. Presently the crowd surged back from the door and formed on either side of the path, leaving an opening down the centre. A tall half-breed with a shock of wavy black hair ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... sympathies with popular liberty no homage paid to his genius by the class whose admiring welcome is most seductive to scholars has ever spoiled; our fellow-citizen, the historian of a great Republic which infused a portion of its life into our own,—John Lothrop Motley. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... these had passed, bearing upon his brow A threefold crown; his countenance was calm. His eye severe and cold; but his right hand Was charged with bloody coin, and he did gnaw By fits, with secret smiles, a human heart 275 Concealed beneath his robe; and motley shapes, A multitudinous throng, around him knelt. With bosoms bare, and bowed heads, and false looks Of true submission, as the sphere rolled by. Brooking no eye to witness their foul shame, 280 Which human hearts must feel, while human tongues Tremble ...
— The Daemon of the World • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... very interesting place, nor was there much to be seen; but she took a lazy, languid interest in the sight which met her eyes. There were the two carriages. The horses were being led to water. Around the carriages was a motley crowd, composed of the poor, the maimed, the halt, the blind, forming that realm of beggars which from immemorial ages has flourished in Italy. With these was intermingled a crowd of ducks, geese, goats, pigs, and ill-looking, ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... the commencement of the performances, with every species of mortal, except woman. Women were exceedingly rare creatures at that time—the meetings of all sorts were composed almost entirely of men, in their varied and motley garbs. ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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 most ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... party that covets the experience of the camp comes down to primitive conditions of dress and equipment. There are guides and porters to carry the blankets for beds, the raw provisions, and the camp equipage; and the motley party of the temporarily decivilized files into the woods, and begins, perhaps by a road, perhaps on a trail, its exhilarating and weary march. The exhilaration arises partly from the casting aside of restraint, partly from the adventure of exploration; and the weariness, from ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... TRAULUS, of 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; ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... Austen, Francis Motley: son of Francis Austen (ii); acquires Kippington property, 3-4; believed to have had Jane ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... resting on the rail of the gangway, and when presently it was raised to the side of the steamer, he still kept his position, so that he could instantly catch sight of his father as he passed down. I stood close behind him, and watched the motley procession of passengers; most of them had the dull colourless skin which bespeaks long residence in India, and a particularly yellow and peevish-looking old man was grumbling loudly as he slowly made his way down ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... 'tis true, I have gone here and there, And made myself a motley to thy view, Gored mine own thoughts, sold ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... charity!' Lastly, the members of a brotherhood for burying the dead: hideously masked, and attired in shabby black robes, white at the skirts, with the splashes of many muddy winters: escorted by a dirty priest, and a congenial cross-bearer: come hurrying past. Surrounded by this motley concourse, we move out of Fondi: bad bright eyes glaring at us, out of the darkness of every crazy tenement, like glistening fragments ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... through the motley rout, That little Jackdaw kept hopping about; Here and there like a dog in a fair, Over comfits and cakes, and dishes and plates, Cowl and cope, and rochet and pall, Mitre and crosier! he hopp'd upon all! With saucy air, he perch'd on the chair Where in state, the great Lord Cardinal ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... was Sunday, the ranchmen and a county officer proceeded toward the scene of the discovery. The shearers heard of the affair, and paused in the arrangement of a horse-race. They went in a body to the store and purchased candles, and then the motley cavalry coursed over the prairie after the rest. They lifted Juan Lucio from the river and bore him to a live-oak tree, where the coroner and his jurymen debated his situation. They inclined to think that he ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... 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 Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... invocation that we might be kept in safety. Poling and rowing through a maze of junks, our little floating caravan, with the two magnates on board, and their picul of rice, their curry and their sugar, and slenderest outfits, bowled along under plain sail, the fore-deck packed with a motley team of somewhat dirty and ill-fed trackers, who whistled and halloed the peculiar hallo of the Upper Yangtze for ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... trees, and waving banners appeared as a procession approached, headed by the pope in his vestments, and surrounded by the village dignitaries, venerable, grey-bearded patriarchs." A wide space in the procession was left for "a strange and motley band of gnomes and sprites, fairies and wood-nymphs," who, as the peasants believed, had been caught by the holy singing and the sacred sign on the waving banner. The chanting still went on as the crowd formed a circle around the glittering cross, ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... his defenceless head!—too busy for the gad-fly life of the clubs—a strong, lonely swimmer in the tide of New York life, he was as yet a comparative stranger to Folly and her motley crew of merry wantons in ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... A motley throng compose the inhabitants of Pueblo. The dark-hued Mexican, his round face shaded by the inevitable sombrero, figures conspicuously. But if you value his favor and your future peace of mind have a care ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... both in years and in folly. What are you doing in a monk's robe? Where is your motley, ...
— Hearts and Masks • Harold MacGrath
... roamed the grassy paths and flower-strewn ways of Wimbledon, is wrapping the heavy folds of her dew-moistened mantle around her, and stealing silently away. Yet for a moment let her turn a parting glance toward the motley groups which have companioned her midnight rambles, and are seen passing in the distance with their eyes fixed steadily ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... completely European. The likeness is sustained by carriages of every description, filled with smartly dressed women, driving through all the streets—a sight never seen at Cairo, for the generality of the streets are scarcely wide enough for the passage of donkeys. But the population is still motley and Asiatic. Turbans, caps, and the scarlet fez, loose gowns, and embroidered trousers, make the streets picturesque. On the other hand, crowds of Europeans, tourists, merchants, and tailors, are to be seen mingling ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... have a still better opportunity of study. He will then find not only representatives of the Finnish and Tartar races, but also Armenians, Circassians, Persians, Bokhariots, and other Orientals—a motley and picturesque but decidedly ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... condemned I could not but witness, with sympathy, the punishment reserved for translators. The translators of Virgil, in particular, were a vast and motley assemblage of most respectable men. Bishops were there, from Gawain Douglas downwards; Judges, in their ermine; professors, clergymen, civil servants, writhing in all the tortures that the blank verse, the anapaestic measure, the metre of the 'Lay of the Last Minstrel,' the ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... fighting. I directed, therefore, immediately on landing that all the vehicles and draft animals, whether horses, mules, or oxen, in the vicinity should be collected and loaded to their capacity with ammunition. Quite a train was collected during the 30th, and a motley train it was. In it could be found fine carriages, loaded nearly to the top with boxes of cartridges that had been pitched in promiscuously, drawn by mules with plough, harness, straw collars, rope-lines, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... waltzers. It is well known, that the waltz is a dance, above all others, requiring grace and youth, and activity in those who perform it. Nothing, therefore, to a stranger, can be more entertaining, than the sight of those motley and aged couples, who, with a desperate resolution, stand up to bid defiance to the warnings of nature; and who, after they have first swallowed a tumbler of punch, (which is their constant practice,) ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... position reversed, when he moralizes angrily to have his angry use of the scourge condoned. Nevertheless, he fills a serviceable place; and certainly he is not happy in his business. Colney suffered as heavily as he struck. If he had been no more than a mime in the motley of satire, he would have sucked compensation from the acid of his phrases, for the failure to prick and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... king o' the sea!" bawled the fellow through the horn; and then the motley crowd yelled in chorus, some blowing huge conch-shells, and all making a most ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... recognized me. I think his eyesight was getting bad. His coat had taken on a few more faded shades of color, the twine strings were more frayed and ragged, the last remaining button—the button of yellow horn—was gone. A motley descendant of ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... three o'clock wit, as some one has called it, the man who was always awake; Lowell, with his rich culture and his passionate loyalty to all that was best in life and art; and the historians of the country, Motley, Prescott, Bancroft, and Francis Parkman, with his splendid record of patient and tireless energy. And then we have the New England writers of the second generation in Edmund Clarence Stedman, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Charles Dudley Warner, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... dreaming of immortality. We know less about his early years in London, where there were wider and better opportunities of gaining an insight into "all seemly and generous arts and affairs." London was a great centre of traffic, a motley crowd of adventurers and traders even in those days, and the boy Milton must often have wandered down to the river below London Bridge to see the ships come in. His poems are singularly full of figures drawn from ships and shipping, ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... gathered there from the distant parts of the empire, lived each in the quarter nearest to its respective province. They all continued to wear their peculiar national costume, so that it was easy to determine their origin; and the same order and system of arrangement prevailed in the motley population of the capital, as in the great provinces of the empire. The capital, in fact, was a ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... to the fair and our station on the parapets at Grotta-Ferrata. Opposite us is a penthouse, (where nobody peaks and pines,) whose jutting fraschi-covered eaves and posts are adorned with gay draperies; and under the shadow of this is seated a motley set of peasants at their lunch and dinner. Smoking plates come in and out of the dark hole of a door that opens into kitchen and cellar, and the camerieri cry constantly, "Vengo subito" "Eccomi ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... caught very satisfactory glimpses of Arcadian life among the Cockneys there, hardly beyond the scope of Bow-Bells, picnicking in the grass, uncouthly gambolling on the broad slopes, or straying in motley groups or by single pairs of love-making youths and maidens, along the sun-streaked avenues. Even the omnipresent policemen or park-keepers could not disturb the beatific impression on my mind. One feature, at all events, of the Golden Age was to be seen in the herds ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... up to the sandy landing-beach, I looked at the motley array of paddlers, and my mind went back hundreds of years to the first Spanish crew which landed here, and I wondered whether these pirates of early days had any fewer sins to their credit than ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... comparison to that of private interests, which so crossed each other and in so many different ways, which turned with such mobility, that, in the ignorance which prevailed of the secret motives of the principal actors in that drama so vivid, motley, and turbulent, nothing could be predicated of what they would do, and a looker-on might have been disposed at times to have pronounced them as insensates, who were rather their own enemies than ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... narrative of Alexander. Books about that hero were easy to come by long before the invention of printing, though Alexander would have had difficulty in recognising his identity under the strange mediaeval motley in which his namesake wandered over the land. No single man, with the possible exception of Charlemagne, was so much written about or played so brilliantly the part of a hero to the Middle Ages and after.[18] The simplicity ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... 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
... spread of the monstrous story of the conspiracy of Dr. Fian. Dr. Fian was nothing less than a Scottish Dr. Faustus. He was a schoolmaster by profession. After a dissolute youth he was said to have given soul to the Devil. According to the story he gathered around him a motley crowd, Catholic women of rank, "wise women," and humble peasant people; but it was a crew ready for evil enterprise. It is not very clear why they were supposed to have attacked the king; perhaps because of his well known piety, perhaps because he was a Protestant. In any case they set ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... In the Park, the motley hour of mid-afternoon, when foreigners and other pathetic folk drive, thinking themselves to be in fashion, had passed; the right, the proper, hour had come, was nearly gone, before Soames and Irene seated themselves under the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... complainingly, the drivers uttered brief shouts. The hats of men and women, various kinds of furs, the liveries of coachmen, the horses puffing steam, covered here and there with colored nets, formed a motley, changing line, moving forward with a rattle and an outcry along the white snow, in an atmosphere glittering ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... with regard to the identity of this Hobab. Probably he was a man of about the same age as Moses, his brother- in-law, and a son of Jethro, a wily Kenite, a Bedouin Arab. Moses begs him to join himself to his motley company, and to be to him in the wilderness 'instead of eyes.' What did Moses want a man for, when he had the cloud? What do we want common-sense for, when we have God's Spirit? What do we want experience and counsel for, when we have divine guidance ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... mob have thronged the sight to greet, And motley figures throng the spacious street; Majestical and calm through all they stride, Wearing the blanket with a monarch's pride; The gazers stare and shrug, but can't deny Their noble forms and blameless ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... They were found to be but a momentary protection, for I think in the first mile the last umbrella went overboard, all having their covers burnt off from the frames, when a general melee took place among the deck passengers, each whipping his neighbor to put out the fire. They presented a very motley appearance on arriving at the first station. Then rails were secured and lashed between the trucks, taking the slack out of the coupling chains, thereby affording us a more steady run to the top of the inclined ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody
... of omission, as my father pointed out to us, in dealing with the vulgar reality seen from one's own window—which has made trite old Harlequin, Clown, and Columbine, seem like people in some fairyland; or like infinitely clever tragic actors, who, for the humour of the thing, have put on motley for once, and are able to throw a world of serious innuendo into their burlesque looks, with a sort of comedy which shall be but tragedy seen from the other side. He brought his sketch to our house to-day, and I was present when my father questioned ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... a curious study for a thoughtful observer, this motley crowd of human beings sinking all differences of race, creed, and habits in the common purpose to move Westward—to the mountain fastnesses, the sage-brush deserts, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... violent emotion, was a young man, dressed in a mean and tattered garb, his face begrimed corresponding with that of the motley crew by which he was surrounded. He was a perfect stranger to the others present, and had not participated in their previous conversation, nor been personally addressed ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... Mr. Wells to suggest that in his vision the Englishman and the American are to embrace only in the sense of clinging to each other in terror. He is a man who understands what friendship is, and who knows how to enjoy the motley humours of humanity. But the political reconstruction which he proposes is too much determined by this old nightmare of necessitarianism. He tells us that our national dignities and differences must be melted into the huge mould of a World State, or else (and I think these ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... 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, ...
— The Miracle and Other Poems • Virna Sheard
... motley for my lady's amusement," he was saying to her, "no new philosophies to spread out for my lady's inspection, no bright pictures to display for my lady's pleasure, and so I, like a poor poverty-stricken minstrel whose harp has been broken, ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... Into this motley but splendid assemblage Judge Merlin led his beautiful daughter. At first her entrance attracted no attention; but when one, and then another, noticed the dazzling new star of beauty that had so suddenly risen above their horizon, a ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... left Ali Masjid at the head of a motley procession that grew noisier and more confident every hour. Ismail still clung to his stirrup, but began to grow more lively and to have a good many orders to fling to ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... She had beneath Orlando's convoy strayed, Since rescued from the cave. When on the plain The damsel saw the motley troop arrayed, She asked Orlando what might be the train? "I know not," said the Count; and left the maid Upon the height, and hurried towards the plain. He marked Zerbino, and at the first sight A baron of ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... the next lid, scratched and worn, And within a motley store Of headless dolls, of schoolbooks torn, Birds and beasts that speak no more, Spoils brought home from the fairy ground Only trod by youthful feet, Dreams of a future never found, Memories of a past still sweet, Half-writ ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... is true I have gone here and there, And made myself a motley to the view, Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear, Made old offences of affections new; Most true it is that I have look'd ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... ward I saw numbers of German wounded, most of them bearded; many there were who seemed weakly and undersized, and among them were many grey heads, a very motley company. These, the Colonel informed us, received precisely the same treatment as our own wounded, ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... inexhaustible quarry of humours, vanities, jealousies, whims, absurd enthusiasms, absurd mortifications. He was able, as he said, to sit at his ease in the side-scene and see himself jigging on the stage in motley or the tragic sock—see himself as a lover, and cry aloud in delight at the mad persistence of the fool he appeared; see himself directing the affairs of the nation, and be ready to die of laughing at himself for pretending to be serious, and at his countrymen for thinking ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... part of the business of the historian. To catch some dim historic figure, and give it life and color,—this power he had. And it was evidently this which gave him the praise of such men as Prescott and Bancroft and Motley. Washington had begun to loom vaguely and impersonally in the mind, a mere great man, when Irving with a touch turned him from cold bronze ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... here concerned to show is that the search for consistency and connection in the manifold impressions of the moment is a deeply rooted habit of the mind, and one which is retained in a measure during sleep. When, in this state, our minds are invaded by a motley crowd of unrelated images, there results a disagreeable sense of confusion; and this feeling acts as a motive to the attention to sift out those products of the dream-fancy which may be made to cohere. When once the foundations of a dream-action are laid, new images ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... 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 fandango. ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... inadequate dramaturgic equipment, and just as Johnson wrote essays because essay-writing was popular and advantageous in spite of his deficiency in the ease and lightness which the essay demands, so Brougham and Motley and Froude adventured themselves in fiction. We may even doubt whether George Eliot was a born story-teller and whether she would not have been more successful in some other epoch when some other literary ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... nationality, the revolution has an extraordinary importance, since it engendered the separation of the Low Countries into two distinct nationalities, which were later to be known as Belgian and Dutch. Most English readers who remember their Motley, or any of the less valuable writings he inspired, are under the impression that if the Belgians did not adopt the same attitude as the Dutch all through the struggle against Spain, it was either because they were blinded by their religious ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... of sun falls on a certain spot of distant shrubbery or woodland, and we see it brighten with many hues, standing forth prominently from the dimness around it. The sunlight gradually spreads, and the whole sombre scene is changed to a motley picture,—the sun bringing out many shades of color, and converting its gloom to an almost laughing cheerfulness. At such times I almost doubt whether the foliage has lost any of its brilliancy. But the clouds intercept the sun again, and lo! old Autumn ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... 'person' was driving homeward very sad and ill at ease. She was vexed that she had not done better, and yet she was wounded by Robert's enjoyment. The Puritan in her blood was all aflame. As she sat looking into the motley lamplit night, she could have 'testified' like any ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... time 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 were fighting for their own hand, and the praetor Minucius Thermus ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... scanned the little wharf, where a motley collection of men were gathered, with a quick-beating heart. Which of them could be Uncle Richard? Would he give him a kind welcome? The boy's spirits began to rise somewhat under the influence of ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... Well: 'tis a motley assemblage this! The world is checkered here not less than in the noisy and elegant capital; and man's peculiarities, man's excellencies, and man's defects, follow him even into the heart of these ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... with matchless art and whim, He gave the power of speech to every limb; Tho' mask'd and mute, conveyed his quick intent, And told in frolic gestures what he meant: But now the motley coat and sword of wood Require a tongue to make ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... the storm break, and with her shuttle the enraged goddess smote the web of Arachne, and the fair pictures were rent into motley rags and ribbons. Furiously, too, with her shuttle of boxwood she smote Arachne. Before her rage, the nymphs fled back to their golden river and to the vineyards of Tymolus, and the women of Colophon in blind terror rushed ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... comfortable. After the fatigue of his journey, Ben enjoyed a good supper and a comfortable bed. The evening, however, he spent in the public room of the inn, where he had a chance to listen to the conversation of a motley crowd, some of them native and residents, others strangers who had been drawn to Centerville by the ...
— The Store Boy • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... week again—the mad blaspheming week of revelry and devilry. The streets were rainbow with motley wear and thunderous with the roar and laughter of the crowd, recruited by a vast inflow of strangers; from the windows and roofs, black with heads, frolicsome hands threw honey, dirty water, rotten eggs, and even boiling oil upon the ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... it—his name is Jacques: Whistler is a fool. The fools were the wisest men at court. Shakespeare, who dearly loved a fool, belonging to the breed himself, placed his wisest sayings into the mouths of men who wore the motley. When he adorned a man with cap and bells, it was as though he had given bonds for both that man's ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... 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 was ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... arranged every thing in my grandmother's house as neatly as possible. I put white quilts on the beds, and decorated some of the rooms with flowers. When all was arranged, I sat down at the window to watch. Far as my eye could reach, it rested on a motley crowd of soldiers. Drums and fifes were discoursing martial music. The men were divided into companies of sixteen, each headed by a captain. Orders were given, and the wild scouts rushed in every direction, wherever a colored ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... went round, "Who is he?" And when, in some inscrutable way, the truth leaked out, the poor people regarded him with a kind of awe. Some, indeed, criticised, and said he did not look much like a millionaire; but there were many in that motley crowd in whose hearts, during those few brief days on the ocean, "Cobbler" Horn made for himself a ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... Immediately in the rear of the post-chaises followed those who claimed relationship to the deceased; amongst whom Bertram fancied that he could distinguish plumes of feathers—and occasionally, as the inequalities of the ground threw the files into a looser array, a motley assemblage of colors and a glittering ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... intonation; some silently looking on, or listening. Two or three common looking fellows began to smoke their segars, but when it was suggested that this might incommode the ladies on the other side of the curtain, they with genuine politeness ceased directly. Through this motley and picturesque assemblage I have to make my way to my bed-room in a few minutes—I will take another look ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... what supplies they would need to last them until they should reach Georgetown, British Guiana, on the north coast of South America. This would be their first stop. Somehow the townspeople quickly guessed their identity, and they were followed from store to store as they shopped by a curious and motley throng of dark-skinned natives, among whom were noticed quite a few white children, presumably belonging to American employees ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... were younger and lighter of foot than we sober married folks, ran on before; so that when the blanket, that served the purpose of a door, was unfastened, we found a motley group of the dark skins and the pale faces reposing on the blankets and skins that were spread round ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... clean white Gloves: Some of Platonic, some of carnal Taste, Hoop'd, or un-hoop'd, ungarter'd, or unlac'd. Thus thick in Air the wing'd Creation play, When vernal Phoebus rouls the Light away, A motley race, half Insects and half Fowls, Loose-tail'd and dirty, ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... Prussia and the Danubian States for the Czar. For the founder of the Continental System such a choice was natural; but, viewed from the standpoint of Continental politics, his treatment of Austria was a serious blunder. His frightful pressure on her motley lands endowed them with a solidity which they had never known before; and in less than four years, the conqueror had cause to regret having driven the Hapsburgs to desperation. It may even be questioned ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... with solemn thrill and stately movement through hours of wondrous preparation for an imposing function, through the splendid gravity of the function itself, accompanied by brilliant crowds collected and looking on in a fashionable church, and motley crowds collected to look on outside the edifice, the latter pushing and jostling each other and commenting in more or less respectful if excited undertones, but throughout devouring with awe-struck or envious eyes. Great people whom Emily had only known through the frequent mention ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... telescope conducts the mortal gaze to revel in the stars. Merman and mermaid, nereid and triton, were there, rejoicing in the sunbeams thus poured upon them through this subtle conduit of ocean, as do the motes of summer in her rays; but soon these disappeared, a motley crowd, confused and joyous, leaving the vision free to pierce the depths, glowing with golden light, in search ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... to 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 ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... For a time that motley group of bandits stood in the light, as if intimidated by the great dignity of the house, by the mysterious prestige of the Casa whose interior, probably, none of them had ever seen before. They gazed about silently, as if surprised to ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... aspect of everything. Instead of the quiet, deserted, winding ways, you could hardly call them streets, everything seemed alive with a motley, moving throng. A long line of boats, and what one might call a caravan, seemed to have risen from the very earth, or been evolved from the wilderness. There were shouting and singing, white men turned to brown by exposure, Indians, half-breeds of varying shades, ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... hindrance. At length a sudden frenzy seized them to march upon (p. 171) Rome. Moncada had shown them the way, and on 6th May, 1527, the Holy City was taken by storm. Bourbon was killed at the first assault; and the richest city in Christendom was given over to a motley, leaderless horde of German, Spanish and Italian soldiery. The Pope again fled to the castle of St. Angelo; and for weeks Rome endured an orgy of sacrilege, blasphemy, robbery, murder and lust, the horrors of which no brush could depict nor tongue ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... there's an aim Which many know and some might even name; But see yon motley muster, Like shades in Eblis wandering up and down! Types there of every 'Show Class' in the Town Elbow and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various
... but by a deity, and facts also confirmed them in this opinion, inasmuch as the power of Sertorius increased beyond all expectation; for with the two thousand six hundred men whom he called Romans, and four thousand Lusitanian targetiers, and seven hundred horsemen, whom he joined to a motley band of seven hundred Libyans, who crossed over with him to Lusitania, he fought with four Roman generals, who had under them one hundred and twenty thousand foot soldiers, six thousand horsemen, two thousand bowmen and slingers, ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... 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 'Mission ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... feature in our discussion. The audience of Plautus was not of a high class. Terence, even in later times, when education had materially progressed, often failed to reach them by over-finesse. Plautus with his bold brush pleased them. Surely a turbulent and motley throng they were, with the native violence of the sun-warmed Italic temperament and the abundant animal spirits of a crude civilization, tumbling into the theatre in the full enjoyment of holiday, scrambling for vantage points on the sloping ground, if such were handy, or a good ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... quietly as the men approached. As they drew nearer, Frank made out that they were indeed a motley crew. Spanish faces — or South American, to be more exact — predominated, but there were a few who seemed to be English or Americans. Also, there were two plainly of African descent and three who seemed ...
— The Boy Allies with Uncle Sams Cruisers • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... that miserable noontide, about four hundred human beings—a weak, hungry, and emaciated looking throng for the most part; their half naked forms, browned by the sun, and hardened by the winter winds—a motley gathering; amongst whom there were scores of fasting men, and hundreds through whose wretched dwellings the, wind and rain found free ingress. They were poor, they were weak, they were ignorant, they were unarmed! but there was one, thing at least which ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... dinner took place in the large central room, and covers were laid for 200 guests. The Prince of Wales acknowledged the toast of his health and that of the Princess, the Duke of Cambridge responded to the toast of the army, Mr. Childers to the navy, Lord Elcho to the volunteers, Mr. Motley to "The Prosperity of the United States," Mr. Gladstone to "Her Majesty's Ministers," the Archbishop of York to, "The Guests," and Mr. Dickens to "Literature." The last toast having been proposed in a highly eulogistic speech, Mr. ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... 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 Bitter ...
— The Battle of the Big Hole • G. O. Shields
... things our eyes discover as we walk along on Market street. Such a medley—infinite, incongruous, comical, pathetic, motley and sublime. ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... few minutes the page came back, followed, close at his heels, by a man in motley dress, with a viol hung over his shoulders, Count Pierre, without waiting to greet the latter, thrust the parchment into his hands with the ...
— Gabriel and the Hour Book • Evaleen Stein
... The motley Muse's maundering nous Cares nothing what the union rate is, If any young things want a house I'll build ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various
... 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
... escape from this confinement, and are then frizzed and curled, like a mop or a poodle's coat. Leonard Harper and I returned in this boat, Tahitian steering, Samoan, Futuman, and Anaiteans making one motley crew. The brisk trade soon carried us to the beach in front of Mr. Inglis's house, and arrived at the reef I rode out pick-a-back on the Samoan, Leonard following on a half-naked Anaitean. We soon found ourselves in the midst of a number ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... disaster might result as a consequence of an incongruous military and political situation, in which German and Austrian consular officials walked the streets side by side with French and British officers. Men who had lived through many strange situations declared that this motley of tongues and nationalities and conflicting interests to be found in Salonika during those last weeks of 1915 was without a parallel ...
— The Deserter • Richard Harding Davis
... the Legislature of 1847, some new members appeared. Caleb Cushing came from Newburyport, and Fletcher Webster, and J. Lothrop Motley from Boston. The Democrats of Boston and vicinity were then engaged in raising and equipping a regiment for Mexico. Cushing was Colonel of the regiment and Edward Webster, a brother of Fletcher, was the Captain of one ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... side lane into the Corso, the mirth was at its height. Out of the seclusion of his own feelings, he looked forth at the tapestried and damask-curtained palaces, the slow-moving double line of carriages, and the motley maskers that swarmed on foot, as if he were gazing through the iron lattice of a prison window. So remote from the scene were his sympathies, that it affected him like a thin dream, through the dim, extravagant material of which ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... less worthy of regard, are those who have picked and chosen among the precepts of the Lord, have accepted what seemed good to them and have explained away the rest. It would be easy, did space allow, to present a motley succession of fanatics and heretics from apostolic days to the present who have developed fantastic theories and have maintained them by means of passages drawn from the Sermon ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... Among the motley crew of destroyers, drunkards, gluttons, satyrs and sirens, our friend the Jolly Baker was on the job—unfortunately for him, accompanied this ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... sing; at first in a low tone, and in unintelligible words; but his voice was good, and it attracted attention, even among that motley crew, and after a little, perceiving that they were listening, he ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... command with a crew of sixty, all told; of whom, however, Jack Keene, midshipman, and Tasker, the gunner's mate—who in his new ship held the rank of gunner—were the only individuals with whom I had already been shipmate; the rest were a motley crowd indeed, collected out of the gutters and slums of Freetown. The Dolphin, it was arranged, was to act in the first instance as tender to the Eros; but, later, might perhaps be detached for certain special work which was just then beginning to ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... be said of Denis Quirk in those days that his only pleasure was in his work. He was lonely for Desmond O'Connor, now a student at Manly. The flat was still frequented by the representatives of motley and variegated talent, as in the old days. Jests were made, good stories told, and songs sung by well-trained voices; but these were mere acquaintances. Denis longed for the intimate ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... of those who've passed before us, Denounced all foolishness and fun, Not so the gay and blithesome Horace; And Shakespeare's Jaques, somewhat hotly, Declared the only wear is Motley! ...
— Ptomaine Street • Carolyn Wells
... Onely a show or two, and so agree, The Play may passe: If they be still, and willing, Ile vndertake may see away their shilling Richly in two short houres. Onely they That come to heare a Merry, Bawdy Play, A noyse of Targets: Or to see a Fellow In a long Motley Coate, garded with Yellow, Will be deceyu'd. For gentle Hearers, know To ranke our chosen Truth with such a show As Foole, and Fight is, beside forfeyting Our owne Braines, and the Opinion that we bring To make that onely true, we now intend, Will leaue ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... Dreamer, they the Dream; I roamed 30 Delighted through the motley spectacle; Gowns, grave, or gaudy, doctors, students, streets, Courts, cloisters, flocks of churches, gateways, towers: Migration strange for a stripling of the hills, A northern villager. As if the change 35 Had waited on some ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... 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 ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... ruins, but near the shore are some well built Khans, and in the inhabited part of the town are several good private houses. The aspect of Suez is that of an Arabian, and not an Egyptian town, and even in the barren waste, which surrounds it, it resembles Yembo and Djidda; the same motley crowds are met with in the streets, and the greater part of the shop-keepers are from Arabia or Syria. The air is bad, occasioned by the saline nature of the earth, and the extensive low grounds on the north and ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... of dinner-hour, had assembled the house of Kantor. Attuned to the intimate atmosphere of the tenement which is so constantly rent with cry of child, child-bearing, delirium, delirium-tremens, Leon Kantor had howled no impression into the motley din of things. Isadore, already astride his chair, well into center-table, for first vociferous tear at the four-pound loaf; Esther Kantor, old at chores, settled an infant into the high chair, careful of tiny fingers in lowering the ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... and stimulating mental condiments for the jaded brains of that gilded cult. His table ballets, his bizarre parlor circuses, his cunningly devised fads in which he set forth his own inimitable antics, won him the motley and the cap and bells of this tinseled court, and forced him well out into the glare of publicity, which was what he ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... however, they were ushered into the study of the courteous Briton whose difficult and sometimes exasperating duty it is to look after the rights and interests of the motley world composed of those Englishmen and Englishwomen who make a short or long sojourn in Paris. Once they were in his presence nothing could have been kinder and more considerate than the British Consul's reception of the ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... arise on earth, With cheerful wisdom and instructive mirth; 50 See motley life in modern trappings dress'd, And feed with varied fools the eternal jest: Thou who could'st laugh where want enchain'd caprice, Toil crush'd conceit, and man was of a piece: Where wealth, unloved, without a mourner died; And scarce a sycophant was fed by pride; Where ne'er was known the ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... art? Yes; those words there are, and many men live by them and for them. And yet it seems to me that if Shakespeare could be born again he would have no cause to retract his Hamlet, his Lear. His searching glance would discover nothing new in human life: still the same motley picture—in reality so little complex—would unroll before him in its terrifying sameness. The same credulity and the same cruelty, the same lust of blood, of gold, of filth, the same vulgar pleasures, the same senseless sufferings in the ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... Boadicea, Queen of the Iceni, the day of her defeat wore a tartan dress (polymita) and an "embroidered" or "fur" mantle; probably the fur was inside, and the skins embroidered outside. Dion Cassius,[560] who describes Boadicea's motley tunic, says that the bulk of the people wore what was apparently a chequered tartan. Semper says that the early tribes of Northern Europe, like the North American Indians of the present time, embroidered their fur wraps. The ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... made a motley group: first came a stout American with two pretty daughters; then a young Frenchman and his valet; then a Sister of Charity draped in black, her close-fitting, white, starched cap and broad white collar framing her face, one hand clutching the rope rail as she stepped feebly toward the steamer, ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... is the mixture of the pigments compounded so as to form a close reproduction both of its colour and its pattern. A sweep of the shrimp net detaches a battalion of these sleeping prawns, and if we turn the motley into a dish and give a choice of seaweed, each variety after its kind will select the one with which it agrees in colour, and vanish. Both when young and when full-grown, the AEsop prawn takes on the colour of its immediate surroundings. At nightfall ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... 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 a great deal of cotton raised ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... 1860 was that of our greatest purely literary achievement, and, indeed, most of the greater names of to-day were familiar before 1850. Conspicuous exceptions are Motley and Parkman and a few belles-lettres writers, whose novels and stories mark a distinct literary transition since the War of the Rebellion. In the period from 1845 to 1860, there was a singular development of sentimentalism; it ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... fifty in breadth, crossed by a bridge resting on double arches, the construction of which dates back to the time of the ancient Romans. This bridge affords a favorite lounging-place for the inhabitants, and at evening a motley assemblage may be seen lolling over its moss-grown sides,—men with their picturesque knit caps of scarlet or brown falling gracefully on one shoulder, and women with their shining black hair and the enormous pearl earrings ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... traffic and pleasure. Between the houses coloured coral-pink, white, blue, and yellow, and the pale green transparent water lies a long stretch of beach covered with every sort of craft that sails the Mediterranean, and with a motley crowd of fishermen, tourists and noisy children; whilst the whole atmosphere rings with raucous voices raised in giving directions, in quarrelling, or in addressing the many perplexed strangers. We disembark, and cross the intervening ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... 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 ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine |
