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Motley   /mˈɑtli/   Listen
Motley

adjective
(compar. motlier; superl. motliest)
1.
Consisting of a haphazard assortment of different kinds.  Synonyms: assorted, miscellaneous, mixed, sundry.  "Assorted sizes" , "Miscellaneous accessories" , "A mixed program of baroque and contemporary music" , "A motley crew" , "Sundry sciences commonly known as social"
2.
Having sections or patches colored differently and usually brightly.  Synonyms: calico, multi-color, multi-colored, multi-colour, multi-coloured, multicolor, multicolored, multicolour, multicoloured, painted, particolored, particoloured, piebald, pied, varicolored, varicoloured.  "The painted desert" , "A particolored dress" , "A piebald horse" , "Pied daisies"



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"Motley" Quotes from Famous Books



... Sensibility, properly so called, is separated by a clear 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 ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... matter here?" demanded a tall, strongly-built woman, pressing forward. She spoke with a foreign accent, and in a tone of command. The motley crowd, above whom she towered, gave way for her as she approached. Everything about the woman showed her to be superior in mind and moral force to the unsightly wretches about her. She had the fair skin, blue eyes and light ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur

... head, with jerkin of green, striped with yellow; hose of different colours, the left leg being yellow, with a red pantoufle, and the right blue, terminated with a yellow shoe; with bells hung upon various parts of his motley attire, so that he could not move without producing a jingling sound, Jack Roby looked wonderful indeed; and was constantly dancing about, and dealing a blow with his bauble. Next came Will Scarlet, Stukely, and Little John, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... everywhere visible. Since Goethe no one has been able to say with so much truth, "My writings are my confessions." Her biography lies there, presented, indeed, in a fragmentary shape and under wayward disguises, but nevertheless giving to the motley groups the strong and uumistakable charm of reality. Her grandmother, by whom she was brought up, disgusted at her not being a boy, resolved to remedy the misfortune as far as possible by educating her like a boy. We ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke

... Stanton, and admire his rude—others call it coarse—contempt of all that is said about him. That impure, lying, McClellan-Copperhead motley crew, accuse Stanton of all the numberless criminal mistakes committed in the conduct of the war—committed by the generals, etc. Stanton never interferes with Mr. Lincoln nor with Halleck in matters that exclusively relate to pure warfare, as where and how to march the respective ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski

... our party, who 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 ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill

... leader carries a sword, on the point of which is generally impaled a cake; during the dancing slices of this cake are distributed to the lookers on, who are supposed to make a contribution to the 'Treasury,' a money-box carried by an individual called the Squire, or Clown, dressed in motley, and bearing in the other hand a stick with a bladder at one end, and a ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston

... sleighs shot forward with clinking harness, the snow under wheels squeaked 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 from frost ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)

... then we ate, and we drank, and we ate again; with no thought of nutrition, nor of reasonableness, nor of the morrow, nor of dyspepsia. We ate and drank without fear and without shame, in the sheer, abandoned ecstasy of celebration. And by means of motley paper headgear, fit only for a carnival, we disguised ourselves in the most absurd fashions, and yet did not make ourselves seriously ridiculous; for ridicule is in the vision, not in what is seen. And we danced ...
— The Feast of St. Friend • Arnold Bennett

... in, the sweeps being worked by the motley crew of scoundrels on board with a regularity which drew rough compliments from the men, and made ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn

... the locked closet amounted to anti-climax. For when I had broken the rusty padlock open with a hatchet, and had opened doors with nervous fingers, nothing more startling appeared than a number of books. The shelves were piled high with them, a motley crew of all colors, but ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... The motley forces drawn up on the bank of the Cumberland for review and instruction made up in fantastic variety for what they lacked in number. There was much of the grotesque and somewhat of the pitiful in the spectacle presented by the straggling ranks of boatmen and backwoods ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable

... Dodo, with Ellen stalking at their side, the very picture of a duenna. Somewhat in the rear Gilbert and two other maids, Kate and Thyrza—this latter from the Bonnivel house—followed with dubious looks, feeling probably that they were neither "fish flesh, nor good red herring," in this motley assemblage, which offered no such companionship as they ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry

... direct relations with one of our greatest literary men, who was again of that literary Boston which mainly represented American literature to me. The official chief of the consul at Venice was the United States Minister at Vienna, and in my time this minister was John Lothrop Motley, the historian. He was removed, later, by that Johnson administration which followed Lincoln's so forgottenly that I name it with a sense of something almost prehistoric. Among its worst errors was the attempted discredit of a man who had given lustre to our name by his ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... motley throng of soldiers, in soiled uniforms, traders, voyageurs, pale-faced women, and wondering children, streamed to the narrow beach beyond the water gate, all could see the approaching boats as, in ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore

... Law; on the line of demarcation between the theatres and Lincoln's Inn; a sort of debateable ground between the spouters and ranters of the stage, and the eaters of commons, by either of which party it was frequented. Around a large table in the parlour sat a motley group. There were ragged wits, well-dressed students, new-fledged actors, a hackney writer or so, an Irish barrister named Shuter, a Scotch reporter, and a hodge-podge of most discordant materials ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 268, August 11, 1827 • Various

... themselves kings, and living in squalid dignity with 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

... scarlet, Lascars with their curly black hair, and dark handsome features, yellow men, sickly women, and half-caste children, with their Hindoo Ayahs, tigers, lions, turtles, cows, sheep, goats, and pigs, on the booms and main deck, the vessel was in a strange motley of confusion. ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat

... 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 how you allude to his nationality. He is a Spaniard, you should know—a pure ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various

... sat there—a grotesque, misshapen figure in gaudy motley—an ungovernable rage possessed him. What was to become of them now? Without the Count of Aquila's stern support the garrison would have forced her to capitulate a week ago. What would betide, now that the restraint of his ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini

... This motley play was never acted; at least the author says: "for the Acting it, those who have the Governing of the Stage, have their Humours, and wou'd be intreated; and I have mine and won't intreat them; and were all Dramatick Writers of my mind, they shou'd wear their ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere

... free," so the bill of lading read, and further, that the ship should "not be responsible for leakage, breakage, or rust." This clause was well for the ship, as one of those wild pampeiros overtook her, on the voyage, throwing her violently on her beam-ends, and shaking the motley cargo into a confused and mixed-up mess. The vessel remaining tight, however, no very serious damage was done, and she righted herself after a while, but without her lofty topgallant-masts, which went with a crash at the first blast ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum

... 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

... of men, or one more united by personal relations and intellectual aims, it would have been difficult to find. In connection with these names, those of Prescott, Ticknor, Motley, and Holmes also arise most naturally, for the literary men and scholars of Cambridge and Boston were closely united; and if Emerson, in his country home at Concord, was a little more withdrawn, his influence was powerful in the ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz

... 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 hastily back ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish

... A.O., Elise sent her book flying across the room, and the next moment was groping under the bed for a dress-box which she had hidden there. A blond wig that she had bought while in Washington for next week's tableaux tumbled out first, with a motley collection of borrowed articles, which she had been at great pains ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston

... filled at this hour with a motley variety of people of all the races known in the islands, from the Tagal Indian up to the native-born of Spain. Some of them were disposed to laugh at the strangeness, not to say the absurdity, of some of the costumes which confronted them; but all of them were too well bred to ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic

... which is more emphatically marked as being so, by the mention of the 'bad' before the good among the guests. God's offer is for all, and, in a very real sense, is specially sent to the worst, just as the doctor goes first to the most severely wounded. So the motley crew, without the least attempt at discrimination, are seated at the table. If the Church understands its business, it will have nothing to do in its message with distinctions of character any more than of class, but, if it makes any difference, will give ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... Belfast. The Dublin Botanical Gardens are wholly supported by Government. Further examples are needless, the facts being simple as they are undeniable. Dublin gets everything. Belfast gets absolutely nothing. Disloyalty is at a premium. Motley's the only wear. The screamers are always getting something to stop their mouths, a sop, not a gag. Steady, quiet, hard-working folks are of no account. The Belfast men ask for nothing, and get it. They want no pecuniary aid, being used to ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... ridges—contesting stubbornly every inch of position lost. And gray Roger knew that the planetoid was doomed. His supposedly impregnable screen was failing in spite of its utmost measure of energy, and, that defense down, the citadel would not last a minute. Therefore he summoned a chosen few of his motley crew of renegade scientists and issued brief instructions. For minutes a host of robots toiled mightily, then a portion of the shield bulged out, extended into a tube beyond the attacking layers of force, and ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith

... character that nothing ever repeats, flash before me again with the vividness of yesterday; and a flight of birds—ah! if I could express what they recall! The dead years pass again in a great procession, a motley company—some like emperors, crowned and richly dowered, with the sound of trumpets and the tramping of many obsequious feet; and others like beggars, despoiled and hungry, trudging along a dusty high road, or like grey pilgrims bound, with bleeding ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... (were that possible) the prime epistolary merit of spontaneity. From the brain of the writer to the sheet before him flows an unbroken Pactolian stream. Lamb, at his best, ranges with Shakspearian facility the gamut of human emotion, exclaiming, as it were at one moment, with Jaques, "Motley's the only wear!"—in the next probing the source of tears. He is as ejaculatory with his pen as other men are with their tongues. Puns, quotations, conceits, critical estimates of the rarest insight and suggestiveness, chase each other over his pages like clouds over a summer sky; and the whole ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb

... toys, shells, sugar-cane, and various other commodities; but to enumerate the extraordinary diversity of goods exposed for sale, or to describe the Babel of tongues which confound the visitor as he wanders through the motley crowd, would be impossible. ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant

... went upstairs. The refreshment-parlour was a spacious place, with trees and illumination of electric globes that hung from thick cables. Seated at the tables was a motley crowd, speaking at the top of their voices, clapping their ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja

... 'Tis a motley company, you see, which comes and goes by the half-penny boat. Here is a Temple barrister, with his red-taped brief under his arm, and at his heels follows a plasterer, and a tiler's labourer with a six-foot chimney-pot upon his shoulders. There ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various

... The population is a motley assortment of races, nationalities and creeds. About 38 per cent being Ottomans or Turks. The Slavic and Rouman races come next in importance, then the Arabs, the remaining population consisting of Moors, Druses, Kurds, Tartars, Albanians, Circassians, ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller

... been rising for some time, now gave very unequivocal notice of an approaching storm. The rain began to fall, and the decks were quickly cleared of their motley groups. ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie

... up Hell to those that Baal adore, Yet make't Damnation to oppose his pow'r. So far this Paradox of Conscience run, Till Israels Faith pulls Israels Altars down. Grant Heav'n they don't to Baal so far make way, Those fatal Wands before their Sheepfolds lay. Such Motley Principles amongst them thrown, Shall nurse that Py-ball'd Flock that's half his own. Nor may they say, when Molocks Hands draw nigher, We built the Pile, whilst Baal but gives ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.

... settlement on the western waters, Daniel Boone, left this memorial of his orthography on a tree in Kentucky: "C-I-L-L-E-D A B-A-R." They did not dress alike, they did not spell alike, they did not think alike. It was a great, and it must have seemed a hopeless, motley of men who were all unconsciously to lay the foundations ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley

... has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his "natural superiors," and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, callous "cash payment." It has drowned the most heavenly ecstacies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine ...
— Manifesto of the Communist Party • Karl Marx

... could not see, but it must have been dolorous from the headlong terror of their flight. Soon by the thinning of the crowd through the doors I saw the cause. It was a motley and a moving spectacle. For by some mischance a flock of sheep had broken into the ball-room, and frightened out of their shallow senses by the lights and music, they rushed pell-mell here and there, upsetting without discrimination whatever ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson

... discovered in a land whose volcanic peaks rose two miles in the air, and here a town duly laid out with canals and bridges, and trim gardens and stagnant pools, was baptized by the ancient and well-beloved name of Good Meadow, or Batavia, which it bears to this day" (Motley, ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold

... 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 by foreign nations ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various

... every direction, to get hold of original letters, where he could, copies, where he could not, certificates and journals, catching at every gossipping story he could hear of in any quarter, supplying by suspicions what he could find no where else, and then arguing on this motley farrago, as if established on gospel evidence. And while expressing his wonder, 'at the age of eighty-eight, the strong passions of Mr. Adams should not have cooled '; that on the contrary, 'they had acquired the mastery of his soul,' ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... motley garb, with a face of scarlet and white, sitting on a blue half-barrel near the flap which indicated the entrance to the men's section of the dressing-tent, caught sight of an arm and hand lying limp under ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon

... Literature:—would your Lordship much like to march through Coventry with them? The immortal gods are there (quite irrecognizable under these disguises), and also the lowest broken valets;—an extremely miscellaneous regiment. In fact the regiment, superficially viewed, looks like an immeasurable motley flood of discharged play-actors, funambulists, false prophets, drunken ballad-singers; and marches not as a regiment, but as a boundless canaille,—without drill, uniform, captaincy or billet; with huge over-proportion of drummers; you would say, a regiment gone wholly ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle

... the Guard that the motley caravan in the avenue was made up of loyal, representative citizens from the important villages of the realm. They were admitted ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... Motley's The Siege of Leyden. Edited by William Elliot Griffis. With nineteen illustrations from old prints and photographs, and a map. Paper, ...
— Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories • Mrs. M. Chaplin Ayrton

... So the motley band came streaming into town. "Now tag, rag and bobtail carry a high hand." Bacon drew up a double line before the State House and demanded that some members of the Council come out to confer with him. When Colonel Spencer and Colonel Cole appeared ...
— Bacon's Rebellion, 1676 • Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker

... village street, surrounded by a company whom their chief has courteously summoned at my request, when I say to him, 'I have come to speak to your people,' I do not need to begin by telling them that there is a God. Looking on that motley assemblage of villagers,—the bold, gaunt cannibal with his armament of gun, spear, and dagger; the artisan with rude adze in hand, or hands soiled at the antique bellows of the village smithy; women who have hasted from their kitchen fire with ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois

... the 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 ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... may be imagined that there is a motley and considerable crowd; but it will scarcely be imagined that there is only one regulation, which is, that no persons may enter or depart till the mail-bags have been landed. The wharf is small and at night unlighted, and the scene which ensued ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird

... 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 ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green

... Franciscan is understood to have a fastidiousness and to overcome it. And yet, if choice were, one might wish rather to make use of one's fellow men's old shoes than put their old secrets to use, and dress one's art in a motley of past passions. Moreover, to utilize the mental experience of many is inevitably to use their verse and phrase. For the rest, all the traits of this love-poetry are familiar enough. One of them is the absence ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell

... asters in Autumn, are found The tents all bestrewing the carpeted ground; The din of a camp, with its stir and its strife, Its motley and strange, multitudinous life, Floats upward along the brown slopes, till it fills The echoing hollows afar ...
— Beechenbrook - A Rhyme of the War • Margaret J. Preston

... our adventurers were now associated was composed of a motley crew of Red River half-breeds, out for the great spring buffalo hunt. It consisted of nearly 700 hunters, as many women, more than 400 children, and upwards of 1000 carts, with horses and draught oxen, besides about 700 buffalo-runners, or trained hunting-horses, ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne

... the swelling of his heart! The long three-week ride had ended. The stage had rolled down a main street the like of which Pan had never even imagined. It was crude, rough, garish with lights and stark board fronts of buildings, and a motley jostling crowd of men; women, too, were not wanting in the throngs streaming up and down. Again it was Saturday night. Always it appeared Pan hit town on this of all nights. Noise and dust filled the air. Pan pulled down ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey

... fulfilment of spring's promise of plenty, with fruit in abundance. Autumn lingers in red and yellow motley, stoutly resisting winter's attack until boisterous winds from east and north send the last leaves shivering to the ground and spread out the city's winter garb. Then Prague assumes a severer aspect; reds and warm greys have vanished, castle, churches, ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker

... 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 Highness the Crown Prince, honored ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... to thy irreverend sophistries,' said I, 'and say what company is this a coming.' 'Bohemians,' cried he, 'Ay, ay, this shall be the rest of the band.' With that came along so motley a crew as never your eyes beheld, dear Margaret. Marched at their head one with a banner on a steel-pointed lance, and girded with a great long sword, and in velvet doublet and leathern jerkin, the which stuffs ne'er saw I wedded afore on mortal flesh, and a gay feather in his lordly ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... written for older readers. It does not strike one as being a history at all,—that is, a straightforward, logical, and continuous narrative coinciding with those exemplar types of historical writing bequeathed to us by Macaulay or by Motley. The book ends, as we have said, with the close of Jackson's administration; but we glean very little concerning the administration and we are told ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various

... Murphy's gang, a motley crew, mostly French Canadians and Irish, just out of the woods and ready for any devilment that promised excitement. Most of them knew by sight, and all by reputation, Macdonald and his gang, for from ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor

... think I am presuming on your patience when I lead you into a nursery, or a boarding school; but the life of Louisa Mancel was so early chequered with that various fate which gives this world the motley appearance of joy and sorrow, pain and pleasure, that it is not in my power to pass over the events of her infancy. I shall, however, spare you all that is possible, and recommend her to your notice only when she attracted the observation ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott

... secret for the camp of the Arabian Emir, Muza ben Nozier. The camp was spread out in one of those pastoral vallies which lie at the feet of the Barbary hills, with the great range of the Atlas mountains towering in the distance. In the motley army here assembled were warriors of every tribe and nation, that had been united by pact or conquest in the cause of Islem. There were those who had followed Muza from the fertile regions of Egypt, across the deserts of Barca, and those who ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various

... were sunk in sleep, but not all; in their camp some kept up their revels till late. All the luxuries which fancy could devise or wealth could purchase were gathered together at Emmaus to hide the grim front of war, so that the camp by daylight presented the motley appearance of a bazaar with the gay magnificence of a court. There sherbet sparkled in vases of silver, and the red wine was poured into golden cups, chased and embossed, in tents stretched out with silken cords. Garments bright with ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker

... 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

... of volunteers came hurrying from farms and caves, bringing such weapons probably as they had been able to keep in hiding. They were willing to respond. It was a motley crowd, no doubt. There were thirty-two thousand of them. These four tribes had once numbered as many as one hundred and eighty-four thousand five hundred fighting men. And at another, later, enumeration ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon

... life with grave dignity like Arab chiefs or caliphs of Bagdad. He sees their actions conditioned and to some extent controlled by the influences of majestic inhuman powers, the genii of eastern tales, huge, cloud-girt spirits of oppressive solemnity. In reality most people wear motley all day long and the fairy powers are leprechauns, tricksy, irresponsible sprites, willing enough to make merry with those who can laugh with them; but players of all Puck's tricks on ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham

... continued their walk up the street until they came into the motley stream of people who were wending their way down to the piers, where the steamers were constantly coming in and going out with passengers from and to ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie

... think, will tax My intellectual organ till it cracks; The Association British isn't wanted to be skittish, Wear the motley, nor to run a race in sacks; But 'twas getting awkward rather when my youngest asked his father What the President ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 29, 1891 • Various

... grizzled warrior had taken his seat on his cross-legged, round-backed chair, and a boy of some twelve years old stood before him, in a sullen attitude, one foot over the other, and his shoulder held fast by a squire, while the motley crowd ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge

... regarded force, file up. They number some forty men. Nothing more than fair bodily strength, willingness and obedience being required in their case, they are more easy to get and to replace than shearers. They are a varied and motley lot. That powerful and rather handsome man is a New Yorker, of Irish parentage. Next to him is a slight, neat, quiet individual. He was a lieutenant in a line regiment. The lad in the rear was a Sandhurst cadet. Then came two navvies and a New Zealander, five Chinamen, a Frenchman, two Germans, ...
— Shearing in the Riverina, New South Wales • Rolf Boldrewood

... he was called—though only behind his back—yet it might better have been Vulture. Big and gross, with thick unstable lips and stubby, hairy fingers, more than once he and his motley gang of hi-jackers had painted a crimson splash across the far corners of the frontiers, and daubed it to the tortured groans of the crews of honest trading ships. Often they had plunged on isolated trading ...
— Hawk Carse • Anthony Gilmore

... aquatic van drew 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 Case's convicts—and ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe

... train get up speed again and disappear at a great pace. Then out of the tunnel burst the pursuing engine, roaring and whistling, her motley crew waving their various weapons and shouting, "Stop! stop! stop!" When they were past, the Toad had a hearty laugh—for the first time since he was thrown ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame

... street in which Joanna lived was thronged with the faithful, who, undeterred by sarcasm, fully credited her prediction. They bivouacked on the side-walks in motley crowds of men, women, and children; and as the hours wore on, and their interest increased, burst forth into spontaneous psalmody. The adjacent thoroughfares were as densely jammed with curious and incredulous spectators, ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum

... Armored in smiles, a motley Britomart— Her lance is high adventure, tipped with scorn; Her banner to the suns and winds unfurled, Washed white with laughter; and beneath her heart, Shrined in a garland of laborious thorn, Blooms the unchanging ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various

... the later events have been submitted. However, Rizal himself may be called in to prove that the record and policy is what has been asserted, for otherwise he would hardly have disregarded, as he did, the writings of Motley and Prescott, historians whom he could have quoted with great advantage to support the attacks he would surely have not failed to make had they seemed to him warranted, for he never was wanting in knowledge, resourcefulness ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig

... depended much upon the excellent work by Mr. Clement Markham entitled the Fighting Veres. In this full justice is done to the great English general and his followers, and it is conclusively shown that some statements to the disparagement of Sir Francis Vere by Mr. Motley are founded upon a misconception of the facts. Sir Francis Vere was, in the general opinion of the time, one of the greatest commanders of the age, and more, perhaps, than any other man—with the exception of the Prince of Orange—contributed ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty

... therein kindly said of me personally." Luckily Lincoln never saw an earlier letter in which Lowell thought that "an ounce of Fremont is worth a pound of long Abraham." The fact is that Lowell, like most men of the "Brahmin caste," came slowly to a recognition of Lincoln's true quality. Motley, watching events from Vienna, had a better perspective than Boston then afforded. Even Mr. Norton, Lowell's dear friend and associate upon the North American Review, thought in 1862 that the President was timid, ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various

... closely the exercise of his almost preternatural powers of language, served but to deepen the wonder with which he was regarded. The extent, the variety, and the solidity of his attainments, and, still more, his complete and ready command, for the purposes of conversation, of all the motley stores which he had laid up, were so far beyond all example, whether in ancient or modern times, as not only to place him in the very first rank of the celebrities of our generation, but to mark him out as one of the most extraordinary personages ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various

... was on the look-out for the missing child. At the same time, an officer was told off to accompany the anxious father on a personal search for his little girl. First of all, they visited the casual ward at the workhouse, and astonished its motley and dilapidated occupants by waking them to ask if they had fallen in with a strayed child on any of the roads by which they had severally approached the town. When they had recovered from their first alarm beneath the gleam ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth

... character of the Monteros is at the Central Market, where they come daily by hundreds from the country in the early morning to sell their produce, accompanied by long lines of mules or horses with well-laden panniers. It is a motley crowd that one meets there, where purchasers and salesmen mingle promiscuously. From six to nine o'clock, A. M., it is the busiest place in all Havana. Negroes and mulattoes, Creoles and Spaniards, Chinamen and Monteros, men and women, beggars, purchasers, ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... arrogant, this foolish age, Which feeds itself on empty hopes, Absorbed in trifles, virtue's enemy, Which idly clamors for utility, And has not sense enough to see How useless all life thenceforth must become, I feel beneath me, and its judgments laugh To scorn. The motley crew, The foes of every lofty thought, Who laugh at thee, I trample ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi

... 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 books of chivalry ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... big-hearted man took it into his head to celebrate his successful trading ventures with a moonlight dance given without reserve to all the inhabitants of Vincennes. It was certainly a democratic function that he contemplated, and motley ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson

... social and political conditions had not gained the stability that is needed before contracts can be entered into extending over many years. International moneylending took place, of course, in the middle ages, and everybody knows Motley's great description of the consternation that shook Europe when Philip the Second repudiated his debts "to put an end to such financiering and unhallowed practices with bills of exchange."[3] But though there were moneylenders in those days ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers

... whenever I came to look about me in the ship, it seemed against all warrantry to .. cherish such emotions. For though the harpooneers, with the great body of the crew, were a far more barbaric, heathenish, and motley set than any of the tame merchant-ship companies which my previous experiences had made me acquainted with, still I ascribed this —and rightly ascribed it —to the fierce uniqueness of the very ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... age of progress, and ours is a progressive land. A great and glorious land, too—a land which has developed a Washington, a Franklin, a Wm. M. Tweed, a Longfellow, a Motley, a Jay Gould, a Samuel C. Pomeroy, a recent Congress which has never had its equal (in some respects), and a United States Army which conquered sixty Indians in eight months by tiring them out which ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... along the narrow paths now, past the little company of grave-stones, graves that were bearing their barbaric burdens of mortuary wreaths, of beaded crosses, and the motley assemblage, common to all French graveyards, of hideous shrines encasing tin saints and ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... nursed and wrapped him are all-too sternly contrasted with this day! Danton, Camille, Herault, Westermann, and the others, very strangely massed up with Bazires, Swindler Chabots, Fabre d'Eglantines, Banker Freys, a most motley Batch, 'Fournee' as such things will be called, stand ranked at the Bar of Tinville. It is the 2d of April 1794. Danton has had but three days to lie in ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... mentioned, the more conciliatory grew the countenance of the magistrate, and, as though into the jaws of a hungry beast, he continued unconcernedly throwing him bit after bit. He probably recalled other nights spent in the motley company, and it struck him that the person of the veiled lady would be an addition which might enhance his credit. Monsieur Jausion found, however, that an important figure was lacking, and he asked in a stern ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various

... proof of the hypocrite's villainy, breaks out once more into a tempest of agonised despair. Upon her cry for immediate revolt against the scoundrelly tyrant, the people collect together and form a motley and passionate crowd. Luzio, who also returns, counsels the people with stinging bitterness to pay no heed to the woman's fury; he points out that she is only tricking them, as she has already tricked him—for he still believes in her shameless infidelity. Fresh confusion; increased ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... the Place d'Armes looking at the sights, the five themselves began to attract much attention. Their height and strength, their long, sender barreled rifles, and their deerskin attire made them highly picturesque figures. The motley population of New Orleans was used to all kinds of people, armed or unarmed, but generally armed. These, however, were different. They bore themselves with dignity, there was about them an air ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler

... know a great deal both about the fishing and the books, though of these not the most edifying; he spoke five or six languages, though chiefly the slang of each. He had evidently lived in varied cities and very motley societies, for some of his cheerfullest stories were about gambling hells and opium dens, Australian bushrangers or Italian brigands. Father Brown knew that the once-celebrated Saradine had spent his last few years in almost ceaseless travel, ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... strewn with tables round which sat a motley gathering of gangsters, fools, pretty iniquities and others by no stretch of the imagination to be termed pretty, confidence men, gambling touts, and the sprinkling of drunkards—plain, common, transient, periodical, suburban, habitual, ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance

... 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 ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude

... in London, when he was very genuine, she had been attracted by him. Now, in New York, when he was dressed up in motley, with painted face and eyes that strove, though sometimes in vain, to be false, he fascinated her. The new Claude, harder, more dominant, secretly unhappy, feverish with a burning excitement of soul and brain, appealed ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens

... contempt which she had seen in the faces of the young men whilst they spoke of Mrs. Stanhope, the match-maker. Belinda's mind, however, was not yet sufficiently calm to reflect; she seemed only to live over again the preceding night. At last, the strange motley figures which she had seen at the masquerade flitted before her eyes, and she sunk into an ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth

... 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 ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll

... upon the busy highways,—an endless procession that went and came. Pack-horses, war chariots, slaves and soldiers, nobles, merchants, and artificers, men with goods to sell and men without,—a motley throng from many lands. Nicanor, shy and fierce-eyed and of shaggy hair, tramping steadily southward in the wake of the swift-footed soldiers, felt that the world was a very mighty place, and never had he dreamed of such great people. As he drew nearer Londinium, the traffic and the bustle ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor

... time of which the history is required. The historians of this day write of the past; and the historian of our present civil war is not yet born, who shall emulate the completeness and conciseness of Irving's Columbus, or Prescott's Ferdinand and Isabella, or Motley's Dutch Republic. Nor can we expect an early solution to the 'Fremont question,' which shall be full and satisfactory, though the length of time involved be but one hundred days. But it is different with Gen. Patterson. It is true that his ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various

... drinking-place I drank up close to the right side of the handle of the cup, as I thought that would be the spot least contaminated. In order not to breathe any more germs than I could possibly avoid, I kept away from theatres and places where motley crowds assemble and shunned dust and impure air as I would a leper. I had read that there was on the market a sanitary mask to be worn when going to places where there was the greatest danger of coming into contact with germs, ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs

... recline in groups, Scanning the motley scene that varies round. There some grave Moslem to devotion stoops, And some that smoke, and some that play, are found. Here the Albanian proudly treads the ground Half-whispering, there the Greek is heard to prate. Hark! ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt

... a motley collection of stuff they did bring, to be sure! Beds and mattresses, bedding, chairs, tables, a big cook stove for the kitchen, pots and pans, china and glass, knives and forks—everything that ...
— The Camp Fire Girls on the March - Bessie King's Test of Friendship • Jane L. Stewart

... an essential 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 ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke

... or the pleasure of yesterday becomes of very small account when a certain (albeit uncertain) morrow is in view, about which all of us must some day or other be speculating. O brother wearers of motley! Are there not moments when one grows sick of grinning and tumbling, and the jingling of cap and bells? This, dear friends and companions, is my amiable object—to walk with you through the Fair, to examine the shops and the shows there; and that we should all come home ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... salute." If we are tempted to laugh at this naive idealism, we Americans will do well to remember that it was an American statesman-idealist who believed that we could raise an army of a million men overnight, and that a shrewd American capitalist-idealist sent forth a "peace ship" with a motley crew of dreamers and disputers to end ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo

... sunset. Far down the garden, Uncle Thomas was holding Edward in the air reversed, and smacking him. Edward, gurgling hysterically, was striking blind fists in the direction where he judged his uncle's stomach should rightly be; the contents of his pockets—a motley show—were strewing the lawn. Somehow, though I had been put through a similar performance an hour or two ago, myself, it all seemed very far away and cut ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame

... 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 qua"—whether they come or not. Big-bellied flasks of rich Grotta-Ferrata wine are filled and emptied; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... Latin classics, 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 ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh

... frontiersman, I felt no danger in joining others of my class, lounging listlessly about in small groups discussing the situation, and gazing with awe upon those strange ships of war, swinging by their cables in the broad stream. It was a motley crew among whom I foregathered, one to awaken interest at any other time—French voyageurs from the far-off Illinois country, as barbarian in dress and actions as the native denizens of those northern plains, commingling ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish

... the idea of communism we do not find this infinite variety of opinion. We find, on the contrary, a definite and irreconcilable duality of thought. Human souls are divided on this matter not, as they are on other matters, into a motley variety of convictions but into two opposite and irreconcilable convictions, unfathomably hostile ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys

... clustered that motley assembly on the north bank of the Silver Lea. While on the other side the stream was a little group of judges, ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant

... warrior with the tip of his 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 ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset

... face—that also not yet fully formed—was overshadowed by a flapping decorated hat obviously constructed less for a woman's head—less still for a maiden's—than for a cash draper's window. Her chest was plastered with a motley collection of cheap jewellery and lace. Her boots ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds

... at this motley crew would have convinced us, had we not been quite sure of it already, that we had no favour to expect. There was not a countenance among them that exhibited the slightest trait of grace or mercy. No such expression could be seen around us, and we felt satisfied ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid

... short time in her motley history, an old-clothesman, one Domenico— he and his "Compagnia del Bruco," his Company of the Worm[1]— reigned over Siena and gave to her people a taste for blood. It was bloodshed on easy terms they had; for surely no small nation (except that tiger-cat Perugia) has achieved so much massacre ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett

... that no President was ever confronted with such a motley crowd of visitors as the members of that delegation—between seventy and eighty in number—as they formed in line around three sides of the East Room in the White House. Their garments were a sight! Some of the men were in full ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume

... of food which people eat recklessly with the natural results,—dyspepsia, inertia, mental vacuity, and general uselessness. A few Court 'functions,' some picture shows, and two or three great races—and—that's all. Some unfortunate marriages are usually the result of each year's motley." ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... student of life as Hamlet is, with lightning-quick intelligence and heavy heart, and these are the Hamlet qualities which were not brought into prominence in the youthful Romeo. Passages taken at haphazard will suffice to establish my contention. "Motley's the only wear," says Jaques, as if longing to assume the cap and bells, and Hamlet plays the fool's part with little better reason. ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris

... were no women and children on the Sarah Constant, nor on the Goodspeed, nor on the Discovery. The story of these ships is not like that later one of the Mayflower. The colour dies out of the picture; and there remains only the worn, motley band of men—men who have taken possession of the country by the sign of the cross, fit omen of ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins

... think in the first mile the last one went overboard, all having their covers burnt off from the frames, when a general melee took place among the deck passengers, each whipping his neighbour to put out the fire. They presented a very motley appearance on arriving at the first station." Here, "a short stop was made, and a successful experiment tried to remedy the unpleasant jerks. A plan was soon hit upon and put into execution. The three links in the couplings of the cars were stretched to their utmost tension, a rail from a fence ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various

... Ferdinand Lopez had manifestly become the favourite of the Duchess for the time, and had, at her instance, promised to remain there for some further days. He had hardly spoken to the Duke since he had been in the house,—but then but few of that motley assembly did talk much with the Duke. Gunner and Pountney had gone away,—the Captain having declared his dislike of the upstart Portuguese to be so strong that he could not stay in the same house with him any longer, and the Major, who was of stronger mind, having resolved ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope

... everything. The soul of goodness in things evil was visible to him. He had thought, felt, and suffered so much, that, as Leigh Hunt says, he literally had intolerance for nothing. Though he could see but little religion in many professing Christians, he nevertheless saw that the motley players, "made up of mimic laughter and tears, passing from the extremes of joy or woe at the prompter's call," were not so godless and impious as the world ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... the fence-posts, which barely keep it from sinking, and manage to navigate it successfully across. The village of Be-o-wa-we is full of cowboys, who are preparing for the annual spring round-up. Whites, Indians, and Mexicans compose the motley crowd. They look a wild lot, with their bear-skin chaparejos and semi-civilized trappings, galloping to and fro in and about the village. "I can't spare the time, or I would," is my slightly un-truthful answer to an invitation to stop over for the day and have ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... day from nine o'clock until twelve. Suddenly a commotion was perceptible among the crowd, and a pressure was felt toward the door which led to the cabinet of the emperor. The ears of those who have suits to urge are keen; and every one of that motley throng heard the footsteps of him who held their destinies in ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... south wall of the church, on the other the arcades of the Parliament House, inclose this irregular bight of causeway and describe their shadows on it in the sun. At either end, from round St. Giles's buttresses, you command a look into the High Street with its motley passengers; but the stream goes by east and west, and leaves the Parliament Close to Charles the Second and the birds. Once in a while, a patient crowd may be seen loitering there all day, some eating fruit, some reading a newspaper; and to judge by their quiet demeanour, you would think they ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... by the Sikh army, which had been moving up from Bugurrarah while he was gaining the passage. This was a terrible engagement. The sun had hardly risen upon river, and swamp, and undulating plains, when the Mooltanee forces fell upon the motley crowd of the British levies, and in such superior numbers that victory seemed certain. For nine hours the English lieutenant resisted the onslaught, and by his valour, activity, presence of mind, and moral influence, kept his undisciplined forces in firm front to the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... agony," all for one thing—to teach the oppressor that his cause must fail. It is difficult, sitting around a comfortable board at a public dinner, to make men realize what their forefathers suffered that the heritage of priceless liberty should be their children's pride. But read Motley, or the recent and remarkably well-written volumes of Douglas Campbell, and you will see that every atrocity that Spanish hatred, religious intolerance, and mediaeval bigotry could invent, every horror that ever followed in the train of war, swept over and desolated Holland. And ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... inaction and solitude our imaginations begin to work. Then we recall our regiment in full gallop over field and plain; we hear the clank of swords and bits; we see once more the flash of the blades, the motley line of the horses; we evoke the well-known figures of our chiefs on their chargers. That night my mind became more restless than ever before; it broke loose, it leapt away, and lived again the ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont



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