"Motley collection" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the famed battle of Lake Erie, fully ten percent of the American crews were blacks. Perry spoke highly of their bravery and good conduct. He said they seemed to be absolutely insensible to danger. His fighters were a motley collection of blacks, soldiers and boys. Nearly all had been afflicted with sickness. Mackenzie says that when the defeated British commander was brought aboard the "Niagara" and beheld the sickly and parti-colored beings around him, an ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... who were a motley collection of all nationalities: Italians, English, Portuguese, Dutch, Germans, and a few Arabs. "Huzzah! Huzzah! Wright forever!" The Arabs, of course, didn't say this, but they ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... the domestic hearth was picturesque, and must have had a beneficent influence. In earlier days the great lug-pole, or, as it was called in England, the back-bar, stretched from ledge to ledge, or lug to lug, high up the yawning chimney, and held a motley collection of pot-hooks and trammels, of gib-crokes, twicrokes, and hakes, which in turn suspended at various heights over the fire, pots, and kettles and other cooking utensils. In the hearth-corners were displayed skillets and trivets, ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... secured permission from the Emperor Ferdinand II to raise an independent army of his own to restore order in the empire and to expel the Danes. By liberal promises of pay and plunder, the soldier of fortune soon recruited an army of some 50,000 men, and what a motley collection it was! Italian, Swiss, Spaniard, German, Pole, Englishman, and Scot,—Protestant was welcomed as heartily as Catholic,—any one who loved adventure or hoped for gain, all united by the single tie of loyalty and devotion to Wallenstein. The force was whipped into shape by the undoubted ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... trees, which looked blue and hazy against their dazzling background. The town was snow-covered, too, and the frozen river, and wherever one went, the air was full of the gay jingle-jangle of countless sleighbells, while the streets were thronged with a motley collection of equipages, from the luxuriously upholstered double sleigh with its swaying robes and floating plumes, down to the shapeless home-made "pung" with its ragged, unlined buffalo skin snugly tucked in about the shawled and veiled grandma, who smilingly awaited ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... of people was steadily increasing. They came singly and in groups, in carriages, farm wagons, automobiles and afoot. Some of the curious went about examining each article in the motley collection in ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... Her enthusiasm for the new church meeting at the house of Mrs. John Day, who was the leading woman in the village, and, incidentally, the wife of its chief citizen, who also owned a small lumber yard, was of a lukewarm character. She had much more interest in the building itself, and the motley collection of individuals in whose hands ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... one of the pawn-shops licensed by the city authorities, and cast your eye over the motley collection of unredeemed articles. There are pistols of every pattern and almost of every age, the majority of them loaded. There are daggers in infinite variety, including the ingenious fan stiletto, which, when sheathed, may be carried in the ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... "Scientific Idealism," with several quite learned volumes of astronomy and geology, side by side with Gulliver and all kinds of travel and story-books which we have most of us adored. It was I who had the task of sorting and arranging this motley collection, and I can hardly tell you, Padre, how ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... river was the occasion for a pandemonium of noise as the Indian dogs swept out upon the ice to greet them with barks, yaps, growls, whines, and howls. Never had the boy seen such a motley collection of dogs. Big dogs and little dogs, long tailed, short tailed, and bob tailed—white dogs and black dogs, and dogs of every colour and all colours between. In only two particulars was there any uniformity—they all made some sort of a noise, ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... standing near the back entrance of the stage when she was looking for a place to hide the picture. Beside the stage entrance there was a little room containing all the lighting switches for the stage, various battery boxes and other electrical equipment, together with a motley collection of stage properties. Quick as a flash Hinpoha opened the door of this room, darted in and hid the picture in a roll of cheesecloth. When she came out one of the teachers was standing directly before the door, pointing out to a friend ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... door, he plunged into the house as if a mob were at his heels. Now he was before the cupboard! Little mercy the phylacteries and amulets, the bridle-spanglery of donkeys, the trinketry of women, his ancestresses once famous for beauty or many children— little mercy the motley collection on the second shelf received from his hands. He tossed them here and there, and here and there again, but the search was vain. Ah, good Lord! was the medalet lost? And ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... The motley collection of antiques the girls had secured while abroad and had shipped home, arrived in due season and the cases were sent to Mr. Ashby's Shop. The girls were told that the goods had been delivered, and the next day they hastened to the establishment ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy |
