"Rabble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in Yerba Buena. A gringo engineer named Fremont with a rabble of adventurers had overthrown the valiant Vallejo at Sonora and declared a California Republic. He had spiked the cannon at the Presidio. And now a gringo sloop-of-war was in the bay, some said with orders to reduce the port. Almost simultaneously ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... say they do not wish to fire on their kinsmen and friends. They are all French, you know, and they see their cousins, brothers, uncles and old acquaintances out there in Clark's rabble. I ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... 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 could, Dieskau took to the French fort at Crown Point, on Lake Champlain, and southward from there to Ticonderoga at the head of this lake, some three thousand five hundred men, including his French regulars, ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... began tearing away at the eland, and bolting huge morsels greedily. This made the rabble's mouth water. The hyenas, and jackals, and vultures formed a circle ludicrous to behold, and that circle kept narrowing as the lion tore away at his prey. They increased in number, and at last hunger overcame ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... have even lost their lives in the fray; and I think the government should interfere, and put down these riotous meetings. Surely, it is very hard, that an old man cannot marry a young gal, if she is willing to take him, without asking the leave of such a rabble as that. What right have they to interfere with his ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... you incensed the rabble, Cats, that can judge as fitly of his worth As I can of those mysteries which Heaven Will not leave Earth to know." (Act 4, ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... that the central figure in the plot is Disraeli, himself, and upon his own head the author plays his shafts of wit and ridicule. The impertinence and impudence which he himself manifested were parodied, caricatured and played upon, to the great delight of the uninitiated rabble, who gave themselves much credit for having ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... Baroness Surowkoff must be consistent; he must be as willing to fight for the cause he espouses as to speak for it: in this case, the sword must follow the oration, else we shall see Poland in the hands of a rabble.' ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... hourly complaining, the whole care of the publick should be transferred to Mr. Wilkes and the freeholders of Middlesex, who might all sink into nonexistence, without any other effect, than that there would be room made for a new rabble, and a new retailer of sedition and obscenity. The cause of our country would suffer little; the rabble, whencesoever they come, will be always patriots, and always supporters of the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... expressing his views without fear, he was regarded as a dangerous heretic. His enemies having informed against him, his house at Saintes was entered by the officers of "justice," and his workshop was thrown open to the rabble, who entered and smashed his pottery, while he himself was hurried off by night and cast into a dungeon at Bordeaux, to wait his turn at the stake or the scaffold. He was condemned to be burnt; but a powerful noble, the Constable de Montmorency, interposed to save his life—not because he had any ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... began lecturing at from two to five dollars an evening. He grew in popularity until he was in demand at five hundred dollars a lecture, and no one before or since more successfully used all the arts of the platform, from the comic that drew the very rabble of the streets, to flights of eloquence that captured college culture. It has been well said: "While Gough was a great preacher of righteousness, he was a whole theatre in dramatic delivery." Lecturers, like preachers, are fishers of men, and there are as many kinds of people ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... with good organization; otherwise it is no more effective than the passive mass or a rabble ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... a stop. 'Now, to think of these vagabonds,' said he, 'attracting the young rabble from ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... convert the garden where he had breathed the air of Truth and Heaven for near half a century into a paltry Chreistomathic School, and to make Milton's house (the cradle of Paradise Lost) a thoroughfare, like a three-stalled stable, for the idle rabble of Westminster to pass backwards and forwards to it with their cloven hoofs. Let us not, however, be getting on too fast—Milton himself taught school! There is something not altogether dissimilar ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... "A rabble of pigmies scaling Heaven," said the noble though misguided young Prisoner. "Prometheus was a Giant, ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... patience, hemmed in and hustled by the rabble on every side, and every moment expecting personal violence, resolved to try measures of intimidation, and at length drew a pocket-pistol, threatening, on the one hand, to shoot whomsoever dared to stop him, and, on the other, menacing Ebenezer with ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... let any of the rabble come into this barn for the present," directed Hal's company commander. "Come, ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock
... are turning to flee; those who immediately surround Darius, the vanquished king, think of nothing but their own safety; but Darius is totally forgetful of himself. His hand extended toward his dying general, he turns his back to the flying rabble and seems to invite death. The whole scene—the headlong rush of the one army, the utter confusion of the other, the chariot of the King wheeling to the front, the rage, the terror, the pity expressed, and all this profoundly ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... the crowd swayed forward and began to move. They followed slowly in its wake, hemmed in by the rabble that streamed towards Ridgmount Gardens, to lose itself in the black slums of Bloomsbury. On the pavement the reeling girl was swept on with the crowd, still singing her hideous song. Mrs. Nevill Tyson was leaning back now, with her eyes closed, not heeding the ugly pageant. ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... the barriers of earth, comprehending them all He followed the soul of his loss with the night in his eyes; And the portals lay bare to him there; and he heard the faint call Of his love o'er the rabble that wails by the river ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... the people who swear," added Eurie. "I haven't heard an oath this morning, and I have roamed around everywhere. I must say Chautauqua will bear off the palm for getting together a most respectable-looking, well-behaved 'rabble!' That is what I overheard a sour-looking old gentleman, who doesn't approve of having a president—or of letting him come to a religious meeting, I don't know which—say would rush in to-day. It certainly is a remarkably orderly 'rush.' Girls, look at ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... ramrods. Thus each arm made only two armed men, whereas a bit of ingenuity might have made each serve three or four; by dividing the stocks and barrels, for instance. The tatterdemalion of the treble fiercely demanded my passport, while the "army" quickly degenerated into a ragged rabble loafing in ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... unbribed, Hibernia's land, Or change the rocks of Scotland for the Strand? 10 There none are swept by sudden fate away, But all whom hunger spares, with age decay: Here malice, rapine, accident, conspire, And now a rabble rages, now a fire; Their ambush here relentless ruffians lay, And here the fell attorney prowls for prey; Here falling houses thunder on your head, And here a ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... total eclipse came over this imposing and majestic luminary when Guy Carleton's guns from the ramparts of Quebec began, in 1775, to thunder on its cupola and roof, which offered a shelter to Arnold's soldiery: the rabble of "shoemakers, hatters, blacksmiths and innkeepers," (says that savage old Tory, Colonel Henry Caldwell), bent on providing Canada with the blessings of Republicanism. A century and more has passed over the gorgeous Palace—now a dreary, moss- covered ruin, surrounded in rear by coarse grass, ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... upon the admiral and endeavour to come to an agreement: But this being disliked by the rest, when Roldan and three others were getting on horseback to go along with Caravajal to the admiral, the rabble surrounded them, declaring they would not allow them to go, and that if any agreement was to be made it should be drawn up in writing, that all might know what was proposed ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... the wound, and washed away the clotted blood and grime. "But not so long ago as thou hast said. Yester eve comes a cloud of dust over the hill by the marshes, and in the cloud as strange a sight as man may see. Chariots, with horses smoking in the traces, lords on horseback, slaves and rabble, all flying from the gods know what. A tall man, very pale, with a mouth set like the jaws of a trap; a younger one, to whom all turned for command and advice; a woman lovely as—er, that is to say, fair enough to please a taste not over-critical as mine, very pale, ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... saw the whole Army leave Camp; and march in four columns towards Friedewald, where Marshal Neipperg is encamped. "Not a bit of it, your Excellency! Neipperg is safe at Neisse; amid inaccessible embankments and artificial mud: and these are mere Hussar-Pandour rabble out here; whom a push or two sends home again,—would it could keep them there! But they are of sylvan (or SALVAGE) nature, affecting the shade; and burst out, for theft and arson, sometimes at great distances, no calculating ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... is bright with the fires started by the rabble. The yellow roofs, the pink walls and the towering marble pagodas catch the reflection of the flames, making a scene of barbaric splendor that would reduce the burning of Rome to a ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... down the lakes from Michillimackinac with a fleet of canoes manned by two hundred and fifty Ottawa and Ojibwa warriors; stopped a while at Detroit; then embarked again, paddled up the Maumee to Raymond's fort at the portage, and led his greased and painted rabble through the forest to attack the Demoiselle and his English friends. They approached Pickawillany at about nine o'clock on the morning of the twenty-first. The scared squaws fled from the cornfields into the town, where the wigwams of the Indians clustered about ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... the valley is a respectable strip of fertile land; at the end of the valley, toward Dan, as much as half the land is solid and fertile, and watered by Jordan's sources. There is enough of it to make a farm. It almost warrants the enthusiasm of the spies of that rabble of adventurers who captured Dan. They said: "We have seen the land, and behold it is very good. * * * A place where there is no want of any thing that is ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... rabble crowds into the room. At the same moment, LADY INGER appears in the doorway of the hall. A ...
— Henrik Ibsen's Prose Dramas Vol III. • Henrik Ibsen
... avenue, and that such battered remnants of the invalid corps as had escaped were limping off behind their cover as fast as possible. The presence of the city's guardians had caused a brief hesitation in the approaching and broken edge of the rabble. Seeing this the brave sergeant ordered a charge, which was promptly and swiftly made, the mob recoiling before it more and more slowly as under pressure it became denser. There was no more effort to carry out the ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... comes from that which is believed in; if you separate it from that, it becomes a mere self-opinion, a sensation of positiveness; and what sort of strength that will give, history will tell us in the tragedies of the Jews who opposed Titus, of the rabble who followed Walter the Penniless to the Crusades, of the Munster Anabaptists, and many another sad page of human folly. It may give the fury of idiots; not the deliberate might of valiant men. Let us pass this by, then; believing that faith can only give strength where ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... soul) queen of a Castle, which for seven years was beset by a rabble rout. Arthur and sir Guyon were conducted by Alma over this castle, which though not named is intended to represent the human body.—Spenser, The Faerie ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... crowd's sympathies were with Bootsey, and when he insisted that the Mongol had tangled him up in his pig-tail, the aroused populace with great difficulty restrained its desire to demolish the amazed heathens. At last, however, they were permitted to go, followed by a rabble of urchins, and Bootsey proceeded on his way ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... his dire reign had thus been spent in jest! And all that time such trifles had employ'd In which so many nobles he destroy'd! He safe, they unrevenged, to the disgrace Of the surviving, tame, patrician race! But when he dreadful to the rabble grew, Him, who so many lords had ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... scattered wits began to return to their allegiance. First, bewilderment at his enforcement had seized him, and the four men, who were continually running round him and speaking all at once, and each pulling him in a different direction, gave him the impression that he was surrounded by a great rabble of people, but he could not discover what they wanted. After a time he found that there were only four men, and gathered from their remarks that he was being arrested for murder—this precipitated him into another and a deeper ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... not able to do business hurriedly with his rabble subjects, did not appear again until this morning, and then, instead of proceeding at once to work, hinted he should like to have the presents I had brought from Aden for him, as the best method of showing ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... crowded together to wonder at the spectacle. But, torn as he was by the cactuses of Barbary and the thickets of Tartary, the seneschal had lost nothing of his haughty air. With a threatening gesture he dispersed the rabble, and limped to his house to taste the repose of which he began to ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... and on the parched turf beneath the mulberries. There was a principle of division. The Federalists, who were in the minority, held one end of the porch; the more prominent Republicans the other, while the steps were free to both, and the space below was given over to a rabble almost entirely Republican. Rand, with several associates, lawyers or planters, stood near the head of the steps;—all waited for the sorting and distribution of the mail. The sun was low over the Ragged Mountains, and after the breathless ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... absent on leave,—or like visiting the hippopotamus in Regent's Park on those days in which he remains steadfastly buried in his tank, and will show only the tip of a nostril for your entrance-fee. Still, it was a pleasure to know that learning was so handsomely housed; and as for the little rabble who could not be trusted in the presence of the sex, we forgave them heartily, knowing that soberer manners would one day come upon them, as inevitably as baldness ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... hokey," said a derisive voice. "He hasn't got a tooth in his head, but it wants no chewing, hokey does na'." There was a general guffaw from the little rabble about the barrow. ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... of the poor whites, in whom hatred of the dominant whites and vengeful malice against the negro burned like slow fires. When almost everywhere the countryside was stripped of its fighting men, these wretches emerged from their swamps and forests, like the Paris rabble emerging from its dens at the opening of the Revolution. But unlike the Frenchmen, they were too sodden to be capable of ideas. Like predatory wild beasts they revenged themselves upon the society that had cast them off, and with utter heartlessness they smote the ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... swarmed into the dark alleyway of the inn. The guards drove back the rabble, and the door was closed and barred. The eager crowd remained outside, standing ankle-deep in slush, with their noses flattened against the panes. A profound silence settled upon the house. Having by this time got into my clothes, I opened the door part way to listen, and see if ...
— The Dean's Watch - 1897 • Erckmann-Chatrian
... the line, and when at length his turn was announced, followed the rabble shamefacedly. The chasseurs in the mess-room were making merry after dinner with pipes and cards, and one of these, giving Pisgah a piece of bread and a tin basin of strong soup, slapped him smartly upon ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... tramp, tramp, our boys are marching. Cheer up, let the Fenians come! For beneath the Union Jack we'll drive the rabble back And we'll fight for our beloved ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... of the church was deeply rooted in the devotion of the common people, it was the service of the mass. And in attacking the doctrine of the Real Presence, the authors of this libel, distributed under cover of the darkness, had, in the estimation of the rabble, proved themselves more impious and deserving a more signal punishment than that sacrilegious Jew whose knife had drawn drops of miraculous blood from the transubstantiated wafer. Not the parish priests, nor the doctors of the Sorbonne, could surpass the infuriated populace in ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... the examination of this peasant. The moment I heard of the errand which had brought this rabble of visitors, a sudden thought struck me. I conceived the possibility of rendering the incident subordinate to the great enquiry which drank up all the currents of my soul. I said, this man is arraigned of murder, and murder is the master-key that wakes distemper in ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... were confined to a few people, the majority realising the adornment the new church would be to the neighbourhood. When I returned I found that this opposing sentiment had described us as "the Tabernacle Rabble." I was in splendid health and spirits however, ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... their child, which the nurse held in her armes, and dandle it. One thing more; there happened a scaffold below to fall, and we feared some hurt, but there was none, but she of all the great ladies only run down among the common rabble to see what hurt was done, and did take care of a child that received some little hurt, which methought was so noble. Anon there came one there booted and spurred that she talked long with. And by and by, she being in her hair, she put on his hat, which was but an ordinary one, to keep ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... join my voice with the rabble," said Edward, "and it makes me sad to see knighthood fallen. What ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a stately Palace, set out with all manner of deliciousness; Soft Musick, Tables spred with all dainties. Comus appears with his rabble, and the Lady set in an inchanted Chair, to whom he offers his Glass, which she puts by, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... glitter in the sun of memorial cards in hats gave the fanciful illusion of an impossible whitish snake that was straggling across the town. Three-quarters of an hour elapsed before the tail of the snake came into view, and a rabble of unkempt boys closed in upon it, filling ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... while the boys still stared. It was as if two leaders or generals were meeting for the first time, and the rabble, looking on, wondered what would come ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... said the prebendary, disdainfully. "They are so anxious to find out whether I am now being conveyed to the place of execution, which would be a most welcome spectacle for them. You ought to have mercy on this amiable rabble, gentlemen, and inform them of the evil tidings that I have unfortunately not been sentenced to be hanged on the gallows, nor to be broken on the wheel, but only to be imprisoned in a fortress for ten years, which I shall pass at ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... "When the rabble had got him into their hands, some took him by the legs, and others by the arms, and so dragging him along the streets, cried, 'Lamb, Lamb, the conjuror, the conjuror!' every one kicking and striking him ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... All the other chief monuments were defaced in like manner. One in particular is worth mentioning. It was a monument in the new building erected to himself by Sir Humfrey Orme in his lifetime. Two words on the inscription, "Altar" and "Sacrifice," are said to have excited the fury of the rabble, and it was broken down with axes, pole-axes, and hammers. So this good old knight "outlived his own monument, and lived to see himself carried in effigie on a Souldiers back, to the publick market-place, there to be sported withall, a Crew of Souldiers going before in procession, ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... seniority[1062].' BOSWELL. 'But is not that taking a mere chance for having a good or a bad Mayor?' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir; but the evil of competition is greater than that of the worst Mayor that can come; besides, there is no more reason to suppose that the choice of a rabble will be right, than that ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... man climbed the ugly fence and dropped down on the other side. Then he ran for the shelter of the long lines of cars standing on the siding. A crew of men recruited from the office force of the railroad was trying to make up a train. The rabble that had gained entrance to the yards were blocking their movements by throwing switches at the critical moment. As Sommers came up to the fence, the switching engine had been thrown into the wrong siding, and had bunted up at full ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... was the Roman habit, the lower citizens were obliged to appear abroad is their tunica, or close garment. The love of praise is so eager a passion, that the public orator is here represented as delighting in the applause of the rabble. Persius, the satirist, has ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... the other hand, were amply supplied with every kind of store and weapon, and could bring a great force to blockade us, though that force was composed of a timid and undisciplined rabble. ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... believing anybody in that crowd cares about the work you have done in their service. Scores of them are under deep personal obligations to me. But I'm leaving this building by my neighbour's roof this morning. You don't want to forget, Jim, that the rabble for whom even Christ lived and died, shouted in his face at last 'Crucify ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... "We make use of Mirabeau, but we do not take him seriously." When Mirabeau awoke to his predicament, he broke out in mixed wrath and scorn: "Of what are these people thinking? Do they not see the abyss yawning at their feet? Both the King and Queen will perish, and you will live to see the rabble ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... from the rape of the Sabines to the ravages of the Caesars. If their people indeed had been, like ourselves, enlightened, peaceable, and really free, the answer would be obvious. 'Restore independence to all your foreign conquests, relieve Italy from the government of the rabble of Rome, consult it as a nation entitled to self-government, and do its will.' But steeped in corruption, vice, and venality, as the whole nation was, (and nobody had done more than Caesar to corrupt it,) what could even ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... it. The cross alone shines rosy-gilt. But what century have we reached? Has this procession from the Surrey side to the Strand gone on for ever? That old man has been crossing the Bridge these six hundred years, with the rabble of little boys at his heels, for he is drunk, or blind with misery, and tied round with old clouts of clothing such as pilgrims might have worn. He shuffles on. No one stands still. It seems as if we marched to the sound of music; perhaps the wind and the river; perhaps these same drums and trumpets—the ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... assembly, congress; convention, conventicle; gemote^; conclave &c (council) 696; posse, posse comitatus [Lat.]; Noah's ark. miscellany, collectanea^; museum, menagerie &c (store) 636; museology^. crowd, throng, group; flood, rush, deluge; rabble, mob, press, crush, cohue^, horde, body, tribe; crew, gang, knot, squad, band, party; swarm, shoal, school, covey, flock, herd, drove; atajo^; bunch, drive, force, mulada [U.S.]; remuda^; roundup [U.S.]; array, bevy, galaxy; corps, company, troop, troupe, task force; army, regiment &c (combatants) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... little bayou of the river; and, returning to the line of stacks, a few more long, unquiet minutes in waiting, speculation, and eager gazing toward the battle. And then we saw what was that dark, turbulent multitude over the river: oh, shame! a confused rabble, composed chiefly of men whose places were rightly on the field, but who had turned and fled away from the fight to seek safety under the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... private armies, armed with modern weapons and organized on European lines. The "army" of Mangku Negoro consists of about a thousand men, and is a far more efficient fighting force than the fantastically uniformed rabble maintained by his suzerain, the Susuhunan. In certain respects this arrangement resembles the plan which is followed at West Point and Annapolis, where, if the appointee fails to meet the entrance requirements, the appointment goes to an alternate, who ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... to my home in the Rue de Lille. On the way I encountered the rabble going from the Corps Legislatif to the Hotel de Ville. My mind ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... are my Switzers? Let them guard the doore. What is the matter? Mes. Saue your selfe, my Lord. The Ocean (ouer-peering of his List) Eates not the Flats with more impittious haste Then young Laertes, in a Riotous head, Ore-beares your Officers, the rabble call him Lord, And as the world were now but to begin, Antiquity forgot, Custome not knowne, The Ratifiers and props of euery word, They cry choose we? Laertes shall be King, Caps, hands, and tongues, applaud it to the clouds, Laertes shall ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... how to be serious in the confutation of an absurdity that shows itself at the first sight. It does not want any great measure of sense to see the ridicule of this monstrous practice; but what makes it the more astonishing, it is not the taste of the rabble, but of persons of the greatest politeness, ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... after truth, runs a question down, worries and kills it, then quits it like a vermin, and starts some new game, to lead him a new dance, and give him a fresh breathing through bog and brake, with the rabble yelping at his heels and the leaders perpetually at fault. This he calls sport-royal. He thinks it as good as cudgel-playing or single-stick, or anything else that has life in it. He likes the cut and thrust, the falls, bruises, and dry blows of an argument: as to any ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... turn her mode of life into ridicule, with even greater bitterness than usual; and turning to her husband and to his father, she exclaimed impatiently that she could not understand how they allowed her to follow her mean and degrading pursuits, to mix with the refuse of the rabble, and draw down upon the whole family not only merited disgrace, but intolerable inconveniences. She was going on in this way, and speaking with great violence, when all of a sudden she turned as pale as death, a fit of trembling came ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... the circumstantial chain seemed forged of painted cardboard. Then the poor man read the judge's summing up, and the chain became tempered steel. The noise of the crowd outside broke upon his ear in his study like the roar of a distant ocean. The more the rabble hooted him, the more he essayed to hold scrupulously the scales of life and death. And the crowd grew and grew, as men came away from their work. There were many that loved the man who lay in the jaws of death, and a spirit of mad revolt surged in their breasts. ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... Palatine Hill. Innumerable vaults and arches peep out of the vegetation. It was upon these, in all probability, the splendid palace of the Caesars was raised. Confused fragments of marble, and walls of lofty terraces, are the sole traces of its ancient magnificence. A wretched rabble were roasting their chestnuts, on the very spot, perhaps, where Domitian convened a senate, to harangue upon the delicacies of his entertainment. The light of the flame cast upon the figures around ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... wrong presently, for the director blew a shrill blast on his whistle and suddenly everything stopped short. The camera man threw a cloth over his lenses and calmly lighted a cigarette. The procession halted in uncertainty and became a disordered rabble; but the director sprang into the open space and shouted at his actors and ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... of the 29th,' he says, 'was ushered in by the dismal ringing of bells, the groans of distant guns, and the savage shouts of the populace; and I arose from a long train of dreams, which defied recollection as well as interpretation. The rabble, headed by a few beardless boys just let loose from the Polytechnic School and other seminaries, had been pleased to fix their head-quarters in our street. About half-past eleven, however, those of them who were collected here having heard that the popular forces who were fighting ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 532. Saturday, February 4, 1832 • Various
... opposing conditions and rabble protest and doleful prophecy and the assurance of certain perils, we turned our faces toward the unfriendly land of the sunset skies, the open West ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... had looked so valiant in face of Sir Hugh Gough's force ten years before, now surrendered their lives and their honour after a mere show of resistance to a force which was nothing better than an armed rabble. The Manchu colony of Nanking, to the number of some 4000 families, had evidently fallen off from its high renown. Instead of dying at their posts, they threw themselves on the pity of the Taeping leader. Their cowardice helped them not; of ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... our very manners and conversation are traditional, and sometimes the life seems dying out of all literature, and this enormous paper currency of Words is accepted instead. I suppose the evil may be cured by this rank rabble party, the Jacksonism of the country, heedless of English and of all literature—a stone cut out of the ground without hands;—they may root out the hollow dilettantism of our cultivation in the coarsest way, and the new-born may begin again to ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... dropped back into the chaise, the troop took their own way, and my next glance showed the street empty. But the Frenchman finds comfort under all calamities. After venting his wrath in no measured terms on "rabble insolence," and declaring that laws were of no use when "gueux" like these could take them into their hands, he consoled himself by observing that, stripped as he was of his honours, the loss might be compensated by his profits; that the "vagabonds" might have expected ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... or mob, in all ages, have been a set of blind, deaf, obstinate, senseless, illiterate savages. That no man of genius, in his senses, would be ambitious of pleasing such a capricious, ungrateful rabble. That the only legitimate end of writing for them is to pick their pockets, and, that failing, we are at full liberty to vilify and abuse them as much as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... egg-laying vertebrates, hitting on the placenta only recently,—experimenting all around the circle, discarding and inventing, taking ages to perfect the nervous system, ages and ages to develop the centralized ganglia, the brain. First life was like a rabble, a mob, without thought or head, then slowly organization went on, as it were, from family to clan, from clan to tribe, from tribe to nation, or centralized government—the brain of man—all parts duly subordinated and directed,—millions ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... gave way, therefore, in a half-hearted hesitation that spelled ruin to their cause. They were forced back to their encampment: over the ground they had vacated picks and shovels began to fly, rails were torn up and relaid, gravel rained from the flat cars, the blockhouses were razed, and above the rabble the locomotive panted and wheezed, its great yellow eye glaring through the night. When it backed away another took its place; the grade rose to the level of the intersection, then as morning approached it crept out beyond. By breakfast-time a long row of flats extended across the line ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... back across the river and to camp, a two hours' halt, a forced march of thirty-five miles—making over fifty miles in all—without eating or drinking, only as could be "caught up" on the march or run. Up the valley this routed, disorganized rabble (it could not be called an army) marched, every man as he saw fit, here a General at the head of a few squads called regiments, or a Colonel or Captain with a few men at his heels, some with colors and some without; here a Colonel without a man, ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... up, and they returned to town. The fame of wicked Dodge never interfered with the transaction of business, its iniquity catering largely to the rabble. ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... practically raised to the condition of a standing army and, contrary to immemorial law, placed under the immediate authority of the Crown. But the bishops and their clergy had demurred. They had little fancy for being left with no other protection than a half-disciplined rabble, who, ready as they might be to act against their troublesome countrymen, had no more respect for a lawn sleeve than for a homespun jerkin. A few troops of regular cavalry were therefore retained, and one regiment of Foot Guards. The former were commanded by Athole, the latter by Linlithgow. ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... while I was away there in Montreal waiting for the New Yorkers to take it—if they could. They were a sorry rabble, for they rushed on La Prairie, that meagre place,—massacred and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... shook his head; "These old Italian tales," he said, "From the much-praised Decameron down Through all the rabble of the rest, Are either trifling, dull, or lewd; The gossip of a neighborhood In some remote provincial town, A scandalous chronicle at best! They seem to me a stagnant fen, Grown rank with rushes and with reeds, Where a white ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... people, it might naturally be inferred that the rich planters would be excluded from any share in the government. Such, however, was not the case. By a conveniently rapid change of front the most prominent men of the colony retained much of their old influence, and the rabble, lacking leaders of ability, were forced to elect them to places of trust and responsibility. But the Commonwealth Period helped to organize the middle class, to give it a sense of unity and a desire for a share in the government. At the time of Bacon's Rebellion ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... Magistrate was a very good fellow in his way, and I don't want to say a word against him, but still, it must be owned that he wasn't exactly the kind of man to stand firm in the midst of a rabble of wild Mohammedans, all howling and flourishing their knives at once under his very nose. To tell the plain truth, he was frightened out of his wits; and the only thing he thought of was how to shift the responsibility on to somebody else's shoulders ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... animal, in spite of his bleeding wounds, rushed in; then the whole pack of mongrels, curs, puppies, lurchers, and turnspits ran in too in a long string, till poor Baptiste was covered with the vile rabble rout; he did what he could, he rolled over and over as far as his chain would let him, growling and grunting, crushing one, sending another away with a bite, struggling furiously. The brave Dane still showed the greatest intrepidity; he had caught ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... boldly in the absence of the Intendant," said Colonel Leboeuf. "A gentleman would give a louis d'or any day to buy a whip to lash the rabble sooner than a sou to win their applause! I would not give a red herring for the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... having concluded his wars, a plague broke out in the empire: sacrifices to the pagan deities were ordered by the emperor, and persecutions spread from the interior to the extreme parts of the empire, and many fell martyrs to the impetuosity of the rabble, as well as the prejudice of the magistrates. Among these were Cornelius, the christian bishop of Rome, and Lucius, his ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... with the apprehension of a new war and fresh encounters and dangers, the formidable character of which he knew by his own experience. He was not now to hazard the war with Octavius or Merula, commanding an inexperienced multitude or seditious rabble; but Sylla himself was approaching, the same who had formerly banished him, and since that, had driven Mithridates as far as ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... close and stick together, both moving and in heaps; as ill united bodies, that, shuffled together without order, find of themselves a means to unite and settle, often better than they could have been disposed by art. King Philip mustered up a rabble of the most wicked and incorrigible rascals he could pick out, and put them all together into a city he had caused to be built for that purpose, which bore their name: I believe that they, even from vices ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... been said about the rabble,—the democracy,—their turbulence, corruption, and degradation, their unfitness to rule, and all that sort of thing, which I regard as irrelevant, so far as the usurpation of Caesar is concerned; since the struggle was not between them and the nobles, but between a fortunate ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... and had we attacked this would not have happened. Tell me, for God's sake, what will Russia, our mother Russia, say to our being so frightened, and why are we abandoning our good and gallant Fatherland to such rabble and implanting feelings of hatred and shame in all our subjects? What are we scared at and of whom are we afraid? I am not to blame that the Minister is vacillating, a coward, dense, dilatory, and has all bad qualities. The whole army bewails it and ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... his brother embarked, amidst the scoffs and shouts of a miscreant rabble, who took a brutal joy in heaping insult on his ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... and Arians forgot their enmity in the pleasant task of reviling the gods and cursing Julian. A yell of execration ran all along the Christian line, from the extreme Apollinarian right to the furthest Anomoean left. Basil of Caesarea renounced the apostate's friendship; the rabble of Antioch assailed him with scurrilous lampoons and anti-pagan riots. Nor were the Arians behind in hate. Blind old Maris of Chalcedon came and cursed him to his face. The heathens laughed, the Christians cursed, ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... great. The Parliamentary ranks were filled with hirelings whom want and idleness had induced to enlist. Hampden's regiment was regarded as one of the best; and even Hampden's regiment was described by Cromwell as a mere rabble of tapsters and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... examples of more active spirits accomplishing much when younger than he, the young Alexander, Scipio, Pompey, and Caesar. But the Savior replied that the glory which consisted of the approval of the rabble was only to be despised. The true glory was that of the man who dared to be truly good, who though little known on earth, was famous in Heaven. Such men did not lay waste fields, sack, pillage, and slay, but by deeds of peace won the approval of the Father. Such was ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... King's bidding, a gigantic devil with cavernous jaws set up a roar, louder than the discharge of a hundred cannon, and as loud, were it possible, as the last trump, to proclaim the infernal Parliament, and behold, without delay, the court and hall are filled by the rabble of hell in every shape, each upon the form and image of that particular sin he was wont to urge upon men. After enjoining silence, Lucifer, looking steadfastly upon the chieftains nearest him, began and spake ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... voices—one of them particularly distinguishing himself above the rest—to such an extent, indeed, that he must have been a prime minister—at least, if the disturbance he made was any criterion of his rank. The common rabble of dusky denizens united their howlings with the uproar of the court, repeating their gesticulations like so many monkeys, and thereby producing a single and instantaneous movement of ten thousand arms ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... not to be expected that they will be much improved by intercourse with the Australian "larrikins," who are composed of the lowest and most criminal orders. This refuse of humanity is largely made up of the rabble of London and Liverpool, many of whom have had their passages paid by relatives and interested persons at home solely to get rid of them, while others have worked their passage hither to avoid merited punishment for ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... I fear. However, a large detachment of the live and dead saints were there, and, certainly, half the rabble of Lisbon. In the rush of this devout crowd, Mrs. Shortridge got separated from her party, and, between alarm and exhaustion, fell, fainting, on the pavement. She would soon have been trampled to death, had I not picked her up and carried her out bodily. ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... Greek and other creeds. The two villages near Lida, two in the government of Grodno, the hundreds of villages and thousands of huts near Dwina, Rzezyca, Mohilew, Witebsk, burned, razed to the ground by an excited and hired rabble of Muscovite Muziks, who had sought and found hospitality in Poland for hundreds of years—certainly all these villages and huts were not inhabited even by the 'lesser nobility.' And it is also certain that the dwellers were not so cruelly punished for denouncing the 'dogs of nobles'—an ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... are the two typical Lucchesi; they sum up a city composed of such as Giovanni Arnolfini and his wife, whom Van Eyck painted, that great bourgeoisie which made Italy without knowing it, and, unconcerned while the great men and the rabble fought in the wars or lost their lives in a petty revolution, were eager only to be let alone, that they might continue their labour and gather in wealth. And of them history is silent, for they ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... fellow, holding in his hands, uplifted, a long pole, at the top of which fluttered in the morning air a snow-white cambric handkerchief, emblem of the bride's purity. Then came the betrothed pair, followed by their nearest friends; then a rabble rout of Gypsies, screaming and shouting, and discharging guns and pistols, till all around rang with the din, and the village dogs barked. On arriving at the church gate, the fellow who bore the pole stuck it into the ground with a loud huzza, and the train, forming two ranks, defiled into ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... into refusing them, and had otherwise prejudiced the community in Oxenford's favor. Hunter had learned also that the junior member of the stage firm had collected a crowd of hangers-on, and being liberal in the use of money, had convinced the rabble of the village that he was an innocent and injured party. The attorney for Esther had arrived, and had cautioned every one interested on their side of the case to be reserved and careful under every circumstance, as they had a bitter ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... would do so. For we are easy sullen things, and must Be laugh'd aright, and cheated into trust; Whilst a black piece of phlegm, that lays about Dull menaces, and terrifies the rout, And cajoles it, with all its peevish strength Piteously stretch'd and botch'd up into length, Whilst the tired rabble sleepily obey Such opiate talk, and snore away the day, By all his noise as much their minds relieves, As caterwauling of wild cats frights thieves. But Rabelais was another thing, a man Made up of all that art and nature can Form from a fiery genius,—he was one Whose ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... debris. The Phalanx, therefore, was terrible, the constituent parts of it imbecile; and the Battle of Cynocephalae finally demonstrated its inferiority, for the various possible exigencies of battle, to the conquering Legion. The brave rabble of Gauls and Goths, on the other hand, illustrated all that private valor, not reposing upon any vaster and more stable strength, has power to achieve; but these rushing torrents of prowess dashed themselves into vain spray upon the coordinated ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... bad to worse. The men could no longer keep their places in the ranks. If one had seen them and not known the spirit of the British Army, one would have thought that they were a dispirited, defeated rabble. Yet, in their own minds, the Officers and men had no doubts about what was going to happen: they were going to fight even though they might not sleep; and their determination was shaken ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... and shopkeepers in the City had hurried down into Devonshire to try and gather up a few of the golden crumbs. Raleigh, meanwhile, was ready to burst his heart with fretting in the Tower, until it suddenly appeared that this very concourse and rabble at Dartmouth would render his release imperative. No one but he could cope with Devonshire in its excitement, and Lord Burghley determined on sending him to Dartmouth. Robert Cecil, writing from Exeter to his father on September ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... rabble o' the morning—the crowd waiting to see His Honor the Mayor—on the other side of the rail. It was the sacrilegious invasion of a business office in the hours sacred to business. It was like that every morning. It was just as well that the taciturn Mac Tavish considered that ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... the young Prince to France by his own scruples and those of the navy; and orders were sent for the child's return. Then came a terrible alarm. The escort sent to meet him were reported to have been attacked by the rabble on entering London and dispersed, so that each man ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge |
