"Rabble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seeming adversaries were got into Lincoln's Inn Fields, they both fell a running as fast as they could, with their swords drawn, up towards Lord Powis's house, which was then building, and leaped into a saw-pit. The rabble presently ran after them, to part them again, and feared mischief would be done before they could get up to them, but when they arrived at the saw-pit, they saw Chevalier at one side of it and Ogle ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... passed By voice of the majority in the court, And either pelt us with rude calumnies, Or stab at us, ye laggards! with base guile. Howbeit, these ways will never help to build The wholesome order of established law, If men shall hustle victors from their right, And mix the hindmost rabble with the van. That craves repression. Not by bulky size, Or shoulders' breadth, the perfect man is known; But wisdom gives chief power in all the world. The ox hath a huge broadside, yet is held Right in the furrow by a slender goad; Which remedy, ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... England? It is the love of the people; it is the attachment to their government, from the sense of the deep stake they have in such a glorious institution, which gives you your army and your navy, and infuses into both that liberal obedience without which your army would be a base rabble, and your navy ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... equally severe criticism on Mr. Milton's knowledge of European history. This last speaker was beginning to be prosy, when fortunately some one came into the Club with news that Sir Arthur Hasilrig, "the Brutus of our Republic," had been nearly torn in pieces by a rabble of boys in Westminster Hall, just outside the Club, and had saved himself by taking to his heels. The laughter over this made the last gentleman forget what he was saying; which gave opportunity to a fifth gentleman to rise and discourse at some length ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... House of Commons had been abandoned. Feargus O'Connor had, in fact, taken fright, and presently the petition rattled ingloriously to Westminster in the safe but modest keeping of a hackney cab. The shower swept the angry and noisy rabble homewards, or into neighbouring public-houses, and ridicule—as the evening filled the town with complacent special constables and their admiring wives and sweethearts—did even more than the rain ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... men because they were so few. When were the good and the brave ever in a majority? Would you have had him wait till that time came?—till you and I came over to him? The very fact that he had no rabble or troop of hirelings about him would alone distinguish him from ordinary heroes. His company was small indeed, because few could be found worthy to pass muster. Each one who there laid down his life for the poor and oppressed was a picked man, culled out of many thousands, ...
— A Plea for Captain John Brown • Henry David Thoreau
... distress felt goaded the multitude on to seditious acts. Two meetings were convened in Spa-fields by some of the mob-orators, to petition the regent for a reform of abuses; and a vast concourse of rabble attended which on the second occasion led to a serious riot. Mr. Henry Hunt figured as the principal demagogue; but though his language was seditious and inflammatory, he had the prudence to withdraw ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... lay exposed to the insults of the rabble, and was at length thrown into a ditch.' ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... the more the better. Your highness knows as well as any man alive, that the maxim of our great master was, 'Begin the war by fighting as many pitched battles as you can. Skirmishes teach discipline to the rabble; allow the higher orders time to escape, the government to tamper, and to encourage the resistance of all. Pitched battles are thunderbolts; they finish the business at once; and, like the thunderbolts, they appear to come from a source which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... entreaties; and perhaps it was unreasonable to expect them to engage in a deadly conflict with their own neighbours, relatives, and personal friends, in the defence of mere strangers like ourselves. They could not even restrain the younger and more violent portion of the rabble from carrying on the species of desultory warfare, from which Barton had already suffered; on the contrary, the stones and other missiles, thrown by persons on the outskirts of the crowd, fell continually thicker and faster. At length ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... worn chiefly by women who preached doctrines for which the public was no better prepared than for dress reform. The outcry against it extended from one end of the country to the other; the press howled in derision, the pulpit hurled its anathemas and the rabble took up the refrain. On the streets of the larger cities the women were followed by mobs of men and boys, who jeered and yelled and did not hesitate to express their disapproval by throwing sticks and ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... prayers are held for safe return at Blanc Sablon,—port of the white, white sand,—and by September 5 Cartier is {12} home in St. Malo, a rabble of grizzled sailor folk chattering a ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... do, For half a dozen years without estrangement; They had their little differences, too; Those jealous whiffs, which never any change meant; In such affairs there probably are few Who have not had this pouting sort of squabble, From sinners of high station to the rabble. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... the great building containing all the Works of Art, and a Library of 150,000 volumes, I asked for the best existing Book (a German one published ten years ago) on the Statues in that very Collection; and, after a rabble of clerks and custodes, got up to a dirty priest, who bowing to the ground regretted 'they did not possess it,' but at last remembered that 'they had entered into negotiations on the subject, which as yet had been unsuccessful.'—The ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... this rabble was a canon regular, whose zeal was so fervent that he stood by them in his surplice, which he considered as a coat of mail, and reiteratedly exclaimed, "Destroy the enemies of Jesus!" This spiritual laconism invigorated the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... dogs circle and backtrack and work with feverish haste. The sun has risen, and up the mountain side comes a band of goats led by a single shepherd dog—no man in sight. We shout to the dog to steer his rabble away, but on they come, and obliterate our trail with a thousand hoofprints and a ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... and I both know that Wordsworth would not deign to notice such an accusation. Through good and evil report, the brave man persevered in his ascent to the mountain-top, without ever even turning round to look upon the rabble that was hooting him from its base; and he is not likely now to heed such a charge as this. But his friends may now ask, on what authority it is published? Was it to you, Mr. Walter Landor, whom Southey (in his strange affection for the name of Wat) had honoured with so much kindness—to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... who are offering their lands at very low rates, and so many tempting chances are offered to Northern men. The tide of emigration southward doesn't yet set very strong, however. I think the great drawback is the feeling that the South is still intolerant of Yankees. The rabble and the young men are still clinging to the hope that they are going to have their own way about managing the nigger, somehow or other, as soon as they get rid of the United States forces, and they know very well that Yankees who come among them will not agree with them ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... at any rate," he said. "Come to-morrow, certainly—whenever you like. You needn't be afraid of that rabble. I'll see you don't have to go ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... working in a nightmare. From time to time would come a rush, a stampede, of deer or tapirs, along the strip of beach between the water and the cliff. The toiling men would draw aside till the rabble went by, then fall ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Saline, Wilson was put on his trial. Several days were occupied in examining the witnesses in the case. After the examination was closed, while Col. Taylor was engaged in a very able, lucid, and argumentative speech, on the part of the prosecution, some man collected a parcel of the rabble, and came within a few yards of the court-house door, and bawled in a loud voice, 'part them—part them!' Every body supposed there was an affray, and ran to the doors and windows to see; behold, there was nothing more than the man, and the rabble he had collected ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... a simple but forcible manner by the acknowledged head of the village, did not fail of their desired effect. The rabble, realizing the danger into which its enthusiasm had hurried it, became but too anxious to appear on the side of the Government. Those who had been loudest in their outcry, now meekly protested against disloyalty, and Podoloff suddenly found himself bereft ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... She lifted one hand in a gesture of command, and called out to the rabble. Correy translated the ...
— Priestess of the Flame • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... given to a certain number of officers to serve under him. The emperor was overjoyed—much more so than Gordon, who was promptly created a mandarin. He foresaw many difficulties in store before he could get his 'rabble' of four thousand men into order, and at the outset he had much trouble with Burgevine, Ward's successor in command of the Ever-Victorious Army, but a very different man from Ward himself. However, by the help of the famous Li Hung Chang, Burgevine was ultimately ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... half-drunken "patriots" tried to force their way into the park one day, with the intention of cutting down the trees and pillaging the chateau, but all the villagers instantly assembled, armed with pitchforks, rusty old guns and stones, and dispersed the rabble. ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... God. No waters gushed from the rock for their refreshment. They were enraged at their sufferings, and endeavoured to obtain supplies by pillaging the country. The Hungarians, and other nations on our western frontiers, Christians, like themselves, did not hesitate to fall upon this disorderly rabble; and immense piles of bones, in wild passes and unfrequented deserts, attest the calamitous defeats which extirpated these ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... in the State of New York. It was supposed that the effect would be decidedly injurious to a community and the idea was abandoned. Young men were so liable to be fascinated by the magnificent spectacle, that not the rabble only were attracted by the "trappings of war," but they have a tendency to induce young, and old men even, of fair prospects, to neglect their agricultural interests for military pursuits, which, in a new country, were certainly ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... granted discretionary power. A military commission will exercise jurisdiction instead of, and in place of, the courts. Let peaceable citizens take courage; let the evil-disposed tremble! As for the rabble, the sword of the law ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... were a score of Helens driving wagons—reasons in plenty for the futility of all attempts to enforce an arbitrary rule of march. Human equations, human elements would shake themselves down into place, willy-nilly. The great caravan therefore was scantily less than a rabble for the first three or four days out. The four columns were abandoned the first half day. The loosely knit organization rolled on in a broken-crested wave, ten, fifteen, twenty miles a day, the horse-and-mule men now at the front. Far to the rear, heading only the cow column, came the ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... marquis of the mob might have his chance; but a bon-mot actually saved, within these few days, one even so obnoxious as a bishop from being sus. per coll. In the general system of purifying the church by hanging the priests, the rabble of the Palais Royal seized the Bishop of Autun, and were proceeding to treat him 'a la lanterne' as an aristocrat. It must be owned that the lamps in Paris, swinging by ropes across the streets, offer really ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... incipient Christians, as they sat in class listening to the instructions of their teacher, to find themselves and him suddenly made the targets of a shower of sticks, snowballs, corn-cobs, and other rubbish, flung at them by a screeching rabble of vagabond boys. [ Ibid., ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... soul into one wild curse! Have done with laying bare your heart to men, have done with telling your life to men! Why should you go on trying to be a poet, go on putting your secret soul into books, to be spurned at by the rabble? Your soul is your own—it is your God's—and what have the rabble to do with it! And all its tenderness! all its shrinking ecstasy! all its holiest consecration!—You will take them out to sell them to ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... hundreds of vociferous busy-bodies will multiply. You have no choice; either you must help furnish this race from within its own ranks with thoughtful men of trained leadership, or you must suffer the evil consequences of a headless misguided rabble. ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... with spleen diseased, A poor dull creature, still with Nature pleased: Hence to thy praises, Garrick, I agree, And, pleased with Nature, must be pleased with thee. 1070 Now might I tell how silence reign'd throughout, And deep attention hush'd the rabble rout; How every claimant, tortured with desire, Was pale as ashes, or as red as fire; But loose to fame, the Muse more simply acts, Rejects all flourish, and relates mere facts. The judges, as the several parties came, With temper heard, with judgment weigh'd each ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... cold-hearted and cruel selfishness. As ex-Senator Brace has said, speaking in behalf of his own people, "From the red race was taken their lands, from the yellow their labor, from the black their persons. The red race was gradually driven toward a setting sun; the yellow race, the rabble demanded to be driven from the country; the black man was a slave in chains, with no ...
— American Missionary, Vol. XLII., June, 1888., No. 6 • Various
... of the talk has reached her ears. She doesn't say so in so many words, but I can see it's that. She wants to get out of our expedition to Monte Rosa hut—wants me to go alone. The question is, ought I to let her get out of it? Does it matter one rap what this rabble says about us? I've come to ask your advice—you were such a brick about it all last night—and what you ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... good God who is no respecter of persons, and am shown out of the door by one of his insolent creatures. I carry my intelligence to the polls on election morning, and am elbowed aside by an American boor or a foreign drunkard, and, with opprobrious epithets by law officers and rabble, am driven away. All this in the North; all this without excuse of slavery and of the feeling it engenders; all this from arrogant hatred and devilish malignity. At last, the country which has disowned me, the government which has never recognized save to outrage me, the flag which ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... head, lulled by the praise Of thousand fluttering fans of flatterers! Wearied of war-horse, gratefully one glides In gilded barge, or in crowned, velvet car, From gay Whitehall to gloomy Temple Bar—" (Where—had you slipt, that head were bleaching now! And that same rabble, splitting for a hedge, Had joined their rows to cheer the active headsman; Perchance, in mockery, they'd gird the skull With a hop-leaf crown! Bitter the brewing, Noll!) Are crowns the end-all of ambition? Remember Charles Stuart! and that they who make can break! ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... organization was made, though the multitude had three leaders. It is said that the first band, consisting of twenty thousand foot, with only eight horsemen, were led by a Burgundian gentleman, called Walter the Penniless. They were followed by a rabble of forty thousand men, women, and children, led by Peter the Hermit, a medley of all nations and languages. Next followed a band of fifteen thousand men, mostly Germans, under a priest named Gottschalk. These three multitudes ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... Jack, and when he could not follow through a fence, he jumped over it. He tried the Warhorse's mettle more than once, and Jacky only saved himself by his quick dodging, till they got to an Osage hedge, and here the Greyhound had to give it up. Besides these, there was in town a rabble of big and little Dogs that were troublesome, but easily left behind in ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... depart from before Metz, till he had taken it by force or by famine, the victuals were cut down; and what they used to distribute to three soldiers was given to four; and it was forbidden to them to sell the remains which might be left after their meals; but they might give them to the rabble. And they always rose from table with an appetite, for fear they should be subject ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... carpenters, {14} bakers, Cossacks, sailors,—in all, five hundred and eighty men.[10] Now, if it was difficult to transport a handful of attendants across Siberia for the first simple voyage, what was it to convoy this rabble composed of self-important scientists bent on proving impossible theories, of underling officers each of whom considered himself a czar, of wives and children unused to such travel, of priests whose piety took ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... stolen and destroyed. The military quickly came up, and a regular engagement took place. Stones were firing in all directions—several soldiers were struck; Mr. Fosberry received a blow of a stone in the leg, and it was not until some time had elapsed that this lawless rabble were subdued, and thirteen of them taken prisoners and brought into our gaol. Nothing could exceed the coolness of our magistrates, officers, and soldiers during this rencontre, and we are happy to say that a portion of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... spoken to her, and told her to pluck up a little spirit; not fancy affronts, and not to pester you with them. Poor child! you have been sadly victimised to-day and yesterday. No wonder you were bored past patience, with that absurd rabble of women!" ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... the cyclone of public sentiment and began to pretend enthusiasm, while secretly plotting the mistrial of Ferguson's cases. And not until the United States Attorney General—a vain Goodrich creature whose talents were crippled by his contempt for "the rabble" and "demagoguery"—not until he had it forced upon him that Ferguson could not be counter-mined, did they begin to treat ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... Washington held her first levee, or drawing-room. It was attended by nearly all of the leading characters in social and political life then in the federal metropolis. "There was no place for the intrusion of the rabble in crowds, or for the mere coarse and boisterous partisan," says Colonel Stone in some remarks upon these receptions. "There was no place for the vulgar electioneerer or impudent place-hunter. On the contrary, they were select, and more courtly than have been given by any of ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... with, and the trout is like to become an extinct animal. Izaak would especially have disliked Fishing Competitions, which, by dint of the multitude of anglers, turn the contemplative man's recreation into a crowded skirmish; and we would repeat his remark, 'the rabble herd themselves together' (a dozen in one pool, often), 'and endeavour to govern and act ...
— Andrew Lang's Introduction to The Compleat Angler • Andrew Lang
... their Majesties, the King and Queen, and all the Royal Court." And the pageant began to unwind its sinuous length along the campus lawn, and all the rustic players who formed the rabble fell in behind the royal personages and ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... Lover of Urania. Lysander, Page to Thersander. Urania, in love with Amintas. Lyces, a Shepherdess. Pages and Attendants, Courtiers (men and women), Officers, Guards, Soldiers, Huntsmen, Shepherds, Shepherdesses, Assassins, and all a Rabble of ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... they told the King and Queen that they were sore oppressed by "ill men" who ruled in New York "by the sword, at the sole will of an insolent alien, assisted by some few, whom we can give no better name than a rabble." From other parts of the colony too letters were written calling Leisler a bold usurper, and begging the King to do something "to break this heavy yoke of worse than ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... eyes fell on a little wizened old Spaniard in a straw hat, nankeen trousers, and a light blue coat, who, as soon as he made his appearance, began to order about everybody in an authoritative and energetic manner, and very quickly brought the confused rabble of defenders into order. Two or three other Spaniards, who from their appearance seemed to be officers, came with him. He had evidently just arrived from a distance, summoned in a hurry, probably, to defend the fort. He went round, looking at the guns, and Jack was very much afraid that he would ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... the work, and have been obliged to make use of wooden clamps for most of it, while battens also have not been forthcoming; and, this being so, it was through no remissness of mine that the work could not be finished by sunset tonight. I suspect, too, that, to eke out its wages, that rabble has been thieving, with the eldest leading the rest. And that, again, is not a thing for which I can be held responsible. True, this is a Government job, and some of those fellows are young, and young, hungry fellows such as they will (may they ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... a hereditary trait? the son of a celebrity? then his essays in design were unworthy of his name. Abashed, inclined to despair, having a glimpse of a tumultuous rabble shouting: "At last he is here!" before the ruddy guillotine on a raw morning, a pale, prim man between the executioner's aids, the young Clemenceau listened to the girl, who probably resembled the Lovely Iza, but looked at the ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... horses and the jingling of spears and scabbards; some lancers who had beaten the moors that night were coming up the street. Half a company of soldiers of the line, escorted by carabineers, came in from the country, climbing the steep street, driving before them a rabble of young men, disarmed, wounded, lame, with their hands tied behind them, the remnant of those who had met at the tomb of Asdrubal in the night just passed. They had been surprised, seized, surrounded ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... as the wedding was going to be solemnized, old Mr. Fox stirred under the bench, and cudgelled all the rabble, and drove them and Mrs. Fox out ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... Marechausee sabre in hand, guarding the place, till the bagpipes can begin. The dance interrupted, in a quarter of an hour, by battle; the cries, the squealings of children, of infirm persons, and other assistants, tarring them on, as the rabble does when dogs fight: frightful men, or rather frightful wild animals, clad in jupes of coarse woollen, with large girdles of leather studded with copper nails; of gigantic stature, heightened by high wooden-clogs (sabots); rising on tiptoe to see the fight; tramping time to it; ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... other man. Particularly caustic did his pen become in respect to those, whether painters, musicians, poets, novelists or reformers, who had endeared themselves to the great mass of the public. The Aspirant always called the public "the rabble," and you can't damn humanity more easily and cheaply than by calling it "the rabble." Naturally every one hastened to buy Mr. Early's furniture, his rugs and his pottery, and diligently to read The Aspirant, in order that he or she ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... that goes to bed Rests with its tail above its head, So in this mongrel state of ours The rabble are the supreme powers. That horsed us on their backs to show us A jadish trick at ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... given opposite page 4 by way of illustration. In the yard a temporary platform—a few boards, it may be, set on barrel-heads[1]—could be erected for a stage; in the adjacent stables a dressing-room could be provided for the actors; the rabble—always the larger and more enthusiastic part of the audience—could be accommodated with standing-room about the stage; while the more aristocratic members of the audience could be comfortably seated in the galleries overhead. Thus a ready-made ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... till at length the night drew on, and one came to summon him to sup with Pharaoh in the Hall. Then he rose up and went, and meeting Pharaoh and Meriamun the Queen in the outer chamber, passed in after them to the Hall, and on to the dais which he had held against the rabble, for the place was clear of dead, and, save for certain stains upon the marble floor that might not be washed away, and for some few arrows that yet were fixed high up in the walls or in the lofty roof, there was nothing to tell of the great fray ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... can they be the Church who so rashly contradict Peter and the Scriptures, who even trample under foot, in his Word, Christ himself, the Head. Rather, they must be wicked devils, a miserable rabble, the worst enemies of the Christian Church; more wicked and ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... you villains! you dare to attack me? Now, s'death! Kill and slay! (He lunges out on all sides; as if he were fighting many people at once.) No quarter; lay on. Thrust. Firm. Again. Eye and foot. Ah! knaves! ah! rascals! ah! you shall have a taste of it. I'll give you your fill. Come on, you rabble! come on. That's what you want, you there. You shall have your fill of it, I say. Stick to it, you brutes; stick to it. Now, then, parry; now, then, you. (Turning towards ARGANTE and SCAPIN.) ...
— The Impostures of Scapin • Moliere
... all that had happened, and wrathfully he cried: "You are too honest for those wise gentlemen in the House of Seti, and too pure and zealous for the rabble here. I knew it, I knew what would come of it if they introduced you to the mysteries. For us initiated there remains only the choice ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Wittmore, there's nothing so comical as to hear me cant, and even cheat those Knaves, the Preachers themselves, that delude the ignorant Rabble. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... said, "there would be plenty to do, but I would not mind wagering that we should not wait for him; and after all, I am not sure if it would not be the best thing to do, for these Germans with us are little better than a rabble." ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... never make a right; Ef we're mistaken, own up, an' don't fight: For gracious' sake, ha'n't we enough to du 'thout gettin' up a fight with England, tu? She thinks we're rabble-rid— ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... present I should undertake an open war against Marx himself, three-quarters of the members of the International would turn against me, and I would be at a disadvantage, for I would have lost the ground on which I must stand. But by beginning this war with an attack against the rabble by which he is surrounded, I shall have the majority on my side.... But, ... if he wishes to constitute himself the defender of their cause, it is he who would then declare war openly. In this case, I shall take the field also and I shall play ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... the bulwark, Coutinno believed he had been called back by a contrivance of the viceroy to prevent him from acquiring honour, and addressed him in the following terms. "Were you ambitious, Sir, that the rabble of Lisbon should report you were the first in storming Cochin, that you thus recal me? I shall tell the king that I could have entered it with only this cane in my hand; and since I find no one to fight with, I am resolved to proceed to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... called out of a whole nation to judge about an acre of land; and the judgment of our inclinations and actions, the most difficult and most important matter that is, we refer to the voice and determination of the rabble, the mother of ignorance, injustice, and inconstancy. Is it reasonable that the life of a wise man should depend upon the ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... they never had it, 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 Cicero, Cato, Brutus, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... crops. Once, in the neighborhood of Amersfoot, the weather was very rainy, and the crops suffered accordingly. On the tobacco growing round the town the blame of the calamity was thrown; and it was resolved to punish tobacco, the sottish rain-drinker and wicked rain-bringer. A rabble, consisting chiefly of boys and youths, rushed to the tobacco fields, and scattered havoc with the ferocity of stupidity. The mad creatures pulled up the stalks, tore off the leaves, and trampled leaves and stalks under foot. Before they had done the work of destruction ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... pronounced didactically, "that a young lady of Miss Abbeway's birth and gifts should espouse the cause of this Labour rabble, a party already cursed ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... election. Its near approach caused more excitement in the "Quaker City" than had been witnessed there since the preceding Presidential election. The party-leaders began to lay their plans early, and the wire-pullers on both sides were unusually busy in their vocation. At the head of the rabble upon which one of the parties depended for many votes, was a drunken and profane fellow, whom we will call Tom Simmons. Tom was great at electioneering and stump-spouting in bar-rooms and rum-caucuses, and his party always looked to him, at each election, to ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... "We must scatter this rabble army and put it wholly to rout," insisted the doctor. "I will swing amongst them and over their heads, while you burn powder for them. If they won't scatter, use your revolver and wound ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... the rabble, your Majesty," the Prime Minister said. "They are an evil, ill-tempered lot ...
— The Land of the Blue Flower • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... West Indies and Mexico, with one branch in the Rocky Mountains. My bird was M. obscurus, and came from Mexico. I found him in a New York bird-store, where he looked about as much at home among the shrieking and singing mob of parrots and canaries as a poet among a howling rabble ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... the usurers 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 ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... dissemination of the royal opinion will at any time create a majority in that house, to divert the odium from the person of the monarch. Twenty-two bishops, thirteen lords of the bed-chamber, and all the rabble of household troops, will at any time compose an army. They may not indeed cover an acre of ground, nor would I advise your lordship to distribute them into a great number of regiments. Their countenances are not ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... first throng'd evening of a play 170 That wears the[A] facies hippocratica, Strong lines of death, signs dire of reprobation; Have you not seen the angel of salvation Appear sublime; with wise and solemn rap To teach the doubtful rabble where to clap?— 175 The rabble knows not where our dramas shine; But where the cane goes ...
— Essays on Taste • John Gilbert Cooper, John Armstrong, Ralph Cohen
... Mr. Brand," he said. "You will ride back to camp with me, Brand. We shall be away from this rabble then." ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... to pull off to us, and when they reached the frigate it was seen that the occupants of the shore-boats were Spanish seamen, with a sprinkling of officers among them. On coming alongside the entire rabble at once boarded; the ship was formally handed over by Farmer to an officer in a resplendent uniform, whose first act was to direct one of his aides to strike the white flag and hoist the Spanish ensign at the peak; and the surviving officers—five of us in number—were then mustered and ordered ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... paying him fare. The public will crowd into our show tonight without paying. The public will eat all the fruit that ripens, all the grain that grows, drink all the liquors malted and take anything they can get for nothing. I mean the public rabble, the mob, not the individual. The only time you can trust the public is when their sympathies are aroused over some great public calamity that brings death and desolation. Then the public is of one mind, the public ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... flesh. But, let us ask, Who ever heard of an army without a chief? An army without a supreme commander is an army without subordination and without law or order; or rather, it is not an army at all, but a rabble, ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... least," shouted Ulrich, beside himself with rage; "shoot me, I say; death is preferable to the disgrace of being a prisoner of such miserable rabble." ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... whilst for the first time a look of ferocity as that of an angry beast lit up the impassiveness of his deep-set eyes, "if this turmoil continues I'll have every slave here flogged till he bleed. Is the business of the State to be hindered by the howlings of this miserable rabble? Get thee gone, woman," he cried finally, looking down on prostrate Menecreta, "get thee gone ere my lictors do thee ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... house, Nash, the butler, and other busybodies had made a descent on it. The officer with the warrant was already there. Lyon, Aldridge, and Hague were with Nash in a cab, and were met by others 'riding hard,' who had seized the people found at Mrs. Wells's. There was a rabble of persons on foot and on ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... among the people of the city; while Whitefield, after a preaching tour of some weeks in the country, reproduced on a still larger scale the triumphs of Kingswood by preaching with marvellous effect to immense throngs of the London rabble at Moorfields and on Kennington Common. From this time field-preaching became one of the most ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... command of the Palace, with carte blanche to defend the constitution; and that I might have once more with me, if only for one day, my old crews of the Ranger, the Richard, and the Alliance! I surely would have made the thirty cannon of the courtyard teach to that mad rabble the lesson that grapeshot has its uses in struggles for the rights ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood
... right," he said, "and you needn't worry about him. He's got one quality left that sets him far enough apart from the rabble of to- day." He looked keenly at the young man as he added, suddenly: "Of all the fellows you've ever helped, Maxwell—and I know you've helped a lot in one way or another—has any one of them before to-day ever shown ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... who looks the soldier, and would evidently make a dashing hussar. His progress through the streets was, from the first, followed by acclamation. But at length it became a kind of triumph. The zeal of the rabble, (probably under good guidance, for the French employes comprehend those little arrangements perfectly,) determined on drawing the carriage. The harness was taken off, the horses enjoyed a sinecure, the coachman sat in uneasy idleness on his box, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... deposited their offerings to the fair beneficiaire. His next step was playing on the violin in the orchestra between the acts of comedies, and singing in the chorus during the operatic season. He seems to have been unnoticed, except as one of the hoi polloi of the musical rabble, till an accident attracted attention to his talent. A drama was to be produced in which a very difficult cavatina was introduced. The manager was at a loss for any one to sing it till Rubini proffered ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... William Pinkethman, the popular actor and droll, was spoken of by Gildon as "the flower of Bartholomew Fair, and the idol of the rabble." In June, 1710, he opened a theatre at Greenwich, and in 1711 his "wonderful invention called The Pantheon, or, The Temple of the Heathen Gods," with over 100 figures, was to be seen in the Little Piazza, Covent Garden ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... 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
... was going forward, he began to expostulate with the Pope, protesting that the thing by no means ought to happen, seeing they were on the point of concluding an accommodation, and that if the generals were killed, the rabble of the troops without a leader would storm the castle and complete their utter ruin. Consequently they could by no means allow the Pope's plan to be carried out. The poor Pope, in despair, seeing himself assassinated both inside the castle and without, said that he left them ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... a row, and cooled by a stream of cold water flowing round them. The tanks hold about 12 gallons, and the cotton is dipped in portions of 1 lb. at a time. It is thrown into the acids, and the workman moves it about for about three minutes with an iron rabble. At the end of that time he lifts it up on to an iron grating, just above the acids, fixed at the back of the tank, where by means of a movable lever he gently squeezes it, until it contains about ten times its weight of acids (the 1 lb. weighs 10 lbs.). It is then transferred ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... tell ye, Ivan, though ye be my son, never mair shall I call ye so, if ye join the rabble that young scamp has got together, and never mair shall ye darken the doors of Dunmorton if ye gae wi' him. Noo choose between that young ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... made by O'Donoju, or abandon its claim on Mexico. This left but two factions in the Congress, and their quarrel had a sudden termination, for the moment, in the elevation of Iturbide to the imperial throne, May 18th, 1822. This was the work of a handful of the lowest rabble of the capital, the select few of a vagabondage compared with whom the inhabitants of the Five Points may be counted grave constitutional politicians. The legislature went through the farce of approval, and the people acquiesced,—as they would have done, had he been proclaimed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... of numbers. A thousand men marching past in column of fours does not make upon the mind the same impression of multitude as the sight of half that number in a disordered rabble. Regularity and compactness reduce the appearance of mass; and you receive a profounder suggestion of size from a comparatively small pile of natural rocks than you do from the geometrical pyramids. In the same way an army whose formations are suddenly relaxed seems to swell enormously ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... emotion—the whole thing has been too much for me—djeer?——in a most menacing and disturbing manner. Now and again these threatening spirits would beckon to their circle certain of those that passed; and these joined them in their minative demonstrations until, knock me funny! if the whole rabble did not surround me, covering me with vituperation. I gleaned from the evidence before me that they were innocent persons who had suffered in consequence of the inadequate punishments I had dealt out to various criminals during my judicial career. There was a woman who ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... pre-arranged. The brother-in-law had been around to the square to a rendezvous of soldiers, and told them that an attempt would be made to abduct his sister by force, and if they heard a shriek from the women, to hasten to his house. The rabble of soldiers wanted no better pastime than such a melee among the infidels, and promised to come. When they heard the noise they started on a run. Raheel, having suspected something of the kind, induced Dr. De ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... as the Gypsies, whom the Bishop of Forli in the year 1422, only sixteen years subsequent to the invasion of India, describes as a 'raging rabble, of brutal and animal propensities,' (15) are not such as generally abandon their ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... lived through many dangers that day, the princess Otomie and I, but one more awaited us before ever we found shelter for awhile. After we had reached the foot of the pyramid and turned to mingle with the terrified rabble that surged and flowed through the courtyard of the temple, bearing away the dead and wounded as the sea at flood reclaims its waste and wreckage, a noise like thunder caught my ear. I looked up, for the sound ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... of the British so long as he merited it. A few presents were then distributed among the Indians, and the council ended. The chiefs, with their blankets still tightly wrapped about them, filed out of the council-room and scattered to their villages, followed by the disappointed rabble of fully three hundred Indians, who ...
— The War Chief of the Ottawas - A Chronicle of the Pontiac War: Volume 15 (of 32) in the - series Chronicles of Canada • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... meeting was a camp meeting. We had a great many tents and a large turnout for a new country, and, perhaps, there never was a greater collection of rabble and rowdies. They came drunk and armed with dirks, clubs, knives, and horsewhips, and swore they would break up the meeting. After interrupting us very much on Saturday night, they collected on Sunday morning, determined on a general riot. At eight o'clock I was appointed ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... concentrates: let us not rove; let us sit at home with the cause. Let us stun and astonish the intruding rabble of men and books and institutions, by a simple declaration of the divine fact. Bid the invaders take the shoes from off their feet, for God is here within.[217] Let our simplicity judge them, and our docility to our own law demonstrate the poverty of nature ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Jocasta too, no longer now my sister, Is found complotter in the horrid deed. Here I renounce all tie of blood and nature, For thee, O Thebes, dear Thebes, poor bleeding Thebes!— And there I wept, and then the rabble howled. And roared, and with a thousand antic mouths Gabbled revenge! revenge ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... colonize and cultivate them, to civilize the natives, to build cities, introduce the useful arts, subject everything to the control of law, order, and religion, and thus to found regular and prosperous empires. That he failed in this was the fault of the dissolute rabble which it was his misfortune to command, with whom all law was tyranny ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... quiet village, did not sleep a wink. Confound sensation newspapers and newspaper correspondents that fellow who writes is enough to drive one mad. The "Evening Post" is the wisest paper. But it is too bad that that rabble of civilians and teamsters should have brought this ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... soul, He must have glanced over the vast creation, that He had called into being; and felt that an Infinite power dwelt in Him. One blazing look of wrathful indignation would have annihilated that rude rabble. But He had clothed himself in flesh, to subdue all of its evil and vile passions; to show to an ignorant and sensual race, the grace and beauty of a self-abnegation—a Divine pity and forgiveness. And thus did the outer material Man die with that beautiful and touching appeal ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... rabble smashed the windows of Apsley House, the residence of the Duke of Wellington. At Nottingham the mob fired and destroyed the castle of the Duke of Newcastle because he was opposed to reform. In Derby a serious riot broke ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... him last in Warwick Inner Yard." And in a few words he explained. Hal Randall shook his head. "May all be well," he exclaimed, and then he told how Sir Thomas Parr had come at midnight and roused the Cardinal's household with tidings that all the rabble of London were up, plundering and murdering all who came in their way, and that he had then ridden on to Richmond to the King with the news. The Cardinal had put his house into a state of defence, not knowing against whom the riot might be directed—and the jester had ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... to Sara one day: "My father used to say that when he was a boy the phrase, 'American workman' stood for the highest efficiency in the world, but that even in his day the phrase had become a joke. How could you expect this rabble to know that there might be such a thing as an American standard ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... door equally long, which also left there empty. Upon coming down James Martin evidently took in the situation at a glance, for, giving my son a pinch, he said: "Mr. Haviland, let us go into the dining-room and call for supper." This was to give the drunken rabble time to leave so that he could relate his adventures with the Southerners after supper. But by this time the porter came to me to inquire if I wished to see Mr. Bayliss, the sick man. I replied in the affirmative, upon which he said: "He is very ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... before black-bearded riders—women mostly these last, with faces white-set and strange of eye, or all beblubbered with weeping. Then came a man or two also on horseback, old and reverend. After them a draggled rabble of lads and half-grown girls, bound together with ropes and kept at a dog's trot by the pricking spears of the men-at-arms behind, who thought it a jest to sink a spear point-deep in the flesh of a man's back—"drawing the claret wine" they called it. For these riders of Duke ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... 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
... wild throng fell into order and silence. The gate of the Kasbah was thrown open, and a line of soldiers came out, headed by the Kaid of Tetuan, and moved on towards the city wall. The rabble were thrust back, the soldiers were drawn up in lines on either side of the street, and the Kaid, Ben Aboo himself, took a ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... therefore, to end without chronicling his safe arrival in Holland, on June 3, 1777. It is a remarkable fact, that, after his life in the woods, even the Dutch looked slovenly to his eyes. "The inhabitants, who crowded about us, appeared but a disgusting assemblage of ill-formed and ill-dressed rabble,—so much had my prejudices been changed by living among Indians and blacks: their eyes seemed to resemble those of a pig; their complexions were like the color of foul linen; they seemed to have no teeth, and to be covered over ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... this land!" said Richard, in an enthusiasm. "What a pity the rabble of other lands cannot be ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... Bess. The citizens of Zendjan offering the Shah a present of 60,000 tomans, as an inducement not to visit their city, as they did when he was on his way to Europe, has a true Elizabethan ring about it, a suggestion of the Virgin Queen's rabble retinue travelling about, devouring and destroying, and of justly apprehensive citizens, seeing ruin staring them in the face, petitioning their regal mistress to spare them the dread calamity of a ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... by Joaquin Valverde, fils, whose music is not unknown to us, and the company included La Argentina, a Spanish dancer who had given matinees here in a past season without arousing more than mild enthusiasm. The theatrical impressarii, the song publishers, and the Broadway rabble stayed away on the first night. It was all very well, they might have reasoned, to read about the goings on in Spain, but they would never do in America. Spanish dancers had been imported in the past without awakening undue excitement. ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... this shouting, curious crowd, stands, waist-deep in the Nile, a slender-limbed boy, about ten years old. He belongs to a superior caste, and holds himself above the common rabble. Being perfectly naked, a careless eye might, however, rank him with the rest, were it not for the talisman which he wears suspended to a fine gold chain round his neck; a curiously designed diamond ring, the inheritance ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... Kirkman's errors; in fact, it might prove an endless task. Suffice it to say that in discussing his subject he revels in such phrases as: "Subject too vast to be comprehended." "Acts of agrarian legislation and foolish manifestations of disappointment and hate." "The rabble will avail itself of every excuse to pass laws that would, under other circumstances, be called robberies." "Ignorance and demagogism." "Government interference, the panacea of cranks and schemers." "Only understood ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... "A rabble of pigmies scaling Heaven," said the noble though misguided young Prisoner. "Prometheus was a Giant, and ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... underwent before and during the battle. All this made the good father say that he was very content to die, and especially because he had not seen the abominations, blasphemies, and shameless acts of that rabble. There was one sick, Tagal, who was the leader of the enemy's fleet, and on this occasion he ended his evil life, to commence payment for his atrocities, blasphemies, and daring. On the other hand, a younger brother of his who was mortally ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various
... '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 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 532. Saturday, February 4, 1832 • Various
... turrets, golden spires cut the blue sky; in the west the gaunt Eiffel Tower sprawled across the glittering Esplanade; behind it rose the solid golden dome of the Emperor's tomb, gilded once more by the Almighty's sun, to amuse the living rabble while the dead slumbered in his imperial crypt, himself now but a relic for the amusement of the people whom he had despised. O tempora! O mores! ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... that we were at Sooloo, we had evidence sufficient of the vindictive feeling held by the rabble against Europeans, and at the same time the various ways they resorted to, to give us an idea of their superiority. They drew our attention to some old cannon mounted on rotten gun-carriages; they pointed out the strength of their fort, the sharpness of their krisses and spears; ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... children, and besought him to act, for their sakes: and sometimes she asked him proudly whether, if they must perish, it would not be better to die with dignity and honour than to wait sullenly, as if inviting the rabble to come and tread their lives out on the ...
— The Peasant and the Prince • Harriet Martineau |
