"Rabble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Miot de Mlito tells us in his Memoirs that at first public opinion was opposed to this change; even those who at the beginning had shown the greatest repugnance to being addressed as Citizen, disliked conferring the title of Monsieur upon Revolutionists and the rabble, and they pretended to address as Citizen those whom they saw fit to include in this class. Many turned the new state of affairs to ridicule. The Parisians, always of a malicious humor, made perpetual puns ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... man clean into us. The shock of the icy water sobered him. He splashed and spluttered to his feet, climbed up the bank like a giant water-rat, and would have slunk towards the house; but the rabble were on him before he had taken a dozen paces, and tormented him till he roared like a wounded bull. The woman with the brand cried out on him with vile words that made my face burn in the dark, and belaboured him about the head with her blazing cudgel. At every blow a shower of sparks ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... indeed, no reason to fear that the rabble, nine-tenths of which had no professional knowledge of the art of war, would boldly storm the csarda, for in such a case the soldiers would know how to defend themselves vigourously, well provided as they were with carbines; but they were ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... did not take long for Eloise to tell all she knew, while Jack listened thoughtfully, resolving to seek out Tom, and by thrashing, or threatening, or hiring, turn him from any plan he might have against this little girl, who seemed to him far too young and dainty to be thrown upon the mercy of the rabble he had seen by the school-house with Tom Walker ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... Supplied such relics as devotion holds Still sacred, and preserves with pious care. So 'twas a hallowed time: decorum reigned, And mirth without offence. No few returned Doubtless much edified, and all refreshed. —Man praises man. The rabble all alive, From tippling benches, cellars, stalls, and styes, Swarm in the streets. The statesman of the day, A pompous and slow-moving pageant, comes; Some shout him, and some hang upon his car To gaze in his eyes and bless him. Maidens wave Their kerchiefs, and old women weep for ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... its conclusions, not by logical steps but by emotional steps, and that its information upon all save a very small minority of the questions publicly at issue is always scant and inaccurate. It is thus constantly liable to inflammation by adroit demagogues, or rabble-rousers, and inasmuch as these rabble-rousers are animated as a sole motive by the hope of turning out the existing officers of state and getting the offices for themselves, the man in office must inevitably regard them as his enemies and the doctrines they preach as ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... manners which favored nothing of monastic stupidity, conceived the most violent hatred to him, because he was not as despicable as themselves; the chiefs, therefore, combined against this worthy man, and set on the envious rabble of monks, who otherwise would not have dared to hazard the attack. He received a thousand indignities; they degraded him from his office, took away the apartment which he had furnished with elegant simplicity, and, at length, ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... fire being great, he was consumed to powder. The Prelats would not suffer any prayers to be made for him, according to their custome. After the death of Master Wischarde, the Cardinall was cryed up by his flatterers, and all the rabble of the corrupt Clergie, as the onely defender of the Catholike Church, and punisher of Hereticks, neglecting the authority of the sluggish Governour: And it was said by them, That if the great Prelates of latter dayes, both at home and abroad, had ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... reformation? For this my praise is sung by ev'ry bard, For which Bridewell wou'd be a just reward. In print my panegyric fills the street, And hired gaol-birds their huzzas repeat; Some charities contriv'd to make a show, Have taught the needy rabble to do so; Whose empty noise is a mechanic fame, Since for Sir Beelzebub they'd do ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe
... Southampton-row several times a-day, signed by numerous physicians. Had he died, how posterity would have been befooled! Suett was then actually dying, yet would he have his joke, and his last moments were cheered by the horse-laugh of the rabble assembled to spell the bulletin suspended to "the second-floor bell," attested by the mark of the old woman who attended him. "You shall be buried in Saint Paul's," said a friend. "Oh, la!" was the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 268, August 11, 1827 • Various
... blest saint! who doffed thy skin to make The Smithfield rabble leap from theirs with joy, We dedicate the pile—arise! awake! - Knock down the Muses, wit and sense destroy Clear our new stage from reason's dull alloy, Charm hobbling age, and tickle capering youth With cleaver, marrow-bone, and Tunbridge toy! While, vibrating in unbelieving ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... 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 at the other, sitting together as lovingly as ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... Macbeth, whose courage returned with despair; 'I will not live to kiss the ground before young Malcolm's feet, and to be baited with the curses of the rabble. Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane, and thou opposed to me, who west never born of woman, yet will I try the last.' With these frantic words he threw himself upon Macduff, who, after a severe struggle, in the end overcame him, and cutting ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... was inconclusive. A king remained surrounded by small cards, like a real monarch overwhelmed by the rabble on May Day. Mrs. Thalassa's eyes strayed mournfully over the rows, then she gathered up the cards and ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... Tom," said Jessamy, apparently quite unmoved by the growing hostility of the rabble, "I love ye, Tom! And I love ye, first because you're a child o' God, though to be sure ye don't look it, Tom!" Here Tom unbuttoned and tossed aside his tight-fitting coat. "And secondly," pursued Jessamy, "I love ye because somewhere inside o' ye you've got an immortal ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... he is a courtier beene excusd Thoughe it were false; for he whose tonge and harte Runne one selfe course shall seldome find the way To a preferment. Nowe the courte is growne As strange a beast as the thronged multytude, Dyffers not from the rabble, onlye tys The ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... my power to avoid it? But your precipitate flight gave me to understand that you had killed your adversary. Any delay in the town might have been attended with danger, backed as his reverence was by all the rabble of the inn." ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... and traicherous Hycy used to sit quietly by, and either put the insult in his pocket, or curry favor wid the young sneering vagabonds that abused it? And yet, at the time Hycy was a thousand times a greater little bigot than Bryan. The one, wid a juvenile rabble at his back, three to one, was a tyrant over the young schismatics; whilst Bryan, like a brave youth as he was, ever and always protected them against the disadvantage of numbers, and insisted on showing them fair play. I am warm, Mrs. Cavanagh," he continued, "and heat, you know, generates thirst. ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... be easy now to laugh at the frustrated designs of the Chartist leaders and at the sort of panic they aroused in London: the vast procession, which was to have marched in military order to overawe Parliament, resolving itself into a confused rabble easily dispersed by the police, and the monster petition, that should have numbered six million signatures, transported piecemeal to the House, and there found to have but two million names appended, many fictitious; ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... unmolested for a while," replied Osterberg. "The place was visited early by the rabble soldiery and they took all that was worth taking, so now I don't ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... the rest Of 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 ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... 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 of ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Meudon. For Oxford, as for Gargantua, "they appointed a great sophister-doctor, that read him Donatus, Theodoletus, and Alanus, in parabolis." Oxford spent far more than Gargantua's eighteen years and eleven months over "the book de Modis significandis, with the commentaries of Berlinguandus and a rabble of others." Now, under Colet, and Erasmus (1497), Oxford was put, like Gargantua, under new masters, and learned that the old scholarship "had been but brutishness, and the old wisdom but blunt, foppish toys serving ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... tyranny reared upon a thousand years of usurpation, military despotism of a day's growth, or presumptuous wealth accumulated by robbery, hypocrisy and insidious assassination. Instead of leading in the reformation of leviathan wrongs, the ministry waits for the rabble to applaud before it commends.[1] It was not in this manner that the great Christ set the world in motion, sowed broadcast the dynamite which uprooted long-established infamies, and prepared the way for the ultimate redemption of the world from sin ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... Bolshevik rabble again sweeps over Siberia in a septic flood we hear again the question: "How can they do so unless they have a majority of the people behind them?" I answer that by asking: "How did a one-man government exist in Russia from 'Ivan the Terrible' to Nicholas ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... Barraneche, were at first spared. Even the conscience of Talma hesitated to murder the good and amiable Garces, who had never been to him and his people anything but a kind and generous friend, but the rabble declared these two were the worst of all, and under this pressure Palma yielded. It was the last terrible scene of this act in the life-drama we are following. The lights were out, the curtain down. Military expeditions were sent to avenge the massacre, but ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... some vague way if he is the cause of it all, flies off to some other tree where he can be quiet and go to sleep. Then, with a great rush and clatter, the crows follow, some swift old scout keeping close to the owl and screaming all the way to guide the whole cawing rabble. When the owl stops they gather round again and go through the same performance more excitedly than before. So it continues till the owl finds some hollow tree and goes in out of sight, leaving them to caw themselves tired; or else he finds some dense ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... work among the Kingswood colliers and 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 conspicuous features ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... meaner fellows your last service Did worthily perform; and I must use you In such another trick. Go bring the rabble, O'er whom I give thee power, here, to this place: Incite them to quick motion; for I must Bestow upon the eyes of this young couple Some vanity[437-1] of mine art: it is my promise, And they expect it ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... captain quietly. "But he will not succeed, my lad. He and the others are in command of a mere rabble of undisciplined men, and before long on their march they will be met by some of the King's forces ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... "Of your scoundrelly rabble, sir," cried Scarlett, turning upon him fiercely. "You see, they are about to treat me as if I ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... scene changes to 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, and goes about ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... for 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 their ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... their nakedness by pooling their rags, were a musical rabble. Kevin MacHenery, carrying a saber captured from one of the BSG-OCS-men, shouted to a tuba-player, the bell of whose horn had been dimpled by a hard-cored snowball. "Play the National Anthem," he yelled. The player, chilly and terrified, ...
— The Great Potlatch Riots • Allen Kim Lang
... breath-catching though safe-guarded dip and flight of Adventure, the magic carpet that transports you to the realms of fairyland, though its journey be through but a few poor yards of space. He no longer saw a rabble, but his brothers seeking the ideal. There was no magic of poesy here or of art; but the glamour of their imagination turned yellow calico into cloth of gold and the megaphones into the silver ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... far astray? Then house-right I must use, and clear the way. Make room! Squire Voland comes! Room, gentle rabble, room! ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... (ptarmigan). They were harassed from post to post, from island to island; their hunting and fishing stations were unscrupulously seized by the invading English. They were shot down without the least provocation, or captured to be exposed as curiosities to the rabble at the fairs of the western towns of Christian England at ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... thought. Edith Allen in a police court, explaining why she was selling her jewelry, the gifts of her dead father, followed by a rabble in the street, her name in the papers, and she the town-talk and scandal of her old set on the avenue! How Gus Elliot and Van Dam would exult! All passed through her mind in one dreadful whirl. She snatched up the money and rushed out with one thought of ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... the influence of the Reformer, hitherto confined mostly to Zurich and its territory, flowed out in all directions beyond these limits. The Zurich ambassadors had to witness a prelude of this in a riot at Luzern, where a disorderly rabble, instigated by several deputies of the diet sitting at that place, carried past their lodging an effigy of Zwingli with scoffs and curses, and burnt it with all the formalities used by the Inquisition. Two months later, in June, Caspar G[oe]ldi, who had ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... on the writings of Fuller for one more example. In his Holy War, having enumerated the rabble rout of fugitive debtors, runaway slaves, thieves, adulterers, murderers, of men laden for one cause or another with heaviest censures of the Church, who swelled the ranks, and helped to make up the army, ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... Gram. And it goes from them down to the commonfolk. Assessments on the lords, taxes on the people, inflation to meet the taxes, high prices, debased coinage. Everybody's being beggared except this rabble of new lords he has around him, and that slut of a ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... passions will have free course; and believe me, the rising floods will not respect those quiet haunts of study in which they will have had one of their springs. The proof of this has been seen before. Some men of the last century wished to destroy religion amongst decent folk, but not for the rabble: they are Voltaire's words, who had too much good sense to be an atheist, but whose pale deism is sometimes scarcely distinguishable from the negation of God. "Your Majesty," thus he wrote to his friend the King of Prussia, in January, 1757, "will render an eternal ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... shown, In which one man, alone, Upon the ground had thrown A lion fully grown. Much gloried at the sight the rabble. A lion thus rebuked their babble:— "That you have got the victory there, There is no contradiction. But, gentles, possibly you are The dupes of easy fiction: Had we the art of making pictures, Perhaps ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... are the things which have pressed their influences upon the Jew until the fume and reek of the Ghetto, the bubble and squeak of the rabble, and the babble of bazaars are more acceptable to him than the breeze blowing across silent mesa and prairie, or the low, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... reply; she rose and moved a few paces, then arrested her steps, and looked around her. She had lost all clew to her way homeward, and she saw with horror, in the distance, the hateful timbrel-girls, followed by the rabble, and weaving their strange dances ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... explosion was imminent. But I must confess that I was not a little startled, when, drawing his bowie-knife from his belt, he strode slowly up to our impassible friend, and, firmly grasping his right ear, applied the cold edge of the steel close to his head. The supplementary alguazil and the rabble of children took to their heels in affright, followed by the dogs, who seemed to sympathize in their alarm. But, beyond a slight wincing downwards, and a partial contraction of his eyes and lips, the object of the Teniente's wrath made no movement, nor uttered a word of expostulation. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... disperse abashed. An instance of this is given by him in his account of his stay at Lo-shan, a small naval station on the Yangtsze. In returning from a visit to the mandarin of the place, he was surrounded by a dense crowd of street rabble, leaping and screaming like maniacs, and shouting to one another: "I say! Come along. Here's a foreigner. What a lark! Ha, ha, ha!" Margary descended from his chair ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... road when the king is expected the people are patiently waiting as for some dreadful disaster; plague, pestilence or famine are nothing to the misery of being subject to the violence and extortion of this rabble soldiery. ...
— Life of Henry Martyn, Missionary to India and Persia, 1781 to 1812 • Sarah J. Rhea
... 1812, is not one of those incidents in English history which Englishmen generally insist on remembering, and it may be as well to explain to English readers that it was on that occasion that an inferior force of American riflemen (a "backwoods rabble" a British officer called them before the engagement) repulsed a British attack, from behind improvised earthworks, with a loss to the attacking force of 3300 killed and wounded, and at a cost to themselves of 13 wounded and 8 killed—or 21 casualties in all. ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... exclamations, followed by idle threats against his admonisher, this condign victim to justice hobbled away, as disdaining to hold further argument with such a rabble. But his scorn was more than repaid by the hisses that chased him, in which the brave Methodist, satisfied with the rebuke already administered, was, to omit still better reasons, too magnanimous to join. All he said was, pointing ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... 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 had to ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the magnificence of her ancestral home. She had loved at once the fine old chateau with its lichen-covered walls, its fine portcullis and crenelated towers, she had wept over the torn tapestries, the broken furniture, the family portraits which a rough and impious rabble had wilfully damaged, she had loved the wide sweep of the terrace walls, the views over the Isere and across the mountain range to the peaks of the Grande Chartreuse, but above all she had loved this sombre row of ilex trees, the broken fountain, the hush and peace which ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... these words he got up, took his stick, and seemed about to depart. Just then in burst a rabble rout of game-keepers and river-watchers who had come from the petty sessions, and were in high glee, the two poachers whom the landlord had mentioned having been convicted and heavily fined. Two or three of them were particularly ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... the years I have been governor to turn so many thousands against me? What do you advise me to do? The Council replied that his keeping the Assembly for so many years was one of the chief grievances and advised him to have a new election. Later he stated that it was Bacon who made "the rabble cry out for a new Assembly." Reluctantly he complied. He had every reason to expect that the new House of Burgesses would be overwhelmingly hostile to him, and as the returns came in he saw that his worst fears would be realized. The final count showed that one after another the ...
— Bacon's Rebellion, 1676 • Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker
... in a cordial way which showed that their patriotic hearts were pleased. Various leading men of the Netherlands and of the conference also thanked us, and one of them said, "You Americans have taught us a lesson; for, instead of a mere display of fireworks to the rabble of a single city, or a ball or concert to a few officials, you have, in this solemn recognition of Grotius, paid the highest compliment possible to the entire people of the Netherlands, past, ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... There is scant opportunity afforded in any of the scenes allotted to Coriolanus for fine touches and delicate shading. During much of the action the spectator is aware only of an imperial figure that moves with a mountainous grace through the fleeting rabble of Roman plebeians and Volscians, dreadful in war, loftily calm in peace, irradiating the conscious superiority of power, dignity, worth, and honourable renown. McCullough filled that aspect of the part as if he had been born for it. His movements had the splendid repose not ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... to conceal the disgust which "this dirty rabble" gave him. He gazed contemptuously about him, and every time that one of his neighbors' elbows came near his coat he brushed the place angrily, ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... will call "J——," I had struck up a mild friendship; mostly charitable on his part, I think, as he was from the beginning one of the most popular and influential men in the class, whereas I was one of the rabble. So it was, at any rate; and often in the evening, returning from library or dining hall on the way to my distant Boeotia, I would drop in at his room, in a lofty corner of old Barclay Hall, to pick up note-books or anything else I ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... time: and this with all the insect's credit for industry. So over-perverse a traveller, so ultra-dilatory a bee as the author of Modern Painters, must shorten his journey, must leave much honey unfilched. He is as the army which commences in orderly retreat and ends in rabble-like riot and demoralization, gaining a place of safety at last, with the sacrifice of much baggage and treasure. So, as has been said, Mr. Ruskin flings away altogether a large division of his idea. ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... 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 gulf of bewilderment. He was unable to conceive ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... saddle-bow, and led off to the stables. Then the Colonel began to make inquiries for the rest of the Regiment, and the language he used was wonderful. He would disband the Regiment—he would court-martial every soul in it—he would not command such a set of rabble, and so on, and so on. As the men dropped in, his language grew wilder, until at last it exceeded the utmost limits of free speech allowed even ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... a consultation among thee of coming to the palace in a body, and of asking the discharge of thy grandson from the Doge, in the name of the rabble of the Lido." ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... how few Sanctuary men there be whom any favourable necessity compel to go thither; and then see, on the other side, what a sort there be commonly therein of them whom wilful unthriftiness have brought to nought. What rabble of thieves, murderers, and malicious heinous traitors, and that in two places especially; the one the elbow of the city [that of Westminster] and the other [St. Martin's-le-Grand] in the very bowels. I dare well avow it, weigh the good they ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... every prisoner, and two lines of fixed bayonets. The mob surged around, heaping on us insults and blows; particularly the women. With hate in their eyes, they spat on us. We had to take that or the bayonet. These were the acts not only of the rabble, but also of the people ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... for, consider, the prettiest novelty loses all its zest when once become familiar. Our senses are but the rabble of our inward republic. The noble live by them, but elevate themselves above their low, degenerate tastes. (Having adjusted her toilet, he leads her to a glass.) Now, by my honor! this must on the morrow be Genoa's fashion—(politely)—may ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... upward until they became a purple curtain that filled half the heavens. The paved still town was squalid by day, but in the evening it became theatrically incredible, with an outdoor cafe amidst flowers and creepers, a Hungarian military band, a rabble of promenaders like a stage chorus in gorgeous costumes and a great gibbous ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... succession, and "with a degree of expression that astonished himself." As one writer puts it, the air "seemed to have acquired a certain sacredness in his eyes in an age when kings were beheaded and their crowns tossed to the rabble." ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... activities, struggling for success in the thick of things. The city attracts the country boy who is ambitious, exactly as old Rome attracted the immature German. The blare of its noisy traffic, the glare of its myriad lights, the rush and the roar and the rabble all urge him to get into the scramble for fun and gain. The crowd attracts. The instinct of sociability draws people together. Those who are unfamiliar with rural spaces and are accustomed to live in crowded tenements find it lonesome ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... the gate, accompanied by the female, and closely followed by the menials. The servitor of the police saluted the stranger with deference, for his calm exterior and imposing presence were in singular contrast with the noisy declamation and rude deportment of the rabble that had preceded. ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... pushed aside a curtain, and is looking out. Involuntarily.] Vile rabble!! Come here. Rosa! [She goes to the window.] Look ... that tall red-haired ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... 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, and refused to ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... toward sunset when Renouf, having apparently appropriated all the most valuable portions of the Spaniard's cargo that he could readily lay hands on, began to clear his disorderly rabble of a crew out of the ship, sending them aboard the schooner, a boatload at a time, and, to my surprise, using the Spanish boats, as well as his own, for this purpose. Meanwhile, the stories told by the men who had from time to time come from the Spanish ship had had the effect of gradually ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... lightly pinched. But they scarcely felt it; they could not believe it. Now, the gentry of Islam, the sheikhs and ulema, would hear this lack-beard dervish, as he was called. But they disdain to stand with the rabble in the Midan or congregate with the Mutafarnejin (Europeanised) in the public Halls. Nowhere but at the Mosque, therefore, can they hear what this Khalid has to say. This was accordingly decided upon, and, being approved by all parties concerned,—the ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... enough, though to the eye and ear very prominent. Stand your ground therefore when they advance, and again wait your opportunity to retire in good order, and you will reach a place of safety all the sooner, and will know for ever afterwards that rabble such as these, to those who sustain their first attack, do but show off their courage by threats of the terrible things that they are going to do, at a distance, but with those who give way to them are quick enough ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... 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, have done, had it been ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... the girl with outstretched arms. "What a terrible misfortune! How came you to be mixed up in this matter? The commandant has just telephoned to me. I have called for his resignation. By St. Inokeste, I will not have the rabble breathing upon you! And this is the good gentleman who came ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... there did not seem to be a single man who was not ablebodied, who had not been free to enlist as a soldier. They were of that scurvy behind-the-rear-guard which every nation has in degree proportionate to its worth. The manhood of Greece had gone to the frontier, leaving at home this rabble of talkers, most of whom were armed with rifles for mere pretention. Coleman loathed them to the end of his soul. He thought them a lot of infants who would like to prove their courage upon eleven innocent travellers, all but unarmed, ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... of mob law:— "When by our excellent Constitution the greatest Subject, no not even the King himself, can, without a lawful Trial and Conviction divest the meanest Man of his Property, deprive him of his Liberty, or attack him in his Person; shall we suffer a licentious Rabble to be Accuser, Judge, Jury, and Executioner; to inflict corporal Punishment, break open Men's Doors, plunder their Houses, and burn their Goods?" And, at the close, this pamphlet reveals the warm-hearted magistrate no less than the erudite lawyer. For of the two condemned ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... jockey-looking 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 ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... the thriving'st calling, The only saint's-bell that rings all in: A gift that is not only able To domineer among the rabble, But by the law's empowered to rout, And awe the greatest that stand ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... funeral multitude, with a "Malaish" on his tongue, was now in leash, ready to spring forth in the inspired hour; and the justification need not be a great one. Some slight incident might set him at the head of a rabble which would sweep Cairo like a storm. Yet Renshaw saw, too, that once immersed in the work his mind determined on, the Egyptian would go forward with relentless force. In the excitement of the moment it seemed to him that Egypt ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... avoid a battle with the British. Their imputation on his courage was certainly unjust; but they were probably quite right when they accused him of a desire to rob and plunder the tories. A succession of such quarrels speedily turned this assemblage of militia into an armed and warlike rabble. Fortunately Hill and Lacey prevailed, word was sent to the mountaineers, and the Flint Hill bands marched in loose order to join them at the Cowpens. [Footnote: Gates MSS. Letter of Gen. Wm. Davidson, Oct. 3, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... feeling himself almost covered by the multitude, he suddenly perceives the smarting of the stabs, and sent forth a roar which sounded like a terrific clap of thunder; and placing his hands on the ground he raised his terrible face: and having lifted one hand to his head he found it full of men and rabble sticking to it like the minute creatures which not unfrequently are found there; wherefore with a shake of his head he sends the men flying through the air just as hail does when driven by the fury of the winds. Many of these men were found to be dead; ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... with shaft, with staff, with bar, The hardier urge tumultuous war. At once round Douglas darkly sweep The royal spears in circle deep, And slowly scale the pathway steep, While on the rear in thunder pour The rabble with disordered roar With grief the noble Douglas saw The Commons rise against the law, And to the leading soldier said: 'Sir John of Hyndford, 'twas my blade That knighthood on thy shoulder laid; For that good deed permit me then A ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... inward ear Angel comfortings can hear, O'er the rabble's laughter; And, while Hatred's fagots burn, Glimpses through the smoke ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... be!" he shouted to those who carried Drift, in a voice so loud that for a moment the rabble stood ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... the gentility, to whose flanks clung the rabble of trade. Back upon the white road came yet other carriages, saluted by those departing. Low hedges of English green reached out into the distance, blending ultimately at the edge of the pleasant sky. Merry enough it was, and gladsome, this spring day; for be sure the really ill did ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... hide the fear that fed upon him with a tinge of swagger. This in the White House—the palace of their President! Storri was more and more convinced that the Americans were a rabble and not a people! ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... honor; men who will not lie; Men who can stand before a demagogue, And brave his treacherous flatteries without winking; Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog, In public duty and in private thinking; For while the rabble, with its thumb-worn creeds, Its large professions, and its little deeds, Mingle in selfish strife—lo! Freedom weeps, Wrong rules the land, ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... the sources of supply, save one, were sealed. This one source of supply was the cavern in which we stood. These were members of the ruling class, and outside was the rabble, starved and unhappy, living on the faint seepage of the vital fumes, without which they became almost bodiless, and the helpless slaves ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... The doctor and Mud Sam severally found their way back to the Manhattoes, each having some dreadful tale of peril to relate. As to poor Wolfert, instead of returning in triumph, laden with bags of gold, he was borne home on a shutter, followed by a rabble route of curious urchins. His wife and daughter saw the dismal pageant from a distance, and alarmed the neighborhood with their cries: they thought the poor man had suddenly settled the great debt of nature in one of ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... conversazione [It] &c (social gathering) 892; 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, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... out of my home. For nature has given it to us as an inn to tarry at by the way, not as a place to abide in. O glorious day! when I shall set out to join that blessed company and assembly of disembodied spirits, and quit this crowd and rabble of life! For I shall go my way, not only to those great men of whom I spoke, but to my own son Cato, than whom was never better man born, nor more full of dutiful affection; whose body I laid on the funeral pile—an office he should ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... the peaking cornuto her husband, Master Brook, dwelling in a continual 'larum of jealousy, comes me in the instant of our encounter, after we had embraced, kissed, protested, and, as it were, spoke the prologue of our comedy; and at his heels a rabble of his companions, thither provoked and instigated by his distemper, and, forsooth, to search his house for his ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... retaining its cylindrical form and perhaps lengthened by a special operation on the part of the new-born grub, forms this safety-channel. At the least sign of danger in the heap of caterpillars, the larva retreats into its sheath and climbs back to the ceiling, where the swarming rabble cannot reach it. When peace is restored, it slides down its case and returns to table, with its head over the viands and its rear upturned and ready to withdraw in ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... Thersites, briggen irons bright, And fear thou no man manly to fight; Though he be stronger than Hercules or Samson, Be thou prest and bold to set him upon. Nother Amazon nor Xerxes with their whole rabble Thee to assail shall find it profitable. I warrant thee they will flee from thy face, As doth an hare from the dogs in a chace. Would not thy black and rusty grim beard, Now thou art so armed, make any man afeard? Surely, if Jupiter did see thee in this gear, He would renne away, and ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... company. Climene, the amoureuse, beautifully gowned in flowered satin, her own clustering ringlets concealed under a pumpkin-shaped wig, looked so much the lady of fashion that you might have wondered what she was doing in that fantastic rabble. Madame, as the mother, was also dressed with splendour, but exaggerated to achieve the ridiculous. Her headdress was a monstrous structure adorned with flowers, and superimposed by little ostrich plumes. Columbine sat facing them, ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... meagre histories of culture, which, for the most part, resemble a collection of variant readings accompanied by a running commentary the classical text of which has perished, many a little book of which the noisy rabble took scant notice in its day, plays a greater role than all that this ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... could not away with, was that Agnes filled her own chamber with the poorest of the poor. 'How,' I cried, thyself and thy friend Madame de Bois-Sombre, were you not enough to fill it, that you should throw open that chamber to good-for-nothings, to va-nu-pieds, to the very rabble?' 'Ma mere,' said Madame Martin, 'our good Lord died for them.' 'And surely for thee too, thou saint-imbecile!' I cried out in my indignation. What, my Martin's chamber which he had adorned for his bride! I was beside myself. And they have an obstinacy these ...
— A Beleaguered City • Mrs. Oliphant
... customs, and even our ancient garments. Pitiable was it to behold the yellow-faced puppies, talking through their noses—and often without noses—stuffed with brochures and newspapers of various sorts, and proclaiming new faiths, laws, and toilets. That rabble had a mighty power over minds, for when the Lord God sends punishment on a nation he first deprives its citizens of reason. And so the wiser heads dared not resist the fops, and the whole nation feared them as some pestilence, ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... back towards the trumpet-calls now sounding confusedly along the crest of the downs; when, to their and our worse dismay, was heard a pounding of hoofs on the road behind us, and over the bridge at our backs came riding a rabble of mounted men with a woman at their head—a woman dressed all in scarlet with a black flapping hat and a scarlet feather. What manner of woman she was I had no time to guess. But she rode with uplifted ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... 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
... seen a line of men, women and boys on both sides of the steps. The elders tried to persuade father to give up the attempt and go no further. He turned to them and said, "I came to conquer for the Lord, and if you do not come with me I shall go alone." When the rabble saw them coming, they began to shout, "Here they come. Here come the saints." A boy approached—more bold than the rest—and as he came father took him by the hand and said, "Good morning, my little man. I am glad to see the young as well as the old ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... I can abide,—but that you should go now, with all your prospects, your ability, the opportunity presented you, and engage yourself in this fatal cause, in this unholy attack upon the king's majesty, connect yourself with this beggarly rabble who have been whipped and beaten every time they have come in contact with the royal troops,—I cannot bear it. You are a man now. You have grown away from your mother, Hilary, and I can no longer command, I must entreat." But ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... comes again. At the end of the four hundred years Death takes the host to paradise. They pass by hell on the way and the host proposes to the devil to play for the newly received souls. The host wins fifteen thousand, which he carries with him to paradise. St. Peter objects to letting the "rabble" in, and Jesus Christ himself says: "The host may come in himself, but he has no business with the others." Then the host says that he has made no difficulty about numbers when Christ has come to ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... 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.
... the people—the scum of the rabble, sir, banded together by the myrmidons of Sir Barnes Newcome, attacked us at the King's Arms, and smashed ninety-six pounds' worth of glass at one volley, besides knocking off the gold unicorn head and the tail of the British lion; it was fine, sir," F. B. said, "to see how the Colonel ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... been tested in the management of elephants and steeds and cars. Having been examined duly, they have been entertained on pay and not for the sake of lineage, nor from favour, nor from relationship. They are not a rabble come of their own accord, nor have they been admitted into my army without pay. My army consists of well-born and respectable men, who are, again, contented, well-fed, and submissive. They are sufficiently rewarded. They are all famous and endued with great intelligence. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... sheep or goat has ever browsed grass beside it. There is no more inaccessible place upon the earth, and few more encircled by awe to the deep considering. It is the door of faery-land. In the middle of night it swings open, and the unearthly troop rushes out. All night the gay rabble sweep to and fro across the land, invisible to all, unless perhaps where, in some more than commonly "gentle" place—Drumcliff or Drum-a-hair—the nightcapped heads of faery-doctors may be thrust from their doors to see what mischief the "gentry" ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... because he had reason to believe they were inciting the Indians to aid them in resisting the commands of Ferdinand and Isabella!! In short, from the day of his landing Bobadilla made common cause with the insurgent rabble, and when they had furnished him with a ream or so of charges against the Admiral and his brothers, it seemed safe to send these gentlemen to Spain. They were put on board ship, with their fetters upon them, and the officer in charge was instructed by Bobadilla ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... was covered with snow, and discussed theology; the rabble laughed and quarrelled. The only ones who were protected against the inclemency of the weather were the actors under the canopy. But the damp snow was heavy, and the linen awning ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... have lost by fatigue and left in the hospital more than fifteen thousand men, 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 calls ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... had found a few parcels of shot in his house, which his wife had for years used to balance her scales. For this they were going to shoot him on Court House Green. What a spectacle was that for a civilized country! A rabble, staggering under intoxication, assuming to be ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... 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
... answered, 'and you shall find it there, Whosoever sheds man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed; and I see neither King Charles, Prince Charles, nor prince Rupert, nor prince Maurice, nor any of that rabble ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... my cousin, now, but could you and I at this moment, instead of this quiet argument, by our well-carpeted fireside, sitting on this luxurious sofa—be once more struggling up those inconvenient staircases, pushed about and squeezed, and elbowed by the poorest rabble of poor gallery scramblers—could I once more hear those anxious shrieks of yours, and the delicious Thank God, we are safe, which always followed, when the topmost stair, conquered, let in the first light of the ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... was observed on the passage, refusing to consort with the emigrants, remained aristocratically grouped around their master on the elevated quarter-deck, casting disdainful glances forward upon the inferior rabble there; much as, from the ramparts, the soldiers of a garrison, thrown into a conquered town, eye the inglorious citizen-mob over which they are ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... 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
... slight recess at its further end, so that from the threshold of the doorway she could not see into the distant corner. Swift as a lightning flash the remembrance came back to her of proud Marie Antoinette narrowing her life to that dark corner where the insolent eyes of the rabble soldiery could not ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... through their tricks by force of fear. They hated these tricks, as they hated the small cages in which they could not lash their tails. They hated the "baby carriage" in which one was presently to sit, while the other pushed him over the floor, his sullen majesty sport for the rabble. They hated the board upon which they must see-saw, while the woman stood in ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... pleasure of life. The days of their celebration were public holidays, which in the fourth century numbered no less than one hundred and seventy-five. The once-sovereign people of Rome became a lazy, worthless rabble, fed by the state and amused with the games. It was well said by an ancient satirist that the Romans wanted only two things to make them happy—"bread and the games ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... little, friv'lous, abject mind, Pleased with the rabble, puff'd with wind, When once, as fast as pride presumes, Itself with vanity it plumes, Is by fond lightness brought with ease To any ridicule you please. One Prince, a piper to the play, Was rather noted ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... you know, I have thought of giving up the world to the Pope. Let him come forth, on foot, and barefoot, and show himself to the rabble, saying, 'See what they have brought me to!' and they will all rush after him, even the troops. The Pope at the head, with us round him, and below us—Shigalovism. All that's needed is that the Internationale should come to an agreement with the Pope; so it will. And the old chap will agree ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... instant, at the crack of his rifle, there was no movement ahead; then something rolled from the sledge and lay doubled up in the snow. A hundred yards beyond it, the huskies stopped in a rabble and turned to ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... rabble, and as out of place as a swarm of butterflies in frost-silvered air, a band of high-born women was to be seen approaching the City this early December morning. Gorgeously attired pages, hardly more warlike than the women, made a blooming hedge around them, while a sufficiently strong ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... alone, I vow unto thee, that in all countries whatsoever wherein I shall have any power or authority, whether in this of Utopia or elsewhere, I will cause thy holy gospel to be purely, simply, and entirely preached, so that the abuses of a rabble of hypocrites and false prophets, who by human constitutions and depraved inventions have empoisoned all the world, shall be quite exterminated from ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... I am not satisfied that you, an Englishman, have authority to act for the Faujdar of Hugli. The crowd I see before me—a rabble of lathiwallahs—clearly cannot ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... Strange, isn't it, how a place can lie slumbering for generations, right at our doors, and no one has sense enough to look at it? And after all, it is while it is sleeping, or beginning to stir, that it charms. Two years from now, when the rabble get onto the racket, the glory will be gone. Think of picnics on the Hills! Imagine a crowd rushing for the dunes, and the bay thick with sails! No! Let's make the best of ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... minute-men was increasing once more,—answered by volleys from Percy's platoons. The British, smarting under the tormenting fusilade, angry over the thought that they were being assailed by a rabble of farmers and were on the defensive, became wanton and barbaric, pillaging houses, and murdering ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... desperately wounded, and one Vaughan, a seditious weaver, formerly an apprentice in Bridewell, and since employed there, who was a notorious ringleader of mobs, was kill'd at the aforesaid mug-house. Many notorious Papists were seen to abet and assist in this villanous rabble, as were others, who call themselves Churchmen, and are like to meet with a suitable reward in due time for their assaulting gentlemen who meet at these mug-houses only to drink prosperity to the Church of England as by law established, the King's health, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Buffianism throughout his whole books, but they bolstered out his part with; as those ragged remnants in his four familiar epistles 'twixt him and Senior Immerito, raptim scripta, noste manum et stylum, with innumerable other of his rabble-routs: and scoffing his Musarum Lachrymae with Flebo amorem meum etiam musarum lachrymis; which, to give it his due, was a more collachrymate wretched Treatise than my Piers Penniless, being the pitifulest pangs that ever any man's Muse breathed forth. I leave out half; not the carrying ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... you, sir, can do better for himself than a junior mastership for his final goal. Take warning by me, as I used to tell you—do you want to come to this sort of thing? sitting from morning to noon in this stifling den, filled with a rabble of impident boys—d'ye think they'll have any respect for your old age and infirmities? not they—they'll call you "Old Ashes"—for they're a yumorous race, boys are, they'll call you "Old Ashes," or "Cinders" to your nose, as soon as they think you're old enough to stand ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... its decomposed parts were but 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 and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... don't give orders any more. We've got a new chief, and you're just one of the rabble, like me." He made a heavily gallant bow toward the latest arrival. "May I ask ...
— The Devil's Asteroid • Manly Wade Wellman
... galloped another group. A negro in a red coat with a blue sash, a general's epaulettes and an immense hat surcharged with tri-colour feathers, was forcing his way through the rabble. He was preceded by a horrible, helmetted negro boy beating upon a drum, and followed by two mulattoes, one in a colonel's coat, the other dressed as a Turk with a hideous Mardi Gras turban ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... 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, ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... poured by six guns into the camp. The rajah sent messenger after messenger to Forde, urging him to return; and he himself, with his frightened army, hurried towards Condore. Forde had, indeed, retraced his steps immediately he heard the fire of the guns, and soon met the rajah's rabble in full flight; and, uniting with them, marched ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... attended by a rabble rout of boys—diavoli scatenati—clean, grinning, white-teethed, who kept incessantly shouting, "Soldo, soldo!" I do not know why these sea-urchins are so far more irrepressible than their land brethren. But it is always ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... my son Saunders was readin' to me the ither nicht in a fule history buik, an' there it said that amang the Papists they used to hae fowk that didna do as they did an' believe as they believed. Sae wi' a lang white serk on, an' a can'le i' their hands, they set them up for the rabble fowk to clod at them, an' whiles they tied them to a bit stick an' set lunt [fire] to them—an that's the origin o' yer stool o' repentance. What say ye ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... rude and boisterous amusement, but those were rude and boisterous times. The custom holds its ground in England, in some measure, to the present day, though now it is confined to throwing out pence and halfpence to the rabble in the streets at an election, and is no longer, as of yore, relied upon as a means of entertaining noble ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Poitou—there are some troublesome people of the city rabble at the door. Bid the guard turn out, and thrust them away. Tell them to strike not too gently with the flats of their swords and the butts of ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... 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
... our success seemed gratifying, and Mr. Fee was delighted; and we proceeded the following morning to our next appointment at Brooksville, in Bracken county. Here we found assembled a large crowd of that brutalized rabble element which formed the background of slavery everywhere. The aboriginal creatures gazed at us like so many wild animals, but showed not the slightest disposition to enter the house in which we were to speak. Mr. Clay remarked that ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... the yells of these kings of the packs of savage prairie wolves, and they were masterful indeed, and could easily be distinguished above the feebler pipings of the wolf rabble. ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... one of their swords, and found it to be very little, if at all blunter on the edge, than the common swords are. Strange to see what a deal of money is flung to them both upon the stage between every bout. But a woful rude rabble there was, and such noises, made my head ake all this evening. So, well pleased for once with this sight, I walked home, doing several businesses by the way. In my way calling to see Commissioner Pett, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... present at 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 ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... below 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 of a long line of priestly ancestors. The boy's face is certainly full ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... Limbo of Vanity. If it should ever surmount the summit and run down on the other side, it will infallibly roll over and annihilate the franchise of the educated classes; for it would not be worth their while to cross the road to exercise it against the rabble preponderance which would then have been created. Thirty years ago, Lord Michin Malicho had several cogent arguments in favour of Reform. One was, that the people were roaring for it, and that therefore they must have it. He has ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... are "the peepers;" "turbatum fugere" is "to scower off in a mighty bustle;" "confundor" is "to be jumbled;" and "squalidus" is "in a sorry pickle." "Importuna" is "a plaguy baggage;" "adulterium" is rendered "her pranks;" "ambages" becomes either "a long rabble of words," "a long-winded detail," or "a tale of a tub;" "miserabile carmen" is "a dismal ditty;" "increpare hos" is "to rattle these blades;" "penetralia" means "the parlour;" while "accingere," more literally than elegantly, is translated "buckle to." "Situs" is "nasty stuff;" "oscula jungere" ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... "I did not think it likely your excellency would have chosen to mingle with such a rabble as are always collected on that hill, which, indeed, they consider as exclusively ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... {103} grew rich, the division of property became very unequal, and the attachment of the people for their government declined, the middle classes lost their importance, and the lower orders of free citizens became a mere rabble. When Rome was poor, the people did not cry for bread, but when the brick buildings were turned into marble palaces, when a lamprey was sold for fifty-six pounds, {104} the people became a degraded populace, ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... is still one other bother, a kind of bother botherum, to tell of, though I hesitate at the telling. It brings this rabble herd of worries into line and makes them formidable; it is, so to speak, the Bother Commander-in-Chief. Well! Euphemia. I simply worship the ground she treads upon, mind, but at the same time the truth is the truth. Euphemia ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... say Mr. 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... which was now 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 ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... London I went to a little meeting of Friends which was then held in the house of one Humphrey Bache, a goldsmith, at the sign of the Snail, in Tower Street. It was then a very troublesome time, not from the government, but from the rabble of boys and rude people, who upon the turn of the time (at the return of the King) took liberty to ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... completed a few trusses of straw were thrown in and distributed thinly over the ground. Then ensued a wild stampede to secure a place beneath the canvas, a rabble of several hundreds fighting frantically among themselves to seek a couch in the absurdly inadequate temporary canvas dwelling. The men stowed themselves in so tightly in close serried rows that when ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... storms of darkness, without the transferred colorings of a stained sufferer. How often have we seen it in our public prints, that woman occupies a false station in the world! and some have gone so far as to say it was an unnatural one. So long has she been regarded a weak creature, by the rabble and illiterate—they have looked upon her as an insufficient actress on the great stage of human life—a mere puppet, to fill up the drama of human existence—a thoughtless, inactive being—that ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... Calvert, the schoolmaster of the village, of whom Mrs. Hinkley spoke to Alfred Stevens in discussing the condition of her son. His tasks were over for the day. The light-hearted rabble whom he taught, released from his dominion which was not severe, were, by this time, scampering over the hills, as far from their usual place of restraint as the moderate strength of their legs could carry them. Though ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... Had the acute-angled rabble been all, without exception, absolutely destitute of hope and of ambition, they might have found leaders in some of their many seditious outbreaks, so able as to render their superior numbers and strength too much even for the wisdom of the ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott |
