"Tatterdemalion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... headed by their tatterdemalion pipers, stumped into the town in due course, and were met on the outskirts by the billeting party, who led the various companies to their appointed place. After inspecting their new quarters, and announcing with gloomy satisfaction that they were the worst, dirtiest, and most uncomfortable ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... Malta stood the whip-jack, habited in his sailor gear—striped shirt and dirty canvas trousers; and adjoining him was the palliard, a loathsome tatterdemalion, his dress one heap of rags, and his discolored skin one mass of artificial leprosy ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... presently. He rose and examined one representing Marlowe and Manderson on horseback. Two others were views of famous peaks in the Alps. There was a faded print of three youths—one of them unmistakably his acquaintance of the haggard blue eyes—clothed in tatterdemalion soldier's gear of the sixteenth century. Another was a portrait of a majestic old lady, slightly resembling Marlowe. Trent, mechanically taking a cigarette from an open box on the mantel-shelf, lit it and stared at the photographs. Next he turned his attention to a flat leathern ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... Place, the gates of the park were opening and the bedraggled company of night-walkers were being at last admitted into that paradise of lawns. Challoner and his companion followed the movement, and walked for awhile in silence in that tatterdemalion crowd; but as one after another, weary with the night's patrolling of the city pavement, sank upon the benches or wandered into separate paths, the vast extent of the park had soon utterly swallowed up the last of these intruders; and the pair proceeded on their way alone in ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... women who launch themselves into party politics, and fill their heads with a vast mass of useless knowledge about political tricks, customs, theories and personalities. Thus, too, we have the woman social reformer, trailing along ridiculously behind a tatterdemalion posse of male utopians, each with something to sell. And thus we have the woman who goes in for advanced wisdom of the sort on draught in women's clubs—in brief, the sort of wisdom which consists entirely ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... descent from the illustrious house of Aguilar, from which sprang Gonsalvo of Cordova, the grand captain. Nay, he actually bears the name of Alonzo de Aguilar, so renowned in the history of the conquest. It is a whimsical caprice of fortune to present, in the grotesque person of this tatterdemalion, a namesake and descendant of the proud Alonzo de Aguilar, the mirror of Andalusian chivalry, leading an almost mendicant existence about this once haughty fortress, which his ancestor aided to reduce: yet such might have been the lot ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 550, June 2, 1832 • Various
... days a favorite resort of mine. Every morning I plunged into the rush downtown I dived from the elevated railway station into the tatterdemalion life of Park Row, and when I raised my head above that ragged human maelstrom and climbed to the editorial room of The Record it seemed as though I lifted my body out of a little muddy stream and plunged my mind into a Charybdis which embraced the whole world. Its centre was the same desk which ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... The retrogressive Doctor Hanchett had been quite an exquisite in the matter of apparel compared with this tatterdemalion. With Dora's companions he was less reticent concerning the character and calling of Posey than he had been with Dora herself. By his account it appeared that Posey had spent about a month in the mines without striking a single streak of luck to hearten him. At the end of that time, completely ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... others of lesser account, scathless go and all by reason of this good, tall fellow. Howbeit, I do know this same fellow for fellow of none account, and no fit mate for thee, noble daughter, love or no. A fierce, brawling, tatterdemalion this, that erstwhile tramped in company with long-legged ribald—a froward jesting fellow. Wherefore this fellow, though fellow serviceable, no fellow is for thee and ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... you infatuated tatterdemalion? Come along! If it weren't for pity I'd have you put in the pillory!" exclaimed Old Hurricane, shaking his cane at ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... of voices our jay-like crew swung on, swaying and thumping in the strange ecstasy of irreflection, happy to be moving they knew not where, nor greatly why, under the visiting sun, to the sound of murdered music. Whenever the band stopped playing, discipline became as tatterdemalion as the very flags and garments; but never once did they lose that look of essential order, as if indeed they knew that, being the worst-served creatures in the Christian world, they were the chief guardians of the inherent dignity ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... go with you— Is all our Project fallen to this? to love the only Enemy to our Trade? Nay, to love such a Shameroon, a very Beggar; nay, a Pirate-Beggar, whose Business is to rifle and be gone, a No-Purchase, No-Pay Tatterdemalion, an English Piccaroon; a Rogue that fights for daily Drink, and takes a Pride in being loyally lousy— Oh, I could curse now, if I durst— This is ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... correct. Bronzed faces show themselves over the tops of the bushes on the opposite edge of the glade; and, the moment after, three Indians emerge into the open ground. That they are Indians, their tatterdemalion dress of coloured blankets, leggings, and mocassins would indicate; but their race is even recognisable in their mode of march. Though there are but three of them, and the path runs no longer among trees, they follow one another in single file, and in the true typical "trot" ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... had a strange fascination for John, mingled of curiosity and fear. Nothing more alien could come into the New England life than this tatterdemalion band. It was hardly credible that here were actually people who lived out-doors, who slept in their covered wagon or under their tent, and cooked in the open air; it was a visible romance transferred from foreign lands and the remote times of the story-books; ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... mules and horses, laden with gear for a mountain ascent, a trim little Japanese, who darted about helping, my native, who was picturesquely dressed in a Mexican poncho, Mr. Alexander, who wore something which made him unrecognisable; and myself, a tatterdemalion figure, wearing a much-worn green topcoat of his over my riding suit, and a tartan shawl arranged so as to fall nearly to my feet. Then we went forth into the darkness. The road soon degenerated into a wood road, ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird |
