"Pell-mell" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on the other hand, that the case is by no means common in which an author is at all in condition to retrace the steps by which his conclusions have been attained. In general, suggestions having arisen pell-mell, are pursued and forgotten ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... I cried out, as I had received authority to do so, "In the name of the King, open to us!" They obeyed an order thus given; we entered pell-mell, and in the greatest haste, men and mules, into the kitchen, which was on the ground-floor; and we hurried to extinguish the lights, in order not to awaken the suspicions of the bandits who were seeking for us. Indeed, we heard them, ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... though inferior in numbers to the forces of the Canadians, was imprudent enough to leave the city and meet them in the open field. Defeated there, and pursued by the enemy, the latter nearly entered Quebec pell-mell with the English troops, and trenches were opened against the city. A few days later an English squadron came in sight, and the place was relieved. "Thus," says the old English chronicler of the navy, "the enemy saw what it was to be inferior at sea; for, had a French squadron got the start ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... Tribune building. Taking one hundred of his own men, and one hundred under Inspector Folk, of Brooklyn, who had been early ordered over, and been doing good service in the city, he marched down Broadway, and was just entering the Park, when the frightened crowd came rushing pell-mell across it. Immediately forming "company front," he swept the Park like a storm, clearing everything before him. Order being restored, Folk returned with his force to Brooklyn, where things began to wear a threatening aspect, ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... thrown by the sinewy arm of an Indian, struck the steel casque of De Soto with such force that it rebounded some sixteen feet in the air. The blow was so severe that it almost unhorsed the Governor, and seemingly caused, as he afterwards said, the fire to flash from his eyes. As the savages rushed pell-mell into the fortress, their pursuers were at their heels, cutting them down. The Spaniards were exasperated. They had sought peace, and had found only war. De Soto had wished, in a friendly spirit, to traverse their country, and they were hedging up his way and pursuing him with relentless ferocity. ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... which you may clearly perceive the souls of men and women, beasts and plants, of stocks and stones, canoes and houses, and of all the broken utensils of this frail world, swimming or rather tumbling along one over the other pell-mell into the regions of immortality. Such is the Fiji philosophy, but the Tonga people deny it, unwilling to think that the residence of the gods should be encumbered with so much useless rubbish. The natives of Otaheite ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... yellow slope, to where the gleaming aspens half hid a red bluff of mountain, towering aloft. Then from far to her left, high up a scrubby ridge of the slope, rang down a voice that thrilled her: "Go—aloong—you-ooooo." Red cattle dashed pell-mell down the slope, raising the dust, tearing the brush, rolling rocks, and ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... D Company, wild with excitement, hunted them through the cellars and lanes and made a great slaughter. The dead lay all about the streets and in the bombed dugouts. Lieut. Rogers, O.C. No. 16 Platoon, was reputed to have killed eight himself. Those Huns who escaped ran pell-mell singly or in groups up the hill and along the Hargicourt road, flinging away their packs, with which the slope was littered. Captain James, who had led the Company so gallantly and successfully, got them together and wheeled round to the east of the village in the chance of ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... would drive them pell-mell; For safety they'd Hazen, and think they did well To escape from the jury of women turned loose Who have drank to its ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... But still their trembling ears retained The deep vibrations of his 'witching song, That, by a kind of magic power, constrained To enter in, pell-mell, the listening throng: Heaps poured on heaps, and yet they slipped along In silent ease; as when beneath the beam Of summer moons, the distant woods among, Or by some flood all silvered with the gleam, The soft-embodied ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... plans, perhaps as we fly; we pick up a stick on the run, hoping to escape but preparing for the reaction of fight if cornered. "What shall I do—what shall I do? finds no conscious answer if the emotion is overwhelming or the instinctive flight a pell-mell affair; but ordinarily memories of other experiences or of teaching come into the mind and some effort is made to meet the situation in an ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... o'clock he reached the journalist's chambers. Malkin had not yet arrived. Peak amused himself with examining certain tropical products which the traveller had recently cast pell-mell into his friend's sitting-room. Then sounded a knock at the door, but it was not such as would ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... enemy, and then, with the watchword "Philadelphia" rushed upon the rovers. No defence was made, for, swarming to leeward, they tumbled, in mad affright, overboard; over the bows, through gun-ports, by aid of trailing halliards and stranded rigging, out of the channels, pell-mell by every loop-hole they went—and then, such as could, swam like water-rats for the friendly shelter of the ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... them, and taking their lances, spurred after the fugitives. The three barons pricked swiftly across the plain. They looked this way and that; often glancing behind them to mark how nearly they were followed. The Romans pursued them pell-mell; some on the beaten road, and others upon the heavy fields. They came by two, or three, or five, or six, in little clumps of spears. Now a certain Roman rode in advance of his fellows, by reason of his good horse, which was right speedy. He followed closely after ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace
... the noise of battle; and saw horsemen and footmen pell-mell, tangled in an abattis, from behind which archers and cross-bowmen ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... wear the khaki of scouts if we did, fellows!" cried Tom Chesney. "Come on, and let's give them a taste of their own medicine," and with loud shouts the five comrades started to gather up the snow as they chased pell-mell ...
— The Boy Scouts of Lenox - Or The Hike Over Big Bear Mountain • Frank V. Webster
... the end be made up of a few well-turned speeches, a few fine books, and a few great plays. As for practicing what is so magisterially set forth, that is the last thing thought of. And if we pass from the world of talent to spheres which the mediocre exploit, there, in a pell-mell of confusion, we see those who think that we are in the world to talk and hear others talk—the great and hopeless rout of babblers, of everything that prates, bawls, and perorates and, after all, finds that there isn't talking enough. They all forget ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... abject Paternians, men, women, and children, pell-mell, on a heap of filth, lift up their hideous ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... quiet for a time; then there arose a tumult of cries, oaths, and yells. The captain gave the order, and pell-mell down the rift we clambered, some dropping their muskets in their hurried descent, one of which exploded in its fall. The bo's'n had found the beach and our boat guarded by six pirates, who were asleep. Four of these they succeeded in throttling. We pushed ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... erect in all his gigantic proportions and waved both arms to welcome his beloved master, the Diehards turned with a yell and fled. Vainly their comrades of Troy called after them. Back and down the hill they streamed pell-mell, one on another's heels; down to the marshy bottom known as Trebant Water, nor paused to catch breath until they had placed a running brook between them and the ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... from whence he drove him with precipitation, and made himself master of the French cannon. The enemy attempted to save themselves in a neighbouring fort; but the gates being shut against them by the governor, who was apprehensive that they would be followed pell-mell by the English, Mr. Clive attacked them with great fury, and made a considerable slaughter; but his humanity being shocked at this carnage, he sent a flag of truce to the vanquished, with terms of capitulation, which they readily embraced. These articles ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... first place, that it is my decided conviction that the Gipsies were neither more nor less, before they set out upon their pilgrimage, than a pell-mell gathering of many thousands of low-caste, good for nothing, idle Indians from Hindustan—not ashamed to beg, with some amount of sentiment in their nature, as exhibited in their musical tendencies and love of gaudy colours, and except ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... and others—much to be pitied, it is true; but misery is misery. Among poor folks they expect it; it does not surprise them, and they help one another as they can. But to see a poor young man, honest, and good, who has been your friend for a long time, accused of theft, and imprisoned pell-mell with rogues and cut-throats! Oh, M. Rudolph! it is true I have no strength against this; it is a misfortune I have never thought ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... would every moment go down. The working and rolling of the vessel, at one instant of dread, displaced and destroyed all the furniture of the cabin and saloons, and, broke it to pieces, throwing the passengers pell-mell about the cabin. Everything that occupied the upper deck was washed away, and a large part of the passengers' luggage was destroyed. Between twenty and thirty of those who were on board, including several ladies, had limbs and ribs fractured, ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... pestilence, and death are in the day's work; the imagination readily accepts them. It instinctively rejects, on the contrary, whatever shall call up the image of our race upon its lowest terms, as the partner of beasts, beastly itself, dwelling pell-mell and hugger-mugger, hairy man with hairy woman, in the caves of old. And yet to be just to barbarous islanders we must not forget the slums and dens of our cities; I must not forget that I have passed dinnerward through Soho, and seen that which ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a curious town, the streets everywhere steep and narrow, and the houses, pell-mell, rich and poor, large and small huddled together without order. Almost opposite the handsome dwelling, the photograph of which had misled me, stood a little house where I could buy rich, creamy milk. It was ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... with an immense number of carriages and people on foot, the same sentiment attracting the court, the citizens, the people, to the delightful place at which the fete was held. All ranks were mingled, all went pell-mell; and I have never seen a crowd more singularly variegated, or which presented a more striking picture of all conditions of society. Ordinarily the multitude at fetes of this kind is composed of little more than one class of people and a few modest bourgeois ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... chairs, old nondescript pieces of planking, broken crates and boxes, were flung together there in moldering confusion. It was evident that after the scheme of using the Jasper B.'s hulk as one of the attractions of a pleasure resort had failed, all the debris of the failure had simply been thrown pell-mell into the hold. Cleggett and Captain Abernethy decided that the vessel, which was stepped for two masts, should be rigged as a schooner. The Captain was soon busy securing estimates on the amount of work ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... managed to cut off the water from the stream which supplied it, and then an alarm was raised that they were about to make an attack. On this the whole army, horse and foot, tumbled over each other pell-mell, trying who should get the soonest out ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... boat was completely smashed between the ship's side and the rock. Nothing could exceed the alarm that prevailed on board for a few minutes after the sudden crash. The decks were covered with spars and rigging, lying pell-mell upon the bodies of those who had been injured by their fall. The man at the helm had been killed at his post, and the wheel itself was shivered to atoms; whilst the darkness of the night, and the roar of the breakers against the cliff, added to the horrors of a catastrophe of which the suddenness ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... heard before. Poor old Joan thought her last hour had really come, and gave herself up for lost, for when she looked round she saw the fearful great creature she had been riding, disappearing in the distance in flames of fire, and tearing after it, helter-skelter, pell-mell, was a horrible crew of men and dogs and horses. Two or three hundred of them there must have been, and not one of the lot had a head ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... thousand Dyaks, let us know that an engagement had really commenced. It would be difficult to describe the scene as I found it. About twenty boats were jammed together, forming one confused mass; some bottom up; the bows or sterns of others only visible; mixed up, pell-mell, with huge rafts; and among which were nearly all our advanced little division. Headless trunks, as well as heads without bodies, were lying about in all directions; parties were engaged hand to hand, spearing and krissing each other; others were striving to swim for their lives; ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... day's work was finished—how fearful, could be seen by the wounded, the dying lying pell-mell upon the battle-field amidst the dead, too exhausted to move. But the day had passed. The cries and shouts of the flying enemy had now ceased—the victory, the battle-field, belonged to the Prussians. What was now most needed by them was an hour's rest. Above the bloody battle-field, ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... him. A loud shout made him turn his eyes for a moment forward, and then he saw Jack, who had gained the forecastle, waving his cutlass in triumph. The Spaniards, who had hitherto shown a bold front, on hearing the shout, and seeing that their chance of victory was gone, threw themselves pell-mell down the hatchways among their companions, who had by this time regained their legs. What was bad, they had also kept possession of their arms, and began to fire upon the English. The seamen could easily have shot them, but the cowardly scoundrels retreated among the chained slaves, ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... herewith two of Mr. Langlois' most interesting photographs. One of these shows the head of the corpse of a young miner whose face stands out in relief against the side of the gallery (Fig. 2) the other shows a wheel and a lot of debris heaped up pell-mell (Fig. 3). ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 561, October 2, 1886 • Various
... running like one distraught to fetch Marian, do tilt pell-mell into Lord Robert, who hath come down to Amhurste for a week ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... yet two miles short of Lexington, ominous sounds of conflict smote his ears: not the rolling volleys and stately tread of victory, but the confused noise of fight and flight, betokening irretrievable disaster. The fresh troops were formed into a hollow square, and pell-mell the hunted fugitives came rushing into their place of refuge. Exhausted by their long march and hot fight, many of them fell prone upon the ground, "their tongues," says a high authority, "hanging ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... as the Pole ran out he met the others coming pell-mell toward him. He flung a guard of all five of them around the barn, and himself walked off a hundred feet or so and gazed upward. The very outline of the ridge pole was indistinguishable, and he swore softly. In the hope of drawing an answering ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... headlong down the slope, shouting vociferously as they came. The soldiers, alarmed and already disheartened, imagined that these eager enemies were but forerunners of a large reinforcement. Hastily they disengaged themselves from the outlaws, and, gathering up Master Carfax, rushed pell-mell with him backward to ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... panic and desperation. The memory of the last hellish night was too stark to allow relaxation—the growing fear, the silent, desperate hunt through the night; the realization that their numbers were increasing; his frantic search for a hiding place in the New City; and finally his panic-stricken, pell-mell flight down into the alleys and cobbled streets and crumbling frame buildings of the Old City.... Even more horrible, the friends who had turned on him, who turned out to ...
— The Dark Door • Alan Edward Nourse
... rocket, That shot, from its socket, Puts armies, pell-mell, to the rout, sir; At Leipsic, its tail Made Napoleon turn pale, And sent all ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... city of which we had heard such varied accounts. "You'll think a good part of it was built in Holland three centuries ago," said our captain, "then boxed up, sent across the waters, and dropped down, pell-mell, in the midst of the jungle." We all laughed incredulously at the time, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... jewel, are you there?" exclaimed Dick, as he distinguished the Irishman. "Come, I have one friend among them whom I may welcome. So, they see me now. Off they come, pell-mell. Back, Bess, back!—slowly, wench, slowly—there—stand!" ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... covering them with sand left to the winds. The lid is fastened with the same mortar which is used in the brick masonry surrounding the coffin, where such a receptacle has been made for it; but they more usually lie pell-mell, separated only by thin layers of loose sand. There are mounds which are, as one may say, larded with them: wherever you begin to dig a trench, the narrow ends stick out from both sides. In these coffins also various articles ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... Johannizza had caused all the people that were therein to be put to death, they fell in to such terror that they were utterly confounded and foredone. As God suffers misadventures to fall upon men, so the Venetians rushed to their ships, helter-skelter, pell-mell, and in such sort that they almost drowned one another; and the mounted sergeants, who came from France and Flanders, and other countries, ...
— Memoirs or Chronicle of The Fourth Crusade and The Conquest of Constantinople • Geoffrey de Villehardouin
... is true that Monsieur de Balzac does not proceed with sureness, and that in his numerous productions, some of which appear to us almost admirable, at any rate touching and delicious or piquant and finely comic in observation, there is a dreadful pell-mell. What a throng of volumes, what a flight of tales, novels of all sorts, droll, philosophic, and theosophic. There is something to be enjoyed in each, no doubt, but what prolixity! In the elaboration of a subject, as in the detail of style, Monsieur de Balzac has a facile, unequal, ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... a cautious reconnoitering beyond the door. This was promptly followed by a pell-mell dash for the open. In a moment they were crowding the trackside, staring with stupid eyes and mouths agape at the miniature snowfall of sugar, and ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... Northern flank. He saw the flash of sabers, the jets of white smoke from rifle or pistol, and then the Northern line was cut through. But new regiments came up, threw themselves upon the cavalry, and all were mingled in a wild pell-mell among the thickets and through the forests. Clouds of smoke, thick and black, settled down, and horse and foot, saber and gun were hidden from ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... hear what the poor innocents within would answer (though that mattered little, for they understood not one word of it), what do the villains but let fly right into the town with their calivers, and then rush in, sword in hand, killing pell-mell all they met, one of which shots, gentlemen, passing through the doorway, and close by me, struck my poor wife to the heart, that she never spoke word more. I, catching up the babe from her breast, tried to run: but when I saw the town ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... behind, listening to his guide who points out the objects and places of interest. And thus, through the alleys and by-ways, through the nooks and labyrinths of these underground temple-ruins, we get to the rear, where the ramparts and mounds crumble to a mighty heap, rising pell-mell to the ceiling. Here, one is likely to get a glimpse into such enchanted worlds as the name of a Dickens or a Balzac might suggest. Here, too, is Shakespeare in lamentable state; there is Carlyle in rags, still crying, as it were, against the filth and beastliness of ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... effort to keep in the race. The words rush through my hand like hounds in pursuit of a hare which they often miss. But in this respect I do not think I am much worse off than the girls who take notes. If the mind is occupied with the mechanical process of hearing and putting words on paper at pell-mell speed, I should not think one could pay much attention to the subject under consideration or the manner in which it is presented. I cannot make notes during the lectures, because my hands are busy listening. Usually I jot down what I can remember of them when I get home. I write ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... commanded Thomond-bridge, and carried them sword in hand after an obstinate resistance. The garrison had made a sally from the town to support them; and this detachment was driven back with such precipitation, that the French officer on command in that quarter, fearing the English would enter pell-mell with the fugitives, ordered the bridge to be drawn up, leaving his own men to the fury of a victorious enemy. Six hundred were killed, two hundred taken prisoners, including many officers, and a great number were drowned ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... organized defense was the last thing they reckoned on, nine more Kurds came galloping down the track pell-mell toward the place where they had heard the solitary rifle-shot, doubtless supposing their own man had come upon the quarry. We fired too fast, for the Armenians were not drilled men, but we dropped two horses and five Kurds, ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... assembly, accompanied by stifled laughter at the preposterous names and all the bourgeois designations which each of these personages transmitted with imperturbable gravity to the usher, who then tossed names and titles pell-mell and mutilated to the crowd below. There were Master Loys Roelof, alderman of the city of Louvain; Messire Clays d'Etuelde, alderman of Brussels; Messire Paul de Baeust, Sieur de Voirmizelle, President of Flanders; Master Jehan Coleghens, burgomaster of the city of Antwerp; Master George de la Moere, ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... a severe cold kept me in bed. Three or four of the little rascals found an entrance and came pell-mell into the house. One located a cookie and the others chased him into my room with it. For half an hour they fought and raced back and fourth over my bed while I kept safely hidden under the covers, head and all. During a lull I took a cautious look around. There they ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... men, till we were all together struggling in the dining-room, from there into the hall, and then on the great staircase. I saw Sir Godfrey and young Scarlett several times during the struggle; then we were all pell-mell, here, there, and everywhere, and I recollect ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... they go pell-mell. Zadkiel is hemmed up in a corner of the cart-shed, and his brother and sister make pretence, to tear him limb from limb. Zadkiel defends himself gallantly, but has to succumb at last, for he is fairly ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... fist, and killed or disabled upwards of twenty Frenchmen with his single arm, until he was killed by the assault of numbers.[20] At one place, where there is a precipitous sand or gravel pit, the heavy English cavalry drove many of the cuirassiers over pell-mell, and followed over themselves, like fox-hunters. The conduct of the infantry and artillery was equally, {p.052} or, if possible, more distinguished, and it was all fully necessary; for, besides that our army was much outnumbered, a great part ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... tumbled into the projectile pell-mell, and without stopping to close the port-hole, we steered towards the city as we mounted rapidly. When the soldiers, weary of running, saw us start, they were stricken with a new fear, and made all possible haste for shelter. When they perceived that we were rising ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... working on a scaffolding, fell five stories to the ground. As his horrified mates rushed down pell-mell to his aid, he picked himself up, uninjured, from a great, ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... boats pulling after us with all the might the rowers can command. We lie to, the proas come nearer. Hurrah! the clothes, some wholly washed, some half-washed, and some not washed at all. Piles of fair white linen are bundled up the gangway pell-mell, Malay washerwomen bundled out ditto, and for payment, the revolving screws settle that in a highly ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... had been slowly working her way, with her several attachments clinging to her, toward the road which ran along the front of the field, turned and started pell-mell toward the river, which flowed wide and deep, through the rushes, at the rear of it. She left the path and took to the corn, and through the mass of growing stalks she swept like a whirlwind. Onward she came. I anticipated the awful catastrophe, and stood riveted ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... "it's—it's just as though some cosmic jester, all-powerful, had scooped up the fragments of a ruined city and tossed them pell-mell into the core ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... the door. Before the triple assault it fell at last, and the three tumbled pell-mell downstairs into the ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... known in Bristol, and a clamorous mob assembled before the Castle. The Mayor, to his credit, did his best to resist the rabble, and to save his prisoner; but the mob were stronger than authority. They carried the gates, rushed pell-mell into the Castle, and dragged the captive forth into the market-place. And then Bertram saw his master again—a helpless prisoner, in the hands of a furious mob, among whom several priests were active. ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... contents of the tap rushed out at once pell-mell into the street. They saw someone whisk round the corner towards the road, and Mr. Huxter executing a complicated leap in the air that ended on his face and shoulder. Down the street people were standing astonished ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... he got away, and nothing would do but that he should go back and speak to him. He said the boy would be disappointed. The men were visibly uneasy at his going, but that didn't affect him. He ordered them to wait, and back he went, pell-mell, all alone into that horde of fiends. They hadn't got over their funk, luckily, and he saw Blue Arrow and made his party call and got out again all right. He didn't tell that himself, but Sergeant O'Hara made the ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... steamer, the loss of life would have been appalling. The captain turned his boat and beached it as soon as possible, not, however, before the men began leaping over the sides of the vessel in one grand pell-mell. The dark waves of unknown death were below them, while the shells shrieked and burst through the steamer. There was but little choice for the panic stricken men. Fortunately the waters here were shallow enough ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... lost their heads. Heedless of the Austrian's prayers and imprecations, heedless of Mrs. Haxton's shrill appeal that they should beat off the few assailants then perilously close at hand, they yielded to the blind instinct of self-preservation, and rushed pell-mell for the camels. At once these men of a martial tribe, men who had cheerfully faced the far greater danger of the Hadendowa general attack, became untrammeled savages, each striving like a maniac to secure a mount for himself, and careless ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... top of some flat rock or in a bare place, and seemed to be talking to each other with their heads close together. Suddenly one would jump down, and start for the bushes or the other side of the pasture. They would all follow pell-mell; then in a few minutes they would come rushing back again. It was pretty to see them playing together and having a good time before the sorrowful day of their ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... arm, which loosely fell, Crying: "No! not yet that dire eclipse!" Now loud laughed the dancers, and whirled pell-mell (While ...
— Along the Shore • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... been about seven o'clock—his daughter returned, or rather, rolled into the room, and with her, pell-mell came "Jane", Bernardo's "friend". Jane was roundly berating his daughter. "You rotten thing!" she cried. "I'll show you! Trying to take away somebody else's man." And the two women came to blows, rousing the entire ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... celebrated in print and picture, as if something extraordinary had happened? The smoke of battle had not cleared away after the victory of reform in the fall of 1894, before the citizens' committee and all the little sub-committees rushed pell-mell to the photographer's to get themselves on record as the men who did it. The spectacle might have inspired in the humorist the advice to get two sets made, while they were about it, one to serve by and by as an exhibit of the men who didn't; and, as ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... gold, each with his bow in one hand and his arrows in his belt. But the calmest had his equanimity disturbed by the consciousness that the main body of his comrades, all noblemen and gentlemen of Scotland, were running pell-mell behind, in a desperate effort to form into rank and march in due order. One eager confused glance, one long-drawn breath, one vehement heart-throb for her who was the centre of all, and the ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... interspersed with touches of pro-slavery, sentimentalism and rhetorical flourish, the former especially directed to the negroes in the gallery, when, suddenly, a cry of "Fire! fire!" was raised in the street. The learned Doctor stood as if electrified, and the instant after his hearers rushed pell-mell out of the chapel, amidst the shrieks of the females, and the consternation of the men, caused, without doubt, by a lurking suspicion of impending evil from the negroes which I have before referred to. On ascertaining that the alarm was caused by a house being on fire in the ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... evidently had a will of her own, which it seemed likely she would enforce, if necessary, with considerable vigour and imperativeness. And so the worthy old housekeeper decided that on the whole it would be well to be careful—to mind one's P's and Q's as it were,—to pause before rushing pell-mell into a flood of unpremeditated speech, and to pay the strictest possible attention ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... through the fighting, this girl, she had drunk her fill from staved-in wine-casks and slept on the bare ground, pell-mell with the men, out in the public square reddened with the glare of conflagration. They were killing all round her, and nobody had been killed yet for her. She was resolved they should shoot her someone, before the end! Stamping with fury, ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... head in white and black On a single fishing-smack, 130 In memory of the man but for whom had gone to wrack All that France saved from the fight whence England bore the bell. Go to Paris: rank on rank Search the heroes flung pell-mell On the Louvre, face and flank! 135 You shall look long enough ere you come to Herve Riel. So, for better and for worse, Herve Riel, accept my verse! In my verse, Herve Riel, do thou once more Save the squadron, honour France, love thy wife ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... survived to describe it. With the low roar of a great torrent, several hundred horsemen burst through the curtain of mist, riding at a furious pace for the British guns. The rear screen of Mounted Infantry fell back before this terrific rush, and the two bodies of horsemen came pell-mell down upon the handful of Buffs and the guns. The infantry were ridden into and surrounded by the Boers, who found nothing to stop them from galloping on to the low ridge upon which the guns were stationed. This ridge was held by eighty of the Scottish Horse and forty of the Yorkshire ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... we've done this job, let's go to the jail and let out the debtors, come on," and suiting action to word he rushed out, and was followed pell-mell by the yelling crowd, all their truculent enthusiasm instantly ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... rumbles upon the heavy ground, shoots beneath a wooden bridge which intercepts the light for a second like a wink, suddenly awakens all the slumbering echoes in the main street of a large town, and dashes on haphazard, pell-mell, neck-or-nothing, down the middle of the road. There - with mechanics working at their trades, and people leaning from their doors and windows, and boys flying kites and playing marbles, and men smoking, and women talking, and children crawling, and pigs burrowing, ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... his direction, two hags were amusing themselves sticking sharp pointed sticks into his body; he bore it manfully, but I saw tears of agony streaming from under his eyelids. Presently the air was filled with yells and whoops; our tormentors rushed off pell-mell, the guards only remaining. I asked what was the meaning of this new outbreak; to which the trapper replied that he supposed it was caused by the arrival of a new lot of those "gosh darned ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... miles above, at Messinger's. We were lightly equipped as to wagons, and marched without deployment straight for Meridian, distant one hundred and fifty miles. We struck the rebel cavalry beyond the Big Black, and pushed them pell-mell into and beyond Jackson during the 6th. The next day we reached Brandon, and on the 9th Morton, where we perceived signs of an infantry concentration, but the enemy did not give us battle, and retreated before ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... against the other's being interrupted. Accordingly, he headed for the point at which he meant to cut into the enemy's fleet. Now came the moment, as regards his division, for doing what Collingwood's had already begun to do, viz. engage in a 'pell-mell battle,'[88] which surely may be interpreted as meaning a battle in which rigorous station-keeping was no longer expected, and in which 'no captain could do very wrong if he placed his ship alongside that of ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... flat of their backs or stomachs were coming headlong down the almost perpendicular slope of a neve, with extended arms and clutching hands, seeking the broken rope which held this string of lives, and only served to drag them down to death in the gulf where the mass was to fall pell-mell, with ropes, axes, veils, and all the gay outfit of Alpine ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... was so loud, his manner so imperative, that the startled boy, without stopping to argue, stuffed the clothes pell-mell into the bag again and departed. A farewell glance at the clock made him look almost as ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... ordered, and Harris would not hear. Harris had thrown himself from his horse to lead the search. He never stopped to remount. He ran like a deer up the stony creek bed until he regained the road, his scouts following pell-mell, and in ten minutes more they found him bending over the lifeless body of brave, sturdy Jack Bennett, weltering in his blood at the side of the spring house, and with no sign of the hapless, helpless ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... the scouts were ready. In another, the little party emerged from the house and started pell-mell down the hill in a mad race to reach the landing ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... a paragraph most frequently result from including more than belongs there. The theme has been selected; it is narrow and concise. When one begins to write, many things crowd in pell-mell. Impressions, which come and go, we hardly know how or why, are the only products of most minds. Impressions, not shaped and logical thoughts, make up the mixed confusion frequently called a theme. The writer puts down enough of these impressions to make a paragraph, and then goes on to ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... with scared anxious faces. To cut the cake was nothing, but the privileges to which this favor had always given a claim now frightened people; therefore, the moment the dish made its appearance the academicians rushed pell-mell into the Salon of Agriculture, as if to shelter themselves behind the husband, who was perpetually smiling. And when Madame Anserre, in a state of anxiety, presented herself at the door with a cake in one hand and the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... The Emperor walked on and said nothing, though many times when he passed by the most mutilated, he put his hand over his eyes to avoid the sight. This calm lasted only a short while; for there was a place on the battlefield where French and Russians had fallen pell-mell, almost all of whom were wounded more or less grievously. And when the Emperor heard their cries, he became enraged, and shouted at those who had charge of removing the wounded, much irritated by the slowness with which this was done. ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Memoirs of Napoleon • David Widger
... yards had to be taken in the open. They did it under fire, on the run, with a dozen riflemen aiming at them from the fringe of blackberry bushes that bordered the mesa. Up the ridge they went pell-mell, Reeves limping the last fifty feet of the way. An almost spent bullet had struck him in the fleshy part of the ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... commenced to saddle, when the enemy approached. They hurriedly formed—Company C, which was quartered in the part of the grounds nearest where the enemy entered the town, were attacked and driven pell-mell through the others, before it was fairly aligned. The three companies became mingled together, and fell back into the town and upon the road, across which Company A (extricating itself from the others) formed, under charge of its cool and gallant ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... six-shooters and the one howitzer. But it was headlong flight. At the trench they did not stop to grapple, but fought their way through and fled on down the hill, on across the grassy plain, nor paused until they had crowded pell-mell into the main Imperialist army drawn ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... the foe, would not wait, and, pushing them aside, clambering, boosting, and tumbling went over the obstruction. Not pausing to form in the ditch, they scrambled up the parapet and went surging over the crest, pell-mell, upon the British. ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... rock of Quebec watched hourly for the approaching fleet. Days passed and weeks passed, yet it did not appear. Meanwhile Vaudreuil held council after council to settle a plan of defence, They were strange scenes: a crowd of officers of every rank, mixed pell-mell in a small room, pushing, shouting, elbowing each other, interrupting each other; till Montcalm in despair, took each aside after the meeting was over, and made him ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... command are yet themselves not amenable to his spiritual power, for look, these rats that would come to his call, just as from his castle top he summon the wolves to your going and to that poor mother's cry, though they come to him, they run pell-mell from the so little dogs of my friend Arthur. We have other matters before us, other dangers, other fears, and that monster . . . He has not used his power over the brute world for the only or the last time tonight. So be it that he has gone elsewhere. ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... a gentleman needs to think about," with the discreet addition, "Not a book for little girls, though." If we find in our circle of poets a certain stateliness of style scarcely to be looked for in a somewhat new republic that might be expected to rush pell-mell after an idea and capture it by the sudden impact of a lusty blow, after the manner of the minute-men catching a red-coat at Lexington; if we observe in their writing old world expressions that woo us subtly, like the odor of lavender from a ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... say? I wish it were. I wish with my heart it were. Look at the crowds for yourself. There they go down the street, pell-mell, bewildered, blinded, some of them by will-o'-the-wisp lights, ditched and mired many of them. The thing is ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... had effected discipline in his own camp by getting his regiments into shape, by establishing hospitals (which were immediately filled), and by protecting the citizens from the depredations of the starving fugitives who had been poured pell-mell into the town. ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... transitions intended to connect different narratives with each other. To leave all the information furnished by the Gospels in the disorder in which tradition supplies it, would only be to write the history of Jesus as the history of a celebrated man would be written, by giving pell-mell the letters and anecdotes of his youth, his old age, and of his maturity. The Koran, which presents to us, in the loosest manner, fragments of the different epochs in the life of Mahomet, has yielded its secret to an ingenious criticism; the chronological order in which the fragments ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... one after another, pell-mell, scouts clambered onto the platform and surrounded him, while the scouts of his own troop edged them aside and elbowed their way to where he stood and mobbed him. And amid all this a small form, with clothing disarranged ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... operations by tossing up pell-mell through the companion, and piling in a squalid heap about the wheel, all clothes, personal effects, the crockery, the carpet, stale victuals, tins of meat, and, in a word, all movables from the main cabin. Thence we transferred our attention to the captain's quarters on the starboard side. Using ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to Robinson as having "sore eyes" when signing bills, kept his hearers expectant and his enemies disturbed. The World followed him, reporting his speeches as "failures" and his audiences as "rushing pell-mell from ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... opened their files, and, as if to cover the retreat, occupied the space vacated in a thinly extended line. The strategy worked even better than Bouquet had expected. The yelling Indians, eager for slaughter and believing that the entire command was at their mercy, rushed pell-mell from their shelter, firing sharp volleys into the protecting files. These were forced back, and the savages dashed forward for the barricade which sheltered the wounded. Meanwhile the two companies had taken position on the right, and from a sheltering hill that concealed them from the enemy ...
— 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
... thronged in on us pell-mell, and as soon as I could lay my hand on my sword I led them through the doorway with a cheer, hoping to be able to enter the farther tower with the enemy. But the latter had taken the alarm too early and too thoroughly. The court was ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... covered the retreat," he added hastily. "Instead of keeping the road, we turned up the embankment and struck into the forest. Dropping down behind the bushes, we watched those devils from the town race pell-mell, howling and shooting, down the chateau road. There must have been a hundred of 'em. Five minutes later, the bungalow was afire. It was as bright as day and I had no trouble in recognising Rasula in the crowd. Selim led the way and ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... could see it was deeper than that. She was thawing in the sunshine of love, and I'll do Doctor Jones the justice to say that he didn't hide his affection under a bushel. It was generous enough for everybody to bask in, and in his pell-mell ardor he took us all to his bosom. The women loved him for it, and entered into a tacit conspiracy to gain him the right-of-way to wherever Eleanor was to be found. In fact, he followed her about like a dog, and she could scarcely ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... said the soldier; 'I am sorry to say that our whole army is retreating, pell-mell, as fast as it can go. The enemy is in active pursuit, and its left wing is now advancing up this side of the valley. In less than twenty minutes the retreat of our cavalry and artillery will be cut off by the hills, and the infantry is already scattering ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... things they could desire. Interest was made that they should not mix with the vulgar convicts, whose ribald choruses and loud laughter and curses could be heard from their own part of the prison, where they and the miserable debtors were confined pell-mell. ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... name now), who nobly devoted her life to the manufacture of fireworks, had so often been seen fluttering in the wind, as she called up a red, blue, or party-coloured light to illumine her temple! That the—but at this moment the bell rung; the people scampered away, pell-mell, to the spot from whence the sound proceeded; and we, from the mere force of habit, found ourself running among the first, as if for ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... of the wild pell-mell, as the Victory lay like a pelted log, rolling to the storm of shot, with three ships at close quarters hurling all their metal at her, and a fourth alongside clutched so close that muzzle was tompion for muzzle, while the cannon-balls so thickly flew that many sailors with good ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... trim beaux its name it boasts, Grey statesmen or green wits; But from the pell-mell pack of toasts Of old cats and ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... invaders, and, without reflecting how little numerical superiority avails in war against experience and tactics, they required to be led against the foe. They were so, and were defeated. The conquerors and conquered entered the city pell-mell; and Edward, enraged at the citizens for shooting upon his troops from the windows, issued orders that the inhabitants should be put to the sword, and the town burned. The mandate, however, was not executed: Sir Godfrey de Harcourt, with wise remonstrances, ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... landed in a deluge of rain, and the only article in our possession that alarmed the officers of the Custom House was not the sewing-machine, which was hardly vouchsafed a look, but your cake-box. We were thankful to tumble pell-mell into a carriage, and soon to find ourselves in a comfortable room, before a blazing fire. We go round with a phrase-book and talk out of it, so if anybody ever asks you what sort of people the Prentiss family are and what are our ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... and stately pace, But far more grave and solemn face; Grave as the Emperor of Pegu 155 Or Spanish potentate Don Diego. This leader was of knowledge great, Either for charge or for retreat. He knew when to fall on pell-mell; To fall back and retreat as well. 160 So lawyers, lest the bear defendant, And plaintiff dog, should make an end on't, Do stave and tail with writs of error, Reverse of judgment, and demurrer, To let them breathe a while, and then 165 Cry ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... motherly sort of cluck, that is but a general expression of affection and oversight. But the moment she finds a worm or a crumb or a splash of dough, the note changes into a quick, eager "Here! here! here!" and away rushes the brood pell-mell and topsy-turvy. If a stray cat approaches, or danger in any form, her defiant, menacing "C-r-r-r-r!" shows her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... all the time. His tongue was decidedly Hanoverian, with its repetitions, its catchwords—"That's quite another thing! That's quite another thing!"—its rattling indomitability, its loud indiscreetness. His speeches, made repeatedly at the most inopportune junctures, and filled pell-mell with all the fancies and furies that happened at the moment to be whisking about in his head, were the consternation of Ministers. He was one part blackguard, people said, and three parts buffoon; but those who knew him ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... heads in the dust; others were left with heads snapped off and dangling in grey withered leaves, or with branches glinting white splinters and stripped naked, as in the dead of winter. In an orchard the fruit trees were smashed, uprooted, heaped pell-mell in a tangle of broken branches, bare twisted trunks, fragments of stump a foot or a yard high, here a tree slashed off short, lifted, and flung a dozen yards, and left head down and trunk in air; there ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... administration was approved, but because circumstances prevented an effective combination of the various elements of sincere opposition, he and his friends accepted the result as popular approbation of their past conduct and warrant for its continuance. Things went from bad to worse with a pell-mell rapidity ...
— Ulysses S. Grant • Walter Allen
... if you just make believe that you're standing on a little hill near that old pit and looking south toward Black Lake, you'll see just what we saw—as you might say. We saw the water just pouring through Nick's Valley and coming toward us and going pell-mell into the old creek bed. Now that's the best way I can tell it to you. I guess the little hill we were on acted kind of like a back stop maybe (anyway, that's what Bert said) because the water only beat against it and then went tumbling back into the creek bed and down ...
— Roy Blakeley's Adventures in Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... I saw them, Rooting, rooting, Of course I slipped And lost my footing, And tripped, And jumped, And finally fell Right down among The pigs pell-mell. For once in my life I was afraid; For the door that led ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... not tenable: that it was even very hazardous, since the occupation of Aubervilliers, to remain on the right side: that if the line of the canal, that joins St. Denis to Lavillette, should be forced, the enemy might enter by the barrier of St. Denis pell-mell ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... the savages were flying pell-mell across the bridge with Gascoyne and Henry close on their heels, and the stout merchant panting after them, with his victorious band, as fast as his less agile ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... conceive. It was panelled, but it was dark and evil-smelling, and how we should have found our way even to the stairs but for an unwholesome jet of yellow gas in the hall, I cannot myself imagine. However, up we went pell-mell, to the right-about on the half-landing, and so like a whirlwind into the drawing-room a few steps higher. There the gas was also burning behind closed shutters, and the scene is photographed upon my brain, though I cannot have looked upon it ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... down the hill, pell-mell, with the N'Yaarkers pursuing hotly with yell and blow. At the swamp we tried to make a stand to secure our passage across, but it was only partially successful. Very few got back without some severe ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... bricks; what has been expended in tools and carts; how much the carpenters earned, and how much the stone-cutters: they do not know the destination and the place of anything. The economists cannot deny that they have before them the fragments, scattered pell-mell, of a chef-d'oeuvre, disjecti membra poetae; but it has been impossible for them as yet to recover the general design, and, whenever they have attempted any comparisons, they have met only with incoherence. Driven to despair at last by their fruitless combinations, ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... cold, wind and rain all seem banded in league against the comfort of mankind: the sky, dull and lowering, presented to the eye nothing but a bleak, cheerless desert of gray, relieved only by troops of dark, inky clouds, which would at moments, as though flying the fury of a raging storm, roll pell-mell through the air like an army in rout, pouring down at the same time through the thick, black fog that covered land and sea like a pall a deluge of cold, heavy water, which occasional blasts of a violent north-west wind would lash into whistling, pelting and drenching gusts. It was wretched ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... Officer tumbled pell-mell up the ladder and handed a piece of folded paper to the Captain, saluted, turned on his heel and descended the ladder again. The Captain unfolded the signal and read with knitted brows. Then he turned ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... fields. His horse was shot, and, dismounting, he was leading the right of the brigade when he fell, pierced through the heart. On pressed the charging lines of the brigade, driving the advance force of the enemy pell-mell into a locust abatis where many were captured and sent to the rear; others were wounded by the fire of their own men. This abatis was a formidable and fearful obstruction. The entire brigade was arrested by it. But Gist's and ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... or crooked, yird or nane, [earth] They roar an' cry a' throu'ther; [pell-mell] The very wee things toddlin' rin— [run] Wi' stocks out-owre their shouther; [over, shoulder] An' gif the custock's sweet or sour, [if, pith] Wi' joctelegs they taste them; [pocket-knives] Syne coziely, aboon the door, ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... perpendicular path, which, always taken by the natives, led equally to the drawbridge and main entrance. To our extreme regret, however, we soon found our course impeded by the huge trunks of mighty pine trees lying in a perfect pell-mell above and on both sides of us. A glance up the hillside showed scores more of these slain giants. To proceed was almost hopeless, and we were forced to rest upon some timber and mark our future course between piles oozing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... ether and over all the lands. But the omnipotent Father in keen wrath Then with the sudden smite of thunderbolt Did hurl the mighty-minded hero off Those horses to the earth. And Sol, his sire, Meeting him as he fell, caught up in hand The ever-blazing lampion of the world, And drave together the pell-mell horses there And yoked them all a-tremble, and amain, Steering them over along their own old road, Restored the cosmos,—as forsooth we hear From songs of ancient poets of the Greeks— A tale too far away from truth, ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... into a reverie, in which the old thoughts that were always hovering dust outside the doors guarded by Common Sense, and watching for a chance to squeeze in, knowing perfectly well they would be ignominiously kicked out again as soon as Common Sense saw them, flocked in pell-mell,—misty, fragmentary, vague, half-ashamed of themselves, but still shouldering up against his inner consciousness till it warmed with their contact:—John Wilkes's—the ugliest man's in England—saying, that with half-an-hour's start he would cut out the handsomest man in all the land ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... To surrender to every random impulse or every habitual prompting is to have neither satisfaction nor freedom. Reflection might be compared to the traffic policeman at the junction of two crowded thoroughfares. If everyone were to drive his car pell-mell through the rush, if pedestrians, street cars, and automobiles were not to abide by the rules, no one would get anywhere, and the result would be perpetual accident and collision. In thinking we simply control and direct our impulses in the light of the consequences we can foresee. ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... illuminated vistas, or temples and saloons red hot with oil and gas—but a few slender materials, so scattered and intermixed with the natural beauties of the park, as to fascinate, and not fatigue the eye and ear. Even the pell-mell frolics of St. Cloud were better idealities of enjoyment, than the splendid promenade of Vauxhall, in the days of its olden celebrity; for diamonds and feathers are often mere masquerade finery in such scenes—so distant are the heads and hearts ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 330, September 6, 1828 • Various
... out of the mob amid a volley of execrations, which were replied to by angry oaths and threats of the cavaliers as they galloped across the Place d'Armes and rode pell-mell into the gateway of the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... rules, he had sounded the roll of the charge. They cut him down and killed him, and the roll of his drum ceased hard. A generation or more later, digging for foundations at this spot, the builders of the Peace came upon his bones, the little bones of a child heaped pell-mell with skeletons of the fallen giants ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... was a scene of confusion. Towards us, over the brow of the hill, came the waggons pell-mell, with a few carts moving rapidly in front. When the first of these reached the spruit its occupants—a man with a woman beside him—became aware that ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... pell-mell, at this challenge, but they tried in vain to catch the bright-eyed, laughing creature who, with golden hair streaming in the sunlight, cast back many a sparkling glance of ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... classes. There is therefore, pending carnival, a complete confusion of ranks, of manners, and of sentiments: the crowd, the cries, the wit, and the comfits with which they inundate without distinction the carriages as they pass along, confound every mortal together and set the nation pell-mell, as if ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... men poured pell-mell through the opening. The details of what followed were always blurred into a medley of carnage in the mind of Wallace. He knew that both he and Quinn fired, and that the cabin ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... and as the breeze plays upon it these frolicsome flowers, which have known no human tending, seem to chase each other in endless races over the whole expanse. I have seen them run breathlessly up the long slope, and then suddenly turn and rush pell-mell down again. If the wind had only stopped for a moment its endless gossip with the leaves, I am sure I should have heard the gleeful shouts, the sportive cries, of these vagrant flowers whose spell is rewoven ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... consideration for the city of B——, had found it necessary to set her at liberty; whereupon, as if the devil drove her, forthwith the brute had gone off in search of her old young enemy the kitten, at the hotel of the princess. She beat up the kitten's quarters again; and again she drove in the enemy pell-mell into her camp in the kitchen. The young mistress of the kitten, out of her wits at seeing her darling's danger, had set down a pail of milk, in which she was washing a Brussels' veil and a quantity of Mechlin lace belonging to the princess—and hurried her kitten into a closet. ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... exploded angrily, as soon as he found that he could run about on his injured leg. Then, showing his teeth, he growled menacingly and bounded through the woods, Dick & Co. following pell-mell. ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... the newcomers on his knuckles. He was a clean hitter, and from the way he pirouetted and skipped you would have said he could dance, too. The three young sports, considerably the worse for wear, fled pell-mell for the barbed-wire fence that bordered the road, and went over it in the twinkling of an eye. Only a few bits of what they would probably have called "nobby pants," speckled here and there on the barbs, betrayed to later wayfarers this new instance ...
— The Motormaniacs • Lloyd Osbourne
... to fling the whole pack forward, pell-mell, crowded together, blocked and confused by its eagerness to pull down the prey. Buck's marvellous quickness and agility stood him in good stead. Pivoting on his hind legs, and snapping and gashing, he was everywhere at once, presenting a front which was ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... with inset brass handles, an exquisitely exact piece of mahogany cabinetwork. From one of the drawers a bit of white linen untidily protruded. Her mother! The upper part was filled with sliding trays, each having a raised edge to keep the contents from falling out. These trays were heaped pell-mell with her mother's personal belongings—small garments, odd indeterminate trifles, a muff, a bundle of whalebone, veils, bags, and especially cardboard boxes. Quantities of various cardboard boxes! Her mother kept everything, could not bear that anything which ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... well!" our captain cries, "for her we will lie by, And on the morrow's coming dawn, a palaver we will try; For should we now attempt to make a pell-mell night attack, I fear our fight would heavy fall upon the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... what the crowd feared would be done. To right and left, however, upon the glacis soldiers were already arranging their bivouacs, while entire batteries, guns, caissons, and horses, in confusion worse confounded, had thrown themselves pell-mell ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... forceable, he breathed only his passions into the wind. They, careless, sat down with Saladyne to dinner, being very frolic and pleasant, washing their heads well with wine. At last, when the fume of the grape had entered pell-mell into their brains, they began in satirical speeches to rail against Rosader: which Adam Spencer no longer brooking, gave the sign, and Rosader shaking off his chains got a poleaxe in his hand, and flew amongst them with such violence and fury, that ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... behind us. "They know! They see! They have the clue!" cried the peasants, as the two hounds leapt from the plateau down the steep declivity leading to the valley, scattering the snowdrifts of the crevices pell-mell in their headlong career. In frantic haste we resumed our loads, and hurried after our flying guides with what speed we could. When the dogs had reached the next level, they paused and waited, standing with uplifted heads and dripping tongues while we clambered down ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... youngsters at Dexter were no more obedient than others of their age elsewhere. So when a scream arose from several childish voices at the lower part of the hill, everybody knew that some child had been disobeying, and, pell-mell, the picnickers rushed in the direction of ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... quick, we stood dumfounded. And then we dashed after, pell-mell, tumbling over one another in our stampede. In the alley we ran against three or four of the guard answering Lucas's cry. We lost precious seconds disentangling ourselves and shouting that it was a ruse ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... the first man who flinches.' And so they set off, but very slowly, like men whose legs were of very little use to them, and I sent four of them three hundred yards ahead to scout, and the others followed pell-mell, walking at random and without any order. I put the strongest in the rear, with orders to quicken the pace of the sluggards with the points of their bayonets ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... combustion, so that it is quite loaded with it by the time it returns to the lungs. There it takes in a fresh supply of oxygen, and discharges at the same time its overplus of carbonic acid, which is driven out of the body by the contractions of the chest, pell-mell with the air which has just been made use of in breathing. You are aware that this air is not the same at its exit as at its entrance to the body, and that if you try and breathe it over again it will no longer be of the ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... spectacle once seen, Phil dashed into the street, hailed a hansom, and drove pell-mell, exciting the cabman who conducted him by the promise of a double fare, to the residence of old Brown and old Brown's daughter. There he told the glorious news, a little broken and halting in his speech. ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray |
