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Pell-mell   Listen
noun
Pell-mell  n.  See Pall-mall.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Pell-mell" Quotes from Famous Books



... and later found his actions characteristic of his tribe. He literally makes hay while the summer shines. He is the only harvester I ever saw who works on the run. He dashed at top speed, without stopping for breath, bit off a mouthful of grass and again ran pell-mell for his growing stack. He scampered down its side, then leaped from an adjacent rock to its top, laden with his bundle of hay. Evidently he found the alpine summer short and felt it necessary to step lively. Altitude, that convenient scapegoat of ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills

... changed their minds when they stepped on deck, for then they thought that I or somebody else had them. I had no need of a dog; they howled like a pack of hounds. I had hardly use for a gun. They jumped pell-mell, some into their canoes and some into the sea, to cool off, I suppose, and there was a deal of free language over it as they went. I fired several guns when I came on deck, to let the rascals know that ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum

... answering hum Of Persian voices. Then, no more delay, Ship upon ship her beak of biting brass Struck stoutly. 'Twas a bark, I ween, of Hellas First charged, dashing from a Tyrrhenian galleon Her prow-gear; then ran hull on hull pell-mell. At first the torrent of the Persian navy Bore up: but when the multitude of ships Were straitly jammed, and none could help another, Huddling with brazen-mouthed beaks they clashed And brake their serried banks of oars together; Nor were the Hellenes slow or slack to muster ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... rushing up pell-mell, helped him pull the infuriated Bruce from his victim. The spectacle of their admired dog-hero, so murderously mauling a woman of the Red Cross, dazed them ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune

... a post In his Croisic keeps alive the feat as it befell; Not a head in white and black On a single fishing smack, In memory of the man but for whom had gone to wrack 130 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! You shall look long enough ere you come to Herve Riel. 135 So, for better and for worse, Herve Riel, accept my verse! In my verse, Herve Riel, do thou once more Save the squadron, honor France, love thy ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... put out his hand, first to Mr. Tolman and then to Steve; and afterward, with a shy smile to the detective and the policeman and a boyish duck of his head, he shot into the hall and they heard him rushing pell-mell down the corridor. Mrs. Nolan, however, was more self-controlled. She curtsied elaborately to each of the men and called down upon their heads every blessing that the sky could rain, and it was only after her breath had become quite exhausted that she consented to retire from the room and in ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett

... has come to bones: to-morrow I will select a neat specimen or two. In the mean time let the full harvest moon wonder at them as they lie turned up after lying hid 2400 revolutions of hers. Think of that warm 14th of June when the Battle was fought, and they fell pell-mell: and then the country people came and buried them so shallow that the stench was terrible, and the putrid matter oozed over the ground for several yards: so that the cattle were observed to eat those places very close for some years after. Every one to ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald

... the forward deck was always under water, and the men gathered abaft the trunk to keep as dry as possible. Officers and crew were huddled together pell-mell, and, with our usual loose discipline, every body joined in the conversation and counsel. Before sundown I again advised the laying-to of the schooner; but the task had now become so formidable that the men who dreaded the job, assured ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... through the desert thus it was, As I came through the desert: Lo you there, That hillock burning with a brazen glare; Those myriad dusky flames with points aglow Which writhed and hissed and darted to and fro; A Sabbath of the serpents, heaped pell-mell For Devil's roll-call and some fete in Hell: Yet I strode on austere; No hope could have ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... when they saw the enemy retire, Their Delhis[390] manned some boats, and sailed again, And galled the Russians with a heavy fire, And tried to make a landing on the main; But here the effect fell short of their desire: Count Damas drove them back into the water Pell-mell, and with a ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... 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 give ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... of her manner, he looked after her as she withdrew, and was almost inclined to believe that she possessed the right side of the argument. Malice did not allow him to think so long. The moment the door closed on her, both the sisters fell on him pell-mell; and the prejudiced illiberality of the one, supported by the ready falsehoods of the other, soon dislodged all favorable impressions from the mind of Somerset, and filled ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... rattle and clamour and clatter Of traffic-filled streets, do you hear that loud noise? And pushing and rushing to see what's the matter, Like herds of wild cattle, go pell-mell the boys. ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... if I only had written them down! Pell-mell they came down the sequestered avenues of my mind, this merry throng. With bacchanal song and shout they came, and eye hath not ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller

... her den Loupart entered with difficulty, on account of the great quantity of heterogeneous objects with which it was crowded. The product of innumerable thefts lay heaped up pell-mell ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain

... like a disabled hulk, the passengers and crew expecting that she 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, with numerous cuts and bruises. One of the ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne

... grass. Eventually he permitted a nearer approach, and slowly stooping I was just on the point of stroking his back when, suddenly becoming alarmed, he swung himself into the air and flapped laboriously off to a low hawthorn, twenty or thirty yards away, into which he tumbled pell-mell like a bundle of ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson

... after fight who shall be king of it? Bast. And if thou hast the mettle of a king, Being wrong'd as we are by this peeuish Towne: Turne thou the mouth of thy Artillerie, As we will ours, against these sawcie walles, And when that we haue dash'd them to the ground, Why then defie each other, and pell-mell, Make worke vpon our selues, for ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... it will no longer. The pell-mell that rages has brought honourable men into a sad minority, and even Mr. Dodge will tell you the majority must rule. Were he to publish my letter, a large portion of his readers would fancy he was merely asserting the liberty of the press. Heavens save us! You have been ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... Colonel, the enemy fired and killed him. The men at the college had just 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 ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke

... hundred. But no; those Russians argued that no single regiment would come browsing around there at such a time. It must be the entire English army, and that the sly Russian game was detected and blocked; so they turned tail, and away they went, pell-mell, over the hill and down into the field, in wild confusion, and we after them; they themselves broke the solid Russia centre in the field, and tore through, and in no time there was the most tremendous rout you ever saw, and the defeat of the allies was turned into a sweeping ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... stands the long 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

... far from the respectable society of the neighbouring planets, and blundering about right and left, pell-mell, helter-skelter among the fixed stars— itself, "and all which it inherit" in that glorious state of confusion so admirably described ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh

... formed the army led by Aetius against that of Attila, who also had in his ranks Goths, Burgundians, Gepidians, Alans, and beyond Rhine Franks, gathered together and enlisted on his road. It was a chaos and a conflict of barbarians, of every name and race, disputing one with another, pell-mell, the remnants of the Roman empire torn asunder and in dissolution. Attila had already arrived before Orleans, and was laying siege to it. The bishop, St. Anianus, sustained a while the courage of the besieged, by promising them aid from Aetius and his allies. The aid was ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... with delight at the thought of going on a journey with the turtle, promised to obey the other's commands. After supper, when all were asleep in the little house of the keeper, he slipped from his bed, took down the heavy key from its peg, and ran pell-mell to the temple. ...
— A Chinese Wonder Book • Norman Hinsdale Pitman

... awhile it crested and hissed, then shot balefully through the Erebus arches, desperate as the lost souls of the harlots, who, every night, took the same plunge. Meantime, here and there, like awaiting hearses, the coal-scows drifted along, poled broadside, pell-mell to the current. ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville

... to rush in pell-mell, head-over-heels," added Mickey, after they had stood thus a short time; but they are sneaking along, just as they always do when they're on the thrack of ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne

... laughter. The ice was broken in good earnest. "Three cheers for Ben Hay! Three cheers and a tiger for Jack Darcy!" and amid all this hubbub the men and women, the boys and girls, rushed in pell-mell. A gladder crew one never saw. To decide when others doubt, to go forward boldly when others hesitate, to stand up for the principle of right when others have traduced and blackened it, to take the first step, is to be as heroic as ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas

... at first faint, but swelling in volume as it approached. A brigade of cavalry, led by the intrepid Rosser, was charging full tilt toward our position. He did not stop to skirmish with the pickets but, charging headlong, drove them pell-mell into the reserves, closely following, with intent to stampede ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd

... the "spring-tide" called out the wilder and more venturesome element; but even that differed vastly from the present situation. It differed just as riding a spirited horse does from trusting oneself, without stirrup leather or bridle rein, to the pell-mell vagaries ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck

... had been taken by force, and that 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, went ...
— Memoirs or Chronicle of The Fourth Crusade and The Conquest of Constantinople • Geoffrey de Villehardouin

... held the post of honour and danger, were fearfully reduced in numbers, faint with famine, and exhausted by their long march. Driven to and fro by the incessant charges of the Syracusan cavalry, they could make no effective resistance, and at last they huddled pell-mell into a walled enclosure, planted with olive-trees, and skirted on either side by a road. They were now at the mercy of the Syracusans. who surrounded the enclosure, and plied them with javelins, stones, and arrows. ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell

... shrilly, and 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 ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... His twin faces,' continues the poet, 'were frightfully distorted: they glared, they grinned, they spat, they railed, and hissed, and roared; they gnashed their teeth, and bit, and butted with their foreheads at each other; his arms, wielding swords and spears, were fighting pell-mell together; his legs, in like manner, were indefatigably at variance, striding contrary ways, and trampling on each other's toes, or kicking each other's shins, as if by mutual consent.' Such would be the true representative of an organ ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... than an hour after their landing, the whole tribe would have rushed pell-mell to the boats, cursing the folly which led them to this devil-haunted island. But it serves no good purpose to say what might have been. As it was the Dyaks, silent now and moving with the utmost caution, passed the well, and were ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy

... the desert thus it was, 25 As I came through the desert: Lo you, there, That hillock burning with a brazen glare; Those myriad dusky flames with points a-glow Which writhed and hissed and darted to and fro; A Sabbath of the Serpents, heaped pell-mell 30 For Devil's roll-call and some fete of Hell: Yet I strode on austere; No hope ...
— The City of Dreadful Night • James Thomson

... 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 limbs could ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne

... strife. The remnants wound Their Rhineward way pell-mell; And thus did Leipzig City sound ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy

... rafters, swung backward by sinewy arms, and driven crashing against the saloon door, one panel of which went in before it. Twice again, while another pistol-shot rang out, we plied the ram, and then followed it pell-mell across the threshold, where we went down in a heap amid the wreckage of the door, though I had sense enough left to remove Hemlock's smoking revolver which lay close by, just where he had dropped it on the floor. He evidently had not expected this kind ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss

... paid with loss, Where we poor puppets, jerked by unseen wires, After our little hour of strut and rave, With all our pasteboard passions and desires, 85 Loves, hates, ambitions, and immortal fires, Are tossed pell-mell together in the grave. Ah, there is something here Unfathomed by the cynic's sneer, Something that gives our feeble light 90 A high immunity from Night, Something that leaps life's narrow bars To claim its birthright with the hosts of heaven; ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell

... 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 wreckage ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum

... 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 ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... taken prisoners. The French troops who had retired advanced immediately, and all the French army pursued so hotly the English, that if the cry had not been raised to halt, it is very doubtful if they would not have got into Quebec pell-mell with the fugitives, being near the town-gates when this cry began. Thus Quebec would have been retaken in a most singular manner,[C] unforeseen and unpremeditated. I know nothing worse than ill-disciplined ...
— The Campaign of 1760 in Canada - A Narrative Attributed to Chevalier Johnstone • Chevalier Johnstone

... Grand Bailiff of Ghent. A deep silence settled over the 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 ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... 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 ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray

... in all this strife, An' hurryin', pell-mell, right thro' life. I don't believe in goin' too fast To see what kind o' road you 've passed. It ain't no mortal kind o' good, 'N' I would n't hurry ef I could. I like to jest go joggin' 'long, To limber up my soul with song; To stop awhile 'n' chat the men, 'N' ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... 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

... instant that Christian society became firmly established, the ancient continent was thrown into confusion. Everything was pulled up by the roots. Events, destined to destroy ancient Europe and to construct a new Europe, trod upon one another's heels in their ceaseless rush, and drove the nations pell-mell, some into the light, others into darkness. So much uproar ensued that it was impossible that some echoes of it should not reach the hearts of the people. It was more than an echo, it was a reflex blow. Man, withdrawing within himself in presence of these imposing vicissitudes, began to take ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... time to answer this poser for along the road came the ambulance, pell-mell. Surely, the boys thought, Artie could not have spoken of Blythe's identity over the 'phone, yet following the ambulance came the touring car of Bridgeboro's police department with the chief in it, the policeman chauffeur, a couple of other men, and county detective Ferrett. ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... were kept at bay by the daring maiden. After her sisters had been safely housed in the loft, with Hannibal who had in his fright quite forgotten her, she immediately joined them and had scarcely ascended the ladder when more than twenty of the wolves rushed pell-mell into the cabin. ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler

... danger was apprehended on account of the stream's overflowing condition. But the 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

... 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 ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston

... themselves from their horses, rushed pell-mell to take a hand in the conflict. Such a ruction appealed to them, and they proceeded to wade into Sam and Turkey foot. Frank and Blunt went on ...
— Frank Merriwell, Junior's, Golden Trail - or, The Fugitive Professor • Burt L. Standish

... 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

... three cards, and wrote the name of a lady on each of them. Then each lady took her card, and they went upstairs to the bed-room pell-mell and laughing. The women were to stand of a row in a certain order against a side of the room, we to follow in an order they did not know. They were to feel all pricks twice, each giving her card to the man at the second ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous

... had, as early as the month of May, been converted into an hospital, which, ever since the beginning of October, was crowded with sick. It could hold no more; the sick and prisoners were therefore intermingled, and lay down pell-mell among the graves. What had hitherto been spared was now completely destroyed. In this case, indeed, dire necessity pleaded a sufficient excuse. Who could find fault with Distress and Despair if they resorted to the only means that could afford them the slightest alleviation? ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)

... dug down through the green sod, down through the brown loam, down through the yellow gravel, and there at the bottom was an oblong red box, and a still, sharp, white face of a young man seen through an opening at one end of it. When the lid was closed, and the gravel and stones rattled down pell-mell, and the woman in black, who was crying and wringing her hands, went off with the other mourners, and left him, then I felt that I had seen Death, and should ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... that you get life served up to you rather pell-mell, lots of it, take-it-as-it-comes," admitted Marise, "but for a gross nature like mine, once you've had that, you're lost. You know you'd starve to death on the delicate slice of toasted bread served on old china. You give up and fairly ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... railroad-bridge, and the latter seven 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 us. The rebel cavalry were all around us, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... flint tools and much gravel were shoved along the bottom; but I have seen the dredging instrument employed in the Thames, above and below London Bridge, to deepen the river, and worked by steam power, scoop up gravel and sand from the bottom, and then pour the contents pell-mell into the boat, and still many specimens of Limnaea, Planorbis, Paludina, Cyclas, and other shells might be taken out uninjured from ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell

... 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 ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London

... Alfred continued, "she's had a time of it to-day. Ester is too cross even to look at; and they've been working pell-mell all day; and Minnie tumbled over the ice-box and got hurt, and mother held her most an hour; and I guess she feels real bad about this. She told Sadie she felt sorry ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)

... crowd, the Ammidons heard, had been knocked down and injured in the pell-mell of the rush. Gerrit's countenance showed his contempt of what he held to be a characteristically ludicrous farce. After all, his wishes in regard to the Nautilus had been easy of execution, the ship was now his; he was already contracting ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer

... 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 horrified ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs

... last hundred 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 Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine

... exquisite grace and devout humility, while she, enthroned in supreme fairness, with her tigress crouched beside her, looked down on them like a goddess calmly surveying a crowd of vestal worshippers. Their salutations done, they rushed pell-mell, like a shower of white rose-leaves drifting before a gale, into the exact centre of the hall, and there poising bird-like, with their snowy arms upraised as though about to fly, they waited, . . their lovely faces radiant with laughter, their eyes flashing dangerous allurement, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... Nations does those of his qualities I have endeavored to indicate by calling them Venetian. Observe the rare fidelity which has contributed its weight of sincerity to this admirable relief. Every prominent head of the many members of the Assembly, who nevertheless rally behind Mirabeau with a fine pell-mell freedom of artistic effect, is a portrait. The effect is like that of similar works designed and executed with the large leisure of an age very different from the competition and struggling hurry of our own. In ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell

... Such were the people whose arrival in the Pacific the Spanish commandantes and viceroys awaited with no small fear and trembling. They knew vaguely that we had just come off victorious from a long, fierce, and bloody struggle with powerful England, and while they consigned us pell-mell to the devil, as "malditos Americanos," they doubted whether we had the additional claim to go there upon the strength of being heretics. The captains of the guarda-costas redoubled their vigilance, and sailed in chase of not a few albatrosses ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames

... to his ears, and in a flash the red-headed girl seized Bumper in her arms and ran pell-mell from the room. Toby started after her, but when the door slammed in his face he flopped down on the floor to howl and kick just like a baby who had eaten pickles instead ...
— Bumper, The White Rabbit • George Ethelbert Walsh

... the time of Henry III, others who are clean-shaven, others who have their hair arranged as in the time of Raphael, others as in the time of Christ. So the homes of the rich are cabinets of curiosities: the antique, the gothic, the style of the Renaissance, that of Louis XIII, all pell-mell. In short, we have every century except our own—a thing which has never been seen at any other epoch: eclecticism is our taste; we take everything we find, this for beauty, that for utility, another for antiquity, still another for its ugliness even, so that we live ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset

... both worked hard together, making painstaking copies of the great masters. 'Runciman I am sure you will like,' Fuseli wrote home, 'he is one of the best of us here.' No doubt Fuseli found him quite a kindred spirit—mad as himself about heroic art—given to like insane ecstasies—like pell-mell execution—like whirling, extravagant drawing—like wild ideas interpreted by a like wild hand, and in a like execrable nankeen and slate tone of colour. Runciman returned in 1771, and proceeding to Edinburgh, arrived ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook

... and bent their heads, but Nanni was not a religious goat! She remembered the glimpse she had had the night before of green things growing in the garden and suddenly bolted down the steep path at a break-neck speed. All the rest of the flock followed pell-mell after her, and the children were obliged to cut short their prayers in order to save the carrot-tops ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... to draw it in again. I had been so well off, and never thought of it, ass that I was! I can still see myself, as I came to. The ground was all torn up around me, worse even than the bodies themselves lying in heaps, mixed pell-mell like a lot of jack-straws; the ground simply reeked, as if it was itself bleeding. It was pitch dark, and at first I did not feel anything but the cold, except that I knew I was hit, all right.... ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain

... answered sharply and saucily, until Sommers felt that the place was intolerable. All this office practice got on his nerves. It was too "intensive." He could not keep his head and enter thoroughly into the complications of a dozen cases, when they were shoved at him pell-mell. He realized that he was falling into a routine, was giving conventional directions, relying upon the printed prescriptions and mechanical devices. All these devices were ingenious,—they would do no harm,—and they might do good, ought to do good,—if ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... conductor, and rattled the door. The railroad men tumbled out pell-mell, all but one. Conrad shook him, and he went out mechanically, ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... exhausting day, now quite 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 ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy

... no doubt, they were terrible. In the days of the old Parlement, of Louis XIII. and Louis XIV., the accused were, no doubt, flung pell-mell into a low room underneath the old gateway. The prisons were among the crimes of 1789, and it is enough only to see the cells where the Queen and Madame Elizabeth were incarcerated to conceive a horror ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... as Henry IV. or the Duke of Guise, could have effected more than all the crusaders of two hundred years. The crusaders numbered many heroes, but scarcely a single general. There was no military discipline among them: they knew nothing of tactics or strategy; they fought pell-mell in groups, as in the contests of barons among themselves. Individually they were gallant and brave, and performed prodigies of valor with their swords and battle-axes; but there was no direction given to their strength ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord

... garden; Marfa Petrovna went so far as to strike Dounia, refused to hear anything and was shouting at her for a whole hour and then gave orders that Dounia should be packed off at once to me in a plain peasant's cart, into which they flung all her things, her linen and her clothes, all pell-mell, without folding it up and packing it. And a heavy shower of rain came on, too, and Dounia, insulted and put to shame, had to drive with a peasant in an open cart all the seventeen versts into town. Only think now what answer could I have sent to the ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... 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 sold by ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton

... for company; and he was so frightened that he ran toward the door pell-mell. Joyce, standing just inside, was in his way; and as he ran against her, she was lifted off her feet and thrown on to his back. Mr. Piggy dashed wildly out of ...
— A Hive of Busy Bees • Effie M. Williams

... move. The farmer squared his fists and received 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

... charge: Let not our babbling dreams affright our souls; Conscience is but a word that cowards use, Devis'd at first to keep the strong in awe: Our strong arms be our conscience, swords our law. March on, join bravely, let us to't pell-mell; If not to heaven, then hand in hand to hell.— What shall I say more than I have inferr'd? Remember whom you are to cope withal;— A sort of vagabonds, rascals, and runaways, A scum of Britagnes, and base lackey ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... the State of South Carolina was the enthusiastic pioneer. At the date of the President's message she had already provided by law for the machinery of a convention, though no delegates had been elected. Nevertheless, her Legislature at once plunged pell-mell into the task of making laws for the new condition of independent sovereignty which by common consent the convention was in a few days to declare. Questions of army and navy, postal communication, and foreign diplomacy, for the moment eclipsed ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay

... and legs were missing, as if he had been cut in two, and the water ran out as it came in, without refreshing or doing him any good! How it could have happened was quite a mystery to me, till I returned with him to the town-gate. There I saw, that when I rushed in pell-mell with the flying enemy, they had dropped the portcullis (a heavy falling door, with sharp spikes at the bottom, let down suddenly to prevent the entrance of an enemy into a fortified town) unperceived by me, which had totally cut off his hind part, ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe

... 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

... great piece of luck that he had found that out. It made everything easy at once, and her words came out pell-mell. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... no trim beaux its name it boasts, Grey statesmen or green wits; But from the pell-mell pack of toasts Of old cats ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... out in these hunts, which you must notice whether you watch wolves or coyotes or a den of fox cubs. Though no sound came from the watchful old mother, the cubs seemed at every instant under absolute control. One would rush away pell-mell after a hopper, miss him and tumble away again, till he was some distance from the busy group on the edge of the big lonely barren. In the midst of his chase the mother would raise her head and watch the cub intently. No sound was uttered that human ears could hear; but the chase ended right ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long

... with trollies drawn by little Corsican ponies. There were shops selling strange sweetmeats. Smoke enshrouded huts where seamen were cooking. There were merchants selling monkeys, parrots, rope, sailcloth and fantastic collections of bric-a-brac where, heaped up pell-mell, were old culverins, great gilded lanterns, old blocks and tackle, old rusting anchors, old rigging, old megaphones, old telescopes, dating from the time of ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet

... scene ensued that it may be just as well not to describe too graphically. Our marines and blue-jackets boarded pell-mell and together, and amid the roar of cannon from other ships, the incessant rattle of musketry from the tops, the hand-to-hand fight raged on, with shouts and groans and shrieks of execration. Hitherto no wounded man had been borne below to the cockpit, ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables

... ranks and made full use of the Indian habits of warfare. The braves would steal like snakes about the pathless forests, and dashing unexpectedly on the outposted redcoats, kill a handful in one fierce charge, and then retreat pell-mell back into their shelter, whither to follow them was to court certain death. The injuries thus inflicted were not overwhelming, but they were teasing for all that. Day by day the waste went on—loss of sentinels, of stragglers, sometimes of whole detachments, and all this was more galling from ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... news, and inquired what they had heard from Jena. Thereupon terror seized them, they were astonished that we already knew of that disaster. The Germans cried, 'Ach Herri Gott! O Weh!' and, hanging their heads, they ran into their houses, and then pell-mell out of their houses again. O that was a scramble! All the roads in Great Poland were full of fugitives; the Germans crawled along them like ants, dragging their carts, or rather waggons and drays, as the people call them there; men and women, ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz

... an ancient Roman city, a modern American town, a half-dozen Hindoo villages, and several thousand seashore bathers have all thrown their clothes—(or the lack of them!)—into one tremendous pile, and everybody has rushed in pell-mell and put on the first thing, or the first two or three things, that came to hand. There is every conceivable type of clothing, but perhaps the larger number have wound up with something like a light bathing suit and a sort of gingham dressing-gown belted over ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe

... from the beginning, and close the period with a sense of perfect roundness and totality. Milton does not seem to have any notion of what a period means. He begins anywhere, and leaves off, not when the sense closes, but when he is out of breath. We might have thought this pell-mell huddle of his words was explained, if not excused, by the exigencies of the party pamphlet, which cannot wait. But the same asyntactle disorder is equally found in the History of Britain, which he had in hand for forty years. Nor is it only the Miltonic sentence ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison

... 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 ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach

... Verdun, his centre and left were safely hinged upon a fortress under cover of which he could launch his counter-offensive with all the weight of his now completely mobilised reinforcements. Moreover, the army that had hurried pell-mell from Paris in taxicabs, in carts, in any form of conveyance that the authorities could lay hands upon, was now completely established on the left of the British, and if Von Kluck, lured on by the prize of Paris, pushed on, he would be ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"

... thought was to rush pell-mell after the Dog. He had often read of the hunt following furiously the baying of the Hounds, ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton

... would tend to diminish popular respect for government servants and to transform... transform, what a wealth of hidden things that word conceals. I cannot so much as pronounce it but a world of ideas and sentiments come thronging pell-mell to invade the secret recesses of my being." "I beg pardon, monsieur?" "What did you say, M. Boscheron?" "Please repeat, monsieur; ...
— Marguerite - 1921 • Anatole France

... an instant the conflict was doubtful, until poor Patrick fell mortally wounded upon the parapet; when the men, no longer hearing his bold cheer, nor seeing his noble figure in the advance, turned and fled, pell-mell, back upon the town. As for me, blocked up amidst the mass, I was cut down from the shoulder to the elbow by a young fellow of about sixteen, who galloped about like a schoolboy on a holiday. The wound was only ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... in a lonely dell, A peanut woman sat—her wares to sell. But brave PELLEAS, turning not aside, O'er that poor woman and her stall did ride. And as he wildly dashed along, pell-mell, To all the night-bugs thusly ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 13, June 25, 1870 • Various

... revery that was in singular contrast to his high spirits of the night before. A small trunk on the coachman's seat was a sufficient indication that he was going to the station. The train for Paris left in twelve minutes, time enough for me to pack my things pell-mell into my valise and hurriedly to pay my bill. The same carriage which was to have taken me to the Chateau de Proby carried me to the station at full speed, and when the train left I was seated in an empty compartment opposite the famous writer, who was saying ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various

... 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 rolled on his back, and in a few minutes is, figuratively speaking, turned inside ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... is bound in duty to be dismounted, for the sake of keeping Mr. Malthus with many others in countenance. For at this point, Phaedrus, more than at any other almost, there is a sad confusion of lords and gentlemen that I could name thrown out of the saddle pell-mell upon their ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... larboard quarter 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 ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly

... But pell-mell into camp they went, stampeding the oxen and horses and frightening the men, and Billy began to feel that he must keep on his ...
— Beadle's Boy's Library of Sport, Story and Adventure, Vol. I, No. 1. - Adventures of Buffalo Bill from Boyhood to Manhood • Prentiss Ingraham

... to turn; to thwart. Thraws, throes. Threap, maintain, argue. Threesome, trio. Thretteen, thirteen. Thretty, thirty. Thrissle, thistle. Thristed, thirsted. Through, mak to through make good. Throu'ther (through other), pell-mell. Thummart, polecat. Thy lane, alone. Tight, girt, prepared. Till, to. Till't, to it. Timmer, timber, material. Tine, to lose; to be lost. Tinkler, tinker. Tint, lost Tippence, twopence. Tip, v. toop. Tirl, to strip. Tirl, to knock for entrance. Tither, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... 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, and Carpenter ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley

... him. His reappearance was heralded by shouts of applause from the younger fellows, many of whom, scenting real trouble, had scrambled out of the water. Sawyer, warned of Steve's whereabouts, looked down the tank, saw him and started pell-mell after him. Again Steve went under, swam cautiously toward the side until he could see the white tiles within reach and then edged back the way he had come. He tried to reach the shallow end of the tank before taking breath, but the effort was too great, and when he stuck his ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour

... army retired to their camp, when the Coonia force 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 ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston

... woods to roam; Wearied she was of barn-door food, Therefore she chuckled round her brood, And said, "My little ones, now follow; We'll go and dine in yonder hollow." They first upon an ant-hill fell— Myriads of negro-ants, pell-mell— "O gobble, gobble—here's a treat! Emmets are most delicious meat; Spare not, spare not. How blest were we, Could we here live from poulterers free! Accursed man on turkeys preys, Christmas to us no ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay

... impossible for a rational mind to deny that the best work done in the arts by women is of better quality than the average work done by men. This lets the cat's head out of the bag, and her whole body follows pell-mell. ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes

... 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 the woods on ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick

... 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.)

... the mob began to run for life, helter-skelter, pell-mell, trampling each other under foot, the soldiers actually shooting any one who ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 27, May 13, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... absorbed in external nature." Whether we halt or advance, we discover a landscape ever renewing itself in a thousand fashions. We have palaces and ruins; gardens and solitudes: the horizon lengthens in the distance, or suddenly contracts; huts and stables, columns and triumphal arches, all lie pell-mell, and often so close that we might find room for all on the same sheet ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various

... Gouilot Pass, and like a fool nearly lost myself and craft. The distance between Moie de Gouilot and the island of Brechou is only about seventy yards, and as it was now past three o'clock, a swift tide was pouring pell-mell through the channel; this in my indolence I did not think of, and had like an ass taken a turn of the sheet round a cleat, and somehow got it jammed. Away went the "Yellow Boy," like a shot out of a gun, and as we passed through, a big puff of wind came round the end of Brechou, and ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling

... better known, is a younger and a less mature book than The Four Men. It is brilliantly full of humour and poetic description: it has even remarkable stretches of Fine Writing. One could deduce from it without much difficulty the general trend of Mr. Belloc's mind, for he has tumbled into it pell-mell all his first thoughts and reflections. With the fixed basis of thought, on which we have already so often insisted, he will think at all times and on all things in the same general way. This gives his observations ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell

... blur. A blink of the eyes—an effort of the will—a sort of "squad, shun!" to the type before him—and the words jumped back into their places, letters separated from their entanglement and stood like soldiers at spruce attention. A relaxing of the effort—and dismiss! helter-skelter, pell-mell went letter, word, and line. It was all a blur again. Once more he made the necessary exercise of his will and was able to read a line or two; but, if the mistiness were not to come before his eyes, the effort had to be sustained, and that made his head feel very heavy. It proved ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond

... to the steep, 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

... Still he thought he would get used to the new home which his son had chosen. But the strange journey with locomotive and steamship bewildered him dreadfully; and the clamor of the metropolis, into which he was flung pell-mell, altogether stupefied him. With a vacant air he regarded the Pandemonium, and a petrifaction of his inner being seemed to take place. He became "a barrel with a stave missing." No spark of animation visited his eye. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... fifty. These just managed to squeeze inside, Davies being about the forty-seventh by half an elbow and several sore toes. It made him feel as if he was bucking the line again; only there was little relish to it this time, with the general pell-mell and every one calling out his order in place of the familiar, ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman

... place his dressing things in order on the toilet-table. They are simple things, but mostly made expressly for him, of oxidised silver, with his initials in plain block letters; and each object has a neat sole leather case of its own, so that they can be thrown pell-mell into a bag and jumbled up together without being scratched. But Lushington takes them out of their cases and disposes them on the table with mathematical precision, smoking vigorously all the time. This done, he unpacks his valise, his shirt-case ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford

... 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

... communications between Contreras and Santa Anna's army was cut, and in the darkness of the following night an assault was made by General Persifer F. Smith, who about sunrise carried the place and drove the garrison pell-mell. This was the first victory of the memorable twentieth ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various

... time no small amount of very exemplary punishment. And, as Masters Putnam and Raymond agreed in talking over the scene afterwards, he certainly did seem to effect an instantaneous cure of the "afflicted," for they came to their sober senses at the first cut of the leather strap, and rushed pell-mell down the passage as rapidly as they could regardless ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson

... latter half of April, we pass through what I call the "robin racket,"—trains of three or four birds rushing pell-mell over the lawn and fetching up in a tree or bush, or occasionally upon the ground, all piping and screaming at the top of their voices, but whether in mirth or anger it is hard to tell. The nucleus of the train is a female. One cannot see that the ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... 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

... life may be led well! So spake the imperial sage, purest of men, Marcus Aurelius. deg. But the stifling den deg.3 Of common life, where, crowded up pell-mell, ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold

... not too good to keep," shouted Josie Jordan, rushing in pell-mell, and seizing the pair with a lustiness peculiar only to a maiden ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour

... say who was first, for Henri, Adolphe, and nearly a dozen others, galloped across the bridge together, and the whole troop followed them pell-mell into the town. The two cannons were soon taken; the irresolute blues, who, with only half a heart, had attempted to defend themselves, were driven from their positions, and Henri at once found ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope

... false terrors, or, as Nash humorously describes their fanciful panic, "when they sweated and were not a haire the worse." Thus were the three learned brothers beset by all the town-wits; Gabriel had the hardihood, with all undue gravity, to charge pell-mell among the whole knighthood of drollery; a circumstance probably alluded to by Spenser, in a sonnet addressed ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... paths that ordinarily he knew very well, he sprang out and down to the ground, a clear fifty feet, breaking his fall by catching and holding for an instant a swaying fir tip on the way. Then he rushed pell-mell over logs and rocks, and through the underbrush to a maple, and from that across a dozen trees to another giant spruce, where he ran up and down desperately over half the branches, crossing and crisscrossing his trail, ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long

... 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 the boat into the surf, ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman

... tornado, an entire caravan, disorganized, broken, and overthrown, was disappearing beneath an avalanche of sand. The camels, flung pell-mell together, were uttering dull and pitiful groans; cries and howls of despair were heard issuing from that dusty and stifling cloud, and, from time to time, a parti-colored garment cut the chaos of the scene with its vivid hues, and the moaning ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne

... crowd of men tramped pell-mell out upon the porch. Stewart, dark-browed and somber, was in the lead. Nels hung close to him, and Madeline's quick glance saw that Nels had undergone some indescribable change. The grinning, brilliant-eyed ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey

... recklessly abandoned their homes. It was a wild night in Nashville. The Rebels had two gunboats nearly completed, which were set on fire. The Rebel storehouses were thrown open to the poor people, who rushed pell-mell to help themselves to pork, flour, molasses, and sugar. A great deal was destroyed. After Johnston's army had crossed the river, the beautiful and costly wire suspension bridge which spanned it was cut down. It cost two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin

... the signal of defeat and victory: the Swedes gave way, the Dutch pressed forward; the former took to their heels, the latter hotly pursued. Some entered with them, pell-mell, through the sally-port; others stormed the bastion, and others scrambled over the curtain. Thus in a little while the fortress of Fort Christina, which, like another Troy, had stood a siege of full ten hours, was carried by assault, without the loss of a single man ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... dashed for the laborers' mess-halls, where hundreds of sun-bronzed foreigners, divided only as to color, packed pell-mell around a score of wooden tables heavily stocked with rough and tumble food—yet so different from the old French catch as catch can days when each man owned his black pot and toiled all through the noon-hour to cook himself an unsanitary lunch. We jotted them ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck

... so well directed, that one of the French boats sunk immediately; and the musket balls with which our other smaller guns were loaded, did great execution among their men. In one minute more, with three cheers from our sailors, we were all alongside together, English and French boats pell-mell, and a most determined close conflict took place. The French fought desperately, and as they were overpowered, they were reinforced by those from the privateer, who could not look on and behold their companions requiring ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat

... rushed, pell-mell, as glad to be let out of their prison, and as pleased to see their mother again, as so many boys and girls would ...
— The Nursery, March 1873, Vol. XIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest People • Various

... day, the old men, the infirm, and the children, remain near a large fire, while the others are engaged in hunting; when they have a sufficiency of food to last for some days, they remain round their fire, and sleep pell-mell among the cinders. ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere

... wall 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 the gorge to join them. ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford

... people, which was the first of any to conceive magnificence, whose gods and kings were formerly surrounded with an over-powering splendour, contrives, to live to-day, pell-mell with its sheep and goats, in humble, low-roofed cabins made out of sunbaked mud! The Egyptian villages are all of the neutral colour of the soil; a little white chalk brightens, perhaps, the minaret or cupola of the mosque; but except ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti

... surprise, the President soon joined me in a tramping suit, with knickerbockers and thick boots, and soft felt hat, much worn. Two or three other gentlemen came, and we started off at what seemed to me a breakneck pace, which soon brought us out of the city. On reaching the country, the President went pell-mell over the fields, following neither road nor path, always on, on, straight ahead! I was much winded, but I would not give in, nor ask him to slow up, because I had the honor of La belle France in my heart. At last we came to the bank of a stream, rather wide and too ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... de Joyeuse. Accordingly, on the 20th of July, the army put itself in movement. The march was made in the utmost confusion. Everything was in disorder; the infantry and cavalry were huddled together pell-mell; no commands could be acted upon, and indeed the whole army was so disorganised that it could have been easily beaten by a handful of men. In effect, the enemy at last tried to take advantage of our confusion, by sending a few troops to harass us. But it was ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... Hayes, the noted Texas Ranger, was raised. Hungerford was the beau-ideal of a soldier, as he was already the hero of three wars, and one of the best tacticians of his time. This command drove the Indians pell-mell for three miles to Mud Lake, killing and wounding them at every jump. Colonel Hungerford and Jack Hayes received, and were entitled, to great praise, for at the close of the war terms were made which have kept the Indians peaceable ever since. Jack Hayes died several ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... urgent and imperative in the voices of both men—something that breathed of danger—the three women hastened from the room. Jane's candle flared and went out in the draught from the suddenly opened door, and in the smothering darkness they stumbled pell-mell down ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler

... artillery, were in the same situation. When the Russian cannon began to open upon this multitude, crammed together near the bank, and each anxiously expecting the turn to pass, a shriek of utter terror ran through them, and men, women, horses, and waggons rushed at once, pell-mell, upon the bridges. The larger of these, intended solely for waggons and cannon, ere long broke down, precipitating all that were upon it into the dark and half-frozen stream. The scream that rose at this moment, says one that heard it, "did not leave ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart

... one great pell-mell rush. On, on, they fly, like giant grey-hounds from the leash, down the stretch of track, until they are but specks in the distance; then on they come, thundering past the grand stand at a maddening pace, with Robin Adair in the lead, General, Yellow Pete, and Black Daffy going like ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey

... cracked all at once, their easy-going, timid, incapable guardians having allowed things to take their course. Society, accordingly, disintegrated and a pell-mell, is turned into a turbulent, shouting crowd, each pushing and being pushed, all alike over-excited and congratulating each other on having finally obtained elbow-room, and all demanding the new ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... to lead her gently back to the tent, Sahwah began to raise her arms slowly above her head, palms together. "Mercy!" exclaimed Katherine, "she's going to dive off the cliff!" And rushing up pell-mell she seized her around the waist and dragged her back unceremoniously, regardless of the accepted rule about ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey

... Chauchet, a very young girl, in her picture of a 'Breton Interior' shows a vigor and decision very rare in a woman." Of the "Maree," the Depeche de Brest says: "On a sombre background, in artistic disorder, thrown pell-mell on the ground, are baskets and a shining copper kettle, with a mass of fish of all sorts, of varied forms, and changing colors. All well painted. Such is ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement

... disciple I be of venerable Martinus the Scribbler; though, for aught I know, himself in progress of transmigration; still, I submit, my cornucopia is not crammed with leaves and chopped straw; and if, in utter carelessness, the fruit is poured out pell-mell after this desultory fashion, yet, I wot, it is fruit, though whether ripe or crude, or rotten, my husbandry takes little thought: the mixture serves for my cider-press, and, fermentation over, the product will be clarified. Judge me too, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... mother shrieked, the enfant terrible howled like a bull of Bashan, and just as the "Red devils" were closing in from the rear, the mouth of a cave loomed up in the hillside into which dashed "pegasus and mooly cow" pell-mell. ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss

... bearded strangers, the flash and report of the fire-arms, the fall of their foremost chief, shot through the brain with the bullet of Arlac, filled them with consternation, and they fled headlong within their defences. The men of Thimagoa ran screeching in pursuit. Pell-mell, all entered the town together. Slaughter; pillage; flame. The work was done, and the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... his feet, indeed—there was the river, the narrow Aco, peacock-green, a dark file of poplars on either bank, rushing pell-mell away from the quiet waters of the lake. Then, just across the river, at his left, stretched the smooth lawns of the park of Ventirose, with glimpses of the many-pinnacled castle through the trees; and, beyond, undulating country, flourishing, ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland



Words linked to "Pell-mell" :   harum-scarum, helter-skelter, hurried



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