Our Boston
mobs are satisfied with what mischief they have already done.
* The Black Hundreds were reactionary
mobs organized by the perishing Autocracy in the Russian Revolution.
"Here is that
mob, the dregs of the people," he thought as he gazed at the crowd: "this rabble they have roused by their folly!
The pitifulest thing out is a
mob; that's what an army is -- a
mob; they don't fight with courage that's born in them, but with cour- age that's borrowed from their mass, and from their officers.
I could see that the whole thing was a vain and unreasoning pursuit; and what, at the first glance, seemed to me the ugliest feature in this
mob of roulette players was their respect for their occupation--the seriousness, and even the humility, with which they stood around the gaming tables.
The Pickwickians had no sooner dismounted than they were surrounded by a branch
mob of the honest and independent, who forthwith set up three deafening cheers, which being responded to by the main body (for it's not at all necessary for a crowd to know what they are cheering about), swelled into a tremendous roar of triumph, which stopped even the red-faced man in the balcony.
At first the tumult of my own thoughts, summoned by the danger-signal and swarming to the rescue from every quarter of my skull, kept up such a hurrah and confusion and fifing and drumming that I couldn't take in a word; but presently when my
mob of gathering plans began to crystallize and fall into position and form line of battle, a sort of order and quiet ensued and I caught the boom of the king's batteries, as if out of remote distance:
Giles's, to search for contraband goods, and the
mob fired on the musketeers, and the musketeers fired on the
mob, and nobody thought any of these occurrences much out of the common way.
The difficulty arises from the fact that one does not deal with ships in a
mob, but with a ship as an individual.
As a vast herd of cows in a rich farmer's yard, if, while they are milked, they hear their calves at a distance, lamenting the robbery which is then committing, roar and bellow; so roared forth the Somersetshire
mob an hallaloo, made up of almost as many squalls, screams, and other different sounds as there were persons, or indeed passions among them: some were inspired by rage, others alarmed by fear, and others had nothing in their heads but the love of fun; but chiefly Envy, the sister of Satan, and his constant companion, rushed among the crowd, and blew up the fury of the women; who no sooner came up to Molly than they pelted her with dirt and rubbish.
As it rarely happens that public opinion, in its whimsical flights, does not identify a principle with a man, thus the people saw the personification of the Republic in the two stern figures of the brothers De Witt, those Romans of Holland, spurning to pander to the fancies of the
mob, and wedding themselves with unbending fidelity to liberty without licentiousness, and prosperity without the waste of superfluity; on the other hand, the Stadtholderate recalled to the popular mind the grave and thoughtful image of the young Prince William of Orange.
Behind the police rearguard, at a respectful distance, was an orderly but vociferous
mob, several blocks in length, that congested the street from sidewalk to sidewalk.