"Scapegrace" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... no Cabinet officer, no member of Congress, was giving strength and efficiency to the movement. Out of respect to Judge Douglas's good sense I must believe he did n't manufacture his idea of the "fatal" character of that blow out of such a miserable scapegrace as he represents that editor to be. But the Judge's eye is farther south now. Then, it was very peculiarly and decidedly north. His hope rested on the idea of visiting the great "Black Republican" party, and making it the tail of his new kite. He knows he was then expecting from ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... nature was altogether different to that of Alice. Love with her had in it a gleam of poetry, a spice of fun, a touch of self-devotion, something even of hero-worship; but with it all there was a dash of devilry, and an aptitude almost for wickedness. She knew Burgo Fitzgerald to be a scapegrace, and she liked him the better on that account. She despised her husband because he had no vices. She would have given everything she had to Burgo,—pouring her wealth upon him with a total disregard of herself, had she been allowed to do so. She would have forgiven ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... movements and slow brain, refusing to look under the surface and see the great loving heart which beat there with its wealth of warm true affection; while Mrs. Blake and the elder brothers and sisters regarded him in the light of a good-for-nothing or general scapegrace. The result was that Dick hid the many sterling qualities of his nature under a gruff, forbidding exterior, and only tender-hearted Winnie guessed how he winced and writhed under the mocking word or light laugh indulged in at his expense. Resenting them bitterly, she gathered ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... understand this." North put out a detaining hand. "If you're not doing this for that young scapegrace in there I'd like to know in whose interest it is. Is there something ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... boyhood the scapegrace of the family had been her admiration, and still remained so, in imagination. For years she had not seen him, and perhaps this (that she considered a grievance) was a kindness vouchsafed to her by Providence. Had she seen the pretty boy of twenty years ago as he now is she would not have ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... produced upon the mind of Charles Claparon very much the effect that his new clothes produced upon his body. The jovial scapegrace, easy-going with all the world, and long used to a comfortable shabbiness, in which his body was no more shackled than his mind was shackled by language, was now encased in the new clothes his tailor had just sent home, rigid as a picket-stake, anxious about his motions as well ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... replied gravely, but with a quick thrill of tenderness in his heart for this little scapegrace who seemed to win from everyone an extra share of love; "no, I don't think I should have named you Peace—that is, if I could have foreseen what the blossom was to be when the bud unfolded. I should have ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... "What a scapegrace!" said the Prince, laughing. "It is you who deserve a promotion, but, by thunder! we are not ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... you have taken the Queen's shilling! Strange! But it is no business of mine. Young scapegrace, I suppose—" ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... honest gentleman who had done no wrong, reduced to such extremity, without doing what he could to help him. Mr Haredale shook him warmly by the hand, and thanked him from his heart. In five minutes' time the chaise was ready, and this good scapegrace in his saddle. The murderer was put inside, the blinds were drawn up, the sexton took his seat upon the bar, Mr Haredale mounted his horse and rode close beside the door; and so they started in the dead of night, and ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... allowed Piero to settle once more in Florence. His house in the Via Larga—it had been occupied by the scapegrace assassin, Lorenzino—again was a nursery of immorality, as well as the headquarters of the enemies of his brother. Piero became the ally of the scheming Cardinal Ferdinando, but his depraved and evil ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... his had refused to do so. He didn't know why. He had always counted on Letty when the time should come to speak the word. He had shown his heart in everything but words; what more did a girl want? Of course, if any one preferred a purely fantastic duty to a man's love, and allowed a scapegrace brother to foist two red-faced, squalling babies on her, there was nothing to be said. So, in this frame of mind he had had one flaming, passionate, wrong-headed scene with his father, and strode out of Beulah with dramatic gestures ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... father is a German count, his mother was an American. He was educated in England and afterward came to America and entered Cornell. That's where I met him. He was the cleverest scapegrace that ever lived. He could sing like an angel, draw like St. Peter, and knew more languages than an Ellis Island interpreter. He made friends wherever he went. To look at him and hear him talk you would never think he was a German; he's the picture of his American mother, and being in England ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... is painting dogs for a living," interrupted Miss Clendenning. "Do you think, you young scapegrace, that this would be better than being a lawyer like Judge Ellicott?" and she turned upon him with one of her quick outbursts of ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... sterner aspect of primitive life; but this can only be referred to as a theme worthy of distinct treatment. It should not be forgotten that the children reared under such influences have often been counted worthy of the highest stations of honor and trust; and although the scapegrace character of ministers' sons is a common fling, yet careful research has proved that it has many and ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... improvement as fallacious as the vicious reasoning of the Norwegian dramatist? Otherwise Bach would be dead; Beethoven, middle-aged; Mozart, senile. What, instead, is the health of these three composers? Have you a gayer, blither, more youthful scapegrace writing today than Mozart? Is there a man among the moderns more virile, more passionately earnest or noble than Beethoven? Bach, of the three, seems the oldest; yet his C-sharp major Prelude belies his years. On the contrary, the Well-tempered Clavichord ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... did he take into his crew, named Parracombe; and by that scapegrace hangs a tale. He was an old schoolfellow of his at Bideford, and son of a merchant in that town—one of those unlucky members who are "nobody's enemy but their own"—a handsome, idle, clever fellow, who used his scholarship, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... invariably the centre of an interested group. As the company scapegrace and black sheep of the battalion he occupies in his mates' eyes a position of considerable importance. His repartees are famous, and none knows better than he how to score off an unpopular officer or N.C.O. He has the distinction also of having spent more days in the guard-room ...
— The Amateur Army • Patrick MacGill
... will not deny that I was a sad scapegrace, but you never took the right way to keep me straight. But for my mother and Olive, I should have run away long before. Father"—and here there was a frightened look in his eyes—"where are they? Why are you alone?" Then, as Mr. Gaythorne raised his hand with a solemn ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... of the establishment, who made a movement as if he would lie down on the floor and lick my boots. But not so. To begin with, I did not happen to possess nine hundred francs, and if I did, I should not Have been fool enough to lend them to this young scapegrace. No! What I did was to extract from my notebook a card, one of a series which I always keep by me in case of an emergency like the present one. It bore the legend: "Comte Hercule de Montjoie, secretaire particulier ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... (inattention) 458; carelessness &c (neglect) 460; desperation; Quixotism, knight-errantry; fire eating. gaming, gambling; blind bargain, leap in the dark, leap of faith, fool's paradise; too many eggs in one basket. desperado, rashling^, madcap, daredevil, Hotspur, fire eater, bully, bravo, Hector, scapegrace, enfant perdu [Fr.]; Don Quixote, knight-errant, Icarus; adventurer; gambler, gamester; dynamitard^; boomer [U.S.]. V. be rash &c adj.; stick at nothing, play a desperate game; run into danger &c 665; play with fire, play with edge tools. carry too much sail, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... there never were girls quite like Helen and Polly," he said to himself. "They both in their own way take after their mother. Helen has got that calm which was always so refreshing and restful in her mother; and that little scapegrace of a Polly inherits a good deal of her brilliancy. I wonder how the little puss has managed the housekeeping. By the way, her week is up to-day, and we return to Nell's and Mrs. Power's steadier regime. Poor Poll, it was shabby of me to desert the family during the end of Indigestion week, but ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... his nature: he saved me because he manifested himself so clearly and unmistakably that I simply had to continue believing in him. And whoever believes in evil as evil cannot be lost. Just as I, even as later the young scapegrace Nietzsche, wanted to make a bolt over good and evil, I faced Satan, and the evil one was so kind that he did me a better turn than any kind human being ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... I intended that you should pay them;" and the scapegrace as he spoke looked full up into the baronet's face with his bright blue eyes,—not impudently, as though defying his grandfather, but with a bold confidence which at once softened the ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... proposed, too, to have me to "Long's," where he was lodging for the time; but this invitation was refused on my behalf by Doctor Buckle, who said, and possibly with correctness, that I should get little good by spending my holiday with such a scapegrace. ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to me to hear this of my poor Jock," said Caroline, "always my pickle and scapegrace, though he is a dear good-hearted boy. His uncle says it is that he wants a strong hand, but don't you think an uncle's strong hand is much ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... scapegrace lord: and stroked his hawk; "there is enough of him to swear by. Put him back! put ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... the magic drink?" asked the dwarf horrified. "Vinegar and turnip juice," laughed the old witch. "A lord who comes to me to win a wife is ripe for any thing. Let Nefert ask Paaker for the money, and the young scapegrace's ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... next half-hour and I'll confess to a keen curiosity about Cyril Jernyngham. He was an amusing and eccentric scapegrace when I last saw him, though that is a ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... entertainers; and he ordered his servant to take places in the mail-coach for that evening, of course charging the sum which he disbursed for the seats to the account of the widow and the young scapegrace of whom ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... headquarters till the novelist, who was the eldest of the family, was about sixteen. He had two sisters (of whom the elder, Laure, afterwards Madame Surville, was his first confidante and his only authoritative biographer) and a younger brother, who seems to have been, if not a scapegrace, rather a burden to his friends, and who ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... Since his scapegrace brother was going to make such an advantageous marriage, and this niece had proved a lovely woman, and rich withal, he quite admitted the ties of blood were ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... are no such masters in these days, and when you reply that there are no such servants either, he does not contradict you. Yet he may have been a sad young scamp when he began life as a dog-boy fifty-five years ago, and, on the other hand, it is not so impossible as it seems that the scapegrace for whose special behoof you keep a rattan on your hat-pegs may mellow into a most respectable and trustworthy old man, at least if he is happy enough to settle under a good master; for the Boy is ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... the throng of youngsters, they gazed for a moment upon the downfall of one of their progeny, and then giving vent to their indignation in loud cries pounced upon their tipsy offspring and pecked him until he struggled upright and staggered away. The last we saw of the young scapegrace he was smoothing his ruffled plumage before a shining milk-pail and apparently admonishing his unsteady double. It is worth recording that the turkey was better the next day, and lived, as we were afterwards told, to a ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... du Boys de Lucelles was a scapegrace of good family, who, after having spent all that he had inherited from his father, and having incurred debts in all kinds of doubtful ways, had been trying to discover some other means of obtaining money, and he had discovered ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... visible on his chin, though a little delicate pencilling darkened his upper lip: His slightly effeminate style of beauty, the graceful curves of his figure, his expression, sometimes coaxing, sometimes saucy, reminding one of a page, gave him the appearance of a charming young scapegrace destined to inspire sudden passions and wayward fancies. While his pretended uncle was making himself at home most unceremoniously, Quennebert remarked that the chevalier at once began to lay siege to his fair ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... remarking, that you will find many persons who are very charitable to blackguards, but who have no charity for the weaknesses of really good people. They will hunt out the act of thoughtless liberality done by the scapegrace who broke his mother's heart and squandered his poor sisters' little portions; they will make much of that liberal act,—such an act as tossing to some poor Magdalen a purse filled with money which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... in, and says that young Mr. Harry Jocelyn will be here this morning from Fallow field, where he has been cricketing. The family have not spoken of him in my hearing. He is not, I think, in good odour at home—a scapegrace. Rose's maid, Polly, quite flew out when I happened to mention him, and broke one of my laces. These English ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... been made through this toad of a Stefano. Knowing the men, I now knew all. But Faustina, she had the pure and simple heart, and the white soul, by the God who made it, and for all her kindness to a tattered scapegrace who made love to her in broken Italian between the ripples and the stars. She was not to know what I was, remember; and beside Corbucci and his henchman I was the Archangel ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... been seen, made good his gravest default, was reinstated in his lucrative and by no means onerous office. He regained the senseria by decree of August 28, 1539. The potent d'Avalos, Marques del Vasto, had in 1539 conferred upon Titian's eldest son Pomponio, the scapegrace and spendthrift that was to be, a canonry. Both to father and son the gift was in the future to be productive of more evil than good. At or about the same time he had commissioned of Titian a picture of himself haranguing his soldiers ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... perplexity to these sounding periods, conscious only that her darling, her adored scapegrace, had suddenly turned serious, and was using the weapons she had so often employed to justify his conduct. For it was using one of the standing arms in the maternal arsenal, to remind the wild and headstrong lad that his father had been Jackson's confidant, that he had ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... good time; coming presently," returned the scapegrace, cheerfully. "Now, Nan, this is our place. We will have Hamilton and Dulce for our vis-a-vis. What a jolly day; and isn't this first-rate?" exclaimed Dick, rubbing his hands, and feeling as though he were only just ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... scapegrace, but a gentleman! Robert, you are a careful, sober, plausible man; and it is a great pity you were not in business; you would have made a fortune!—you won't inherit one, though you think it: I have marked you, sir. Philip, beware of your brother. ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... grace of manner. My mother, upon whom what she called 'style' made a far greater impression than anything else, pronounced her to be a perfect little lady, and I heard her remark that she wondered how the child of such a scapegrace as Wynne could have been ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... that the captain of a great public school should so far forget himself as to utter a secret prayer in his own study about such a matter as the correction of a young scapegrace? It was an unusual thing to do, certainly; and probably if Wyndham had known what was passing in the captain's mind he would have thought more poorly of his brother's friend than he did. But I am not quite sure, reader, whether ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... was about twenty-two. Miss Lovina was almost bed-ridden with the rheumatism that year, and 'Tenty had to come back twice a day from her work to see to her, so that she made it up by staying evenings, against her usual rules. Now about the middle of that May, Doctor Parker's scapegrace son Ned came home from sea,—a great, lazy, handsome fellow, who had run away from Deerfield in his fifteenth year, because it was so "darned stupid," to use his own phrase. Doctor Parker was old, and Mrs. Parker was old, too, but she called ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... not die—he will not die, I hope—at any rate, don't talk so loud within hearing of these people. My dear Lady O'Shane, this foolish boy— this Harry Ormond is, I grant, a sad scapegrace, but you must bear with him for my sake. Let this poor wounded fellow remain here—I won't have him stirred to-night—we shall see what ought to be done in the morning. Ormond, you forgot yourself strangely ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... Calthea Rose should get hold of them I should be lost. She'd drop old Tippengray like a hot potato and stick to me like one of those adhesive plasters that have holes in them. No, sir; I don't want Calthea Rose to think well of me. I want her to keep on considering me as a good-for-nothing scapegrace, and, by George! it's easy enough to make her do that. It's all in her line of business. But I want other people to think well of me in a general way, and when Calthea and Tippengray have settled things between them, ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... that scapegrace of a Dick, of course!" said Mrs. Salsify, quickly; "but as to a better one than the colonel, I don't know about that. The advantages of his position are very great. Maddie would have been the tip-top of Wimbledon if ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... next letter made matters in some degree easier, for it at least showed the direction that his family gave to the excuses they now offered for the behaviour of the young scapegrace. First, he had been very unwell in London—almost seriously unwell; and next, Lizzy said she had been quite right as to St. George's love for Dorothea, for he had made her an offer before ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... living, and, in its own more difficult way, it is no less genuine a poem. The jolly, jovial tone of the poem, its hearty humour and high spirits, and the breathless rush and hurry of the verse, render the scapegrace painter to the life. Not less in keeping is the situation in which the unsaintly friar is introduced: caught by the civic guard, past midnight, in an equivocal neighbourhood, quite able and ready, however, to fraternise ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... of them, "it proves what I was saying. What respect is shown to old age in these days? Do you see that idle lad riding while his old father has to walk? Get down, you young scapegrace, and let the old ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... son of one of Mr. Carleton's old tenants down here at Enchapel,—who was under sentence of death, lying in prison at Carstairs. The father, I am told, is an excellent man and a good tenant; the son had been a miserable scapegrace, and now for some crime—I forget what—had at last been brought to justice. The evidence against him was perfect and the offence was not trifling—there was not the most remote chance of a pardon, ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... stepped into the vacant place of Marian's mother. She was the only sister of "Cobbler" Horn, and, with the exception of a rich uncle in America, from whom they never heard, and a wandering cousin, a sad scapegrace, she was ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... who found Cyril Gilbraith by the White Stones, with a cigarette and a sprained ankle, on the night the whole village was out with lanterns searching for the well-loved young scapegrace. It was the Tailless Tyke and his master who one bitter evening came upon little Mrs. Burton, lying in a huddle beneath the lea of the fast-whitening Druid's Pillar with her latest baby on her breast. It was little M'Adam who took off his coat ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... their speech is gross and weighty, and stingy are their rich and wealthy." "I am not of them." "Then whence art thou, O young man?" "I am from Mosul." "Then art thou from the foulest and filthiest of a Catamite race, whose youth is a scapegrace and whose old age hath the wits of an ass." "I am not of them." "Then whence art thou, O young man?" "I am from the land of Al-Yaman." "Then art thou from a clime other than delectable." "And why so, O ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... realize the limitations of the financial intellect. He saw that to get ideas into Bankers' brains is even more difficult than to get cheques from their pockets. Still, there was that promising scapegrace Simon! He hurried out on his scent, and ran him to earth in a cosy house near the town gate. Simon practised law, it appeared, and his surname ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... loved platitudes. Be this as it may, certain it is that he loved an audience—even of one. He had been considerably ruffled this morning by communications made to him by his good-looking and somewhat scapegrace youngest son. Those who fail to rule their own households often find solace in attempting to rule the households of others. Speech and patronage consequently tended to the ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... lad I knowed in Chain Tickle come shoutin' down t' St. John's. A likely lad, too: blue-eyed, tow-headed, an' merry—the likes of his mother, a widow. No liar, no coward, no pinch-a-penny: a fair, frank-eyed, lovable little rascal—a forgiven young scapegrace—with no mind beyond the love an' livin' jollity o' the day. Hang the morrow! says he; the morrow might do very well, he'd be bound, when it come. Show him the fun o' the minute. An' he had a laugh t' shame the dumps—a ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... her dreamy emotionalism would have made her a welcome member of the Darmstadt circle of ladies. She is in love with Pedro, but Pedro is not the hero of the piece. That place is assigned to his eldest brother Crugantino, a scapegrace, with a noble heart, who, finding the ordinary bonds of society too confined for him, has taken to highway robbery. "Your burgher life," he says—and we know that he is here uttering Goethe's own sentiments—"your ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... pilgarlic, vagabond, knave, rogue, scoundrel, caitiff, miscreant, scapegrace, villain, rascal, renegade, reprobate, rake, scullion, poltroon, varlet, ronion, libertine, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... and you have been eating like a sailor or a ploughman; you have been gallivanting and merry-making and playing the boy for two weeks; up at all sorts of irregular hours, and into all sorts of boyish performances; and the consequence is, that, like a thoughtless young scapegrace, you have used up in ten days the capital of nervous energy that was meant to last you ten weeks. You can't eat your cake and have it too, Christopher. When the nervous-fluid source of cheerfulness, giver of pleasant sensations ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... end of the year. Even Mr. Swartz, the wooly-headed young gentleman, and half-brother to the Honourable Mrs. Mac Mull, and Mr. Bluck, the neglected young pupil of three-and-twenty from the agricultural district, and that idle young scapegrace of a Master Todd before mentioned, received little eighteen-penny books, with "Athene" engraved on them, and a pompous Latin inscription from the professor to his ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... went on. "You don't—meet other chaps the way you met me to-day, do you?" Set the blind to lead the blind! If there was anything absurd in scapegrace Ted's turning mentor he was unconscious of the absurdity, was exceedingly ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... wish, I wish, I wish you could give it to me!" That of itself had its-significance. But still more significant was David's mention of his looking in at Steerforth's bed-room on the following morning, before himself going away alone, and of his there finding the handsome scapegrace fast asleep, "lying easily, with his head upon his-arm," as he had often seen him lie in the old school dormitory. "Thus in this silent hour I left him," with mournful tenderness, exclaimed the Reader, in the words and accents of his young hero. "Never more, O God forgive ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... for the sake of his position," he said bitterly. "But to my mind he is insufferable. His father was a scapegrace, as everyone knows. His mother was a circus girl. And his grandmother—an Italian—was divorced by Sir Beverley before they ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... only child, and so his parents, although they said, "To-day we really will disinherit him," or "To-morrow we really will break off all relations with him," still it was all empty talk; and the years and months passed by, until the scapegrace reached his twenty-sixth year, having heaped wickedness upon wickedness; and who can tell how much trouble he brought upon his family, who were always afraid of hearing of some new enormity? At last they held a family council, and told the parents that matters had come to such a pass ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... but no one knew how to begin, and it was evident, from the prim expression of Rose's face, that she intended to stand upon her dignity till they had properly abased themselves. The pause was becoming very awkward, when Charlie, who possessed all the persuasive arts of a born scapegrace, went slowly down upon his knees before her, beat his breast, and said, in a ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... his mother, and have been amused even under the sober face of parental discipline. For, once through, no one could follow the boy. There was no one about the farm slender enough to scramble after. I had not the smallest doubt that the scapegrace was now lying snugly in his hole, impregnable behind the great hay-mow, provisioned with a few farls of cake from his mother, and with his well-beloved Robinson Crusoe for sole companion of ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... to break up the relations existing between the pair while the lady was as yet only the housekeeper. It must have been with great reluctance that he considered visiting him at all. The sacrifice, if such there was, was made in the interest of Karl; where this young scapegrace was concerned, the master was generally willing to sink his own preferences. The situation must have been embarrassing for all concerned, less so in reality for the master than for the others. Absorbed in the ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... sent you to the mast-head, you remember, when you were a middy with me in the Neptune? It was for cutting off the tail of my dog Ponto, and you said—though that was all moonshine, of course—you did it to cure him of fits! By George! what a terrible young scapegrace you were, to be sure, Vernon, always in mischief from sunrise to gunfire, and always at loggerheads with my first lieutenant and the master, ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... if," resumed he, in the same grave way, "yon scapegrace shall read thy letter, and hear me tell him how thou pinest for him, and yet, being a traitor, or a mere idiot, will not turn to thee what shall become of me then? Must I die a bachelor, and thou fare lonely to thy grave, neither ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... sweet girl she is!" he said to himself; "and what a pity her position is not a better one! With a father like that, and a brother who has stamped himself as a scapegrace at the beginning of life, what is to become of her? Unless she marries well, I see no hopeful prospect for her future. But of course such a girl as that is sure to make a ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... translations "without knowing one syllable of the original," and of "books which he had never read." He then turned French valet, and got well paid. He then fell into the service of Jack Wilding, and was valet, French marquis, or anything else to suit the whims of that young scapegrace.—S. Foote, The ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... But little girls like you are good to everyone, are you not? That is what makes you so lovely. You could be good to even a scapegrace, eh? A poor, sad outcast like me?" He laughs and leans towards her, his handsome, dissipated, ...
— A Little Rebel • Mrs. Hungerford
... (1655-1709) escaped from his corsair captors and slavery at Algiers, made his sorry company of knaves and fools acceptable by virtue of inexhaustible gaiety, bright fantasy, and the liveliest of comic styles. His Joueur (1696) is a scapegrace, possessed by the passion of gaming, whose love of Angelique is a devotion to her dowry, but he will console himself for lost love by another throw of the dice. His Legataire Universel, greedy, old, and ailing, ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... Willy with many sighs and tears; implored him to be a good boy and enter on good courses, not on bad ones that would break her heart. Willy, the little scapegrace, was willing to promise anything. He laughed and made light of it; it wasn't his fault if folks told stories about him; she couldn't be so foolish as to give ear to them. London? Oh, he should be all right in London! One or two fellows here were rather fast, there was ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Vanderscamp, and him he liked for his very wickedness. He in a manner took the boy under his tutelage, prompted him to all kinds of mischief, aided him in every wild, harum-scarum freak, until the lad became the complete scapegrace of the village; a pest to his uncle, and to every one else. Nor were his pranks confined to the land; he soon learned to accompany old Pluto on the water. Together these worthies would cruise about the ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... thousand pounds, and had, indeed, empowered his son to receive it: he had also pledged himself for the other fifty; and then, after all, that perverse fool of a girl would insist on being in love with that scapegrace, Lord Ballindine! This, however, might wear away, and he would take very good care that she should hear of his misdoings. It would be very odd if, after all, his plans were to be destroyed, and his arrangements disconcerted by his own ward, and niece—especially when he designed ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... Astley? By Polina? I do not know. At all events, the debt was paid to the tune of two hundred thalers, and I sallied forth a free man. But what was I to do with myself? In my dilemma I had recourse to this Heintze, who was a young scapegrace, and the sort of man who could speak and write three languages. At first I acted as his secretary, at a salary of thirty gulden a month, but afterwards I became his lacquey, for the reason that he could not afford to keep a secretary—only ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... in comfort and pleasantness. Only his own rooms—dining-room, smoking-room, bedroom—had been suffered to show traces of many a brawl and fray. It was as if he had deemed anything good enough for a scapegrace and beast like him, and thought to pay the whole price in his own person. It would not be with his will if any other person, high or low, contributed to his heavy forfeits. And Gervase Norgate's servants, new as well as old, had a pitiful liking for ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... scapegrace had entirely forgotten that the horse was very swift and spirited, and also that he did not belong to him or his parents. So Harry, with one bound, jumped the fence, paying no kind of attention to a great thorn which tore down the leg of his pantaloons for half a yard, ran up to Lightfoot, ...
— The Big Nightcap Letters - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... single spring, to the deck. "A steamer had run us down!" Aloft, towered a huge black wall, while the intruder's cut-water pressed our tiny craft almost beneath the tide. There was no time for deliberation. The steamer's headway was stopped. The Gil Blas, like her scapegrace godfather, was in peril of sinking; and as the wheels began to revolve and clear the steamer from our wreck, every one scrambled in the best way he ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... crust. Look at Theobald Scheffler, his old comrade. He wasted twenty thousand francs at Paris on a woman who kicked up her legs in the middle of a quadrille. We ourselves spent more than two thousand thalers a year for our wicked scapegrace. His death is a great saving, and therefore ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... he had suffered terribly during the past week. A man may be a scapegrace and a spendthrift and may boast of it; he may have no principle and no conscience; he may be immoral, he may defy God and the devil, but it is nevertheless true that he suffers fearful anguish of mind when he is guilty, for the first time, of a positive crime, ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... could not have known it," after a moment or two he averred. "He even laughed over the name when I told it to him, and said he had a scapegrace cousin out in Arizona and wondered if the husband could ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... Count de Guichen sailed for the Antilles with a portion of the French fleet, and maintained with glory the honor of his flag in a series of frequently successful affairs against Admiral Rodney. At the beginning of the war, the latter, a great scapegrace and overwhelmed with debt, happened to be at Paris, detained by the state of his finances. "If I were free," said he one day in the presence of Marshal Biron, "I would soon destroy all the Spanish and ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... answered his late antagonist "What, in the name of old Sathan, could make you, who stand so highly on your reputation, think for a moment of drawing up with such a rogue as Craigengelt, and such a scapegrace as folk ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... is "par." with a family. Needless to say, the part was well acted and sung by Brother NED, whom a gentleman near me, who "knew all about it," mistook for his brother JOHN, and criticised accordingly. As Cherubino, Mlle. SIGRID ARNOLDSON is a delightfully boyish scapegrace, giving us just that soupcon of natural awkwardness which a spoilt sunny Southern lad of sixteen, brought up in such mixed society as is represented by Count Almaviva's household, would occasionally ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 9, 1892 • Various
... John, who had again carried the unfortunate young scapegrace from our parlour into Mrs. Tod's kitchen—the centre room of the cottage; and was trying to divert the torrent of maternal indignation, while he helped her to plaster up the still ugly looking wound. "Come, ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... burned effigies of the Pope, while thousands of squibs were discharged, with shouts that frightened the Popish Portuguese Queen, at that time living at Somerset House, forsaken by her dissolute scapegrace ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... French from the time he could lisp, and, what was dangerous in his father's eyes, filled him with bits of poetry and fine language, so that he knew Heine, Racine and Beranger and many another. But this was made endurable to the father by the fact that, by nature, the boy was a warrior and a scapegrace, could use his fists as well as his tongue, and posed as a Napoleon with the negro children in the plantation. He was leader of the revels when the slaves gathered at night in front of the huts and made a joy of captivity and ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker
... aunt, if she married a man whom she knew to be a scapegrace because he was very rich ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... bad of you, William," Mrs. Ellison said indignantly. "Here is this boy, who is notoriously a scapegrace, has the impertinence to ride your horse, and you encourage him in his misdeeds by giving ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... had him in his mouth, it was 'bear and forbear,' wasn't it?' put in that scapegrace, Tom, who is always doing something ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... understand fully the feelings of a High School boy of that day with regard to those ancient Highlanders, who then formed the only police of the city of Edinburgh, the reader must consult the poetry of the scapegrace Fergusson. It was in defiance of their Lochaber axes that the Cowgate Port was manned—and many were the occasions on which its defence presented a formidable mimicry of warfare. "The gateway," Sir Walter adds, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... of that system. Life wants padding," said Mr. Vincy, unable to omit his portable theory. "However," he went on, accenting the word, as if to dismiss all irrelevance, "what I came here to talk about was a little affair of my young scapegrace, Fred's." ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... give her a prominent position in society. Imagine my horror, John, when I discovered last evening that my only child, whom I have so fondly cherished, has ungratefully deceived me. Carried away by the impetuous avowals of this young scapegrace, whom his own father disowns, she has confessed her love for him—love for a pauper!—and only by the most stringent exercise of my authority have I been able to exact from Louise a promise that she will not become formally engaged ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... up a magnificent young scapegrace, reckless to the point of madness, and with that inherent love of risk that is the very breath of life to such men. Despite these defects there is no doubt that his was one of those personalities that win love without effort. So of course it was a foregone conclusion that he should ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... with my father, whenever he was incensed against me, and scolded me, because, instead of studying my books and going to school, I was always loitering about the fields or hunting in the woods. At last, when I was fourteen years old, and was still an incorrigible scapegrace, they sent me to the island of Rugen, to my sister, who was married to Baron von Krackwitz. But I did not stay there very long. The Swedes came to the island, and I could not withstand the desire to become a soldier; therefore, I ran away from the island and enlisted in ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... was the scapegrace, Philip Tell, who assailed the cap of our sovereign with stones, till he ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... it necessary that he should return by a cab. He was a man fairly well to do in the world, as he had no one depending on him but one daughter,—no one, that is to say, whom he was obliged to support. But he had a married sister with a scapegrace husband and six daughters whom, in fact, he did support. Mrs. Carroll, with the kindest intentions in the world, had come and lived near him. She had taken a genteel house in Bolsover Terrace,—a genteel new house on the Fulham Road, ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... much the elegant fashion, to see a hanging. The victim was a girl of sixteen, to suffer for the murder of her infant, and as she went to the gallows she screamed aloud in frenzy the name of the child's father. The young scapegrace looking on, 'twas said, turned pale on hearing her and went into the crowd, asking questions. Two hours later he appeared at his cousin's house and, calling for her guardian, held ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... soft, quick, slow—as if the green old bells were actually out of breath with laughing. No, Gregorio has rung for thirty, yes, nearly forty years, and his ringing is as steady as the pendulum of the Padre's great clock. Ah, it is Juan, young scapegrace! that rings, and out of breath, truly, is he; so that for once he is ready to obey when admonished by the Padre to leave off. "What a noise thou art making, Juanito! I think San Gabriel will be stopping his ears. Run up the choir steps, ...
— The Penance of Magdalena & Other Tales of the California Missions • J. Smeaton Chase
... business man ought not to forget that kind of thing. And so Miss Halliday has made a runaway match, has she? I remember seeing her when I dined at Bayswater—an uncommonly fine girl. And she has gone and thrown herself away upon some penniless scapegrace, most likely? Now, by the bye, how about this Honduras Company, Mr. Orcott; they don't seem to have ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... gentry in the drawing-room; always cutting jibes and jokes at Mrs. Barry, at which she (who was rather a slow woman at repartee) would chafe violently: in fact, leading a life of insubordination and scandal. And, to crown all, the young scapegrace took to frequenting the society of the Romish priest of the parish—a threadbare rogue, from some Popish seminary in France or Spain—rather than the company of the vicar of Castle Lyndon, a gentleman of Trinity, who ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Breslau, Frederick had eked out his income by tutoring a boy, a rather desperate case, whose father, a furniture manufacturer, paid handsomely for his son's private lessons. Frederick's pupil turned out to be a good-hearted chap, an amusing scapegrace, who soon became his devoted slave. It was this scapegrace, now a full-grown man, that Frederick recognised ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... his honesty and imagination, his generosity and childlike capacity for admiration and affection were from nature alone. He was a schoolboy who never grew up; cultivating his cabbages at Worthing in 1875, he is essentially the same shrewd, passionate, romantic scapegrace who deserted his ship in Bombay harbour soon after the battle of Trafalgar, and burnt Shelley's body on the foreshore ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... was never clearly explained, and, whether or no, the elderly lady could not put up with this sort of thing any longer; she complained so often and so vigorously, that her troublesome neighbor was served in due form with a notice to quit. The young scapegrace was determined to be revenged in some way on the party who was the cause of his being so summarily ejected from his quarters. Now, right under his window there was a globe belonging to the old lady, well filled ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... wide for a fraction of a second, then she as quickly accepted the situation, and said, cordially, "I'm sure we shall be friends. And you must like my scapegrace brother, too, if ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... and then went up-stairs softly and tapped at his mother's door. Her 'come in' was glad and eager, and a soft pink colour flushed into her cheeks when she saw it was really Johnnie. This good mother, so just and tender to all her sons, kept a special corner of her heart for the merry scapegrace who excelled the family cat in a talent for unintentional mischief, and almost equalled that luckless animal in a facility for getting into universal disgrace. In another minute Johnnie was squatted ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... could not help smiling at the handsome young scapegrace, and was a good deal touched at his devotion to Virginia, so leaning down from his horse, he patted him kindly on the shoulders, and said, "Well, Cecil, if you won't go back, I suppose you must come with me, but I must get you a hat ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... a scapegrace and a reprobate, who lived by means that were a secret from his neighbours, had sadly neglected this only child. He had neglected her, though with every passing year she grew more and more like her dead mother, until ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... people, were spreading through the castles and even through the half-rustic manors of the lordlings. Ever in our midland provinces, the most backward by reason of their situation, the sentiment of social equality was already driving out the customs of a barbarous age. More than one vile scapegrace had been forced to reform, in spite of his privileges; and in certain places where the peasants, driven to desperation, had rid themselves of their overlord, the law had not dreamt of interfering, nor had the ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... Senator's society nor his dinners—at which this scapegrace remarked that there was too much grace and too little wine —which attracted him to the horse. The fact was the poor fellow hung around there day after day for the chance of seeing Laura for five minutes at a time. For her presence at dinner he would endure the long bore of ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... these poor people, at the dignity of this humble woman, and at the protecting and respectful affection evinced by her son—a young man, whose usual tone of voice and general behavior had seemed to indicate that he was decidedly a scapegrace. "Thanks, Victor," he replied, "I won't take any refreshment. I've just left the dinner-table. I've come to give you my instructions respecting a very important and very ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... that,' said Dr. May emphatically. 'There was a scapegrace brother that ran away, and was heard of no more till he turned up, a wealthy man, ten or fifteen years ago, and bought what they call the Vintry Mill, some way on this side of Whitford. He has a business on a large scale; but Ward had as little intercourse with him as possible. ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... my patience," said he, turning into Tibble's special workshop one afternoon. "Here hath Mistress Hillyer of the Eagle been with me full of proposals that I would give my poor wench to that scapegrace lad of hers, who hath been twice called to account before the guild, but who now, forsooth, is to turn ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... a little shocked at this putting of his thoughts into plain English, for it sounded somewhat profanely. But he was in no mood to find fault with his companion, and they got on very well together to the end of their brief journey. The young scapegrace was glad, indeed, that it was brief, for his self-control was fast leaving him, and having bowed a rather abrupt farewell to the doctor, he was not long in reaching one of his haunts, from which during the evening, and quite late into the ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... both paws, and wept, and besought him so piteously to have patience with her darling, that old Nutcracker, who was himself a soft-hearted old squirrel, was prevailed upon to put up with the airs and graces of his young scapegrace a little longer; and secretly in his silly old heart he revolved the question whether possibly it might not be that a great genius was actually ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... acquainted with some of my new schoolfellows it became less easy to stick steadily to work. I happened to find myself in hall one evening, where we were preparing our tasks for next day, seated next to a lively young scapegrace, whose tongue rattled incessantly, and who, not content to be idle himself, must needs make ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... to your excellency that there is in your dominions a young scapegrace of an Englishman, named Jack Harkaway. He has surrounded himself with many doers of evil, worse even than himself, amongst whom is an old scoundrel, formerly a schoolmaster, who, though he has lost both his legs, still continues to go about, and get ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... old fellow would sit, singing the praises of his scapegrace son, while his hearers would nod solemn heads, fostering old Jasper's innocent delusion for the sake of his white hairs and the medals upon ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... (scapegrace born!) Climbs, and gets the powderhorn, And with speed the wicked soul Pours the powder in the bowl. Hush, and quick! now, right about! For already ...
— Max and Maurice - a juvenile history in seven tricks • William [Wilhelm] Busch
... cause of the war. They had fought Mohammedan fanatics and black savages. It did not matter much to them when they died; now as well as ever. If they had mothers or sisters they were the secrets of each man's heart. The scapegrace youth, the stranded man of thirty who would forget his past, the born adventurer, the renegade come a cropper, the gentleman who had gambled, the remittance man whose remittance had stopped, the peasant's ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... the sun-dial! No matter what his age might happen to be, he had the same bright eyes, and the same habit of striking at things without hitting them. Yes, it was John. There could be no possible mistake about it. It was that harum-scarum young scapegrace John. If Miss Amanda had had a heart, it would have gone out to that dear old boy; if she had had eyes they would have been filled with tears of affection as she gazed on him. Of all her family he had been ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... repeated all this to my wife she ran to the old gentleman's room and told him all the things that I should not have known how to say—that we cared for him; that we wanted him to stay with us; that he was far, far more our uncle than the brilliant, unprincipled scapegrace who had died years before, dead for almost a lifetime to the family who idolized him; and that we wanted him to stay with us as long as kind heaven would let him. But it was of no use. A change had come ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... really meant it he would hardly have told her that he loved her, and then not waited for an answer,—not have come back for an answer,—not have gone to their father for an answer. And then, Patience thought, Sir Thomas would never consent to this marriage. Ralph was in debt, and a scapegrace, and quite unfit to undertake the management of a wife. Such was the elder sister's belief as to her father's mind. But she could not force upon Clary the necessity of taking any action in the matter. She was not strong ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... only occupied for the moment, but to make a permanent profession of what with their predecessors was a passing phase of youthful ebullience. It is true that we have still a long step to make before we sink to the mere roue, the shameless scapegrace and cynical man about town of the Restoration. To make a Wycherley you must distil all the poetry out of a Fletcher. Fletcher is a true poet; and the graceful sentiment, though mixed with a coarse alloy, still repels that unmitigated grossness which, according to ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... Mr. Burslem at the grammar school on the hill, the amazing news came one day that Bob Clive, the wild boy who had terrorized the tradespeople, plagued his master, led the school in tremendous fights with the town boys, and suffered more birchings than any scholar of his time—Bob Clive, the scapegrace who had been packed off to India as a last resource, had turned out, as his father said, "not such a booby after all"—had indeed proved himself to be a military genius. How Desmond thrilled when the old schoolmaster read out the glorious news of Clive's defense of Arcot with ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... the old man. "There are others as clever as you, and infinitely less expensive. You ungrateful young scapegrace!" he added, turning on Desmond, "I have been a friend to you and to your family. But for me ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... distinguee, and it is on you that his relations' choice has fallen. I don't know what you will think of it, but I consider it my duty to let you know of it. He is said to be very handsome and a terrible scapegrace. That is all I have been able to ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... fancy manifested therein. As a deaf musician he is comparable to the blind seer who penetrates more deeply into the mysteries of life than those whose physical eyesight is perfect. Beethoven's closing years form a period of manifold complications, caused by the care of his scapegrace nephew, by his settled deafness and precarious financial position. Yet he grimly continued to compose, his last works being of titanic dimensions such as the Choral symphony, the Mass in D and the last Quartets and Pianoforte Sonatas. Beethoven ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... see," he assented with a glance at the pocketbook I had just drawn out. "You want a private room from which you can watch the young scapegrace. I understand, I understand. But the private rooms are above. Gentlemen are not ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... the gentleman a world of good—it complicated matters beautifully. Five minutes ago the case looked dark as night for Miss Catheron—here was a rift in her sky. Who was this man—was it Miss Catheron's scapegrace brother? Jimmy could tell him nothing more. "If you wants to find out about Miss Inez' brother," said Jimmy, "you go to old Hooper. He knows. All I know is, that they say he was an uncommon bad lot; but ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... the twins, Horatio and Tommy; but loyal-hearted and generous to boot, and determined to resist the stern decree of their aunt that they shall forsake the company of their scapegrace grown-up cousin Algy. So they deliberately set to work to "reform" the scapegrace; and succeed so well that he wins back the love of ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty |
