"Scapegrace" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dead. They could easier do without his services in the Circumlocution Office, than they can tolerate his fractious spirits. He poisons life at the well-head. It is better to be beggared out of hand by a scapegrace nephew, than daily ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... explanation of 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 ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... 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 ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... play—L'Homme a bonne Fortune (1686). JEAN-FRANCOIS REGNARD (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, is surrounded ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... 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 hostess, bestowing tender and love-laden glances on her behind that ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the paternal estate beyond his maintenance, his right of succession might easily grow up in the eye of the law as an available asset capable of forfeiture with the theoretical assumption that the scapegrace was unfit to hold his position in the family.(220) His future portion, thus becoming deprived of a representative, might be wholly or in part confiscated to the State. There are many inscriptions confiscating to the State the goods of criminals who transgressed ...
— On The Structure of Greek Tribal Society: An Essay • Hugh E. Seebohm
... 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 ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... another made of the stool of a young scapegrace catamite. 'Twill be to the beetle's taste; ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... ideas, but owed its existence to the fact that each was amused and interested by the other. Youghal found Comus, for the time being at any rate, just as amusing and interesting as a rival for Elaine's favour as he had been in the role of scapegrace boy-about-Town; Comus for his part did not wish to lose touch with Youghal, who among other attractions possessed the recommendation of being under the ban of Comus's mother. She disapproved, it is true, of a great many of her son's friends and associates, but this particular ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... 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 had been married ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... and the like; but the offering had always 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 Gabriel come down ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... benevolences upon the different travellers on the king's highway. A letter of the old lord, his father, which, by the by, is not the letter of an illiterate man, is still extant, in which he complains in very moving terms of his son's degeneracy and misconduct. The young scapegrace, wishing to make his father know from experience the inconvenience of being scantily supplied with money, enjoined his tenantry in Craven not to pay their rents, and beat one of them, Henry Popely, who ventured to disobey him, so ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 354, Saturday, January 31, 1829. • Various
... 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 ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... 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 ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... mortifying the sweet-natured, shiftless little creature. When, in September, bright, talkative Charlotte and baby Emily came to Cowan's Bridge, they found their idolised little mother, their Maria, the butt, laughingstock and scapegrace ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... 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 ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... put about. The girl sat entirely still, regarding the swimmer in a kind of fascinated silence. The irony of fate, indeed, that, at a moment when her whole mind and heart were toward the rose-pink future, this scapegrace ghost from her only "past" should have risen out of the sea upon her. To dream of a Canning, and be entrapped ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... her any expressed fear of,—departure. She was,—and is,—a brave, good woman, attached to her household duties, anxious for her husband's comfort, but beyond measure solicitous for all good things to befall that scapegrace Jack Neverbend, for whom she thinks that nothing is sufficiently rich or sufficiently grand. Jack is a handsome boy, I grant, but that is about all that can be said of him; and in this matter he has been diametrically opposed to his ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... be thought unfortunate because she marries such a pink of perfection as Mr. Western, and avoids such a scapegrace as I am, I ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... a scapegrace when a youth; at sixteen he ran away from home and was by turns servant to a tradesman at Nancy, a workman at Lyons, and a hawker of rabbit-skins. In 1792, he enlisted as a volunteer and in a year ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... 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 towards Lady O'Shane—as to this fellow, don't make such a rout about the ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... perhaps less fond of the scapegrace nephew than was her husband, and she felt the matter chiefly as it affected him, so that she heard with more equanimity than he had done; and as they sat round the fire in the half-light, for which Anne was thankful, the Doctor ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... soon as he should be independent of his father, and free to please himself. Beyond question, however, is it that they were never united in wedlock, and that Will Cowper joined the Home Circuit with the tenacious fame of a scapegrace and roue. ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... already be known 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 ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... be in that direction, you may be sure, for her fate is sealed. Dear me, how sad it is to see a superior girl like that about to throw herself away on a handsome scapegrace. I won't mention names, but you understand me." And Mrs. Jane shook her head, as if she could mention the name of one superior girl who had thrown herself away and now saw the ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... husband's neck with 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 to ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... was excellent, and there was masterly treatment of character in the contrasts of the brothers Dorrit; but of the family generally it may be said that its least important members had most of his genius in them. The younger of the brothers, the scapegrace son, and "Fanny dear," are perfectly real people in what makes them unattractive; but what is meant for attractiveness in the heroine becomes often tiresome by ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... he would not obey his parents, nor would he learn a craft. His father sickened of his grief and chagrin for his son's perversity and died, whilst Alaeddin abode on that his wise. When his mother saw that her husband had departed this life [149] and that her son was a scapegrace and a good-for-nought, she sold the shop and all she found therein and fell to spinning cotton and feeding herself and her graceless son Alaeddin with her toil. The latter, seeing himself quit of his father's danger, [150] redoubled in his gracelessness and his perversity and would not ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... like him. They did not approve of him as lord and master, nor was it possible for them to resign themselves to the fate that had put this young scapegrace into the shoes, so to speak, of the grim old barons Rothhoefen, who whatever else they may have been in a high-handed sort of way were men to the core. This pretender, this creature without brains ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... present, he would go hopping up the steps of paradise on one foot. He is strong on boxing. All beliefs are possible to him. He plays in the gutter, and straightens himself up with a revolt; his effrontery persists even in the presence of grape-shot; he was a scapegrace, he is a hero; like the little Theban, he shakes the skin from the lion; Barra the drummer-boy was a gamin of Paris; he Shouts: "Forward!" as the horse of Scripture says "Vah!" and in a moment he has passed from the small ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... 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 ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... a little. "My father was saying something like that to me a while ago. He meant that they used to think me a great scapegrace here. Do you ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... shall want his protection. You may well say that. What other object can such a scapegrace have? The girl is handsome—well made—can show a pretty foot. How the upper story is furnished matters little. That's blinked in you women if nature has not played the niggard in other respects. Let this harum-scarum ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Wankin is 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 ...
— The Amateur Army • Patrick MacGill
... you have taken the Queen's shilling! Strange! But it is no business of mine. Young scapegrace, ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... than a couple of pounds of lollipops every week, and doubtless would have consumed more had her pocket-money allowed it. The second of Totty's guests was Annie West, whom you know already, for she was at the 'friendly lead' when Thyrza sang; she was something of a scapegrace, constantly laughed in a shrill note, and occasionally had to be called to order. The third was a Mrs. Allchin, aged fifteen, a married woman of two months' date; her hair was cut across her forehead, she wore large eardrops, and over her jacket hung a necklace with ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... customs, under control of no stern records of society, Calhoun had caused some trouble in his time by the harmless deeds of a scapegrace, but morally—that is, in all relations of life affected by the ten commandments—he was above reproach. Yet he was of the sort who, in days of agitation, then common in Ireland, might possibly commit some act ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... audacity and loyalty, so perfectly realized and rendered in this quaint and fascinating play. The admixture of what a modern boy would call cheek and chaff with the equally steadfast and venturesome resolution of the indomitable young scapegrace is so natural as to make the supernatural escapades in which it involves him quite plausible for the time to a reader of the right sort: even as (to compare this small masterpiece with a great one) such a reader, while studying the marvellous text of Meinhold, is ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... beside her fireplace with a boyish wonder at finding himself so much at home, he had represented the incalculable in her carefully planned life. Declining to accept the attitude of other people toward her, he had almost upset her attitude toward herself. He was the first man since the scapegrace cousin who had neither feared nor yet provoked her sharp tongue. While he relished her wit, it had always been with an unspoken deprecation of its cutting edge. He gave her a queer feeling of having allowances ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... ramshackle piano in an East Side restaurant in New York when the Colonel picked him up, Sebastian could do charming things with quite simple little tunes, if you did not inquire into problems of harmony and counterpoint too closely. He was doing them now, weaving odds and ends of familiar tunes, rather scapegrace and thin, into a lovely, reassuring whole, that made you feel rested and safe. Judith, making herself comfortable against a stiff and unwieldy Arts and Crafts sort of cushion, as long experience had ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... arrive in the 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
... I might come to surpass you in virtue, learning, wit, and appearance, and so win our Uncle George's regard, and, incidentally, his legacy. But I was a young demon, romping with the grooms in the stable, while you were a young angel in nankeens, passing studious hours with your books. When I was a scapegrace at Harrow, you were winning golden opinions at Eton; when you were an 'honors' man at Oxford, I was 'rusticated' at Cambridge. Naturally enough, perhaps, I grew sick of the name of Peter (and, indeed, it smacks damnably of fish, don't you think?)—you, or your name, crossed ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... 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 of shaking its dust off his feet. His father, roused for once ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... supper, and work alongside the old man for hours at a time. Folks considered it only another odd fad on the part of the deacon. They prophesied that he would sooner or later he sorry for having anything to do with such a good-for-nothing scapegrace as Nick Lang, who would not hesitate to play some nasty practical joke on his benefactor when the notion seized him and he had grown tired of ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson
... forward and shook hands. "You will find her ladyship in, I believe. She will be delighted to see you. This young scapegrace," here he caressed his son's clustering curls tenderly—"has not yet done with his lessons—the idea of the circus to-day seems to ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... trees,- See to her side avenging Valor fly:- "Ha! Villain! Draw! Now, Terraitorr, yield or die!" - When the poor hero flounders in despair, Some dear lost uncle turns up millionnaire, - Clasps the young scapegrace with paternal joy, Sobs on his neck, "MY ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... herself away upon a poor man, or one who cannot 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 ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... time in clasping him in her embrace, and reasoning with him as she wept. "My lord and master," she said, "it is your duty, of course, to keep your son in proper order, but you should also regard the relationship of husband and wife. I'm already a woman of fifty and I've only got this scapegrace. Was there any need for you to give him such a bitter lesson? I wouldn't presume to use any strong dissuasion; but having, on this occasion, gone so far as to harbour the design of killing him, isn't ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... this long interval, Balboa had not been idle. A singular change had taken place in his character. He had entered upon the adventure in his famous barrel on Encisco's ship as a reckless, improvident, roisterous, careless, hare-brained scapegrace. Responsibility and opportunity had sobered and elevated him. While he had lost none of his dash and daring and brilliancy, yet he had become a wise, a prudent and a most successful captain. Judged by the high standard of the modern times, Balboa was {35} cruel ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... died, poor fellow; he was a good soldier—and his'—I felt she was going to say 'his fool of a widow,' but a glance from me quelled her; 'his widow went and married that good-looking scapegrace, Jack Watts-Morgan. Never marry a man, my dear, with a double-barrelled name and no visible means of subsistence; above all, if he's generally known by a nickname. So you're poor Tom Cayley's daughter, are you? Well, well, ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... long before he found out all about the accident; when there was a grand to-do, as may be expected, Mr Vernon expressing himself very strongly anent the fact of Jupp putting such a dangerous thing as gunpowder within reach of the young scapegrace, and scolding Mary for not looking ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... Coughan, Norfolk, who was married in 1581. It is reasonably conjectured that he could not have been over twenty-one when in May, 1609, he joined the company going to Virginia. Henry was evidently a scapegrace, whose friends were willing to be rid of him. Such being his character, it is more than probable that he was shipped bound as an apprentice, and of course with the conditions of apprenticeship in like ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... I am not a directory. A person who knows everybody usually knows nobody—worth knowing! But it seems to me I did know of a Saint-Prosper at the military college at Saumur; or was it at the Ecole d'application d'etat-major? Demmed scapegrace, if I am not mistaken; sent to Algiers; must be the same. A hell-rake hole!—full of German and French outcasts! Knaves, adventureres, ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... 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 ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... 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 ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... and a good man are not necessarily the same thing. Many a scapegrace has been dearly loved by his wife, and many a highly respected man has been secretly despised by his wife and children. When the prison doors open to discharge the sinners who have served long sentences, the wives of those who have been good husbands are waiting for them with open arms. The ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... case bravely for the scapegrace Mr. Butler, dwelling particularly upon the error under which he was labouring, that he had imagined himself to be knocking at the gates of a monastery of Dominican friars, that he had broken into the convent because denied admittance, and because he suspected some treacherous reason ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... 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 and wrapped the child in it; little ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... strictures naturally inspired by envy?—had been known to add that he also 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
... 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
... lately. I think that Duncan gave him a rough lesson the other night which did him good, and dear old Rose too has been leading him by the hand; but the best thing is that, through Wright, he sees less of Eric's friend, that young scapegrace Wildney." ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... a poor fellow—the 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, but it seemed the poor wretch had been building up his dependence upon that hope and was resting ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... 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 ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... 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 maids are domesticated ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... long determined," he said, "that if you ran counter to my wishes, and persisted in your infatuated affection for that scapegrace, I should remove you to some secluded spot, where you might reconsider your conduct and form better resolutions for the future. This country house answered the purpose admirably, and as an old servant of mine, Mrs. Jorrocks, chanced to ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... can, aunt, if she married a man whom she knew to be a scapegrace because he was very ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... German priest, in which the latter came to grief, was displayed as an evidence that the American people were determined to drive out all German professors and to abjure German science. The doings of every scapegrace in an American university, of every silly woman in Chicago, of every blackguard in New York, of every snob at Newport, of every desperado in the Rocky Mountains, of every club loafer anywhere, were served up as typical examples ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... dwelling-place was a cave under a cliff about half-way up the creek on the northern side. Fabayne was well-connected, his father was a Church dignitary, a dean, I fancy and was evidently well off; for he allowed the scapegrace son 200 per annum, paid quarterly. Fabayne was a university man and an accomplished scholar, but he had gone the pace at an unusually rapid rate. When I knew him he was a ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... my young friend, do not let the recollection of that scapegrace's words trouble you in the slightest degree. Let me assure you, that no one who knows you, and whose good opinion is worth having, will ever esteem your personal merits less, upon account of—" Mr. Middleton hesitated for a moment, ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... being 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 ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... same one that his scapegrace nephew, Dale Wacker, was caught peddling the stolen pickles in. I saw Lem painting it fresh out in his shop only two days ago. You know ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman
... with all her free ways, they could not go the least bit farther with her than she pleases. You wouldn't suppose it, but she can keep out of scrapes better than Rashe can—never has been in one yet, and Rashe in twenty. Never mind, your Honor, there's sound stuff in the bonny scapegrace; all the better for being free and unconventional. The world owes a great deal to those who dare to act for themselves; though, I own, it is a trial when one's ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... lads, Rufflers, Blades, Bullies, Mohocks, Corinthians, and Dandies, down to the last drunken clerk who wrenched off a knocker, or robbed his master's till to pay his losses at a betting-office. True; we of this generation can hardly afford to throw stones. The scapegrace ideal of humanity has enjoyed high patronage within the last half century; and if Monsieur Thomas seemed lovely in the eyes of James and Charles, so did Jerry and Corinthian Tom in those of some of the first gentlemen of England. Better days, however, have dawned; 'Tom and Jerry,' instead ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... knew that if he could bring the most abandoned scapegrace along in his studies so that he could spend a year with Miss Georgiana Shipman, in nine cases out of ten these hard-to-manage boys would be saved to the school. Sometimes they graduated at the ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... 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 ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... their heads when they saw those hands. There were some who inferred that Ronicky Doone was little better than a scapegrace, and that, in reality, he had never done a better or more useful thing than handle cards and swing a revolver. In both of which arts it was admitted that he was incredibly dexterous. As a matter of fact, since there was no estate from which he drew an income, and since he had never been known ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... of the boys remarked that Yan was getting very thin and pale. Never very robust, he now looked like an invalid; but at home no note was taken of the change. His mother's thoughts were all concentrated on his scapegrace younger brother. For two years she had rarely spoken to Yan peaceably. There was a hungry place in his heart as he left the house unnoticed each morning and saw his graceless brother kissed and darlinged. At school their positions ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... child. Strange mixture of sternness and softness! The supposed sin of the father was never to be pardoned; but natural affection was to have its way, and be lavished upon the son; and the son could not return it, because the influence of the banished scapegrace was too strong—he had won it all for himself, as scapegraces have the ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... 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 was probably not his own; and they will insist ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... 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 ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... this treachery on the part of his pampered offspring, on whom he had lavished everything and to whom he had denied nothing in the way of luxury. It was hard for him to realise that he was as much of a scamp and scapegrace in their young eyes as he was in the eyes of his wife—and the whole of his wife's family, even to the ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... the feeling Renton himself had towards his daughter, and for the first time he found himself on common ground with the scapegrace who professed it, and whose light, mocking face so little enforced his profession. If Bittridge could have spoken in the dark, his words might have carried a conviction of his sincerity, but there, in plain day, confronting the father of Ellen, who had ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... legacies would obviously cut him to the heart. The position of an adopted son towards his adoptive father is one full of delicacy; where a man lends his name he looks for great consideration. And this legacy of Villon's portion of renown may be taken as the mere fling of an unregenerate scapegrace who has wit enough to recognise in his own shame the readiest weapon of offence against a prosy benefactor's feelings. The gratitude of Master Francis figures, on this reading, as a frightful minus quantity. If, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had thrown the glamour of romance about her scapegrace brother from the day he had flung out of the house in ignominy, boasting with the arrogance of inexperience that he would succeed and come back triumphant, to fill them with envy and chagrin. She never had heard from him directly since, but ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... indebted for the place to that scapegrace Hill. The head clerk was Hill's cousin, himself utterly unlike his relation, yet a good deal attached to him. Hiram, who made it a rule never to lose sight of anybody, always managed to fall in with Hill (who had ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... a very tender spot in her heart for pretty Cyril, where she had none for scapegrace Betty. She had doctored Cyril for bruises, had washed his face in her own room and brushed his wavy hair; had kissed him, and given him cakes, and acid drops, and bananas. And although these small sweet matters were just between Miss Sharman and Cyril—their influence ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... O King of the Age, that there dwelt in a city of the cities of China a man which was a tailor, withal a pauper, and he had one son, Alaeddin hight. Now this boy had been from his babyhood a ne'er-do-well, a scapegrace; and, when he reached his tenth year, his father inclined to teach him his own trade; and, for that he was over indigent to expend money upon his learning other work or craft or apprenticeship, he took the lad into his shop that he might be taught tailoring. But, as Alaeddin was a scapegrace ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... "Ay, it was the scapegrace, Philip Tell, who assailed the cap of our sovereign with stones, till he struck it down," ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... "How now, neighbour SCAPEGRACE, wherefore so in the dumps? Thou seemest to have a sore struggle with thy load, which, sooth to say, seems a heavy one. Can I ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Big Nightcap Letters - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... were; good and true. There were Black Knight and Scapegrace, Rightful and Happy Lad, Bean Eater and Emetic—the latter the great sprinter who was bracketed with Swallow on the book-maker's sheets. Mares, fillies, geldings—every offering of horse-flesh above three years. ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... 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 enough in ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... in 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 in the ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... 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 ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... it is to the public to have even a social scapegrace hatch out golden ideas for their education and amusement, notwithstanding the neglect of ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... 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 laugh as catchin' ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... 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 worse than ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... 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 over ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 Burke's famous aphorism, ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... 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 ripe ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... silent. Her brother's infatuation for the Vicar's scapegrace ward was the affair of a year ago. She had hoped he had forgotten it. His escapades at the time, in company with his hero, had caused his mother to seek the advice ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... much tendency to dissipation. The authorities of the college could not afford to expel or even offend a student. for its endowment was so small that it must have all the instruction fees possible, and must keep on good terms with the wealthy fathers of its scapegrace students. The scapegraces soon found this out, and the result was a little pandemonium. Only about a dozen of our number studied at all; the rest, by translations, promptings, and evasions escaped without labor. I have had to do since, as student, professor, or lecturer, with some half-dozen large ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... changed. She was more thoughtful; she looked at him with softer eyes. It seemed to her very wonderful, this friendship between a rough, big man and her brother, who had always been something of a scapegrace at home. Her own regard for Kelley deepened. "Men ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... family, the ne'er-do-weel, who enlisted. There were, of course, certain exceptions—such, for instance, as when a lad came of a fighting family, with father, uncles, and brothers all in the Army. As for the gentleman ranker, he was always a scapegrace. ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... a day when we stood before the graves of my father and mother, who had died years after I had left England died mourning me as dead and from the lips of an old greybeard, who had been my schoolmate, we heard how that scapegrace son of theirs had gone treasure-seeking and had never returned all those ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... the wretch is certainly intoxicated; how wickedly his eyes begin to twinkle. Why, Scapegrace, I'm ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... fervent envy of his recognized depravity and of the hateful ease with which he thought of something to say in those uncomfortable moments when he and I and Stella were together. At most other times I could talk glibly enough, but before this seasoned scapegrace I was dumb, and felt my reputation to be hopelessly immaculate ... If only Stella would believe me to be just the tiniest bit depraved! I blush to think of the dark hints I dropped as to entirely fictitious women who "had been too ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... in the remote future, one of his family would become enamoured of those insignificant animals to which he had never vouchsafed a glance in his life! Had he guessed that that lunatic was myself, the scapegrace seated at the table by his side, what a smack I should have caught in the neck, what ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... announcement for Master Tom! He was to go up to tea the first night, just as if he were a sixth or fifth form boy, and of importance in the School world, instead of the most reckless young scapegrace amongst the fags. He felt himself lifted on to a higher social and moral platform at once. Nevertheless he couldn't give up without a sigh the idea of the jolly supper in the housekeeper's room with East and the rest, and a rush round to all the studies ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... servants' hall, than with the 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
... 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, forgive the lad. He will ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... words, both of you, also made me feel a trifle foolish. My judgment is shaken to the earth. Here I've been holding you up as a kind of paragon, a fossilized Galahad, with a horizon just at your elbows, to find you touring France, faisant l'aimable with a frolicsome scapegrace in ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... was the scapegrace of the school, and the most trying scapegrace that ever lived. As full of mischief as a monkey, yet so good-hearted that one could not help forgiving his tricks; so scatter-brained that words went by him like the wind, yet so penitent for every ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... broken 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 most dear to her, although, as he had ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... issued. Looking over, they could see on a ledge about six feet down a little corduroyed, blue-jerseyed figure, and a frightened, freckled face that peered upwards. Gwen recognized the urchin in a moment: it was Johnnie Cass, the scapegrace of a family of fisher folk who lived in the village, and the naughtiest boy in Winnie's Sunday School class. He was in no immediate danger, for the ledge was wide, but the wall of rock above him was too steep to admit ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... blind furies—and how blindly furious he can sometimes be!—of controversy. With Mr. Belloc, on the other hand, laughter is a separate and relinquishable gift. He can at will lay aside the mirth of one who has broken bounds for the solemnity of the man in authority. He can be scapegrace prince and sober king by turns, and in such a way that the two personalities seem scarcely to be related to each other. Compared with Mr. Chesterton he is like a man in a mask, or a series of masks. He reveals more of his intellect to the world than of his heart. He is not one ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... peasant fathers. A poor apprentice is the hero of "Poverty Is No Crime," and a wealthy manufacturer the villain of the piece. Good-heartedness is the touchstone by which Ostrovsky tries character, and this may be hidden beneath even a drunken and degraded exterior. The scapegrace, Lyubim Tortsov, has a sound Russian soul, and at the end of the play rouses his hard, grasping brother, who has been infatuated by a passion for aping foreign fashions, to his native ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... number of things crowded themselves into a few brief years! It is not easy to curtail these boyhood adventures of Sam Clemens and his scapegrace friends, but one might go on indefinitely with their mad doings. They were an unpromising lot. Ministers and other sober-minded citizens freely prophesied sudden and violent ends for them, and considered ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... 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 beginning ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... Town-guard. To 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
... relatives who had come from home to search for and bring him back. It is a strange error of judgment which sends such men as this to the Colonies, but perhaps those who are responsible consider they are justified by the removal of the scapegrace and finally getting rid ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth |
