"Scapegrace" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his indiscretion, Villain's partner makes confession. Juvenile, with golden tresses, Finds her pa and dons long dresses. Scapegrace comes home money-laden, Hero comforts tearful maiden, Soubrette marries loyal chappie, Villain ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... 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 over our aromatic uncle ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... stranger, with an unmoved countenance. "Goat! let us not deceive the Innocent! A scapegrace is one thing, a scapegoat is another, and from some points a preferable one. But the Innocent is abroad, I perceive. Innocent, I am the Scapegoat. ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... 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 kept his hounds and drank his ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with a young Madam of exceeding Beauty, and of large Fortune in her own right, the daughter of a neighbouring Baronet. And she, to her sorrow, poor soul, became as desperately enamoured of this young Scapegrace, and would have run away with him, I have no doubt, had he asked her, but for a spark of honour which still remained in that reckless Heart, and forbade his linking the young girl, all good and pure as she was, to so desperate a life as his. And so he went wandering for a time up and down the ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... 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 over ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... all my 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 kind to me. But then"—as I would feelingly lament,—"we ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... 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, of which he had ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... am afraid your majesty is a sad scapegrace," replied Florimel: "however, we all know that the sceptre of an ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... 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 often told her, there ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... truth, almost always remain at his office so late as to make 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, about a quarter ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... 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 and guidance of ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... flourishing gallant, and somewhat later (during the Fronde), from his blunt speech and familiar manners with the Parisian mob, became the idol of the market-women, and was therefore dubbed Roi des Halles. But this scapegrace suitor withdrew his pretensions in order to gratify, it is said, the handsome though decried Duchess de Montbazon, who had enthralled him in her flowery chains as a led-captain. On entering her nineteenth year Mdlle. de Bourbon was promised in marriage ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... scapegrace from city and from college, was in an ecstacy; he had never beheld skies so blue, lakes so fair, landscapes so lovely; with every breath he seemed to draw in life, vigor, and a new sense of beauty. Every morning he was up at sunrise, scouring the country ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... Bonn, first as a singer, and afterward as Capellmeister to the court. Musicians were not held of much account in those days, and the marriage of a singer with the daughter of a cook was not at all considered a mesalliance. Johann was a sad drunken scapegrace, and his poor wife, in bringing up her family upon the small portion of his earnings which she could save from being squandered at the tavern, had a pitiably hard and long struggling ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... 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 after ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... 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 ripe old ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... officer was there! It was only just now, that I was talking about him to my wife. He was the life of the house!—how well he could perform plays—particularly the character of a scapegrace. In the Two Edmonds, for instance, he would make you die with laughing, in that part of a drunken soldier—and then, with what a charming voice he sang Joconde, sir—better than they ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... 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
... long-suffering in many ways, though roused to wrath by any injury to his young bedding-out plants. Mrs. Ramsay 'mothered' Clive, feeling it was some return for the kindness which Uncle David had shown to her own girls. She grew fond of the young scapegrace and covered his escapades as far as possible, so as not to alarm nervous Aunt Nellie, who would have been much perturbed at some of ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... blue surcoats laced with gold. As for the Dragoons, they were to be recognized by a kind of fur bonnet, of which the tail fell gallantly over the ear. The Dragoons had the reputation of being scamps, a scapegrace crowd, witness the song: ...
— The Seven Wives Of Bluebeard - 1920 • Anatole France
... 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, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... household, by her 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 ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... the little 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 Big Nightcap Letters - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... after 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
... someone rich and 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
... brought as near as art allowed—not near enough to satisfy him—the entranced and happy pair. That old man, with nine times ten thousand pounds safe and snug in the stocks, was miserable to look at, and as miserable in effect. He was a widower, and had a son at Oxford, a wild, scapegrace youth, who had never been a joy to him, but a trial and a sorrow even from his cradle. Such punishments there are reserved for men—such visitations for the sins our fathers wrought, too thoughtless of their progeny. How the old man envied the prosperous ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... fond and widowed father, and 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 burgher life is to me intolerable. ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... 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 this a fixed purpose on your part to cut short my own existence? But ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... 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, abominable ...
— A Little Rebel - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... scapegrace!" said the Prince, laughing. "It is you who deserve a promotion, but, by thunder! we are not ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... fire eating. gaming, gambling; blind bargain, leap in the dark, leap of faith, fool's paradise; too many eggs in one basket. desperado, rashling[obs3], madcap, daredevil, Hotspur, fire eater, bully, bravo, Hector, scapegrace, enfant perdu[Fr]; Don Quixote, knight- errant, Icarus; adventurer; gambler, gamester; dynamitard[obs3]; boomer [obs3][U. S.]. V. be rash &c. adj.; stick at nothing, play a desperate game; run into danger &c. 665; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... at great bonfires at the Temple gate the frenzied people 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
... 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 ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... 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
... 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 ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... particularly clever in disguising himself, so as to be quite unrecognisable. With his dress he changes his voice, gait, and even his face; and will look the part of a decrepid old woman every bit as well as the more easily assumed one of a scapegrace student. His vivacity, good-humour, and fun, are inexhaustible. In the ludicrous extravaganzas, reviews of the past year, which nearly every carnival sees produced at the Palais Royal, he is perfectly irresistible. Powerfully aided by Grassot, Lemenil, Sainville, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... You should have seen her happiness in Harvey. She could hardly bear to let the little fellow out of her arms, and how she cried and clung to him when we parted at the Oakland wharf! Poor little mother! She has never given up the hope of seeing that scapegrace of an ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... his chin. The door softly opens; the "bull's-eye" flashes its gleam first on one bed, then on the other. "All right here," is the inspector's mental verdict as he pops out again suddenly as he entered. Billy McKay, the scapegrace, is safe and Stanley has time to ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... made from the stool of a young scapegrace catamite. 'Twill be to the beetle's taste; he likes it ...
— Peace • Aristophanes
... 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 ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... I—I mean to say I was regenerated out here. The truth is I was a good deal of a scapegrace when I left England. I was always for hunting and horses, and naturally I came directly to the wild West country, and here I've been ever since. I've had my turn at each phase of it—cow-puncher, soldier, ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... with Tom Thurnall. Plenty of trouble had both the lads given the Doctor in the last five years, but of very different kinds, Tom, though he was in everlasting hot water, as the most incorrigible scapegrace for ten miles round, contrived to confine his naughtiness strictly to play-hours, while he learnt everything which was to be learnt with marvellous quickness, and so utterly fulfilled the ideal of a bottle-boy (for of him, too, as of all things, I presume, ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... the 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. ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... 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 ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... Salvation," contains four short stories, some of which are long enough to be fairly called novelets.... "Rod's Salvation" is a good picture of 'longshore life, telling of the devotion of a sister to a scapegrace brother and well worthy ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... him 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
... 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, ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... treats the scapegrace to a string of maxims from the De Utilitate, maxims which a model son might have read, but which Gian Battista would certainly put aside unnoticed, and finishes with some serviceable practical ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... have a dram" Holding the Surgeon's flask with a smile To a young scapegrace from the glen. "O yes!" he eagerly replied, "And thank you, Colonel, but—any guile? For if you think we'll blab—why, then You don't know ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... a blessing it is to the public to have even a social scapegrace hatch out golden ideas for their education and amusement, notwithstanding the neglect of farm ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was 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, ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... better one than 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 she ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... 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 by pitiless rogues, yet the ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... 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 from ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... 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. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... dear," he whispered. "I had no idea it would hurt you to hear this. You have always seemed indifferent, hard even, toward my scapegrace son. And this was right, for—for—" What could he say, how express one-tenth of that with which his breast was labouring! He could not, he dared not, so ended, as we have intimated, by ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... 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 maid, ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... I 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?" ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... strange 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 worse than any ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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
... reached me, 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. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... 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 • Frederic William Farrar
... 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
... to his nephew, telling him we were late: to me a little too politely saying he put no blame on me, but only on his scapegrace of a nephew. I said that our lateness was due to having to ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... 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 be ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... be such a nice man, and so attentive to grandmamma! Even grandpapa not only sings his annual song with unprecedented vigour, but on being honoured with an unanimous encore, according to annual custom, actually comes out with a new one which nobody but grandmamma ever heard before; and a young scapegrace of a cousin, who has been in some disgrace with the old people, for certain heinous sins of omission and commission—neglecting to call, and persisting in drinking Burton Ale—astonishes everybody into convulsions of laughter by volunteering the most extraordinary comic ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... dear reader; hold this well in mind! Here is the profound 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 ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... 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 ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... by the beauty of Rosa, his niece that is to be, and by the affectionate salutations of these young ladies, which he receives in a sort of dream. He is sorely taken aback, too, by the dutiful behaviour of his nephew and has a woeful consciousness upon him of being a scapegrace. However, there is great rejoicing and a very hearty company and infinite enjoyment, and Mr. George comes bluff and martial through it all, and his pledge to be present at the marriage and give away the bride is received with universal favour. ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... 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, and then said, ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... everything at the 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
... throwing 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 engaged to Arthur ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... such baby English at Baden. There, however, she was in a state of enthusiasm—the sort of illuminated transparency they show at the end of fireworks. Mention of her old scapegrace of a father lit her up again. The girl there and the girl here were no doubt the same. It could not be said that she had duped him; he had done it for himself—acted on by a particular agency. This creature had not the capacity to dupe. He had armed a bluntwitted young woman with his idiocy, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a devil of a scapegrace in my time. No tree was too high for me, no water too deep; and, when there was mischief going, I was the ring-leader of the band. Father racked his head for days together to find a punishment that I should remember; but it was all no good: he wore out three ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... looks up curiously, and finally gets rid of the fellow by buying what he does not want, with the charitable intention of giving it to some dear but tiresome relative at home. And ever afterward, perhaps, he associates with his first impression of the Vatican the eager, cunning, scapegrace features of the man who sold ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... always at liberty to play about with the scapegrace young men of her acquaintance, you know. And this morning my employer was seized with a sudden desire to visit Aigle, so we drove over and lunched at a quaint old inn there. We've ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... she had really sacrificed so much, who dealt her the final blow. This idle scapegrace had got into fresh debt and difficulty. Mrs. Bertram expostulated, she wrung her hands, she could almost have torn her hair. The young man stood ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... present case, the Senator would appear to his peers and associates to be conferring a favour on the object of his elderly affections, and to be crowning the series of favours he had already conferred. For Ortensia was the penniless child of his brother-in-law, a scapegrace who had come to a bad end in Crete. The Senator's wife had taken the child to her heart, having none of her own, and had brought her up lovingly and wisely, little dreaming that she was educating her own successor. If she had known it, she might have behaved differently, ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... While young Maurice (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! ...
— Max and Maurice - a juvenile history in seven tricks • William [Wilhelm] Busch
... 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 French fleets." The marshal at once paid his debts. "Go, sir," said he, with a flourish ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... rogues are 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
... are a little wretch—a scapegrace who does not think of that which I love—yourself! You do not know that I am with child, and that in a little while I shall be no more able to conceal it than my nose. Now, what will the abbot say? What will my lord say? He will kill you if he puts himself in a passion. My advice is little one, ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... 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 this method. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... 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 up all the love of ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... goddess;—and then, though he is a god, he is a dry, silent, uncongenial and uncomfortable god. It would have suited me much better to have married a sinner. But then the sinner that I would have married was so irredeemable a scapegrace." ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... jobs which I need not count up now. There is no one in the house but yourself and an apprentice, who is bound to my son—worse luck—an idle good-for-nothing, with whom you may just civilly pass the time of day, but no more. He is not a companion fit for any young woman—a wild scapegrace. Mr Lambert would be glad to be quit of him. Now, if your box is taken to your chamber, you may go and lay aside your hood. I suppose you have more gowns than ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... and some 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 were reversed. Yan was the principal's ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... 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 ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... error. Now, isn't all this talk of artistic 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, ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... 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 ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... matter—not so much so as to forfeit anything of lucidity. Let me state, then, in all earnestness and sobriety and simplicity of speech, what is known to every worldly-wise male dweller in the cities, to every scamp and scapegrace of the clubs, to every reformed sentimentalist and every observer with a straight eye—namely, that in all the various classes of young women in our cities who support, or partly support, themselves in vocations which bring them into personal contact with men, female chastity is a vanishing ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... lunch time came neither Madge nor Kid appeared for the meal. Much calling failed to bring a response. Then I remembered and gave account of the conversation I had heard. It was found that Dynamite was gone from the corral. Evidently the little scapegrace had meant what he said and had carried Madge off. Mrs. Williams ordered the cart and at once we started after ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... was not the 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. ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... Clyde's address. I must bring him to comfort Cecilia when she learns the truth. She was fond of that poor scapegrace, with all his faults and follies. He paid bitterly ...
— The Romance Of Giovanni Calvotti - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... 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 severely with his own hand, that he lay ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 354, Saturday, January 31, 1829. • Various
... His 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 ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... gasped 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 you ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... Humbert was 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 he was general of brigade. Kleber, Lefebvre, Suchet, ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... "Oh! you young scapegrace," was the rejoinder, "if ever I forgive you, I'll—umph!—that I will"—then changing his tone to one of much feeling, he continued, "So you hadn't forgotten the old man then, Frank? ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... 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 reside in the neighbourhood, I have warned ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... For the first time the thought amused him, and then it maddened him. He had played the part of an idiot, and all because there had been born within him a love of adventure and the big, free life of the open. No wonder some of his old club friends regarded him as a scapegrace and a ne'er-do-well. He had thrown away position, power, friends and home as carelessly as he might have tossed away the end of a cigar. And all—for this! He looked about his cramped quarters, a half sneer on his lips. He had tied himself to this! To his ears there came faintly ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... looking after the retreating figure; "she's going out to hunt for that drunken old scapegrace of a father, I'll warrant. It's dangerous for a fine young girl with a face like hers to be on the streets alone at this hour of the night. I've told the old basket-maker so scores of times, but somehow he does not seem ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... the dories over the side in the same breath. But his aspirations received a chilling setback from none other than Bijonah Tanner himself. The old man had been sleepless for a week, trying to nose out the Lass for the top haul of the fleet, and here was a young scapegrace who came and cast anchor within a hundred ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams |
