"Scamp" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... years, long before the conquest of the Moors—watches him. Well then"—Villiers sweeps with a white feminine hand the long hair that is falling over his face—he has half forgotten, he is a little mixed in the opening of the story, and he is striving in English to "scamp," in French to escamoter. "The family are watching, death if he is caught, if he fails to kill the French sentry. The cry of a bird, some vague sound attracts the sentry, he turns; all is lost. ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... neighbour was a worthless young scamp named Jo Garvey, who lived mainly by hunting and fishing. Jo was a sharp-witted rascal, without a single scruple between, himself and fortune. With a tithe of Hans's industry he might have been almost anything; but his dense laziness always rose up like ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... old picture fits into an old frame, and one could leave her about—so he put it to himself—without fear of her getting damaged. When Tom Morrison, shrewd business man, dropped a hint about the rashness of marrying the daughter of a scamp like Ferdinand Selincourt, Bernard merely stared at him and let the indiscretion go in silence. He can scarcely be said to have loved his bride, for up to the time of the wedding his nature was not much more developed than that of a prize bull, but he considered her a very pretty ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... took a rope, about ten feet long and one inch thick, and placed one end of it around the horns of the "in hand ox," and gave the other end to me, telling me that if the oxen started to run away, as the scamp knew they would, I must hold on to the rope and stop them. I need not tell any one who is acquainted with either the strength of the disposition of an untamed ox, that this order{163} was about as unreasonable as a command to shoulder a mad bull! I had never driven oxen before, and I was as awkward, ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... is a young scamp, Polly—that is my present notion of him: it will surprise you to hear that, for my part, I do not love him one whit. Ah! years ago I saw something in that lad's eye I never quite fathomed—something his mother has not—a depth which warned ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... Jones, Plunkett, Cooper, Glover, Carew (descendants of the famous Bamfield Moore Carew), Loversedge, Mansfield, Martin, Light, Lee, Barnett, Boswell, Carter, Buckland, Lovell, Corrie, Bosvill, Eyres, Smalls, Draper, Fletcher, Taylor, Broadway, Baker, Smith, Buckly, Blewett, Scamp, and Stanley. Of the last-named family there are more than two hundred, most of whom are known to the author, and are the most ancient clans in this part ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb
... don't think it ever went to Canvas. I don't think Gainsboro' could have painted the lovely portrait at the Bishop of Ely's, slight as it was; Sir Joshua was by much the finer Gentleman; indeed Gainsboro' was a Scamp. ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... it, you may have it," said Gates. "I don't care much for the money, but I should like to have the scamp compelled to fork ...
— The Young Musician - or, Fighting His Way • Horatio Alger
... ago, he was a captain or a colonel or something equally fancy in the army. He's a dashing young scamp, and he had the good luck or the bad luck whatever you want to call it to engage the affections of a good-looking young actress who was supposed to be bestowing those affections on a man higher up. Naturally, the man higher up looked about for ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... Dan since his departure. Dad spoke about him to Mother. "The scamp!" he said, "to leave me just when I wanted help—after all the years I've slaved to feed him and clothe him, see what thanks I get! but, mark my word, he'll be glad to come back yet." But Mother would never say anything ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... that an incredulous Western world puts no faith in Mahatmas. To it a Mahatma is a kind of spiritual Mrs. Harris, giving an address in Thibet at which no letters are delivered. Either, it says, there is no such person, or he is a fraudulent scamp with no greater occult powers—well, than ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... you, sir? How dare you?" she demanded, furiously. "How dare you stand there and tell me that my Alma left me of her own free will? My Alma leave her mother who loves her so? My Alma run away like some common scamp? I didn't come here to be insulted ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... vermin as myself and my countrymen. He has not yet, however, fulfilled his promise. Scenes such as these are of frequent occurrence at restaurants; bully and coward are generally synonymous terms; any scamp may insult a foreigner now with perfect impunity, for if the foreigner replies he has only to denounce him as a spy, when a crowd will assemble, and either set on him or bear him off to prison. While, as I have already said, nothing can be more courteous than the conduct ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... York turned suddenly to a graceless young scamp who had once been a regular ornament ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... though she had never seen him on a horse. She had, after all, to adjust her views a little, to remember that she was a Mallett, a member of an honoured Radstowe family, the granddaughter of a General, the daughter of a gentleman, though a scamp. She was ashamed of the something approaching reverence with which she had looked at the man on the horse, but she was also ashamed of her shame; in fact, to be ashamed at all was, she felt, a degradation, and she cast ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... point Mr. Vance, remembering, perhaps, that Mr. Nevill Tyson was a great man in his customer's county, and chilled a little by Sir Peter's manner, checked the flow of his reminiscences. "He was a wild young scamp—another two inches round the waist, sir—but I daresay he's settled down steady enough ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... like going back to the place now. However now I'm coming to the point I've an idea that it might suit me as a breeding station, and told her I would stop at Bowen, and go and look at it. Now it would suit me very well if I could leave my protege here for a couple of weeks, as the young scamp has managed to sprain his wrist on board, and so can't very well come with me, though I should like ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... to hide a murderer even in his own village. [Footnote: The Italians here live usually grouped by "villages," that is, those from the same community with the same patron saint keep close together. The saint's name-day is their local holiday. If the police want to find an Italian scamp, they find out first from what village he hails, then it is a simple matter, usually, to find where he is located in the city.] That was conclusive. It was not so in those days. So, between the vendetta, the mafia, the ordinary neighborhood feuds, ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... on deck, Ma'am; though, when I first went mate, I could sleep anyhow and anywhere. I sailed out of Boston to South America, in a topsail-schooner, with an old fellow by the name of Eaton,—just the strangest old scamp you ever dreamed of. I suppose by rights he ought to have been in the hospital; he certainly was the nearest to crazy and not be it. He used to keep a long pole by him on deck,—a pole with a sharp spike in one end,—and any man who'd get near enough to him to let him have a chance ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... not a judge, ma'am, and so can't cross-question," he answered, with a quick blush but a defiant little nod, "and if you were, no one is obliged to incriminate himself. I was merely passing, and the movements of that scamp, Bissel, slightly awakened my curiosity, and I followed him and the girl. I was exceedingly fortunate, and saw enough to enable the judge to draw from the girl the whole story. Now you see what a simple, prosaic part I played. Miss ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... guide, and as often did he catch another glimpse of him and push on. At last a car, not too full for Mr. Hastings to crowd himself into, rewarded his signal, and Tode plunged after him as far as the platform. There he halted. There were many passengers and much fare to collect, so our young scamp had enjoyed quite a ride ...
— Three People • Pansy
... record we have of the Bedlington was a dog named Old Flint, who belonged to Squire Trevelyan, and was whelped in 1782. The pedigree of Mr. William Clark's Scamp, a dog well known about 1792, is traced back to Old Flint, and the descendants of Scamp were traced in direct ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... the boatswain, Mr. Strand, who was taking a look at the lugger over the hammock cloths of the waist, as he stood on the heel of a spare topmast to do so; "I never fell in with a scamp that had ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Smollett's a fine seaman, as I'll own up to any day, but stiff on discipline. 'Dooty is dooty,' says he, and right he is. Just you keep clear of the cap'n. The doctor himself is gone dead again you—'ungrateful scamp' was what he said; and the short and the long of the whole story is about here: you can't go back to your own lot, for they won't have you; and, without you start a third ship's company all by yourself, which might be lonely, you'll have to jine ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... my only sister. The Blair emeralds, as perhaps you know, descend down the female line. They, therefore, came to my niece from her mother. My poor sister had long been disillusioned before death released her from the titled scamp she had married, and she very wisely placed the emeralds in my custody to be held in trust for her daughter. They constitute my niece's only fortune, and would produce, if offered in London today, probably seventy-five or a hundred thousand pounds, although actually they are not ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... scamp—and I suppose I'm a cross-grained devil! But if I was angry, where's the wonder? A man doesn't pick up a quaint little book on the quais, and look to have it turning its ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... to? It's a rotten shame to have that lowdown scamp under Mr. Hooper's roof. It's a wonder Grace doesn't give him away; she must know what a ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... you little scamp! Be off! I am coming. (To Ramel) You see she makes this innocent child ...
— The Stepmother, A Drama in Five Acts • Honore De Balzac
... drowned!" he said, in a voice that broke on the last word. A horrified whisper passed through the class, and they looked at one another with uncomprehending eyes. Peter Funck was the most active boy in the village, the best swimmer, and the greatest scamp the school had ever ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... the thread of her narrative rather abruptly. Sayap wheeled around to see whence the blow had come. The other girls all laughed, but she was angry. Her wrath was raised to the highest pitch however, when she discovered that Shyuote was the aggressor. On a little eminence near by stood the scamp, dancing, cutting capers, and ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... "that the real moral of your story is, that I must become a freemason, because I might travel abroad and be attacked by a scamp who was also a freemason. Now, I think I had better decline joining a society that ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... That must be the hammer-thrower. He put my hand down twice, the young scamp." He turned suddenly to Dede. "Say, it's only twelve miles to Santa Rosa, and the ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... To the foison thy lap overflowing its laurel of Sicily yield. Call, assemble the nymphs—hamadryad and dryad— the echoes who court From the rock, who the rushes inhabit, in ripples who swim and disport. "I admonish you maids—I, his mother, who suckled the scamp ere he flew— An ye trust to the Boy flying naked, some pestilent 55 prank ye shall rue." Now learn ye to love who loved never—now ye ...
— The Vigil of Venus and Other Poems by "Q" • Q
... a fight and got whipped," said Bobby Coon to his neighbor, for Bobby Coon is a graceless young scamp and does not always show proper respect ...
— The Adventures of Jerry Muskrat • Thornton W. Burgess
... the eyes of Dagobert's wife. But she had been bound against interfering by the influence of the Jesuit confessional. The fourth was M. Hardy, a manufacturer, and the fifth, Jacques Rennepont, a drunken scamp of a workman, who were more easily fended off, the latter in a sponging house, the former by a friend's lure. Adrienne de Cardoville, daughter of the Count of Rennepont, who had also been Duke of Cardoville, was the lady who had ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... shall take it!" said George; "look here—I told Aunt Chloe I'd do it, and she advised me just to make a hole in it, and put a string through, so you could hang it round your neck, and keep it out of sight; else this mean scamp would take it away. I tell ye, Tom, I want to blow him up! it would do ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... afraid my little scamp led them into the danger," he said. "Scientific taste forsooth! Science is as good a reason as anything else ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in your pocket," she handed me the tube of sunburn cream, "maybe I'd better check up on some of the others and make sure they haven't forgotten." She went off without another word, leaving me with an unpleasant feeling that she'd come off best, that she considered me an irresponsible scamp. ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... "You're a young scamp. You needn't try to come it over me, you know. Why, I know Blackwall by heart. There isn't such a street there. Who ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... for classes three and four. (To make a list for class one would be but a waste of time.) Procure if you can for this purpose a loose-leaf notebook, and in the several lists reserve a full page for each letter of the alphabet as used initially. Do not scamp the lists, though their proper preparation consume many days, many weeks. Try to make them really exhaustive. Their value will be in proportion to ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... he gave an account of his cut foot, piteous enough. The lieutenant listened. "The 65th? Scamp, I reckon, but flesh is weak! Hasn't been exactly a circus parade for any of us. Let him ride, men—if ever we get this damned wheel out! Keep an eye on him, Fleming!—Now, all together!—Pull, ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... scamp!" cried she, when she heard her visitor's footstep in the upper hall, "I have been waiting for you a full five minutes. I don't wait for every one, I would have you know. Come here and give an account ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... his red poll a redder cowl hung down; His jacket, if through grease we guess, was brown; A vigorous scamp, some forty summers old; Rough Shetland stockings up his thighs were roll'd; While at his side horn-handled steels and knives Gleam'd from his pouch, and thirsted ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... Church that Morton's name became synonymous with scandal throughout the whole Colony. In the very midst of the dun-colored atmosphere of Puritanism, in the very heart of the pious pioneer settlement this audacious scamp set up, according to Bradford, "a schoole of atheisme, and his men did quaff strong waters and comport themselves as if they had anew revived and celebrated the feasts of y^e Roman Goddess Flora, or the beastly practises of y^e ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... important part in the state since the death of the King, that it is fit that he should be made known. The Abbe Dubois was a little, pitiful, wizened, herring-gutted man, in a flaxen wig, with a weazel's face, brightened by some intellect. In familiar terms, he was a regular scamp. All the vices unceasingly fought within him for supremacy, so that a continual uproar filled his mind. Avarice, debauchery, ambition; were his gods; perfidy, flattery, foot-licking his means of action; complete impiety was his repose; and he held the opinion ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... and respectability to the whole exterior; whereas, a broken, squashed, higgledy-piggledy sort of a hat, such as Randal Leslie had on, would go far towards transforming the stateliest gentleman that ever walked down St. James's Street into the ideal of a ruffianly scamp. ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... woman, of your own accord! Now you propose to make him and your family ridiculous, just for a whim. I sent you money to come on here, after your husband's death, and all your life I have tried to be a good father to you. What is my reward? You run away and marry the first irresponsible scamp that asks you; you show no sign of repentance or feeling until you are in trouble; you come back, at my invitation, and are made as welcome here as if you had been the most dutiful daughter in the world, and then—THEN—you propose to bring fresh sorrow and disgrace upon ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... went to the bad—well, as I started to say, Jack found this boy in the caboose one morning as he was starting from Wood's Hollow. He wasn't more than three years old, and how he got there is yet a mystery. Jack took a fancy to him and gave him a home while he lived. I think the young scamp still lives with the widow ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... you were a miserable," she said, bitterly, "a drunken, worthless scamp, but until now I did not know you were a murderer. Yes, comrades, this man with whom you sit and smoke is a miserable assassin. Yesterday evening he tried to take the life of Arnold Dampierre here, whom you all know as a friend of freedom ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... scruples of conscience at the sacrifice he was making of his ward, and stronger still respecting his ward's fortune; but he appeased them with the reflection that if his son were a gambler, a roue, and a scamp, Lord Ballindine was probably just as bad; and that if the latter were to spend all Fanny's money there would be no chance of redemption; whereas he could at any rate settle on his wife a jointure, ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... One scamp wrote so brazenly, so persistently, demanding answers to be sent to a certain prominent club, that I one day laid the letters before Mr. Daly, and he advertised in the theatre programme that "if Mr. B.M.B., of such a club, would call at the box office, ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... from Spring Bank, Kentucky,' then in an aside, which I am not supposed to hear, she adds, 'A great heiress, of a very respectable family. You may have heard of them.' Somehow, this always makes me uncomfortable, as it brings up certain cogitations touching that scamp you were silly enough to marry, thereby giving me to the world, which my delectable brother no doubt thinks would have been better off without me. How is Hugh? And how is that Hastings woman? Are you both as much in love with her as ever? Well, so be it. I do not know as she ever harmed ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... like him are such perverse creatures. He takes his rides just as usual. No; he won't listen to an old woman like me; and, as for friends to advise him, the only one of them that has darkened our doors is a scamp who had better have kept away. You may have heard tell of him. The old Earl, his wicked father, used to be called by a bad name. And the wild young lord is his father's ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... were dragged some distance. The wheel passed over my head, and cut it so that it bled freely, but the wound was not serious. My father was badly hurt. After a while we started for home, and before we reached it the old scamp got frightened at a log, and set off full tilt. Again, father was thrown out, and I tipped over on the bottom of the waggon. Fortunately, the shafts gave way, and let him loose, when he stopped. Father was ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... love. But if you starve and beat them? Perhaps Salina's unhappiness of temper owed its development chiefly to this cause. No wonder, then, that we find her melancholy, morbid, unreasonable, and now so ready to cling again to this wretch, this scamp, her husband, forgiving all, forgetting all (for the moment at least), in the wild flood of love and tears that drowned ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... what was a comin'. For, if you will believe it, he hadn't much more than got sot down when he says to me right there, in the middle of the forenoon, and right to my face,—the mean, miserable, lowlived scamp,—says he, right there, in broad daylight, and without blushing, or any thing, ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... of long words. "Be silent, you black scoffer, and do not allude to such disgraceful things in the presence of respectable people! For I am a decent Christian woman, I would have you understand. But everybody knows your reputation! and a very fit companion you are for that scamp yonder! and volumes could not ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... was born to ill-luck, Tom," he went on; "for some scamp or other robbed me of my little savings as soon as I reached London, and I had to make shift to pay my fare down here. It is a long story to tell how I found you out. I went to the old place first, and they sent me on here. I had a drop of beer and a crust at ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... no person to stand quietly by and let a scamp like Mr. Coyote spoil his whole life. He shook his head in a most obstinate fashion, giving his visitor fair warning ...
— The Tale of Benny Badger • Arthur Scott Bailey
... with a position to keep up simply can't afford to be caught in the act of feloniously making away with pigs in war-time; besides DORA was still alive and she might have something to say; so I had to pretend how pleased I was, and I gave the scamp half-a-crown. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 12, 1919 • Various
... overhauled our stores during the night," he said, "and hang me if the scamp has not ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... promise that he wouldn't tell, for in spite of his handsome coat and fine manners, Reddy Fox is a scamp. And, besides, he has no love for Johnny Chuck, for he has not forgotten how Johnny Chuck once made him run and called him a ...
— Mother West Wind's Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... what I am," she exclaimed, wrathfully descending the stairs more rapidly than she had mounted them, "and if you know anything about the little scamp, I'll ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... her hand, and spoken to her one word of joy at her recovered health. But that had been all. There was a sort of compact, Katie knew, that there should be no other Tudor marriage. Charley was not now the scamp he had been, but still— it was understood that her love was not ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... of course. Scamp! Worm! Cockroach! Low down, ungrateful, pop-eyed pig!" Nor did the reviling stop there. For the space of about ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... realise that he now possessed a definite entity not only in Blakeville, but in the world at large. He was a recognised human being! People who had never heard of him before were now saying, "What a jolly scamp he is! What a scalawag!" Oh, it was good to come into his own, even though he reached it by a crooked and heretofore undesirable thoroughfare. Path was not the word—it was a thoroughfare, lined by countless staring, admiring fellow ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... truth now up in Heaven, the beloved old man? Surely; for the beloved old woman, who alone knew it on earth, is she not there? He knows now how his selfish, wilful, school-hating scamp, of whom only he and Aunt Judy ever boded any good, stole away from his playmates and his games, every afternoon when school was dismissed, and with that baleful phantom before him, and that doleful cry in his ears, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... Vane. I know'd that chap onct, and I found him not a man, but a scamp. I never liked the Vanes, father'n son. The old man's dead, ...
— Five Thousand Dollars Reward • Frank Pinkerton
... seemed to think then," says he, "that it was largely my fault. I suppose she'll feel the same about whatever mischief he's in now. If I could only find the young scamp! But really I haven't time. I'm an hour late at the Boomer ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... manner did Leibel, poor thing, go round and round the cupboard. He gazed in through the glass door, smiled at the box containing the citron, until his mother saw him, and said to his father that the young scamp wanted to get hold of the citron to ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich
... forgotten herself, and lived only for her father and mother, because she loved them, and because they needed her. For the same reason she would have laid herself down in the dust, to make a way for her young scamp of a brother to pass over to get his own will. But for the man who had married her she had professed no love, and even in his fine house it might have ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... beginning in this style already?" she called out. "The supper stood waiting for you a whole hour: now I have put it away. Go to your bedroom; and if you turn out a good-for-nothing and a scamp, it is no fault of mine. I don't know any thing that I had not rather do than look after ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri
... character? Well, I'll be equally candid. Or, at least, I'll give you my opinion of him. It's another superlative. Just as I consider him the best violinist, I also hold him to be the greatest scamp in the place—and I've no objection to use a stronger word if you like. I wouldn't take his hand, no, not if he offered it to me. The last time he was in this room, about six months ago, he—well, let us say he borrowed, without a word to me, five or six marks that were lying loose on the ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... to start another syndicate. I am really tempted to curse my conscientiousness. If I hadn't recopied Davie he would now be done and dead and buried; and here I am stuck about the middle, with an immediate publication threatened and the fear before me of having after all to scamp the essential business of the end. At the same time, though I love my Davy, I am a little anxious to get on again on The Young Chevalier. I have in nearly all my works been trying one racket: to get out the facts ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... work, and unless he is constantly on the watch valuable time is lost daily. In the harvest, however, he has an advantage. The corn is reaped by piece-work, and the labourers therefore strain every nerve to do as much as they can. But then he must be on the lookout to see that they do not "scamp" it. ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... grant you that there is a certain fairness in trying the blackguard and the religionist by different standards. Where the pretension is higher, the test may justly be more severe. But I say it is unfair to puzzle out with diligence the one or two good things in the character of a reckless scamp, and to refuse moderate attention to the many good points about a weak, narrow-minded, and uncharitable good person. I ask for charity in the estimating of all human characters,—even in estimating the character of the man who would show no charity to another. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... intended remonstrance and reproof and proceeded to answer it. "Yes," he said, "I know him. It's Van Rensselaer Livingstone. His cousin, Van Ruy-ter Livingstone, married your cousin Grace—Grace Winthrop, you know. He's a great scamp—this one, I mean; gambles, and that sort of thing, I'm told, and drinks, and—and various things. I shall have to speak to him if he sees me, I suppose; but of course I shall not introduce him ...
— The Uncle Of An Angel - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... like other things Southern, live long and die hard. The old house had been built of the best materials, and its woodwork dowelled and mortised and tongued and grooved by men who knew their trade and had not learned to scamp their work. For the colonel's grandfather had built the house as a town residence, the family having owned in addition thereto a handsome country place upon a large ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... a few rupees has generally proved the most effective ointment. I have known some rascals say, they were sorry they had not been lucky enough to be wounded, as they considered a punctured cuticle nothing to set against the magnificent douceur of four or five rupees. One impetuous scamp, being told not to go in front of the line during a beat near Burgamma, replied to the warning caution of ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... are at a blank wall here. We lack a guide now, that is sure. Two interpreters we have, who may or may not be of use, but no one knows the country. But now—you know our other new interpreter, the sullen chap, Charbonneau—that polygamous scamp with two ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... lifted his hat to go. With a beaming face he muttered something about its being just like the young scamp to give himself a rascally English name, called Hans "my son," thereby making that young gentleman as happy as a lord, and left the cottage with very little ceremony, considering what a ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... the most excited member of the party over this visit to Macquarie Island was Scott's Aberdeen terrier 'Scamp,' who was most comically divided between a desire to run away from the penguins, and a feeling that in such strange company it behooved him to be very courageous. This, however, was Scamp's first and last experience of penguins, ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... forgotten and unimportant, the Captain deferred lifting anchor for a whole week. I called myself unpretty names for thinking that I could not even see her without danger. I despised myself for the judgment that accused me of being such a scamp as to think I would do anything to rob her of the protection and safety you could give her, and I could not, and an egoist for being possessed with the idea that I could ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... scamp, brother, raised above his proper place, who takes every opportunity of giving himself fine airs. About a week ago, my people and myself camped on a green by a plantation in the neighbourhood of a great house. In the evening we were making merry, the girls ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... until his venal nature gave in to their earnestly persuasive eloquence and the contents of their purses, and he consented to let Diavolo 'just try what it was like to sit up on that high box,' Angelica having previously got inside, and, of course, the moment the young scamp had the reins in his hands he drove off ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... it all the fault of that runaway scamp, young Madison, in whom Louis had always been deceived, and who had never been seen since the night of his apparition ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... thing," laughed Robert as he stooped down and picked it up, "to examine a letter not intended for me, but he is such a scamp that I'll do it in this case, hoping to learn something that will help ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... said the captain; "scamp rather than scoundrel. Well, I suppose I shall hear from the count and Porthos and the little man with the pink kid gloves—Aramis. I hate the little animal, but Porthos—I want you to see Porthos. He has gigantic manners. He is so conscious ...
— A Diplomatic Adventure • S. Weir Mitchell
... tempted him to delay his purpose for the simple pleasure of playing, first with you and then with me. It's himself that has given him away; there's mighty little credit to us, Mark. His own pride of intellect has thrown him. If he can win out now I'll forgive the scamp." ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... that! And Jerry-Jo always brings ill-luck on a trip. I should have known better than to let the half-breed scamp go. 'Twas pity as moved me. Jerry-Jo is one as thinks rocking a boat is spirit, and yelling for help, when no help is needed, a rare ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... he loves ter sneak around behind 'em, out of sight, And give a sudden snap and snarl as if he meant ter bite; Of course they know he wouldn't hurt, and only means to scare, But still, it worries 'em ter know the little scamp is there; And if they do git nervous-like and try to hit him back He swells up so with pride it seems as if his skin would crack; And then he's wuss than ever, so they find it doesn't pay, But let him keep on "yappin'" till he's ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... secretarial preparation includes more than merely technical instruction. It gives a sound business training as well, and, in addition, insists on one or more foreign languages. A girl who hopes to become something more than a shorthand-typist ought not to scamp her professional training: this should, of course, follow her school-course—i.e., not begin until she is seventeen or eighteen. Graduates, who have specialised in foreign languages, may also advantageously prepare for the better secretarial ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... thought, 'may not be a scamp; his face is not a bad one, but he's a queer fish. I don't know what to make of him. I shall never know what to make of him! They tell me he works like a nigger, but I see no good coming of it. He's unpractical, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... laid, and other coins were attached to his thigh by means of wax; some of these were silver, and there were also silver plates, all being the thank-offerings of those whom he had cured of fever. Now we had a scamp of a Libyan groom, who took it into his head to filch all this coin under cover of night. He waited till the statue had descended from his pedestal, and then put his plan into effect. Pelichus detected the robbery as soon as he got back; and this is how he found the offender out and punished ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... only sixteen, you think everything is permitted you." Then he adds in a tone of gentle raillery, "and who would think, seeing this little rosy, ingenuous face that I hold on my knees the most notable scamp of ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... a howl from an anonymous Christian in the columns of the Pall Mall Gazette. He protests against the "grotesque indecency of such a scheme," and stigmatises Marlowe as "a disreputable scamp, who lived a scandalous life and died a disgraceful death." That Marlowe was "a scamp" we have on the authority of those who denounced his scepticism and held him up as a frightful warning. His fellow poets, like Chapman ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... I forbid you to speak like that. Have you the least idea where you hail from? A scamp ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... was only a little firelight to make the darkness and emptiness of the large room more noticeable. She knelt down on the hearth-rug and buried her face in the seat of Mrs. Rushton's favourite arm-chair. The dearest of all her dear dogs, Scamp, came and laid his black muzzle beside her ear, as if he knew the whole case and wanted to mourn with her. Two hours passed; Hetty listened intently for every sound, and wondered impatiently why Mr. and Mrs. ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... The old scamp did not know all the facts in Beverley's case, nor did he even suspect what had happened; but he was aware of the young man's tender feeling for Alice, and he did shrewdly conjecture that she was a factor in ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... fooled me. Ef Tennessee hedn't stepped up so powerful peart I moughtn't hev come ter my senses in time. I mought hev tore up Nate's grant by now. But arter this I ain't never goin' ter set out ter act like a scamp jes' 'kase ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... partly because he owned her, but chiefly because sea-sickness incited him to deeds of gallantry. Then there were two skittish nurses, who got on board because one of them knew the second engineer; there was Colonel Tingle (swashbuckler); Senor Canaba (scamp), who had bribed both the captain and the chief engineer (Mr. Bidgood); and lastly a brace of crafty Malays, who were the second mate's contribution to the batch, and made a very reluctant appearance ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 29, 1914 • Various
... of a dying man, without any one knowing how he had caught it, and his wife looked at him like a tigress ready to eat him, and as soon as he saw us he trembled so violently as to make his hands and knees shake, so I said to him immediately: "It is all settled, you dirty scamp, but don't do such ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... with me. And between us was the child. We were holding it by the hands—our little child. (Angrily, to keep herself from crying) It's too silly for anything! I know, of course, that our child would be a gawky youngster of twenty-three by now—that it might have turned into a scamp or a good-for-nothing girl. Or that it might be dead already. Or that it had drifted out into the wide world, so that we had nothing left of it—oh, yes, yes.... But we should have had it once, for all that—once there would have been ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... the half-cracked lady at the Crompton House who sent the hat and slippers. She's been married twice,—run away the first time. My land! what a stir there was about it, and what a high hoss the Colonel rode. Who her second was nobody knows,—some scamp by the name of Smith,—that's your name, and a good one, too, but about the commonest in the world, I reckon. There's four John Smiths in town, and Joel Smith, who brings my milk, and George Smith I buy aigs of, and forty odd more. They say the Colonel hates the name ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... must have been splendidly built to have stood as it has done so many centuries without accident. Winchester tower fell not long after its building, Peterborough tower has been rebuilt in modern days; but Paul of Caen did not scamp his work as the monks of Peterborough did, and no evil-living king was buried below the tower, as was the case at Winchester, thus, according to the beliefs of the time, leading to its downfall. Tewkesbury tower alone can vie with ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... you are so sad and melancholy. I can now prove to you the superior efficacy of my exhilarating means. I found at Cairo, in the Teriaki Square, opposite the hospital for the insane—wasn't it a profoundly philosophical idea to establish in such a place dealers in happiness?—an old scamp, dry as a papyrus of the time of Amenoteph, shrivelled as the beards of the Pschent of the goddess Isis; this cabalistic druggist possessed the true receipt for the preparation of hashisch; besides, he seemed ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... the Doctor, a little impatiently, for it was only the morrow of the parade. "I should think your patience would be exhausted. The scamp has been in more mischief than any other boy in ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... sick. I'm a martyr in this world. [She plucks a flower viciously and pulls off its petals] I believe that if I had the power I'd do this to all of you! I'd do this to all of you! I'd do this to all of you! You just wait, you young scamp! I'll catch you. My heart boils, it boils, it boils over! And now I must smirk before the mistress as if I were a fool. What a life! What a life! The sinners in hell do not suffer as I suffer in ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... him was very indistinct, and I concluded myself misled by a resemblance. Since that day nothing had occurred to remind me of him, and for a long time I had entirely forgotten the good-hearted but reckless scamp, who for a brief period had attracted ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... chariot's womb A fox I saw, with hunger seeming pin'd Of all good food. But, for his ugly sins The saintly maid rebuking him, away Scamp'ring he turn'd, fast as his hide-bound corpse Would bear him. Next, from whence before he came, I saw the eagle dart into the hull O' th' car, and leave it with his feathers lin'd; And then a voice, like that which issues forth From heart with sorrow ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri |
