"Madcap" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... plan too madcap for Peachy to undertake. She revelled in anything venturesome or bizarre. The Camellia Buds did as she decreed, and resigned the courts that afternoon to Bertha, Mabel, Elsie, Ruth, Rosamonde, Winnie, Monica, and Callie, who fell readily into the trap prepared ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... she it is whom we give you. What a madcap you are never to listen to anything but ...
— The Impostures of Scapin • Moliere
... Berthaud. "You are a man of experience. There is Mademoiselle Lemercier who comes here with her aunt. She is very rich; according to what is said she has over a million francs. But she doesn't belong to our set, and besides I think her a bit of a madcap." ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... SAEVA CUPIDINUM. ...he sprang out of bed, surfeited with disgust.... And she rose also, and ran off to her room, laughing like a madcap, and carrying her dress and petticoats ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... all on those tissue-paper hats; the surprise and horror of good Mrs. Ramsey when she beheld Alene Dawson among that madcap crowd, skipping along gaily intent on her play, unobserving the pained expression of the portly lady who was coming up the other side of the street. Mrs. Ramsey had stopped suddenly, "so flustrated by the sight," as she said later, that she had not the strength to hail Alene and when ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... New Hampshire regiment, begged Whitefield to furnish a motto for the flag. The preacher, who, zealot as he was, seemed unwilling to mix himself with so madcap a business, hesitated at first, but at length consented, and suggested the words, Nil desperandum Christo duce, which, being adopted, gave the enterprise the air of a crusade. It had, in fact, something of the character of one. The cause was imagined to be the cause of ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... thee, yes; and to Holly here I must seem as some madcap girl blown to and fro by every wind of fancy, and building me a palace wherein to dwell out of dew and vapours, or from the substance of the sunset fires. Thinkest thou then that I would enter on this war—one woman against all the world"—and ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... Ralph, "to view her more nearly. That madcap earl found me other employment than to remark her ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... Nunez makes a regular fortune and marries a native and has two daughters: Augusta and Margarita. Augusta, the younger, marries my father, Ricardo Hasting, who was a madcap and ran away from his home; Margarita weds a soldier, colonel Buenavida. They all come to Spain with plenty of money; my father plunges into disastrous business schemes, and after he has been utterly ruined he learns, I don't know how, that the fortune of the priest Nunez de Latona is ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... even to the person rejecting it. How much more so must it be to papa, though he likes you, and when you are near him would perhaps, in a fit of unworldliness, be almost as reckless as the creature he calls madcap and would rather call countess. No! sooner with a Will-o'-the-wisp, my friend. Who could ever know where the man was when he himself never knows where he is. He is the wind that bloweth as it listeth—because it is without an aim or always with a new one. And am I the one to direct ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... That is to say, Madcap, in Italian. It appears that a very mixed language is spoken in the ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... at Koenigsberg, and France would have carried her frontier eastward to the Rhine, dismembering Germany. Such, I doubt not, would have been the attempt. The conception is entirely worthy of that Imperial levity with which the war began. But the madcap menace of the French Empire cannot be the measure of German justice. It is for Germany to show, that, notwithstanding this wildness, she knows how to be just. Dismemberment on this account would be only another form of retaliation; but retaliation ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner
... Mab-like revelries. Until now Cigarette had been as absolutely heedless and without a care as any young bird, taking its first summer circles downward through the intoxication of the sunny air. It was not without fiery resistance and scornful revolt that the madcap would be prevailed on to admit that any shadow could have ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... Egyptian remains of far older date. It protected one section of the oldest overland route, when the islet formed the key of the Gulf-head. It subsequently became an eyrie whence its robber knights and barons—including possibly "John, the Christian ruler of 'Akabah" (A.D. 630), and, long after him, madcap Rainald de Chatillon (A.D. 1182)—could live comfortably and sally out to plunder merchants and pilgrims. The Saracenic buildings may date, as the popular superstition has it, from the reign of Salh el-Dn (Saladin) who, in A.D. 1167, cleared his country of ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... the scrub ere they decided to take him at his madcap word, and let his blood be on the chuckle-head of the new-chummiest new chum that ever came out after the rain! Was it pluck or all pretence? It was rather plucky even to pretend in such proximity to the terrible Stingaree; on the whole, the coaching trio were disposed ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... keep his mind easy on that point,' replied the warders. 'We had tried everything we could think of, to get rid of her majesty the queen, but without effect. So a young madcap Shadow, half against the will of the older ones of us, slipped up stairs into the nursery; and has, no doubt, succeeded in appalling the baby, for he is very lithe and long-legged.—Now, ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... Touchstone on a bus From Ludgate Hill to World's End. It was he! Despite the broadcloth and the bowler hat, I knew him, Touchstone, the wild flower of folly, The whetstone of his age, the scourge of kings, The madcap morning star of elfin-land, Who used to wrap his legs around his neck For warmth on winter nights. He had slipped back, To see what men were doing in a world That should be wiser. He had watched ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... madcap, that boy, monsieur. Would you believe it, drunk as he is, he has just mounted his master's thoroughbred, a horse that can do twenty miles an hour, and started for Troyes with a letter in order that it may reach Paris to-morrow! And only nine years ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... sufficiently of puritanism to be properly piquant. There was a tang of the swift, immoral, fascinating 'seventies in Claire's still cautious reference to champagne and cigarettes. It was impossible for any San Franciscan who had lived through those splendid madcap bonanza days to deny the lure of gay wickedness. At least it was hard to keep one's eyes on a prayer-book while the car of pleasure rattled by. And a coffee-and-cake social was, after all, a rather tame experience in the face of beverages more sparkling and eatables distinctly enticing.... Of ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... softened and grew strangely handsome as she listened: she was drawing Phillis out,—leading her to speak of the old life, and of all their youthful sources of happiness. Then she fell into a retrospect of her own young days, when she was a spoiled madcap girl and had all sorts ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... becoming a madcap," the astrologer said, as he led Guy into the room. "I cannot blame her altogether; I have made a boy of her, and I ought not to be shocked at her acting like one. But she gave me a rare fright last night when she did not return until close on midnight. Still, ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... explosion of madcap humour. Not so another succession of scenes produced about the same time. The subject of them is that Leuchsenring whose acquaintance, we have seen, Goethe had made under the roof of Sophie von la Roche. Since then, apparently, Leuchsenring's proceedings had provoked a repugnance in Goethe ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... bent down; before she knew it the little girl's arms were about her neck and the child was telling her about the dance at the stone house across the way. The sister smiled as she listened to the rush of eager words, but she was so glad to find this madcap telling her openly her heart's one desire, that she did what she had never done before in all her life of beautiful child-consecrated work: she said "Yes, and I will go with you. Wait for me outside the ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... overtake her, will find the Little Countess just as she left the cradle, if it were possible to suppose that she has preserved its innocence as well as she has retained its profound puerility. Has that madcap a soul? The word nothingness has escaped me. It is indeed difficult for me to conceive what might survive that body when it has once lost the vain fever and the frivolous breath that ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... only to complain that it froze and did not burn. Longarine is discreetly unhappy for her dead husband, but appears decidedly consolable; Ennasuite is a haughty damsel, disdainful of poor folk, and Nomerfide is a pure madcap, a Catherine Seyton of the generation before Catherine herself, the feminine Dioneo of the party, and, if a little too free-spoken for prudish modern taste, a ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... of May, in 1848, found San Francisco a manless Eden. Stanley, struggling with a few elderly Indians and squaws to carry on his work, bemoaned the madcap folly bitterly. ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... possible in the diggings in this guise, however. You did not know me as the chief performer in that little comedy with Brigalow on Diamond Gully. You did not recognise me in the dark man who talked with you and Burton while the madcap from Kyley's was leading the troopers a merry dance along the lead. By the way, I admire your taste in women, Jim. She's a fine, unshamed barbarian, ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... Member in the principle of his argument if not in the violence of his remedies. He was a young travelling Englishman; one of that class who are Radicals at twenty, Independents at thirty, and Conservatives at forty. He had not yet reached the intermediate stage. He saw in this madcap Radical Member one of the crude but strong expressions of advanced civilisation. He had the noble ideal of Australia as a land trodden only by the Caucasian. The Correspondent, much to our surprise, had by occasional interjections at the beginning of the discussion ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... prince that afterward Belied his madcap youth and proved A greatly simple warrior lord Such as our ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... introduction to the wild young madcap Prince of Wales, afterwards the famous Henry ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... anything could reconcile him to his fate, it was the knowing how pure and good and loving was the wife he was getting. Then he wrote of the doctor and Margaret, whom he described as a dashing, brilliant girl, the veriest tease and madcap in the world, and the ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... left about half-an-hour ago, saying he would soon be back. He is off on some madcap expedition, you may be sure. He ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... His son was Henry the Fifth, the greatest of the Plantagenet kings. When he was a young man, and only Prince of Wales, he was very wild and fond of games and jokes. They used to call him Harry Madcap. ...
— Royal Children of English History • E. Nesbit
... 's all right. No time for pettings now. There 's work to be done. Why didn't Jemima come? This is no place for a madcap like you." ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... on the veranda, enjoying the evening breeze that came laden with sweet scents from off the prairie. Blue Bonnet clapped her hands over Uncle Joe's eyes in her old madcap fashion. ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... morning I'll take you with me, and we'll go a ride together out of the town. We'll have splendid horses. Then we'll come home, wind up our business, and amen! Don't be surprised, don't tell me it's a caprice, and I'm a madcap—all that's very ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... interior affairs of the frigate itself formed their principal theme. Rumours about the private life of the Commodore in his cabin; about the Captain, in his; about the various officers in the ward-room; about the reefers in the steerage, and their madcap frolickings, and about a thousand other matters touching the crew themselves; all these—forming the eternally shifting, domestic by-play of a man-of-war—proved inexhaustible topics for ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... an honest poet once on earth Who beat all other bardies at a canter; Rob' Burns his mother called him at his birth. Though handicapped by rum and much a ranter, He won the madcap race in Tam O'Shanter. He drove a spanking span from Scottish heather, Strong-limbed, but light of foot as flea or feather— Rhyme and Reason, matched and yoked together, And reined them with light hand and limber leather. He wrote to me once on a time—I mind it— A bold epistle ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... very bud of youth, while yet the sparkling jest was ripe upon the merry lip, and the ruddy glow of health upon the cheek gave earnest of a lengthened life———But, soft! methinks I hear my reader exclaim, "How now, madcap, moralizing Mr. Spy? art thou, too, bitten by the desire to philosophize, thou, 'the very Spy o' the time,' the merry buoyant rogue who has laughed all serious scenes to scorn, and riding over hill, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... "You're a madcap!" said her mother. "You'll be brought home on a shutter some day! Mark my words, Bab! You'll see!—or at least I shall; you'll be past seeing! But it don't matter; it's what we're made for! Die or be killed, it's ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... (disorder) 59; ferment &c (agitation) 315; storm, tempest, rough weather; squall &c (wind) 349; earthquake, volcano, thunderstorm. berserk, berserker; fury, dragon, demon, tiger, beldame, Tisiphone^, Megaera, Alecto^, madcap, wild beast; fire eater &c (blusterer) 887. V. be violent &c adj.; run high; ferment, effervesce; romp, rampage, go on a rampage; run wild, run amuck, run riot; break the peace; rush, tear; rush ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... I thought you'd rejoice to know it." The lady turned to me as if Mr. Sawtelle had left us. "Yes, sir; he'd make you die laughing with some of his pranks, that madcap would. I tell you, ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... was just the kind of man in whose company Brougham delighted to spend hours. He would listen to the recital of the thrilling adventures with the Maoris with breathless interest. A story told of the madcap days of Brougham's youth gives some idea of the welcome he would extend to Rutherford. One evening, after Brougham and some other gay spirits had supped together in London, they saw a mob of idle scoundrels beating an unfortunate woman with brutal ferocity. ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... and for her honour. Listen, but tell nobody—four days ago, the King, passing her to go to supper, approached her, under the pretence of tickling her, and tried to slip a note into her hand. D'Amblimont, in her madcap way, put her hands behind her back, and the King was obliged to pick up the note, which had fallen on the ground. Gontaut was the only person who saw all this, and after supper, he went up to the little lady, and said, 'You are an excellent friend.' 'I did my duty,' said she, and immediately ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... like this! Letters rained on me—yes, even love-letters, as if, to quote Mrs. Page, I were still in "the holiday-time of my beauty." As I would always rather make an audience laugh than see them weep, it may be guessed how much I enjoyed the hearty laughter at His Majesty's during the run of the madcap absurdity of "The Merry Wives ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... instead, they had to get used to the strange idea of the dead unknown wife, and the little son for whose sake they were to grow up into wise sober women before they had done with being little girls. What wonder that Angel looked pale and grave after a wakeful night, and that Betty felt that madcap ways and tumbled curls must cease from this ...
— Two Maiden Aunts • Mary H. Debenham
... soon in progress. What a display of neat ankles and deft feet in mocassins! What a clattering of sabots and shuffling of "beefs"! The perspiration rolled off the brow of the musician, and young Lecour was whirling round like a madcap with the daughter of the ferryman of Repentigny, when the latch was again lifted, ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... bird by outward circumstances inaccurately observed. There is the owl. How little do the people of England know of him—even of him the barn-door and domestic owl—yea, even at this day—we had almost said the Poets! Shakespeare, of course, and his freres, knew him to be a merry fellow—quite a madcap—and so do now all the Lakers. But Cowper had his doubts about it; and Gray, as every schoolboy knows, speaks of him like an old wife. The force of folly can go no further, than to imagine an owl complaining to the moon of being disturbed by people walking ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... master, of you,' she began again, 'you are very sorry for me. But you mustn't be too sorry, really! I'll tell you one thing; for instance, I sometimes, even now.... Do you remember how merry I used to be in my time? A regular madcap!... So do you know what? I sing ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... arrived. There was no help for it. She dared not keep him after that in the face of society. But she might take the bold, and perhaps a little dangerous measure of adopting the flight as altogether her own madcap idea. Her thoughts went floundering in the bog of expediency, until she was tired, and declined ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... taken the wind out of Ada's sails and gained a feather in your cap, I can assure you. It all seems too good to be true. The queen dethroned at last!" and Winnie catching Nellie round the waist, danced her up and down the schoolroom in a regular madcap whirl. ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... on a fresh May morning, I took my love to church, To see if Parson Primrose were safely on his perch. He scarce had got to Thirdly, or squire begun to snore, When, like a sun-lit sea-wave, A green and crimson sea-wave, A frolic of madcap May-folk came ...
— The Lord of Misrule - And Other Poems • Alfred Noyes
... said Kitty, nestling quietly to her father's side as her madcap brother and sister whirled round the room. But they brought up with a round turn, though a little dishevelled-looking, to hear Mr. Maynard's ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells
... for him. How could you let a boat go away while the sea is tumbling about in this terrible fashion; and, pray, who has gone in her? Ah, Mr Paget, I am glad to see you have not risked your life. But where is Charles Dicey? Just like him, to do such a madcap trick. My dear girls, your brother jumped into the boat to pick up a silly man who tumbled overboard, and they cannot find him or any of those who ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... their own lives. She quite captivated him by her simplicity and frankness; she washed her masses of brown hair and shook it loose in the sunshine, and she came in wet more than once, and changed her shoes before the fire—just as she had years ago, when she was a madcap little girl running ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... were well grounded, he was captured and borne off in triumph twenty times a day. It was trying work, but HE was always in the vein, and ready to take the rough with the smooth. In all respects the young madcap was up to the standard, so that day and night passed in a ceaseless whirl, which left every one but himself breathless. The glorious month at Hellebergene had done good. He was drawn into endless jovial adventures, so strange, so audacious, that one would have staked ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... lesson from the songs Of woodland birds discoursing on the wrongs Of madcap moths and bachelor butterflies. I should have caught the cadence of the sighs Of unwed flowers, and learnt the way to woo, Which all things know but I, beneath the blue Of Heaven's great dome; for, undesired of thee, I have but jarr'd the ...
— A Lover's Litanies • Eric Mackay
... virtually as Ambassador but without a staff. On this occasion he immediately startled us out of our senses by proposing that we should depose the Khedive and set up Prince Halim. He had converted Freycinet to this madcap view.' ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... very happy, now, in a larger house, with a study and book shelves, his mother a tender and tranquil woman, Faith a contented housekeeper with a servant, and hardly knowing which to adore the most, Polly Henry's merry madcap household, or ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... his son, The nimble-footed madcap, Prince of Wales, And his comrades, that daft the world aside ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... life that Fate, leading a traveler in easy gradients upwards along a road of triumph, suddenly assumes a madcap mood and with wanton hand throws a tiny obstacle in his way; an obstacle at times infinitesimal, scarce visible on that way towards success, yet powerful enough to trip the unwary traveler and bring him down to earth with sudden and ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... what I could to keep your amusements within the bounds of reason and without avail, but I wouldn't be doing my duty to your sainted mother if I didn't try to save you from yourself. I shall do something to prevent this—this madcap venture—I don't know what. I shall see Mr. Winthrop at the Trust Company. There must be ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... a general idea that it is in the most ancient part of the castle, is unknown. Where walls are fifteen feet thick, it is not impossible to have a chamber so concealed, that none but the initiated can guess its position. It was once attempted by a madcap party of guests to discover the locality of the secret chamber, by hanging their towels out of the window, and thus deciding in favour of any window from which no spotless banner waved; but this escapade, which ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... "Madcap schemes?" ejaculated de Marmont. "Nothing more or less, my dear Clyffurde, than complete revenge for the humiliation those de Cambrays put ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... A madcap young assistant on his pony comes tearing along across country. The weighing for the first race is going on; horses are being saddled, some vicious brute occasionally lashing out, and scattering the crowd behind him. The ladies are seated round ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... you are thinking of such a madcap as Katy in Jenny Baynor's sick-room. But that is just my reason. I've talked with Mrs. Raynor, and she is quite willing to try Katy, if we can only get her there to be tried. If there's any one in this world who can tame Katy's ...
— Harper's Young People, March 16, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... and uncontrollable; but one thing softens even her, and checks her usually resistless wheel: it is a mother's prayer. I heard this from my own mother, and experienced it myself, especially in my oldest son Eumedes, who from the wildest madcap became an ornament of his class, and to whom the King—you doubtless know it—intrusted the command of the fleet which is to open the Ethiopian land of elephants to the Egyptian power. You, Hermon, are an orphan, but for you, too, the souls ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... floor. A numbing, wilting sensation wrinkled my spine. The Princess Hildegarde of Barscheit! She stood opposite me, the woman—ought I not to say girl?—for whom I had been seeking, after a fashion, all these months! The beautiful madcap who took the duchy by the ears, every now and then, and tweaked them! The princess herself, here in this lonely old castle into which I had so carelessly stumbled! Romance, enchantment! Oddly enough, ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... he has taken this madcap freak of turning painter," the uncle continues, "there is no understanding the chap. Did you ever see such a set of fellows as the Colonel had got together at his party the other night? Dirty chaps in velvet coats and beards? They looked like a set of mountebanks. And ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... names seven times, in case three should not be enough. Then Robin turned to the Bishop and swore that he should marry these two forthwith. The gown was given back to him, and my lord of Hereford commenced the service. He thought it more polite to obey, remembering his last experience with this madcap outlaw. ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... from old conservative England, and I had been among its most conservative people. I had caught something of its old musty-parchment ideas, and the cricket-like manners of Harriet Hosmer rather troubled me. It took some weeks for me to get over the impression of her madcap ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... lawyer, "would be getting the consent of your parents to any such madcap scheme as going off into the woods to camp, day after ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... sister, not a moment would elapse before she would cast herself upon her neck and weep her sincere contrition, and be for hours an altered being; until her natural spirit would prevail, and she would be again the wild, mirthful madcap, whose very faults could call forth no keener reproach than a grave and thoughtful smile from the lips of those who loved her the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... girls thought they had kept it so quiet, but some one must have 'peached,' I suppose, to curry favor. Whatever made you go, Maggie? You know you have never mixed yourself up with that Day, and Merton, and Marsh set. As to that poor Polly Singleton, there's no harm in her, but she's a perfect madcap. What could ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... I swore I could employ Thine absence well. But all my pride is o'er! Now am I lashed, as when a madcap boy Whirls a swift ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... the past. Harry enlarged upon the fascinations of a London Me; described the curricle he used to drive in Hyde Park; gave me the measurement of Madame Vestris' ankle; alluded to his first introduction at a club to the madcap Marquis of Waterford; told over the sums he had lost upon the turf on a Derby day; and made various but enigmatical allusions to a certain Lady Georgiana Theresa, the noble ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... my friend took it sadly to heart, to my Aunt Gainor's amusement and Mrs. Ferguson's, who would have Dr. Rush set up a ward in the new hospital for the broken-hearted lovers of Darthea. When first Jack Warder was thus badgered, he fell into such a state of terror as to what the madcap woman would say next that he declined all society for a week, and ever after detested the ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... looked again, and in the elderly, lame, one-eyed, sober-looking man, recognised the wild jovial Willy, who had tamed the most unruly fillies, taken the most frantic leaps, carolled forth the blithest song—madcap, good-fellow, frolicsome, childlike darling of gay ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... morning sprang up from sleep, Saying, 'Now for a frolic! now for a leap! Now for a madcap galloping chase! I'll make ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... voice that the old don't hear, but the care-free youngsters do, Is calling them to the fields and streams and the joys that once I knew. And if youth be wild desire for play and care is the mark of men, Beneath the skin that Time has tanned I'm a madcap youngster then. ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... came to him at intervals, in earlier manhood, those outbursts of volatility, which, to serious natures, act as safety-valves after prolonged tension of all the powers of the mind. At such moments of levity he is described as almost boyish in recklessness, plunging into any madcap escapade that might be afoot with heedlessness of all consequences. Stories of misadventures, quips and quiddities of every kind, were then his delight, and of these he possessed a fund which no man knew better how to use. He would ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... young—he will mend his ways! We were all ridiculous when we were twenty. We have all caused our mothers many anxious nights. Time will set everything to rights, and put some ballast in this young madcap's brains. Besides, your friend Patterson doesn't seem to me quite free from blame. In knowledge of books, he may have been unequalled; but as a guardian for youth, he must have been the worst of fools. After keeping your son on a short allowance for years, he suddenly gorges him ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... harmless mischief and a sort of organized playful insubordination. The school had two parties: the sages or good girls, and the diables, their opposites. Among the latter Aurore conscientiously enrolled herself and became a leader in their escapades, acquiring the sobriquet of "Madcap." These outbreaks led to nothing more heinous than playing off tricks on a tyrannical mistress, or making raids on the forbidden ground of the kitchen garden. But the charm that held together the confraternity of ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... she is a good girl ... a trifle of the wilful. She must have it that many things are hurtful to me ... reading in particular ... it makes people so odd. Tina is a small matter of the madcap ... in her own particular way ... but exceedingly discreet, I do assure you, if they will only leave ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... years. Wait till you are grown a little more and better able to bear the toils of war; and the rather as you have war enough at home, considering all the amorous conflicts that are raging in your bosom. Gently, gently with you, madcap! Look what you are doing before you marry; and now give us a little dole for God's sake and for the name you bear; for truly I believe you are well born, and if along with this you are loyal and true, then I will sing jubilee for having hit the mark ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the customary cowardly threat Ward made when he found himself caught in any of his madcap pranks. His rich father was a man of considerable influence in Stanhope, and many a man dared not treat the banker's son to the whipping he so richly deserved simply because it might be that his bread and ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... in white beaded slippers and a green sport skirt broke free from the cavorting ring, and behind Mr. Leary's back the nimble fingers of the madcap tapped his spinal ornamentations as an instrumentalist taps the stops of an organ; and she chanted a familiar counting ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... honoured, who reproached James with the fact that during his absence in Denmark more reverence was paid to his shadow than had been shown since his return to his person. The outrages perpetrated by the King's illegitimate cousin, the madcap Bothwell, were largely laid to James's door, as the doings of a spoiled favourite of the Court: and the unpunished murder of the popular Earl of Moray, the 'Bonnie Earl,' by Huntly—one of the worst crimes even of that lawless time, and of complicity in which the King himself was suspected—aggravated ...
— Andrew Melville - Famous Scots Series • William Morison
... From her madcap craving for new sensation, Ann was destined to evolve an inspiration which with customary energy and Diane's interested connivance she swept through to fruition, unaware that Fate marched, leering, ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... growing up in the Destournier household, Helene, who should have been a devotee, was a merry madcap, who exceeded her mother in daring feats, a dark-eyed, laughing maid the Indian girls adored. She could manage a canoe, she could fly, they said, she took such wonderful leaps. Rose could sing like a bird and had a fondness for all animals. Little Barbe ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... of Henry—Prince Hal, as he was called—leading a wild, merry life, as a sort of madcap; playing at being a robber, and breaking into the wagons that were bringing treasure for his father, and then giving the money back again. Also there is a story that, when one of his friends was taken before the Lord Chief Justice, he went and ordered him ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... madcap even carried her games and toys into the sacred environment of the Audience Chamber. Seated on the floor, innocently exposing the prettiest pair of ankles in England, and surrounded by her big playfellows, she would challenge ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... with Scotch caution, was silent. But the impulsive Marraby—Madcap Marraby, as they called him in B.N.C.—said "It's because I won't lie!" and, leaping up, raised his glass aloft and cried "I give you Zuleika Dobson, the fairest witch that ever was ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... about seven o'clock. Three gentlemen were seated at one of the tables in a low, smoky room. They had already emptied several bottles, and one of them seemed to have just suggested some madcap scheme to the others, the thought of which sent them off ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... only knows whither these brilliant butterflies of all colors," said M. Baleinier, smiling with an air of paternal indulgence, "that are passing through your brain, are likely to lead you. Oh, madcap, when will she be as reasonable as she ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... Madcap ever, you laugh the while, As you drink your bitters and munch your bread; The face is the same, and the same old smile Came up ...
— Silhouettes • Arthur Symons
... had held us enraptured, and we had wept with COQUETTE, and fiercely cheered the WHAUP while he held WATTIE by the heels, and made him say a sweer. And we had talked with MACLEOD and grown mournful with Madcap VIOLET, and had seen many another fresh and charming face, and had talked Gaelic with gusto and discrimination. And Queen TITA had sped with us, and we had adored BELLE, and yet we cried for more. But now the dream-journey was past, and lo! suddenly the whole heaven was blazing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 30, 1892 • Various
... pranks of the madcap breeze In the blossoming trees! O the sounds that thrill, and the sights ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... that saucy mood, And moping prisons tame him down" Said Captain Cloud. "God help that day" Cried Captain Morn, "and he so young. But hark, he sings—a madcap one" "O we multiply merrily in the May, The birds and Mosby's ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... to confront the fabulous perils of his imagination. Trouble enough thereafter encountering the sea's real assault, to subdue the reasonable terrors of those parts. Trouble enough, too, by and by, to devise perils beyond the common, to find a madcap way, to disclose a chance worth daring for the sheer exercise of courage. But from all these perils, of the real and the fanciful, of the commonplace path and the way of reckless ingenuity, Terry Lute emerged at last with the ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... one should recognise him; but as long as my mother lived he would not leave her. When death had taken her from him, he so evidently stood in need of a complete change of scene, that even those friends who had most strongly dissuaded him from what they deemed a madcap enterprise, thought it better to leave him to himself. It would have mattered little how much they tried to dissuade him, for before long his passionate longing for the journey became so overmastering that ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... venture to say that he has been having such a good time that he hasn't even yet thought of building a nest, and here half the people of the Old Orchard have grown families. I've a nest and eggs myself, but that madcap is just roaming about having a good ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... a secret though,' said a young officer; 'which is, that we are to have a dance after all, and a rare madcap and riotous one it will he. Everything is already arranged; the musicians are come secretly, and quartered out of sight. Roderick has managed it all; for he says, one ought not to let him have ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... boy, who was at that time about thirteen and a half, and resembled Rene more than it is allowable for a child to resemble his father, and had nothing of the Sire Bruyn about him but his name—behold the little one, a madcap and pretty like his mother, who came in from the garden, running, perspiring, panting, jumping, scattering all things in his way, after the uses and customs of infancy, and who ran straight to his well-beloved mother, ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... grieve about that. You are all false! My sweet little lark, my sunshine, my little madcap, lay your head on my knee, I want to ruffle ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... houses, and told me the names of their occupants, all utterly unknown to me. At last I said, "Who are these people, Black? I don't know one of them." "You soon will know them, though, my boy," he answered. "Just wait and see if you don't." And sure enough, when "Madcap Violet" appeared, all the unknown personages of that night-walk at Camberwell were ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... had no love for such shows, and nobody would be greatly troubled at her hardihood in escaping from the escort of her servants. She was always doing the like, and no harm had ever befallen her. Her father was wont to call her his Madcap, and her mother sometimes chided, and feared she would come to ill by her wild freaks; but she had always turned up safe and sound, and her independent ways had almost ceased to excite comment or uneasiness. On May Day, when all the world was abroad and in good humour, they ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... word!" said my father gaily. "Children," he continued, "do you wish to go? What says my madcap, Amy?" ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... my dear brother, that I have been not a little amused, I may even say instructed, by a trick played by your madcap nephew, for the honor and glory, I suppose, of his scepticism, or for some other motive, not easily divined. He promised me significantly an entertainment, in which I should enjoy the "feast of reason and the flow of soul," by which I little thought that he was going to collect a rare party ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... From time to time I feel the need of breathing the atmosphere of such a life as this. My madcap existence is like a song; each of my love-episodes forms a verse of it, but ...
— La Boheme • Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica
... I, a madcap child, now childlike In the dark to sing am fain; If my song be not delightsome, It at least has ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Contemporary Review (Oct. 1871), and evoked replies from Rossetti (The Stealthy School of Criticism), and Swinburne (Under the Microscope). Among his novels are A Child of Nature (1879), God and the Man (1881), and among his dramas A Nine Days' Queen, A Madcap Prince, and Alone in London. His latest poems, The Outcast and The Wandering Jew, were directed against certain aspects of Christianity. B. was unfortunate in his latter years; a speculation turned out ruinously; ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... that Maggot was a noted madcap, who stuck at nothing, and appeared to derive positive pleasure from the mere act of putting his life in danger. No human foot could, by climbing, have reached the spot where the nest of the daw, or Cornish chough, ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... concerning my marriage with Jean. Indeed, I came to look upon it as something that was utterly illegal, and that I could never be expected to stand by what was only, after all, a mere farcical thing, the act of a madcap boy." ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... ill-clad, turbulent, high-tempered young fellow, looked up to by his crowd very much as the champion of the heavy weights is looked up to by his gang of blackguards. Alexander himself was not much better,—a foolish, fiery young madcap. How often is he mentioned except as a warning? His best record is that he served to point a moral as 'Macedonian's madman.' He made a figure, it is true, in Dryden's great Ode, but what kind of a figure? He got ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... were dimmed as I looked upon his face. Spare and handsome it was, and boyish still, the weaker lines emphasized in its relaxation. Would that relentless spirit with which he had been born make him, too, a wanderer forever? And was it not the strangest of fates which had impelled him to join this madcap expedition of this other man I loved, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... harshly, her lip curling in fierce disdain. The other laughed a false laugh and assumed an airy, condescending tone. "Ah! madcap! madcap!" And his glance, anxious and imploring, rested upon the Nabob, as if to beseech his forgiveness for ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... heart, Go, dream of love requited! Go, foolish heart, Go, dream of lovers plighted; Go, madcap heart, Go, dream of never waking; And in thy dream Forget that thou ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... said, blushing, and shaking her pretty little fist at Claude, 'that madcap! how he has betrayed me! When he is at his easel, he is so in the seventh heaven, that he sees nothing, thinks of ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley |
