"Scamp" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a preacher and any other man as a lover. William, I recall, made love as ardently as the wildest young scamp in Edenton. This was one of the thrilling circumstances of our courtship. I should not have been surprised if Tom Logan, or Arthur Flemming or any one of a half a dozen others had made me telegraphic dispatches of an adoring nature with his eyes, but I was ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... row, he said to himself. If anything were to be done for her he must put up with all that. There had suddenly come upon John, he knew not how, as he scanned her anxious face, a conviction that the man was a scamp, from whom at all hazards she ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... do you charge those in the passenger-carriage?" "Two dollars." "And do you charge me the same as you do those who ride in the best carriages?" asked the Negro. "Yes," was the answer. "I shan't pay it," returned the man. "You black scamp, do you think you can ride on this road without paying your fare?" "No, I don't want to ride for nothing; I only want to pay what's right." "Well, launch out two dollars, and that's right." "No, I shan't; ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... upset the apple-cart as much as I can, in my small way.' Or else he says: 'No, I will not bother about others. If I have lusts, they are my own, and I prefer them to other people's virtues.' So, a waster, a scamp, takes a sort of stand. He exposes himself to opposition and final castigation: ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... said the Elder, "the God-given power of creation is exercised unthoughtfully, unwisely, and often wickedly. A good-for-nothing scamp may become a father in name; but he who attains to that holy title in fact, must do as God does,—must love, cherish, sustain and make sacrifices for his child until his offspring becomes old enough and strong enough to stand ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson
... to scamp much of every picture; but in every picture you will find one figure that could not be excelled. Nothing probably could be more slovenly, more hideously unpainted, than, for example, the bed and the guitar-case in ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... while he tells of the virtues of the great and good man. He says there are no such masters in these days, and when you reply that there are no such servants either, he does not contradict you. Yet he may have been a sad young scamp when he began life as a dog-boy fifty-five years ago, and, on the other hand, it is not so impossible as it seems that the scapegrace for whose special behoof you keep a rattan on your hat-pegs may mellow into a most respectable and trustworthy old man, at least ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... marry Lady Charlotte Chillingworth, I tell you. He has asked my permission. The infernal scamp! he knew it pleased me. He bled me of a thousand pounds only the other day. I tell you, he's going to marry Lady ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... what made you so mad at the man she got—he's a good fellow, and puts up with all her high temper. She's terrible like yourself, excuse me for saying so and meaning no harm. If she'd married some young scamp that was soaked in whiskey and cigarettes you'd a-had something to kick about. I don't see what you find in him to fault. Maybe you'll be for telling me to mind my own business, but I am not used to doing that, for I like to take a hand any place I see I can do any good, ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... altogether mistaken about that brigand—that Tomaso. He is a scrubby and ill-favoured scamp—a sneaking, crawling rascal, capable of all the villany of his master, but ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... of fence, and was tried upon the same charge, the Prince propounced that there was no insanity in the matter. "The wretched creature," he told his father, was "not out of his mind, but a thorough scamp." "I hope," he added, "his trial will be conducted with the greatest strictness." Apparently it was; at any rate, the jury shared the view of the Prince, the plea of insanity was, set aside, and Francis was found guilty of high treason ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... scamp appeared in one of the European countries, and offered for sale a pill, which he declared to be a sure protection against earthquakes. Absurd as was the assertion, he sold large quantities of his nostrum, and grew rich on the proceeds. The credulity ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... said Ratoneau, glaring at him with savage fury, "I believe you have played me false and arranged the whole affair. Your scamp of a son has escaped the prison he richly deserved, and you have plotted to marry him to your cousin's daughter. I always thought you as clever as the devil, monsieur. But look here—and you too, madame, listen to me. I will ruin the ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... "Charlie Hunt, 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
... gout. Sir William had recently had a touch of the family complaint, and spoke of it in terms which gave the squire some fraternal sentiment. From that, they fell to talking politics, and differed. The breach was healed by a divergence to their sons. The squire knew his own to be a scamp. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... had little mercy for the loafer and the scamp — If there wasn't law and order, there was justice in the camp; And the manly independence that is found where diggers are Had a sentinel to guard it in the CAMBAROORA STAR. There was strife about the Chinamen, who came in days of old Like a swarm of thieves and ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... 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 line from 1792 ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... "You fool! You scamp!" exclaimed his father when he had heard how his son had wasted all the money that had been given to him. "Go and live in the stables and repent of your folly. You shall never ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs
... anything else. Nan has had a falling-out with the old scamp of a moonshiner who calls himself her father. She came to me for help, and broke down in the midst of telling me about it. I can't stand a woman's crying any ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... trick, leaving him to lie there. A peasant carried him to a small suburban inn, where he remained several days oppressed horribly by a sense that he had forgotten something. When he recollected what it was, he entrusted the captain's letter to his landlady;—a good woman, but she chanced to have a scamp of a husband, who snatched it from her and took it to his market. Beppo supposed the letter to be on its Way to Pallauza, when it was in General Schoneck's official desk; and soon after the breath of a scandalous rumour began ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and then sat down to dinner, and to long stories of the imposture and villany of the Italians. One of them chiefly bewailed himself that the day before, having unwisely eaten a dozen oysters without agreeing first with the oyster-man upon the price, he had been obliged to pay this scamp's extortionate demand to the full, since he was unable to restore him his property. We thought that something like this might have happened to an imprudent man in any country, but we did not the less join him in abusing the Italians—the purpose for ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... Rufe!" screamed the small boy from behind, rushing forward. "Touch one of these deer, and the dog'll have ye! We've got two deer, but we've lost our horse,—scamp rode ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... taken such a gloomy view of his condition. Mr. McKeown's epistle continued in this fashion: 'That ought to do for him, Mathew, or my name ain't Tom McKeown. It is not that he is any worse or better than other young fellows of his own stamp, but he has the greatest scamp in Christendom for his daily associate. Atlee is deep in all the mischief that goes on in the National press. I believe he is a head-centre of the Fenians, and I know he has a correspondence with the French socialists, and that Rights-of-labour-knot of vagabonds ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... brabbling among the Rogues, Thieves, Besognosos, Beggars, Ribbibes, Bidstands, and Clapper-dudgeons, male and female, who infested the outskirts of the Old Palace, or had Impudently Squatted within its very walls, and had made of the Place a very Alsatia, now that Scamp's Paradise in Whitefriars had been put down by Act of Parliament. Here they burrowed like so many Grice, till the shoulder-tapping Pilchers of the Compter came a badger-drawing with their bludgeons. 'Twas a perfect chaos of clap-dishes, skeldering, cranion-legged ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... Superior turned pale. "You scamp," he said, "do you know with whom you have had dealings?" "I do," I said, trembling all over. Well, they called together the whole brotherhood and discussed the matter in secret. And then the Father Superior said to me: "It's this way, Kondraty," ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... said Blondet. "If you but knew, Lucien, how rare such explosions are in this jaded Paris, you might appreciate yourself. You will be a precious scamp" (the actual expression was a trifle stronger); "you are in a fair way to be ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... should say nowadays? What is quite certain is, that he possessed original talent; that amidst all the execrable tricks wherein he delighted and wherein he was a master, he possessed the sacred spark. . . . A licentious scamp of a student, bred at some shop in the Cite or the Place Maubert, he has a tone which, at least as much as that of Regnier, has a savor of the places the author frequented. The beauties whom he celebrates—and I blush for him—are none ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... wonderfully new ideas seemed to be in evidence; and when the patrol sought the blankets, leaving the camp-fire dying down, they were about evenly divided on the question as to whether the educated tramp keeping company with the foreign owner of the bear was a smart man, or just a scamp. ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... already I did not care two straws for literary glory. Posthumous ambition perhaps requires an atmosphere of roses; and the more rugged excitant of Wick east winds had made another boy of me. To go down in the diving-dress, that was my absorbing fancy; and with the countenance of a certain handsome scamp of a diver, Bob Bain by name, ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... be true that the heart of a man changeth his countenance, then it is absolutely certain to my mind that your clergyman is the most unmitigated scamp, and it may, with propriety, be said that he has no conscience at all, so perverted has it become. He is a gambler by profession, and a passer of counterfeit money, but his business is burglary. He has followed it for years, and had his mind not been on it for years, he could not have ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... have penetrated through all the circles of power and splendor, you were not dealing with a gentleman, at last, but with an impostor and rogue; and he fully deserves the epithet of Jupiter Scapin, or a sort of Scamp Jupiter. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... tell you, Tom Brown, I felt sorry for that boy. It's punishment bad enough for a little scamp like him leaving the honest shore, and folks to home that were a bit tender of him maybe, to rough it on a trader, learning how to slush down a back-stay, or tie reef-points with ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... ball, but extracted. I would be all right if that lazy Irish scamp would only give me half enough to eat. By the way, Wayne, of course I never got the straight of it, for there are half-a-dozen stories about the affair flying around, and those most interested will not talk, but one of your special friends, and to my notion a most charming young ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... for such a scamp', said the Troll. 'No! let's first burn out his eyes, and then turn him adrift in a ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... if you were not particularly interested, you'd find not bad fun, Mr Wentworth. These private attempts at law are generally very amusing. I'll attend and look after your interests; but you had better see that this Tom Wodehouse,—I remember the scamp—he used to be bad enough for anything,—don't give you the slip and get out of the way. Find out if you can where he has been living these two days. I'll attend to the other matter, too," the lawyer said, ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... starting for himself, and threw himself heart and mind into the business. When an estimate was to be prepared it was Hunter who measured up the work and laboriously figured out the probably cost. When their tenders were accepted it was he who superintended the work and schemed how to scamp it, where possible, using mud where mortar was specified, mortar where there ought to have been cement, sheet zinc where they were supposed to put sheet lead, boiled oil instead of varnish, and three coats of paint where five were ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... A barefoot scamp, both mean and sly, Soon after chanced this dove to spy; And, being arm'd with bow and arrow, The hungry codger doubted not The bird of Venus, in his pot, Would make a soup before the morrow. Just as his deadly bow ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... upon one of our most distinguished officers deceased, and upon the service in general." It repudiates, without explaining away, certain unpleasant impressions that even the careful reader of to-day cannot entirely avoid. Marryat made Frank Mildmay a scamp, I am afraid, in order to prove that he himself had not stood for the portrait; but he clearly did not recognise the full enormities of his hero, to which he was partially blinded by a certain share thereof. The adventures were admittedly his own, ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... himself on a seat on the other side of the boulevard, and by turns whistling, scratching himself, and swinging his feet in enormous tattered boots, persistently stared at him. 'And his master,' thought Aratov, 'is waiting for him, no doubt, while he, lazy scamp, is kicking ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... within about four men from the front. My fellow-soldiers, who had hitherto been very light-hearted and chatty, had suddenly become grave and quiet, some of them even looking pale and scared. On one side of me was an irrepressible scamp of a boy about eighteen years old, a dark little fellow, with a monkey face and a feeble, falsetto voice like a very old woman. I watched him take out a small sharp knife and without looking down draw it across the upper part of his surcingle three or four ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... 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
... turned out to be terriers naturally calls to mind the case of my old friend Jeremiah Simpkins' son. There isn't a solider man in the Boston leather trade than Jeremiah, nor a bigger scamp that the law can't touch than his son Ezra. There isn't an ounce of real meanness in Ezra's whole body, but he's just naturally and unintentionally a maverick. When he came out of college his father thought that a few years' experience in the hide department ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... 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 ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... he hastened to the bath-house And he crouched upon the threshold. Full of maidens is the bath-house, In their hands the bath-whisks holding. "Scamp, come here; and shall we boil you, Or, O Broad-eye, shall we roast you, Either for the master's supper, Or perchance the mistress' breakfast, For the luncheon of the daughter, Or perchance the ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... out—I'd kick him out so quickly he wouldn't know it," declared Jimmy. "If a daughter of mine were married to that scamp, she'd never lay eyes on him except over my dead body. I reckon God would enjoy the sight of ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... not profess any deep regret for a husband whom she had often asserted to be a good-for-nothing scamp. She looked at the matter chiefly in a pecuniary point of view, and, on making a rapid calculation, came to the conclusion that any deficiency caused by the loss of the small fraction of his earnings that came ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... half cleaned my study out—only just stuck the candlesticks in the cupboard, and swept the crumbs on to the floor. So at last I was mortal angry, and had him up, and made him go through the whole performance under my eyes. The dust the young scamp made nearly choked me, and showed that he hadn't swept the carpet before. Well, when it was all finished, 'Now, young gentleman,' says I, 'mind, I expect this to be done every morning—floor swept, table-cloth taken off and shaken, and everything ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... 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
... kindly, sir," said father, raising his hand to his cap again in salute as the captain turned to leave us. "You're very good, sir, for to h'interest yourself, sir, in this yere young scamp of a son ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... "Here's a young scamp," said Captain Worse, "who went out a cabin boy, but now we have given him the rating of an apprentice. The Consul must know that we had two deaths at Rio—the devil's own climate.—Come, Lauritz, step ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... closed noiselessly after Mr. Hanbury, Junior. "The scamp," said the father to himself, "I can't help admiring him. Thirty years ago I entertained just such ideas, but what has become of them!" He thought a moment, passed his hand over his forehead, then jumped up quickly and ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... never told a lie in my life. My business relations with Tom had been of an entirely unsatisfactory character, and the idea of any one's loving the beery scamp presented itself in a ludicrous light. I got out of the difficulty ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... the road, shying stones at the birds, and making lots of noise. He told papa he felt so sick that his teacher had let him go home; but papa noticed that his mouth looked sticky, so he opened his dinner- basket, and found that the little scamp had eaten up all his dinner on the road, corned beef, bread and butter, a great piece of mince pie, and six pears. Papa couldn't help laughing, but he made him turn around and go right back to ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... hastily, "you don't know what you are saying. I am a blackguard—a scamp, unfit to touch a ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... away, you big standup and fall down, I'll show you how to get them out. What do you think us fair sex wear hat pins for, hey, shover? Want some of this jig juice for your tire? Right-o! Ain't I the English scamp? Got her fixed all right? Climb in, folks, and we will journey homeward, for I am beginning to feel thirsty and you certainly don't get the same treatment here that you do in town. Sadie, now that the crackers are gone I wish you would ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... Her hair was flyin', her eyes was dancin', an' she was laughin'—laughin' out loud. Light an' easy she pulled the pinto up beside us an' calls out: "Oh, daddy, this is lovely, this is mag-ni-fi-cent"—the little scamp used to pick up big words from the Easterners, an' when she had one to fit she never wasted time on a measly little ranch word—"oh, I'm never goin' to ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... beggar," said Robin, catching his breath. "He is back there on the highroad with the hardest stick I've met in a good many days. He gave me no chance to reason with him, the dirty scamp!" ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... different certainly," said Fanny with emphasis and a sniff, but not quite the emphasis Dan had asked for. Her coolness did not put him out, though. Fanny had a soft spot in her heart for him, and he knew it, the scamp; but though Dan was perhaps her favourite, at any rate for the moment, the others benefited by the ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... goody Liu promptly gave him a slap. "You mean scamp!" she cried. "What an awful rumpus you're kicking up! I simply brought you along with me to look at things; and lo, you put on airs;" and she beat Pan Erh until he burst out crying. It was only after every one quickly combined ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... though," said Jarvis, "for as hard as he'd ha' found it, it would ha' been more like him to set to work and teach his father, than to scamp up ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... certainly felt some 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, which would be a full compensation for ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... employed as shopkeepers, and are as knowing in the art of bargain-driving as any tradesmen of London or Paris. They generally go here under the denomination of "Klings," an appellation synonymous, in the Singapore vocabulary, with "scamp," to which I have no inclination to dispute their title. The boats employed to carry cargoes to and from the shipping in the harbour, are almost all manned by these Klings; and excellent boatmen they are. When pulling off a heavily-laden boat, they cheer ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... such inexplicable incidents as might well bewilder the imaginations of simple country folks. My uncle gave us an account of a lad not long before in his employ, who laughed at the idea of supernatural appearances, and was indeed afraid of nothing. "The young scamp," said he, "though I don't know why I should call him so, for he was as honest as he was bold,—appeared so thoroughly fearless, that it sometimes looked like mere bravado (I am afraid he pronounced it brave-ardor); and a companion who also lived with ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... woman an important character. Now we know that she wasn't. Look at the matter as it presents itself to an unprejudiced mind. A young and susceptible girl falls in love with a man, who is at once a gentleman and a scamp. She may have tried to resist her feelings, and she may not have. Your judgment and mine would probably differ on this point. What she does not do is to let her mother into her confidence. She sees the man—runs upon him, if you will, in places or under circumstances ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... him. However, the delay was sufficient. I took a race and a good leap; the ropes were cast off; the steam-tug gave a puff, and we started. Suddenly the captain was up to me: 'Where did you come from, you scamp, and ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... he likes.' 'At the feet of the statue a number of pence were 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
... a tricky feller an' hev 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 somebody ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... does get are mostly those of his neighbors in the Green Forest and the Old Orchard. But once in a great while some foolish hen will make a nest outside the henhouse somewhere, and if Blacky happens to find it the black scamp watches every minute he can spare from other mischief for a ...
— Blacky the Crow • Thornton W. Burgess
... I'd be glad to get rid of it. You just hold on till I say the word; and if anything happens to me this time, keep it to help some other scamp as you helped me. This is my will, and you all witness it. Now I feel better.' And Dan squared his shoulders as if relieved of a burden, after handing over the belt in which he ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... assign a reason or occasion for the composition of The Blues, it is a harder, perhaps an impossible, task to identify all the dramatis personae. Botherby, Lady Bluemount, and Miss Diddle are, obviously, Sotheby, Lady Beaumont, and Lydia White. Scamp the Lecturer may be Hazlitt, who had incurred Byron's displeasure by commenting on his various and varying estimates of Napoleon (see Lectures on the English Poets, 1818, p. 304, and Don Juan, Canto 1. stanza ii. line 7, note to Buonaparte). ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... into the 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 ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... thoroughly, and by an honest pride in their community as a whole. The members of a decaying community are, for the most part, languid and indolent; their very gestures are dawdling and slouching, the opposite of smart. They shirk work when they can do so, and scamp what they undertake. A prosperous community is remarkable for the variety of the solid interests in which some or other of its members are eagerly engaged, but the questions that agitate a decadent community are for the most part ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... yearning to put an arm about him.... Dear old Jack.... Dear, irresponsible scamp.... His reaction of the irritation vanished.... It was so darned good to ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... returned, "'tho' it would be a hard job fer any of us ter larn that aught had befallen little Prue, and even that little scamp, Hi Babson, I'd hate ter think of a hard fate fer him, he was ...
— Randy and Her Friends • Amy Brooks
... newspaper aside or quit the room. I very promptly declined to do either, when he snatched the paper from my hands, and instantly drew his sword. I was unarmed, with the exception of a good sized whalebone cane, but my anger was so great that I at once sprung at the scamp, who at the instant made a pass at me. I warded the thrust as well as I could, but did not avoid getting nicely pricked in the left shoulder; but, before my antagonist could recover himself, I gave him such a wipe with my cane on his sword-arm that his wrist snapped, and his sword ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... "Yes, an' that scamp after he'd sold all the stuff went to work an' auctioned off the dishes an' coffee-urn an' everything. Just skinned the place out slick," Jimmy burst out, indignantly. "I went 'round to see where the baskets was, an' some fellers told me all about it. They said 'twas a red-headed chap done ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston
... Susan Caraway, had fretted for three weeks after he had left. She said that he gained this power over animals not by any real love for them, for he was indifferent to them except when he was actually touching them, and would always scamp his work without regard for their comfort, but simply by some physical magnetism, and pointed out that there it resembled the power some men have over women. It surprised Ellen that she laughed as she said that, and seemed to find ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... with an impatient wave of her hand. "I can't tell you what I mean. I've got no evidence. But it's true. She's ridiculously fond of that young scamp Phil. Somehow—in some way—Harrison has got the ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... a young scamp," said Gilbert, coolly. "I'm much obliged to him for introducing my name into the matter. I hope ...
— Fame and Fortune - or, The Progress of Richard Hunter • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... scamp," replied Georges, with an air that hid a multitude of mysteries. "He put me in command of his cavalry,—so ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... gone a-mousing in years past. And he had found the sport to be quite worth while. Stalking about the close cropped meadow he had surprised many distant cousins of Master Meadow Mouse who never returned home to tell the story of their meetings with the black scamp. Maybe Mr. Crow was getting slow in his old age. He had never come so near to catching a Meadow Mouse before, only to be disappointed. It was no wonder that ...
— The Tale of Master Meadow Mouse • Arthur Scott Bailey
... "So that scamp is in the mountains? I s'pected it; he claimed to have shot the buck and wouldn't divide till Jack took a hand. Why did you let him ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... her death. For her marriage could hardly have been a happy one. All her life long she had 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 gone ill with ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... recalled, she said, "John Wynne has not changed, nor will he ever." She declared that, after all, it was her fault—to have treated me as if I were a man, and to have given me too much money. I shook my head, but she would have it she was to blame, and then said of a sudden, "Are you in debt, you scamp? Did John pray for me!" I replied that I owed no one a penny, and that she had not been remembered. She was glad I was not in debt, and added, "Never play unless you have the means to pay. I have been very foolish. ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... 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 ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... I, 'I've something to say to you. In the first place you're a scamp who would keep a gentleman from getting a fair price for his own property. Secondly, you're an ignorant fellow and don't know what you're talking about. I never heard of your Colonel Smith—I'm not drawing up real estate lots ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... course it isn't true, for she doesn't know any more than I do. Father is furious and Mother's eyes are all red with crying. At dinner nobody says a word. If I could only find out what he's done. Father was shouting at him yesterday and both Dora and I heard what he said: You young scamp (then there was something we couldn't understand) and then he said, you attend to your school books and leave the girls and the married women alone you pitiful scoundrel. And Dora said. Ah, now I understand and I said: Please tell me, he is my brother ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... inexplicable. One moment she was all fire and determination, satisfied of Oliver's innocence and eager to proclaim it. The next—but you were with us. You witnessed her hesitation—felt its force and what its effect was upon the damnable scamp who has our honour—the honour of the Ostranders under his tongue. Something must have produced this change. ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... that a freshman was a scamp without seasoning—and a fellow of no spirit till he had been pulled up before the big wig and suffered ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... dared kick the fellow out of the house," thought Prince Duncan. "He is a low scamp, and I don't like the reputation of ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger
... Well, now with us there is not a scamp of eighteen who would engage in the army if he were told that he might become a Colonel, but never a General; or even a General, but never a Marshal of France. Who, or what, could induce a man to rush into a career in which there is at a certain point an impassable barrier? ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... right, sah," returned the other, with a slight bow. "And such bein' the case me and my posse had better be turnin' our attention in another quarter. We're gwine tuh find that little scamp yet, and tickle his hide foh him. When he goes back tuh his kind below, they'll understand that weuns up-river don't tolerate thieves and brawlers in ouh town. Good day, sah, and we sure hope you-all may have a pleasant voyage; but we done warn yuh tuh look ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... king" Huck calls him, and confesses how he felt "ornery and humble and to blame, somehow," for the old scamp's misfortunes. "A person's conscience ain't got no sense," he says, and Huck is never more real to us, or more lovable, than in that moment. Huck is what he is because, being made so, he cannot well be otherwise. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Macduff with a 'damned be he who first cries hold, enough,' determination, and yet he laughed. 'What you laughing at?' cried I. 'Oh, ha, ha, ha, you're licking the wrong boy,' giggled the unspeakable scamp. It's just that way here. You gentlemen are licking the wrong boy; I am not General Hall, at all, I am Lieutenant-General Ulysses S. Grant." The crowd roared: "He's a good un, let's hear him—ha, ha, ha, he's a ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... intersected by deep trenches, which divided them into fields just as hedges would. These were now frozen over, but the ice was melting fast, and water stood on the top. Along them walked the two gunners, William the keeper following with Scamp, the retriever, in a leash; for Scamp would hunt about and put everything up far out ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... committed?" he said eagerly. "Surely you can see it all for yourself, since you admit the 'nephew'—a scamp, perhaps—who sponges on the good-natured woman. He terrorises and threatens her, so much so that she fancies her money is no longer safe even in the Birkbeck Bank. Women of that class are apt at times to mistrust the Bank of England. Anyway, she withdraws her money. Who knows what she meant to ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... rascality, the dash with which he does his work, his ubiquitous serviceableness, and his rogue's humor make him a picturesque character and account for his having become on the stage the most popular figure in the piece; but that Fiesco should be willing to trust himself and his cause to such a scamp, and that such remarkable results should be achieved by the black man's kaleidoscopic activity, brings into the play an element of buffoonery that injures it on the serious side. The daring play of master and man excites a certain ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... "No, no, you saucy scamp! I can't afford to feed you on diamonds from my sacred ring! Did you get your greedy nature from some sable Dodonean ancestress? If we had lived three thousand years ago, I might be superstitious, and construe your freak into an ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... so common and so frequently unsustained by landed and moneyed interests, that they have not that significance which they hold in England. A count may be a penniless scamp, depending upon the gambling-table for a precarious subsistence, and looking out for the chance of ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... "You scamp! Leave my boy alone!" screamed Mrs. Bangs. "Oh, John, perhaps you had better run for a policeman!" she added, as Randy let go ...
— Randy of the River - The Adventures of a Young Deckhand • Horatio Alger Jr.
... count, and also to Gridot the architect, that you have nothing to do but pick up your brushes and come at once. Prices are arranged to please you. I am off to Italy with my wife; so you can have Mistigris to help you along. The young scamp has talent, and I put him at your disposal. He is twittering like a sparrow at the very idea of amusing himself at ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... 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
... stood open-mouthed, yet dumb, in came the Scamp, and, with a brisk assumption of delegated authority, took Griffith's weapon out of his now unresisting hand, then marched to Neville. He instantly saluted Catharine, and then handed his pistol to her seeming agent, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... to no decision. The military court of honour put the result of its deliberations in the Carlsruhe Zeitung, as a public advertisement, couched in these terms: "The Herr von Kugelblitz may not fight with the Herr von Thalermacher." Thus posted as a scamp, Thalermacher advertised back his own defence; and, by public circulars and bills, declared the accusation of Kugelblitz to be false and malicious, and his behaviour dishonourable and cowardly. At the same time, a Russian officer ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... the Drakes were not people likely to countenance an impostor. His first instinct had been to protect his sister from an unknown scamp, and he was sorry that he had spoken to her so roughly. Her distress and anxiety were apparent, and he was filled with pity for her. Since childhood they had been the best of pals, and if she loved a man who was worthy of her ...
— The Madness of May • Meredith Nicholson
... down with me to the City for an interview with his brokers in Adam's Court, Old Broad Street. Finglemore, the senior partner, hastened, of course, to receive us. As we entered his private room a good-looking young man rose and lounged out. "Halloa, Finglemore," Charles said, "that's that scamp of a brother of yours! I thought you had shipped him off years and ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... however ignorant or unworthy, and whatever they may be—here a lawyer, there a Capuchin, elsewhere a brewer or a shoemaker, most generally some demagogue, and, in many a town or village, some deserter or soldier drummed out of his regiment for bad conduct, perhaps one of the noble's own men, a scamp whom he has formerly discharged with the yellow cartridge, telling him to go and be hung elsewhere. It is hard for the noble officer to be publicly and daily calumniated on account of his rank and title, to be characterized as a traitor at the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... said Felix. 'Mr. Audley has just been talking to me about that poor boy. He really is as untaught as that little scamp at the potteries that we tried ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in at that confounded tavern, charged full price for a night's lodging,—curse that skinflint Hodges!—and took a coach that brought me to Salem as fast as it could clip over the road. I'm too fat to straddle a horse. Come, where's Hamlin and that young scamp of yours?" ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... across the way to Pinkins's, because one of his little ones was suddenly taken with some baby ailment, and the poor fellow, in his wife's absence, was scared out of his few wits in consequence. He sent for the kind-hearted widow, and begged her help for Johnny. She came, nursed the young scamp like a mother, and returned at nine, with her conscience glowing under the performance of a kindly ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... were, and you put a shame upon her that lies in the graveyard—as sweet a lass, as good, as ever lived on earth. Ay, a shame and a scandal! For your eyes were shut always to the sidelong looks, your ears never heard the things people said—'A good- for-nothing ship-captain, a scamp and a ne'er-do-weel, one that had a lass at every port, and, maybe, wives too; one that none knew or ever had seen—a pirate maybe, or a slave-dealer, or a jail-bird, for all they knew! Married—oh yes, married right enough, but nothing ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... not much recommendation you got from me, Pierre," the merchant said bluntly; "for a more troublesome young scamp I never had in my warehouse. Still, as I told Monsieur Philip, I think everything has been against you; and I do hope, now that this English gentleman has given you a chance, that you ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... dryly, "for I don't believe Susan would give a red cent for what I'd think if she once took a fancy. She'd as soon elope with that wild-eyed scamp as eat her dinner, if it ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... she said. "Michael always considered him a scamp and shifty; but I delighted in him, because he played the banjo quite excellently, and was so useful at parish entertainments. Michael took him abroad; but had to dismiss him on landing. He wrote and told me the fact, but gave no reasons. Poor Walker! I do not wish ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... how much handsomer he was than Harry, how much brighter than Alaric!—he had touched 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 ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... muttered the old man, looking at his son, "the scamp means to hoodwink his father; he'll go far. You are not going to court," he went on in a low tone, "to carry remittances to Messieurs de Guise or to the little king our master, or to the little Queen Marie. All those hearts are Catholic; but I would take my oath the Italian woman has some spite ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... if she hadn't let her hand linger in mine. Oh, I wish to heaven girls were not so senselessly innocent and sisterly! Great Caesar! I'd give five hundred dollars not to have drooled that drivel about being her brother! George! She ought to know that only a fool or a scamp could make such an absurd proposal. I wonder if she still wants to lend me her money! I'd rather face a whole bank directorate with an overdrawn account than those Fairs this evening. I know exactly ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... 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 tired ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... hand aside, and said sharply: "Whin I take y'r hand, Little Hammer, it'll be to put a grip an y'r wrists that'll stay there till y'are in quarters out of which y'll come nayther winter nor summer. Put that in y'r pipe and smoke it, y' scamp!" ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... 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, ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... the village, and was as good as she was pretty. To say the truth, the time had been when Bessy had not felt unkindly towards the yellow-haired lad; but his conduct had long put a gulf between them, which only the conceit of a scamp would have attempted to pass. However, he flattered himself that he "knew what the lasses meant when they said no;" and on the strength of this knowledge he presumed far enough to elicit a rebuff so hearty ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... astonishment. Why, her own father had been such as he, 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 ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... sailors, used to voyaging hither and thither and to making their own way in strange places, who did not hesitate to put themselves in the very front, close by the settle where she sat, and to sing bass to Rhoda's treble, and even to find the text for her in the Bible. One of them, a notorious young scamp, Evan Price, was Aunt Priscilla's greatest plague and aversion; but she never caught a single word or glance from Rhoda which could show that the girl encouraged him, or any one among the others; and as long as that was ...
— The Christmas Child • Hesba Stretton
... the character of his house damaged, and must needs consult his honor, the Mayor. That high functionary, knowing the agility with which such heroes as Fopp exercised their heels, gave out no encouragement of catching the rascal. Had it been a scamp, who by his winning manners deceives inconsolable widows, seduces artless damsels, and otherwise exercises his skill in the art of fascinating females, his Honor had been after him with all the courage of his police force. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... 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 and Drayton, spoke of ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... off, laughing, and Patty looked a bit dismayed. "Kit's such a scamp," she said, ruefully, "he'll tell that ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... about the room, first on one leg, then on the other, like a cat upon hot bricks, "so you would be excited, if your life were worried out, as mine is, over a wicked scamp of a son. Why can't folks trouble their heads about their own business, and let my affairs alone? A pity but what he was hung, and the ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... heads in the true coaching style, proceeded to descend from his throne, and had reached the ground ere he was aware of the presence of a stranger. Seeing him then, he made the sort of half-obeisance of a man that does not know whether he is addressing a gentleman or a servant, or, maybe, a scamp, going about with a prospectus. Puff had been bit in the matter of some maps in London, and was wary, as all people ought to be, ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... was rejoiced. "Call Satan in!" he ordered. "I know that rogue perfectly well, and he has come in the very nick of time. A scamp like that will be sure ...
— Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof
... Voetius, a theological scamp, who accused Descartes of atheism, was very ill with the black bile; but he knew still less than Descartes how his detestable bile ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... in fact, grew as tall and old as the Roscannon's upon the pages of heraldry, but drink and riotous living had perished its roots and rotted its branches long before April was born. Her father, its last hope, had been a scamp and gamester who broke his wife's heart and bequeathed the cup of poverty and despair to his child's lips. But these were things locked in April's heart, and not for idle telling ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... you say 'good-by' at all, then!" asked the child, a mischievous but winning young scamp of six or seven, who had as many tricks as a monkey or a magpie. In fact, in chattering and hiding things he was nearly as bad as a magpie, and the torment of his governess's life; yet she was fond of him. "Why do you bid us good-by, Mr. Roy? ...
— The Laurel Bush • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... aside; keep out of sight, put out of sight; lose sight of. overlook, disregard; pass over, pas by; let pass; blink; wink at, connive at; gloss over; take no note of, take no thought of, take no account of, take no notice of; pay no regard to; laisser aller [Fr.]. scamp; trifle, fribble^; do by halves; cut; slight &c (despise) 930; play with, trifle with; slur, skim, skim the surface; effleurer [Fr.]; take a cursory view of &c 457. slur over, skip over, jump over, slip over; pretermit^, miss, skip, jump, omit, give the go-by to, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... indeed! I forbid you to speak like that. Have you the least idea where you hail from? A scamp like you has ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... do little for the child. Yet when I heard that harm was threatened to her through that scamp Delahaye, I crossed the ocean at an hour's notice. I saved her from him. He deserved his fate, but I am no murderer by profession, and the shock unnerved me for ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... 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)
... 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 ...
— Mother West Wind's Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... young scamp!" Mr. Purfleet said, in a rage. "You will laugh with the other side of your mouth, presently. You and Sankey are nice-looking figures, ain't you, with your ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... scamp. I see it when I put him through his paces with all the tricks I taught him. He's getting too logy, and has to be told three times before he'll do a blessed thing. But about this wretched matter, Paul—you won't say anything ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... young 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 ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... the Tuileries terrace, is seized by the hair by an old vixen who bids him "Bow your head to your sovereigns, the people, you bastard of a deputy!" On the 20th of June one of the patriots, who is crossing the Assembly room, whispers in his ear, "You scamp of a deputy, you'll never die but by my hand!" Another time, having defended the juge-de-paix Lariviere, there awaits him at the door, in the middle of the night, "a set of blackguards, who crowd around ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... while ago that a grave account appeared in a newspaper of a whole new business of compressing ice. Perpetual motion has been the dream of scientific visionaries, and a pretended but cheating realization of it has been exhibited by scamp after scamp. I understand that one is at this moment being invented over in Jersey City. I have purchased more than one "perpetual motion" myself. Many persons will remember Mr. Paine—"The Great Shot-at" as he was called, from his story that people were ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... walking up to the little corner bar, in company with Phil! And as for Nat Boody, whose stories he once listened to admiringly, what a scrubby personage he has become in his eye! Fighting-dogs, indeed! "Scamp" would be nothing to what he has seen a score of times in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... is no scamp. It is very unkind of you to speak in such terms of one whom you know is very ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... said Jacques—"au revoir, if zey do not hang me. Good boys, bose of you, but von vord. Old Daygo he is a rascaille, an old scamp; but he serve me vairy true, and it vas I tempt him vis monnaie to keep my secrete after he show me ze cavern. You vill not tell of him. He is so old, if you send him to ze prisone he ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... your share, and die a gentleman, and now, my cock, you've got to. Cap'n 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 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 with ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... visited foreign climes, how very substantial everything appears in England, from the child's plaything to the Duke of York's column! To use a joiners phrase, everything abroad is comparatively scamp-work. Talk about the Palais Royale, the Rue Richelieu, and the splendour of the Parisian shops—why, two hundred yards of Regent-street, commencing from Howell and James's, would buy the whole of them, and leave a balance sufficient to buy the remainder of the French expositions. But ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... didn't stop to reason,—to think of the difference in the outward appearance of herself and the boy,—to see that the policeman knew the boy perfectly well for a mischievous young scamp who was up to no good. She didn't stop to consider anything; but with those words, "If yer don't want ter be locked up," ringing in her ears, she turned and ran from the station-building as fast as her legs could carry her. As she came out upon the sidewalk, she saw the colored ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... incidents of her life, and to publish such letters of hers as could be laid hands on, moved him to transports of indignation, which break forth in a letter to his friend Miss Blagden with unmeasured violence: what he felt with the "paws" of these blackguards in his "very bowels" God knows; beast and scamp and knave and fool are terms hardly strong enough to relieve his wrath. Such sudden whirls of extreme rage were rare, yet were characteristic of Browning, and were sometimes followed by regret for his own distemperature. In ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... the proselyte by not asking any price for his kindness, by not intruding himself upon him, by not preaching at him, by always coming down to his level, and treating him as an equal. It was, so I think, a touching sight to see a serious person becoming the comrade of a young scamp, and virtue putting up with the speech of licence in order to triumph over it more completely. When the young fool came to him with his silly confidences and opened his heart to him, the priest ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... friend Coimbra, the son of Major Coimbra of Bihe, and, according to Lieutenant Cameron, the greatest scamp in the province. He was a dirty creature, his breast was uncovered, his eyes were bloodshot, his hair was rough and curly, his face yellow; he was dressed in a ragged shirt and a straw petticoat. He would have been called a horrible old man in his tattered straw hat. This Coimbra was the confidant, ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... to pay you out, my lad,' Frank continued. 'Your mother has been foolish enough to promise to be my wife, and that will place me in the responsible position of father to the most ungovernable young scamp in Christendom; and one of the conditions your mother makes is that I am to prevent you from saving any more lives and reputations. What do you think ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... often as coarse as a blanket, but being beautifully woven with various colors, is quite showy at a distance. Among the Mexicans there is no working class (the Indians being practically serfs, and doing all the hard work); and every rich man looks like a grandee, and every poor scamp like a broken-down gentleman. I have often seen a man with a fine figure and courteous manners, dressed in broadcloth and velvet, with a noble horse completely covered with trappings, without a real in his pockets, and absolutely ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... administration of his estate,—but there were things which Ned with all his zeal and all his cleverness could not do for him. He was conscious that had he been as remiss in the matter of hunting, as that hard-riding but otherwise idle young scamp, Gerard Maule, he might have succeeded much better than he had hitherto done with Adelaide Palliser. "Hanging about and philandering, that's what they want," he ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... well-accomplished gentleman, a man of honour in King's Bench Walk, and of excellent disposition and temper," in spite of a good deal more gallantry than our stricter age would pardon. The worst of it is that the worthy son is always being mistaken for the scamp, while the miserable Tony Lumpkin passes for a time as the pink of propriety. Eventually, he falls into the hands of some Alsatian tricksters. The first of these, Cheatley, is a rascal who, "by reason of debts, does not stir out of Whitefriars, but there inveigles young ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Mole's neighbors sneered at him, and said he was queer. Mr. Blackbird was one of these scoffers. Though he was a lazy scamp, he always managed to look sleek and well fed. And he liked the same ...
— The Tale of Grandfather Mole • Arthur Scott Bailey
... Andreitch said to his wife every time she ventured to try to incline him to mercy. "The puppy, he ought to thank God for ever that I have not laid my curse upon him; my father would have killed him, the worthless scamp, with his own hands, and he would have done right too." At such terrible speeches Anna Pavlovna could only cross herself secretly. As for Ivan Petrovitch's wife, Piotr Andreitch at first would not ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... my fine edge, and one good-for-nothing scamp used me to cut down cabbages, but, as he came very near cutting down his younger brother at the same time, he was sent to bed supperless by his father. I have really never performed any drudgery. Like Caesar, 'I ...
— Who Spoke Next • Eliza Lee Follen
... sympathetically, but everybody seemed embarrassed and glad that he was going to Italy. Ivan Ossipovitch was positively tearful, but was, for some reason, unable to bring himself to embrace him, even at the final leave-taking. It is true that some of us retained the conviction that the scamp had simply been making fun of us, and that the illness was neither here nor there. He ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... in the country on some old property of her husband's. She wrote me very kind little notes, but I felt somehow that—in spite of what you said about 'consolation'—they were the notes of a wretched woman. The only advice I could have given her was to leave her scamp of a husband and come back to her own land and her own people. But this I didn't feel free to do, and yet it made me so miserable not to be able to help her that I preferred to let our correspondence ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... now. Don't forget the Leroy paper, renew Beaumont, but sell up that artist scamp to the last stick and stone. Parasites can bite as well ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... cock and bull story about that lady at Killimaga, who goes to your church. I guess the constable told it to him. I gave him no satisfaction because there was nothing in it that concerned me; but the old scamp thinks it might hurt you, so he gave it to Brinn, who will publish it if you don't ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... to take his advice and never to be more than a simple private; for, as he philosophically argued, "whilst you're that, do you see, you have to think of nothing: there are petty officers, officers, captains, and admirals paid for looking after you and taking care of you!" or perhaps some scamp, with mock solemnity, wondering whether his mother was thinking of him, and whether she would cry if he never returned to England; on which a six-foot marine remarks, that "thank God, he has got no friends; and there would only be two people in England ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... that we do, the controlling power that restrains and limits and stimulates and impels. And then men will know where to have us, and will be sure, and rightly sure, that we shall not shirk our obligations, nor scamp our work, nor neglect our duties. And being thus full of faith, and counted faithful by Him, we need care little what men's judgments of us may be, and need desire no better epitaph than ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren |
