"Madcap" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... beauty, was General Leclerc, young and rich, but weak in body and mind, "a quiet, insignificant-looking man," who at least loved her passionately, and would make a pliant husband to the capricious little autocrat. And we may be sure Napoleon heaved a sigh of relief when his madcap sister was safely ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... 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 a play, ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... in the water, and covered with rotten, black-looking boards. As far as comfort and convenience go, they are far inferior to those of Cobourg and Kingston, or even to those of our own dear little "City of the Bay," as Belleville has not inaptly been christened by the strange madcap, calling himself the ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... 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 have possessed ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... 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 ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... know, Father," 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 reply ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells
... think, 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? ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... why it was given her, but it suited her very well, and stuck to her, and our yawl every week carried five merry, strong young fellows on the Seine between Asnieres and Maison Lafitte, who were ruled from under a parasol of colored paper, by a lively and madcap young person, who treated us like slaves whose business it was to row her about, and whom we were ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... Elfinhart outgrew The madcap antics of the younger crew, (For fairies age but slowly: don't forget That at two hundred they are children yet!) But still she frolicked with them, though scarce of them, And learned each year more tenderly to love them. But most of all she loved with all her heart On quiet summer ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis
... however, was not the only blot upon Lyly's Oxford life. From the hints thrown out by his contemporaries, and from some allusions, doubtless personal, in the Euphues, we learn that, as an undergraduate, he was an irresponsible madcap. "Esteemed in the University a noted wit," he would very naturally become the centre of a pleasure-seeking circle of friends, despising the persons and ideas of their elders, eager to adopt the latest fashion whether in dress or in thought, and intolerant alike of regulations and of duty. Gabriel ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... no news, he would have only himself to blame if he re-established communications with her in obedience to a passing whim. She was at Crawleigh, resting and building up her strength; he would be back in full harness within thirty-six hours, and there would be no room for her madcap incursions into ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... Warren presented a picture to bring admiration into any eye, and although she was entirely lacking in poise and dignity, her constant restless vivacity and the witch-like spirit of laughter that possessed her were quite as engaging. She was a madcap, fly-away creature whose ravishing lace was framed by an unruly mop of dark hair, which no amount of attention could hold in place. Little dancing curls and wisps and ringlets were forever ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... 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 diables was a grand, long-cherished ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... 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 ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... 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
... up from sleep, Saying, "Now for a frolic! now for a leap! Now for a madcap, galloping chase! I'll make a commotion in every place!" So it swept with a bustle right through a great town, Creaking the signs, and scattering down The shutters, and whisking, with merciless squalls, Old women's bonnets and gingerbread stalls. There ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... 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
... broken in spirit and utterly cast down by grief and shame as had been confidently predicted, he, much to the disgust of his congregation, went calmly about his duties as though nothing unusual had occurred, referring jocosely to this lark of his madcap ward as he ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... feathers out of the tail of a splendid parroquet that was screaming on its gilded perch, in order to make a plume for his hat. Madame de Villefort merely cried,—"Be still, Edward!" She then added,—"This young madcap is, however, very nearly right, and merely re-echoes what he has heard me say with pain a hundred times; for Mademoiselle de Villefort is, in spite of all we can do to rouse her, of a melancholy disposition and taciturn habit, which frequently injure the effect of her ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... 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 ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... after dinner, behold her little 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, jumping ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... been shot, but the times were extraordinary, and he rightly judged that when a Continental war was brewing, the most daring course was also the most prudent, namely, to go to Paris. Thither Paoli allowed him to proceed, doubtless on the principle of giving the young madcap a rope ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... i' the dust! Per De, my lord, a parch-ed pea am I— I'm all athirst! Athirst? I am so dry My very bones do rattle to and fro And jig about within me as I go! Why tramp we thus, bereft of state and rank? Why go ye, lord, like foolish mountebank? And whither doth our madcap journey trend? And wherefore? Why? And, prithee, to what end?" Then quoth the Duke, "See yonder in the green Doth run a cooling water-brook I ween, Come, Pertinax, beneath yon shady trees, And there whiles we do rest outstretched at ease Thy 'wherefores' and thy 'whys' shall answered ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... she were going to say so, she must turn him away as soon as she 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
... was drawing nigh when we had to present ourselves before that company of men of genius, each with his own crow; and I was still unprovided; and yet I thought it would be stupid to fail of such a madcap bagatelle; [3] but what particularly weighed upon my mind was that I did not choose to lend the light of my countenance in that illustrious sphere to some miserable plume-plucked scarecrow. All these considerations made me devise a pleasant trick, for the increase of merriment ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... a madcap young, who drove Through clouds of dust at postal pace, By the decree of Mighty Jove, Inheritor of all his race. Friends of Liudmila and Ruslan,(1) Let me present ye to the man, Who without more prevarication The hero is of my narration! Oneguine, O my gentle readers, Was born ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... said before, different persons have their different specialties in courage, as in everything else; and while Reddy and Heady were brave as lads could well be in some ways, their courage lay in other lines than in running dead before the wind in a madcap ice-boat on ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... and pleasanter plan of my own, but of that, as I knew, she would hear nothing. I did not smile at hers, however; though I confess it was not easy to imagine madcap Nina in the role of a landlady, regulating the accounts and presiding at the table of a boarding-house. I can't pretend that I believed there was the slightest likelihood of her filling it with success. But I said nothing to discourage her; and the fact that she ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... 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
... Persia in past time, Haji Mirza Aghasi, was a well-known but rather eccentric dervish. My knowledge of this was the means, on one occasion, of averting a disagreeable display of violence by a gay sort of madcap, the relative of a post-house master, who had attached himself as groom to the stable establishment. My smart Armenian servant, who was equally good as groom or table attendant, had taken off his warm pea-jacket to help in bracing up the loads on my baggage post-horses, which were ...
— Persia Revisited • Thomas Edward Gordon
... Embassy, 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
... Frank once more, his heart not a little sore within him for the good days he had spent in it, and especially because of the thought that he would now find there no madcap Die Vernon to tease and torment him out of ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... that. You are all false! My sweet little lark, my sunshine, my little madcap, lay your head on my knee, I ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... said my father gaily. "Children," he continued, "do you wish to go? What says my madcap, Amy?" ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... 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 tell a funny story with wonderful spirit and freshness ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... "Madcap schemes?" ejaculated de Marmont. "Nothing more or less, my dear Clyffurde, than complete revenge for the humiliation those de Cambrays put upon me ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... prince that afterward Belied his madcap youth and proved A greatly simple warrior lord Such ...
— 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
... sprang up from sleep, Saying, 'Now for a frolic! now for a leap! Now for a madcap galloping chase! I'll make a commotion ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... 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,' ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... 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
... hay-gray meadow, the blas farmer-lad will not even lift his eyes from the plow to watch the pinkness of her passing. But here in the prudish brick-minded city where the Young Spring at her friskiest is nothing more audacious than a sweltering, winter-swathed madcap, who has impishly essayed some fine morning to tiptoe down street in her soft, sloozily, green, silk-stockinged feet, the whole hob-nailed population reels back aghast and agrin before the most innocent flash of the rogue's green-veiled toes. And then, suddenly snatching off its own cumbersome ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... who was an eye-witness of this madcap Paris, wrote in detail about the dance and the dress of these people. He told how they dressed in the brightest clothes they could obtain, for maddened with happiness as they were, they instinctively felt that bright clothes would enliven ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... in which your own instinct should have guided you—your womanly instinct! But you have always been an unwomanly girl. You have put me to shame many a time by your hoydenish tricks; but I bore with you, believing that your madcap follies were at least harmless. To-day you have gone a step too far, and have been guilty of absolute impropriety, which I shall be very slow ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... Cousin Chicoree. Did you ever see a happier fellow than he is? I'll 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 time. Isn't that ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... Sir John Oxon," said Warbeck. "And the beauty he makes his boast on is the Gloucestershire Wildairs handsome madcap—the one ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... long, swift flight the party went back to the house. There followed another gay hour before the fire, while Stuart roasted chestnuts, and Georgiana, sitting on the floor against her father's knee, told stones of madcap pranks at college, illustrating them by such changes of facial expression and such significant gestures that her hearers ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... which they had been accustomed to pay little heed, had been at work in their city during the dark hours, and young Romeo of the Montagues, handsome, devil-may-care lad as they had known him, and little Juliet of the Capulets, that madcap, merry, gentle young mistress, lay dead, side by side in ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... when that madcap Lalie Spring honored me with her love, as I never can refuse anything to a woman who smells of fresh scent, and who has a large store of promises in her looks, and who puts out her red, smiling lips immediately, as if she were going to offer you handsel money, I bought a piano, so that ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... joy! how did you manage it, dear? You have 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
... 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 ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... had come the crowning glory, the climax of their wonderful summer—the race! They felt again the straining of that moment when, with half a length to make up and scant twenty yards from the goal, she had led them in the glorious, madcap dash to victory! From that day on she had reigned supreme in the girls' warm hearts, and there was not one of them but felt "that nothing was too good ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... 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 that flood ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... 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 ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... 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 whooping ...
— The Lord of Misrule - And Other Poems • Alfred Noyes
... think,' she said, catching my arm. 'That big mill down yonder hasn't ground the originality altogether out of you. I adore originality. It was clever of you to catch at the suggestion of this arrangement. Lois Cayley, you say; any relation of a madcap Captain Cayley whom I used once to know, ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... flight of the pretty courtesan, it bears the sad notice: Residence to let. Its fast closed shutters give it the gloomy appearance of a deserted boudoir. Complete silence succeeds feverish bustle! Vanda was a boisterous, madcap spendthrift. Through the old windows with their old-fashioned panes there often used to escape snatches of song, airs of waltzes, fragments of quadrilles. Vanda's horses pawed the ground spiritedly as they started at the fashionable hour for the Bois, through ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... preposterous scarlet jackets; quaint old stomachers, more wicked than the smartest bodices; Polish pelisses, strained and tight as ripe gooseberries; tiny Greek caps, all awry, and clinging to the dark hair, Heaven knows how; every wild, quaint, bold, shy, pettish, madcap fancy had its illustration in a dress; and every fancy was as dead forgotten by its owner, in the tumult of merriment, as if the three old aqueducts that still remain entire had brought Lethe into Rome, upon their ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... you madcap; I'll to the alehouse with you presently; where, for one shot of five pence, thou shalt have five thousand welcomes. But, sirrah, how did thy ...
— The Two Gentlemen of Verona • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... is sometimes the friendship that was fancied!" I cried. "What kind of justice do you call this, to blame me for some words that a tomfool of a madcap lass has written down upon a piece of paper? You know yourself with what respect I have ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... you copied for me, to look at; and one day, who should come in but Elliott, who was staying with his governor on the West Cliff, where the old gentleman has taken a house. Well, you know, I told you what a madcap fellow Poole is; and what should he do, but tell Elliott that I was going stark mad for a girl that couldn't have me because her dad had engaged her to somebody else; and then he shewed him the music that was lying on the table with your name on it. So you may guess how Elliott ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... 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 • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... madcap!' he said good-humouredly. 'Do you know how heavy the dews are? There, I told you so; your ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... 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 nothing short of restraint in prison ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... stomach frightful attacks of indigestion by stealing out to the pantry and devouring a whole mince pie because he had been refused two pieces at the table—this rebellious, unreasonable, whimsical old madcap was an electric element in our quiet, orderly life. He insisted on going to every picnic and church sociable, where he ate recklessly of all the indigestible dainties he could lay his hands on, stood in drafts, tired himself ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... 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 Infidel ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... It was such a madcap frolic as students, utterly reckless of consequences, might engage in; but, after all, it was a serious affair. The clothes had to be returned; then the perpetrators of the outrage would be known at the college, and they might be expelled from ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... good-humouredly, "and don't let that madcap get you into mischief. I shouldn't be surprised if he tries to get his information ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... 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 to be released ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... society which constitutes the aristocracy of the ring and the turf, and all that kind of thing. You see, I am putting all the worst points first. But I have known so many young men in my day, after a madcap career of a few years among prizefighters, wrestlers, and jockeys—learning their slang and affecting their manners—take up and cultivate the graces and the decencies. There was poor dear Newgate, many degrees lower in that kind of frolic, who, ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... thine old wine till he became drunken and boisterous; but thou art too noble not to bear with his ignorance and pardon his offence." When the Barmaki heard my brother's words he laughed his loudest and said, "Long have I been wont to make mock of men and play the madcap among my intimates, but never yet have I come across a single one who had the patience and the wit to enter into all my humours save thyself: so I forgive thee, and thou shalt be my boon companion in very sooth and never leave me." Then he ordered the servants to lay the table in earnest and they ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... such thing; you are even more of a madcap than he is. The other day both of you looked as if you had taken a bath. How is it that a big girl like you cannot remain two minutes seated? Lucien!" she continued directing her eyes on her son, "turn off the water ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... 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. ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... trouble—trouble enough at first, day by day, in fear, 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 reputation of having airily ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... madcap would do more than think about it, and with cheers would sail away for Sigurd's Vik; but it is not recorded that many men thus won the fame they went for. So at last every one very sensibly decided that the Vik was an excellent place ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... everywhere in triumph, that whimsical, adventuresome, madcap woman, of whose life as an actress so many stories were told, had carried the arrogance of the virgin warrior-maid conceived by the master Wagner. In a bulky book, of uneven irregular pages, where the singer with the minute conscientiousness ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... rules provide! This is scandal, this is a shame, This madcap prank in Our Lady's name. Out of the doors with him; back to the street: He has no ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger
... madcap enterprise lopped off, La Salle's scheme of Mississippi trade and colonization, perfectly sound in itself, was too vast for an individual; above all, for one crippled and crushed with debt. While he grasped one link of the great chain, ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... young man whose brother was now with him, and who lives in Memmingen. His name is Herr Unhold, and he pressed me very much to come to Memmingen if possible. We sent a hundred thousand loves to papa by them, and to my sister, the madcap, which they promised to deliver without fail. This change of carriages was a great bore to me, for I wished to send a letter back from Waging by the postilion. We then (after a slight meal) had the honor of being conveyed as far ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... 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 nothing, but his ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... my kirtle to-day behind," said she, "so we couldn't go dancing the Halling-fling[3] together on the green sward. But the homestead in the Blue Mountains is my lawful property, and tell the old man that it was madcap Gyri thou wast running after to-day, because thou art so madly fond ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... his youth, the book will doubtless be bought. But he must be a dull person who does not find another charm in Mr. Moscheles's artless narrative, mostly about nothing at all, or about the nothings that make up the joy of living to madcap boys.—N. Y. ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... course, when he descended down among the steerage passengers and then crawled up the iron rungs of the ladder to the windy height. But that did not trouble him. All at once such a madcap spirit had come over him, he felt so happy and refreshed; as if he had never had to suffer dull cares, or put up with the whims of a hysterical wife, or practise medicine in a musty, out-of-the-way corner of the ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... 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
... she grew steadily worse. Her dancing was delicate, accurate, even graceful, but the thing the British public likes to think typically American, a sort of breezy swagger, was gone. To bill her in her present state as the Madcap American would be ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... good fortune to live in an unenclosed parish, and may thank the wise obstinacy of two or three sturdy farmers, and the lucky unpopularity of a ranting madcap lord of the manor, for preserving the delicious green patches, the islets of wilderness amidst cultivation, which form, perhaps, the peculiar beauty of English scenery. The common that I am passing now—the lea, as it is called—is one of the ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... contradiction, with two men who accompanied him, while his sleek claybank mare also argued loudly with her colt. She had much ado to pace soberly forward, even under the coercion of whip and spur, while her madcap scion galloped wildly ahead or lagged far in the rear, and made now and then excursions into the woods, out of sight, to gratify some adolescent curiosity, or perhaps, after the fashion of other and human adolescents, to relish the spectacle of the maternal anxiety. Ever and anon ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... poor Hector, how you would suffer if you had to put up with me during the process! You ought to marry a clever woman who would keep your house as you would like it kept, and help you on by her gracious ways, not a madcap girl who has not learned to manage herself, much less other people. Dear Hector, I thank you with all my heart for thinking so kindly of me and paying me such an honour, but, indeed, ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... madcap Tyndall's letter in the "Times?" He'll break his blessed neck some day, and that will be a great hole in the efficiency of my scientific young England. We mean to return next Saturday, and somewhere about the 16th of 17th I shall go down to York, where ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... may 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 seem alone ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... yawning fireplace cheery with the dying embers of a fire built hours ago to drive out the dampness, and its two high-posted beds standing there in lofty dignity, the little Yankee school marm could hardly realize what madcap freaks she had perpetrated since she bounded over the gate at the foot of the lane leading from the highway down to Mulberry Hill, the ancestral home of ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... 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 ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... two, Pa, Ma, and daughters three, All drove in madcap hurry to the station, In fact, they might have tittered "Seven are we" Had they remembered the superb quotation; But Julia (housemaid) made some lamentation About some best back hair she'd left behind, But all ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... declared that the planks would not bear such a weight of Romish sin, and that God was displeased with their pulpits and altars, their doctrine and sacrifice. One zealot remembered that, at the return of Prince Charles from the madcap expedition to Spain, a Catholic had lamented, or was said to have lamented, the street bonfires, as there would be never a fagot left to burn the heretics. "If it had been a Protestant chapel," the Puritans cried, "the Jesuits would have called the calamity an omen of the ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... alleges, besides (p. 149) the ex post facto excuses of Francis's conduct, is the recovery of Henry's rights to the crown of France; and if this were the real object, it reduces both King and Cardinal to the level of political charlatans. To conquer France was a madcap scheme, when Henry himself was admitting the impossibility of raising 30,000 foot or 10,000 horse, without hired contingents from Charles's domains;[414] when, according to Giustinian, it would have been hard to levy 100 men-at-arms or 1000 light cavalry in the whole island;[415] when the ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... surrey swept even with the sidetracked tramp, the bright-eyed girl, seized by some merry, madcap impulse, leaned out toward him with a sweet, dazzling smile, and cried, "Mer-ry Christ-mas!" in a shrill, ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... and as great a liar as ever," Marya Dmitrievna's son continued; "and only fancy, yesterday this madcap"—pointing to the school-girl, his wife's sister—"put some pepper in ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... hear that she and her sister were considered to be Southern Unionists—and were greatly petted in governmental circles for their sacrificing fidelity to the flag. His informant, an official in the State Department, added that Miss Matilda might have been a good deal of a madcap at the outbreak of the war—for the sisters had a brother in the Confederate service—but that she had changed greatly, and, indeed, within a month. "For," he added, "she was at the White House for the first time ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... about to do so in what I considered the most agreeable and appropriate manner when the madcap broke away from me, and sprang upon a footstool and waved ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... ought to do, Garry lingered. If by a word he could restrain this madcap penitent from roving off in a fit of sentimentality it must be spoken forcibly ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... 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
... Such madcap experiments might perhaps one day, in the distant future, be tried with reasonable success, but hardly at the beck of a Spanish king sitting in his easy chair a thousand miles off, nor indeed by the servants ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... plumes disappeared in the shadow of the trees. "She'll break her neck some day;" and thinking someone must be in fault, her eyes would turn reprovingly upon Mrs. Jeffrey for having failed in subduing Maggie, whom the old governess pronounced the "veriest madcap" in the world. "There is nothing like her in all England," she said; "and her low-bred ways must be the result of her having been born ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... Juan Manuel 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 Quest • Pio Baroja
... torrent. turmoil &c (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 headlong, rush foremost; raise a storm, make a riot; rough house [Slang]; riot, storm; wreak, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... magic of these mountains is getting in your blood! Of course not—they are just a very happy family who know a little more than most of us about what's really worth while in this world. Now tell me about your own nieces—Isobel, and that madcap Gyp, and little Tib." She knew well how fond John Westley was of these three girls and to talk of them brought to her a breath of what she had known at home before she had married Will Allan, ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... Newark, New Jersey. It was full of antique furniture, and the walls were adorned with old family portraits. The place was in charge of an old man and his wife and a negro boy, who were the sole occupants, except when the nine would sally forth from New York and enliven its solitudes with their madcap pranks ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... "Go, madcap, and take your idle fancies with you. There is certainly more of the bold Montespan in you than of ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... a small table in the centre of the room with a settee and two or three chairs arranged close to it. Around this table now an eager little group had congregated: the Prince of Wales in the forefront, unwilling to interfere, scarce knowing what madcap plans were floating through Blakeney's adventurous brain, but excited in spite of himself at this momentous game of hazard the issues of which seemed so nebulous, so vaguely fraught with dangers. Close to him were Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, Lord Anthony Dewhurst, Lord Grenville and perhaps ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Meanwhile our little madcap remained quite unconscious of the honors designed her. She had cried every day of the first week of Herbert's absence; every alternate day of the second; twice in the third; once in the fourth; not at all ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... recover with the prettiest little foot in the world pointed out. Her mother came in as she was in this attitude; my lady had been in her closet, having taken poor Frank's conversion in a very serious way; the madcap girl ran up to her mother, put her arms round her waist, kissed her, tried to make her dance, and said: "Don't be silly, you kind little mamma, and cry about Frank turning Papist. What a figure he must be, with a white sheet and a candle, ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... 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. ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... visit this morning? Why, Lydia Ames, who hasn't darkened my doors since Wilfred became interested in Marcia. The idea!" overcome by indignation. "What did she want? A princess of the blood? Apparently not! She wants instead a fortune-teller, a madcap like Ydo Carrothers. She spent the whole time this morning telling me how charming and fascinating Ydo was and what a fillip she gave to life. I told her frankly that I had been very thoroughly acquainted with Miss Ydo Carrothers ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... attracted by the flame of her beauty and charm, 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 very ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... for your services? I want to engage you to teach my madcap daughters a little quiet bravery and ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... 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 straightway ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... 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 ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie |
