"Harum-scarum" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... other hand, the groups, though equally individual, lacked this harum-scarum quality, and, if occasionally ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... making enough to take care of us, that's all. This afternoon I was over in his office cleaning up his desk,—you know he never does it himself, and even a harum-scarum like me can help it some,—and I saw a lot of things that scared me. Bills and things like that. And it would be hard to talk to daddy about it; I don't think I ever could. And you know he really could make a lot of money if he wanted to; ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... harum-scarum life of Dover Street was there time or place for such self-communing? In the night, when everybody slept; on a solitary walk, as far from home as I ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... "Harum-scarum and happy, They frolic the whole night through; Maybe you'll hear them dance, this year (Though very few ...
— Zodiac Town - The Rhymes of Amos and Ann • Nancy Byrd Turner
... to say that his cousin agreed heartily to take a part in the adventure, and that he would shortly come up to arrange the details with Rupert. Rupert had met Gerald Dillon before, and knew him to be as wild, adventurous, and harum-scarum a young officer as his cousin Pat; and in half-an-hour's talk ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... Merton considered, and revealing a self-confidence that amounted almost to impudence. Further, her cheeks were brown, her brief nose freckled, and she did not take the pains with her face that most of the beautiful young women who waited there had so obviously taken. She was a harum-scarum baggage with no proper respect for any one, he decided, especially after the day she had so rudely accosted one of the passing directors. He was a more than usually absorbed director, and with drawn brows would have gone unseeing through ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... if William Taylor ever found another pupil so apt, or a disciple so enthusiastic among all the "harum-scarum young men" {33b} that he was so fond of taking up and introducing "into the best society the place afforded." {33c} He was much impressed by Borrow's extraordinary memory and power of concentration. Speaking one day of the different degrees of intelligence in men he said:- "I cannot ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... many times," said the former; "but I can't say that he has ever been a friend of ours. He's rather a wild harum-scarum sort of chap—I imagine his own worst enemy, for he drinks heavily when he can get it, and spends much of the time in the guard-house. Still, they say he's a fighter, every inch of him, and has done some things ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... had been a dare-devil rider. Now, increasing weight led him to prefer buggy to saddle; but his recklessness had not diminished. With the reins in his left hand, he would run his light, two-wheeled trap up any wooded, boulder-strewn hill and down the other side, just as in his harum-scarum days he had set it at felled trees, and, if ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... most of the Norwich antipathetic references to Borrow arose from his waywardness and wildness as a youth, and considered that there was no evidence that he was ever dissipated or loose in his life. We may largely discount Harriet Martineau's acid references to Taylor's harum-scarum young men, especially as she romanced about that very wild young man Polidori, Byron's erstwhile physician, who, during his stay in Norwich—1817-8—was ever at the ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper
... those sort of things well. Those little things were of more consequence than we supposed. So he goes on, harassing about the way to prosperity, and losing it. With a long head, but somewhat a wrong one,—harum-scarum. Why does not his guardian angel look to him? He deserves one,—maybe he ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... held forth in the Cymric tongue over their beasts. But probably their language was such as would shock Nannie.... Supposing Frank Gardner did come to England? In that case it might be safer to confide in Frank. He was harum-scarum, but he was chivalrous and he pitied Vivie. Besides he was a prime appreciator of a lark. Should she even tell Rossiter? No, of course not. That was just one of the advantages of being "David." As "David" she could form a sincere and inspiring friendship with Rossiter which would ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... time to spread Rennie had every peck of wheat in the market bought up. He must have coined an enormous profit by this smart transaction; but to him it seemed to matter nothing at all. He was one of the most careless of the harum-scarum sons of Adam, and if he made money easily, so in a like manner did he let it ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde
... of Troy divine," which also is much scratched and interlined with Pope's corrections; a manuscript of one of Ben Jonson's masques; of the Sentimental Journey, written in much more careful and formal style than might be expected, the book pretending to be a harum-scarum; of Walter Scott's Kenilworth, bearing such an aspect of straightforward diligence that I shall hardly think of it again as a romance;—in short, I may as well drop the whole ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... description, with a harum-scarum devil of a half-bred, making his way at all risks, at a full gallop, as unmanageable in his career as his driver had been in his speculations; dust flying, women sprawling, men bawling, dogs barking, and the multitude continually increasing. Scouts, Scamps, Lords, Loungers ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... woods, over those green rolling plains, harum-scarum, helter-skelter, long hair flying wild, and all bearded as a Turk or a pard, comes a rider you recognize. The rider dismounts, and another old acquaintance turns from a shepherd, with whom he has been conversing on matters that never plagued ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... agility, strength, and happiness. The usual morning gathering of Rajahs and their followers, with Klings and Sikhs, was there, and I suspect that they thought adult Europeans very foolish for being amused with these harum-scarum antics. ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... dutiful and well-ordered family. But the youngest daughter, Kezia, a girl of high spirits and intelligence, who fancied she had been pointedly slighted by the Misses Stanley, when, in one of Mary's harum-scarum expeditions on her Shetland pony, she had passed without recognition the better-mounted young lady of Lexley Park; and the eldest son, who so positively refused to accompany his father to the house of a man by whom Mr Sparks had inconsiderately represented himself as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... catch something, for it is the only excuse that will serve you. I am not quite sure that it will not be high treason for me to be seen speaking to you.' I tried to get at the rights of it, but he is such a harum-scarum fellow there was no succeeding. Next I met Thorndale, who only bowed and passed on the other side of the street—sign enough how it was with Philip; so I thought it best to go at once to the Captain, and get a rational account of what ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... her of a morning. She would want him to be at his pictures 'On such a sunshiny morning!' he would say. And the next day, maybe, it would rain. 'You know I can't paint these dark days,' says he. And off they would go, on some harum-scarum or other, like a couple of children. Like a couple of children—and so they ever were, too. Do you mind my speaking ...
— Old Valentines - A Love Story • Munson Aldrich Havens
... doctor was his namesake and neighbor, Philip Lambert. Phil was graduating, himself, this year from the college across the river, a sturdy athlete of some note and a Phi Beta Kappa man as well. Out of a harum-scarum, willful boyhood he had emerged into a finely tempered, steady young manhood. The Dunbury wiseacres who had been wont to shake their heads over Phil's youthful escapades and prophesy a bad end for such a devil-may-care youngster ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... unlike harum-scarum Peace that her sisters wondered, although they attributed it to chagrin over her blunder, and considerately refrained from asking questions. But when they had reached home once more, and were gathered in the cool library waiting for Gussie's summons to dinner, Peace abruptly burst forth, "I b'lieve ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... alley was contagious. With the reporters' messenger boys, a harum-scarum lot, in "the front," the alley was not on good terms for any long stretch at a time. They made a racket at night, and had sport with "old man Quinn," who was a victim of dropsy. He was "walking on dough," they asseverated, and paid no attention to the explanation ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... reproduction of the poems of chivalry sung in the market, for they were probably serious, stately, and bald, with at most an occasional joke; it is the reproduction of the joint impression received from the absurd, harum-scarum, unpractical world of chivalry of the poet, and the real world of prose, of good-humoured buffoonish coarseness with which the itinerant poet was surrounded. The paladins are no Don Quixotes, the princesses no Dulcineas, the battles are real battles; but ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... "A harum-scarum young chief," replied Media, "heir to three islands; he likes nothing better than the sport you ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... think me a terrible harum-scarum fellow to be continually falling in love in this way, but I have a dread of being an old bachelor, and I am ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... return to his noiseless and solitary tramp under the April stars. Martin gave him Oldershaw's full name and address and his own; and the girl, still shrill and shattered, gave hers, after protesting that all automobiles ought to be put in a gigantic pile and scrapped, that all harum-scarum young men should be clapped in bed at ten o'clock and that all policemen should be locked up in their stations to play dominoes. "If it'll do you any good to know it," she said finally, "it's Susie Capper, commonly called 'Tootles.' And I tell you what it is. If you come snooping round my place to ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... "Yes, I know many people think boys are a nuisance, but that is because they don't understand them. I do; and I never saw the boy yet whom I could not get on capitally with after I had once found the soft spot in his heart. Bless me, I couldn't get on at all without my flock of dear, noisy, naughty, harum-scarum little lads, could I, my Teddy?" and Mrs. Bhaer hugged the young rogue, just in time to save the big inkstand from going ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... then carelessly add: "Unless you would prefer to come quietly home with me. My maid is an excellent cook and one is very comfortable chez-moi." And often the prospect thus sketched would piquantly allure a client. Nevertheless at intervals she could savour a fashionable restaurant as well as any harum-scarum minx there. Her secret fear was still obesity. She was capable of imagining herself at fat as Marthe—and ruined; for, though a few peculiar amateurs appreciated solidity, the great majority of men did not. However, ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... deeply the news brought in by that orderly, for soldiers are not such harum-scarum roughs as some people seem to imagine. For the most part, they're men with the same feelings as civilians; and I don't think many of us slept very sound that night, feeling as we did what a charge we had, and that we might be attacked at any time; and a good deal ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... only to steal off to the Rocky Mountains, and there no jurisdiction can touch them. And then, sir, think of flying for debt! A set of bailiffs, mounted on bomb-shells, would not overtake an absconded debtor, only give him a fair start. Upon the whole, sir, it is a pestilential, topsy-turvy, harum-scarum whirligig. Give me the old, solemn, straightforward, regular Dutch canal—three miles an hour for expresses, and two for ordinary journeys, with a yoke of oxen for a heavy load! I go for beasts of burthen: it is more primitive and scriptural, and suits a moral and religious ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... velvet lawn and with an unsatisfied air Mrs. McGregor wheeled about to collect Nell and Tim, who were already tugging at her skirts. She felt as if the events of the past half-hour were a dream. Carl, her harum-scarum son, the catastrophe worker of the family, was the acknowledged friend of Mr. John Coulter, one of the richest and most revered citizens of Baileyville. And more than that he appeared to possess the influence to have men removed from their jobs and discharged employees reinstated ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... harum-scarum boy had given place to this middle-aged, successful business man, with the deep voice and big whiskers, was hard for Alec to realize, for in all Miss Eunice's reminiscences he had kept the perennial prankishness of youth. But now Alec, listening, learned ...
— Flip's "Islands of Providence" • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Gaunt, between the pillars of the 6th bay of the Choir, was the tomb of WILLIAM HERBERT (1501-1569), first Earl of Pembroke of the second creation, a harum-scarum youth, who settled down into a clever politician, and was high in favour with Henry VIII., who made him an executor of his will, and nominated him one of the Council of twelve for Edward VI. He went through the reign of Mary not without suspicion of disloyalty, but was allowed to hold his ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... way Jim Kendric knew of getting back among old friends and old surroundings. There was nothing subtle about him; in all things he was open and forthright and tempestuous. In a man's hardened and buffeted body he had kept the heart of a harum-scarum boy. ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... some places, and here and there patches of grass. Sometimes we could see four or five lochs at once, some of them two or three miles long, and down through the middle of the moor came the maddest and most harum-scarum little river that could be imagined. It actually seemed to go out of its way to find rocks to jump over, just as if it was a young calf, and some of the waterfalls were beautiful. All around us was melancholy mountains, all of them with "Ben" for their first names, ...
— Pomona's Travels - A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former - Handmaiden • Frank R. Stockton
... and surprise Wolf, he'd love it," Norma said, as the visitor's approving eyes noted the general order and warmth, the blue-checked towels and blue bowls, the white table and white walls. The little harum-scarum baby of the family was proceeding to get her husband a most satisfactory and delicious little dinner, and Aunt ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... used to be the most harum-scarum girl I ever knew, laughing, dancing, and singing from ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... I hope not. I guess it's just as well she was away. She'll think we've acted just like two harum-scarum men, and will be awfully scandalized over your marrying this woman. Don't you feel a ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... amused at the harum-scarum idea that had tempted our young explorer to these distant fields, for few men knew more about the fearful difficulties awaiting the venturesome nomad in those lonely wastes beyond than did the veteran factor, since many a time and oft he had roamed ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... that the party that arrived in the Missisquoi were not very promising-looking boys. They had a wild, harum-scarum appearance and manner, which fully justified the description Captain Vesey had given of them. In a word, they were evidently wild boys; and in this respect they did not differ ...
— All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic
... breeder of "Zarah." Here, too, is a fresh, sprightly gentleman in a kilt whom his companions designate "the Bourach." Requesting an explanation of the term I am told that "Bourach" is the Gaelic for "through-other," which again is the Scottish synonym for a kind of amalgam of addled and harum-scarum. A jolly tanner observes: "I'll get a compartment to oursels." The reason of the desire for this exclusive accommodation is apparent as soon as we start. A "deck" of cards is produced and a quartette betake themselves to whist with half-crown stakes ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... tight-fitting trousers, as became Mr. McGuffie's son, but Robertson wore the kilt and never looked anything else but a gentleman, yet his kilt was ever of the shabbiest, and neither had his bonnet any tails. His manners were those of his blood, but a freer and heartier and more harum-scarum fellow never lived. It is a pleasant remembrance, after many years, to see again a group of lads round the big fire in the winter time, and to hear Duncan Robertson read the stirring ballad, "How Horatius kept the bridge in the brave days of old," till Peter can contain himself no longer, ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... with summer heat and the joy of my heart. I didn't deserve you, for I wanted a son so badly, and was fearfully disappointed that you were not a boy. You seemed to understand and did not get mad about it, and I've often wanted you to know that no son could mean to me now what my little harum-scarum daughter means. There has never been a day since you first looked into my eyes that I haven't thanked God for you, and the thing I am most afraid of in life is that you may get sick or not be strong, and that is why I am so glad for you to be in such a charming old place as Twickenham ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher
... better looking of the two; his face wore an easy, good-natured, free expression; while Frederick's was cold and reserved. Many people called John Massingbird a handsome man. In character they were quite opposite. John was a harum-scarum chap, up to every scrape; Fred was cautious and ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... dignified and austere and exclusive, was yielding before the onslaught of new people, who were bizarre and fantastic and promiscuous and loud. And the younger sets cared no more about anyone—nor about anything under heaven, save to have a good time in their own harum-scarum ways. In the old days one always received a neatly-written or engraved invitation to dinner, worded in impersonal and formal style; but the other day Mrs. Alden had found a message which had been taken from the telephone: "Please ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... Bishop of Havana took into his household as servants, and into the cathedral as altar-boys, three harum-scarum Indians, then said to have come from Florida, now believed to have been of Mexican origin, though there were not wanting citizens who solemnly declared that the trio had come from a warmer place than any ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... "What a harum-scarum that Bunny is!" said Mrs. Dashwood with a sigh. "It is very hard to make an impression ...
— Naughty Miss Bunny - A Story for Little Children • Clara Mulholland
... heard it?" he exclaimed, looking at me sharply out of his small gray eyes. "It seems, 'way back in the sixteenth century, there was a harum-scarum young feller living in a neighboring castle, and he took an awful shine to Lady Katherine, daughter of the Earl of Cummyngs, who was boss of this place at that time. Now the young man who loved Miss—I mean Lady—Katherine ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... Charles delivered a very effective general reply to Lord Salisbury's attacks on the Government's European policy. It was a little hard to be blamed for delay in settling difficulties which all sprang from Lord Salisbury's own "harum-scarum hurry" when he was Foreign Minister and Second Plenipotentiary of England. Lord Salisbury might say of the naval demonstration that the Powers might as well have sent "six washing-tubs with flags attached to them." The fact was that only to the concerted action of the whole ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... can see one who is, at all events. Pray, sir, do you mean to let your sister marry that good-natured, well-disposed, harum-scarum young fool, Lawless?" ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... can ride all day, or paddle or swim, or go hunting with Michel or one of the others; and be interested in what I'm doing, and come home tired and sleep without dreaming—why everything is all right. But if you insist on cooping me up!—well, I'm likely to turn out something worse than harum-scarum, that's all!" ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... epigrammatic, harum-scarum Irish trooper, in the Indian service, whose adventures and sayings are narrated in Soldiers Three, The Courting of Dinah Shadd, etc., ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... fellow, dark, with regular but heavy features, close-cropped hair, and moustaches already full-blown. He shook hands with both his friends, and stopped before the picture, looking nonplussed. In reality that harum-scarum style of painting upset him, such was the even balance of his nature, such his reverence as a steady student for the established formulas of art; and it was only his feeling of friendship which, as a rule, prevented him from criticising. But this time his ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... brought her sewing-work, shirts for the boy, and done it as neat and capable as you'd wish to see. She always was a smart child, but dreadful careless," said the other old lady, evidently much impressed by the change in harum-scarum ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... slave law and other concessions to slavery and its extension. As a result Yale fell into disrepute in the South, which had, up to that time, sent large bodies of students to it, and I remember that a classmate of mine, a tall, harum-scarum, big-hearted, sandy-haired Georgian known as "Jim'' Hamilton, left Yale in disgust, returned to his native heath, and was there welcomed with great jubilation. A poem was sent me, written by some ardent admirer of his, beginning ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... get nothing of the sort here, let me tell you," snapped the unreasonable old man. "I can't afford to do business at cost just to please a lot of harum-scarum boys, who want to spend days loafing in the woods when they ought to be earning an honest penny ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... Certainly not, it was most ill-advised, probably some quixotic idea about not wanting to testify against his friend. If you knew the boy you would understand what a hot-headed, harum-scarum person he is. He was my pupil at one time and I grew quite fond of him. He has ability, undoubted ability, but he is a ship without a rudder; he has been drifting ever since he ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... sort of harum-scarum trick have you got up your sleeve, Jack?" questioned George, uneasily, as the ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel
... his head a few minutes in thinking over what he had heard of Mrs. Pelham, and wished he might see Ray and make him understand that he thought the place should go to him, but Stannard said, emphatically, that Ray was too harum-scarum for office-work, good as he was in the field. And then came a brief letter from Truscott, cordial and straight to the point as ever. It wound up by saying, "The colonel attributes your hesitation to the fact that you think it ought to go to some man who has served longer with the regiment. We ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... of harum-scarum fellows who had scaled the heights and planted the flag before long found themselves facing the great Admiral Sir George Rooke himself, on his quarter-deck, Lieutenant Fieldsend and George Fairburn being of the party. The admiral said a few words of commendation; few as they were, they ...
— With Marlborough to Malplaquet • Herbert Strang and Richard Stead
... has come to no good," Henry sometimes said to himself. "He was always a harum-scarum fellow, good-natured, but lazy and heedless. I wish I could do him a good turn. I have been so prospered that I could afford to help him along if I could ...
— Sam's Chance - And How He Improved It • Horatio Alger
... wilfully naughty child, this harum-scarum Poppy, but very thoughtless and very curious. She wanted to see every thing, do every thing, and go every where: she feared nothing, and so ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott |
