"Harum-scarum" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Minister's Wooing," which he brought from Germany, and can not think Mrs. Stowe came up to herself this time, whatever the newspapers may say about it; and as for the plot, I don't see why she couldn't have let Mary marry good old Dr. Hopkins, who was vastly more of a man than that harum-scarum James. As to "Adam Bede," I think it a wonderful book, beyond praise. I hope these literary observations will be blessed to you, my dear. Mrs. Tholuck sent me a very pretty worsted cape to wear about house, or under a cloak. We went to Lausanne last Wednesday (George, A. and I) to do a little shopping ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... really choose if they had a chance, and to escape what might be very uncomfortable, and so are we. We're both Elsies, and about the same age, and have brown eyes: if Uncle John were to take his pick, wouldn't he take a quiet, dignified, ladylike Elsie, instead of a harum-scarum one with short hair that was mad for the stage? And Aunt Milly being rather frail, I should have driven her to drink, while you're used to an invalid aunt. Isn't it just wonderful? The more I think of it, the righter ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... family would remember his age. He received as insults his son-in-law's counsels to remain quietly at home, becoming more aggressive and reckless as he advanced in years, exaggerating his activity, as if he wished to drive Death away. He accepted no help except from his harum-scarum "Peoncito." When Karl's children, great hulking youngsters, hastened to his assistance and offered to hold his stirrup, he would repel ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... a young fellow now in Melbourne, one Desmond O'Connor, a wild, harum-scarum, but of good stuff. You will find him at Mrs. Tippett's, 102 The Grove, Upper Hawthorn. Look him up, if you still love me, and take him under your care. Find him a place in your office; he has the necessary qualifications. He is a journalist, but I foresee ruin in that line for Desmond. Supply ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... 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
... three miles back from almost all New England towns are certain old pastures and clearings, long since run wild, in which the young foxes love to meet and play on moonlight nights, much as rabbits do, though in a less harum-scarum way. When well fed, and therefore in no hurry to hunt, the heart of a young fox turns naturally to such a spot, and to fun and capers. The playground may easily be found by following the tracks after the first snowfall. (The knowledge will ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... very hard on them that their niece should turn out a little wild harum-scarum creature, such as they had never dreamt of— really unable to move without noises that startled Lady Jane's nerves, and threw Lady Barbara into despair at the harm they would do—a child whose untutored movements were a constant eye-sore and distress to them; and though she could sometimes ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... tell the truth,' said Mrs. Harewood, as she sat and fanned herself with her husband's trencher cap, looking more than ever like a frog in a strawberry bed, 'though my Willie is the cleverest boy in the school, little good his cleverness would have done him, and he would have been harum-scarum Bill more than ever, if it were not for Lance. So say his father and brother Jack; so that they will not be for his going to a public school unless Lance were sure ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "dead reckoning," and the curious instruments I told you of— one of them is called a sextant—the captain can take his ship right across the pathless ocean, just as easily as a coachman does his coach along a high-road. You see sailors on shore, and they seem often harum-scarum, idle fellows, but at sea everything is done with the greatest order, and every man and boy has his proper duty, just as the servants in a large country-house. The crew are divided into watches, called the starboard and larboard, or port, watches; the chief ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... Croisette's rapidly amplifying figure, of Sarah Bernhardt's unnecessary immodesty in dressing Racine's Andromaque, of the Grant reception at Healy's, of Lefevre's slipperiness of texture, of the lack of the true sentiment of piety in Bouguereau's religious pictures, of the harum-scarum amusements among the Americans at Bonnat's atelier, and the latest gossip ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... only 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
... successor? With finest tact she urges self-restraint and a policy of moderation. Temperaments of every type are to be met in her pages—a sensitive poet, troubled by "confusion of thought" deepening into melancholia; a harum-scarum boy, in whose sunny joyousness she discerns the germ of supernatural grace; vehement sinners, fearful saints, religious recluses deceived by self- righteousness, and men of affairs devoutly faithful to sober duty. Catherine enters into every consciousness. ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... Then Mrs. Poole got her husband to make private inquiries about Miss Nancarrow. Good-natured Jim obeyed her, and had to confess that the report was tolerable enough; the girl was perhaps a little harum-scarum, ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... can such a scapegrace have? The girl is handsome—well made—can show a pretty foot. How the upper story is furnished matters little. That's blinked in you women if nature has not played the niggard in other respects. Let this harum-scarum but turn over this chapter—ho! ho! his eyes will glisten like Rodney's when he got scent of a French frigate; then up with all sail and at her, and I don't blame him for it— flesh is flesh. I ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... she certainly shows more partiality to him than to any one, and wonders incessantly how he managed to pick up so unworthy and harum-scarum a father. ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... confidant and monitor, and by some strange attraction of opposites Jo was gentle Beth's. To Jo alone did the shy child tell her thoughts, and over her big harum-scarum sister Beth unconsciously exercised more influence than anyone in the family. The two older girls were a great deal to one another, but each took one of the younger sisters into her keeping and watched over her in her own way, ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... appreciation of the writers. But she volunteered no information about the business which had occupied her afternoon. Morgan was somewhat puzzled. He was still inclined to hold to his belief that she had gone on some harum-scarum chase after money, but as she did not manifest the least sign of disappointment or dejection, it was hard to think that her pockets were as empty as before. He refrained from questioning her, however, for in a grim ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... judicious interference of young Fritz von Hartmann, who had now recovered from his lethargy. Stepping to the front of the platform, the young man apologised for the conduct of his companion. "I am sorry to say," he said, "that he is a harum-scarum sort of fellow, although he appeared so grave at the commencement of this experiment. He is still suffering from mesmeric reaction, and is hardly accountable for his words. As to the experiment itself, I do not consider it to be a failure. It is very possible that our spirits may have been communing ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... it brought him a thousand satisfactions. "Hard work they are," as he once wrote, "but what fit work!" And again: "O, it's a cold house where a dog is the only representative of a child!" Not that dogs were despised; we shall drop across the name of Jack, the harum-scarum Irish terrier, ere we have done; his own dog Plato went up with him daily to his lectures, and still (like other friends) feels the loss and looks visibly for the reappearance of his master; and Martin the cat ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 was a sort of wild proposition. ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... with blood, and then pelted the passers-by with sheep's heads. They spent the money in the royal treasury like water, and played so many heedless and ruthless boy-tricks that the period of these months of folly was known, long after, as the "Gottorp Fury," because the harum-scarum young brother-in-law, who was the ringleader in all these scrapes, was Duke ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... recognized social place, quite outside the restricted limits of Methodism, and shone in it with an unflagging brilliancy altogether beyond the traditions of Tyre. Delightful as she was in other people's houses, she was still more naively fascinating in her own quaint and somewhat harum-scarum domicile; and the drab, two-storied, tin-roofed little parsonage might well have rattled its clapboards to see if it was not in dreamland—so gay was the company, so light were the hearts, which it sheltered in these new days. As for Theron, the period was one of incredible fructification ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... got enough in this pack to turn the world inside out with wonder—ah, what a sensation it will be, what an educational feature! It will send out a hundred harum-scarum expeditions to find Polaria—but there are few commanders like Captain Burrows; he could do it, the rest of 'em will die in the ice. But when I get to San Fran——. Say, captain, how long will it take to get there, and ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady |
