"Madcap" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... unique, I think, for her fidelity to her friends, and for her honour. Listen, but tell nobody—four days ago, the King, passing her to go to supper, approached her, under the pretence of tickling her, and tried to slip a note into her hand. D'Amblimont, in her madcap way, put her hands behind her back, and the King was obliged to pick up the note, which had fallen on the ground. Gontaut was the only person who saw all this, and after supper, he went up to the little lady, and ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... distant deprecation, as he eyed all Frenchmen, good and bad, ugly or handsome, he put off his hesitation and entered the governor's chamber. Colonel Nicholls came forward to greet him, and then suddenly stopped, astonished. Then he wheeled upon the girl. "Jessica, you madcap!" he said in ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... 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 in ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... Chiquita's latest escapade. Instead of being overwhelmed, 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 was pleased to ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... crowd surged, beneath the blossomed ale-poles, Lifting up to Whittington a fair face afraid, Swept against his horse by a billow of madcap prentices, Hard against the ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... looked again, and in the elderly, lame, one-eyed, sober-looking man, recognised the wild jovial Willy, who had tamed the most unruly fillies, taken the most frantic leaps, carolled forth the blithest song—madcap, good-fellow, frolicsome, childlike darling of gay and ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... you 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
... victory, Gallows Walsh now harangued his followers, and proposed to break open Newgate, or the Black Dog, as the prison was called, and effect a general jail delivery. He was answered by shouts of concurrence, and away went the throng of madcap youngsters, fully bent upon putting an end to the tyranny of law. They were joined by the mob of the city, and made an attack upon the prison with true Irish precipitation and thoughtlessness, never having provided themselves with cannon to batter ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... a perfect salad, there should be a spendthrift for oil, a miser for vinegar, a wise man for salt, and a madcap to stir the ingredients up, and mix ...
— My Pet Recipes, Tried and True - Contributed by the Ladies and Friends of St. Andrew's Church, Quebec • Various
... 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 from ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... heart, Go, dream of love requited! Go, foolish heart, Go, dream of lovers plighted; Go, madcap heart, Go, dream of never waking; And in thy dream Forget that ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... "Come, madcap, tell me your history, or I will fill you with powder and blow you up like a mine; take care, for I have already played that trick to others besides you, in the old wars ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... 'Madcap!' he said; 'but I suppose the first day of the holidays must be privileged. Ha! Fitzjocelyn, you're the right man in the right ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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
... accomplished actress, whose part in real life, says Fielding, was that of "the best Wife, the best Daughter, the best Sister, and the best Friend." The words are more than mere compliment; they appear to have been true. Madcap and humourist as she was, no breath of slander seems ever to have tarnished the reputation of Kitty Clive, whom Johnson—a fine judge, when his prejudices were not actively aroused—called in addition "the best ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... 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, ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... morning sprang up from sleep, Saying, 'Now for a frolic! now for a leap! Now for a madcap galloping chase! I'll make a commotion in ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... "He's a madcap, that boy, monsieur. Would you believe it, drunk as he is, he has just mounted his master's thoroughbred, a horse that can do twenty miles an hour, and started for Troyes with a letter in order that it may reach ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... feathers, dancing sarabands, and making the house echo with her laughter. If by chance the writer, abandoning science for pleasure, says to her, "Wait a moment, little one, till I come," and runs in great haste to play with the madcap, she has disappeared. She has gone into her hole, hides herself there, rolls herself up, and retires. Take the poker, take a staff, a cudgel, a cane, raise them, strike the wench, and rave at her, she moans; strap her, she moans; caress her, fondle her, she ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... 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 ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... prince of Wales in Henry IV. Mr. Wood displayed the versatility of his talents. In the gay, thoughtless, trifling rake, the "madcap" prince, he was spirited, and playful without puerility; in the serious parts, whether as the penitent apologizing son, or the martial hero, he was judicious, impressive, and not deficient ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... one morning sprang 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 Shutters, and whisking, with merciless squalls, Old women's bonnets and gingerbread stalls. There never ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... a sort of organized playful insubordination. The school had two parties: the sages or good girls, and the diables, their opposites. Among the latter Aurore conscientiously enrolled herself and became a leader in their escapades, acquiring the sobriquet of "Madcap." These outbreaks led to nothing more heinous than playing off tricks on a tyrannical mistress, or making raids on the forbidden ground of the kitchen garden. But the charm that held together the confraternity of diables was a grand, long-cherished design, to which ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... make her your friend. Coax her secret out of her, and you will find that she is some madcap actress from a travelling company of mountebanks, who has done this thing in order to have the story told by the gazetteers and bring people to look at her. Get her to confess, and then let her story spread among the crowd—and the whole uprising that is now taxing ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... 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
... thee, yes; and to Holly here I must seem as some madcap girl blown to and fro by every wind of fancy, and building me a palace wherein to dwell out of dew and vapours, or from the substance of the sunset fires. Thinkest thou then that I would enter on this war—one woman against ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... 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
... dandy, Sir John Oxon," said Warbeck. "And the beauty he makes his boast on is the Gloucestershire Wildairs handsome madcap—the ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... one should recognise him; but as long as my mother lived he would not leave her. When death had taken her from him, he so evidently stood in need of a complete change of scene, that even those friends who had most strongly dissuaded him from what they deemed a madcap enterprise, thought it better to leave him to himself. It would have mattered little how much they tried to dissuade him, for before long his passionate longing for the journey became so overmastering ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... Witch in her tenderness calls him "Robin mine," the name of that bold outlaw, the joyous Robin Hood, who lived under the green bowers. She delights too in calling him fondly by such names as Little Green, Pretty-Wood, Greenwood; after the little madcap's favourite haunts. He had hardly seen a thicket when he took ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... 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 was done to soothe her perturbation Till she became more quietly ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... and swept a low curtsy, coming up to the 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 ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... in the violence of his remedies. He was a young travelling Englishman; one of that class who are Radicals at twenty, Independents at thirty, and Conservatives at forty. He had not yet reached the intermediate stage. He saw in this madcap Radical Member one of the crude but strong expressions of advanced civilisation. He had the noble ideal of Australia as a land trodden only by the Caucasian. The Correspondent, much to our surprise, had by occasional interjections at the beginning of the discussion ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... "You're a madcap!" said her mother. "You'll be brought home on a shutter some day! Mark my words, Bab! You'll see!—or at least I shall; you'll be past seeing! But it don't matter; it's what we're made for! Die or be killed, it's ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... 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 and the ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... evidences of fatigue, and after one particularly 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 spent ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... both on the veranda, enjoying the evening breeze that came laden with sweet scents from off the prairie. Blue Bonnet clapped her hands over Uncle Joe's eyes in her old madcap fashion. ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... "My madcap brother," she said, "has left me, but I expect him back in a few minutes; for, fortunately, as anything pleases him for a minute, nothing has charms ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... Protestants, on the other hand, lustily 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 ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... be king of England. His son was Henry the Fifth, the greatest of the Plantagenet kings. When he was a young man, and only Prince of Wales, he was very wild and fond of games and jokes. They used to call him Harry Madcap. ...
— Royal Children of English History • E. Nesbit
... Dr Nettleby. "You're afraid of some of your nice messmates getting hauled over the coals? I bet that madcap Larkyns is at the bottom of it; I saw him with you close to one of the ports just now, as I passed by on my way down here, and I wondered what mischief you were up to! Well, well, I respect you, my boy, for not telling tales ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... 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 chapel ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... her soft blue eyes had held us enraptured, and we had wept with COQUETTE, and fiercely cheered the WHAUP while he held WATTIE by the heels, and made him say a sweer. And we had talked with MACLEOD and grown mournful with Madcap VIOLET, and had seen many another fresh and charming face, and had talked Gaelic with gusto and discrimination. And Queen TITA had sped with us, and we had adored BELLE, and yet we cried for more. But now the dream-journey ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 30, 1892 • Various
... 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 ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... is in 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
... he had seen in England! The remarks on Excelsior are even still more amazing. Excelsior, says Mr. Robertson, is not a ballad because a ballad deals either with real or with supernatural people, and the hero of the poem cannot be brought under either category. For, 'were he of human flesh, his madcap notion of scaling a mountain with the purpose of getting to the sky would be simply drivelling lunacy,' to say nothing of the fact that the peak in question is much frequented by tourists, while, on the other hand, 'it would be absurd to suppose him a spirit ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... "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
... "Mariposa" meant butterfly, she told the baby's mother, who gratefully accepted the compliment to her newly born daughter. The mother and her mates called her "Mary Posy." The mistress, who was fond of the madcap ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... already said that Maggot was a noted madcap, who stuck at nothing, and appeared to derive positive pleasure from the mere act of putting his life in danger. No human foot could, by climbing, have reached the spot where the nest of the daw, ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... you'd rejoice to know it." The lady turned to me as if Mr. Sawtelle had left us. "Yes, sir; he'd make you die laughing with some of his pranks, that madcap would. I tell you, ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... permitted you to speak, my young Solomon. I wished to honor in you the wisdom of your father; but another time avoid meddling with his highness's name; it is not safe to sport with the lion's paws. The matter is settled. The necklace is worth a hundred thousand piasters, is it not, Mansour? This madcap, shall give you, therefore, a hundred thousand piasters, and ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... 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 behaved—and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... only one, was La Mettrie, whom we once saw transiently as Army-Surgeon at Fontenoy: he is now out of all that (flung out, with the dogs at his heels); has been safe in Berlin for three years past. Friedrich not only tolerates the poor madcap, but takes some pleasure in him: madcap we say, though poor La Mettrie had remarkable gifts, exuberant laughter one of them, and was far from intending to be mad. Not Zanyism, but Wisdom of the highest nature, was what he drove ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... build the superstructure of his own fascinating imagination, and on which other writers more grave, though not more trustworthy as historians, have rested for conclusive evidence of the wild frolics and "madcap" adventures of Henry of Monmouth. Stowe's account is this: "In the year 1410, upon the eve of St. John the Baptist, (i.e. June 23,) the King's sons, Thomas and John, being in East-Cheap at supper, or rather ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... by scolding him mildly about his extravagance and madcap frolics (though, in truth, she was charmed with him for both)—he replied that young men will be young men, and that it was in dutifully waiting in attendance on his aunt, he had made the acquaintance with whom he mostly lived at present. She then with some prelude, began to warn ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... old madcap, you: what need all this? cannot a man have been a little whoremaster in his youth, but you must upbraid him with it, and tell him of his defects which, when he is married, his wife shall find in him? Why, my father's dead, man, now; who by his death has left me the better ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... nipped in the very bud of youth, while yet the sparkling jest was ripe upon the merry lip, and the ruddy glow of health upon the cheek gave earnest of a lengthened life———But, soft! methinks I hear my reader exclaim, "How now, madcap, moralizing Mr. Spy? art thou, too, bitten by the desire to philosophize, thou, 'the very Spy o' the time,' the merry buoyant rogue who has laughed all serious scenes to scorn, and riding over hill, and dale, and verdant plain upon thy fiery ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... memory, remained on the threshold of that secret retreat. In the profound silence we heard the sigh that came forth form his breast; he removed the most beautiful of the rings with which his skeleton fingers were laden, and placed it in Marianina's bosom. The young madcap laughed, plucked out the ring, slipped it on one of her fingers over her glove, and ran hastily back toward the salon, where the orchestra were, at that moment, beginning the prelude ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... knot of village maids Goes gaily tripping to the brook, For water-nymphs they mean to be, And seek some still, secluded nook. Here Laura goes, my own delight, And Colin's love, the madcap Jane, And half a score of goddesses Trip over daisies in the plain: Already now they loose their hair And peep from out the tangled gold, Or speed the flying foot to reach The brook that's only summer-cold; The lovely locks stream out behind The shepherdesses on the wing, And Laura's ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... feverish, febrile, hysterical; delirious, mad, moody, maggoty-headed. unquiet, mercurial, electric, galvanic, hasty, hurried, restless, fidgety, fussy; chafing &c. v. startlish[obs3], mettlesome, high-mettled[obs3], skittish. vehement, demonstrative, violent, wild, furious, fierce, fiery, hot- headed, madcap. overzealous, enthusiastic, impassioned, fanatical; rabid &c. (eager) 865. rampant, clamorous, uproarious, turbulent, tempestuous, tumultuary[obs3], boisterous. impulsive, impetuous, passionate; uncontrolled, uncontrollable; ungovernable, irrepressible, stanchless[obs3], inextinguishable, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... of Pecolat is another illustration of his character and of the strange, turbulent age in which he lived; and it went far to embitter the hatred of the duke and the bishop against him. This poor fellow was the jester, song-singer and epigrammatist of the madcap patriots who were associated under the title of "Sons of Geneva." Under a trumped-up charge of plotting the death of the bishop he was kidnapped and carried away to one of the castles in the neighborhood, and there tortured until a false confession was wrung from him implicating Berthelier ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... behind her pure, smiling, and stupid brow. It might be said that death, at whatever age it 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 to ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... about that. You are all false! My sweet little lark, my sunshine, my little madcap, lay your head on my knee, I want to ruffle ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... perhaps afterwards it was the more sterling qualities that underlaid that courage that drew him to the young man; certain it was that in two weeks Myles was the acknowledged favorite. He made no protestation of virtue; he always accompanied the Prince in those madcap ventures to London, where he beheld all manner of wild revelry; he never held himself aloof from his gay comrades, but he looked upon all their mad sports with the same calm gaze that had carried him without taint through the courts of Burgundy and the ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... holds her hand by chance, 'Tis the first rigadoon they dance; With parted lips, right thirstily Each rustic tracks them as they fly, And the damsel sly Feels every eye, And lighter moves for each adoring glance. Holy cross! what a sight! when the madcap rears aright Her shining lizard's head! her Spanish foot falls light, Her wasp-like figure sways And swims and whirls and springs again. The wind with corner of her 'kerchief plays. Those lovely cheeks where on the youths now gaze, They hunger ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... it all, I see it all! Now God be thanked, I am indeed awake at last! Come, joy! vanish, sorrow! Ho, Nan! Bet! kick off your straw and hie ye hither to my side, till I do pour into your unbelieving ears the wildest madcap dream that ever the spirits of night did conjure up to astonish the soul of man withal! . . . ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... I swore I could employ Thine absence well. But all my pride is o'er! Now am I lashed, as when a madcap boy Whirls a swift ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... 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
... incautious, precipitate, overhasty, indiscreet, inconsiderate, impulsive, temerarious, madcap, headlong, foolhardy, unwary, reckless. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... 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.
... a lesson from the songs Of woodland birds discoursing on the wrongs Of madcap moths and bachelor butterflies. I should have caught the cadence of the sighs Of unwed flowers, and learnt the way to woo, Which all things know but I, beneath the blue Of Heaven's great dome; for, undesired of thee, I have but jarr'd the notes ...
— A Lover's Litanies • Eric Mackay
... 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 his life. ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... for Mr. Ryland to clear up this difficulty. As he points out, Lady Lucy's elder sister, Olive, married George Stanhope, Dean of Canterbury, and left a daughter Mary,—Swift's "Moll Stanhope,"—a beauty and a madcap, who married, in 1712, William Burnet, son of Bishop Burnet, and died in 1714. Mary, another sister of Lady Lucy's, married Augustine Armstrong, of Great Ormond Street, and is the Mrs. Armstrong mentioned by Swift on Feb. 3, 1711, as a pretender to wit, without taste. Sir Berkeley Lucy's mother was ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... 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 from ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... older date. It protected one section of the oldest overland route, when the islet formed the key of the Gulf-head. It subsequently became an eyrie whence its robber knights and barons—including possibly "John, the Christian ruler of 'Akabah" (A.D. 630), and, long after him, madcap Rainald de Chatillon (A.D. 1182)—could live comfortably and sally out to plunder merchants and pilgrims. The Saracenic buildings may date, as the popular superstition has it, from the reign of Salah el-Din (Saladin) who, in A.D. 1167, cleared his country of the ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... madcap even carried her games and toys into the sacred environment of the Audience Chamber. Seated on the floor, innocently exposing the prettiest pair of ankles in England, and surrounded by her big playfellows, ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... done this willful child some good, you see. They had taught her to think—to know herself. She never could be the same crude, madcap ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... From time to time I feel the need of breathing the atmosphere of such a life as this. My madcap existence is like a song; each of my love-episodes forms a verse of it, but Marcel is ...
— La Boheme • Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica
... the empty-headed 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
... 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 of ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... genial explosion of madcap humour. Not so another succession of scenes produced about the same time. The subject of them is that Leuchsenring whose acquaintance, we have seen, Goethe had made under the roof of Sophie von la Roche. Since then, apparently, Leuchsenring's proceedings ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... bent upon my worldly advantage, and that is plain even to the person rejecting it. How much more so must it be to papa, though he likes you, and when you are near him would perhaps, in a fit of unworldliness, be almost as reckless as the creature he calls madcap and would rather call countess. No! sooner with a Will-o'-the-wisp, my friend. Who could ever know where the man was when he himself never knows where he is. He is the wind that bloweth as it listeth—because it is without an ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 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
... A madcap scheme danced before me. The time, I must know the time! Crouching low and cloaking the flame with my jacket I struck a match; 2.30 a.m.—the tide had been ebbing for about three hours and a half. Low water about five; they would be aground till 7.30. Danger to life? None. Flares and rescuers? ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... known to you, my dear brother, that I have been not a little amused, I may even say instructed, by a trick played by your madcap nephew, for the honor and glory, I suppose, of his scepticism, or for some other motive, not easily divined. He promised me significantly an entertainment, in which I should enjoy the "feast of reason and the flow of soul," by which I little ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... was quite sure, although the masses of her hair had been like night for dusky splendour, and her cheeks of that rich bloom which denotes young vigour and radiant health. He could hear her voice now, quoting a serious poet to fit a madcap mood—and quoting him in such a voice! What were the words? He remembered her ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... Master Edward, snatching the 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 ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... hear himself questioned as to his absence from lectures the day before. But it was difficult to repulse rudely a very good comrade with a smooth pink face and fair hair, bearing the nickname amongst his fellow-students of "Madcap Kostia." He was the idolized only son of a very wealthy and illiterate Government contractor, and attended the lectures only during the periodical fits of contrition following upon tearful paternal remonstrances. ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... Crispus Attucks? A Negro whose soul, galling under the destroying influence of slavery, went forth a freeman, went forth not only to fight for his liberty, but to give his life as an offering upon the altar of American liberty. He was not a madcap, as some would have the world believe. He was not ignorant of the issues between the American colonies and the English government, between the freemen of the colony and the dictatorial governors. ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... but he did not look at his daughter. Somehow, suddenly, a strange constraint possessed him where Zoe was concerned. "Then let us have Zoe's song; let us have 'La Claire Fontaine'," cried the black-eyed young madcap ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of Fly, nor 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
... on a fresh May morning, I took my love to church, To see if Parson Primrose were safely on his perch. He scarce had got to Thirdly, or squire begun to snore, When, like a sun-lit sea-wave, A green and crimson sea-wave, A frolic of madcap May-folk came whooping ...
— The Lord of Misrule - And Other Poems • Alfred Noyes
... frankness; she washed her masses of brown hair and shook it loose in the sunshine, and she came in wet more than once, and changed her shoes before the fire—just as she had years ago, when she was a madcap little girl ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... 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 her ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... you madcap, Henri, who are playing these pranks? Gentlemen, let him alone; he is ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... persons, however, whom I found at the encampment were a couple of insane fellows, determined to follow us—perhaps to show "by one satiric touch" what kind of madcap enterprise was ours. The first was a Neapolitan, who had dogged me all the while I was at Tripoli, pestering me to make a contract with him as servant. To humour his madness, I never said I would not; and the poor fellow, taking my silence ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... customary cowardly threat Ward made when he found himself caught in any of his madcap pranks. His rich father was a man of considerable influence in Stanhope, and many a man dared not treat the banker's son to the whipping he so richly deserved simply because it might be that his bread and butter depended in a measure on the good will or the ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... with a learned semi-madcap, who waiteth in darkened rooms for spirits to come to him—and the spirit runneth ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... 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
... thing," Mrs. Tully accepted with a smile of enthusiasm. "She is a splendid, unusual woman, very unspoiled, very natural. And after all, what does doing things amount to? I'd give more for one of Paula's madcap escapades—oh, I heard all about swimming the big stallion—than for all her pictures if every one was a masterpiece. But she was hard for me to understand at first. Dick often calls her the girl that never grew up. But gracious, she can put on the grand air when she needs to. I call her the ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... gentleman in point of courage, lofty bearing, courtesy, but an unsoaped, ill-clad, turbulent, high-tempered young fellow, looked up to by his crowd very much as the champion of the heavy weights is looked up to by his gang of blackguards. Alexander himself was not much better,—a foolish, fiery young madcap. How often is he mentioned except as a warning? His best record is that he served to point a moral as 'Macedonian's madman.' He made a figure, it is true, in Dryden's great Ode, but what kind of a figure? He got drunk,—in very bad company, too,—and then turned fire-bug. He had one redeeming ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... two children walked the length of the terrace with him, all chattering at once. She seemed to be in a daring, madcap mood and Saltash laughed and jested with her as though she had been indeed the child she looked. Only at parting, when she would have danced away, he suddenly stopped ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... with its 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
... who sometimes played off monkish mummeries about the cloisters, at other times turned the state chambers into schools for boxing and single-stick, and shot pistols in the great hall. The country people of the neighborhood were as much puzzled by these madcap vagaries of the new incumbent, as by the gloomier habits of the "old lord," and began to think that madness was inherent in the Byron race, or that some wayward star ruled over ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... 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 ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... the Bishop and swore that he should marry these two forthwith. The gown was given back to him, and my lord of Hereford commenced the service. He thought it more polite to obey, remembering his last experience with this madcap outlaw. ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... marriage with Jean. Indeed, I came to look upon it as something that was utterly illegal, and that I could never be expected to stand by what was only, after all, a mere farcical thing, the act of a madcap boy." ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking |
