"Harum-scarum" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were all her own, lawfully paid for out of her own money. So the house was quite bare, and my young master, the moment ever he set foot in it out of his gig, thought all those things must come of themselves, I believe, for he never looked after any thing at all, but harum-scarum called for every thing as if we were conjurers, or he in a public-house. For my part, I could not bestir myself any how; I had been so much used to my late master and mistress, all was upside down with me, and the new servants in the servants' ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... and just as certain to be a child's favorite as the others in the famous series. Harum-scarum ...
— Three People • Pansy
... so. 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
... rearranging of the banquet-hall was going on, Simmons was busying himself putting a new bridge under the strings of his violin, tightening its bow, and testing the condition of his instrument by that see-saw, harum-scarum flourish so common to all virtuosos;—no function of the club was ever complete without music—the men meanwhile settled themselves comfortably in their seats; some occupying their old chairs, others taking possession of the divans, the gay costumes of the members, and the ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... actress even then," he went on. "Colonel King had a beautiful daughter, and he was supposed to have a son—a harum-scarum, reckless lad, who went galloping over the ranges with the cowboys, roped cattle, took part in round-ups, and did all sorts of things like that. This boy was known as Tom King. Colonel King's foreman, Injun Jack, had a grudge against Frank Merriwell and swore to kill him. He found his opportunity ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... with Louise Johnson around," returned Anne. "But never mind, Laura, they won't forget this meeting, even if they do have to 'react' a bit. I'm sure that even Louise will keep the memory of this last Council tucked away in some corner of her harum-scarum mind." ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Camp Fire Girls' Story • I. T. Thurston
... same 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 ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... mean? 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 ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... is the custom of the hunters to return to the plains for the fall or autumn hunt, which is usually expected to furnish the means of subsistence during the long and severe winter. But this hunt is not always a success, and when it is a partial failure the gay, improvident, harum-scarum half-breeds have a sad time of it. Occasionally there is a total failure of the hunt, and then starvation stares them in the face. Such was the case at the time of which we write, and the improvident habits of those people in times ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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 not profit you probably ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... that it was Griffin herself," said Elinor with spirit. "She's such a wild, harum-scarum thing, and she does ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... there is nothing of that sort," said Augustus. "His grandfather wants him, and Orme thought he might as well start at once. He was always a sudden harum-scarum fellow like that." ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... privateersman - serving my country, I say; but he calls it pirate. He is thrifty and sober; he has a treasure, they say, and it lies so near his heart that he tumbles up in his sleep to stand watch over it. What has a harum-scarum dog like me to expect from a man like him? He won't see I'm starving for a chance to mend; 'Mend,' he'll say; 'I'll be shot if you mend at the expense of my daughter;' and the worst of it is, you see, he'll ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... brutality. Ay, and as I've heard say, of many a deed of darkness, not omitting murder, and other crimes not less foul and hateful to Him who made this beautiful world, and gave to man a religion of love and purity. There the rollicking, roaring, bullying, fighting, harum-scarum Irishman of olden days had full swing for all the propensities and vile passions which have ruined him at home, and gained him a name and a fame not to be envied throughout the world. Often have I wondered whether, had a North American Indian, or a South-Sea Islander, visited ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... of the invading forces who spoke, and the words were addressed to a very harum-scarum looking young lady, who stood facing him on the opposite side ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... thing for the paper," he said, "if it only panned out; but it is such a rattle-brained, harum-scarum thing. No one under the sun would have thought of it ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... splendid white horse that black man is holding for him! How he bows his neck, and champs his bit, and paws the ground!" said Willie, a harum-scarum, neck-or-nothing young blade of fourteen, who would have given his best leg to have been the owner of a galloping, high-headed, ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... Miles (Throckmorton), harum-scarum, brave, indiscreet, over-generous hero of Constance Cary Harrison's story, Flower ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... 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
... white. He would not let her see that he did not know what this was, but he was ashamed, and he determined to find out; he determined to get a drawing-book, and learn something about it himself. To his thinking, the room was pretty harum-scarum. There were shawls hung upon the walls, and rugs, and pieces of cloth, which sometimes had half- finished paintings fastened to them; there were paintings standing round the room on the floor, sometimes right ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... past, and Rudolf once more far away from Strelsau. Then enough of the truth—no more—must be disclosed. Helsing would be told the story of Rudolf Rassendyll and persuaded to hold his tongue about the harum-scarum Englishman (we are ready to believe much of an Englishman) having been audacious enough again to play the king in Strelsau. The old chancellor was a very good fellow, and I do not think that Rudolf ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... 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 ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... "Fust-rate! that harum-scarum venter er mine was the best I ever made. She's done waal by me, hes Bewlah; ben a grand good housekeeper, kin kerry on the farm better 'n me, any time, an' is as dutif'l an' lovin' a wife as,—waal, as annything that is extra ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... obtain more minute, though, we are sorry to say, scarce more satisfactory intelligence. The luck, good and bad together, which had distinguished Roaring Ralph, in all his relations with Roland, never, it seems, entirely deserted him. His improvident, harum-scarum habits had very soon deprived him of all the advantages that might have resulted from the soldier's munificent gift, and left him a landless good-for-nothing, yet contented vagabond as before. With poverty returned sundry peculiar propensities which he had manifested in former days; so that Ralph ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... my girls, and 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 Molly Loo. ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... felt very 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; ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... Those "harum-scarum" expeditions, the Crusades, were perhaps influential in checking piracy, although the rabble that composed the majority of them had as little principle as the worst of the freebooters. From the time that Peter the Hermit set Europe in a blaze, all ranks, ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... obeyed him. At intervals of half an hour she opened the door softly, looked in at him, thought he was asleep, and went softly away. But he had never been further from sleep in his life. Henrietta Hastings's harum-scarum gossiping and philosophizing happened to be just what his troubled mind needed to precipitate its clouds into a solid mass that could be clearly seen and carefully examined. Heretofore he had accepted the conventional explanations of all the ultimate problems, ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... was saying," said Aunt Polly, "he warn't BAD, so to say —only mischEEvous. Only just giddy, and harum-scarum, you know. He warn't any more responsible than a colt. HE never meant any harm, and he was the best-hearted boy that ever was"—and she ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... was a scion of a good Scottish Border family, a youth careless and harum-scarum as the most typical of middies, but a gentleman, and popular alike with officers and men. He was about eighteen, had already distinguished himself in more than one brush with the enemy, and was looked on as a most promising officer. ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... Dublin, which were all her own, lawfully paid for out of her own money. So the house was quite bare, and my young master, the moment ever he set foot in it out of his gig, thought all those things must come of themselves, I believe, for he never looked after anything at all, but harum-scarum called for everything as if we were conjurors, or he in a public-house. For my part, I could not bestir myself anyhow; I had been so much used to my late master and mistress, all was upside down with me, and the new servants ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... one of the most delicate diplomatic missions of recent years. Everybody conceded that he had a future. If Jack had never appeared on her horizon she would have married Ned and been to him a loving wife. But the harum-scarum cousin had ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... 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 come to dinner, ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... Codman. "The company has nothing to do with it. As far as I can see it is only the wild plan of a harum-scarum young man. He has no authority. He's doing it for excitement, for an adventure. He doesn't seem to know anything of—of what is going on—and, personally, I think he's mad. He and his friend are the two men who twice drove past your house this morning. What his ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... 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
... 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 on the surface ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... its low roof, its crimson walls, dark furniture and handsome fire (the fires at Cockhoolet were always handsome: Bessie was the architect and superintended the building herself; they never looked harum-scarum nor meaningless nor thoughtless, nor as if they were not meant to burn; they combined taste, comfort, and, as a consequence, economy; everything tasteful and comfortable is in the long run economical), its table-cloth, glistening like the summit of the Alps and laden with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... Amy's 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 ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... risk 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 ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher
... how indispensable it was for a Barrister to do all 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 wrong one—harum-scarum. Why does not his guardian angel look to him? He deserves one—: may be, he has tired him out." Lamb's Works, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... you, Frank, an' the baby ain't got no objections, I'd like to use some of this to start a savings account for my namesake. Curry ain't no name for a baby girl, an' you ought to let me square it with her somehow. Mebbe when she gits of age, an' wants to marry some harum-scarum boy, she won't think so bad ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... harum-scarum sweeping, and said, with a look and tone almost defiant, "I don't want ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... repeated Miss Wealthy. "You see, when Mildred was a harum-scarum girl—" Hildegarde uttered an exclamation, and Miss Wealthy stopped short. "Is there something you want to say, dear?" she asked gently. ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... 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 now twenty-five years ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... you've made friends with her," the Colonel said. "She's a harum-scarum lot, I'm afraid, and a sad chatterbox, but she's the right sort of a person for a man with nerves like you! You're looking a bit ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... "You always were harum-scarum," remonstrated Aunt Janet, under this outburst. She did not, however, offer any real objection and they went ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... interested in mining, he himself looked upon it as being too near akin to gambling; but feeling well disposed towards Tom, and the sum required being very moderate, he lent his friend the money, quite prepared, knowing Tom's optimistic, harum-scarum character, ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp |
