|
|
|
More "Blunder" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... believed that he could not lawfully be disobeyed. In the two years during which he still remained in the Church his faith in her system fell rapidly to pieces. Within two months after the publication of the Encyclical he wrote that the Pope, like the other princes, seemed careful not to omit any blunder that could secure his annihilation.[351] Three weeks afterwards he denounced in the fiercest terms the corruption of Rome. He predicted that the ecclesiastical hierarchy was about to depart with the old monarchies; and, though ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... generous little woman!" He bent over her and kissed her, apparently unconscious that she instinctively drew back from his caress. "If you really will help me, no doubt I shall build things up again in no time, and this one blunder won't count for much. You are a worthy comrade for ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... hers, and she could afford to do as she pleased with his; he was broad and tall and she was not slow to see that he was indifferent. He did not care who the guests were, or how they came; he merely wished to make sure of their presence. His only blunder was the rather diffident recommendation that Barbara Drew be asked again. If he observed that Mrs. Dan's head sank a little closer to the paper, he attached no importance to the movement; he could not see that her eyes grew narrow, and he ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... part of a lady, than you do. How you manage it, I can't tell; but you do as much by a look, and a pleasant one too, that's the rarity! as I do by high words, and passionate exclamations: I have often nothing but blunder upon blunder, as if the wretches were in a confederacy to try my patience."—"Perhaps," said I, "the awe they have of your ladyship, because of your high qualities, makes them commit blunders; for I myself was always more afraid of appearing before your ladyship, ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... poured a little of the tea into the cups, and then emptied the pot over the balustrade, which was, as it happened, a blunder, because while she endeavoured to crumble a small portion of the bread so as to convey the impression that she had been eating it, Alton and Seaforth ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... sedition. Both Aaron and Miriam had received a portion of the prophetic genius that distinguished Moses, and they naturally thought that they should have some share in the government, at least to make a few suggestions, when they thought Moses made a blunder. Miriam was older than Moses, and had at this time the experience of 120 years. When Moses was an infant on the River Nile, Miriam was intrusted by his parents to watch the fate of the infant in the bulrushes and the daughter of Pharaoh in ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... dispatches backwards and forwards between the parties. This man Cole seems to have been the most wiley conspirator of them all, and played his infamous part of the plot with the most adroit shrewdness; and the defeat of the whole scheme was not owing to any blunder of his, but rather the blunder of those who employed and furnished him with the means. Having been well supplied with money by Mr. Thompson, and no limit put to his expenses, he began his work with a will. He seems to have begun by getting generally well acquainted with the officers of ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... again triumphed. The Stephenson Coast Line secured the approval of Parliament; and the shareholders in the Atmospheric Company were happily prevented investing their capital in what would unquestionably have proved a gigantic blunder. For, less than three years later, the whole of the atmospheric tubes which had been laid down on other lines were pulled up and the materials sold—including Mr. Brunel's immense tube on the South Devon Railway—to make way for the working of the locomotive engine. George Stephenson's first verdict ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... until patience became a fault, and our inaction was naturally ascribed by him to fear. Had firmness been shown by Lord Cornwallis, when Seringapatam was practically in his power, the second war would have been avoided and thousands of lives spared. The blunder was a costly one to us, for the work had to be done all over again, and the fault of Lord Cornwallis retrieved by the energy and firmness of ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... boast ourselves over the sages who had the misfortune of living too soon. It would be falling into the same blunder Macaulay ascribed to Johnson in alleging that the philosopher thought the Athenian populace the inferiors of Black Frank his valet, because they could not read and Frank could. Our heads are apt to be turned by our success in throwing together iron, timber, stone and other dead matter. Let us remember ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... to him in fetters and with a shorn head, guarded by two soldiers who were waiting to take him back to prison, had a free soul and was immeasurably superior to himself. He was in consequence somewhat troubled, and had to summon up all his courage in order to go on with the inquiry and not blunder in his questions. He was amazed that Stepan should narrate the story of his crimes as if they had been things of long ago, and committed not by him ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... field with these pleasant and genial theories; but M. Ghil informs us that Rimbaud was mistaken in many things, particularly in coupling the sound of the vowel u with the colour green instead of with the colour yellow. M. Ghil has corrected this very stupid blunder and many others; and his instrumentation in his last volume, "Le Geste Ingenu," may be considered as complete and definitive. The work is dedicated to Mallarme, "Pere et seigneur des ors, des pierreries, et des poissons," and ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... aghast. He knew the danger better than any one. If Alan was spent, Bandmaster might blunder and there would be a nasty spill. He hoped for the best as he watched with his feelings strung to the ...
— The Rider in Khaki - A Novel • Nat Gould
... colouring highly, took Menteith a little apart, and expressed to him his regret that he had fallen into a foolish blunder. ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... two years ago, addressed 'to the most impudent man living,' was universally acknowledged to be dedicated to our commentator." Warburton had always the Dunciad in his head when a new quarrel was rising, which produced an odd blunder on the side of Edwards, and provoked that wit to be as dull as Cooper. Warburton said, in one of his notes on Edwards, who had entitled himself "a gentleman of Lincoln's Inn,"—"This gentleman, as he is pleased to call himself, is in reality a gentleman only ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... Bertrand was amused at Joan's naive way of referring to her advice as if it had been a valuable present to a hostile leader who was saved by it from making a censurable blunder of omission, and then he went on to admire how ingeniously she had deceived that man and yet had not told him anything that was not the truth. This troubled Joan, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... been due rather to the urgent persuasion of his friends than to his own eagerness to appear in print. Though J. S. Mill and a few other critics wrote with good judgement and praised the book, it met with a cold reception in most places, and the Quarterly Review, regardless of its blunder over Keats, spoke of it in most contemptuous terms. All can recognize to-day how unfair this was to the merits of a volume which contained the 'Lotos-Eaters', 'Oenone', and the 'Lady of Shalott'; but the effect of the harsh verdict on the poet, always ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... she had pronounced one of the world's great tragedies. "Then you will give yourself to that man—yourself, Grace, that beautiful self—and without love? It's a crime! Don't commit the horrible blunder that's ruined my life. See what wretchedness ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... the will of God is to dwell in the land of uprightness, disobedience is to dwell in a dry and thirsty land, barren and dreary, horrid with frowning rocks and jagged cliffs, where every stone cuts the feet and every step is a blunder, and all the paths end at last on the edge of an abyss, and crumble into nothingness beneath the despairing foot that treads them. Do you see to it that you walk in ways of righteousness which are ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... for this seeming neglect. It may not be too late even now, however, to make amends for this strange oversight, by hastening on Mr. Howitt's party. The whole expedition appears to have been one prolonged blunder throughout; and it is to be hoped that the rescuing party may not be mismanaged and retarded in the same way as the unfortunate original expedition was. The savans have made a sad mess of the whole affair; let them, if possible, retrieve ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... the clear-cut blunder of which I spoke. The real blunder is this. Mr. Wells deserves a tiara of crowns and a garland of medals for all kinds of reasons. But if I were restricted, on grounds of public economy, to giving Mr. Wells ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... had been left in hiding, while Max set out for Aix-la-Chapelle alone. He still wore the workman's clothes in which he had masqueraded for so long, and, with his excellent knowledge of the German tongue, he had little to fear so long as he took care not to blunder into a military patrol. Without misadventure he reached Aix, and purchased a dozen spanners similar to those used by plate-layers, except that the handles were short and lacked the great leverage necessary for ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill
... them muttered something about having seen it written therein that God the Father was alone omnipotent. This reached the ears of the legate, who replied in astonishment that he could not believe that even a child would make so absurd a blunder. "Our common faith," he said, "holds and sets forth that the Three are alike omnipotent." A certain Tirric, a schoolmaster, hearing this, sarcastically added the Athanasian phrase, "And yet there are not three omnipotent ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... must blunder again and say that I had been wondering how else she came by the Parisian French; but at this her jesting mood vanished ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... and demerits of Prince Louis's notable comparison between the Christian religion and the Imperial-revolutionary system. There are many blunders in the above extract as we read it; blundering metaphors, blundering arguments, and blundering assertions; but this is surely the grandest blunder of all; and one wonders at the blindness of the legislator and historian who can advance such a parallel. And what are we to say of the legacy of the dying revolution to Napoleon? Revolutions do not die, and, on their death-beds, making fine speeches, hand over their property ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... given by himself to the confraternity. And they all came to his house in Kensington Palace Gardens, and Thackeray was duly chaffed and teased—"and who can doubt," says Trollope, "but they were very jolly over the little blunder?" ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... of an historian on the march of the Roman legions: "They make a solitude, and call it peace." Strength! There are those in perdition at this moment who could tell them that what they call strength is the stupidity which adds to sin the increment of a huge blunder. ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... said Mrs. Bradd, cheerfully. It might have been accident, but she tapped her pocket as she spoke, and the outwitted mate bit his lip as he realised his blunder, and turned to the door. The couple watched him as he ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs
... presented herself to their View, on the Frontiers of Egypt. She was found alone, and in a very disconsolate Condition. This Lady must, doubtless, said they to themselves, be the Queen of Babylon: And without listning to her Complaints, convey'd her instantly to my Husband Moabdar. Their gross Blunder at first incens'd his Majesty to the last Degree; but after he had view'd the Lady with an attentive Eye, he found she was extremely pretty, and was soon pacify'd. Her Name was Missouf. I have been since inform'd, that her Name in the Egyptian Language signifies ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... much trouble. Charles saw it all, ridiculed his peculations, but called him his "bed of down." His knowledge of human nature was however derived from a contemplation mainly of its weaknesses, and was therefore one-sided. He was often deceived, and made many a fatal blunder, shrewd politician though he was. He involved himself often in enterprises which could not be honorable or profitable, and which inflicted damage on his greatest interests. He often offended men who might have ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... because of the identity of the story with the "Leonore" operas, of Gaveaux and Paer. Much confusion has existed in the books (and still exists, for that matter) touching the order in which the four overtures were composed. The early biographers were mistaken on that point, and the blunder was perpetuated by the numbering when the scores were published. The true "Leonore No. 1," is the overture known in the concert-room, where it is occasionally heard, as "Leonore No. 2." This was the original overture to the opera, and was performed ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... every day's journey improves our position. Conde feels secure now; he dreaded only the passage of the Loire. Guise made a huge blunder which, in the future, will ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... the young girl in some perplexity. In spite of the ridiculous blunder of which he stood convicted, he was very far from being a simpleton, and he had a lively suspicion that Mademoiselle Noemie's sudden frankness was not essentially more honest than her leaving him in error would have ...
— The American • Henry James
... preference. Lord Ellenborough is of a different opinion. He takes away the gates from a Mahometan mosque, and solemnly offers them as a gift to a Pagan temple. Morally, this is a crime. Politically, it is a blunder. Nobody who knows anything of the Mahometans of India can doubt that this affront to their faith will excite their fiercest indignation. Their susceptibility on such points is extreme. Some of the most serious disasters that have ever befallen us in India have been caused by that susceptibility. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... irresolute friendship of Lothario? though perhaps, as to the time and place where those several persons lived, that good historian may be deplorably deficient. But the most known instance of this kind is in the true history of Gil Blas, where the inimitable biographer hath made a notorious blunder in the country of Dr Sangrado, who used his patients as a vintner doth his wine-vessels, by letting out their blood, and filling them up with water. Doth not every one, who is the least versed in physical history, know that Spain was not the country in which this doctor lived? The same ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... set forth in the highly scientific language of Mr. Cavor the aim to which his experiments tended, I am afraid I should confuse not only the reader but myself, and almost certainly I should make some blunder that would bring upon me the mockery of every up-to-date student of mathematical physics in the country. The best thing I can do therefore is, I think to give my impressions in my own inexact language, without any attempt to wear a garment ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... to put a bullet into me. I don't set so much store by my life as some fidgets do, but it's not pleasant to be shot off in that summary fashion. So I sent for Mr. Robin and satisfied him that he was making the same blunder that Deerham just then was making—mistaking ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... last, a fortnight afore Michaelmas?] [Theobald suspected that Shakespeare had written "Martlemas."] This correction, thus seriously and wisely enforced, is received by Sir Tho. Hammer; but probably Shakespeare intended a blunder. ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... is made of the right stuff if he did make one mistake, and I guess he will never make the same blunder again. Too bad though about his house. No insurance at all, and that was ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... harshly judged because of the mere quantity he can take, for a quart of ale to him is really no more than a glass of wine to the 'City' gentleman who lives delicately. He is to be pitied rather than condemned, and aided out of the blunder rather than chastised. Punishment, indeed, waits upon him only too doggedly, and overtakes him too quickly in the shape of sorrows and privations at home. The evil lies not in the ale, but in the character of the man that sold him the ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... of the main army of Howe to occupy Philadelphia was the great British blunder of the war. It enabled the Vermont and New Hampshire militia to throw obstacles in the march of Burgoyne, who became entangled in the forests of northern New York, with his flank and rear exposed to the sharpshooters ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... having hunted everywhere for a Protestant church, one of which we found at last by some blunder quite empty, we went with our landlord, a serjeant in the national guard, to inspect the heights of Chaumont, Belleville, and Mt. Martre.... We ascended from the town for about 3 miles to a sort ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... miscue was a boot of a Cobb bounder in a tight place. Fournier's blunder did not appear in the error column. Jack simply sat down on the grass and watched a tall fly light near him in gleeful security. By keeping his feet Fournier should have caught said fly and saved the cost of ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... what in these words, or perhaps just the intonation of that phrase, induced me suddenly to make all possible allowances for him. I ceased to be annoyed at my unexpected predicament. It was some mistake on his part; he was blundering, and I had an intuition that the blunder was of an odious, of an unfortunate nature. I was anxious to end this scene on grounds of decency, just as one is anxious to cut short some unprovoked and abominable confidence. The funniest part was, that in the midst of all these considerations of the ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... hills gets all the sun, and on a fine summer's morning grows drowsy with the heat. The crimson and creamy-gold of the opening honeysuckle swings heavy with its own sweetness. The hart's-tongue ferns, matted all over the steep banks, hang down like the tongues of thirsty dogs. The bees blunder sleepily from flower to flower. The black and crimson butterflies take short flights and long panting rests. Even the late wild roses seem less saucily cheerful than usual, and the branching ferns on the hillsides look as though they ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... all alive with Arabs for the next ten leagues," said Cecil, as he settled himself in his saddle. "They have come northward and been sweeping the country like a locust-swarm, and we shall blunder on some of them sooner or later. If they cut me down, don't wait; but slash my pouch loose and ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... who declared without knowing anything about the evidence the police had in their possession that in arresting the famous barrister the police had made a far worse blunder than in arresting Birchill. It was even hinted that the arrest of the man who had got Birchill off was an expression of the police desire for revenge. To these people the acquittal of Holymead was a foregone conclusion. The man who had saved Birchill's life by his brilliant ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... blunder of haste and happiness; it brought Dr. Lavendar and David up to the Stuffed Animal House very often, "to try on." David's coming was always a delight, but the old man fretted her, somehow;—he was so good. She said ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... that is generally called "The Remedy." It is almost wholly due to this careful, solid, and scientific method that "The Remedy" is never found. For this scheme of medical question and answer is a blunder; the first great blunder of sociology. It is always called stating the disease before we find the cure. But it is the whole definition and dignity of man that in social matters we must actually find the cure before ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... impressed by Wagner's ideas when I only half understood his art; and when one of his compositions puzzled me, my confidence was not shaken, for I was sure that the genius who was so convincing in his reasoning would not blunder; and that if his music baffled me, it was I who was at fault. Wagner was really his own best friend, his own most trusty champion; and his was the guiding hand that led one through the thick forest and over the rugged ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... continually. There is no book in which children a little advanced beyond the simplest monosyllabic lessons will learn to read faster, or more readily catch the proprieties of inflection, emphasis, and cadence, than the Bible. I would by no means put it into the hands of a child to spell out and blunder over the chapters before he has read any thing else. The word of God ought not to be so used by mere beginners. But it contains lessons adapted to all classes of learners, after the first and simplest stage. Let any teacher who has never made the trial ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... behaved toward them as if he were displeased with them, and that he had no project of substituting any other administration for the present one.[81] And his temperate treatment of them was the more remarkable, because a flagrant blunder of Burke (who filled the post of Paymaster), in reinstating some clerks who had been dismissed by his predecessor for dishonesty, had manifestly weakened the ministry in the House of Commons;[82] while in another case, in which the King had clearly in no slight degree a personal ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... eternity of love's happiness with the paltry years of love's waiting, saw nothing in the condition of affairs to ruffle its peaceful serenity? And yet to most the time would have seemed very, very long. Men may blunder against rich pockets or leads and wealthy say farewell to a day which they greeted as the poorest of the poor. So may men win fortunes on a turn of the wheat market. But the one is no more prospecting than the other ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... ready to surrender, though he knew now that he had committed a woful blunder. In fact, the knowledge that he was dealing with Frank Merriwell aroused him to a fierce resistance. He felt that it would simply be ruinous to be held and recognized by Merriwell, and he began to fight like a demon ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... you. When you were brought here I was still in durance vile, and Higgins was in his strait-jacket. On being released, my hands were full, as you can suppose. Moreover, I did not learn at once of your detention. The saddle and the valise caused me to suspect that a blunder had been committed. I cannot adequately express my regrets. In ten minutes," continued Dr. Pendegrast, turning a fat gold watch over on its back in the palm of his hand, where it looked like a little yellow ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... been unnoticed all the previous part of the morning till now, when the Doctor put him on to construe in a Greek play. He did not know a word of it, though little Timmins, his form-fellow, was prompting him with all his might. Pen had made a sad blunder or two when the awful Chief ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... signal-distance of the chase, and was already busy exchanging the usual information, when the "stranger" barque was discovered to be no other than their old friend and faithful tender the Agrippina; and the Alabama continued her course, not a little amused at her own blunder in thus chasing her ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... plenty of campaign material in the testimony collected by the Joint Committee, in the reports of the Freedmen's Bureau, and in the bloody race riots which had occurred in Memphis and New Orleans. The greatest blunder of the Administration was Johnson's speechmaking tour to the West which he called "Swinging Around the Circle." Every time he made a speech he was heckled by persons in the crowd, lost his temper, ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... the tray of needles, forgot the silesia was to be 'twilled' till it was cut off, gave the wrong change, and covered herself with confusion by asking for lavender ribbon at the calico counter. Mr. Bhaer stood by, watching her blush and blunder, and as he watched, his own bewilderment seemed to subside, for he was beginning to see that on some occasions, women, like ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... of an apoplectic attack. "I have heard him ask twenty times a-day," says Dr. Watson, "What is the name of the lad that is at college?" (my elder brother); and yet he was able to repeat, without a blunder, hundreds of lines out of classic authors. And hence, there is no reason for discrediting the story of a German statesman, a Mr. Von B. related in the seventh volume of the Psycological Magazine, who having called at a gentleman's house, the servants of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 20, No. 567, Saturday, September 22, 1832. • Various
... the first move in his game, Messer Simone lost no time in making the second move. Fortified, as he was, by the friendship and the approval of certain of the leaders of the city, he could confidently count upon immunity from blame if any seeming blunder of his delivered to destruction a certain number of young gentlemen whose opinions were none too popular with many of those in high office. So, while still the flambeaux of the festival were burning, and while still a few late guests were carousing at Messer Folco's tables, the emissaries of ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... easy it is to blunder," he said. "I'm looking for a Polish Jewess, whose chief feature is her nose, and who wears ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... if you look at it that way, of course you'll be suspicious. But I don't believe anything of the sort. It was just a blunder of someone who didn't know how, trying to write ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton
... 'very fast;' and his own style does no doubt very boldly take this capacity for granted in us. In 'choice and pith of diction,' again, of which Mr. Lowell speaks, he hits the mark with a felicity that is almost his own in this generation. He is terse, concentrated, and free from the important blunder of mistaking intellectual dawdling for meditation. Nor in fine does his abruptness ever impede a true urbanity. The accent is homely and the apparel plain, but his bearing has a friendliness, a courtesy, ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... having fully broken fast, A noise she heard, and hurried To find the hole by which she came, And seem'd to find it not the same; So round she ran, most sadly flurried; And, coming back, thrust out her head, Which, sticking there, she said, "This is the hole, there can't be blunder: What makes it now so small, I wonder, Where, but the other day, I pass'd with ease?" A Rat her trouble sees, And cries, "But with an emptier belly; You entered lean, and ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... events occurred which disturbed the ,wretched monotony of Francis Burney's life. The Court moved from Kew to Windsor, and from Windsor back to Kew. One dull colonel went out of waiting, and another dull colonel came into waiting. An impertinent servant made a blunder about tea, and caused a misunderstanding between the gentlemen and the ladies. A half-witted French Protestant minister talked oddly about conjugal fidelity. An unlucky member of the household mentioned a ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... dressing simultaneously for an important occasion—either the first night or something else. In that feverish environment he forgot the form of words which he had carefully prepared for the breaking to his wife of the great financial news. Fortunately she gave him no chance to blunder. ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... that Ferrer should have believed, as late as October fourth, that he would not be condemned to death. Even more pathetic that his friends and comrades should once more have made the blunder in crediting the enemy with a sense of justice. Time and again they had placed faith in the judicial powers, only to see their brothers killed before their very eyes. They made no preparation to rescue Ferrer, not even a protest of any extent; nothing. ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... quarrelled with Agamemnon about a—; and then afterwards, animated by private resentment only, he went about killing people basely, I will call it, because he knew himself invulnerable; and yet, invulnerable as he was, he wore the strongest armour in the world; which I humbly apprehend to be a blunder; for a horseshoe clapped to his vulnerable heel would have been sufficient. On the other hand, with submission to the favourers of the moderns, I assert with Mr. Dryden, that the Devil is in truth the hero of ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... first, that Tudor was not the right man for Joan and could not possibly make her permanently happy; next, that Joan was too sensible a girl really to fall in love with a man of such superficial stamp; and, finally, that Tudor would blunder his love-making somehow. And at the same time, with true lover's anxiety, Sheldon feared that the other might somehow fail to blunder, and win the girl with purely fortuitous and successful meretricious show. But of the one thing Sheldon was sure: Tudor had ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... a crime—it was blunder of the very first magnitude, and such a blunder as could only have been made by a very stupid as well as a very arrogant man. Doria by this time was a warrior of European celebrity, and one to whom even kings used the language of persuasion; to ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... hull—and had, at the same time, or subsequently, become water-logged to such an extent as to submerge her hull nearly to the level of the deck; her crew had abandoned her; and she had been left washing about, a scarcely visible yet truly formidable death-trap, for our own good ship to blunder upon to her destruction. The force of the blow had turned the stranger nearly bottom up, so I could not even make a guess at her nationality, and, worse still, it had robbed us of a possible chance of slightly bettering our condition by taking up our quarters ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... our disapprobation of Homer, or any other poet, who is guilty of such a foolish blunder as to tell us (Iliad, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... dangerous to men and to other animals as are the crocodiles of the Nile. At that place they met their companions who had anchored their large vessels after receiving the leader's orders to proceed. Much disturbed by the possible consequences of Nicuesa's blunder, the ships' captains consulted together and decided to adopt the opinion of the captains of the brigantines which had coasted along very near to the shores of Veragua; they therefore sailed for that port. Veragua is a local name given to a river ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... (unless he happened to be an antiquarian) as they would be to an Englishman. These the Translator has, as far as possible, got rid of, and has endeavoured to reduce the explanatory foot-notes—those 'blunder-marks,' as they have been well styled—to as small a number as is consistent with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... relation between two conceptions. I shall not dwell here on the faultiness of this definition, in that it suits only for categorical and not for hypothetical or disjunctive judgements, these latter containing a relation not of conceptions but of judgements themselves— a blunder from which many evil results have followed.* It is more important for our present purpose to observe, that this definition does not determine in what the ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... was Alvord's reply, "but he's handicapped by the personality of his man. Edge's doing pretty well, considering. He probably is wise to the situation. He didn't expect anything like a contest, you know, owing to that confounded blunder one of you two made. Now he's doing the best he can; but his man's been too strong in the God-and-morality way in years gone by to wipe out the stain by one evening of free booze. On the other hand, your life has been perfect—always careful and sound in business, ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... salutations with myself, Hoka was still staring and ruffling like a gamecock. It was a Corsican who had years before called him cochon sauvage—cocon chauvage, as Hoka mispronounced it. With people so nice and so touchy, it was scarce to be supposed that our company of greenhorns should not blunder into offences. Hoka, on one of his visits, fell suddenly in a brooding silence, and presently after left the ship with cold formality. When he took me back into favour, he adroitly and pointedly explained the nature of my offence: I had asked him to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Tartarin would growl, furious at his blunder, and plunging fiercely into the gloom with his ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... and bloat, a gas-bag and fanfaron, a Gascon and a carajo, alma miserabile, and a pudding-head, a sacre menteur and a verfluchte prahlerische Hauptesel, a brassy old blunder-head and a spupsy, un sot sans pareil and a darned old hoffmagander; a pepper-pot-pourri, a thafe of the wurreld and an owld baste, the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Frank. "We all agreed that this Gilbert fellow was as cool a customer as we'd ever met. Now the chances are he'll grasp the situation at a glance, laugh at his blunder, put your bag safely away, and hustle to remedy the mistake so as not to be left out of the tournament. Believe that, Will, for your own peace ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... to Exon, By special direction, Came down the world's wonder, Sir Salathiel Blunder, With a quoif on his head As heavy as lead; And ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... where such exhibits are less common. But for a few minutes I kept accidentally confusing the two kingdoms, mistaking zoophytes for water plants, animals for vegetables. And who hasn't made the same blunder? Flora and fauna are so closely associated ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... been in possession of her accustomed faculties. But between the harrowing suspicion that engrossed her mind and the nervous moisture that gathered in her eyes with each step, she mounted a story too high, and did not perceive her blunder until, happening to think that her apartment must lie somewhere in the region she had gained, she consulted the numbers upon the adjacent doors, and saw that she had wandered a hundred rooms out of her way, She stopped short to consider which ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... can hold each other very tight and try to walk straight. We shall blunder horribly, but it will be better than stumbling apart. ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... help until he had exhausted all other means of redeeming his folly in not learning Carmencita's full name and address before he left her. Was a man's whole life to be changed, to be made or unmade, by whimsical chance or by stupid blunder? In the gray dawn of a new day he reached his home and went to bed for a few ...
— How It Happened • Kate Langley Bosher
... thought, Dagaeoga, but keep straight in the direction we are going. See that you do not paddle unconsciously in a curve. We shall certainly be pursued, and although our foes cannot see us well in the dark, some out of their number are likely to blunder upon us. If it comes to a battle you will notice that I have an extra rifle and pistol for you lying in the bottom of the canoe, and that I am something more than ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... indifference and without deep concern, merely devoting their attention to the attack on Kiaochow, neglecting the larger issues of the war, they will have brought to nought our great Imperial policy, and committed a blunder greater than which it can not be conceived. We are constrained to submit this statement of policy for the consideration of our authorities, not because we are fond of argument but because we are deeply anxious for ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... a hope that there was some mistake, perhaps a blunder on the part of the servant who delivered the message, and that I should receive a note or a visit the next day which would set the matter right. But neither note nor visit came. In a few days the schooner Mary left Baltimore on the return ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... horse, and shaking down some litter for the poor wearied animal, he heard Smith observe to Ganlesse,—"By my faith, Dick, thou hast fallen into poor Slender's blunder; missed Anne Page, and brought us a great ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... tricks of the "Great Essay" style, she could use it with a dexterity strangely in contrast with the flat and fumbling manner in which poor Milly had been wont to express her ideas. But in the region of actual knowledge, she now and again perpetrated some immense and childish blunder, which made the teachers, who nursed and trained her like a jockey or a race-horse, tremble for the results of the ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... was quickly finished with rough, and, but for one frightful blunder, with merciful swiftness. The crowd fell back when it came to the square of soldiery, and the condemned man, the priests, and the firing squad of six young volunteers passed in and the lines ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... When he first adopts a subject he necessarily falls into mistakes, and it is interesting to watch his gradual progress into fuller information and better nourished irony, without his ever needing to admit that he has made a blunder or to appear conscious of correction. Suppose, for example, he had incautiously founded some ingenious remarks on a hasty reckoning that nine thirteens made a hundred and two, and the insignificant Bantam, hitherto silent, ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... at all like following them, but my evil genius led me in that wretched town from one blunder to another, and so I went in spite ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... contradiction. It is a life in which he is at war with himself as well as with others, for it is the life of a being who, though essentially social, tries to find satisfaction in a personal or individual good. The "intelligence" and the "heart" equally condemn such a life; it is not only a crime but a blunder. For a spiritual being as such is one who can only save his life by losing it in a wider life, one who must die to himself in order that he may live. In the progress of man's spirit, therefore, there is no necessary or ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... My blunder was this, I travelled to Bayreuth with an ideal in my breast, and was thus doomed to experience the bitterest disappointment. The preponderance of ugliness, grotesqueness and strong ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... part of the great blunder. You must have heard us raging like a thousand Afrites. I never knew the ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... between an armchair and a throne. The minor actors are not so accustomed to their new position. Nothing is more amusing than the embarrassment of the courtiers when they have to answer the Emperor's questions. They begin with a blunder; then, in correcting themselves, they fall into still worse confusion; ten times a minute was repeated, Sire, General, Your Majesty, Citizen, First Consul. Constant, the Emperor's valet de chambre, has given us a description of this 18th of May, 1804, a day devoted to receptions, ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... by period, and scene by scene, his kaleidoscopic past career, his first fatal blunder as a Grand Trunk telegraph operator, when one slip of the wrist brought a gravel train head-on into an Odd Fellows' Excursion special, his summary dismissal from the railroad, and his unhappy flight to New York, his passionate struggle to work his ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... marriage was a good one," replied his mother, "but I could not swear all that Shanks would have had me, John—No, I could not swear that, for Dr. Paulding had nothing to do with it, and if he were to repeat it all over to me a thousand times, I am sure that I should make a blunder, even if I consented to tell such a falsehood. My father and good Mrs. Danby used always to say that the mutual consent made a marriage, and a good one too. Now your father's own letter shows that he consented to it, and God knows I did. But these lawyers will ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... English. What was the use of it, they asked, if the German army were reduced to 100,000 men? M. Tardieu himself tells the story of all the efforts made, especially by Lloyd George and Bonar Law, to prevent the blunder which later on was endorsed in the treaty as Article 428. Lloyd George went so far as to complain of political intrigues for creating disorder on the Rhine. But Clemenceau took care to put the question in such a form that no discussion was possible. In the matter of the occupation, he said to ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... counter looked rather sharply at me, and said with equal sharpness, "You don't belong about here." I was alarmed, and thought I had betrayed myself. A fip in Maryland was six and a quarter cents, called fourpence in Massachusetts. But no harm came from the "fi'penny-bit" blunder, and I confidently and cheerfully went to work with my saw and buck. It was new business to me, but I never did better work, or more of it, in the same space of time on the plantation for Covey, the negro-breaker, than I did for myself in these earliest ...
— Collected Articles of Frederick Douglass • Frederick Douglass
... troopers had not seen, for they had not lingered. Understanding on their own part the horrible blunder, they had turned even as their leader turned, and they had raced madly back the way they had come, conceiving that he followed. And there was reason for their haste other than their anxiety to set a term to the sacrilege of ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... and absolutely incontrovertible conclusion is that this theory of successive ages must be a gross blunder, in its baleful effects on every branch of modern thought deplorable beyond computation. But it is now perfectly obvious that the geological distinctions as to age between the fossils are fantastic and unjustifiable. No one kind of true fossil can be proved to be older or ...
— Q. E. D., or New Light on the Doctrine of Creation • George McCready Price
... his shaken nerves became steadier as he gave thought to the fact that he was a companion of the two men about whose exploits he had heard so much. Evidently the stories had not been exaggerated. What must they think of him for giving way as he had? He rose to his feet in time to see a horse blunder into the open on Red's side of the house, and after it blundered its owner, who immediately lost all need of earthly conveyances. Holden laughed from the joy of being with a man who could shoot like that, and he took up his rifle and turned ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... was doing," continued Malcolm Sage, "and Peters removed the passbook, put it in a drawer, first destroying the cancelled cheques. He made a blunder in not replacing the pass-book with something else. That was the last link in the ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... about got time," he muttered, and with swift fingers that did not blunder or fumble he loosened the bag and threw it over his shoulder. Then he started to run, leading Jane's horse, and he ran, and trotted, and walked, and ran again. Close ahead now Jane saw a rise of bare rock. Lassiter reached it, searched along the base, and, ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... South, which has been for a century overridden and suppressed by the incubus of an organized despotism, from which there is now, for the first time, the chance of a redemption, if these friends of Southern reason do not commit a blunder in their understanding of ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... know why I pay this L500. Because she who of all the world is the nearest and the dearest to me,"—she looked up into his face with amazement, as he stood stretching out both his arms in his energy,—"has in her impetuous folly committed a grievous blunder, from which she would not allow her husband to save her, this sum must be paid to the wretched craven. But I cannot tell the world that. I cannot say abroad that this small sacrifice of money was the justest means of retrieving the injury ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... one hitch, and it is to the honour of human nature. Evil spirits like Saradine often blunder by never expecting the virtues of mankind. He took it for granted that the Italian's blow, when it came, would be dark, violent and nameless, like the blow it avenged; that the victim would be knifed at night, or shot from behind a hedge, and so die without speech. It was a ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... toward the house. Yes, it is handsome, grand. Youth and age together did not make any blunder of it. There is the tower, that was to be his study and library and place of resort generally. What crude dreams he had in those days! Science and poesy, art and history, were all a sad jumble in his brain, and now he has found his life-work. He hopes that he may make the world ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... Sphex was given as the heroine of the story. How could I do otherwise, not having the original text in front of me? How could I suspect that an entomologist of Lacordaire's standing should be capable of such a blunder as to substitute a Sphex for a Common Wasp? Great was my perplexity, in the face of this evidence! A Sphex capturing a Fly was an impossibility; and I blamed the British scientist accordingly. But what insect was ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... and "We three blunder-heads," two frizzled physicians of the last century, and the invariably accompanying cane, or Esculapian wand. This edition is by Mr. Britton, who has prefixed a dedication and an essay on the genius of Anstey, both of which sparkle with humour and lively anecdote; and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 533, Saturday, February 11, 1832. • Various
... seize his old schoolmate by the hand, proclaim his friendship for him and assure Mr. Westall and the rest that they had committed the worst kind of a blunder—that they had made as great a mistake in arresting this boy for a horse-thief, as Nels and his fellow wood-cutters had made in suspecting him of being Tom Percival, simply because he happened to have in his possession a watch ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... By special direction, Came down the world's wonder, Sir Salathiel Blunder, With a quoif on his head As heavy as lead; ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... except women's hearts from the same law? I give his opinion, not his words. He doesn't talk of "women's hearts." You know his trick of suggesting when it comes to talk of the feelings. I slid into a worse blunder and sympathised with him. He replied that it didn't make the difference to him which I might think. I felt as if a stream of ice-water had been turned down my back on Christmas Day. However, he went on in a sort of shame-faced style, ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... presumption of his wealth! How could it ever be paid? And more than that, it had been given in a fraud. He had no money when he gave it, and no prospect of any but what he was to get from those worthless shares. Would anybody believe him that it was only a stupid blunder of his own? Yes, his partners might believe him; but, horrible thought, he had already implicated THEM in his fraud! Even now, while he was standing there hesitatingly in the road, they were entering upon ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... "'How many blunder in mistaking Passion, Mixed with a little sentiment, for Love! Passion may lead to Love, as it may lead Away from Love, but Passion is not Love; It may exist with Hate; too often leads Its victim blindfold ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... seems to blunder still worse. She takes an egg which we suppose is going to turn into a frog, and she brings out of it a tadpole—neither fish, flesh nor fowl nor anything else. After a while the tadpole gets legs and has a long tail; it must lose that tail in order to become a frog. A benevolent zoologist one ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... plain as the nose on your face," said Bates. "That story will come out to-morrow morning, and everybody will say it was the blunder of a newspaper reporter; and then Waterman will come forward and do the rescue act. It'll be just ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... What do you imagine that I should think of it! The whole thing seems to me the most ghastly blunder—the most horrible anomaly. You—in these surroundings! Married to a man so entirely beneath you, and with whom you don't get ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... feet, including the plainly agitated Mr. Harper himself. But who is this, in the lunar cockpit before the Speaker's desk, demanding firmly to be heard—so firmly that Mr. Harper, with a glance at him, sits down again; so firmly that Mr. Speaker Doby, hypnotized by an eye, makes the blunder that will eventually cost him his ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... to his side. "Fool that I was not to allow for that earlier train! It's abduction, Watson—abduction! Murder! Heaven knows what! Block the road! Stop the horse! That's right. Now, jump in, and let us see if I can repair the consequences of my own blunder." ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... order to the men of his squad, he asked himself with terror, whether he had not inadvertently committed some gross blunder, whether some inferior might ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... Scotchmen who have raised themselves to distinction and prosperity in England, he had that character which satirists, novelists, and dramatists have agreed to ascribe to Irish adventurers. His high animal spirits, his boastfulness, his undissembled vanity, his propensity to blunder, his provoking indiscretion, his unabashed audacity, afforded inexhaustible subjects of ridicule to the Tories. Nor did his enemies omit to compliment him, sometimes with more pleasantry than delicacy, on the breadth ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Ratcliffe was playing his cards. The longer he reflected, the more certain he felt that Ratcliffe was at the bottom of this scheme to get rid of him; and yet, as he studied the situation, it occurred to him that after all it was possible for Ratcliffe to make a blunder. This Illinois politician was clever, and understood men; but a knowledge of men is a very different thing from a knowledge of women. Carrington himself had no great experience in the article of women, but he thought he knew more than Ratcliffe, who was evidently relying ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... suffering, she had an irresistible claim upon his compassion, her husband did not feel certain that even were Eva herself again Toni's tragic blunder would be repaired; and although he was fully determined to do all in his power to bring Eva's restless spirit peace, there was a possibility that she would return to life as callous, as ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... to live down his blunder and to regain much of his old strength by reason of his winning personality; yet made another blunder when he agreed to meet Abraham Lincoln in debate—and one which cost him the presidency. For his ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... of his name, the skill with which he promoted the material prosperity of France, and the successes of his early wars, promised to build up a lasting power. But then came the days of failing health and tottering prestige—of financial scandals, of the Mexican blunder, of the humiliation before the rising power of Prussia. To retrieve matters he toyed with democracy in France, and finally allowed his Ministers to throw down a challenge to Prussia; for, in the words of a French historian, ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... things, let me warn you against a favourite blunder of your countrymen. Don't endeavour to explain peculiarities of action in this country by singularities of race or origin; don't try to make out that there are special points of view held that are unknown ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... the severe fighting of the day had ended. It was a drawn battle with very heavy losses on both sides. On the 18th the opposing hosts confronted each other without coming to blows. Did not McClellan blunder again? Having a much greater army, a part of which had not been engaged, ought he not to have renewed the battle in the attempt to crush the Confederates and drive them into the river? When he awoke on the 19th Lee's army ...
— Reminiscences of a Rebel • Wayland Fuller Dunaway
... eagle into the sea, and Gulliver having been received into the ship's cabin, he calls upon the crew to bring the box into the cabin, and put it on the table, the cabin being only a quarter the size of the box. It is the veracity of the blunder which is so admirable. Had a man come from such a country as Brobdingnag he ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... not so robust as he appears to be there. Next to his translations Botany is his grand study. He has collected every plant and tree in his garden that will possibly grow in India, and is so scientific withal that he calls everything by its classical name. If, therefore, I should at any time blunder out the word Geranium, he would say Pelargonium, and perhaps accuse me of ignorance, or blame me for vulgarity. We had the pleasure of hearing him preach from Rom. vii. 13, when he gave us an excellent sermon. ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... generously, gratefully. Can it be that, after all, he despises and is no true lover of his own art, and is but chilled by an enthusiasm for it in another, such as that of Jean-Baptiste? as if Jean-Baptiste over-valued it, or as if some ignobleness or blunder, some sign that he has really missed his aim, started into sight from his work at the sound of praise—as if such praise could hardly be ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... not seeing his way clearly, puts you off with circumstantial phrases, and tries to gain time for fear of making a false step. This gentleman has heard some one admired for precision and copiousness of language; and goes away, congratulating himself that he has not made a blunder in grammar or in rhetoric the whole evening. He is a theoretical Quidnunc—is tenacious in argument, though wary; carries his point thus and thus, bandies objections and answers with uneasy pleasantry, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... another Mistake, not to call it a Blunder, he makes about Hell; which he not only makes LOCAL, but gives it a being before the Fall of the Angels; and brings it in opening its mouth to receive them. This is so contrary to the nature of the thing, and so great an absurdity, that no Poetic ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... came overseas to it—a dark, intelligent princess. With all her splendour, there were hints of splendour still hidden—hints of an older, richer, and more mysterious land. He smiled at the idea of her being "not there." Ansell, clever as he was, had made a bad blunder. She had more reality than any other woman ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... poets without thinking of Shakspeare, who towers above them all. We have yet to discover an editor capable of doing him full justice. Some of Johnson's notes are very amusing, and those of recent editors occasionally provoke a smile. If once a blunder has been made it is persisted in. Take, for instance, a glaring one in the 2nd part of Henry IV., where, in the apostrophe to sleep, "clouds" ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.11.17 • Various
... a blunder, I attempted to correct it. I might have seen there was too great a disparity between the ages of the parties to make it likely that they were man and wife. One was about forty: a period of mental vigour at which men seldom cherish ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... army is likely to be a mere encumbrance in war, it is perhaps even a still graver blunder to maintain one during that conflict of preparation which is at present the European substitute for actual hostilities. It consumes. It produces nothing. It not only eats and drinks and wears out its clothes and withdraws ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... moment the gig came alongside the schooner, the lieutenant offered his hand to Miss Lydia, and then helped the colonel to swing himself up on deck. Once there, Sir Thomas, who was still very much ashamed of his blunder, and at a loss to know what he had better do to make the man whose ancestry dated from the year 1100 forget it, invited him to supper, without waiting for his daughter's consent, and with many fresh apologies and handshakes. Miss Lydia frowned a little, but, after all, ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... then he said: "You are mistaken; it was Octavius and not Antony who was on Sextus' galley with Lepidus." And he went on his way to the courtyard, confining his blame to the historical blunder. ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... Department found immediate voice. But the conclusion drawn by some that Rhett's subsequent course sprang from personal vindictiveness is trifling. He was too large a personality, too well defined an intellect, to be thus explained. Very probably Davis made his first great blunder in failing to propitiate the Rhett faction. And yet few things are more certain than that the two men, the two factions which they symbolized, could not have formed a permanent alliance. Had Rhett entered the Cabinet he could ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... said, "you know I am to blame. I chose you because I loved you; I swear that I will never commit such a blunder again; have pity on me, speak one word to me, save me from the disgrace that is killing me. I know you have a right to be angry, but for the sake of ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... a charm from a hidden chain and held it in his palm so that the clearer light fell upon it. "I command you to learn its peculiarities well. There must be no blunder." ...
— Then Marched the Brave • Harriet T. Comstock
... in the political career of the colonel. The appellation of "nigger lover" kept him ever after firmly wedged in his political grave. Thus, by the same stroke, was the career of an ex-slaveholder wrecked and that of an ex-slave made. This political blunder of a local office-seeker gave to education one of its great formative institutions, to the Negro race its greatest leader, and to America one of ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... know you," she said sweetly, "though I half mistook you for Miss Whitney; but she is dark, and you are fair, so I ought not to have made the blunder. I know your brother Stephen ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... be cheated of my fare.' I would still have refused, but I perceived Clifton began to look serious, and I said to him—'Well, well, good man, here then, take this snuff-box to the marchioness, she may want it: but do not blunder, and break it; for if you do I shall dismiss you my service. Recollect the picture in the ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... sending to you. When you were brought here I was still in durance vile, and Higgins was in his strait-jacket. On being released, my hands were full, as you can suppose. Moreover, I did not learn at once of your detention. The saddle and the valise caused me to suspect that a blunder had been committed. I cannot adequately express my regrets. In ten minutes," continued Dr. Pendegrast, turning a fat gold watch over on its back in the palm of his hand, where it looked like a little yellow turtle, "in ten minutes dinner will be served. ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... with Tanno than I had ever been in our lives. I comprehended why he, with all his superlative equipment of tact and intuition, had blundered; he could not but assume that circumstances were as they should have been rather than as they were; yet the blunder was, in a sense, unforgivable, and had created a social situation than which nothing ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... Cunobelin (known to literature as Cymbeline), had just been succeeded by two sons, Caractacus (q.v.) and Togodumnus, who were hostile to Rome. Caligula, the half-insane predecessor of Claudius, had made in respect to this event some blunder which we know only through a sensational exaggeration, but which doubtless had to be made good. An immediate reason for action was the appeal of a fugitive British prince, presumably a Roman partisan and victim of Cunobelin's sons. So Aulus Plautius with a singularly ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... fifteen miles, as from its elevated position the lamp is 190 feet above the sea. From this point to Limasol the beach is low and sandy, and has always been accepted as the most favourable point for a disembarkation of troops. With historical facts before us there is small excuse for the blunder committed in landing our army of occupation, during the extreme heat of July, at Larnaca instead of Limasol. At the former port there is not a tree to throw a shade, and the miserable aspect of the surrounding country ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... with Hungary, committed the immeasurable blunder of calling in the 200,000 Russians who made conquest certain, but the price of whose aid she may still have to pay. Venice, and Venice only, continued to defy her power. Since Novara, the first result of which was the withdrawal of the Sardinian Commissioners, who had taken over ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... charge was soon checked and the troops fell back in disorder. Their loss was fully 5000 men, and the loss in Toombs' brigade was 219 men, making his losses in the two engagements over one-third of his entire number. Malvern Hill was a blunder which was never repeated, but it was a disastrous one for ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... rush high in the gully under, And the lightnings lash at the shrinking trees, Or the cattle down from the ranges blunder As the fires drive by on the summer breeze. Still the feeble horse at the right hour wanders To the lonely ring, though the whistle's dumb, And with hanging head by the bow he ponders Where the whim boy's gone — why the shifts ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... received your letter, and am happy to hear that your mother has been so well in your absence, which I wish had been prolonged a little, for you have been wanted to copy out the Farce, in the writing of which I made many an unlucky blunder. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... it to Giovio as just the poison to be kept handy by folk addicted to the pursuits which he and others attribute to the Borgias. Can you surmise any better reason? For observe that Giovio describes the Cantarella for you—a blunder of his which gives the lie to his statement. "A white powder of a faint and not unpleasing savour," says he; and that, as you know, is nothing like cantharides, which is green, intensely acrid, and burning. Yet who cares for such discrepancies? Who will ever question anything that ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... note and after an impressive delay continued: "There is a new plan to save my father. If you deliver this note safely you will have taken the first step to set him free. If you blunder, if it is found out that Mr. Forrester and one of the Rojas family are conspiring together, it will mean greater cruelties for my father; it ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... Hudson. At the same time Colonel Barry St. Leger was to make a diversion by way of Oswego, on the Mohawk River. Burgoyne began his advance in June, with about eight thousand men. Proceeding up Lake Champlain he compelled the Americans to evacuate Crown Point, Ticonderoga and Fort Anne. His first blunder was in failing to avail himself of the water carriage of Lake George, at the head of which there was a direct road to Fort Edward. Instead of taking this course he spent three weeks in cutting a road through the woods, ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... that day; but on Monday morning she sent a person to Captain Watson's, to know if Mrs. Veal was there. They wondered at Mrs. Bargrave's inquiry; and sent her word, that she was not there, nor was expected. At this answer Mrs. Bargrave told the maid she had certainly mistook the name, or made some blunder. And though she was ill, she put on her hood, and went herself to Captain Watson's though she knew none of the family, to see if Mrs. Veal was there or not. They said, they wondered at her asking, ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... of my flight, except the stress of blundering against trees and stumbling over the railings. To blunder against some trees is very stressful. At last I could go no further: I had run full tilt into a gasworks. I fell ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... summer's morning grows drowsy with the heat. The crimson and creamy-gold of the opening honeysuckle swings heavy with its own sweetness. The hart's-tongue ferns, matted all over the steep banks, hang down like the tongues of thirsty dogs. The bees blunder sleepily from flower to flower. The black and crimson butterflies take short flights and long panting rests. Even the late wild roses seem less saucily cheerful than usual, and the branching ferns on the hillsides look as though they were cast ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... condition was not, I warrant, by any means so dangerous but that a few simple remedies would soon have set you, with your strong constitution, on your legs again, had you not through Carlos's well-intentioned blunder in running off for the nearest physician fallen into the hands of the redoubtable Pyramid Doctor, who was making all preparations for bringing you ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... pleaded—"wait! One last word! One day I shall hope to explain to you, then perhaps you will find it in your heart to forgive. For the blunder that I made in Slotman's office, for the further insult, if you look on it as such, I ask you to forgive me now. It was the act of a senseless fool, a mad fool, who had done wrong and tried to do right, and through his folly made matters worse. To-night perhaps I ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... do nothing for myself at present,' he said; 'I get on her nerves. She was in love with that black-haired, enfant du siecle,—or rather, she prefers to assume that she was—and I haven't given her time to forget him. A serious blunder, and I deserve to suffer for it. Very well, then, I retire, and I ask you and Helen to keep watch. Don't let her go. Make yourselves nice to her; and, in fact, spoil me a little now I am on the high road to forty, as you used to ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... is the fault? Tis not my arrogance, But candor, Lord, that puts the blame on Thee. What right hadst Thou to make these people free And let all nature prompt them to advance?— Oh, no such blunder, Lord, hadst Thou called me, Instead of Wisdom, ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... from ourselves or others; when we forget an appointment which part of us really wishes to avoid, or forget a name with which we are perfectly familiar; when we lose the pen so that we cannot write or the desk key so that we cannot work; when we blunder and drop things and do what we did not mean to do; then we may know—the normal as well as the nervous person—that our subconscious minds with their repressed desires are trying to get the ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... was a strange blunder to be made so near the time, about so remarkable a person, unless he concluded that whoever displeased Henry VIII. was of ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... and the narrow fairway. Much labour had been expended and considerable rude skill shown by the enemy in building bastions and other defensive works at various places on the river,—particularly in the Shabluka gorge and before Omdurman. Why the Khalifa committed the blunder of making no adequate preparation for defending the pass at Shabluka it is difficult to understand. Only one conclusion suggests itself. He was probably afraid to trust his followers so far from his sight, lest the negroes should desert. We continually heard from our own blacks that most ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... the god of his idolatry. Fond as he was of sport, and highly as he appreciated it as a discipline for character, he held that the cult of athletics could be overdone, and that to make a business of what should only be a pastime was a grave blunder. In an essay which he wrote on "Sport," he characterises the professional athlete as a man who is engaged "in the vilest of trades." "Life," he wrote, "is made up of varied interests, and man has serious ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... his tone, becoming very apologetic. He probably knew by experience that for a blunder such as this evidently, was, he, rather than his superior, would have to bear the brunt. But Rhodes was implacable; the world, he said, would ring with the outrage. As soon as the British Government learned of the disgraceful manner in ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... grand outburst of harmony. The whole earth seemed to vibrate with sublime melody. "Our blunder has not been discovered yet," finished Branasko, after a pause, "else the fete down below would have been over. I am cold; ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... the better of her for a minute or two. She was very angry with herself, would never forgive herself, she said, if by her own trivial fault she had thrown away this favor of kind Fortune. What must she do, what could she do, to retrieve her blunder? Where seek for him? How find him? She quivered, grew hot and cold again with excitement. Should she go to the Green Square?—he was sure to visit that quarter. Then she remembered a high window in the canon's house that commanded the open spaces ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... eagerness to appear in print. Though J. S. Mill and a few other critics wrote with good judgement and praised the book, it met with a cold reception in most places, and the Quarterly Review, regardless of its blunder over Keats, spoke of it in most contemptuous terms. All can recognize to-day how unfair this was to the merits of a volume which contained the 'Lotos-Eaters', 'Oenone', and the 'Lady of Shalott'; but the effect of the harsh verdict ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... No-body home! Had to spill the beans, you simps! Nobody home a-tall! Had to shoot a man—got us all in wrong, you simps! Nobody home!" He waggled his head and flapped his hands in drunken self-righteousness, because he had not possessed a gun and therefore could not have committed the blunder of shooting the man. ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... a stupendous and laughable blunder of Rienzi. The Lex regia empowers Vespasian to enlarge the Pomrium, a word familiar to every antiquary. It was not so to the tribune; he confounds it with pomarium, an orchard, translates lo Jardino de Roma ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... great unwisdom, having picked over the sample of an enormous quantity of second-rate corn which Henchard had in hand, and removed the pinched, blasted, and smutted grains in great numbers. The produce if honestly offered would have created no scandal; but the blunder of misrepresentation, coming at such a moment, dragged Henchard's name into ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... previous to the day of service and to the date of the order, no attention was paid to it. The Judge, however, proceeded, and on the eleventh of the month made another order of expulsion. After the adjournment of the court, he discovered his blunder, and at once issued another direction to the sheriff to notify us that the last order of expulsion was suspended until the twenty-eighth of October, and to show cause on that day why we should not be again expelled. In the meantime, the Judge made ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... partially erected. In August, after the viceroy had seen the estimated cost of the establishment, further progress was arrested by want of funds. Before the end of the century everybody concerned had come to the conclusion that the villa of Brancifort was a great blunder,—the "settlers are a scandal to the country by their immorality. They detest their exile, ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... one, many of the bulkheads having been blown down, and nineteen officers and men seriously injured, of whom fourteen died. It came near leading to a still more serious blunder; for, when the flames broke out, the quartermaster was ordered to hoist the signal, "A fire on board." In his trepidation he mistook the signal, and announced, "A mutiny on board." Seeing this, Capt. Rodgers of the "John Adams" beat his ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... of his tongue there were words of adoration, not fastidious and carefully chosen, but simple, elemental words such as a farmhand might blunder out in the deep shadow of a lane, after dark. But he held them back. He would wait until after they had dined together and all round them there were silence and solitude. He drove still more slowly in order to give the two Japanese servants time to carry out his instructions and remove themselves. ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... this Age are arriv'd to that consummate Pitch of ill-nature, that they'll by no means permit any Person the favour to Blunder but their mighty selves, and are in all respects, except the Office of a Critick, in some measure ill Writers; I have known an unnatural Brother of the Quill causless condemn Language in the Writings of other Persons, when his ...
— A Vindication of the Press • Daniel Defoe
... carvee would clear a field the size of our garden (some 160 acres) of weeds in a couple of days. We can send them, moreover, with orders to fetch a certain number of any particular fruit or plant, and they scarcely ever forget or blunder. Some of them, of course, are cleverer than others. The cleverest will remember the name of every plant in the garden, and will, perhaps, bring four or even six different kinds at a time; but generally we show them a leaf of the plant we want, or ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... Jimmy Kinsella, came towards them from the boat He was bent on being particularly polite to Miss Rutherford, feeling that he ought to atone for his unfortunate blunder with the boat He took off his ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... must not blunder," added Aquareine cautiously. "To fail in our attempt would be to acknowledge Zog's superior power, so we must think well upon our plan before we begin to carry it out. What do you advise, sir?" she asked, ...
— The Sea Fairies • L. Frank Baum
... faith, hope, love.' When Paul takes three nouns and couples them with a verb in the singular, he is not making a slip of the pen, or committing a grammatical blunder which a child could correct. But there is a great truth in that piece of apparent grammatical irregularity; for the faith, the hope, and the love, for which he can only afford a singular verb, are thereby declared to be ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... face in his hands, and lay gently rolling from side to side, trying to stifle the hysterical fit which had attacked him; for it was mingled with relief from what he had looked upon as certain death, anger with himself for making such a blunder, and delight ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... instruction, and the idea of science, to get on wonderfully well. 'On the contrary,' said he, 'we get on wonderfully ill. Our engineers have no real scientific instruction, and we let them learn their business at our expense by the rule of thumb, but it is a ruinous system of blunder and plunder. A man without a requisite scientific knowledge undertakes to build a difficult bridge; he builds three which tumble down, and so learns how to build a fourth which stands, but somebody pays for the three failures. ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker
... patriotic for the country, but is he patriotic for me?" Franz Josef is cold, pitiless, and does not hesitate to ruin in a moment his most faithful servitor if he is at any time guilty of failure, or commits a blunder. Even when a minister or general is forced to carry out an order in spite of strong protests, he has relentlessly broken him if any catastrophe has resulted. A notable case is that of the general who commanded the Austrian armies ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... Latin, Vulgate, and Gothic, alone of Versions; in Irenaeus and Origen (who contradict themselves), and in the Latin Fathers. All the Greek authorities, with the few exceptions just recorded, of which A and D are the only consistent witnesses, unite in condemning the evident blunder[16]. ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... gathers in his victim. And yet I do not grudge the long, long hours I squandered in those years when people were in heathenish darkness. I had no book like yours to tell me how to win the affections of the opposite sex. I could only blunder on, week after week and yet I do not regret it. It was just the school I needed. It ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... were accessible by anybody. Dare took occasion to go and study both sets, with a view to finding a flaw in Somerset's which might have been passed over unnoticed by the committee of architects, owing to their absence from the actual site. But not a blunder could he find. ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... question in the simplest form—Has the movement of alliterative verse got the initial or the final beat? In the middle of the 18th century Bishop Percy decided this question with sufficient accuracy, though he mixed up his statement with a blunder which it is not easy to account for. He points out how the poets began to introduce rhyme into alliterative verse, until at length rhyme came to predominate over alliteration, and "thus was this kind of metre at length swallowed up and lost in the common burlesque Alexandrine or anapaestic ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... mathematicians and incorrect ones, so we may have phrenologists whose discoveries and whose workmanship may command the admiration of the world, those whose talents are of the order of mediocrity, and those who blunder on ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... delivered, and Stepan Arkadyevitch, who had only just come from the races, and many other acquaintances; and Levin heard and uttered various criticisms on the meeting, on the new fantasia, and on a public trial. But, probably from the mental fatigue he was beginning to feel, he made a blunder in speaking of the trial, and this blunder he recalled several times with vexation. Speaking of the sentence upon a foreigner who had been condemned in Russia, and of how unfair it would be to punish him by exile abroad, ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... to me of an oath, which, under all possible circumstances, is to prevent the relaxation of the Catholic laws! for such a solemn appeal to God sets all conditions and contingencies at defiance. Suppose Bonaparte was to retrieve the only very great blunder he has made, and were to succeed, after repeated trials, in making an impression upon Ireland, do you think we should hear any thing of the impediment of a coronation oath? or would the spirit of this country tolerate for an ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... you, man, there's a blunder in the returns. Look, man, look!" snatching up the report from the Flats. "Isn't that arrant nonsense on the face of it? The Flats, mind you; our own little pocket borough of the Flats! Don't talk to me about ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... Appendix to the "Battle of Agincourt." "Rege praesente, pedes ejus tergente post extremam unctionem propriis manibus,"—words which can only be translated so as to represent the King, "after extreme unction, wiping the feet" of the Bishop,—the Editor of that work, by the careless blunder of an amanuensis, or some unaccountable accident, is made to render by the strange sentence, "covering his feet with extreme unction;" and he is then led, as a comment upon that text, to observe, that "the Bishop received from Henry's own hand the last offices of religion." Extreme ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... 1871.) How the mistake which I have made in speaking of greatest happiness as the foundation of morals arose, is utterly unintelligible to me: any time during the last several years I should have laughed such an idea to scorn. Mr. Lecky never made a greater blunder, and your kindness has made you let me off too easily. (242/2. In the first edition of the "Descent of Man," I., page 97, Mr. Lecky is quoted as one of those who assumed that the "foundation of morality lay in a form of selfishness; but more recently in the 'greatest happiness' principle." Mr. ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... of their final enslavement to The Master, whose apparent impersonality made him the more terrible as he remained mysterious. So far they seemed like struggling flies in some colossal web, freeing themselves from one snaring spot to blunder helplessly into another. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... with a passionate cry, he saw yet another letter,—the one in which these had been enfolded,—a letter written to him, and by Mrs. Russell. As by a flash, he perceived that there had been some blunder here, by which he was the gainer; and, partly ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... in place of his as the possessive of it. The first appearance of the new coinage its is placed in 1598. Long after its introduction many looked askance at its, because of the grammatical blunder it contains—the t in its being a nominative neuter ending, and the s a possessive ending. But no one thinks now of shunning what was then ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... Court, no doubt—a blunder that—And yet Perchance a blunder that may work as well As better forethought. Having no suspicion So will he carry none where his not going Were of itself suspicious. But of those Within, ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... was a political blunder. It stirred up the embers of Napoleonism. Ten years later they blazed ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... into the true state of the case, and I felt much easier on the subject. That Marble ever intended to serve under the British flag, I had not supposed for a moment; but I was not sure that regret for the blunder he had already made, might not lead him into some new mistake of equally serious import, under the impression that he was correcting the evil. As for Neb, I knew he would never desert me; and I had not, from the first, felt any other concern on his account, ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... of my own volition at this time, I assure you," he replied a trifle stiffly. The thought that he was suspected of a blunder in social custom stung him; as, in a rather lazily amused way, she ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... spoliation of which he considered himself the victim. But the moment was not favourable for putting his projects in train. The murder of Capelan, which its perpetrator intended for a mere crime, proved a huge blunder. The numerous enemies of Tepeleni, silent under the administration of the late pacha, whose resentment they had cause to fear, soon made common cause under the new one, for whose support they had hopes. Ali ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... is "ratey," as has been explained in an earlier volume, is a much greater offender than a midshipman who is merely touge. For a ratey fourth classman makes the foolish blunder of considering himself as good as ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock
... note the position of the full moon in the heavens, or the towering Big Horn Mountains, he would have gained an approximate idea of where he was; but, despite his experience in the West, he galloped forward at an easy canter, with never a suspicion of the blunder he ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... discovered the whereabouts of the missing diplomat. Now he had merely given notice as plainly as though he had shouted from the housetops that Fairfield was under observation. He had committed a blunder, and he did not forgive blunders easily, especially ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... shift in favor of Cornwall. Some of the members of the Legion insisted that Colonel Saylor as a candidate was using his connection with their organization too strongly. He made an egregious blunder in an address to the Clear Creek miners and when his speech was reported ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... planned; each one's part had been carefully mapped out, and a thousand times Virginia had gone through the ordeal of this day in her mind. Yet now the beating in her temples confused her thoughts. She was afraid that she should forget, that she should make some irretrievable blunder, and that everything would be ruined by her fault. But much might depend now upon a look or a gesture, and she held herself in a vice of self-control, fearing that her smile on greeting the courteous old Commandant was suspiciously forced, her ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... I looked in the books or journals to find out if there are similar cases on record, but I have no doubt that there are others. And if boys may have this additional ornament to their vertebral columns, why not men? And if men, why not giants? So I may not have made a very bad blunder, after all, and my reader has learned something about the homo caudatus as spoken of by Linnxus, and as shown me in photograph by Dr. Priestley. This child is a candidate for the vacant place ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... or the administration. I can quite understand that, from the point of view of what are known as the pro-Boers, such a result is eminently desirable. They thought the war was a crime, the annexation a blunder, and they think to-day that the sooner you can get back to the old state of things the better. I say I quite understand that view, though I do not suppose it is shared by His Majesty's ministers, or, at any rate, ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... Karl der Grosse, our best and biggest. Run down in the night by a British liner that blundered into the fighting in trying to blunder out. They're fighting in a gale. The liner's afloat with her nose broken, sagging about! There never was such a battle!—never before! Good ships and good men on both sides,—and a storm and the night ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... father and mother watched from morning until night as their greatest treasure, could be called unlucky! She had never expressed a wish in her life that had not been gratified. "You mustn't say such things to me, Ellen," added the child, vexed that her maid did not look sorry for having made such a blunder. ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... we were, and the coons acted a little better, but I could see that the officers were not particularly solemn. They seemed to expect something rich. They evidently looked upon me as a star idiot, who would make some blunder, or say something to make them laugh: I made up my mind that in my new position I would act just as decorous, and speak as kindly as though the deceased was the president. During all my life I had made it a practice never to speak ill of ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... as Westernport, but not being a surveyor he had furnished only a rough outline of the lay of the shore. Up to this time Baudin had not inquired the name of the commander of the Investigator, and it was from not knowing to whom he was talking that he fell into a blunder which the politeness, native to a French gentleman, would certainly have made him wish to avoid. He began to criticise the chart, finding great fault with the north side, but commending the drawing of the south—that is, of northern Tasmania and the islands near it. "On my pointing ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... under the leadership of Calhoun, came presently to regard the Missouri arrangement as a capital blunder on its part, and from the standpoint of that section this conclusion seems strictly logical. For the location of a slave line upon the Louisiana territory operated in fact as a decided check to the expansion of slavery as a social rival and a political power at one and the same ...
— Modern Industrialism and the Negroes of the United States - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 12 • Archibald H. Grimke
... this has all been a strange blunder, but it is perfectly clear how it happened. That man Beaton evidently had never seen Frederick Cavendish. He was simply informed that he would leave New York on that train. He met this Cavendish on board, perhaps even saw ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... "and if I do, don't smile too broadly, young man. You ought to know by this time that the personal equation counts for something in this old-fashioned island of yours. Now, the late Deemster was an example which it would be perilous to repeat. If it were repeated, I know who would hear of the blunder every day of his life, and it wouldn't be the Home Secretary either. Deemster Mylrea was called upon to punish the crimes of drink, and he was himself a drunkard; to try the offences of sensuality, and he was himself ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... tastefully done in a quiet color. While it would not be acceptable for formal social correspondence, it does very well on more intimate letters and saves the necessity of writing each time the home address. It is best to use printed letterheads, rather than commit the blunder now so common, among those who do not habitually use engraved paper, of omitting the address from the letter. This, in case the letter is misdirected, and travels to the Dead-Letter Office, prevents effectually its ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... anything better than this Old world in the way it began; And though some matters have gone amiss From the great original plan, And however dark the skies may appear, And however souls may blunder, I tell you it all will work out clear, For ...
— Poems of Sentiment • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the window and looked out. There in the village street was Dobson, and Dobson saw him. That was a bad blunder, for his reason told him that he should have kept his presence in Dalquharter hid as long as possible. There was a knock at the cottage door, and presently ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... questions and Annie's answers were related quickly enough, and the cause of Michael's blunder was plain ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard
... the Department of the South, for instance, must be set the more disastrous mismanagements of the Department of the Gulf,—the only place from which we now hear the old stories of disease and desertion,—all dating back to the astonishing blunder of organizing the colored regiments of half-size at the outset, with a full complement of officers. This measure, however agreeable it might have been to the horde of aspirants for commissions, was in itself calculated to destroy all self-respect in the soldiers, being based on the utterly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... Cocchi; you had not told me of his death, but I was prepared for it, and heard it from Lord Huntingdon. I am still more obliged to you for the trouble you have given yourself about King Richard. You have convinced me of Crescimbeni's blunder as to Rome. For Florence, I must intreat you to send me 'another copy, for your copyist or his original have made undecipherable mistakes; particularly in the last line; La Mere Louis is impossible to be sense: I should wish, as I am to print it, to have every letter of ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... Egypt's darkness in his head Thinks Wit the devil, and curses books unread. For twice ten winters has he blunder'd on, Thro' heavy comments, yet ne'er lost nor won: Much may be done in twenty winters more, And let him then learn English at threescore. No sacred Maro glitters on his shelf, He wants the mighty Stagyrite ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... sedative, and escaped a miserable day in sleep. But, with all her faults, Lottie abounded in practical common sense; and Hemstead's words and her own experience suggested that she might be doing herself a very great wrong. She felt that it was no light matter to make one's whole life a blunder, and to invest all one's years and energies in what paid no better interest than she had received that day. Her physical pain and mental distress acted and reacted upon each other, until at last, wearied out, she sobbed ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... it was supposed, of obtaining something more substantial than thanks, for the good that might result to them from their charitable remembrance of the frailty of their nature. The boys dropped on their knees, and recited the lesson that they had been taught, without committing a single blunder. A few needles were, however, the only recompense it was thought proper to make them, so that it was not likely their masters would desire any more prayers to be offered up at the shrine of their prophet, for Christians so illiberal and irreligious. Of all the vices ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... No! We blunder in our history. There were no women and children on the Sarah Constant, nor on the Goodspeed, nor on the Discovery. The story of these ships is not like that later one of the Mayflower. The colour dies out of the picture; and there remains only the worn, ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... pursued the retreating enemy to Milan. Instead of following up his advantage by promptly attacking the main army of the Imperialists, the French king dispatched a part of his force to Naples, and with the other turned aside to blockade the city of Pavia. This blunder enabled the Imperialists to reform their ranks and to march towards Pavia in order to join the besieged. Here on 24 February, 1525,—the emperor's twenty-fifth birthday,—the army of Charles won an overwhelming ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... Thucydides has expressed himself." Now Thucydides says quite the reverse: he says that, owing to the crowd of the people, the guard could not at first seize him. How did Mr. Mitford make this strange blunder? The most charitable supposition is, that, not reading the Greek, he was misled by an error of punctuation in the ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Lords to turn us out. If we stand the shock, we shall be firmer than ever. I am not without anxiety as to the result; yet I believe that Lord Grey understands the position in which he is placed, and, as for the King, he will not forget his last blunder, I will answer for it, even if he should live to the age of his father. [This "last blunder" was the refusal of the King to stand by his Ministers in May 1832. Macaulay proved a bad prophet; for, after an interval of only three years, William the Fourth repeated ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... genius in life. I can see that you are naturally consecrated to it. My son is a good steady fellow, but he lacks the divine gift. I am getting old. We need new fire, new brains, in the conduct of this business. I ask you to forgive the unlucky blunder we made lately, and devote yourself ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... has it been kept because she has been prevented from declaring war by outside interference; or because she has been able to carry out her policy and to achieve her ambitions without going the length of declaring war; or because a war would have been not only a heinous crime, but a political blunder. ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... it's odd I should blunder into your house to get my bandaging. My first stroke of luck! Anyhow I meant to sleep in this house to-night. You must stand that! It's a filthy nuisance, my blood showing, isn't it? Quite a clot over there. Gets visible as it coagulates, I see. It's only the living tissue I've ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... mean it's for him you most suffer?" And then as the Princess, after a look, but turned away, moving about the room—which made the question somehow seem a blunder—"I ask," she continued, "because I think everything, everything we now speak of, may be for him, really may be MADE for him, quite as if it ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... stayed the plague of phthisis, And plumbed a mystery more dim And deep than that of Isis. For what are Dragons, Laidly Worms, And such-like mythic scourges, Compared with microscopic germs 'Gainst which the war he urges? Hygeia, goddess, saint, or nymph, We trust there's no big blunder, And hope your votary's magic lymph May prove no nine days' wonder. We dare not trust each pseudo-seer Who'd powder, purge, or pill us; But pyramids to him we'll rear Who baffles ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 6, 1890 • Various
... that she still bent over the lock, motionless, saw in hand. In the instant she made a mental review of her proceedings and satisfied herself that she had been guilty of no professional blunder. The inopportune appearance of Mr. Cragg must be attributed to a blind chance—to fate. So the first wave of humiliation that swept over her receded as she gathered her wits to ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... conviction that he had thrown away a valuable opportunity in mere idle gossip, nevertheless endeavored to look mysterious as he replied, "Oh, business gin'rally." Then in the faint hope of yet retrieving his blunder he inquired, "How long will ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... its point. But as I have said, this is the one Dickens work of which the date is essential. It is really an important part of the criticism of this book to say that it is his first book. Certain elements of clumsiness, of obviousness, of evident blunder, actually require the chronological explanation. It is biographically important that this is his first book, almost exactly in the same way that it is biographically important that The Mystery of Edwin Drood was his last book. ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... tried—yes, anything. Perhaps you know the Marquis thought so too, and even today I believe we were nearly right. We saw you in Brussels later, and in Holland, and then at Blanzy this year. I have known of a dozen commissions you have performed without a single blunder. Indeed, I know of only one thing in which ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... sometimes happen even in an easy passage. A difficult passage attracts more than usual of a translator's attention, and if he fails there, it is either because the difficulty cannot be overcome, or because he cannot overcome it. Mere inadvertence or sleepiness may sometimes cause a translator to blunder, when he would not have blundered if any friend had been by to keep ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... of woman,' soliloquized Percy, as he saw the carriage drive off. 'Gentleness, meekness, and a dash of good sense, is the recipe for a rational female—otherwise she is a blunder of nature. The same stamp as her sister, I see; nothing wanting, but air and the beauty, which, luckily for Arthur, served ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Harry, with Oscar and his sister, started for the party. Our hero, having confessed his inability to dance, had been diligently instructed in the Lancers by Oscar, so that he felt some confidence in being able to get through without any serious blunder. ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... as she rose to her feet. Durrance rose with her. He was still not so much disheartened as conscious of a blunder. He had put his case badly; he should never have given her the opportunity to think that marriage would be an interruption of ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... with Egypt's darkness in his head Thinks Wit the devil, and curses books unread. For twice ten winters has he blunder'd on, Thro' heavy comments, yet ne'er lost nor won: Much may be done in twenty winters more, And let him then learn English at threescore. No sacred Maro glitters on his shelf, He wants the mighty Stagyrite himself. ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... your relations and friends at any possible failure. Many well-meaning efforts to acquire this useful knowledge have been nipped in the bud by the thoughtless, silly way in which some people will laugh at any mistake or blunder. A cake which has caught in baking, or a pudding with the sugar left out, will probably afford them an inexhaustible subject of mirth. Make up your mind, however, not to be discouraged by any of these things. Practice will give nimbleness ...
— The Skilful Cook - A Practical Manual of Modern Experience • Mary Harrison
... truly, Should not be confounded unduly. Fanatics here blunder; As far they're asunder As ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various
... the past has disturbed you. We can stand war, and it is possible that we might win, even against Jugendheit; but war at this late day would be a colossal blunder. Victory would leave us where we began thirty years ago. One does not go to war for a cause that has been practically dead these sixteen years. And an insult to Jugendheit might precipitate war. It would be far wiser to let me answer the prince regent, saying that your highness ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... was "expressly pretermitted" in the June Platform! Mr. Watkins was in such a hurry to join the Forney, Pierce, and Catholic Democracy, that he did not stop to examine even the Platform which most disgusted him! But this is not the worst blunder which he committed in that speech. He turned to the new Platform, and asked, with an ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... and my companions were full of glee. Even the ennuye skipped up and down the room like a school-boy: I never shall forget Richard's happy and relieved expression, when I laughed aloud at somebody's amusing blunder. ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... than an outrage," replied Ahenobarbus; "it's a sheer blunder of the Fates. Remind me to tell you about Drusus and his fortune, before I have ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... ahead. I deserve it," urged Mr. Jennings self-depreciatively. "How I blunder! Anyhow I've found you can laugh as well as cry, and that's something. Perhaps now," he continued, "seeing I'm such a failure as a Sherlock Holmes, you will be so kind as to tell me yourself who you are. Do you live here? I never saw you before. I'm sure you're a ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... apart. He said neither yea nor nay, but watched dazedly her preparations, her concoctions, her advance upon him with a yellow teacup and a wafer. He did not stand up to take it and he knew too late that this was a blunder. ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... crying heart of Helen. But not so Kassandra views him pray, that well of woe Kassandra, she whom Loxias deceived With gift to see, and not to be believed; To read within the heart of Time all truth And see men blindly blunder, to have ruth, To burn, to cry, "Out, haro!" and be a mock— Ah, and to know within this gross wood-block The fate of all her kindred, and her own, Unthinkable! Now with her terror blown Upon her face, to blanch it like a sheet, Now with ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... shiver. "Oh, what a mess it is!" she said. "What a perfectly hopeless blunder it is!" She slid down from the ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... quarrel with the old man, so I listened politely to all he said. But this did not propitiate him, and I soon found him so jealous as to be a nuisance. He was Colonial-born and was always airing the fact. He rejoiced in my rawness, and when I made a blunder would crow over it for hours. 'It's no good, Mr Crawfurd; you new chums from England may think yourselves mighty clever, but we men from the Old Colony can get ahead of you every time. In fifty years you'll maybe learn a little about the country, but we know all about it before we start.' ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... suppose you must wed, and make no blunder, And either would love you, and let you win her — Which of the two would you choose, I wonder, The stolid ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... nosing, his greasiness. We don't know what we may think, what we may say, he does his silly utmost to prevent our reading and seeing the one thing, the one sort of discussion we find—quite naturally and properly—supremely interesting. So we don't adolescence; we blunder up to sex. Dare—dare to look—and he may dirt you for ever! The girls are terror-stricken to silence by his significant whiskers, by the bleary ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... the old Long Parliament did nothing but blunder and talk, so he marched into the House one day with a company of soldiers, and sternly ordered the members all off, calling out, as he pointed to the mace that lay before the Speaker's chair, "Take away that bauble." After that he called together a fresh ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... interesting idea is suggested by the blunder of somebody over another puzzle. A boy was given a puzzle to solve by a friend, but he misunderstood what he had to do, and set about attempting what most likely everybody would have told him was impossible. But he was a boy with a will, and he stuck at it for six months, off ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... afterward. They used their eyes and critical faculties after marriage instead of before. The romance exhaled like a morning mist; and the facts came out distinctly. They learned what kind of man and woman they actually were, and two idealized creatures were sent to limbo. Because I don't blunder upon the woman I wish to marry, but pick her out, that's no reason I can't and won't love her. Your analysis and judgment were correct only up to date. You have now to meet a suit honestly, openly announced. This may be bad policy on my part; yet I have so much faith in you and respect ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... cope with Hungary, committed the immeasurable blunder of calling in the 200,000 Russians who made conquest certain, but the price of whose aid she may still have to pay. Venice, and Venice only, continued to defy her power. Since Novara, the first result of which was the withdrawal of the Sardinian Commissioners, who ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... of the Venetian churches is a blunder for which the Austrians will pay dearly in loss of international good-will. A century hence these shattered churches will be pointed out to visitors as the work of the modern Vandals, and lovers of art and beauty throughout the world will execrate the nation which permitted the sacrilege. They ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... patriotism is extinct in his soul. He has now but one thought, one ferocious desire: to avenge himself upon those who have denied him—and even upon all mankind! Really, Mr. Hart, your governments of Europe and America committed a stupendous blunder in refusing to pay Roch the ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... may be, I have been making up my mind for some days past that the embassy on behalf of Elvira, which I thrust upon you, and which you so generously undertook, was a blunder on my part which it would be delightful to repair, and which no artistic considerations whatever need prevent me from repairing. You cannot think how divine she was in Juliet the other night. Imperfect and harsh, of course, here and there, but still a creature to build many and ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sedentary life, he is fit to live among women or in their fashion. Let him adopt one of their trades if he likes; and if there must be eunuchs let them take those men who dishonour their sex by adopting trades unworthy of it. Their choice proclaims a blunder on the part of nature; correct it one way or other, you will ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... dreariest group I ever saw,—ragged, gaunt, and pale, mud to the knees, with bloody bandages untouched since put on days before; many bundled up in blankets, coats being lost or useless, and all wearing that disheartened look which proclaimed defeat more plainly than any telegram, of the Burnside blunder. I pitied them so much, I dared not speak to them. I yearned to serve ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... ignorant with Lieutenant Loti but uninstructed evidently, marries a geisha whose father had made the happy dispatch at the request of the Son of Heaven after making a blunder in his military command. She is Cio-Cio-San, also Madama Butterfly, and she comes to her wedding with a bevy of geishas or mousmes (I do not know which) and a retinue of relations. All enjoy the hospitality of the American officer while picking him to ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... unpardonable blunder," he replied. "What? Give you a letter of introduction? and when the police come, I suppose, I must forget the circumstance? No, indeed. Talk of it ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 'for life in general there is but one decree. Youth is a blunder; Manhood a struggle; Old Age a regret. Do not suppose,' he added, smiling, 'that I hold that youth is genius; all that I say is, that genius, when young, is divine. Why, the greatest captains of ancient and modern times both conquered Italy at five-and-twenty! Youth, extreme ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... chill and failing at the heart. I was actually permitting myself to experience a sickening sense of disappointment; but rallying my wits, and recollecting my principles, I at once called my sensations to order; and it was wonderful how I got over the temporary blunder—how I cleared up the mistake of supposing Mr. Rochester's movements a matter in which I had any cause to take a vital interest. Not that I humbled myself by a slavish notion of inferiority: on the contrary, ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... of Viele was a blunder. He told the Onondagas that the English governor was master of their country; and that, as they were subjects of the king of England, they must hold no council with the French without permission. The pride of ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... ever. Why on earth should the doctor want a photograph of the Dane Oxbye to show the friends of Lord Harry? Could he have made a blunder as stupid as it was uncalled for? No one could possibly mistake the dead face of that poor Dane for the dead ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... the purpose of his abduction; nor did he fail to guess that now, with the chief witness out of the way, the trial would be hurried where before it had been delayed. Personally he had little to fear beyond a detention—unless he should attempt to escape, or unless a searching party might blunder on his traces. Bob had already made up his mind to use his best efforts to get away. As to the probabilities of a rescue blundering on this retreat, he had no means of guessing; but he shrewdly concluded that Saleratus ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... exhausted by this effort, and paused for breath, whereupon Mr. Tubbs, anxious to retrieve his recent blunder, ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... was her bonnet. She had to walk out and hang it up, while the class, and even the babies tittered at her blunder. ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... it was to see Dick's mother and sister rise, also, and turn to Nell with dark, proud, searching eyes. Belding vaguely realized some blunder he had made. Nell's white, appealing face gave him a pang. What had he done? Surely this family of Dick's ought to know his relation to Nell. There was a silence that ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... scratch on his hand, and when he automatically touched it with his lips, it made them burn. The lit lamps in the Gray's Inn Road seemed to him a little unsteady, and the passers-by showed a disposition to blunder into him. ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... the case of North Carolina. The proposed arrangement is wicked. It will not bear the test of intelligent and impartial examination. We believe in this case, as in that of Louisiana, that the Federal Constitution has been violated, and we hope that the people of North Carolina will repudiate the blunder at the polls. ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson
... loss.' Fifteen years after this was written Scott began the composition of 'Marmion,' and it is interesting to note that, so early in life as the date of this letter indicates, he was so keenly alive to the great blunder in military tactics made by James IV and his advisers, and so manifestly stirred to eloquent ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... announced the servant, who knew that his mistress's young sister was expected, and who had not asked Hetty for her name. In the excitement of the moment Hetty heard, but hardly understood the announcement. She thought the servant had made a curious blunder. ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... Post has made another blunder. Lord Abinger, it seems, is too Conservative to resign. After all the editorial boasting about "exclusive information," "official intelligence," &c. it is very evident that the "Morning Twaddler" must not be looked upon as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... advantages had been limited to a knowledge of reading, writing and ciphering, with a something of grammar. Miss Brown's childhood had passed under the tutilage of accomplished masters. She could dance, execute a few showy pieces upon the piano without a blunder, utter glibly French and Italian phrases, and had, with the help of her teacher, finished, creditably, a landscape, a gorgeous sunset, of amber and crimson, and purple-tinted clouds, which hung in the most conspicuous position in her mother's drawing-room. Melinda read novels, ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... beat deliriously at the very thought. If release came this way—by Roger's own decision—she would be free to take it! The price of the blunder she had made when she pledged herself to him—a price which was so much heavier than she could possibly have ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... a moment, and then decided to speak frankly. "Yes," he said, "your kindness gives you the right to know. To not tell you would show a lack of gratitude. I made a painful blunder before in not staying unflinchingly with my company. The more I think of it, the more I regret it, and the more I am decided not to repeat it, but abide with my comrades and share their fate in all things. I feel that I no longer have a choice ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... expected, found its contents were not of a kind to give her much satisfaction. In fact, in her emotion of anger and indignation she made a false step in her state-craft of a nature one can hardly imagine a person so astute as the Princess making. This blunder led ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... Zeus was superseded by the air, Poseidon by the water; and while some of the philosophers received in silence the popular legends, as was the case with Socrates, or, like Plato, regarded it as a patriotic duty to accept the public faith, others, like Xenophanes, denounced the whole as an ancient blunder, converted by time into ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... a fact. Perhaps it would be safer to wait. I've made enough trouble for one day by my blunder-headed thoughtlessness." ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... that part of his idea, which is still beyond the bounds of that large duration he represents to his own thoughts, is very obscure and undetermined. And hence it is that in disputes and reasonings concerning eternity, or any other infinite, we are very apt to blunder, and ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... interview in a New York paper with the Chief of Staff of the German Army opposite the British in which he must have been correctly quoted, as his remarks passed the censorship. He said that the loss of Pozieres was a blunder. I liked his frankness in laying the blame on a subordinate who, if he also had spoken, might have mentioned the presence of the Australians as an excuse, which, personally, I think ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... and leaned upon his chair, with his eyes fixed on Festing. "When I told you I was going to be married, you showed your confounded supercilious pity! You thought I was making a fatal mistake. Well, you're not a clever fellow, Stephen, but that was the worst blunder you ever made. Marrying Sadie is perhaps the only wise thing I have done. She has borne with my follies, hustled me when I needed it, and helped me to fight my weaknesses; and if there's any hope of my being a useful man, I owe it to her. Now it's obvious that I can't draw comparisons, but ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... buffet first on one paddle-wheel and then on the other from the angry guardian breakers, which seem sworn foes of boats and passengers. Again and again are we knocked aside by huge billows, as though the poor little tug were a walnut-shell; again and again do we recover ourselves, and blunder bravely on, sometimes with but one paddle in the water, sometimes burying our bowsprit in a big green wave too high to climb, and dashing right through it as fast as if we shut our eyes and went at everything. The spray flies high over our heads, G—— and I are drenched over and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... taken "all in a heap;" she had heard many a love-tale, but never one with so manly a note. Shrewd, sensitive Mistress Betty was bewildered and confounded, and in her hurry she made a capital blunder. She dismissed him summarily, saw how white he grew, and heard how he stopped to ask if there were no possible alternative, no period of probation to endure, no achievement to be performed by him. She waved him off the faster because she became affrighted at his humility; and got ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... point. The scale, moistened with a frothy liquid, became glutinous, and was drawn out like a riband. This bee then attached all the wax it could concoct to the vault of the hive, and went its way. A second now succeeded, and did the like; a third followed, but owing to some blunder did not put the wax in the same line with its predecessor; upon which another bee, apparently sensible of the defect, removed the displaced wax, and carrying it to the former heap, deposited it there, exactly in the ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... said his mistress, "you voted your tax receipt, so your first vote has counted nothing." Do you think, gentlemen, said Mrs. Stewart, that such women as attend our conventions, and speak from our platform, could make so ludicrous a blunder? I think not. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... by sending for d'Arthez's books, of which she had never, as yet, read a single word, although she had managed to maintain a twenty minutes' eulogism and discussion of them without a blunder. She now read them all. Then she wanted to compare these books with the best that contemporary literature had produced. By the time d'Arthez came to see her she was having an indigestion of mind. Expecting this visit, she had daily made a toilet of what may be called ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... in from without and became entangled with her hair, which was in some ways so curiously like it. McTosh, whose eye was everywhere, promptly lowered a shade two inches—the one blunder he made that day. ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... me by any future demonstrations of a style of admiration I neither desire, appreciate, nor intend to permit. If accident should ever thrust you again across my path, you will do well to forget that our minister committed the blunder of sending you here to-day. Mr. Laurance will please accept my thanks for this package of papers, which shall be returned to-morrow to the office of the American embassy. Resolved to forget the unpleasant incidents of to-day, Madame Orme is ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... alarm first. He had been furtively repairing the viewscreen and thinking dark thoughts the while. There was sick dread for him in the contemplation of the future, for after this last unfortunate blunder DeCastros would be certain to keep his promise and have him examined. This might very well be his last voyage, and Mr. Wordsley had known for quite a long time that he could not live anywhere except out ...
— The Marooner • Charles A. Stearns
... his ridiculous blunder, and it was a long time before he heard the last of his midnight adventure and his raid on his own mule. But he always liked to tell the "balance of the story," as he termed it, and this is his version: "I had not slept any the night before, for I stayed awake watching to get a shot at the ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... follow directly across the plain, for at this time the Carthaginians greatly outnumbered them in cavalry, and they would, therefore, have to take the road round the foot of the mountains, which was nearly seventy miles long; and yet, by some unaccountable blunder, they neglected to place a sufficient guard over their great magazines at Cannae to defend them for even a few ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... a woman like me, a woman who can't pretend to stupidity, and who has lived for years in the diplomatic world, to blunder in what she undertakes?" ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... education to which a green race-horse is subjected were unknown on the Rancho Palomar. Panchito was a trained saddle animal, wise, sensible, courageous and with a prodigious faith that his rider would get him safely out of any jam into which they might blunder together. The starting-gate bothered him at first, but after half a dozen trials, he realized that the web, flying upward, had no power to hurt him and was, moreover, the signal for a short, jolly contest of speed with his fellows of the rancho. Before the week was ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... encircled the globe when reports were printed that over a thousand people lost their lives on the Lusitania, found a sympathetic echo in the Berlin Foreign Office. "Another navy blunder," the officials said—confidentially. Foreign Office officials tried to conceal their distress because the officials knew the only thing they could do now was to make preparation for an apology and try to excuse in the best ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... the college graduate, making him incapable of rendering correctly into English the spirit and the letter of a foreign tongue, I have respectfully declined. I may say, and with accuracy, that scarcely a translation is made which does not show some blunder ...
— The Importance of the Proof-reader - A Paper read before the Club of Odd Volumes, in Boston, by John Wilson • John Wilson
... very distressing—a terrible and horrible blunder," she said, with a desperation that must have ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... influence, I lost all confidence. I know how impulsive and excitable your people are, and I really feared that some such measure might be madly advocated and carried into effect. I see, now, that I made a blunder, and I am already punished for it. I was getting eight per cent. from my American investments, and now that I have the capital here it is lying idle. I shall probably not be able to invest it at a better rate than ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... post or pillar, especially a house-post, should be set up according to the original position of the tree from which it was hewn,—that is to say, with the part nearest to the roots downward. To erect a house-post in the contrary way is thought to be unlucky;—formerly such a blunder was believed to involve unpleasant consequences of a ghostly kind, because an "upside-down" pillar would do malignant things. It would moan and groan in the night, and move all its cracks like mouths, and open all its knots like eyes. Moreover, the spirit of it (for every ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... society of New England, there to become a boy again, to enter Harvard College, and come under all its at that time rigid and petty regulations. It almost seems a mistake, but it was not. Already he was too ripe and too wise to blunder. He himself gives us his ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... more actively intelligent man. Deep in his soul Dubois had hidden his one profound discovery about the modern art of warfare, the key to his career. And this discovery was that NOBODY KNEW, that to act therefore was to blunder, that to talk was to confess; and that the man who acted slowly and steadfastly and above all silently, had the best chance of winning through. Meanwhile one fed the men. Now by this same strategy he hoped to ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... marvel! he discovered that he was immortal; and feeling sure of his case, and knowing that he would be Emperor for ever, he went to an island for a little while, so as to study the dispositions of those folk who did not fail to make blunder upon blunder. Whilst he was biding his time, the Chinese and the brutes out in Africa, the Moors and what-not, awkward customers all of them, were so convinced that he was something more than mortal, that they respected his ...
— The Napoleon of the People • Honore de Balzac
... the impishness of childhood, climbed up in the auto. It was a simple matter to even blunder on pushing the button that would set the self-starter in operation. The car had been left standing on a level bit of road, but, just ahead of it, was a rather steep slope. Mollie had neglected to leave ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope
... and blew his nose. The sisters saw with regret that there was no recurring to the attractive subject of that interview in Chicago, though their minds were beset with a thousand questions they wished to ask him about it. They realized that to do so would be a blunder. They had stumbled upon a gold mine and were obliged to leave its rich hoard untouched. They returned to Phil, who, as a topic, offered safer ground than ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... toothpick. He was sure that those Neapolitans were recruits of the Bolognese Polizia; on the track of the Guidascarpi, possibly. As he was not unlike Angelo Guidascarpi in figure, he became uneasy lest they should blunder 'twixt him and La Scala; and the notion of any human power stopping him short of that destination, made Ammiani's hand perfectly firm. He drew on his gloves, and named the place whither he was going, aloud. 'Excellency,' said the waiter, while taking up and pretending to reckon ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... sometimes anything but accurate; in this case he errs almost as greatly as when he venerates himself as the prince of freemen, with gyveless wrists and flashing eyes. As for the foreigner, what he falls into is the typically Freudian blunder of projecting his own worst weakness into another. The fact is that it is he, and not the native American, who is the incorrigible and unimaginative money-grubber. He comes to the United States in search of money, and in search ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... conversation with the temporary skipper of the Chih' Yuen, during which he ascertained that the vessel had fortunately struck only very lightly; and, as she had been considerably sheltered from the seas by the part of the reef through which she had somehow managed to blunder before striking, she had not bumped to any extent, and was making but little water. It was therefore to be hoped that her bottom was not so badly injured as Wong-lih had at first anticipated, and that, at the rising of the tide, it might be possible, with the assistance of the San-chau, ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... administration for doing that very thing. "How would you like," he said to me, "when you get to be engineer-in-chief to have your errors dragged forth by your subordinate? Before long your engineer-in-chief will be made a divisional inspector. As soon as any one of us commits a serious blunder, as he has done, the administration (which can't allow itself to appear in the wrong) will quietly retire him from active duty by ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... the winner, but only signalizes that that side is his." The evasion came too late; persons who had inconvenient memories saw through the shuffling of a pseudo-prophet, who only managed to cast a retrospective gleam of insincerity over his fortune-telling, to convert blunder into bad faith, and to stultify his present along with his past position. The leek had to be eaten at last: why, after so many "prave 'ords" of superiority and defiance, confess that the eating of it had been more than half ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... I begin to feel tired of her already; I felt I should when I was persuaded to order her: and that is the Folly of it. They say it is a very bad Thing to do Nothing: but I am sure that is not the case with those who are born to Blunder; I always find that I have to repent of what I have done, not what I have left undone; and poor W. Browne used to say it was better even to repent of what [was] undone than done. You know how glad I should be if you came here: but I haven't the Face to ask it, especially after that ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... was quite perfect, and Timothy Ruddel, who was called up before me, was also able to say his lesson without a blunder very much to the disappointment of Mr O'Gallagher, who observed, "So you've slipped through my fingers, have you, this time, Master Timothy? Never mind, I'll have you yet; and, moreover, there's Master Keene to go through the fiery furnace." Just ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... she muttered to herself, "I have made a grievous blunder; it may be I have ruined Cornelius, the tulip, and myself. I have given the alarm, and perhaps awakened suspicion. I am but a woman; these men may league themselves against me, and then I shall be lost. If I am lost that ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... but not until she had exhausted the means of defence and life. At that time, few men in America but were in the habit of denouncing the French President for his indifference to the Italian cause. He was charged with having been guilty of a blunder and a crime. His consent to the expedition to Rome aggravated his offence, for it was an act of intervention on the wrong side. But the passage of ten years enables us to be more just to him than it was possible for us to be in 1849. He was not firm in his seat. He was but a temporary chief ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... will help me out," she said to John as he bowed and seated himself. "'Some one has blundered,' and here is a whole bottle of champagne which must be drunk to save it. Are you prepared to help turn my, or somebody's, blunder into hospitality?" ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... in person. Death or victory Was his device, "and there was no mistake," Except his last; and then he did but die, A blunder which the wisest men will make. Aloft, where mighty floods the mountains break, To stand, the target of the thousand eyes, And down into the coil and water-quake, To leap, like Maia's offspring, from the skies— For this all vulgar flights ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... with him. He knew the land well, and what there was in the woods and the waters. He had walked out to the railroad station, fourteen miles distant, to see the cars, and back the same day. I asked him about the flies and mosquitoes, etc. He said they were all gone except the "blunder-heads;" there were some of them ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... carelessness, and an error crept into one of the reports she was copying. The error was slight, but it brought her a sharp reprimand from Mr. Troy. It was the second time, he reminded her, that she had made that blunder. At the reproof the girl's face flushed painfully, and ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... Musky Bay, the name of the little settlement where I am stopping, they think I am just a city man up for the fishing. I do not use my right name there. By an inadvertence, I suppose it was habit, I wrote it on the hotel register to-night. That was a sad blunder, for it is practically certain that these men will not rest till they have found out where ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... way. But to do this, of course, would be a surrender to the German contentions, an acknowledgment of the wisdom of the German methods against which she is protesting with all her might. Democracy, apparently, must blunder on until that ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... him an arm. His eyes were half-closed and his gaze absolutely dulled. The dressed and waxed moustache, which ran to a needle-like point, looked doubly tasteless against his wax mask of a face. He was the incarnation of walking decrepitude, vapid and slack. Quite evidently he had committed the blunder of trusting to a split in Germany. In his blindness he explained that he had come to free the Germans, who had, against their will, been incorporated into Prussia, and all Germany rose like one man against him. And in his foolish proclamation ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... something definite, something that would settle once for all the question that filled his mind. But what could he do? That little point was still unsettled. Knock at the girl's door, pretend that it was a blunder, and trust to inspiration to discover in the brief encounter if anything was wrong? Or put money in an envelop and push it under her door? If he did that, she would probably give the money to Sam, as she had ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... mean, after Tennyson's death," I myself wrote to Philip Hamerton, "to be Poet-laureate!" From these samples of our callow speech, the modesty of our ambition may be inferred. Well, it all happened just as we planned, only otherwise! Through some blunder of arrangement we two started for London on the same day, but from different railway stations, and, until some weeks afterwards, one knew nothing of the other's exodus. I arrived at King's Cross Railway Station with the conventional ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... have considered the RUDIMENTS of COOKERY quite unworthy of attention. These little delicate distinctions constitute all the difference between a common and an elegant table, and are not trifles to the YOUNG HOUSEKEEPERS who must learn them either from the communication of others or blunder on till their own slowly accumulating and dear-bought ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... ago I could have counted on hitting him where I liked. I trust I shall not blunder against his vitals now. However, if I do, he has ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... I write politics for my own sake, I must put in love and intrigue, social incidents, with perhaps a dash of sport, for the benefit of my readers. In this way I think I made my political hero interesting. It was certainly a blunder to take him from Ireland—into which I was led by the circumstance that I created the scheme of the book during a visit to Ireland. There was nothing to be gained by the peculiarity, and there was an added difficulty in obtaining sympathy and affection ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... in Malone's Shakspeare.—Has any notice been taken of the following odd blunder in Malone's Shakspeare, Dublin ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 14. Saturday, February 2, 1850 • Various
... or two. She was very angry with herself, would never forgive herself, she said, if by her own trivial fault she had thrown away this favor of kind Fortune. What must she do, what could she do, to retrieve her blunder? Where seek for him? How find him? She quivered, grew hot and cold again with excitement. Should she go to the Green Square?—he was sure to visit that quarter. Then she remembered a high window in the canon's house ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... nothing the parent can do right. You would think that now and then he might, if only by mere accident, blunder into sense. But, no, there seems to be a law against it. He brings home woolly rabbits and indiarubber elephants, and expects the Child to be contented "forsooth" with suchlike aids to its education. As a matter of fact, the ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... is an obvious blunder here, for this account of the trade must be understood as follows: "That the trade in silks and spices from the East, which now come by way of Syria, came over land by way of Astracan to Tanna, whence it was transported by sea to Venice." The concluding sentence, "That no other nation ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... right mood, or in the nick of time. How he envied those fortunate mortals who always arrived at the right moment, and instinctively said the right thing! That talent had never been his. With him it was blunder. ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... a bad tool, at once stubborn and secretive, cunning enough to recognise and to resent handling, thickheaded and vain enough to blunder ruinously. And Elmur found at the last and most important moment that for some unexplained reason he had lost the whip-hand of ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... complicated. She showed a decided inclination for Stratton's society, and when he came to know her better he found her frank, breezy, and delightfully companionable. He knew perfectly well that unless he wanted to take a chance of making some tremendous blunder he ought to avoid any prolonged conversation with the lady. But she was so charming that every now and then he flung prudence to ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... months' siege since October, but it did not redound to the credit of its defenders. They were superior in numbers to the besiegers, were amply provisioned, and well supplied with heavy artillery and all the munitions of war. Every sort of blunder seems to have been committed by the commander, who apparently regarded the siege as a relief from more arduous work in the field, and capitulated because the repulse of the rescuing expedition foreboded an increase ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... may say, this in itself is a great advantage. One can see from his "Education" that his material difficulties were so slight that he could take them cheerfully, even in our world where poverty is both a blunder and a crime. This in itself tends toward happiness. Henry Adams, it is true, suffered terribly in his heart. His description of the death of his sister is heart-rending; he does not dwell on the worst of his griefs. ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... my day," said Odo wearily. "And meanwhile we blunder on, without ever really knowing what incalculable instincts and prejudices are pitted against us. You and your party tell me the people are sick of the burdens the clergy lay on them—yet their blind devotion to the Church is ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... yourself still deeper in my estimation, of annoying me by any future demonstrations of a style of admiration I neither desire, appreciate, nor intend to permit. If accident should ever thrust you again across my path, you will do well to forget that our minister committed the blunder of sending you here to-day. Mr. Laurance will please accept my thanks for this package of papers, which shall be returned to-morrow to the office of the American embassy. Resolved to forget the unpleasant incidents of to-day, Madame Orme is ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... in a doctrine, means, that we understand what the propositions are, and accept them. But if through blunder we accept a wrong set of propositions, so as to believe a false doctrine, we nevertheless have Implicit (or Virtual) Faith in the true one, if only we say from the heart: "Whatever the Church believes, I believe." Thus a person, who, through blundering, believes ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... all the sun, and on a fine summer's morning grows drowsy with the heat. The crimson and creamy-gold of the opening honeysuckle swings heavy with its own sweetness. The hart's-tongue ferns, matted all over the steep banks, hang down like the tongues of thirsty dogs. The bees blunder sleepily from flower to flower. The black and crimson butterflies take short flights and long panting rests. Even the late wild roses seem less saucily cheerful than usual, and the branching ferns on the hillsides look as though they ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... safest of jumpers pulled into their fences and caused to fall by the adoption of such tactics. A lady should remember that when her mount is going straight for a fence, with the intention of getting safely to the other side, any interference on her part will cause him to either blunder badly, or, if the jump is a fixture, to fall. If a horse slackens speed when near a fence, and suddenly runs out, his rider should let him refuse and take him at it again. I once got a very bad fall through turning a horse quickly at a fence which he was in the ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... or victory Was his device, "and there was no mistake," Except his last; and then he did but die, A blunder which the wisest men will make. Aloft, where mighty floods the mountains break, To stand, the target of the thousand eyes, And down into the coil and water-quake, To leap, like Maia's offspring, from the skies— For this all vulgar flights he ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... Bismarck for the first time; they were discussing the conduct of the Austrian Government in shooting Robert Blum, a leading demagogue who had been in Vienna during the siege. Beust condemned it as a political blunder. "No, you are wrong," said Bismarck; "when I have my enemy in my ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... irony of the truth. For he bestows those withering words on the nation that has the fifty religions, and attributes "ideas"—as the antithesis of "convenience" and "practical sense"—to the nation that has the fifty sauces. And not for a moment does he suspect himself of this blunder, so manifest as to be disconcerting to his reader. One seems to hear an incurably English accent in all this, which indeed is reported, by his acquaintance, of Matthew Arnold's actual speaking of French. It is certain that he has not the interest of familiarity with the language, ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... nature to a sedentary life, he is fit to live among women or in their fashion. Let him adopt one of their trades if he likes; and if there must be eunuchs let them take those men who dishonour their sex by adopting trades unworthy of it. Their choice proclaims a blunder on the part of nature; correct it one way or other, you will ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... entrusting me with any message you may have to send," replied Hsiao Hung with a laugh. "I'll readily go and deliver it. Should I not do so faithfully, and blunder in fulfilling your business, my lady, you may visit me with any punishment your ladyship may please, and I'll ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... pardon, young gentleman," and for a moment her words were drowned in a shout of delighted laughter, as the listening rogues appreciated the blunder she had made. ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... he said, "but at the moment, I could not but think of you; how you suit it out here." Now she coloured and drew back. Then she heard close by her: "You must not be angry, it always happens that when we wish to repair a blunder, ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... Madam Budd—there are such accidents truly, and serious things be they to encounter," answered Spike, hemming a little to clear his throat, as was much his practice whenever the widow ran into any unusually extravagant blunder; "yes, serious things to encounter. But the land-fall that I mean is a different sort of thing; being, as you well know, what we say when we come in sight of land, a'ter a v'y'ge; or, meaning the land we may happen first to see. The departure ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... Monday morning she sent a person to Captain Watson's, to know if Mrs. Veal was there. They wondered at Mrs. Bargrave's inquiry; and sent her word, that she was not there, nor was expected. At this answer Mrs. Bargrave told the maid she had certainly mistook the name, or made some blunder. And though she was ill, she put on her hood, and went herself to Captain Watson's though she knew none of the family, to see if Mrs. Veal was there or not. They said, they wondered at her asking, for that she had not been in ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... Deventer was anxious to make amends for his blunder of a moment before. "Shall I send the bank watchmen to go on each floor in turn and ask everybody ...
— The Runaway Skyscraper • Murray Leinster
... its interest after the battle of Leutzen, when the Swedish hero laid down his life in defense of his Protestant brethren, so the Theban contest with Sparta has no great significance after the battle of Mantinea. The only great blunder which Epaminondas made was to encourage his countrymen to compete with Athens for the sovereignty of the seas. That sovereignty was the natural empire of Athens, even as the empire of the land was the glory of Sparta. If these two powers had been contented with their own ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... been impossible to keep together, to be sure of the way, or to distinguish friend from foe, to do a thing which he hesitated to do in the daytime and with his entire force, would have been a more serious blunder than either. Of course, if Preston had started, it would have been with the determination to succeed or lose his life in the adventure. That was his reputation and his character as a soldier. But the services and lives of such ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... possibly her own inclination might set in the same direction; or, again, she might wish to renew her early engagement with the emperor himself. The same uncertainty had been felt at Brussels; the Bishop of Arras, therefore, had charged Renard to feel his way carefully and make no blunder. If the queen inclined to the emperor, he might speak of Philip as more eligible; if she fancied Courtenay, it would be useless to interfere—she would only resent his opposition.[87] Renard obeyed his instructions, and the result was reassuring. ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... air as he stepped by her reaching out for butcher-knife and roast. "So you are dad's kind, are you? Hitting the booze every show you get. The Lord deliver me from his chief blunder. Meaning a man." ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... reckless, and my companions were full of glee. Even the ennuye skipped up and down the room like a school-boy: I never shall forget Richard's happy and relieved expression, when I laughed aloud at somebody's amusing blunder. ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... prick his nerves with a needle of suggestion where all his passions, ambitions and sentiments are at white heat, will readily throw away the whole game of life in some mad act out of harmony with all he ever did. It matters little whether the needle prick him by accident or blunder or design, he will burst all bounds, and establish again the old truth that each of us will prove himself a fool given perfect opportunity. Nor need the occasion of this revolution be a great one; the most trivial event may produce ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... allies, that Mr. Venizelos made his defence in an eloquent and powerful speech at a special session of the Greek parliament. The accusation against him was not only that during the late war he had sacrificed Greek interests to Bulgaria but that he had committed a fatal blunder in joining her in the campaign against Turkey. His reply was that since Greece could not stand alone he had to seek allies in the Balkans, and that it was not his fault if the choice had fallen on Bulgaria. He ...
— The Balkan Wars: 1912-1913 - Third Edition • Jacob Gould Schurman
... Leech—might be wiped out in a dinner given by himself to the confraternity. And they all came to his house in Kensington Palace Gardens, and Thackeray was duly chaffed and teased—"and who can doubt," says Trollope, "but they were very jolly over the little blunder?" ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... made some comment; but Hamilton, who now perceived his blunder, which might have a disastrous effect on the attitude of these men toward him, hastened to make a ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... your pardons," he said, faintly, as though he had committed some blunder. "I—I fear I am not ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton
... try it," she said, as she went out, holding up her list, "but I feel that I shall blunder, and do ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... the minister, hesitatingly, supposing he had not heard aright, and yet doubting if this could be the correction of his auricular blunder. ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... indeed. What a blunder it was to let them slip through their fingers, when they might have seized them with two or three hundred ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... think I am going to let you off so," said he; "you must give me half-a-dozen kisses at least to prove that you have forgiven me for making so great a blunder." ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... watched them with anxiety. I do not know how far Jevons was aware that the house in Mayfair was a blunder; I think he wouldn't have acknowledged that it was a blunder at all. His own attitude to it was not in the least disturbed by his humorous perception of other people's. With his dexterity in adjustments he was quite capable of reconciling them, quite capable of enjoying the effect ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... war of 1812 between the United States and England; and the general revolt of the Spanish colonies. The world was learning new lessons, adopting new policies, in which the Spanish colonial system was a blunder the folly of which Spain did not even then fully realize. Yet from it all, by one means and another, Cuba benefited. Spain was fortunate in its selection of Governors-General sent out at this time. Luis de Las Casas, who arrived in 1790, is credited with much useful ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... the French were heavily burdened by the venality of La Barre, who subordinated public policy to his own gains. We have now to record his most egregious blunder—an attempt to overawe the Iroquois with an insufficient force—an attempt which Meulles declared was a mere piece of acting—not designed for real war on behalf of the colony, {98} but to assist the governor's private interests as a trader. From whatever ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... poems to the Queen, and his welcome to Alexandra, Princess of Wales, all of which are of great excellence. His Charge of the Light Brigade, at Balaclava, while it gave undue currency to that stupid military blunder, must rank as one of the finest battle-lyrics in ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... he said, "You know that the splendour is enacting behind. You guess the opening of the rose. One stalks this earth agog for miracles. It is full of hints—you catch a moment—for flashed instants you are God. Then the mist wraps you, and you blunder forward, two-legged man swaying for a balance. Translate the oracle as you will— with your paint-pans, with your words—we get broken lights, half-phrases. But we guess the rest, and so we strain and grow. Who are you or I, that we ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... "It is a matter of equality. In fact, it would be hard to tell which of the two is the more indebted to the other—the employer or the employee. It is in this spirit that I try to run this great plant. I blunder, it is true; I suppose we all do that. But I sincerely believe labor should have an honored place, and so far as I am concerned I give it one. If I had a boy," Mr. Croyden's voice faltered, "If I had a boy," he repeated more firmly, "he should be brought ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett
... that the old Long Parliament did nothing but blunder and talk, so he marched into the House one day with a company of soldiers, and sternly ordered the members all off, calling out, as he pointed to the mace that lay before the Speaker's chair, "Take away that bauble." After that ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to know the full value of symptoms under medication, as well as the full value of the symptoms when not under medication. This knowledge I am using in analyzing this medical classic and from my standpoint I can see how very easy it was for the author of the article under consideration to blunder along as he did. The doctor should not feel lonesome, however, for he has a ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.
... of employment." The answer is, of course, that the state of things here contemplated is a permanent and normal one wherein production is correctly adapted to human desires. If A is found not to be wanted, after the production of it, an industrial blunder has been committed, and wealth is wasted just as when burned up. It is ill-assorted production. The trouble is not in a lack of demand for what A may produce (of something else), but with the producers of A in not making that for which there were desires, from ignorance or lack ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... enfranchisement. To this proposition my friend, Susan B. Anthony, never consented, but was compelled to yield because no one stood with her. I was convinced, at the time, that it was the true policy. I am now equally sure that it was a blunder, and, ever since, I have taken my beloved Susan's judgment against the world. I have always found that, when we see eye to eye, we are sure to be right, and when we pull together we are strong. After we discuss any point together ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... very nearly. And, what is a wiser and better thing, Can keep the living from ever needing Such an unnatural, strange proceeding, By showing conclusively and clearly That death is a stupid blunder merely, And not a necessity of our lives. My being here is accidental; The storm, that against your casement drives, In the little village below waylaid me. And there I heard, with a secret delight, Of your maladies physical and mental, Which neither ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... on the propriety of using me himself that evening at the chateau of the King of the French. Fortunately, his monitress, though by no means of the purest water, knew better than to suffer her eleve to commit so gross a blunder, and I escaped the calamity of making my first appearance at court under the auspices of such ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... think it is? It is governed by influence. It is governed by the ambitions and the enterprises which control votes. The young woman that thinks she is going to vote for the sake of holding an office is making an awful blunder. ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... many Californian towns. It was a blunder; the site has proved untenable; and, although it is still such a young place by the scale of Europe, it has already begun to be deserted for its neighbour and namesake, North Vallejo. A long pier, a number of drinking saloons, ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in vain to clear matters up. Your aunt would insist that I took her to be forty, and the fun that my blunder made rather drew us together, and gave me a start over the other fellows at the station, half of whom fell straightway in love with her. Some months went on, and when the mutiny broke out we were engaged to be married. It is a proof of how completely the opium dreams had passed out ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... replied; "it was more perplexing than that Even if the police had not made the usual blunder of arresting him for intoxication instead of sending him immediately to the hospital, it would have made no difference. The doctors simply could not have saved him, apparently. For the truth is, Professor Kennedy, we don't even know what ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... and scarce awake, Out in the trench with three hours' watch to take, I blunder through the splashing mirk; and then Hear the gruff muttering voices of the men Crouching in cabins candle-chinked with light. Hark! There's the big bombardment on our right Rumbling and bumping; and the ...
— Counter-Attack and Other Poems • Siegfried Sassoon
... and women do as a matter of fact usually make this choice hastily and on wofully imperfect information of one another's characters, that is no warrant for a resort to unlawful expedients to remedy the blunder. If a woman cares ardently enough about religion to feel keen distress at the idea of dissent from it on the part of those closely connected with her, she surely may be expected to take reasonable pains to ascertain ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... trying to figure out what SC meant! And, if it weren't so late, I'd start right out now to find my mine! If it weren't for that a. b. part I could ride right to it, and snap my fingers at the prowler. But, it may take me a long time to blunder onto the meaning of these letters, and anyway, I want to know 'who's who,' as Mr. Christie says." She continued her work, and a half-hour later examined the result critically. "SC 1 NW 1 N [up arrow] ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... Spaniard, puzzled Marryat and his shipmates. It is not wonderful that he did not understand its meaning, since in spite of campaigning in Spain, and many visits to Spanish ports, he never learnt to avoid the absurd blunder of putting the title Don before a surname. But if the steersman is drawn from life, so are not either the carrack, which is a fragment of the sixteenth century, out of its place, nor 'Don' Ribiera and his sons, nor the bishop, nor anybody else in that ill-fated ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... very sorry to hear that," said Lionel, sharply. Fairthorn looked frightened. "I 'm afraid I have made a blunder. Don't tell Mr. Darrell." ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... good; but, in another quarter, Allcraft suddenly discovered that he had committed an egregious blunder. He had entrusted Planner with the secret of his critical position—had made him acquainted with the dishonest transactions of his father, and the consequent bankruptcy of the firm. Not that this disclosure ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... in its paternal tenderness than seemed consistent with the granite-hewn strength and sternness of his general character. A thorough soldier, with a soldier's contempt for fine-spun diplomacy, he had been led into many a blunder when acting as a chief of party and of State; but his absolute single-minded honesty had more than redeemed such errors; "integrity and uprightness had preserved him," and through him the land and its rulers, amid difficulties ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... always been this way, I wonder, Did editors always display The same disposition to blunder O'er the weight of the news of the day? When simpler was war and directer, Was Athens accustomed to see In the sheets of its Argus how ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 5, 1919 • Various
... your turn. My friends are fond of ascribing my success in my various missions to the possession of peculiar qualities. No such thing: I owe everything to the simple habit of always waiting till it is my turn to speak. And believe me, that he who plays before his turn at whist, commits as great a blunder as he who speaks before ...
— The Infernal Marriage • Benjamin Disraeli
... splintered condition, into which some person had cut up the controversy with a view to his own more convenient study of its chief elements, Heber had misconceived as the actual form in which these parts had been originally exchanged between the disputants—a blunder of the worst consequence, and having the effect of translating general expressions (such as recorded a moral indignation against ancient fallacies or evasions connected with the dispute) into direct ebullitions of scorn or displeasure personally against his immediate antagonist. ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... began the rite which was to unite Amyas Belamour to Aurelia Delavie. He intended to shorten the service, but his nervous terror and the obscurity of the room made him stumble in finding the essential passages, and blunder in dictating the vows, thus increasing the confusion and bewilderment of poor little Aurelia. Somehow her one comfort was in the touch of the hand that either clasped hers, or held the ring on her finger—a strong, warm, tender, trustworthy hand, neither as white nor as soft as ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... execution. If our authorities and people view the present European War with indifference and without deep concern, merely devoting their attention to the attack on Kiaochow, neglecting the larger issues of the war, they will have brought to nought our great Imperial policy, and committed a blunder greater than which it can not be conceived. We are constrained to submit this statement of policy for the consideration of our authorities, not because we are fond of argument but because we are deeply ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... given to be able to say it off from beginning to end, exceptions and all, without a blunder! But he could only stand and hang his head; he did not know a word of it. Then through the hot pounding in his ears he heard the master's voice; it was quite gentle; not at all the scolding voice he expected. And it said, "I'm not going to punish you, little Franz. ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... deficiency of eight and a quarter millions that he hands over to the new Parliament, from the surplus of six millions which the former Parliament handed over to him. I cannot, I think, state the matter more fairly than that. You are—deluded I was going to say, but I could not make a greater blunder, for deluded you are not; and deluded the people of England are not, and the people of Scotland will not be, but you are flattered and inveigled by compliments paid to the existing Administration in various newspapers abroad. Is not that a ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... in no haste—Fabius Cunctator about to be named—with 60,000 men; does come to Kolin. Frederick attacks; but a blunder of too-impetuous Mannstein fatally overturns the plan of battle; to which the resulting disaster is imputed: disaster seemingly overwhelming and irretrievable, but Daun does not follow up. The siege of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... raised by authority above what it will yield with a profit to the buyer, that commodity will be the less dealt in. If a second blundering interposition be used to correct the blunder of the first, and an attempt is made to force the purchase of the commodity (of labour for instance), the one of these two things must happen, either that the forced buyer is ruined, or the price of the product of the labour, in that proportion, is raised. Then ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... "It was a blunder," whispered Storms, when the captain stepped beside him. "Those wretches mean mischief, and it ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... reflected, in eliminating formal discipline as far as possible in the shipboard routine. It had seemed the best course for a long cruise under the present conditions. But now I had a morale situation that could explode in mutiny at the first blunder on ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer
... supernal, were at work here no man can tell. Philosophers stumble, fools blunder, and the truth dances on ahead through Life's woodland of mysteries—one instant revealing itself in a golden shaft of sunlight, hiding the next with smothered laughter in the black shadow of a fern, while seekers after it tramp past in ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... wonder Was some heart-chord snapped asunder When the threads were soft and silken? Did some fatal boyish blunder Plant a canker in my bosom That hath ever ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... disapprobation of Homer, or any other poet, who is guilty of such a foolish blunder as to tell us (Iliad, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... ending with an implied question lent a subtle meaning to his utterance, and he helped it with covert glance and sour smile. Thus might Caesar Borgia ask some minion if he could use a dagger. But Royson was too humiliated by his blunder to pay heed to hidden meanings. He grasped the card in his muddied fingers, and looked towards Miss Fenshawe, who was now patting one of the horses. Her aristocratic aloofness was doubly galling. She, too, had heard what he said, and was ready to classify him ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... thither. Marius did not understand, and committed this error. "The father" began to grow inexact, and no longer brought "his daughter" every day. Sometimes, he came alone. Then Marius did not stay. Another blunder. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... I am afraid, Captain, that I have made a blunder. Mrs. Dillon came to me—most kindly of course—and made an offer to take care of a booth at the bazaar, and I refused her. You know my feeling against giving these Americans any ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... piece of Heine's prose, and as dangerous. He would run over a man's pockets while he spoke with him, returning what he chose to discard without the lightest breath of suspicion. 'A good workman,' his contemporaries called him; and they thought it a shame for him to be idle. Moreover, he did not blunder unconsciously upon his triumph; he tackled the trade in so fine a spirit of analysis that he might have been the very Aristotle of his science. 'The keek-cloy,' he wrote, in his hints to young sportsmen, 'is easily picked. If the notes are in the ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... the way, is not a moral tale. Virtue does not triumph, nor will vice be crushed. It is the mere record of a few mistakes, culminating in Mark Ruthine's blunder—a little note on human nature without vice in it; for there is little vice in human nature if one takes the trouble to sift ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... to-day made another sad blunder— What can be come over me lately, I wonder? The Prince was as cheerful as if all his life He had never been troubled with Friends or a Wife— "Fine weather," says he—to which I, who must prate, Answered, "Yes, Sir, but changeable ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... special knowledge as well as a sufficient training in Roman institutions generally. Each of these Roman subjects is like a language with a delicate accidence, which is always presenting the unwary with pitfalls into which they are sure to blunder unless they have a thorough mastery of it. I could mention a book full of valuable thoughts about the relation to Paganism of the early Christian Church, by a scholar at once learned and sympathetic;[4] who when he happens to deal for a moment with the ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... my haste. "You are right—but don't be brutal. Don't kill the child. Listen. Instead of writing to Jack Marston, let him come. Let him tell her himself. Give her a chance. Give him one, even. It is a cruel business, anyhow. Don't let's blunder into making ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... and blest the well-directed blow that had deprived him of life, I suddenly checked myself when I heard her say—Amen! knowing that him whom she reviled was my very self. A little reflection taught me silence—a little practice enabled me to speak of that frightful night without any very excessive blunder. The wound I had given myself was no mockery of one—it was long before I recovered—and as the benevolent and generous Torella sat beside me talking such wisdom as might win friends to repentance, and mine own dear Juliet hovered near me, administering ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... that the case should be heard at their bar; and Westminster Hall was prepared to be the scene of a great public trial. At first Defoe, in heaping contemptuous ridicule upon the High-flying Doctor, had spoken as if he would consider prosecution a blunder. The man ought rather to be encouraged to go on exposing himself and his party. "Let him go on," he said, "to bully Moderation, explode Toleration, and damn the Union; the gain will ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... sure of one thing for to-morrow," said I, "and that is the certainty that if there's blunder to be made one or other of my following will make it. Still, I'm not complaining, for it's good to be ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... girl in love. Rachel is in love. She would not say with whom—naturally. At least, naturally for Rachel. I felt rather helpless, but as I knew that all she wanted was an intelligent sympathizer, not verbal assistance, I was willing to blunder a little. I knew she would ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... fairway. Much labour had been expended and considerable rude skill shown by the enemy in building bastions and other defensive works at various places on the river,—particularly in the Shabluka gorge and before Omdurman. Why the Khalifa committed the blunder of making no adequate preparation for defending the pass at Shabluka it is difficult to understand. Only one conclusion suggests itself. He was probably afraid to trust his followers so far from his sight, lest the negroes ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... collocation, till there steal forth that horrible Papce! which means more on your lips than I am sure it ever did when Latin was a live language, and Papce a natural and unpedantic ejaculation!—no, I would sooner blunder through the dark by myself a thousand times than light my rushlight at the lamp of that ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... who else to call upon—of course I could not go out into the audience to find some one, and thus betray my predicament to everybody; neither could I take one of the housemaids, because she would have been sure to blunder and be so awkward. Oh! isn't ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... accuracy, the result of incessant watchfulness and of orderly habits. Yet it is his accuracy which has been called in question by some modern writers, on the ground of passages in his letters which they have misinterpreted, or failed to understand. In every instance the blunder has not been committed by ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... former French government when assailed with difficulty? It was at once as if struck motionless, or, the little animation that was left was just sufficient to enable it to go from one blunder to another. How different has England been on every emergency? In place of the arm of government seeming to slacken in the day of danger, it has risen superior to it. We have never seen the same scenes happen here, that have taken place in Poland, Sweden, and ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... don't wonder; I spoke too fast again; But you'll forgive one blunder, For you are like most men: You are,—or so you've told me, So many mortal times, That heaven ought not to hold me ...
— The Man Against the Sky • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... New Testament itself might well be read simply as literature. The words, the phrases, the ideals which literature offers so lavishly, unconsciously stir the mind to lofty motives and the true perception of the meaning of life. We must not, of course, commit the fatal blunder of making a didactic lesson out of what is read. We take care that it is understood and illustrated, and then leave it to have its ...
— Children and Their Books • James Hosmer Penniman
... as I can see, you are not to blame. Apologize to the lady for the blunder of your godfathers and godmothers. Stupid old parties! They ought to have thought of Hyacinth;" and Carrol threw his cigar into the fire and began ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... speak like a native, and he had dabbled in the humanities; but he would drag forth my smattering of learning with so much glee that one might have thought him ignorant of the plainest A B C of the matter. More than once I have known him blunder in a Latin quotation that I might correct him. Aileen and he had a hundred topics in common from which I was excluded by reason of my ignorance of the Highlands, but the Macdonald was as sly as a fox on my behalf. He would draw out the girl about the dear Northland they both loved and then ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... young man who has since reached a high place in the ecclesiastical body to which he belongs. The reviewer, in this case, had in a previous article discussed the question of literary schools in America. Speaking of the origin of the term "Lake School," he pronounced the epithet Lakers "the mere blunder of superficial wit and raillery." But that did not prevent him from creating the absurd title of "Bay writers," which he applied to all the writers about Boston, baptizing them in the profane waters of Massachusetts Bay. "The Church Review" was in the habit ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... the poet, had just preceded him, and it seemed a moment aptly chosen for his so-different theme. "And then," to quote Howells, "the amazing mistake, the bewildering blunder, the cruel catastrophe was ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... husband, and a bond of mutual sympathy drew the composer to her. After the death of her husband, she persuaded Haydn to sign a promise to marry her if his wife should die, but the composer afterward repudiated the agreement, very likely not wishing to repeat his first matrimonial blunder. ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... idea of a definite task, fanatically followed to the exclusion of all minor considerations, breaks down. When the work is good, when we are sure we are all right, then we may carry off things with a high hand. But the work isn't always good, we aren't always sure. We blunder, we make a muddle, we are fatigued. Then the sacrificed affections come in as accusers. Then it is that ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... a political blunder. It stirred up the embers of Napoleonism. Ten years later they blazed into a ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... kind of you to put so much faith in me," said the middy; "but don't say any more, please, and don't believe in me too much for fear I should make some horrible blunder, ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... seldom read, even it may be suspected in Mr. Arber's excellent reprint of it, or in that of Mr. Bond. It gave a word to English, and even yet there is no very distinct idea attaching to the word. It induced one of the most gifted restorers of old times to make a blunder, amusing in itself, but not in the least what its author intended it to be, and of late years especially it has prompted constant discussions as to the origin of the peculiarities which mark it. As usual, we shall try to discuss ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... sturdy old Commodore Jones will blunder along with the American liners, CYANE and UNITED STATES, and haul down that proud Mexican ensign. He will hoist for the first time, on October, 19, 1842, the stars and stripes over the town. Even though he apologizes, the foreigners will troop back there ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... that draft treaty was a weapon in our hands; to-day it is a weapon against us. It was a gigantic blunder. If its terms were made public, it would mean disaster.... It might possibly bring about another war—not with Germany this time! That is an extreme possibility, and I do not believe in its likelihood ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... place. On the day following that of your departure from Windermere, I was duly inducted by Cleon into my new duties. They are few in number, and by no means difficult. So far I have contrived to get through them without any desperate blunder. Another thing I have done of which you will be pleased to hear: I have contrived to ingratiate myself with the mulatto, and am in high favour with him. You were right in your remarks; he is worth cultivation, in so far that he is all-powerful in our little establishment. M. Platzoff never interferes ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... Christy Minstrel choruses by people who had developed vocal talent for this occasion only, and a screaming display of conjuring tricks by an amateur of legerdemain who had forgotten the art, if ever he had mastered it. At every new mistake or blunder, and with each fresh change of expression on the entertainer's streaky face, conveying the idea of his being under the influence of a bad dream, and hoping to wake up in his own quarters by-and-by, to find that he had never really undertaken to make a pudding in a hat, and smash ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... Mr. Morris. "Does the King, then, not realize that he is no longer the power in the state? The National Assembly will not tolerate Necker's dismissal. Will you not go instantly to Versailles and try to undo this fatal blunder of the King?" he asked. Monsieur de ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... seem to us worse than the glaring inconsistency at the end of the sixth book of the Aeneid, where Aeneas is dismissed by the gate of the false visions. That incident, whether ironical or not, is unquestionably an artistic blunder, since it destroys the impression of truth on which the justification of the ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... a clown!— Should only contend that Adam slipped down; While you—you Supralapsarian pup!— Should nothing aver but that Adam slipped up. It's all the same whether up or down You slip on a peel of banana brown. Even Adam analyzed not his blunder, But thought he had slipped on a peal ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... go to the devil their own way, not laying the blame of their own folly on others! But having got you—would I ever have let you go for any power under Heaven? Why (as soon as you were free) did I marry you? I knew that, politically, it was a blunder: that over there it would go against us— prove the case. Half Ireland cared nothing for the verdict of an English jury. But when we married, they had to believe it then.... Well, I wanted them to believe it. I know my love would have waited, had I asked ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... doesn't blunder," answered Jose, "he can sweep us all into his net. The only thing that saves us now is Miller's skill and reputation. Every one believes he is going to show fight somewhere ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... and I too frequently gave unsatisfactory answers to the questions with which he assailed me. Owen, hovering betwixt his respect for his patron, and his love for the youth he had dandled on his knee in childhood, like the timorous, yet anxious ally of an invaded nation, endeavoured at every blunder I made to explain my no-meaning, and to cover my retreat; manoeuvres which added to my father's pettish displeasure, and brought a share of it upon my kind advocate, instead of protecting me. I had not, while ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... wandering in regions where he had little business, confound the old authentic Presbyterian Witchfinder with a new, spurious, imaginary Historian of the Brittische Journalistik; and so stumble on perhaps the most egregious blunder in ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... Martha, taking courage, and laying a timid hand on his arm. "Sure, I don't know what 'tis all about. I don't know what blunder he've made. But I'm thinkin', zur, you'll be sorry if you acts in haste. 'Tis wise t' count a hundred. Don't be too hard on un, zur. 'Tis like the blunder may be mended. 'Tis like he'll do better next time. ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... others advanced. Then a party of a couple of dozen rose from the ground near to hand, with a young man in a European officer's uniform at their head. They ran to us, while we stood and waited. At last they saw who I was, and when they came near they apologized very gracefully for their blunder. "It was fortunate that you shouted when you did," said one ugly-faced young rebel, as he slipped his cartridge back into his pouch; "I had you nicely covered and was just going to shoot." Some of the soldiers ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... Fleecing Gideon, but of his daughter Lucy, which has never yet been seen in any exhibition or loan collection. "Oho," says Master, "then I won't fight a chap who has a daughter like that." Ha! Mad bull "heard without"—one of the "herd without,"—Master picks up blunderbuss, no blunder, makes a hit and saves a miss; i.e., Lucy. What shall he have who kills the bull with a bull 'it? Why, a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, October 4, 1890 • Various
... she thinks she has; but it 'aint true. He's made a blunder, though, not announcin' his engagement, and I'm goin' to tell him so the first chance I get. I don't see why he should air his private affairs all over the town, but if he don't announce his engagement before long, Virginia Bascom'll make an ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... you don't mind, I'll sit here a while longer and think things over, Lester. Perhaps I'll blunder on to the ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... books was adversely criticised by the public he received the judgment with open mind, and often analyzed it with much acuteness. The introduction to The Monastery is a good example of frank, though not servile, submission to the decree of public opinion. That he was deeply impressed with his blunder in managing the White Lady of Avenel may be surmised from the fact that in several later discussions of the effect of supernatural apparitions in novels, he emphasized the necessity of keeping them sufficiently infrequent to preserve an atmosphere ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... Samvarta a nominative. I have adopted the Bengal reading. If the Bombay reading be accepted, the meaning would be that Samvarta himself, piqued with Vrihaspati, caused Marutta to perform a sacrifice. K. P. Singha makes a ludicrous blunder in supposing Samvarta to have been a ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... regale of hams and Florence wine, I had dropped it." My Lady Granville said, "You was afraid of being thought interested."—"Yes," said the queen-mother, with all the importance with which she used to blunder out pieces of heathen mythology, "I think it was very ministerial." Don't you think that the Minister word came in as awkwardly as I did into their room? The Minister is most gracious to me; he has returned my visit, which, you know, IS never practised ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... was then known of the geography of the Atlantic or of true longitude, that Columbus attributed these islands to the east coast of Asia. He therefore named them "Indian Islands," as if close to Hindustan, a blunder that has now been perpetuated for four hundred and ten years. The natives were called "Indians" for the same reasons. As the knowledge of geography advanced it became necessary to say "West Indies" or "East Indies" ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... crowd,' he said with high assumption of carelessness. 'But here is what I can't understand! Your father told Sanchia; she has raced off and staked; and as sure as fate, they are on the wrong hill! Sanchia wouldn't make a blunder like that!' ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... no class of puzzle over which people so frequently blunder as that which involves what is called the theory of probabilities. I will give two simple examples of the sort of puzzle I mean. They are really quite easy, and yet many persons are tripped up by them. A friend recently produced five pennies and said to me: "In throwing these five pennies at the ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... words, or perhaps just the intonation of that phrase, induced me suddenly to make all possible allowances for him. I ceased to be annoyed at my unexpected predicament. It was some mistake on his part; he was blundering, and I had an intuition that the blunder was of an odious, of an unfortunate nature. I was anxious to end this scene on grounds of decency, just as one is anxious to cut short some unprovoked and abominable confidence. The funniest part was, that in the midst of all these considerations ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... not the country, Her evenings full of stars, Her yachts upon the water with the wind among their spars— The city for my wonder, Her glory and her blunder, And O the haunting thunder ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley
... sympathized with her son in his desire to see every man, woman, and child, that loved the old Union, served in this fashion, felt in her own writhing and bleeding flesh the stings of that inhuman vengeance. Terrible blunder, for which she had only herself to thank! Robbery of her neighbor's house—the dishonest "borrowing," not of these ill-gotten goods only, but also of her neighbor's name—had brought her, by what we call fatality, to ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... money touched fuzzy's dingy palm his first instinct was to take to his heels; but a second thought restrained him from that blunder of etiquette. It was his; it had been given him. It—and, oh, what an elysium it opened to the gaze of his mind's eye! He had tumbled to the foot of the ladder; he was hungry, homeless, friendless, ragged, cold, drifting; and he held in his hand the key to a paradise of the mud-honey that ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... of the late Sir Thomas Hanmer, a magnificent set of Large Paper Hearnes for about 40 Guineas. Many of these are now in the choice library of his Grace the Duke of Grafton. The copies were catalogued as small paper. Was there ever a more provoking blunder?!] ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... complicated than would, on the first consideration of them, be imagined. The Veterinary Surgeon has a long list of them, suited to the wants and dangers, imaginary or real, of his patients; and he who is not scientifically acquainted with them, will occasionally blunder in the choice of remedies, or the application of the means of cure which he adopts. Little attention may, perhaps, be paid to the medical treatment of the dog; yet it requires not a little study and experience. I will endeavour ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... Squadron sometimes only one-fourth could be used. To professional readers it may seem unnecessary to enter on such familiar and obvious details; but a military man, in making his estimate, has fallen into the curious blunder of making a fleet fire every gun, bow, stern, and both broadsides, into one fort, a hundred yards square; a feat which only could be performed by landing a ship in the centre of the works, in which case it could enjoy an all-round fire. The nine gunboats carried one heavy and one light gun, ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... North Star whispers: "You are one Of those whose course no chance can change. You blunder, but are not undone, Your spirit-task is fixed ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... Bonaparte were to retrieve the only very great blunder he has made, and were to succeed, after repeated trials, in making an impression upon Ireland, do you think we should bear anything of the impediment of a Coronation Oath? or would the spirit of this country tolerate for an hour such ministers and such ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... he to himself, "I have been only once robbed in the course of my life. It was then a little my fault; for before I took to my pistols, I should have been certain they were loaded. To-night I shall be sure to avoid a similar blunder; and my pistols have an eloquence in their barrels which is exceedingly moving. Humph, another milestone! These fellows drive well; but we are entering a pretty-looking spot for Messieurs the disciples of ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... beggar had the impudence to spoon on my sister Zoe. That was my fault, not hers. He was an old college acquaintance, and I gave him opportunities—I deserve to be horsewhipped. However, I am not going to commit the same blunder twice. My sister is in your neighborhood for ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... was sent to the Spanish Consul in Hongkong, also a cablegram directing him to give it publicity that "Spain's good name might not suffer" in that colony. By his blunder, not knowing that the Lusitania Club was really a Portuguese Masonic lodge and full of Rizal's friends, a copy was sent there and a strong reply was called forth. The friendly editor of the Hongkong Telegraph devoted columns to the outrage by which a man whose acquaintance ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... he will. I don't mean that we should repeat the blunder of last night. You may be sure he won't keep it in his cabin ...
— In A New World - or, Among The Gold Fields Of Australia • Horatio Alger
... Sloughman was waiting for some one to admit him, and she had no more time to think over the recent conversation, or to determine whether or not Mr. Linton was aware of her blunder. ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... brushing them aside, let us put the question in the simplest form—Has the movement of alliterative verse got the initial or the final beat? In the middle of the 18th century Bishop Percy decided this question with sufficient accuracy, though he mixed up his statement with a blunder which it is not easy to account for. He points out how the poets began to introduce rhyme into alliterative verse, until at length rhyme came to predominate over alliteration, and "thus was this kind of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... unnerved by the presence of a couple of Times reporters, or perhaps my knowledge of shorthand was not then all that it should have been. Be this as it may, I have to confess with regret that in reporting my turn of the great statesman's speech I made one woeful blunder. Lord Russell said (I quote from memory) that we saw now in the New World that which had so often been seen in the Old—a struggle on the one side for empire and on the other for independence. Now in the system of shorthand which I had learned, the word "independence" is represented by an ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... pardonably grand excess Of pity, through our people's will was bought Free indolence for Isles of Western slaves: And now, when thousands blandly would deny The proven murderer his rope, the thief Due chastisement; and when a General May blunder troops to death, yea, and receive His Senate's vote of thanks and all made smooth; And when, as much from universal trust In other states' goodwill as from the pinch Of blinking parsimony, we our fleets Let rot, and regiments shrink to skeletons.— From those fell ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... the, and it own in place of his as the possessive of it. The first appearance of the new coinage its is placed in 1598. Long after its introduction many looked askance at its, because of the grammatical blunder it contains—the t in its being a nominative neuter ending, and the s a possessive ending. But no one thinks now of shunning what was then ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... of that boy yet? There's no counting on what he'll do next. I don't know how he'll ever get through the world, I'm sure, but I'll look after him while he's here at least. I owe him a huge debt of gratitude for this Christmas blunder. What an awful mess this place is in! But, Hannah, did you ever in the world see anything so delightful as that little Tommy Smithson stuffing himself with plum cake, not to mention Teddy Grant? It did me good just ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... with long lashes, the haunts of tender shadows; her mouth of gracious lips unsmiling, a little triste. Compunctions smote him; with his crude and clumsy banter he had contrived to tune her thoughts to sadness. He would have given worlds to undo that blunder; to show her that he had meant neither a rudeness nor a wish to desecrate her reticence, but only an indirect assurance of gratitude to her for suffering him and willingness to serve her within the compass of his poverty-stricken powers. For ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... hart shool blunder, Mine horshes Ill do vaggon yoke, Und ghase him quickly by mine dunder, I vly zo zwift ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... to a few. Morris claimed that the worm that brought the Internet to its knees was a benign experiment that got out of control as the result of a coding error. After the storm of negative publicity that followed this blunder, Morris's name on ITS was ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... Mr. Carleton was there. Fleda sat a little apart from the rest, industriously bending over a complicated piece of embroidery belonging to Constance and in which that young lady had made a great blunder which she declared her patience unequal to the task of rectifying. The conversation went gayly forward among the others; Fleda taking no part in it beyond an involuntary one. Mr. Carleton's part ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... admitted that he had never behaved toward them as if he were displeased with them, and that he had no project of substituting any other administration for the present one.[81] And his temperate treatment of them was the more remarkable, because a flagrant blunder of Burke (who filled the post of Paymaster), in reinstating some clerks who had been dismissed by his predecessor for dishonesty, had manifestly weakened the ministry in the House of Commons;[82] while ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... catch a United States judge, or a commissioner of six or eight in a whole State. Truly a hard case, and yet the slaveholders themselves set the very trap in which they have been caught, and thus it is that, through their folly, and your generosity in not pointing out to them the blunder they were committing, the new law is more favorable to the fugitive than the old one. Surely, Sir, it could not have been more perilous to the young West Indian judge to meddle with "reasons," than it is for you. Either, Sir, you voted for the law without reading it, or you have ...
— A Letter to the Hon. Samuel Eliot, Representative in Congress From the City of Boston, In Reply to His Apology For Voting For the Fugitive Slave Bill. • Hancock
... fearful peril before him, out of the smell of the desert and the ghostly glow of the Libyan hills there came a memory—the memory of a mistake he had made years before with a woman. She had never forgiven him for the mistake—he knew it at last. He knew that no woman could ever forgive the blunder he had made—not a blunder of love but a blunder of self-will and an unmanly, unmannerly conceit. It had nearly wrecked her life: and he only realised it now, in the moment of clear-seeing which comes to every being once in a lifetime. Well, it was ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... serious doubts had arisen in many quarters: scepticism had begun to arm itself against the sceptic: the economist of 1800 was no longer quite sure of his ground. He was now suspected of being fallible; and, what seemed of worse augury, he was beginning himself to suspect as much. To one capital blunder he was obliged publicly to plead guilty. What it was, we shall have occasion to mention immediately. Meantime it was justly thought that, in a dispute loaded with such prodigious practical consequences, good sense and prudence demanded a more extended enquiry than had yet been ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... to pieces and bulls kited them on their horns in the Colosseum. Anyway, it was as plain as daylight that I had lost my time and money in bothering about Oppenstedt, and that I might as well give him up as the most incorrigible, stiff-necked, self-opinionated, blunder-headed ass and lunatic this side ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... systematic and seaman-like manner that had, from the first, marked him as a thorough sailor. He was always considerate to the men under him, and many times when I expected an outburst of fierce anger, such as nine out of ten deep-water mates would indulge in at a stupid blunder of a lazy sailor, he simply gave the fellow a quiet talking to and impressed him with the absolute necessity of care in his work. We had plenty of men aboard, and the crew of the Sovereign were turned to each watch and made to do ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... fit for society," said Dennis, all out of sorts with himself. "It seems that I can only blunder and give pain. But I am indeed grateful ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... of Horus, their dawn-god, used the finger in or on the lips for "child." It has been conjectured in the last instance that the gesture implied, not the mode of taking nourishment, but inability to speak—in-fans. This conjecture, however, was only made to explain the blunder of the Greeks, who saw in the hand placed connected with the mouth in the hieroglyph of Horus (the) son, "Hor-(p)-chrot," the gesture familiar to themselves of a finger on the lips to express "silence," and so, mistaking both ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... I felt as if I alone of all my townsmen had paid my tax. They plainly did not know how to treat me, but behaved like persons who are underbred. In every threat and in every compliment there was a blunder; for they thought that my chief desire was to stand on the other side of that stone wall. I could not but smile to see how industriously they locked the door on my meditations, which followed them out again without let or hindrance, and they were really all that was dangerous. ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... that night. She tossed in a restless agony of remembering, and the pitiable party seemed a life-failure, as she lay thinking of it in the dark, a colossal blunder never to be obliterated. They were unlucky—the Monroes. They never could ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... Jean-Baptiste, who takes his judgments generously, gratefully. Can it be that, after all, he despises and is no true lover of his own art, and is but chilled by an enthusiasm for it in another, such as that of Jean-Baptiste? as if Jean-Baptiste over-valued it, or as if some ignobleness or blunder, some sign that he has really missed his aim, started into sight from his work at the sound of praise—as if such praise could hardly be ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... in Rome it was resolved that the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception would be reconsidered and abolished at the approaching General Council; in fact, that the definition was a mistake, and that the blunder of 1854 would be repaired in 1869." I told him, of course, that no such question could be entertained in the Council; that the doctrinal decrees of the Church were irrevocable, and that the dogma of the Immaculate Conception was defined once ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... Age are arriv'd to that consummate Pitch of ill-nature, that they'll by no means permit any Person the favour to Blunder but their mighty selves, and are in all respects, except the Office of a Critick, in some measure ill Writers; I have known an unnatural Brother of the Quill causless condemn Language in the Writings of ...
— A Vindication of the Press • Daniel Defoe
... follow Spitta in his curious mistake of regarding the differences between the two as altogether to the disadvantage of the "John." Spitta, indeed, goes further than this. So bent is he on proving the superiority of the "Matthew" that what he sees as a masterstroke in that work is in the "John" a gross blunder; and, on the whole, the pages on the "John" Passion are precisely the most fatuous of the many fatuous pages he wrote when he plunged into artistic criticism, leaving his own proper element of technical ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... sometimes blunder on a lucky idee," answered Mr. Marble to one of my earnest representations, "and I've known chaps among 'em that were almost as knowing as dullish whites; but everything out of the common way with 'em is pretty much chance. As for Neb, however, I will say this for him; that, for a nigger, he ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... Light Brigade!" Was there a man dismay'd? Not tho' the soldier knew Some one had blunder'd: Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die: Into the valley of Death Rode ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... because Wellington, finding his position could be bettered by retirement and concentration, decided upon withdrawal. But Ney could have been the victor in every sense, in spite of his indifferent tactics, if it had not been for the same blunder ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... observe; and I aver, that in riding above 100,000 miles I scarce ever remember my horse (except two, that would fall head over heels anyway) to fall, or make a considerable stumble, while I rode with a slack rein. To fancy, therefore, that a tight rein prevents stumbling, is a capital blunder. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... wharves, and that the rich and strong will cease to fly from her shores. All this must be taken into account in any reasonable calculation of the future. It is just as foolish to err from lack of faith as it is to blunder from ...
— Home Rule - Second Edition • Harold Spender
... "it is no wonder, poor creatures, you are not eatin'. That was a nice blunder of the Giant," and he stepped in and changed their food, putting hay before the mare and meat before the bear, and at once both of them fell to it and Jack went out and closed the stable door. As he did so his finger stuck in the ring, and he pulled ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... the societies thought they knew more than Mangan, most of them wouldn't have joined if they had known as much. You see they had never had any money to handle or any men to manage. Every year I expected a revolution, or some frightful smash-up: it seemed impossible that we could blunder and muddle on any longer. But nothing happened, except, of course, the usual poverty and crime and drink that we are used to. Nothing ever does happen. It's amazing how well we get along, ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... the moment the French were heavily burdened by the venality of La Barre, who subordinated public policy to his own gains. We have now to record his most egregious blunder—an attempt to overawe the Iroquois with an insufficient force—an attempt which Meulles declared was a mere piece of acting—not designed for real war on behalf of the colony, {98} but to assist the governor's private ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... Budd—there are such accidents truly, and serious things be they to encounter," answered Spike, hemming a little to clear his throat, as was much his practice whenever the widow ran into any unusually extravagant blunder; "yes, serious things to encounter. But the land-fall that I mean is a different sort of thing; being, as you well know, what we say when we come in sight of land, a'ter a v'y'ge; or, meaning the land we may ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... tell her yet. The stake was too big. He was playing for all that life held worth having. He couldn't rush a girl of that kind. A blunder would be fatal. He had a reputation as a flirt. She had heard it, no doubt. He must put his house in order. His word must ring true. She ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... sparse facts touchin' the moon,' returns Colonel Sterett, 'cannot be deemed wonders in any proper sense. They're merely interestin' details which any gent gets onto who brings science to his aid. But usin' the word "wonders," I does once blunder upon a mir'cle which still waits to be explained. That's a shore-enough marvel! An' to this day, all I can state is that I sees it with these ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... on the common practice, which, to own the truth, had proceeded from his own obstinacy, and had been done in the very teeth of the objections of the scribe who forged the papers. But Andrea was still too little of an English scholar to understand the blunder, and the Jack passed, with him, quite as currently as would "John," "Edward," or any other appellation. As to the Wing-and-Wing, all was right; though, as the words were pointed out and pronounced by both parties, ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... for the break-up of the Government, then he was the instigator of a blunder that must be pronounced not only disastrous but culpable. It lowered the legitimate spirit of party to the nameless spirit of faction. The dangers from which the old liberties of the realm had just emerged have been described by no one so forcibly as by Burke himself. ...
— Burke • John Morley
... though he had not encouraged Fox to take this step, still with his usual loyalty followed him out of office. This may have been a proper thing to do if their distrust of Shelburne was incurable, but the next step, coalition with Lord North against him, was not only a political blunder, but a shock to party morality, which brought speedy retribution. Either they had been wrong, and violently wrong, for a dozen years, or else Lord North was the guiltiest political instrument since Strafford. Burke attempted to defend the alliance on the ground of the substantial ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... mere possibility of such a colossal blunder was, of course, the admission of the whole of John Dillon's contention—namely, that, whatever might happen in Egypt, Ireland was right in not accepting the discretion of any man as the sole ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... false step he had taken, but from desire to show his shame of having behaved so ungenerously: Donal received him so as to make it plain he did not misunderstand him, and they had a long talk. Graeme was all the readier for his blunder to hear what Donal had to say, and Donal's unquestionable disinterestedness was endlessly potent with Graeme. Their interview resulted in Donal's thinking still better of him than before, and being satisfied that, up to his light, the man was honest—which is saying much—and thence open to conviction, ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... plain and practical, if not an all too obvious one. It is this: if all your preparation and confidence fails you at the crucial moment, and memory plays the part of traitor in some particular,—if, in short, you blunder on a detail of the story, never admit it. If it was an unimportant detail which you misstated, pass right on, accepting whatever you said, and continuing with it; if you have been so unfortunate as to omit a fact which was a necessary ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... indignation of the Chinese authorities at the violation of their territory fully revealed itself. Peremptory orders were sent to the Canton authorities from Pekin to expel the foreigners at all costs. The government of India was responsible for what was a distinct blunder in our political relations with China. In 1808, when alarm at Napoleon's schemes was at its height, it sent Admiral Drury and a considerable naval force to occupy Macao. The Chinese at once protested, withheld supplies, refused to hold any intercourse ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... overboard, as I think he did, he might have reached London before I did, and thus defeated me, at least for a time. Twice had he confused and confounded his own schemes. Bunyard, deceived by the letter I had brought from my uncle, gave me the address of my mother. If not before, he learned his blunder when Dunkswell arrived. I could fancy the confusion with which they confronted each other when the facts came out. But it was "all up" with them. They had been "whipped out," and I was satisfied. I did not wish to prosecute them, because it would delay me, and because ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... favour with many people: until, placed in power some day, he shows that to rule well requires other things than one-sidedness in the ruling person; and is fortunate if he does not acquire that part of renown which consists in notoriety, by committing some colossal blunder, henceforth historical from ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... at will or owners? Which? Is there any reason why any of us should escape, as some of us live as if we believed we should escape, the certain fate of all others? If there is not, what about the sanity of the man whose whole life is built upon a blunder? He is convicted of the grossest folly, unless he be assured that either there is no God, or that He does not care one rush about what we do, and that consequently we are certain of a continuance in our ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... tenderness than seemed consistent with the granite-hewn strength and sternness of his general character. A thorough soldier, with a soldier's contempt for fine-spun diplomacy, he had been led into many a blunder when acting as a chief of party and of State; but his absolute single-minded honesty had more than redeemed such errors; "integrity and uprightness had preserved him," and through him the land and its rulers, amid difficulties where the finest statecraft might ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... young man, "you see, you were very ill when you came from Naples, but your condition was not, I warrant, by any means so dangerous but that a few simple remedies would soon have set you, with your strong constitution, on your legs again, had you not through Carlos's well-intentioned blunder in running off for the nearest physician fallen into the hands of the redoubtable Pyramid Doctor, who was making all preparations for bringing ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... a woman that he is down and out financially and dare not ask her to marry him, do you think there is an end of it, dear reader? Do you think a Silenus would hesitate and stickle and scruple over a point of honor; though some of us have seen Silenus blunder into a paradise which he promptly transformed into a sty? And do you think the descendant of the Man of the Iron Hand thought anything less of her lover for refusing to accept renunciation as his right? If Wayland could have trusted himself to look at her, he ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... indissoluble is essential to our national existence. If that be not so, we have neither a flag nor a country,—we can neither contract a debt nor make a treaty,—we have neither honor abroad nor strength at home,—our experiment of free government is a blunder and a failure, and for us, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... with any message you may have to send," replied Hsiao Hung with a laugh. "I'll readily go and deliver it. Should I not do so faithfully, and blunder in fulfilling your business, my lady, you may visit me with any punishment your ladyship may please, and ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... flotilla of provision boats, and after a little further dialogue, in which the cool Highlander completely deceived the French sentries, the British were allowed to slip past in the darkness. The tiny cove was safely reached, the boats stole silently up without a blunder, twenty-four volunteers from the Light Infantry leaped from their boat and led the way in single file up the path, that ran like a thread along the face of the cliff. Wolfe sat eagerly listening in his boat below. Suddenly from the summit he saw the flash of the muskets and heard the stern ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... myself made a stupid blunder in thinking that Indians could do service in Tibet, I am justified in claiming that Lord Charles Beresford made ten times as stupid a blunder when he expressed the hope of seeing "Indian lances roaming the streets of Berlin and the little brown Gurkas ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... the gentle, persistent tone of one who is patient with the unreasonableness of a frightened child. His determination to win success never faltered, rather it hardened with opposition into adamant; but he was beginning to realize his blunder. He had overwhelmed her; had brought about an upheaval of her world so violent that, in her bewilderment, her dread of chaos, she instinctively laid hold on the old supports and clung to them with desperation. She must have time to think, to familiarize ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... the Frontiers of Egypt. She was found alone, and in a very disconsolate Condition. This Lady must, doubtless, said they to themselves, be the Queen of Babylon: And without listning to her Complaints, convey'd her instantly to my Husband Moabdar. Their gross Blunder at first incens'd his Majesty to the last Degree; but after he had view'd the Lady with an attentive Eye, he found she was extremely pretty, and was soon pacify'd. Her Name was Missouf. I have been since inform'd, ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... man, with low bows, "I am quite abroad at my blunder: I thought this was the room of that young person. I brought her proposals for work ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... know?" asked Sanders, who had realized his great mistake in losing his temper, in talking as openly and as violently as he had and in dragging the name of Senator Stevens into the controversy. He must try to keep Stevens from hearing of this day's blunder, for Jim Stevens knew as well as he, didn't he, that the man who loses his temper, like the man who talks too much, is of no use ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... charming cousins, and I found the young officer with Mdlle. F—— in the room by the garden. The lady was writing, and on the pretext of not disturbing her I went after Mdlle. Q——, who was in the garden. I greeted her politely, and said I had come to apologize for a stupid blunder which must have given her a very poor opinion ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... between the Christian religion and the Imperial-revolutionary system. There are many blunders in the above extract as we read it; blundering metaphors, blundering arguments, and blundering assertions; but this is surely the grandest blunder of all; and one wonders at the blindness of the legislator and historian who can advance such a parallel. And what are we to say of the legacy of the dying revolution to Napoleon? Revolutions do not die, and, on their death-beds, making fine ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... it was time for him to go to bed, when I heard somebody else blunder into my sitter, and in a moment Lambert appeared at the door. Now Lambert, who was only gorgeous by day, frequently became aggressive at night, and I told him to clear out jolly quickly. But instead of doing what he was wanted to he lit a huge cigar, and began smoking the thing in my bedder. ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... spoke of The rights of war and peace but with the greatest contempt: which was the more shocking; as, in his dispute with the English on the right of Kings, he every where copies Grotius, and when he departs from him is sure to blunder: with which ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... April, 1862. It had been recommended by Mr. Davis in a special message, and Congress promptly passed it. Nobody in Georgia could understand why such a law had been recommended, or why it had passed. It was the most ruinous blunder of the Confederate Government during the war. If such a law was necessary, it showed that the Confederacy had fallen to pieces. If it was not necessary, its enactment was a stupendous piece of folly; and such it turned out ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... side. "Fool that I was not to allow for that earlier train! It's abduction, Watson—abduction! Murder! Heaven knows what! Block the road! Stop the horse! That's right. Now, jump in, and let us see if I can repair the consequences of my own blunder." ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... into which we are born. It is the aim of education, as it is the aim of religion, to lift us above the spirit of the age; but in attempting to do this, they who lose sight of what is true and beneficent in that spirit, commit a serious blunder. A national spirit, too, is a narrow, and often a harsh and selfish spirit; but when culture and religion strive to make us citizens of the world and universally benevolent, a care must be had that we retain what is strong and noble in the character ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... could leave well enough alone, let Miss Wilder blunder along with her somehow. That was evidently the way the rest of them did. He had almost decided upon this course, when he met Isabelle, standing on the pony's bare back, making him run, while poor Miss Wilder panted behind, protesting at ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... error, she would flush, exhibit a lovely childlike embarrassment, declare that she was no whist player at all, and beg to be forgiven; and the very next moment she would trump her partner's trick, or purposely commit some other blunder that would be sure to give the ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... service for the first hole or two. During this preliminary stage give the old but disappointing favourite another chance to show that it will not desert you in the hour of need; but if it fails to rise to the occasion and you blunder with it during the play at the first and second holes, pass sentence upon it forthwith and relegate it finally to your bag. Then at the third hole let the new one have its trial. Over and over again have I found this method succeed most wonderfully, and I am a particular ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... with the lady. The gentleman will go to London with me. They are to come here, after all, though my first advice was a blunder." ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... would infallibly wreck any ship that tried to approach within the point-blank range of some 270 yards, and its extreme range of ten times that distance was no protection to the haven, which lay round a sharp corner of the cliff. But the engineer's blunder was never a check upon the alacrity of the Die-hards, who cleaned, loaded, rammed home, primed, sighted, and blazed away with the precision of clockwork and the ardour of Britons, as though aware that the true strength of a nation lay not so much in the construction of her fortresses as ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... fact I never said a word; I hardly moved, but simply allowed her to depart. I could not help realising that this was henceforth to be the intolerable character of the conjugal relations I had resumed eight years before. I told her peremptorily to keep quiet and not be guilty of any blunder either in judgment or in act, and tried to make her realise to what a serious state of affairs this foolish occurrence had brought us. She really seemed to understand what I meant, and promised to keep quiet and not to give way to her absurd jealousy. Unfortunately the ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... for him you most suffer?" And then as the Princess, after a look, but turned away, moving about the room—which made the question somehow seem a blunder—"I ask," she continued, "because I think everything, everything we now speak of, may be for him, really may be MADE for him, quite ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... was acquitted—the government routed and overwhelmed with disgrace, gave up the other prosecutions, and the treason trials ended. Even George III. had wit enough left to see the blunder which his ministers—the Slave Power of England in 1794—had committed, and stammered forth, "You have got us into the wrong box my Lord [Loughborough]; you have got us into the wrong box. Constructive treason won't do my Lord; constructive treason won't do." By and by, Gentlemen, ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... paper with a passionate cry, he saw yet another letter,—the one in which these had been enfolded,—a letter written to him, and by Mrs. Russell. As by a flash, he perceived that there had been some blunder here, by which he was the gainer; and, ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... a bloomin' blunder," remarked the Little 'Un. "We ought to have billed the town for ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... or pillar, especially a house-post, should be set up according to the original position of the tree from which it was hewn,—that is to say, with the part nearest to the roots downward. To erect a house-post in the contrary way is thought to be unlucky;—formerly such a blunder was believed to involve unpleasant consequences of a ghostly kind, because an "upside-down" pillar would do malignant things. It would moan and groan in the night, and move all its cracks like mouths, and open all its knots like eyes. Moreover, the spirit of it (for every house-post has ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... officials to whom it has been kindly intimated that another career than the army had better be sought. I have met many officers, and the impression made upon me is an exceedingly favorable one. I do not believe that in case of war now the blunder of those in command would have to be atoned for by the superior fighting qualities of the rank and file, as was notoriously the case during the Crimean War. The promotion of General Wolseley means business. The Duke of ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... cost, however, did not cover more than half the expenditure. It was an experiment with us. Mr. Kloman knew nothing about blast-furnace operations. But even without exact knowledge no serious blunder was made. The yield of the Lucy Furnace (named after my bright sister-in-law) exceeded our most sanguine expectations and the then unprecedented output of a hundred tons per day was made from one blast furnace, for one week—an output that ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... muttered to herself, "I have made a grievous blunder; it may be I have ruined Cornelius, the tulip, and myself. I have given the alarm, and perhaps awakened suspicion. I am but a woman; these men may league themselves against me, and then I shall be lost. If I am lost that matters ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... mischief take it! I am a notary and a member of my chamber!—Pshaw! it was an ambassador's fit of temper, nothing is sacred for people of that kind. To-morrow he shall explain what he meant by saying that I had done nothing but blunder and talk nonsense in his house. I will ask him for an explanation—that is, I will ask him to explain my mistake. After all is done and said, I am in the wrong perhaps—— Upon my word, it is very good of me to cudgel my brains like this. What business ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... war with their ability to do first-class work in the field. Year after year are drinking offenses condoned by the club officials who run the club, and old time drunkards re-engaged for the coming season, while steady, sober players are left out in the cold. Besides this blunder, there is that of engaging half worn out stars in the place of rising young players ambitious of distinguishing themselves in the League arena. This mistake in team management was as conspicuous in 1894 ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1895 • Edited by Henry Chadwick
... most genuinely at odds with the world, the first head of his quarrel was with himself. He was only too well aware of his own defects and errors. He felt himself to be unamiable, often gross of understanding, always ready to fall into a blunder which other men would avoid. He had stood in his own way as often as he had been balked by others, ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... night. She tossed in a restless agony of remembering, and the pitiable party seemed a life-failure, as she lay thinking of it in the dark, a colossal blunder never to be obliterated. They were unlucky—the Monroes. They never could do things ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... chronology are all brought together from Abel to Noah. The good children say the ten Commandments, the Belief and the Lord's Prayer; but Cain and his rout, after he had received a box on the ear for not taking off his hat, and afterwards offering his left hand, is prompted by the devil so to blunder in the Lord's Prayer as to reverse the petitions and say ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... great wisdom in Napoleon's recipe for saving life in dealing with a mob,—"First fire grape-shot into them; after that, over their heads as much as you like." The position of Mr. Lincoln was already embarrassed when he entered upon office, by what we believe to have been a political blunder in the leaders of the Republican Party. Instead of keeping closely to the real point, and the only point, at issue, namely, the claim of a minority to a right of rebellion when displeased with the result of an election, the bare question of Secession, pure and simple, they allowed their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... A blunder of thirty million pounds in the estimates for British operations in Russia is revealed in a White Paper. It is expected that the Government will bequeath it to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various
... wreathed in smiles, tumbled over themselves to do us honour. One by one they danced for us, stopping to tell their names and to ask ours. "Major Jabussy," "Missa Blown," they got the names all right but applied them promiscuously, and then went into roars of laughter at their blunder. The merriment was infectious. Let no one waste further sympathy over the poor benighted Eskimo of this Canadian North. The Mackenzie River Eskimo is, with perhaps the one exception of an Arab I fraternized with in Chicago at the World's Fair, the most ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... haakbus, hook-gun, the second element of which appears in blunderbuss. The first part of this word has undergone so many popular transformations that it is difficult to say which was the original form. Ludwig has Donner-buechs, Blunder-buechs, oder Muszketon, "a thunder-box; a blunder-buss; a musketoon; a wide-mouthed brass-gun, carrying about twenty pistol bullets at once." It was also called in German Plantier-buechs, from plantieren, to plant, set up, because fired from a rest. Du. bus, like Ger. Buechse, ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... as his studio, and were accessible by anybody. Dare took occasion to go and study both sets, with a view to finding a flaw in Somerset's which might have been passed over unnoticed by the committee of architects, owing to their absence from the actual site. But not a blunder could he find. ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... the razor down. Here (in Michael's words) was the total disappearance of a valuable uncle; here was a time of inexplicable conduct on the part of a nephew who had been in bad blood with the old man any time these seven years; what a chance for a judicial blunder! "But no," thought Morris, "they cannot, they dare not, make it murder. Not that. But honestly, and speaking as a man to a man, I don't see any other crime in the calendar (except arson) that I don't seem somehow to have committed. And yet I'm a perfectly ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... monument to the insight and generous enthusiasm of the gentleman whose name is rightly connected with its own in its official title—"The Zetter-Madonna of Solothurn." And it smiles with Holbein's own undebased handiwork throughout. Pace Woltmann's blunder,—its network of fine cracks, even over the Virgin's face, attests that it has suffered no over-painting. The work has been mounted on a solid back, the greatest fissures and the holes filled up to match their surroundings, the stains and defacements ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... estimation, of annoying me by any future demonstrations of a style of admiration I neither desire, appreciate, nor intend to permit. If accident should ever thrust you again across my path, you will do well to forget that our minister committed the blunder of sending you here to-day. Mr. Laurance will please accept my thanks for this package of papers, which shall be returned to-morrow to the office of the American embassy. Resolved to forget the unpleasant incidents of to-day, Madame Orme is compelled to ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... say can always freely express his opinion in one set of papers or the other. A striking speech is read the next day by the whole nation; a striking injustice to a single individual, or a Government blunder, may be taken up by the whole nation. The disappearance of private property will necessarily mean the disappearance of the free Press, and therefore of public opinion. All newspapers would be owned, edited, and printed by the Government, ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... I could have counted on hitting him where I liked. I trust I shall not blunder against his vitals now. However, if I do, he ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... l'entomologie", I believed that a Sphex was given as the heroine of the story. How could I do otherwise, not having the original text in front of me? How could I suspect that an entomologist of Lacordaire's standing should be capable of such a blunder as to substitute a Sphex for a Common Wasp? Great was my perplexity, in the face of this evidence! A Sphex capturing a Fly was an impossibility; and I blamed the British scientist accordingly. But what insect was it that Erasmus Darwin ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... scruple; for she would never have perverted your heart, she would have left you free.—To love a prostitute of the lowest class when you have not, like kings, the power to give her high rank, is a monstrous blunder." ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... how fundamental is Christ's doctrine of the Divine Fatherhood. It is not so much because our anxiety is useless, or because it unfits us for service, but because God is what He is, that our worry is at once a blunder and a sin. It is mistrust of the heavenly love that cares for us. The sovereign cure for ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... and hurried To find the hole by which she came, And seem'd to find it not the same; So round she ran, most sadly flurried; And, coming back, thrust out her head, Which, sticking there, she said, "This is the hole, there can't be blunder: What makes it now so small, I wonder, Where, but the other day, I pass'd with ease?" A Rat her trouble sees, And cries, "But with an emptier belly; You entered lean, and lean ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... to funerals, and are offered to the dead. And as Crassus was haranguing his soldiers, he let fall a word which was thought very ominous in the army; for "I am going," he said, "to break down the bridge, that none of you may return;" and whereas he ought, when he had perceived his blunder, to have corrected himself, and explained his meaning, seeing the men alarmed at the expression, he would not do it out of mere stubbornness. And when at the last general sacrifice the priest gave him the entrails, they slipped out of his hand, and when he saw the standers-by concerned at it, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... interference; or because she has been able to carry out her policy and to achieve her ambitions without going the length of declaring war; or because a war would have been not only a heinous crime, but a political blunder. ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... lowly bed. Wakefield remarks: "Some readers, keeping in mind the 'narrow cell' above, have mistaken the 'lowly bed' in this verse for the grave—a most puerile and ridiculous blunder;" and Mitford says: "Here the epithet 'lowly,' as applied to 'bed,' occasions some ambiguity as to whether the poet meant the bed on which they sleep, or the grave in which they are laid, which in poetry is ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... made a terrible blunder. She wasn't my mistress. I killed Crimtyphon for quite another reason. She had ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... p.m., when, prompt to the minute, the King appeared and took his seat just behind the conductor, where he could see the score, and notice every mistake, either instrumental or vocal. A royal caning often repaid any unlucky artist who made a blunder, much to the gratification of the audience. Such a patron as this, however generous, could not be considered highly desirable; and Mme. Mara, whose reputation had become world-wide, longed more and more to accept some of ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... an almost unbelievable torture! She could regard them now dispassionately, albeit with wonder. She marvelled now that she had ever given herself to such a man. By the light of experience she realized how tragic had been her blunder, and now that the awful sense of shock and desolation had passed she could be thankful that no heavier penalty had been exacted. The man had been taken swiftly, mercifully, as she believed. He had been spared much, and she—she had been delivered from a fate far worse. For she could never ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... the Orange Free State and the adminstration of the South African Republic were quite different things. By following Krueger's policy Mr. Steyn has been guilty of a crime as well as a great political blunder. Had he remained neutral the English army would have been compelled to establish the basis of its operations much farther North, and would have been deprived of the use of the railway line to Bloemfontein. Moreover, when peace was restored, he would have remained independent. ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot
... conceit that, at the first glance, might have gladdened the heart of a naturalist, with the belief that he had made the discovery of some unknown bird. The artist, however, had sufficiently provided against the consequences of so embarrassing a blunder, by considerately writing beneath the offspring of his pencil, "This is the sign of the Whip-Poor-Will;" a name, that the most unlettered traveller, in those regions, would be likely to know was vulgarly given to the Wish-Ton-Wish, or ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... priests in Ireland itself shows, he was also able to apprehend the position of earnest Roman Catholics. He had, however, not so learnt his Catechism or his Prayer Book as to understand that the Reformation, if not a crime, was at least a blunder, and therefore, like other plain Englishmen, he was not prepared to admit the pretensions and assumptions of a new race of nondescript priests. Thirteen prelates took the unusual course of requesting ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... a letter I could accept. If Mr. Darwin had said that by some inadvertence, which he was unable to excuse or account for, a blunder had been made which he would at once correct so far as was in his power by a letter to the Times or the Athenaeum, and that a notice of the erratum should be printed on a flyleaf and pasted into all unsold copies of ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... so many words where they are wrong; he attacks instead the cause in themselves which led to their mistake—a matter always of infinitely more consequence than any mistake itself: the one is a live mistake, an untruth in the soul, the other a mere dead blunder born of it. The word-connection therefore between their blunder and our Lord's exhortation, is not to be found; the logic of what the Lord said, is not on the surface. Often he speaks not to the words but to the thought; here he speaks not even to the thought, ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... Lampe, the most insufferable of blockheads, ever attain to. In particular, I have been told by Kant's old friends, that for the space of more than thirty years, during which he had been in the habit of reading the newspaper published by Hartung, Lampe delivered it with the same identical blunder on every day of publication.—'Mr. Professor, here is Hartmann's journal.' Upon which Kant would reply—'Eh! what?—What's that you say? Hartmann's journal? I tell you, it is not Hartmann, but Hartung: now, repeat it after me—not Hartmann, but Hartung.' Then Lampe, looking sulky, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... fuzzy's dingy palm his first instinct was to take to his heels; but a second thought restrained him from that blunder of etiquette. It was his; it had been given him. It—and, oh, what an elysium it opened to the gaze of his mind's eye! He had tumbled to the foot of the ladder; he was hungry, homeless, friendless, ragged, ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... pipe, which never had seemed so sweet. But, for all of its solace, he was disturbed by the thought that perhaps he had made a blunder which had placed him in a false light with Miss Horton—only he thought of her as Agnes, just as if he had the right. For there were only occasions on which Dr. Slavens admitted himself to be a fizzle in ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... some time," he said, "in order to tell you that I am ready at any moment to repair the unpardonable blunder that I made yesterday, and to escort back to New York the very unsuitable young woman ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... narrow sofa-shaped dog upholstered in lemon and white,—something terribly ferocious like 'Russian Wolf Hound' I think he is! But I've named him Beautiful-Lovely! And there's the neatest looking paper-white coach dog just perfectly ruined with ink-spots! Blunder-Blot, I think, will make a ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... angry guardian breakers, which seem sworn foes of boats and passengers. Again and again are we knocked aside by huge billows, as though the poor little tug were a walnut-shell; again and again do we recover ourselves, and blunder bravely on, sometimes with but one paddle in the water, sometimes burying our bowsprit in a big green wave too high to climb, and dashing right through it as fast as if we shut our eyes and went at everything. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... all we meet, Just what they should do or leeav undone; To be crammed full o' wisdom an wit, Like a college professor throo Lundun. To show statesmen ther faults an mistaks,— To show whear philosifers blunder; To prove parsons an doctors all quacks, An strike men o' science ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... teachings of the previous fifty thousand years. He asks us to believe that God muddled men's minds with a mysterious series of revelations cloaked in fable and allegory; that He allowed them to stumble and to blunder, and to quarrel over these "revelations"; that He allowed them to persecute, and slay, and torture each other on account of divergent readings of his "revelations" for ages and ages; and that He is still looking on while a number of bewildered and antagonistic religions fight ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... men would only let the Bible "coach them," they would be saved from many a blunder and defeat. It is important to have, as steersman, one who knows the currents, and just when to alter the course. The youngster who steers the University boat has been up and down the river many a time, till he has learned everything he needs to know. ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... aware that he was sitting on something uncomfortable—a lump, perhaps a stone—but he did not move. He was waiting for his brain to clear. When at length he hoisted his heavy weight upon his knees, and then staggered drunkenly to his feet, to blunder toward a tree and support himself by its trunk, his normal circulation began to be restored, and pain assailed his skull, arousing ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... Monday's Times. I was therefore immensely surprised when Mr. Hutton, from the depths of his beard, asked me in deep tones whether I had seen The Times of Monday, and what was said therein about my Privy Council article. I admit that for a moment I thought I had been guilty of some appalling blunder and that, as the soldiers say, I was "for it" However, I saw that I must face the music as best I could, and admitted that I had not seen the paper. "Then you ought to have," was Mr. Hutton's not very reassuring reply. He got up, went to a side-table, and, after much digging into a huge ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... Will, speaks of this work as The American Crisis, remembering perhaps that a number of political pamphlets had appeared in London, 1775-1776, under general title of "The Crisis." By the blunder of an early English publisher of Paine's writings, one essay in the London "Crisis" was attributed to Paine, and the error has continued to cause confusion. This publisher was D. I. Eaton, who printed as the first number ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... know," Jimmie broke in, "is how Ned got away. They had him tied up plenty last time I saw him. And, after he got away, how did he happen to blunder into the company of our escort? China is a land of ...
— Boy Scouts on Motorcycles - With the Flying Squadron • G. Harvey Ralphson
... present European War with indifference and without deep concern, merely devoting their attention to the attack on Kiaochow, neglecting the larger issues of the war, they will have brought to nought our great Imperial policy, and committed a blunder greater than which it can not be conceived. We are constrained to submit this statement of policy for the consideration of our authorities, not because we are fond of argument but because we are deeply anxious for our ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... good even!" Tartarin would growl, furious at his blunder, and plunging fiercely into the gloom with his cane waved ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... himself. But who is this, in the lunar cockpit before the Speaker's desk, demanding firmly to be heard—so firmly that Mr. Harper, with a glance at him, sits down again; so firmly that Mr. Speaker Doby, hypnotized by an eye, makes the blunder that will eventually cost him his ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Ballinrobe or elsewhere without tents, baggage, or food. That furious Ulster Tories, "spoiling for a fight," should leave everything but repeating rifles and revolving pistols behind when rushing to possible fray is quite conceivable; but that the Control Department should always blunder when troops are moved rapidly is not quite so ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... than saw Wonstead blunder in to follow his example, and for the first time in months the other was dumb, not uttering a word as he stowed away for the breakthrough which should take them back into normal space and the star worlds. Raf tore a nail on ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... unyielding attitude, even while she was sorely conscious that she herself had been stubbornly unyielding. If he had truly loved her, she reiterated, he would never have made it an issue between them. But that was like a man—to insist on his own desires being made paramount; to blunder on headlong, no matter what antagonisms he aroused. And he was completely in the wrong, ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... the most meticulous exactness (Rabelais' geography is irreproachable, and he carefully avoids the cheap expedient of making Spadassin and Merdaille blunder) and the sagest citations of Festina lente, they take him through Asia Minor to the Euphrates and Arabia, while the other army (that which has annihilated Grandgousier) comes round by the northern route, sweeping ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... to the custom on such occasions, were committing adultery with their eyes, some with their hands, others making assignations for the same purpose, and doing various other things profitable to your kingdom, made his appearance to play his own part; by which blunder, he drove every one from taking his pleasure to praying. In like manner did this numskull act; for, whilst journeying over the world, on hearing two wenches talking of walking round the church at night, in order to see their sweethearts, he must needs show himself in the figure he wears at home, ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... generous and patriotic warmth evaporated at once, at this sudden inlet of cold air into the conversation. He perceived that he had made a terrible blunder; and as it was not his business at that moment to vindicate the British constitution, but to serve Leonard Fairfield, he abandoned the cause of the aristocracy with the most poltroon and scandalous abruptness. Catching at the ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... it is the duty of the officer to get at the facts, and act according to them. Complaints against any junior are always unpleasant to hear because of their air of intrigue. Tactlessly handled, without due weighing of the case from both sides, they turn one blunder into two. But no officer is well-advised if he believes that his duty automatically is to uphold the arm of a subordinate when the facts say that the latter is dead wrong. His duty is to reduce friction wherever it is caused by a misuse of power. This implies dealing discreetly with the ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... it, though, often afterward, men of clerkly attainments took me aside and kindly pointed out what they conceived to be a blunder. I have dwelt, perhaps tediously, upon this swap; my excuses are—first, that, having made few such good bargains during the days of my vanity, the memory is a pleasant one; and, second, that the horse will necessarily play a certain ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... about the room. Now we ask why he is allowed to remain. For he is a ceaseless disturber; constantly noisy and constantly aware of making a noise, his excuses are as bad as his indiscretions. He cannot speak without making some awkward blunder. He is forever asking questions without knowing what to do with the answers. A confused and confusing creature! We say he has grown backward. Where before he was all that is estimable, he has become all that we do ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... {57} By a blunder which Sir James Ramsay corrected, history has accused James of arresting his "whole House ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... reckoning from the time his sugar leaves the plantation. This arrangement, several planters told me, was profitable to them; but it was discontinued—it was not to the advantage of the agents; its discontinuance was no doubt a blunder for the planters. Moreover, the Australian market has been too long neglected; but the advantage of possessing two markets instead of one is too obvious to ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... forces, an evolution towards greater activities and higher adjustment, the growth of a stability which shall be ever more unstable. This onward motion is recognized in the pessimistic philosophy of Von Hartmann, as a movement towards ever greater possibilities of pain. With him life is "the supreme blunder of the blind unconscious force" which created man and developed him as the ...
— The Philosophy of Despair • David Starr Jordan
... more than usual severity. His stature was small, and his limbs ill put together. Among boys little tenderness is shown to personal defects; and the ridicule excited by poor Oliver's appearance was heightened by a peculiar simplicity and a disposition to blunder which he retained to the last. He became the common butt of boys and masters, was pointed at as a fright in the play-ground, and flogged as a dunce in the school-room. When he had risen to eminence, those who had once derided him ransacked their memory for the events of his early ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... everywhere, all about the city, other instructed men were waiting for the signal that was to tell them to hustle deadly firearms from the beds of green-laden market wagons. It was all arranged with deadly precision. There could be no blunder. The Iron Count and his ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... "that's right; I like to hear you laugh now; for goodness' sake, let's forget all this. I will, if you will; and we will be all the better friends for it perhaps. At any rate, you'll be all the more friend to me for having saved you from making such a blunder as thinking you were in love ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... with mental confusion as to the real causes and objects of the conflict. A survey of newspapers from Mexico to Cape Horn during August, 1914, to the end of that year shows plainly that for several months public opinion had not cleared up, that the conflict seemed to be a frightful blunder, a terrific misunderstanding, that might have been avoided, and for which no one nation in particular was ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... this same tourist happens to possess a mildly venturesome disposition, a sailing-craft, and a chart of the region, he will sooner or later blunder across the dwelling-place of his silent vendors. At the foot of some rarely-frequented bay he will come on a diminutive village of small whitewashed log houses. It will differ from other villages in that the houses are arranged with no reference ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... lo their blunder! When our lads start up anon, Breaking out like unchained lions, With a ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... a stick, and after an ineffectual attempt to scale the rock above, F. and I also unwillingly followed his example. The water was piercingly cold as it swept against us, and the pain was so great that we were glad to blunder over as quickly as possible, without taking very much trouble about picking our steps. After passing this in safety we came suddenly upon a band of hill-men with their loads, from Thibet; they were the first natives we had encountered, and wild and weird-looking ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... youthful ardor, made a slight blunder, of which the counsel for the defense at once adroitly took advantage. Answering certain questions about Grushenka, and carried away by the loftiness of his own sentiments and his success, of which he was, of course, conscious, he went so far as to speak somewhat ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... avenue; and there was a strong sweet smell of wet earth and grass. Rose had drawn the hood of her waterproof over her head, and her face gleamed an indistinct whiteness from its shelter. Oh this leaping pulse—this bright glow of expectation! How had she made this stupid blunder about his going? Oh, it was Catherine's mistake, of course, at the beginning. But what matter? Here they were in the dark, side by side, friends now, friends always. Catherine should not spoil their last walk together. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... all the indications, made a tunnel, and, without aid, counsel or assistance of any kind, worked it for six months, without rest or cessation, and with scarcely food enough to sustain my body. Well, I made a strike; not like you, Mulrady, not a blunder of good luck, a fool's fortune—there, I don't blame you for it—but in perfect demonstration of my theory, the reward of my labor. It was no pocket, but a vein, a lead, that I had regularly hunted down ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... "What a blunder he will make if he does!" she said. "It will show, as Mr. Simlins says—that he don't understand ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... diverted from the wages fund to purchase land for this experiment. The aid which the stronger country proposed to give to the weaker, from the Treasury to which both contributed, was the remission of one-third of this debt. A blunder in foreign policy, the escapade of an ambitious minister in India or Africa, has cost the British taxpayer more in a month than he spent to save millions of fellow-subjects beyond ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... the younger sons carry the royal blood far down among the people, down even into the kennels of the outcast. Generations follow, oblivious of the high beginnings, but there is that in the stock which is fated to endure. The sons and daughters blunder and sin and perish, but the race goes on, for there is a fierce stuff of life in it. It sinks and rises again and blossoms at haphazard into virtue or vice, since the ordinary moral laws do not concern its mission. Some rags of greatness always cling to it, the dumb faith that sometime and ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... this way, I wonder, Did editors always display The same disposition to blunder O'er the weight of the news of the day? When simpler was war and directer, Was Athens accustomed to see In the sheets of its Argus how ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 5, 1919 • Various
... dawn-god, used the finger in or on the lips for "child." It has been conjectured in the last instance that the gesture implied, not the mode of taking nourishment, but inability to speak—in-fans. This conjecture, however, was only made to explain the blunder of the Greeks, who saw in the hand placed connected with the mouth in the hieroglyph of Horus (the) son, "Hor-(p)-chrot," the gesture familiar to themselves of a finger on the lips to express "silence," and so, mistaking both the name and the characterization, ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... the rather stolid thunders of their "Inasmuch." The world, which gives the lie to the law alike in its rejoicings, in its habits, and in its pleasures, is severer than the Code and the Church; the world punishes a blunder after encouraging hypocrisy. The whole economy of the law on marriage seems to me to require reconstruction from the bottom to the top. The French law would be perfect perhaps if it excluded daughters ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... for only t'other day I said to Morris that I wouldn't wonder if Helen and another chap had a hankerin' for one another; and he said he wished it might be so, for you—no, that other chap, I mean—would make a splendid husband," and Aunt Betsy turned very red at the blunder, which made Mark Ray feel as if he walked on air, with no obstacle ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... this place a blunder of the copyists, which almost makes the sentence unintelligible. The translator, without entering into minute controversies, has, upon all such occasions, adopted what appeared, from the context, to be the most probable sense. It remains, therefore, to enquire, who were the ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... for society," said Dennis, all out of sorts with himself. "It seems that I can only blunder and give pain. But I am indeed ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... saw it all, ridiculed his peculations, but called him his "bed of down." His knowledge of human nature was however derived from a contemplation mainly of its weaknesses, and was therefore one-sided. He was often deceived, and made many a fatal blunder, shrewd politician though he was. He involved himself often in enterprises which could not be honorable or profitable, and which inflicted damage on his greatest interests. He often offended men who might have been useful friends, and converted allies into enemies. "His Majesty," ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... people think if you went away in the midst of dinner? There's a man opposite staring at us now! You're not as tactful as you were the night of the burglar. Then, you did just the right thing, cleverly and bravely. For that I can forgive you a good deal—but not everything. Now you make one blunder after another." ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... had no sooner said the words than he perceived the horrible blunder he had committed in making such a speech before Mademoiselle de Nucingen. He colored high,—a most unusual sign in him,—and the solemn silence which seemed to wrap all present completed ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... concept of a meliorative trend in the process of evolution. This animistic explanation of phenomena is a form of the fallacy which the logicians knew by the name of ignava ratio. For the purposes of industry or of science it counts as a blunder in the apprehension and valuation of facts. Apart from its direct industrial consequences, the animistic habit has a certain significance for economic theory on other grounds. (1) It is a fairly reliable indication of the presence, and to some extent even of the degree ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... of his friend roughly, as he had been accustomed to do in the days of their youth, when he wanted to warn Porthos that he had committed, or was about to commit, a blunder. Porthos understood him, and ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... much less so. Ascend, then, with me the hall steps, that I may introduce you to my Lord and his visitants. But have a care how you proceed; be mindful to go there in broad daylight, and with your eyes about you. For, should you make any blunder,—should you go to the right of the hall steps, you are laid hold of by a bear; and should you go to the left, your case is still worse, for you run full against a wolf!—Nor, when you have attained the door, is your ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... should teem with voluminous productions. As a man travels on, however, in the journey of life, his objects of wonder daily diminish, and he is continually finding out some very simple cause for some great matter of marvel. Thus have I chanced, in my peregrinations about this great metropolis, to blunder upon a scene which unfolded to me some of the mysteries of the book-making craft, and at once put an ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... himself again upon the ground, he buried his face in his hands, and lay gently rolling from side to side, trying to stifle the hysterical fit which had attacked him; for it was mingled with relief from what he had looked upon as certain death, anger with himself for making such a blunder, and delight at ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... of the pyramid out of the archives before the banquet and learned it thoroughly, and so was able to thread my way through its angular mazes without pause or blunder. I, too, was heavily wearied with what I had gone through since my last snatch of sleep, but I dare set apart no time for rest just then. Nais must be sacrificed in part for the needs of Atlantis; but a plan had come ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... tell you on the stairs, Madame Giraud? Pamela knows how we count upon her. She wishes to make a good match as much on our account as on her own; her heart bleeds to see us porters, us, the authors of her life! She is too sensible to blunder in this matter. Is it not so, my child, you would not ...
— Pamela Giraud • Honore de Balzac
... rare, sweet smile flitting across his lips, "dost thou blunder as Mary did? Is the Lord yet in the sepulchre? 'He is not here; He is risen.' And why then should His sepulchre be holier than other graves, when He that made the holiness is ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... am in the service of my beloved country. I go where I am sent. I am under orders, Messieurs, and until I report in Paris I know not what duty I am to perform. But I am charmed to see you again, and rest assured I shall not repeat my lamentable blunder." ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the War Front - Or, The Hunt for the Stolen Army Films • Victor Appleton
... disagreement over a horse-trade. On the day of the trial, Mr. Logan, having bought a new shirt, open in the back, with a huge standing collar, dressed himself in extreme haste, and put on the shirt with the bosom at the back, a linen coat concealing the blunder. He dazed the jury with his knowledge of "horse points"; and as the day was sultry, took off his coat and "summed" up in his shirt-sleeves. Lincoln, sitting behind him, took in the situation, and when his turn came ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... scene of conflict, and, supported by the Pergamene fleet, advanced into Macedonia. In the first cavalry combat the Macedonians retained the superiority; but soon dissensions and desertions occurred in the Macedonian army, and the blunder of the pretender in dividing his army and detaching half of it to Thessaly procured for the Romans an easy and decisive victory (606). Philip fled to the chieftain Byzes in Thrace, whither Metellus followed him and after a ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... mysterious labyrinth was this Trade confederacy, into which he had put his foot so rashly, and shown his game, like a novice, to the subtle and crafty Grotait. He now collected all his powers, not to injure Little, but to slip out of his own blunder. ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
Copyright © 2025 e-Free Translation.com
|
|
|
