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More "Bungling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... makes me content to be, and careless about doing. My truest and best life is in myself, and I can only live it in circumstances of tranquil monotony. People talk so much about making the most of life, but their attempts are curiously bungling. What they call living is for the most part more pain than pleasure to them; for the truth is, that life should not be lived by men of mind, but contemplated; it is the spectator, not the actor, who enjoys and profits. The actor has his moment of applause, ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... the British form of government, the people of Holland cannot easily overcome a feeling of vague distrust that the nation which in the past has so often abused them cannot entirely be counted upon to treat them justly this time. Incidentally, I may say that the bungling of Mr. Churchill in Antwerp, which we know much better than do the people of England, is another reason why we are a bit afraid of the island across ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... interior customs lines, preventing the easy passage of goods from one part of France to another; the extravagance of the king's household; the pensions granted to undeserving persons; every evil of the bungling, iniquitous old rgime was brought under the scrutiny of the new thinkers, who tested the existing system by the light of reason and the welfare of the great ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... headlong—dropped and missed again! As he rushed past he saw the face of Ostrog's aeronaut confident and cool and in Ostrog's attitude a wincing resolution. Ostrog was looking steadfastly away from him—to the south. He realized with a gleam of wrath how bungling his flight must be. Below he saw the Croydon hills. He jerked upward and once more he gained ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... If I ever do anything worth while it will be because of you. In everything I shall ever attempt I shall try to do it as if you were to pass judgment upon it. You will be a lifelong inspiration to me. Oh, I am bungling this! I can't tell you what I feel—you are so pure, so good, so noble! I shall reverence all women for ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... could he have to injure Mr. Cone? He cannot, surely, look upon that gentleman as a rival. But, if he could harbour such a wish, his moral and intellectual character stands too high, to allow a suspicion of his employing such means—means so base and so bungling, that it may well be wondered at how even their high mightinesses could think of them. The truth is, no such thing was imagined—the whole had its root in causes which more deeply concern the public than Mr. Wood or Mr. Cone. A set ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... till I knew the nature of the doubt in this man's mind. If these words, or any words I could use, would serve to surprise his secret, then welcome the lie or suggestion of a lie. "It was a brute's act," I went on, bungling with my sentences in anxiety to see if my conclusions fitted in with his own. "Who was the brute? Do you know, ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... the utmost," he said at last; and as soon as he said these words he lost his moral footing, and felt himself swept away from his pinnacle by a flood of passionate resentment against the bungling creature that had come so near to spoiling his life. "Yes; I've been tried more than any man ought to be," he went on with righteous bitterness. "It was unfair. What possessed you to? . . . What possessed you? . . . Write such a . . . After five ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... bad regulator of production, exchanges, and consumption, a mediocre administrator of the province and the commune, an undiscerning philanthropist, an incompetent director of the fine arts, of science, of instruction, and of worship.[2208] In all these offices its action is either dilatory or bungling, according to routine or oppressive, always expensive, of little effect and feeble in returns, and always beyond or apart from the real wants it pretends to satisfy. The reason is that it starts from too high a point therefore extending over too vast a field. ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... That man should be shot who would try to brain one. It is an impertinence even to write about Christmas. Christmas is a matter that humanity has taken so deeply to heart that we will not have our festival meddled with by bungling hands. No efficiency expert would dare tell us that Christmas is inefficient; that the clockwork toys will soon be broken; that no one can eat a peppermint cane a yard long; that the curves on our chart of kindness should be ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... unnaturally have been different. At Turin and at Genoa there are no such stoppages at all; but in any other part of Italy, give me an Austrian in preference to a native functionary. At Naples it is done in a beggarly, shambling, bungling, tardy, vulgar way; but I am strengthened in my old impression that Naples is one of the most odious places on the face of the earth. The general degradation ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... now. I must know what my criminal bungling has amounted to, first. When I have seen the flood go down, then it will be time to go. I want to ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... paper to see if that lost child at the asylum had been found. Edgar jumped on the car, and seemed determined that I should not read the paper until I reached home. He was very kind, but slightly bungling in his attentions. I knew then that something was wrong, but just what was beyond my imagination, unless Jack Howard had been expelled from Harvard, or Bell Winship had been lost at sea on the way home; so I persisted in reading, and at ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... will extinguish every other vegetable that grows around them. The fortunes they daily acquire in every province, from the misfortunes of their fellow-citizens, are surprising! The most ignorant, the most bungling member of that profession, will, if placed in the most obscure part of the country, promote litigiousness, and amass more wealth without labour, than the most opulent farmer, with all his toils. They have so dexterously interwoven their doctrines and quirks with the laws of the land, ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... copy. You burned only the copy. Mr. Vanringham, it develops, knew well enough what that bungling Degge had been deputed to do, and he preferred to treat directly with Lord Humphrey's principal. Mr. Vanringham is an intelligent fellow. I dare make this assertion, because I am fresh from an interview with Mr. Vanringham," ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... dear Alixe, has been one of my delights, for I can project my futile desires into another's soul. I am denied the gift of music-making, so this is my revenge on nature for bungling its job. If Richard had genius, my intervention would be superfluous. He has none. He is dull. You must realize it. But since he has known me, has felt my influence, has been subject to my volition, my sorcery, you may call it,—" ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... your watch, Tom," said Jack. "We don't want to make any mistake and cross the line too soon—but we don't want to be late, either. This job is too important to run any risks of bungling it. I'd hate to think that I'd been trusted with something really big for the first time and then fallen ...
— The Boy Scout Automobilists - or, Jack Danby in the Woods • Robert Maitland
... wall, a queue of waiting women. They would be there until the early morning, many of them, and it was possible that then the bread would not be sufficient. And this not from any real lack, but simply from the mistakes of a bungling, peculating Government. No wonder that one's heart ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... had something to do with his dissatisfaction; in any event, they made his bungling seem the more ridiculous. His fellow scouts had called him "bull head" and "butter fingers," but only in good humor and because they loved to jolly him; for in plain fact they all knew and admitted that Tom Slade, former hoodlum, was the best all-round scout that ever raised his hand and promised ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, a patron of sport in many forms, a traveller in many countries, and a recipient of the honour of knighthood from His Majesty, in recognition of my services for various philanthropic works. These facts, however, have availed me nothing now that the bungling amateur investigator into crime has pointed the finger of suspicion towards me. My servants and neighbours have alike been plagued to death with cunning questions as to my life and habits. I have been watched in ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... hope for him; the proofs of his guilt were manifest and incontrovertible. The forged note, which his wife had taken from his desk and given to the milliner, was one which had not gone through certain mysterious preparations. It was a bungling forgery. The plate would doubtless have been retouched, had not this bill been prematurely circulated by Mrs. Ludgate: thus her vanity led to a discovery of her husband's guilt. All the associates in Lewis's iniquitous confederacy ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... wishes of the people, and the best interests of the entire community; and we have at last reached a point where to stand still is as ruinous as to go on—as we are going—to certain destruction and annihilation. Look at the finances, entirely destroyed by the bungling and injudicious course of the honorable Mr. Memminger, who has proceeded upon fallacies which the youngest tyro would disdain to refute. Look at the quartermaster's department,—the commissary department,—the State department, ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... said the doctor. "Young man like he is soon mends a hole in his flesh. You did quite right; but I suppose the bandaging was young Dick's doing, for of all the clumsy bungling I ever saw ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... Drake's conscience had anything to do with the bungling manner in which he made this first attempt at piracy, we cannot say, but he soon gave his conscience a holiday, and undertook some very successful robbing enterprises. He received information from some natives, that ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... throughout the whole of the work, that an apologetical explanation of certain religious opinions is intended; and there is a considerable abatement of that tone of insolence with which the improved Christians are apt to treat the bungling specimens of piety to be met with ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... admiration comes over me in the presence of this man. The tears are on the point of coming to my eyes, and I advanced a step to tell him how heartily I appreciated him, for all he had taught me, and to beg him not to hurt me; I was only a poor bungling wretch, who had had a sorry enough time of it as ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... business, and I have made two hundred very necessary dollars this winter; and I will try it again." If the matter had presented itself to her mind in that way Mrs. Frankland probably would have felt a repulsion from the work she was doing. It is a very bungling mind, or a more than usually clear and candid mind, that would view a delicate personal concern in so blunt a fashion. Mrs. Frankland's mind was too clever to be bungling, and too emotional and imaginative to be critical. What she saw, with a rush of grateful emotion, was that the Divine ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... introducing and enforcing thorough system, and of skilfully directing labor and investment, so as to secure the most from the least outlay. A farm such as we have just seen would be like a bottomless pit for money in bungling, careless hands." ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... convalescent, has been taken under the wing of our commander-in-chief, and his lips will be sealed by the time we get out—if ever we get out. With an official history and a discreet independent version, no one will ever understand what bungling there has been, and what culpability. It is our chicken-hearted chiefs, and they alone, who should be discredited. With a few exceptions, they are more afraid than the women, and never venture beyond the British Legation. Everything is left to the younger men, whose economic ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... Heavy men with coarse voices, red necks, and great whips in their hands, wearing blue blouses and otter-skin caps, bargaining over their cups, stamping their feet, striking their fists, familiar with the servant, and bungling ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... week, and but for Eiulo's skill and dexterity, we should never have accomplished this nice and difficult operation, except after a very bungling and imperfect fashion. Arthur understood very well how it should be done, but his knowledge was theoretical rather than practical, while Eiulo had acquired considerable skill in the art, by building and thatching miniature houses in the woods, an ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... wait with timid phlegm Till some illustrious pedant hum or hem. 179 The lords who starv'd old Ben were learn'dly fond Of Chaucer, whom with bungling toil they conn'd, Their sons, whose ears bold Milton could not seize, } Would laugh o'er Ben like mad, and snuff and sneeze, } And swear, and seem as tickled as you please. } Their spawn, the pride of this ...
— Essays on Taste • John Gilbert Cooper, John Armstrong, Ralph Cohen
... to put up the wire itself, and this was done in rather a bungling manner, if this wire were compared with that of ordinary ...
— What Might Have Been Expected • Frank R. Stockton
... Flossy. That man is lonesome, I tell you, Ruth. He actually hungers and thirsts for his intellectual and moral affinity, and yet even he did not have the sense—the astuteness—to select a wife who would have stood at his side, instead of one who lay in a wad at his feet. Oh, the bungling marriages that we see! I believe one reason is that like seldom marries like. For my part I do not believe in the marriage of opposites. Look at Robert Browning and his wife. That is my ideal marriage. Their art and brains were married, as well as their hands and hearts. It is pure music to think ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... committed him in the broadest and fullest manner to the employment of Chinese cheap labor. It was a cheap political trick, a rank forgery, and the purpose of the letter was to arouse the labor vote in close states against Mr. Garfield. It was also a bungling forgery. We present herewith facsimiles of the forged letter and one written by Mr. Garfield branding ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... should feel as much disposed to knock a man down who took my words out of my mouth, as one who stole my money out of my pocket. Such a habit may be a credit to one's powers, but not to one's modesty or good feeling. What is it but saying, 'My dear sir, you are making a very bungling piece of work with that sentence of yours; allow me to finish it for you in proper style.'" Tho one is inclined to feel that this author could well have reserved his verbal scourging for more irritating ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... held in great reputation by the Nimrods of the village, because he hunted partridges, not with "scatter-gun" and dog,—such amateurish bungling he disdained and swore against,—but in the good old-fashioned way of stalking with a rifle. And when he brought his bunch of birds to market, his admirers pointed with pride to the marks of his wondrous skill. Here was a bird with the head hanging by a thread of skin; there one with its ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... of it, only the hook and the bait. If he had known how to fish properly, he would have been able to catch plenty of fish, but although he was the greatest hunter in the land he could not help being the most bungling fisher. ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... can try mighty hard," retorted the man grimly. "But we've got to go easy, Sarah Ellen,—no bungling. We've got to spin some sort of a yarn that won't break, nor have any weak places; and of course, as far as the real work of the farm is concerned, we'll still do the most of it. But the place'll be theirs. See?—theirs! ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... fool. Do you think I'm a bungling theorist like yourself? Who do you think is operating that short-wave station? I am. Who do you think put the world to sleep? I did. Who do you think ...
— The End of Time • Wallace West
... a free man to take his place in the world from which he had these many weary months been excluded. There was no bitterness in his heart toward any one, even Moxlow's harsh denunciation of him was forgotten; the law through its bungling agents had laid its savage hands on him, that was all, and these agents had merely done what they ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... bungler, who had been in love with Norah since he had worn knickerbockers, and Norah held her own head higher in the air. And she let Mr. Williamson, the new book-keeper at Conner's (he who would have mortgaged two farms for her), take her to the ice-cream table, leaving the bungling lover (christened Patrick Maurice, his surname being Barnes), to jostle dismally over to the apron table, ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... the stove, he began bewailing his fate in an angry voice. What a dog's life a sculptor's was! The most bungling stonemason was better off. A figure which the Government bought for three thousand francs cost well nigh two thousand, what with its model, clay, marble or bronze, all sorts of expenses, indeed, and ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... going down to them in a condescending spirit, they could be drawn up to the level of others, so that they would realize their manhood, and be led to make earnest efforts to take their rightful places in the world. I know I am bungling dreadfully; I don't know how to tell you her plans, only that they were splendid. But I am afraid the world will have to be made over, before they can be ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... de Csar is a mutilated tragedy: it ends with the speech of Antony over the dead body of Caesar, borrowed from Shakspeare; that is to say, it has no conclusion. And what a patched and bungling thing is it in all its parts! How coarse-spun and hurried is the conspiracy! How stupid Caesar must have been, to allow the conspirators to brave him before his face without suspecting their design! That Brutus, although he knew Caesar to be his father, nay, immediately after this fact had ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... gluttons these Romans are! They have no real taste for art, for beauty. They cannot even conduct a murder, save in a bungling way. They have to call in us Hellenes to help them. Ha! ha! this is the vengeance for Hellas, for the sack and razing of Corinth and all the other atrocities! Rome can conquer with the sword; but we Greeks, though conquered, can, unarmed, ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... some of the others, none are so peculiarly foul as Bingley-on-the-Sea. The asphalt on the Bingley esplanade is several degrees more depressing than the asphalt on other esplanades. The Swiss waiters at the Hotel Magnificent, where Sam was stopping, are in a class of bungling incompetence by themselves, the envy and despair of all the other Swiss waiters at all the other Hotels Magnificent along the coast. For dreariness of aspect Bingley-on-the-Sea stands alone. The very waves that break on the shingle seem to creep up the beach reluctantly, ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... foolish girl. Pack old Dame Jellicot into the embrasure of yonder window," said the knight, "on that side of the door, and we will ensconce ourselves on this, and we shall have time to finish my explanation, for they have bungling engineers. We had a clever French fellow at Newark would have done the job in the firing of ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... and I felt humbled and unhappy." He need not have done so, for the man who thus distrusts his own work is always the truest workman; it is only fools or poor creatures who are pleased and self- satisfied with their own first bungling efforts. But the great enjoyment of Rome to Gibson consisted in the free artistic society which he found there. At Liverpool, he had felt almost isolated; there was hardly anybody with whom he could talk on an equality about his artistic ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... that the art of stimulating the nations—about which the delegates were so solicitous—to enthusiastic readiness to accept the Council as the "moral guide of the world" should have been exercised in such bungling fashion. ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... Sinang. "Every one who charges high is not learned. Look at Dr. Guevara; after performing a bungling operation that cost the life of both mother and child, he charged the widower fifty pesos. The thing to know ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... freedom. It had seemed, in the past, a cowardly thing to avail himself of his knowledge—it was like going with his debts unpaid. But now, in the bright, moonlit room it no longer appeared so. He had finished his task, had ended the bungling, and had heard a clear call ringing with commendation and approval. There was nothing ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... she quickly replied, "he is but a bungling swordsman. My master—but I am not at liberty to tell you who has taught me ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... itself in his letter to Mr. Ellis, the naturalist:—"As for your pretty little seed cups, or vases, they are a sweet confirmation of the pleasure nature seems to take in superadding an elegance of form to most of her works, wherever you find them. How poor and bungling are all the inventions ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... no notice of the suggestion; floundered along, bungling terribly. Committee tried to help him out; that didn't help matters much. To have a Member in one part of the House filling up an awkward pause by suggesting "dried fruit," another "coffee," a third "rum," and a fourth "probate duty," when after all, JOKIM was thinking ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 2, 1891 • Various
... capable of continuous energy. During the eighteenth century the British empire spread round the world. Under Chatham it had been finally decided that the English race should be the dominant element in the new world; if the political connection had been severed by the bungling of his successors, the unbroken spirit of the nation had still been shown in the struggle against France, Spain, and the revolted colonies; and whatever may be thought of the motives which produced the great revolutionary wars, no one can deny the qualities ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... felt feverish to the tips of my claws, as I thought of the miserable creature who had usurped the place I wished to fill, and who might be the means of my having to fall back after all on the Deserted Cats' Fund. What bungling puss had had him under her paws, and allowed him to escape with a torn ear and the wariness of experience? Let me but once catch ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... inscription has the appearance of being intended for a tomb-stone; but there is nothing in the verse that would suggest such a thought. The composition is in the style of those laboured portraits in words which we sometimes see placed at the bottom of a print to fill up lines of expression which the bungling Artist had left imperfect. We know from other evidence that Lord Lyttleton dearly loved his wife; he has indeed composed a monody to her memory which proves this, and she was an amiable woman; neither of which facts could have been gathered from these ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... to work then, skinning my birds pretty readily from old practice, and after a little bungling I managed to make of ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... the pride and selfishness, the upstart and arrogant exclusiveness, the insular prejudices and weaknesses, which form a part of our national character; but doing this, he loved his countrymen and countrywomen for their finer qualities, and hated the bungling foreigners who presume to caricature them without the barest knowledge of their subject. This is the secret of the hearty abhorrence which Leech always testified for Frenchmen. The ignorance of his countrymen on the subject of English women has been amusingly ridiculed by one of ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... made waste then, for all the party were so excited by what they had seen and heard, and so anxious to start in pursuit quickly, that they retarded their own progress by the bungling manner in ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis
... with two cabins of matting, one in the prow and the other in the stern. She was built of planks sewn together in a very bungling manner. ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... of the old feudal times, in which our modern tax system had its origin, there has been a constant improvement in the system of taxation. Yet this has been very slow and apparently has been carried on in a bungling way. The tendency has been to tax every form of property that could be observed or described. And so our own nation, like many others, has gone on, step by step, adding one tax after another, without carefully considering the fundamental principles ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... I have received your confidential letter of yesterday, informing me of the bungling scheme which has been worked out without your help. I presume it would be fruitless to attempt any opposition to the species of mania which manifests itself in such action. It may be best to let it run its course during the short time which must yet elapse ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... grave he took occasion to cast imputations upon the motives of the historian, and asperse the honesty of his statements. Parsons added nothing new of moment to the discussion, for what he said was merely a rehash, made in a very bungling way, of the old facts and assertions. But the spirit in which he wrote and the insinuations in which he indulged furnish ample justification for the low opinion which Cooper held of the evidence ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... the Bible could deceive you about an important thing like that, it could deceive you about the Incarnation and the Atonement. You were no longer obliged to believe in that ugly business of a cruel, bungling God appeased with bloodshed. You were not obliged to believe anything just because it ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... called The Coyote," said Rathburn, walking slowly toward him. "I'm the man they think robbed that joint down in Dry Lake last night. I'm the man they're looking for. I'm the man they want to make pay for your bungling work. That's the way it's gone for three years, Percy. I've been blamed for job after job that I didn't even know was pulled off till I heard they were looking for me on account of it. But this is one job they'll not be able to lay at my door; for I've got the man who's responsible ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts
... Exasperated at the delay, Voltaire committed the folly of undertaking to steal away. He and his niece were arrested and imprisoned in an inn, where they were subjected to very unpleasant treatment. The action of Frederick was unworthy of a king. Its meanness was intensified by the bungling stupidity of the resident. The people of Frankfort grew indignant, and the burgomaster began to show resentment, for Frankfort was a free city and the King of Prussia had no right to trespass upon its privileges. It was mean in a monarch to strike this foul blow because he had been pricked ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... they're at the bottom of it," said Craven. "That's no news to us. If it weren't for them, we wouldn't have this trouble now, despite your bungling. But that doesn't help us any. With this new discovery of mine I have shielded this building from their observation. They can't spy on us any more. But that's as ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... little smile, and said she saw, and would do her best; but her heart sank at the prospect. What a responsibility to be put upon her ignorant shoulders. The Lord's Sabbath in her bungling hands to make or to mar for these two young souls! She must pray. Oh, she must pray continually ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... minds of all ages and all countries. Literary newspapers, too, are a singularly cunning device for robbing the reading public of the time which, if culture is to be attained, should be devoted to the genuine productions of literature, instead of being occupied by the daily bungling commonplace persons. ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... THE. Bungling writers sometimes write sheer nonsense, or say something very different from what they have in their minds, by the simple omission of the definite article; thus, "The indebtedness of the English tongue to the French, Latin and Greek is disclosed in almost every sentence ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... was he safe from the clutch of the law? Of these things he had not troubled to think, so assured was he that the mere threat would suffice. From his present point of view it was easy enough to see that the plot had been a wretched piece of bungling; in failing of its end it became the project of a simpleton. Had the girl herself been cool enough to see this? Did she defy him in knowledge of the weakness of his position? Probably not; in that case she would have spoken differently she had granted, and clearly with sincerity, his power ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... can put your hands on them whenever you like. One does not need to come to Australia to hear that sort of romance, Mr. Durham; I hoped rather that one would not hear it in Australia, but you police are as capable at blundering and bungling and bluffing ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... according to orders, for she dared not offend Dick's father. None of the Challoners were accomplished girls. Dulce sang a little, and so did Nan, but Phillis could not play the simplest piece without bungling and her uncertain little warblings, which were sweet but hardly true, ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... see where the bungling comes in," Littleson answered. "I offered her a hundred thousand dollars for that paper. She took the tip and got it somehow. How could I tell that she had ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... ho! Antonio, weigh well what you are about to do. You are a clever chirurgeon, and perhaps will never be anything more than a bungling painter all your life long; for, with your permission, as young as you are, you are decidedly too old to begin to use the charcoal now. Believe me, a man's whole lifetime is scarce long enough to acquire a knowledge of ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... in the taverns. For indeed it is six hours beyond the time; young Bouille, silly stripling, thinking the matter over for this night, has retired to bed. And so our yellow Couriers, inexperienced, must rove, groping, bungling, through a Village mostly asleep: Postillions will not, for any money, go on with the tired horses; not at least without refreshment; not they, let the Valet in round hat ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... who was by this time sitting up and gently chafing his wrists and ankles, and attempted to put to him the question which Dick had suggested. But he found that the words would not come to him; he felt that he knew but could not remember them; and after two or three bungling attempts he was obliged to ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... state of trepidation; and though it is his darling weapon he seems always afraid of it, and is never sure of his aim till he is quite close to his object. I have mentioned this fact to several Europeans who had accompanied various tribes to battle, and they all informed me they made a sad bungling use of the musket; their aim would be surer if they had large and ferocious animals to hunt or contend with. There is another circumstance that operates against their acquiring skill in the use of the gun: they are so fond of cleaning, scrubbing, and taking them to pieces, that in a short ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... sharp eyes followed every line in the letters of his name, he scarcely thought. His mind was so disturbed, and his feelings so strangely conflicting, that it was some time before he became conscious how much they betrayed—these bungling ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various
... that the murderer made sure of hitting him—at a fairly long range, too. How many men were there in Roxton and Easton this morning—was there even one woman?—capable of sighting a rifle with such calm confidence of success? Mind you, Fenley had to be killed dead. No bungling. A severe wound from which he might recover would not meet the case at all. Again, how many rifles are there in the united parishes of Roxton and Easton of the type ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... of the enemy, of that Hemerlingue against whom Jansoulet was waging ruthless financial war, trying to defeat all his operations, and losing very considerable sums at the game, because he had against him his own excitable nature, his adversary's cool-headedness and the bungling of Paganetti, whom he used as a man of straw? In any event, the star of gold had turned pale. Paul de Gery learned as much from Pere Joyeuse, who had entered the employ of a broker as book-keeper, and was thoroughly posted on matters connected with the Bourse; but what ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... in Mr. Grote's opinion, the remaining books injure the symmetry of this plot by unnecessarily prolonging the duration of the Wrath, while the embassy to Achilleus, in the ninth book, unduly anticipates the conduct of Agamemnon in the nineteenth, and is therefore, as a piece of bungling work, to be referred to the hands of an inferior interpolator. Mr. Grote thinks it probable that these books, with the exception of the ninth, were subsequently added by the poet, with a view to enlarging ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... that of the papists to their saints, wants to be raised by the help of pictures. But I am so far from desiring to exhibit such pictures to the public, that I would wish to draw a curtain over those that have been lately set forth in certain French novels; very bungling copies of which have been presented us here under the ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... rule of art as well as of life, wrote William Blake, is that the more distinct, sharp and defined the boundary line, the more perfect is the work of art; and the less keen and sharp the greater is the evidence of weak imitation, plagiarism and bungling. 'Great inventors in all ages knew this—Michael Angelo and Albert Durer are known by this and by this alone'; and another time he wrote, with all the simple directness of nineteenth-century prose, 'to generalise is to be ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... had taught her a new humility. She came to Jacqueline as a suppliant, begging to be forgiven not only for her moment of cruel anger but for her stupid and bungling interference in her child's life. Nothing was very clear in her mind except that Philip must be told the truth, and that, whatever happened, she and her ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... Jesus in my life." I shall never forget it. My cheeks burned with shame. I said, "Oh! my God, if these are the leaders, we need not wonder at the people." A man occupying such a position to dare to say it! The Lord have mercy on him. No wonder the Lord's work is done in such a bungling way! I say those who want to be successful in winning souls require to watch not only days but nights. They want much of the Holy Ghost, for it is true still, "This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting." ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth
... Laugh at him and make fun of him as you will, he was a scout. He was at once the littlest scout and the biggest scout that ever scouting had known. He boasted and bungled, but out of his bungling came triumph. He fell, oh such falls as he fell! But he always landed right side up. He could save the world with a blunder. And ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... after a period of bungling and robbery, was placed in the same financial position as the United States after a period of war. In one case, as in the other, taxation was the only remedy. But the Heligolanders did not like their medicine, and, like children, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... that the enemies of the cardinal said that it was he himself who set these bungling assassins to work, in order to have, if wanted, the right of using reprisals; but we must not believe everything ministers say, nor ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... complicated system of means and appliances for the salvation of the world to a mere idle mockery of the miseries of man's estate? Does it not show the whole plan of salvation, as conceived and executed by the infinite wisdom of God, to be an awkward and bungling attempt to accomplish an end, which might have been far more easily and perfectly accomplished? And if so, does it not become all Christian theologians to expunge this false principle from their systems, and eradicate it from ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... intimacy between them which would not otherwise have occurred in a fortnight, perhaps never. But he had done it with an assurance almost, if not quite, hypnotic, and he had removed his hand—a move, she recognized, which offered more opportunities for bungling than the initial venture—with the exact degree of insouciance, of abstraction, but at the same time not without a slight lighting of the eyes expressive alike of humility and gratitude. Lurking in her mind was an irritation over the position in which ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... to have been a very bungling piece of work, but this man's life was given to evil doing, and the great number of crimes confessed and committed by him would seem to say that he was not deserving of any more sympathy than which he got. This was a sorry spectacle, a human being dying like a dog, but necessity, ...
— California 1849-1913 - or the Rambling Sketches and Experiences of Sixty-four - Years' Residence in that State. • L. H. Woolley
... them; but who is this son Euphorion? To me it seems as if there could be but one answer—the Renaissance. Goethe indeed has told us (though, with his rejuvenation of Faustus, unknown to the old German legend and to our Marlowe, in how bungling a manner!) the tale of that mystic marriage; but Goethe could not tell us rightly, even had he attempted, the real name of its offspring. For even so short a time ago, the Middle Ages were only beginning to be more than a mere ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... by bad mill management probably than by bad mining, though every experienced man must have seen in his time many most flagrant instances of bungling in the latter respect. Shafts are often sunk on the wrong side of the lode or too near or too far away therefrom, while instances have not been wanting where the (mis) manager has, after sinking his shaft, driven in the opposite ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... Assent was given by commission to forty Bills—the first Bills which became law in the Queen's reign; and, the clerks in the House of Lords having been accustomed ever since the days of Queen Anne to say "his Majesty" and "Le Roy le veult," there was hopeless bungling over the feminine appellations, now after 130 years revived. However, the Bills scrambled through somehow, and among them was the Act which abolished the pillory—an auspicious commencement of a humane and reforming reign. On the 8th of July came the rather belated burial of William IV. ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... plan, the telephone abroad may be raised to American levels. There is no racial reason for failure. The slow service and the bungling are the natural results of treating the telephone as though it were a road or a fire department; and any nation that rises to a proper conception of the telephone, that dares to put it into competent hands and to strengthen it with enough capital, can secure as alert and brisk ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... philosophers, will this very day compel me to add a somewhat curious problem to those you have stated. I am wondering what the result will be when two 'lucks'—in other words, two unconsciousnesses, of which one is adroit and fortunate, the other inept and bungling—meet and in some measure blend in the same venture, the same undertaking? Which will triumph over the other? I soon shall know. This afternoon I propose to take a step that will be of supreme importance ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... heart, Which might have made me, scarcely less than thou, A god among my brethren weak and blind,— 210 Scarce less than thou, a pitiable thing To be down-trodden into darkness soon. But now I am above thee, for thou art The bungling workmanship of fear, the block That awes the swart Barbarian; but I 215 Am what myself have made,—a nature wise With finding in itself the types of all,— With watching from the dim verge of the time What things to be are visible in the gleams Thrown forward on them from the luminous past,— ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... our systems of education; and the lack of the ability to write a decent letter, or even a note of invitation, acceptance, or regret, is often the cause of great mortification, to say nothing of the delays, misunderstandings, and losses resulting in business affairs from bungling and incorrectly ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... let me see his insolent rubbish. Where are your eyes? You bungling louts ought to protect me against the foul brood that peoples this city, and their venomous jests. Past grievances are forgotten. Set the painter's father and brother at liberty. They have had a warning. Now I want something new. Something new, I say; and, above all, let me see the ringleaders ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... diplomatic post in the gift of the government. Peter's brows rose swiftly at his father's annoyance. He opened his lips for argument, then swiftly changed his intention. "Tell me about Judge Adams, dad," he said, bungling over his desire to change the topic, "the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... said. "I may as well give you the whole story. The first boat lowered was lost, through the men's own bungling, the captain says. Then there was a desperate fight for the three remaining craft. Most of the officers were killed. Courtenay got a few of us together when Isobel and Mrs. Somerville joined you here, and we held off such of the madmen as tried to seize the jolly-boat. They managed to lower two ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... Charlie's sentiments. What is so desperately trying about the Army system is that mere efflux of time puts a man who may be, and generally is, grossly stupid, in command of much more intelligent people, whose lives are at his bungling mercy. If Napoleon, who won his Italian campaign at 27, had been in the British Army he wouldn't have become a Major till 1811. It is an insane system which no business would dream of adopting. Yet it wouldn't do to abolish it, or you destroy the ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... possibility of nightcaps, I went in. Halicarnassus obeyed the hint which I pricked into him with the point of my parasol, and stopped outside. The one place in the world where a man has no business to be is the inside of a dry-goods shop. He never looks and never is so big and bungling as there. A woman skips from silk to muslin, from muslin to ribbons, from ribbons to table-cloths, with the grace and agility of a bird. She glides in and out among crowds of her sex, steers sweepingly clear of all obstacles, and emerges triumphant. ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... was not quite at home amid these splendours. As his voice and costume indicated, he belonged to the great order of minor clerks, and would probably go dinnerless on the morrow to pay for this evening's festival. The waiter overawed him, and after a good deal of bungling, with anxious consultation of his companion's appetite, he ordered something, the nature of which was but dimly suggested to him by its name. Having accomplished this feat he at once became hilarious, and began to eat large quantities ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... evaporated—surged up in him now. His fear was lest the charged atmosphere of the banker's presence might deflect his own hitherto clear perception of true worth. He dreaded, once in the midst of those disturbing currents, a bungling presentation of the cause which inspired him, and which he ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Rome the most perfect instrument which, while it inflicts the most exquisite torments, shall at the same time not early, assail that which is a vital part, but, you observe, prolong life to the utmost. Some, of an old-fashioned structure, with a clumsy and bungling machinery—here are some sent to me as useless—long before the truth could be extracted, or much more pain inflicted than would accompany beheading, destroyed the life of the victim. Those which I build—and I build for ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... I was beginning to see things where there was nothing to be seen on the day when I had my first visitor, and the shock of surprise when the cell door was opened to admit Cyrus Whitredge, the lawyer whose bungling defense had done so little to stave off my conviction, was almost like a premonition of further disaster. Before I could rise from my seat on the cot he was shaking hands with me and twisting his dry, leathery face into its nearest approach to ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... a singularly unsuspicious mortal. Even as a boy his head was always in the clouds. He has not seen much society save that of his mother and an old-maid sister. Moreover, he is so dreadfully pious, and life with him such a solemn thing, that unless we are very bungling he will not even imagine such frivolity, as he would call it, until the truth is forced upon him. Then there will be a scene. You will shock him then, Lottie, to your heart's content. He will probably tell ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... McClernand was appointed to this command by President Lincoln in person, who had no knowledge of what was then going on down the river. Still, my relief, on the heels of a failure, raised the usual cry, at the North, of "repulse, failure, and bungling." There was no bungling on my part, for I never worked harder or with more intensity of purpose in my life; and General Grant, long after, in his report of the operations of the siege of Vicksburg, gave us all full credit for the skill of the movement, and described the almost impregnable ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... Coyote," said Rathburn, walking slowly toward him. "I'm the man they think robbed that joint down in Dry Lake last night. I'm the man they're looking for. I'm the man they want to make pay for your bungling work. That's the way it's gone for three years, Percy. I've been blamed for job after job that I didn't even know was pulled off till I heard they were looking for me on account of it. But this is one job they'll not be able to lay at my door; for I've ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts
... his head—no, the Tocsin did not make mistakes of that kind. The safe was unquestionably behind the panelling in front of him. Well, there was a way—it was distasteful to him because it was crude and bungling, but he could afford no more time in a search, that he had ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... You must excuse me, Miss Knowles. There was something about your voice and face—rather threw me off my balance. If you'll kindly overlook the bungling start-off! I'm greatly pleased to meet you. My wife will be, too. May I ask you to step aboard the car?—No, here she ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... established in office to enable the king to evade the demands of the Allies. They increased in severity from the surrender of the fleet to that of the army's batteries and then to its disbandment; but they were backed by inadequate force and bungling diplomacy. On 1 December detachments of Allied troops, landed at the Piraeus, were driven back with bloodshed, and well into the new year the King continued to defy the Entente and push Greece deeper into anarchy. On its side the Entente wished to avoid ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... men shouted contradictory directions to one another. Two of them made a bungling rush at the figure, which had the result of forcing it out of its orbit in the centre of the room, and sending it crashing against the walls and furniture. A stream of blood showed itself down the girl's white ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... too much wine at dinner, and too much whiskey after dinner. Perhaps the frequent libations he had taken increased his zeal, but they diminished his discretion in a corresponding ratio. He had begun his work too soon, and had done it in a very bungling manner. If whiskey was a curse to him, it was a blessing to me, for in his sober senses he would not have exposed himself and his plans by robbing my valise so early ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... that occurred at the trial and his knowledge of Maslova, Nekhludoff was convinced that she was innocent, and at first was confident that the other jurors would so find her, but when he saw that because of the merchant's bungling defense of Maslova, evidently prompted by his undisguised liking for her, and the foreman's resistance which it caused, but chiefly because of the weariness of the jury, there was likely to be a verdict of guilty, he wished to make objection, but feared to speak ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... first of all, clear. There should be no hesitation in our witness; nothing uncertain in the sound that we give. There are plenty of so-called Christian people whose lives, if they bear any witness for the Master at all, are like the notes that some bungling learner will bring out of a musical instrument: hesitating, uncertain, so that you do not know exactly what note he wants to produce. How many of us, calling ourselves Christian people, testify on both sides; sometimes bearing ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... am sure by the description he gave me of the cause of the swelling. The mercury mounted to his esophagus and, being able to swallow neither solids nor fluids, he died the 23rd June of positive famine . . . . The interest of the bungling surgeon is to say that he died of the pox. This is not true, I beg, you to give the lie to anyone you hear saying it. I have before my eyes four hundred and sixty of his letters over which I weep and which I will burn. I have asked Count Leopold to burn mine, which he had saved, and I hope ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... into position, and the old soldier attacked him very slowly, cutting at his neck on either side, then down straight at his head, next at his arms and legs; and in every case, though in a bungling way, Roy interposed his blade after the ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... his arms to his side. Again and again he repeated this operation till Cameron stood swathed in the coils of the rope like a mummy, inwardly raging, not so much at his captor, but at himself and his stupid bungling of his break for liberty. His helpless and absurd appearance seemed to restore ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... floors of a house where a crime has just been committed," said a famous detective, "burn the feet." M. Lecoq seemed exasperated, like a true artist, before the gross, pretentious, and ridiculous work of some green and bungling scholar. ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... certain assumptions in her program which will bear examination. Is man the calculating tyrant the modern uneasy woman charges? Are her fetters due only to his unfair domination? Or is she suffering from the generally bungling way things go in the world? And is not man a victim as well as she—caught in the same trap? Moreover, is woman never a tyrant? One of the first answers to her original revolt came from the most eminent ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... handy and hurled it; the poor beast bleated once, and rolling down the rock thudded at my feet, where I despatched it with my knife. My next care was to skin it, which unlovely task I made worse by my bungling, howbeit it was done at last and I reeking of blood and sweat. None the less I persevered and, having cleaned the carcass I cut therefrom such joints as might satisfy our immediate needs, and setting them in my turtle-shell ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... broadest and fullest manner to the employment of Chinese cheap labor. It was a cheap political trick, a rank forgery, and the purpose of the letter was to arouse the labor vote in close states against Mr. Garfield. It was also a bungling forgery. We present herewith facsimiles of the forged letter and one written by Mr. Garfield branding the Morey letter ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... the lesson that even good European troops cannot ignore the recognized rules and precautions of war. After this engagement the siege languished, and the French abstained from taking any further part in it. But the imperialists continued their attack in their own bungling but persistent fashion, and at last the insurgents, having failed to obtain the favorable terms they demanded, made a desperate sortie, when a few made their way to the foreign settlement, where they found safety, but by far the greater number perished ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... Hall on purpose to be mystified. I remember how the fact of having seen Dr. Sexton do the trick of reading the names in the hat spoilt my enjoyment of Dr. Lynn's experiment. He really appeared quite bungling when I knew all he was about. He did not, on this occasion, produce the letters on his arm; but I saw he could quite easily have done so, though the doing it would have been no sort of reproduction of Mr. Forster's manifestation, who showed you the name of some relative when you had looked ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... the night had taught her a new humility. She came to Jacqueline as a suppliant, begging to be forgiven not only for her moment of cruel anger but for her stupid and bungling interference in her child's life. Nothing was very clear in her mind except that Philip must be told the truth, and that, whatever happened, she and her child would ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... bungling practice, which obtains in our political life, the Administration elected in November does not take office until the following March, an interval which permits the old Administration, often beaten and discredited, to continue ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... confessedly rather obscure. Our ordinary understanding of it would be that she did that for no other purpose than just to break the skull of Abimelech. As a matter of fact, that expression is a printer's bungling way of giving a word which has become obsolete in the original form. When the King James translators wrote that, they used the word "alto," which is evidently the beginning of "altogether," or wholly or utterly, and what they meant was that she threw the stone ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... bottom of it," said Craven. "That's no news to us. If it weren't for them, we wouldn't have this trouble now, despite your bungling. But that doesn't help us any. With this new discovery of mine I have shielded this building from their observation. They can't spy on us any more. But that's as far as ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... in and get them," I said, "I don't care. I don't care about anything. Why did he ever try to paddle across in all that rain? That was the beginning of all the trouble. A couple of bungling tenderfeet—" ...
— Roy Blakeley's Adventures in Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... husband of Madame Killer. He is an accomplished scholar, and has obtained his diploma from one of our best medical colleges. He might have obtained a competency by honest practice. But when Madame Killer, already enriched through her nefarious business, hinted that she was disposed to marry him, Bungling eagerly took the hint, and ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... older artists—among them Ghirlandajo, was an enormous vault of 150 feet in length by 50 in breadth, which Michael Angelo was required to cover with designs representing the Fall and Redemption of Man. But the painter was unable to bear what seemed to him the bungling attempts of his assistants; so dismissing them all and destroying their work, he shut himself up, and working in solitude and secrecy, set himself to evolve from his own inner consciousness the gigantic scenes of a tremendous drama. In 22 months (or, as Kugler holds, in three years, including ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... way of giving him a piece of his mind, he would cast side-long at his master a look of severe reproach, unqualified disapprobation. Plain was it that to his dogship's way of thinking it was a very bungling fashion of doing business, thus to suffer this red barbarian to pass from under their hands, untouched by tomahawk or tooth—betraying, as it did, a weakness of feeling altogether unbeseeming warriors of the first blood like themselves. Therefore did his excellency doggedly keep his tail, nor would ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... numbered among the late lamented," she continued, "I can forgive you for bungling the Hooker end of your job. With Hank's finger out of the pot, I'm content to split with Jerkline Jo. So, no thanks to you, everything has worked out all right after all. Can't you send Pete out with instructions to bite a rattlesnake, or ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... checked any transient wish for revenge. The reader has been told that Chingachgook could scarcely be said to know how to manage the oars of the Ark at all, however expert he might be in the use of the paddle. Perhaps there is no manual labor at which men are so bungling and awkward, as in their first attempts to pull oar, even the experienced mariner, or boat man, breaking down in his efforts to figure with the celebrated rullock of the gondolier. In short it is, temporarily, an impracticable thing for a new beginner ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... altogether until the time when this indispensable condition should be fulfilled. But it was precisely my rage over the tinker that, in a moment of agitation, gave me the theme for Siegfried's furious outburst against the bungling Mime. I played over the childishly quarrelsome Polter theme in G minor to my sister, furiously singing the words at the same time, which made us all laugh so much that I decided to make one more effort. This resulted in my writing ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... the copy. You burned only the copy. Mr. Vanringham, it develops, knew well enough what that bungling Degge had been deputed to do, and he preferred to treat directly with Lord Humphrey's principal. Mr. Vanringham is an intelligent fellow. I dare make this assertion, because I am fresh from an interview with Mr. Vanringham," his Grace of Ormskirk ended, and allowed ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, a patron of sport in many forms, a traveller in many countries, and a recipient of the honour of knighthood from His Majesty, in recognition of my services for various philanthropic works. These facts, however, have availed me nothing now that the bungling amateur investigator into crime has pointed the finger of suspicion towards me. My servants and neighbours have alike been plagued to death with cunning questions as to my life and habits. I have been watched in the streets and watched in my harmless amusements. ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... chastened, hang-dog air The Author rose to accompany me, casting a withering look upon Mr. Nicholas Jelnik, who despised The Author for a bungling and intrusive idiot, and let his glance convey the fact. He was sorry for me, with a compassionate understanding of what I had been through. But I wanted neither his sorrow nor his compassion. He had punished The Author, but he hadn't saved me from a ridiculous and painful ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... Doffing his habit, Sir John Finett stood confessed before them. He knelt penitently before the king, humbly assuring his Majesty that he had been preparing this device, and many others, to please and surprise him; but that, through the bungling of some, and the bashfulness of others, he was obliged to enact the parts himself. This excuse the king was graciously pleased to accept, commending him for his great ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... But the professional was evidently growing uneasy in his mind; his side of the conversation grew awkward and disjointed, and he made the blunder of drifting into an embarrassing silence before coming to the point. He took one elbow from the rail, and said, with a bungling attempt at carelessness which was made more transparent by the ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... had had something to do with his dissatisfaction; in any event, they made his bungling seem the more ridiculous. His fellow scouts had called him "bull head" and "butter fingers," but only in good humor and because they loved to jolly him; for in plain fact they all knew and admitted ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... if by accident, crying out at his clumsiness. "Curse your bungling!" yelled Roger, and stooped to pick it up. Pascoe descended again, full of apologies. He had used the instant well. The riders had seen the one frantic wave of his hand, and were galloping down the lane towards the rear of ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... enclosure wherein we manipulators of melody are penned up. I know not what cause or provocation the architect of BOOTH'S Theatre may have had, but certain it is that he entertains a horrible spite against musicians. He may have been distracted by diabolical hand-organs, or driven wild by bungling buglists, but why should he include worthy and unoffending artists in his hatred? The revenge of a BORGIA was not more terrible or cruel than that of this architect. He has put the orchestra so far below the stage that no part of the latter is ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870 • Various
... claim that he did so—Columbus, by his voyages of 1492 and 1493, led the way thither. If Vespucci, as some have asserted, claimed to have sailed in 1497, in order to establish a priority of discovery, he did it in a very bungling manner, and at a time when it might easily have been refuted, so many of his companions were then living. Besides, though his name was bestowed upon the newly discovered continent—perhaps as a consequence of the writing of this very letter—it was done without ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... aerial squabble: but to the poor men who had to bear the wrongs, Inquisitions, rack-rents, Waterloos, unspeakable horrors, it was hard earnest, you know! Oh the wretchedness—the deep, deep pain—of that bungling ant-hill, happily wiped out, my God! My sweetheart Clodagh ... she was not an ideal being! There was a man called Judas who betrayed the gentle Founder of the Christian Faith, and there was some Roman king named Galba, a horrid dog, and there was a French devil, ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... trembling little smile, and said she saw, and would do her best; but her heart sank at the prospect. What a responsibility to be put upon her ignorant shoulders. The Lord's Sabbath in her bungling hands to make or to mar for these two young souls! She must pray. Oh, she must pray continually that she ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... not trust himself in any such stalking exploit and he had no standing capital of good reputation with which to verify his honorable intention in case his bungling hand should slip. He had as good as promised Townsend that he would not go swimming. But also these boys all had ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... securely, that, with the keys in our possession, we might open the gates, and pass without question the only sentinels who guarded the exterior corridor. Germaine was eloquent upon the merit of his scheme, while, to my mind, it indicated the bungling project of a beginner, and was promptly rejected, because I would not injure with violence the innocent girl I had trifled with, and because I would not dishonor the kindness of Sorret and his wife, by ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... as Sir Edward Grey, in one of his rare moments of emphasis, declared his determination to go as far as either speaker if the case which they foreshadowed should arise. But new occurrences disquieted the public; the bungling which had characterized dealings with the officers at the Curragh was not ended there. General Gough received a document from Colonel Seely, Secretary of State for War, countersigned by Sir John French and Sir Spencer Ewart, the military heads of the War Office; ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... asserted confidently. "We are at least beyond reach of these bungling English spies. There is no further fear of eavesdroppers. We are entirely alone. Each may speak his own mind. There is nothing to be feared in the way of interruption. I trust, Monsieur Douaille, that you ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the good, honest woolen stuffs of one kind and another that fill the shops attest the need and the taste that prevail. They had a garment when I was in London called the Ulster overcoat,—a coarse, shaggy, bungling coat, with a skirt reaching nearly to the feet, very ugly, tried by the fashion plates, but very comfortable, and quite the fashion. This very sensible garment has since ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... police, to the Foreign Office, and to all concerned, that the Sultan's commissionaries should have been so unceremoniously despatched to Paradise. It was not my fault, believe me, nor was it altogether necessary. I am in no way responsible for the bungling measures adopted by my Turkish assistants. You see, in Constantinople they are accustomed to these ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... occupation? There are lawyers starving for want of clients, doctors with patients under monuments, and preachers talking to empty pews, who might have been successful in factories or furrows. Cowper was a failure as a lawyer, he was a success as a poet; Goldsmith was a bungling surgeon, he was a power with his pen; Horace Greely was a success in the Tribune office, he was a failure as a farmer and a slow ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... Ludgate, there was no hope for him; the proofs of his guilt were manifest and incontrovertible. The forged note, which his wife had taken from his desk and given to the milliner, was one which had not gone through certain mysterious preparations. It was a bungling forgery. The plate would doubtless have been retouched, had not this bill been prematurely circulated by Mrs. Ludgate: thus her vanity led to a discovery of her husband's guilt. All the associates in Lewis's iniquitous confederacy suffered the just punishment of their ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... serve as a specimen of the Attic style of the controversy. Hard words sometimes passed. Boyle complains of some of the similes which Bentley employs, more significant than elegant. For the new readings of "Phalaris," "he likens me to a bungling tinker mending old kettles." Correcting the faults of the version, he says, "The first epistle cost me four pages in scouring;" and, "by the help of a Greek proverb, he calls me downright ass." But while Boyle complains ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... true that the enemies of the cardinal said that it was he himself who set these bungling assassins to work, in order to have, if wanted, the right of using reprisals; but we must not believe everything ministers say, nor everything ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... classes," which society creates, and then shrinks in horror, like Frankenstein, from the monster her own clumsy ambition has created. Thou Frankenstein Mammon! hast thou not had warnings enough, either to make thy machines like men, or stop thy bungling, and let God ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... the instruments I have examined, in which his signature, written probably by his secretary, or his title of Marques, in later life substituted for his name, is garnished with a flourish at the ends, executed in as bungling a manner as if done by the hand of a ploughman. Yet we must not estimate this deficiency as we should in this period of general illumination, - general, at least, in our own fortunate country. Reading and writing, so universal now, in the beginning of the sixteenth century might ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... a dancer hissed off the boards. With the excuse that the footlights dazzled her, she was turning every moment towards the audience to look for her son. Perhaps there would be a duel with the Prince, if he was there. And all her fault—all through her stupid bungling. ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... Constitution—if any State, upon its own mere motion, with cause or without cause, can withdraw from the Union as a partner may dissolve a copartnership—then the Constitution itself is a stupendous failure, the men who made it were bungling journeymen and not master-mechanics, and to institutions of our country, so far from deserving our gratitude and admiration, are worthy only of our contempt. The hour has come, and the men have come, to settle these issues, fraught with ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... unhappy." He need not have done so, for the man who thus distrusts his own work is always the truest workman; it is only fools or poor creatures who are pleased and self- satisfied with their own first bungling efforts. But the great enjoyment of Rome to Gibson consisted in the free artistic society which he found there. At Liverpool, he had felt almost isolated; there was hardly anybody with whom he could talk on an equality about ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... notice. He was to go down at once and say that she commanded acceptance. He went. A scurf of books and china ornaments awaited them. The Basts had just been evicted for not paying their rent, and had wandered no one knew whither. Helen had begun bungling with her money by this time, and had even sold out her shares in the Nottingham and Derby Railway. For some weeks she did nothing. Then she reinvested, and, owing to the good advice of her stockbrokers, became rather richer than she ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... saw the real piazza at work. I was on the streets all hours of day and night, and what I saw was nothing like the trite imaginings of the German Chancellor. As I have said in a previous chapter, the "demonstrations" did not begin in any perceptible form until the bungling hand of Prince von Buelow betrayed his intrigue with Giolitti and the politician's intention of defeating the Salandra Government in its preparations for war became evident. At no time did the rioting in ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... any improvement in the Roman theatre, but that one day being surrounded by the multitude and excessively fatigued, he called a slave to relieve him while he recovered his breath. Displeased with the bungling manner in which the slave performed this new task, Livius rebuked him very severely, the slave justified, the master replied, and a dialogue ensued which the spectators imagining to be a part of the plan of the piece, greatly applauded. The drama at once broke upon their view in a new ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... Morris, the assistant of the Financier, suggested the decimal computation, and Jefferson the dollar as the unit of account and payment. The board of treasury, which for five years had administered the finances in a bungling way, was dissolved by Congress in the fall of 1781, and Morris was left in sole control. Semi-annual statements of the public indebtedness were now begun. The expenses of the government were steadily and inflexibly cut ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... killed. A legislature meets before the hatred has had time to cool and the law is changed. Again, a community may have capital punishment and nothing notable happens. Now and then hangings occur. Juries acquit because of the severity of the penalty. A feeling of shame or some bungling execution may arouse a community against it. A deep-seated doubt may arise as to the guilt of a man who has been put to death. The sentimental people triumph. The law is changed. Nothing has been found out; no question has been settled; science has made no contribution; the public has ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... same style as the nave, though naturally a little earlier. But on the south side a singular change took place in the fourteenth century. As at Waltham, the builders of that day cut away the triforium and threw the two lower stages into one. But what was done at Waltham in the most awkward and bungling way in which anything ever was done anywhere, was at Fecamp at least done very cleverly. Without meddling with the vaulting or the vaulting-shafts, the pier-arches and triforium range of the thirteenth century have been changed ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... Captain von Papen, the military attache, had been discovered in his work by the British and had been deported. When he reached Germany, by the way, he was given the Order of the Red Eagle by the Kaiser, who doubtless recognized in the bungling plotter a fellow spirit. Thanks to the information gained from von Papen's papers, the United States had a very good idea of what the other Germans in America were doing and began to ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... the futtock rigging, and a moment afterwards, standing in the top, beside the Old Man. He was shouting to the men who had gone out on the craneline. It seemed that the man on the port side was bungling; but at last—nearly a minute after the other man had lit his flare—he got going. In that time, the man in the top had lit his second blue-light, and we were ready to get into the topmast rigging. First, ...
— The Ghost Pirates • William Hope Hodgson
... from sixty to thirty in his preoccupation. He speeded again, but was soon forced to stop and ask his way into Primrose Meadows. The vague directions of a farmer's son lost him nearly eight precious minutes, during which his friend, Captain Strawn of the Homicide Squad, might be bungling things rather badly. But at last he found the ornate pair of pillars spanned by the painted legend, "Primrose Meadows," and drove through them into what soon became a rutted lane. Almost a quarter of a mile from the entrance he found the isolated house, unmistakable because of the ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... look at them at present. Has Nick learned this story by heart?" I inquired. "He used to be a very bungling liar when we were small boys together; and I don't know whether he has ...
— Up the River - or, Yachting on the Mississippi • Oliver Optic
... criticised by Cooper. Now that the latter was in his grave he took occasion to cast imputations upon the motives of the historian, and asperse the honesty of his statements. Parsons added nothing new of moment to the discussion, for what he said was merely a rehash, made in a very bungling way, of the old facts and assertions. But the spirit in which he wrote and the insinuations in which he indulged furnish ample justification for the low opinion which Cooper held of the ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... significantly, "the deal might 'a' turned out different. I reckon it's luck I didn't." Which may have been true enough, for Sundown would undoubtedly have been afraid to use the weapon and Fadeaway might have misunderstood his bungling. ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... person; she was not given to introspection. She never took herself to pieces, in a morbid way, to examine the inner workings of her own mind, after the manner of some folk, who regulate themselves in a bungling fashion, and wind themselves up afresh daily; and who would even time their own ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... impended over it—had arrived at a less reverent opinion of princes' oaths; and it was well for England in that supreme hour that there were such men as Howard and Drake, and Winter and Frobisher, and a whole people with hearts of oak to defend her, while bungling diplomatists and credulous dotards were doing their ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... mouth, as one who stole my money out of my pocket. Such a habit may be a credit to one's powers, but not to one's modesty or good feeling. What is it but saying, 'My dear sir, you are making a very bungling piece of work with that sentence of yours; allow me to finish it for you in proper style.'" Tho one is inclined to feel that this author could well have reserved his verbal scourging for more irritating forms of impertinent interruption, it is nevertheless true that people are ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... scratching his head with an air of some vexation; 'three is not enough, and it's very bungling and irregular not to have more, but if we can't help it we can't, so there's no use in talking. A novelty would be very desirable. You couldn't sing a comic song on ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... everything a large organizing brain capable of introducing and enforcing thorough system, and of skilfully directing labor and investment, so as to secure the most from the least outlay. A farm such as we have just seen would be like a bottomless pit for money in bungling, careless hands." ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... to have a little worse than the worst known about him. One might say he was excessively sincere." Enderby divined that Alford had been bungling the matter, and he was willing to help ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... poor woman's pride and happiness hung on her faith in that picture. I tried to make her understand that it was worthless—but she wouldn't; I tried to tell her so—but I couldn't. I behaved like a maudlin ass, but you shan't pay for my infernal bungling—you mustn't buy the picture!" ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... the first time the horror of loneliness. I thought of the poor little man's notebook that I had seen. I thought of his fearless and lovable ways—of his pathetic little tweed cap, of the missing button of his jacket, of the bungling darns on his frayed sleeve. It seemed to me that heaven could mean nothing more than to roll creaking along country roads, in Parnassus, with the Professor beside me on the seat. What if I had known him only—how long was it? He had brought ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... his fiendish instructions the bungling executioner was a long time mangling the wrist of Hackston's right arm before he succeeded in separating the hand. Hackston quietly advised him to be more careful to strike in the joint of the left. Having been drawn up and let fall with a jerk, three times, life ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... perfect instrument which, while it inflicts the most exquisite torments, shall at the same time not early, assail that which is a vital part, but, you observe, prolong life to the utmost. Some, of an old-fashioned structure, with a clumsy and bungling machinery—here are some sent to me as useless—long before the truth could be extracted, or much more pain inflicted than would accompany beheading, destroyed the life of the victim. Those which I build—and I build for the State—are not to be complained of in that way. ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... soon, so he came alive, and they had to hang him over; and father got all worked up about it. He said the man had suffered death the first time to "all intents and purposes," so that fulfilled the requirements of the law, and they were wrong when they hanged him again. Laddie said it was a piece of bungling sure enough, but the law said a man must be "hanged by his neck until he was dead," and if he weren't dead, why, it was plain he hadn't fulfilled the requirements of the law, so they were forced to hang him again. Father said that law was wrong; the man never should have been ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... She stared and stared. Blue looked around at her inquiringly, reproachfully. Billy Louise sent him slowly forward and stirred up the huddled little bunch. She read the brand on each one; read the story they shouted at her, of bungling theft. She could not believe it. Yet she did believe it, and she went hot with anger and disappointment and contempt. She sat and thought for a minute or two, scowling at the cattle, while she decided ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... through his shining engines, showing us some of the beauty spots—the Weir pumps and the refrigerating machinery and the thrust-blocks (we hope we have these right), unconsciously inflicting upon us something of the pain it gives the bungling jack of several trades when he sees a man who is so fine a master not merely of one, but of two—two seemingly diverse, but in which the spirit of faith and service are the same. "She's a bonny ship," he said, and his face was lit with sincerity as he said it. Then he ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... from his habit of wearing spectacles, imposed no painful awe; and if it was the property of snuffy old hypocrites like him to write like copperplate and surround their signatures with arabesques, to spell without forethought, and to spout "my name is Norval" without bungling, Tom, for his part, was glad he was not in danger of those mean accomplishments. He was not going to be a snuffy schoolmaster, he, but a substantial man, like his father, who used to go hunting when he was younger, and rode a capital black mare,—as pretty a bit of horse-flesh ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... women are susceptible to flattery there is danger of bungling, of making the effort so conscious that it is offensive. "Your natural beauty will be enhanced by one of our suits for our cutter understands how to set off a woman's form and features so she is admired wherever she goes." The average woman is disgusted ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... was great bungling. On the one hand, Thurloe's means of intelligence being still wonderfully goods, if only because the Royalist traitor Sir Richard Willis still maintained with him the curious compact made with Cromwell, and Thurloe's information being at the disposal of the Rump Government, there had been time ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... but there is nothing in the verse that would suggest such a thought. The composition is in the style of those laboured portraits in words which we sometimes see placed at the bottom of a print to fill up lines of expression which the bungling Artist had left imperfect. We know from other evidence that Lord Lyttleton dearly loved his wife; he has indeed composed a monody to her memory which proves this, and she was an amiable woman; neither of which facts could have been gathered from these inscriptive verses. This epitaph would ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... anxiety. The department could not afford to "fall down" on this conspicuous case. Public interest had increased rather than diminished during the progress of the investigation, and the newspapers had already begun to hint that the Central Office was "bungling the job." ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... that means my brother Philip's consent," exclaimed George Sheldon, with contemptuous impatience. "What a slow, bungling fellow you are, Hawkehurst! Here is an immense fortune waiting for you, and a pretty girl in love with you, and you dawdle and deliberate as if you were going to the dentist's to have a tooth drawn. You've fallen into a position that any man in London ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... height of absurdity to lay down the rule that nobody who dissected the dead should be allowed to operate on the living? The effect of such a division of labour would be that you would have nothing but bungling surgery; and the effect of the division of labour which the honourable Member for Montrose recommends will be that we shall have plenty of bungling legislation. Who can be so well qualified to make laws and to mend laws as a man whose business is to ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... capable of serving under him (for all are ready to take him as chief), he might secure to himself a long and honourable possession of power. Then it is said he can't whistle off these men merely because it is convenient, but he had better do that than keep them on bungling through all the business of the country. Besides, I have some doubts of his tender-heartedness in ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... world," returned Mr. Hamlin, sententiously, "tells me that's the only way you can trust anybody. ONCE doesn't make a habit, nor show a character. I could see by his bungling that he had never tried this on before. Just now the temptation to wipe out his punishment by doing the square thing, and coming back a sort of hero, is stronger than any other. 'Tisn't everybody that gets that chance," he added, with ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... were forced to stop firing from want of powder, that he went with his gunners to get some, and that while they were gone, somebody, said to be Mr. Vaughan, brought a supply, on which the men loaded the forty-two-pounders in a bungling way, and fired them. One was dismounted, and the other burst; a barrel and a half-barrel of powder blew up, killed two men, and injured two more. Again: "Wednesday. Hot fire on both sides, till the French were beat from all their guns. May 29th went to 2 Gun [Titcomb's] Battery to give the ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... being pure children of nature, are without the least understanding of what Christianity came to do in the world, they still offer his person and words a sincere if inarticulate worship, trying to transform that sacrificial and crucified spirit, as much as their bungling fancy can, into a patron of Philistia Felix. Why this persistent adoration of a character that is the extreme negation of all that these good souls inwardly value and outwardly pursue? Because the image of Christ and the ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... to the half-inch distance of the mote in the sunbeam; and he had not only availed himself of both the principles which opticians discovered, but has executed his work with an infinite perfection which bungling men may admire, but can never imitate. The sclerotic coat of the eye, and the choroid which lies next it are full of muscles which, by their contraction, both press back the crystalline lens nearer the retina, ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... a flutter to the Baron, and attempted some innocent and bungling measures. "He still breathes," he kept saying. "All is not yet over; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... greatest pains are taken to make death as nearly as possible instantaneous, and any bungling which prolongs the agony excites indignation and horror in the public mind. But the most revolting feature of death by crucifixion was that the torture was deliberately prolonged. The victim usually lingered a whole day, sometimes two or three ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... glad to understand how it is that your daughters are able to play the numerous pieces which I have heard from them so correctly and intelligently, without bungling or hesitation, and with so much expression, and the most delicate shading; in fact, in such a masterly manner. From my youth upwards, I have had tolerable instruction. I have played scales and etudes for a long time; and have taken great pleasure in studying and industriously ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... tampered with," he said quietly, and he handed it to the prosecuting attorney. The fact was plain; it was a bungling job and better proved the Red Fox's guilt. Moreover, there were only two such big rifles in all the hills, and it was proven that the man who owned the other was at the time of the murder far away. The days of brain-storms had not come then. There were no eminent Alienists to prove insanity for ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... old, as to-day, when a baby yelled, the woman who had borne it was likely to appear at once upon the scene. Ab's mother came running lightly from the river bank toward where the youngster lay. She was worthy of attention as she ran, and this is but a bungling attempt at a description of her and ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... inspired me with a passion. Externally, at any rate, it is one of the loveliest works of man's hands, and an overwhelming proof into the bargain that when elegance belittles grandeur you have simply had a bungling artist. ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... when he had been gone a week, Mrs. Grant was milking the cows, of which they kept twenty. Ethan was helping her, and Fanny, not yet a proficient in the art, was doing what she could to assist. Doubtless she was rather bungling in the operation, for the cow was not as patient ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... letter overflowing with enthusiasm, on Poggio's discovery of a copy of Quintilian. Some of the half-witted, who joined in this great hunt, were often thrown out, and some paid high for manuscripts not authentic; the knave played on the bungling amateur of manuscripts, whose credulity exceeded his purse. But even among the learned, much ill-blood was inflamed; he who had been most successful in acquiring manuscripts was envied by the less fortunate, and the glory of possessing a manuscript of Cicero seemed to approximate to that of being ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Tawm Kinch in his parlor embracing his daughter and bungling an odious dance with her, William Pepperall saw red. He would throw the old brute out of his house. As he made his temper ready Mrs. Judge Hippisley hurried up the hall. She had walked round the block, crossed two back yards and climbed the kitchen steps to throw the judge off the scent. ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... course, does not exist." I should not even like very much to have to explain, under such circumstances, that Sea-View Cottage might exist, but was unthinkable by the human mind. Nor should I like any better to be the bungling and absurd metaphysician who professed to be able to see everywhere the aspects of a truth that is not there. Of course, it is perfectly obvious that there are truths in Kipling, that there are truths ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... utmost," he said at last; and as soon as he said these words he lost his moral footing, and felt himself swept away from his pinnacle by a flood of passionate resentment against the bungling creature that had come so near to spoiling his life. "Yes; I've been tried more than any man ought to be," he went on with righteous bitterness. "It was unfair. What possessed you to? . . . What possessed you? . . . Write such a . . . After five years of perfect happiness! ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... himself the lee-gage, he could not pick and choose, nor yet manoeuvre; yet he brought his fleet into action, giving mutual support throughout nearly, if not quite, the whole line. What Byron did has been set forth; the sting is that his bungling tactics can find no extenuation in any urgency of ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... in the tomb; but Christ is soon coming into his kingdom. Then the thief will be remembered, be raised from the dead, and be with Christ in that paradise into which he will then introduce all his people. Thus all is as clear as a sunbeam, when the text is freed from the bungling tinkering ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... his patience, whether it was in bungling, in harvesting his graft, or whether it was a form of slackness. Nor could they help doing so, for patience, a wonderful purposeful patience, was his greatest characteristic. Every other feature of his ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... wreck. The same glance apprised him of an English ensign, union down, tattered and frayed to half its size, at the end of the standing spanker-gaff, with the halyards made fast high on the royal-backstay, above the reach of bungling blind fingers. Tom Plate was coming aft with none of the hesitancy of the blind, and squinting aloft at the damaged distress-signal. He secured another ensign—American—from the flag-locker in the booby-hatch, mounted the rail, ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... intrust the firing of that gun to a bungling, thick-headed, stupid idiot of a fellow, who don't know muzzle from vent; and the wonder is that he didn't blow one of his majesty's ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... Dirk that cleanliness and industry should reign in the snug new quarters, to pass without improving them. Dirk, out of regard and gratitude to "the young master," as he called him, was willing to make the attempt, and strove, in his bungling way, to impress his neighbors with the fact that they were expected to reform their way of living. But it was up-hill work for people who had lived all their life in filth and wretchedness, and progressed but slowly. Many were the hours, after the recitations were over, that Noll spent ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... countries. Literary newspapers, too, are a singularly cunning device for robbing the reading public of the time which, if culture is to be attained, should be devoted to the genuine productions of literature, instead of being occupied by the daily bungling commonplace persons. ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... fact, then the thing the Bible calls sin was either somehow embedded, by a competent and responsible Creator, in man's very constitution as a necessary process of his evolution, or else it slipped into the race through the bungling and unwatchful incompetence of an impotent Creator. Thus in either case God becomes ...
— The Church, the Schools and Evolution • J. E. (Judson Eber) Conant
... be. I told myself so, and yet I tried so hard in my halting, bungling way to worship the goddess of my idolatry, that my ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... the other was continuing, "to allow to lapse any contact with the one intelligent alien race we have discovered who can furnish us with full-time partnership to our mutual benefit. And there mustn't be any bungling here!" ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... separately, look well for Mr Sadler's theory. He must be a bungling gamester who cannot win when he is suffered to pack the cards his own way. We must beg leave to shuffle them a little; and we will venture to promise our readers that some curious results will follow from the operation. In nine counties of England, says Mr Sadler, in which the population is from ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... simplify theirs by adding a recording apparatus and reducing theirs to a single circuit. The latter showed to the Attorney-General a drawing, which I obtained sight of, of a method by which he proposed a bungling imitation of my first characters, those that were printed in our journals, and one, however plausible on paper, and sufficiently so to deceive the Attorney-General, was perfectly impracticable. Partiality, from national or other motives, aside from the justice ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... whose devotion to the fair sex, like that of the papists to their saints, wants to be raised by the help of pictures. But I am so far from desiring to exhibit such pictures to the public, that I would wish to draw a curtain over those that have been lately set forth in certain French novels; very bungling copies of which have been presented us here under the ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... no matter by whom sold, that have not these words printed on the title-page are printed on the bungling plates made by ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... together like two doors, the upper lip will grow just thrice as long, and again one can't tell what sort of a face will come of it. Time, my dear young friend, is, as somebody found out many many years ago, a bungling workman; he makes a creature pretty enough; then he daubs and trims and pares and pulls and squeezes the thing about, draws the nose and chin out of their sheaths, knocks in the cheeks, eats ruts into the forehead, till he has ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... you think I'm a bungling theorist like yourself? Who do you think is operating that short-wave station? I am. Who do you think put the world to sleep? I did. Who do you think ...
— The End of Time • Wallace West
... disgraceful!" cried Colin hotly; "and more disgraceful still was it that the fire came from our own side—from the Seminary scholars, who had gone in advance; a thing they had no business to do. But this was not the worst—at least it was not the end of the bungling; for if you will believe me, the same thing happened three distinct times. Twice more after we had got the men formed up again, and were leading them up the hill behind the English guns, did those wretched Seminary ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... of music during his excruciating performance, than many a listener at a splendid concert. Mozart, for whom he had a special cultus, would surely have felt satisfied, if his clairvoyant spirit had been abroad, with my friend's marvellous bungling over that first finale of "Don Giovanni." The soul, the whole innermost nervous body (which felt of the shape of the music, fluid and infinitely sensitive) of the poor creature at the piano would draw itself up, ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... ended here, and all parties henceforward fixed their eyes intently on the drama. Mrs. Murray waited with a woman's instinct for her moment to come. Strong tried to counteract her influence by bungling efforts to make the lovers' path smooth. Catherine was a sort of cushion against which all the billiard balls of the game knocked themselves in succession, leaving her cool and elastic temper undisturbed. Three more days passed without throwing much ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... answer, but snatching the rope from his companion's hand, proceeded to bind old John himself; but his very first move was so bungling and unskilful, that Mr Dennis entreated, almost with tears in his eyes, that he might be permitted to perform the duty. Hugh consenting, he achieved it in ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... "Every one who charges high is not learned. Look at Dr. Guevara; after performing a bungling operation that cost the life of both mother and child, he charged the widower fifty pesos. The thing to know is how ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... holds fast to the skill already attained while practice or intelligence makes ready for the next step in advance. Could we not form habits we should improve but little in our way of doing things, no matter how many times we did them over. We should now be obliged to go through the same bungling process of dressing ourselves as when we first learned it as children. Our writing would proceed as awkwardly in the high school as the primary, our eating as adults would be as messy and wide of the mark as ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... a black dado, far down the street, against the wall, a queue of waiting women. They would be there until the early morning, many of them, and it was possible that then the bread would not be sufficient. And this not from any real lack, but simply from the mistakes of a bungling, peculating Government. No wonder that ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... one has to tell such things at all, it is better to be silent about them. As to the Carlsruhe plan you are probably sufficiently enlightened. Devrient has thought it desirable to make an excuse for the bungling and neglectful way in which he has taken up the idea of a first performance of "Tristan" at his theatre, by saying that it is impossible to execute the work. To that ALSO I do not reply. Why should I speak? I know my fate and my ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... deceive you about an important thing like that, it could deceive you about the Incarnation and the Atonement. You were no longer obliged to believe in that ugly business of a cruel, bungling God appeased with bloodshed. You were not obliged to believe anything just because it was in ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... or inclosure bear the traces of some bungling repairs made between the earthquake of 63 and the eruption of 79. They were Doric, but the attempt was to render them Corinthian, and, to this end, they were covered with stucco and topped with capitals ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... transport had been actually secured for the troops that had arrived at Buffalo, and the dilemma was intensified to the extremest pitch. What ship-owner, in the face of such bungling, would run the risk of placing any of his vessels at the disposal of a party so uncomfortably situated? That was a question which presented itself at the last moment, and which was more ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... disinterred by the late Lord Nugent for the purpose of settling the disputed point of history as to the manner in which the patriot received his death-wound. The examination seems to have been conducted after a somewhat bungling fashion for a scientific object, and the facts disclosed were these: 'On lifting up the right arm we found that it was dispossessed of its hand. We might therefore naturally conjecture that it had been amputated, as the bone presented a perfectly flat appearance, as ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 218, December 31, 1853 • Various
... deserved to win it; for they, too, were doing what would have cost them their heads if Elizabeth had known it—corresponding, as Essex was accused of doing, with Scotland about the succession, and possibly with Spain. But they were playing cautiously and craftily; he with bungling passion. He had been so long accustomed to power and place, that he could not endure that rivals should keep him out of it. They were content to have their own way, while affecting to be the humblest of servants; ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... watchful partner with the machinist in securing the proper working of these new mechanical appliances, and the smoothness of the scene shifting. The Queen is a connoisseur in these matters, and there must be no bungling. ...
— Shakespeare's Christmas Gift to Queen Bess • Anna Benneson McMahan
... feelings. He was only aware that she was crying, and tried in a bungling way to soothe her. But now that she had given way, she sat down in the grass and ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... Thornly began, "I do not know what to say. I want to make you understand and I am afraid I may make further mistakes. I see I have wronged you. In a sense, I've been a bungling fool; but as true as God hears me, I didn't want you upon my canvas for any low or mean reason. I swear that as truly as I ever spoke. It seemed my right to make live what I saw in you. Maybe it was not my right—I begin to fear ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... Harry, "this is lucky. I'm glad I came upon you at such a time. You won't have to trust to a bungling Spaniard ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... is a case which will require the most careful handling—a case for the subtlest diplomacy. If I am going to risk my reputation for veracity—and jeopardize my hopes of Heaven by the fibs that I must tell in your behalf, I don't propose to have my efforts spoiled by senseless bungling. Will ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
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