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More "Blunder" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... whole of the grisly story. Mr. Kitson will advise you as to what steps you may take to free yourself. It was a most horrible blunder, and it was all the more tragic because you were the victim, you of all ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... said. "I think, you know, that we are a couple of old fools, to be troubling ourselves about Aggie's future, at present. Still, in a matter which concerns us both so nearly, we cannot be too careful. If we had a woman with us, we could safely leave the matter in her hands; as it is, we must blunder on, ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... Three Sons of Hali The Story of the Fair Circassians The Jackal and the Spring The Bear The Sunchild The Daughter of Buk Ettemsuch Laughing Eye and Weeping Eye, or the Limping Fox The Unlooked for Prince The Simpleton The Street Musicians The Twin Brothers Cannetella The Ogre A Fairy's Blunder Long, Broad, ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various
... at once that Berkeley must have been responsible for the Rebellion. He probably cared very little whether the old Governor oppressed the people or not, so long as he kept them quiet, but it was an inexcusable blunder for him to drive them into insurrection. Charles himself, it is said, had resolved long before, never to resume his travels; he now wondered why Sir William had brought upon himself this forced journey to Accomac. He decided to institute ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... the track Of flying Fortune, emulously panting, The empires, kingdoms, dukedoms of the earth I saw, now clinging to her waving locks, Now to the end of her encircling boa. Beholding this, and o'er the ample sheets Profoundly meditating, I became Of my sad blunder, and myself, ashamed. ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... the most ardent of the "Friends of the People"; and was intimate with Mirabeau, to whom he ventured to speak a word for the king's safety, and was told that the French would not commit the English blunder of cutting off their king's head, because that was the usual way to establish a despotism.[291] Great expectations were cherished of Lord Daer's future, but they were defeated by his premature death in 1794. The Mr. M'Gowan mentioned by Swediaur is little known now, ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... imagine that I should think of it! The whole thing seems to me the most ghastly blunder—the most horrible anomaly. You—in these surroundings! Married to a man so entirely beneath you, and with whom you don't get ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... clapped my eyes upon her and seen Quicksands; say you, I should have thought of that before condemning Gerard his fancy; but there, life is a school, and the lesson ne'er done; we put down one fault and take up t'other, and so go blundering here, and blundering there, till we blunder into our graves, and there's ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... be felt. This country is not run by votes. Do you think it is? It is governed by influence. It is governed by the ambitions and the enterprises which control votes. The young woman that thinks she is going to vote for the sake of holding an office is making an awful blunder. ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... swiftly if there were some trap here Pollard was setting for him to blunder into. But he could see none, and he could understand that matters might stand so that the smaller sum now would be worth more to him than the ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... with great advantage. He intends, as you will see by his speech, to move the previous question on Pitt's proposition, which he is afraid to attempt to negative. After this recantation was over, the day was closed by such a blunder of Sheridan's, as I never knew any man of the meanest talents guilty of before. During the whole time that I have sat in Parliament, in pretty warm times, I never remember such an uproar as was raised by his threatening us with the ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... shouted Bazalgette, in double ire at his own blunder and at being taken to task by his own Telemachus; he added, but in a very different tone, "You are too ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... power the giftie gie us To see oursel's as others see us! It wad frae monie a blunder free us And foolish notion: What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us, ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... and "We three blunder-heads," two frizzled physicians of the last century, and the invariably accompanying cane, or Esculapian wand. This edition is by Mr. Britton, who has prefixed a dedication and an essay on the genius of Anstey, both of which sparkle with humour and lively anecdote; and an amusing ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 533, Saturday, February 11, 1832. • Various
... are not," and Jacintha laid a grasp of iron on him. "Will you be quiet?—is not one blunder a day enough? If you go near her now, she will affront you, and order the doctor not to ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... never did it a second time. On the contrary, she begged pardon in real regret at having given such deep offence to her brother and his wife, and in astonishment that so simple an action could offend. She had made an equally distressing blunder in the early days of her life with the Gresleys by taking up the daily paper on its arrival in ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... needs a large equipment. The man who comes forward to shape a country's policy has truly no end of things to consider. He must be aware of the condition of the people: no statesman must fall into the sincere but thoroughly upper class blunder that President Taft committed when he advised a three months' vacation. Realizing how men and women feel at all levels and at different places, he must speak their discontent and project their hopes. Through ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... means to do," he wrote to Atticus. "I do not think he knows himself. Certainly none of us know.—It is all panic and blunder. We are uncertain whether he will make a stand, or leave Italy. If he stays, I fear his army is too unreliable. If not, where will he go, and how and what are his plans? Like you, I am afraid that Caesar will be a Phalaris, and that ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... All-Father now and then punish, out of sheer malevolence, or in an attempt to get even with man for the results of instincts He had put into him at first creation? Was that first creation final in its wisdom; or had it been a partial blunder, needing the interference of a heaven-sent, earth-born Intercessor to set the matter right? Could the All-Wise make a blunder? If not, then why the Atoning Son? In short, aside from some mysterious force which had set certain laws to rolling like mammoth, ever-growing snowballs ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... Sister—to Mary dead—they are all weighty with thought and tender with sentiment. Your poetry is like no other:—those cursed Dryads and Pagan trumperies of modern verse have put me out of conceit of the very name of poetry. Your verses are as good and as wholesome as prose; and I have made a sad blunder if I do not leave you with an impression that your ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... We arrived at the spot I sought, and there encamped. Our provisions were nearly out; the sun having reduced the men's sugar, and melted the bacon, which had been boiled before we set out. This was an unfortunate blunder. Bacon, in such warm weather, should be carried uncooked, and our's might have then been very good. The men jocosely remarked, that, although we had out-manoeuvred the natives, the weather had been so hot that, ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... that her son should be baptized "John Joel Jedediah Cleishbotham," or nothing! It was in vain that he remonstrated. Janet was firm, and hunting up Maude's letter, written more than three years before, she bade him write down the name, so as not to make a blunder. But this he refused to do. "He guessed he could remember that horrid name; there was not another like it in Christendom," he said, and on the Sunday morning of which we write he took his baby in ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... called, Earl of, instead Of Viscount, Rochford. They are taken from a MS-dated twenty-eight years after the author's death, and are much in the manner of Lord Surrey's and Sir T. Wyat's poems. I should at first have doubted if they were not counterfeited, on reading my Noble Authors; but then the blunder of earl for viscount would hardly have been committed. A little modernized and softened in the cadence, they ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... invited to spend the day with her the prospect gave me the greatest joy, but the aftertaste of the visit was generally bitter, for usually I committed some mortifying blunder in that family where I felt myself so misunderstood. Every time I wished to have Jeanne at my house for dinner it was necessary for my aunt Bertha, who was a person of authority in the eyes of Jeanne's parents, to ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... did change it, though, often afterward, men of clerkly attainments took me aside and kindly pointed out what they conceived to be a blunder. I have dwelt, perhaps tediously, upon this swap; my excuses are—first, that, having made few such good bargains during the days of my vanity, the memory is a pleasant one; and, second, that the horse will necessarily play a certain ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... his chair, with his eyes fixed on Festing. "When I told you I was going to be married, you showed your confounded supercilious pity! You thought I was making a fatal mistake. Well, you're not a clever fellow, Stephen, but that was the worst blunder you ever made. Marrying Sadie is perhaps the only wise thing I have done. She has borne with my follies, hustled me when I needed it, and helped me to fight my weaknesses; and if there's any hope of my being a useful ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... had also tried to establish the doctrine of descent with modification; but they all committed the blunder of clumping the two cycles of causation into one. What preserves an animal with his peculiarity, if it be a useful one, they saw to be the nature of the environment to which the peculiarity was adjusted. The giraffe with his peculiar ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... see at the gate the carriage which was to take us to the station. Now came the moment when I was tried by the crucible and found to be dross. I committed the most foolish blunder of my life. My love suddenly overleapt its bounds. In a moment my arms were around her lithe body; my lips met hers squarely. After it was done she stood very still, as if incapable of understanding my offence. But I understood. I was overwhelmed with remorse, love, ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... by doubts whether Harry Luttrell were at this moment knowing the deep contentment that the fixed aim of his boyhood and youth had been fulfilled; or whether he was lying out on the dark ground beneath the stars unaware of it and indifferent. Hillyard nursed a hope that some blunder had been made, and that he ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... with the impishness of childhood, climbed up in the auto. It was a simple matter to even blunder on pushing the button that would set the self-starter in operation. The car had been left standing on a level bit of road, but, just ahead of it, was a rather steep slope. Mollie had neglected to leave the emergency brake set, and when ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope
... labyrinth was this Trade confederacy, into which he had put his foot so rashly, and shown his game, like a novice, to the subtle and crafty Grotait. He now collected all his powers, not to injure Little, but to slip out of his own blunder. ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... interesting idea is suggested by the blunder of somebody over another puzzle. A boy was given a puzzle to solve by a friend, but he misunderstood what he had to do, and set about attempting what most likely everybody would have told him was impossible. But he was a boy with a will, and ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... Madeleine's fault," cried M. de Bois, coming to the rescue. "It was my folly,—another blunder of mine! I was dolt enough to think that you had only to see her for all to be well; and, instead of warning Mademoiselle Madeleine that you were in Washington, I kept from her a knowledge which would have prevented your encountering each other. It was all my imprudence, ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... very fine indeed; and its performance, like that of the principal singers, proceeded without a flaw or blunder from first to last." ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... business of Gerald's. She's goaded him into it, with her Low-Church ways. She's put poor Louisa up to worrying him; there's where it is. I did not see how your brother could possibly have fallen into such a blunder of his own accord. But come to luncheon; you must be hungry. You will think the boys grown, Frank; and I must ask you what you think, when you have a little leisure, ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... great inland sea. Achelunda was said to be the name of this Lake, and in the language of Angola, it meant the "sea." It means only "of" or "belonging to Lunda," a country. It might have been a sea that was spoken of on a whole, or anything. "Nyassi, or the sea," was another name and another blunder. "Nyassi" means long grass, and nothing else. Nyanza contracted into Nyassa, means lake, marsh, any piece of water, or even the dry bed of a lake. The N and y are joined in the mouth, and never pronounced separately. The "Naianza"!—it would be nearer ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... put on, Christ. The passage quoted is correct, except that 'married estate' should be 'marriage state.' So satisfied was D'Anvers with the just and Christian correction given him for so egregious a blunder, that if he did not repent with tears, he took special care to leave out all this absurd reference to the marriage ceremony performed in water from ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... master; but exults in mortifying him in direct colloquy: yet never indulges this amiable disposition except with a really kind purpose, and entirely knowing what he is about. Fairservice, on the other hand, gradually falls into an unconscious fatality of varied blunder and provocation; and at last causes the entire catastrophe of the story by bringing in the candles when he has been ordered to ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... not have turned them out of hand fast enough. The enlightened few, in these countries, were as a drop in the bucket to the unenlightened many; and although no doubt there were numbers of the former who were well—meaning men, yet they were one and all guilty of that prime political blunder, in common with our Whig friends at home, of expecting a set of semi—barbarians to see the beauty of, and to conform to, their newfangled codes of free institutions, for which they were as ready as I am to die at this present moment. Bolivar, in his early fever of patriotism, made the same mistake, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... have counted on hitting him where I liked. I trust I shall not blunder against his vitals now. However, if I do, he ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... grasp. This is the greatest fault in our American musical educational systems of to-day. Pupils are permitted to play works that are technically impossible for them to hope to execute without years of preparation. What a huge blunder this is! ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... suppose that errors of judgment must have occurred. Even had they not, differences of opinion between the Executive, bound by an oath to the strict performance of his duties, and writers and debaters must have arisen. It is not necessarily evidence of blunder on the part of the Executive because there are these differences of views. Mistakes have been made, as all can see and I admit, but it seems to me oftener in the selections made of the assistants appointed to aid in carrying out the various duties of administering the Government—in ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant • Ulysses S. Grant
... regularly come upon the tables of men of wealth, would have been just as nutritious, just as wholesome, and in every way just as good, save in the gratification to pride and palate. He was committing an immense economic blunder. Like thousands of others, he did so in the belief that it was wise ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various
... me remark, commits trespasses on language that are really past excusing. In one place she says that a man 'had a contemptible opinion' of some other man's understanding. Such a blunder is not of that class which usage sanctions, and an accuracy not much short of pedantry would be argued in noticing: it is at once illiterate and vulgar in the very last degree. I mean that it is common ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... my mind then and there; to tell her of what I knew, and of what I had witnessed with my own eyes. Yet such a course was useless. I was proceeding carefully, watching and noting everything, determined not to blunder. ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... parent can do right. You would think that now and then he might, if only by mere accident, blunder into sense. But, no, there seems to be a law against it. He brings home woolly rabbits and indiarubber elephants, and expects the Child to be contented "forsooth" with suchlike aids to its education. As a matter of fact, the Child is content: it bangs its own head with the woolly ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... a sovereign less adequately equipped than democracy for its gigantic responsibilities. One of its most enthusiastic modern supporters, Professor John MacCunn, gravely admits that "Democracy, still raw to its work, whether in politics or industry, may blunder—may blunder fatally."[53] Long ago it was pointed out by Plato that democracy is the cult of incompetence. In more recent times Mill has emphasized the possibility that democracy may govern badly and oppressively; Maine has warned us that the dominance of the ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... which may be of use to him on some future occasion: "When a probable solution of a difficulty is to be found by a parallelism in the poet's pages, it is better to adopt it than to charge him with a blunder ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 68, February 15, 1851 • Various
... me, sir. I have no wish to burden you with the responsibilities I am about to assume. I should hardly choose the moment when I am on the point of being appointed Councillor to perpetrate such a blunder. I told you of my perplexity, and I asked your ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... to work in the sugar bush, and I took my spelling book with me. When a spare moment occurred I sat down to study, and so absorbed was I in the attempt to blunder through my lesson, that I did not hear the Captain's son-in-law coming until he was fairly upon me. He sprang forward, caught my poor old spelling book, and threw it into the fire, where it was burned to ashes; and then ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... apparent lack of warmth were mere matters of calculation. Her plan was to inspire him with trepidation, to keep him always at arm's length, for his own safety as well as hers. She knew something of men. Even the best, if suddenly thrown into an affair so strange as this, might commit an irreparable blunder; and this she did not want Hillard to do. She was secretly pleased with his strong face and shapely head. There was neither beard nor mustache to hide the virtues or defects. The chin was square but not heavy, the mouth humorous, kindly and firm, the nose bridged; and the brown eyes, sleepy ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... we can provide an equally fair setting in the quality of refinement. And refinement is not to be achieved but by rejection. One who suggests to me that refinement is apt to be a mere negative has offered up a singular blunder in honour of robustiousness. Refinement is not negative, because it must be compassed by many negations. It is a thing of price as well as of value; it demands immolations, it exacts experience. No slight or easy charge, then, is committed to such of us ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... a fatal blunder, the blunder of a people who had been so blinded by materialism that they do not seem to have so much as the consciousness that there is such a thing as moral strength on earth. No one who had followed with intelligent understanding the ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... have been taken off as perched on an anchor, instead of holding it in his claws, and I think it would have been more nateral; but I suppose it was some stupid foreign artist that made that 'ere blunder, I never seed one yet that was equal to our'n. If that Eagle is represented as trying what he can't do, it's an honourable ambition arter all, but these Bluenoses won't try what they can do. They put me in mind of a great big hulk of a horse in a cart, that ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... you came from Naples, but your condition was not, I warrant, by any means so dangerous but that a few simple remedies would soon have set you, with your strong constitution, on your legs again, had you not through Carlos's well-intentioned blunder in running off for the nearest physician fallen into the hands of the redoubtable Pyramid Doctor, who was making all preparations for bringing you ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... Venice finally surrendered, but not until she had exhausted the means of defence and life. At that time, few men in America but were in the habit of denouncing the French President for his indifference to the Italian cause. He was charged with having been guilty of a blunder and a crime. His consent to the expedition to Rome aggravated his offence, for it was an act of intervention on the wrong side. But the passage of ten years enables us to be more just to him than it was possible for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... each disputed parish has thus far been laid aside, and among them two parishes where a most foolish blunder, or something worse, was made in omitting from the Republican tickets the names of all the electors but the two Senatorial and one district elector. The Democrats claim this will lose over 2,000 votes, but our friends, whose information we have ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... to Exon, By special direction, Came down the world's wonder, Sir Salathiel Blunder, With a quoif on his head As heavy as lead; And thus opened ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... am tired of life. My nose is turn-up, my mouth is large; I pocket other people's saucers and napkins; I am always making blunders. This is my last blunder. I shall never blush again. Farewell. Let the inscription on my tombstone be—'Died of ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... "it don't do to tell a—a screech owl he's a canary. He's liable to believe it by and by and start singin' in public. . . . Then he finds out he's just a fool owl, and has been all along. Humph! Me a wonder! . . . A blunder, you mean." ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... held long enough to save the munitions and stores, and effectually disable the cannon, which supplied the English with the only artillery they had, competent to the work before them. The hasty abandonment of this important post was not Duchambon's only blunder, but it was the ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... dismounted in the encounter,—in what manner we are not told,—and would have been cut down by a British sergeant, but for his wearing a uniform that resembled that of a British colonel. He was helped to a horse at a most fortunate moment. He did not know, in consequence of the blunder of Clarke, that the dragoons whom he had fought and beaten, were only an advanced guard of a body of infantry. Horses and men were in his hands, and, dividing his force, he sent off one party of his men in charge of the prisoners and ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... gamecock. It was a Corsican who had years before called him cochon sauvage—cocon chauvage, as Hoka mispronounced it. With people so nice and so touchy, it was scarce to be supposed that our company of greenhorns should not blunder into offences. Hoka, on one of his visits, fell suddenly in a brooding silence, and presently after left the ship with cold formality. When he took me back into favour, he adroitly and pointedly explained the nature ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... entrusting me with any message you may have to send," replied Hsiao Hung with a laugh. "I'll readily go and deliver it. Should I not do so faithfully, and blunder in fulfilling your business, my lady, you may visit me with any punishment your ladyship may please, and I'll ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... A comical blunder has been made by the printer, in M. Ter naux-Compans's excellent translation of Xerez, in the account of this expedition. "On trouve sur toute la route beaucoup de porcs, de lamas." (Relation de la Conquete du Perou, p. 157.) The substitution of porcs for parcs ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... for, when the drawbridge was drawn slowly up that evening, it was ten men, and three of them unarmed, against a regiment; and short and terrible would have been the shrift accorded to them had an inkling of suspicion arisen, or had the slightest blunder, or precipitation, ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... recitations were halting, once woefully incorrect. The teacher in charge was about to reprove her for inattention; but the wide, sorrowful eyes made an unconscious appeal, and the blunder ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... excusably enough, turn back in their hearts to other days, when if the issues were not clearer, the means of trying them were simpler; when, so stirring were the times, one might even have atoned for many a blunder and backsliding by visibly dying for the cause. To have breasted the Spanish pikes at Leyden, to have drawn sword with Oliver: that may well seem to us at times amidst the tangles of to- day a happy fate: for a man to be able to say, I have lived like a fool, ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... Van Praet, most accomplished bibliographers, published the catalogue of the precious library of the duke de La Valliere, the abbe Rive boasted that he had discovered a blunder in every one of the five thousand titles of their catalogue. Barbier and Brunet have both been criticised for swarms of errors in the earlier editions of their famous catalogues. The task of the exact cataloguer is full of difficulty, constantly renewed, and demanding almost encyclopaedic ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... epoch. William was indeed a most mutinous vassal, and a vein of such mutiny runs through his family fortunes: his sons Rufus and Henry I. disturbed him with internal ambitions antagonistic to his own. But it would be a blunder to allow such personal broils to obscure the system, which had indeed existed here before the Conquest, which clarified and confirmed it. That ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... some hideous blunder, and he perceived at length that the person addressing him in no ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... refuse liberties which otherwise they would concede. I say such a refusal would be an insult to the hundreds and thousands of loyal Dutch subjects the King has in all parts of South Africa, I say that this invidious treatment of the Orange River Colony would be the greatest blunder, a fitting pendant to all that long concatenation of fatal mistakes which has marked our policy in South Africa for so many years; and I say it would be a breach of the spirit of the terms of peace, because we could not say, "We promised you self-government by the terms of peace, but what ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... don't commit murders—not in Europe, at any rate," said Mr. Flexen. "In the East and in the United States it's different perhaps. Murder is always as much of a blunder as a crime. It makes people so keen after the criminal. No: no ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... form—Has the movement of alliterative verse got the initial or the final beat? In the middle of the 18th century Bishop Percy decided this question with sufficient accuracy, though he mixed up his statement with a blunder which it is not easy to account for. He points out how the poets began to introduce rhyme into alliterative verse, until at length rhyme came to predominate over alliteration, and "thus was this kind of metre at length swallowed up and ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... his merriment being shared by Nellie and Mrs Gilmour, the latter not sorry for the old sailor's "putting his foot in it" by a very similar blunder to that for which he had laughed at her shortly before; while, as for Dick, the struggles he made to hide the broad grin which would show on his face were quite comical and ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... storekeeping is your genius in life. I can see that you are naturally consecrated to it. My son is a good steady fellow, but he lacks the divine gift. I am getting old. We need new fire, new brains, in the conduct of this business. I ask you to forgive the unlucky blunder we made lately, ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... refused to her. Alessandro still hoped that the Duke of Albany would succeed in changing this decision of the king of France who, willing as he was to buy the support of the Medici in Italy, would only grant them his second son, the Duc d'Orleans. This petty blunder lost Italy to France, and did not ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... had been to call the police. He did not act upon it. They might blunder. The thing might get out. This law-breaker might escape. Not five people in all the world knew of Curlie's detecting station. He would work out this ...
— Curlie Carson Listens In • Roy J. Snell
... spoke of The rights of war and peace but with the greatest contempt: which was the more shocking; as, in his dispute with the English on the right of Kings, he every where copies Grotius, and when he departs from him is sure to blunder: with which Boeclerus has ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... protested against that class of thing being done; and I now say that while this particular job must be completed, no other of the sort will be authorized, without an understanding with you, if at all. The Secretary of War is wholly free of any part in this blunder. ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... moment, and then decided to speak frankly. "Yes," he said, "your kindness gives you the right to know. To not tell you would show a lack of gratitude. I made a painful blunder before in not staying unflinchingly with my company. The more I think of it, the more I regret it, and the more I am decided not to repeat it, but abide with my comrades and share their fate in ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... one hitch, and it is to the honour of human nature. Evil spirits like Saradine often blunder by never expecting the virtues of mankind. He took it for granted that the Italian's blow, when it came, would be dark, violent and nameless, like the blow it avenged; that the victim would be knifed at night, or shot from behind a hedge, and so die without speech. It was a bad minute for Prince ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... added, with a frown, "that I didn't think that the woman who gave bail, might be one of the gang. By Jove!" with a sudden start, "I believe that money, which she deposited in the bank as security, is only a blind after all, and they both intend to skip! What a wretched blunder it was to accept bail anyway! But I'll cage both birds this time, only what I do must be done quickly. They must have done a smashing big business in diamonds," he went on, musingly; "and there are evidently two women and ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... movements, by means of the confederate who awaited his arrival at the station. As it happened, they simply hit upon the wrong person. It might have paid them much better to follow me. The outcome of the blunder is that I am in a fair way towards ascertaining all I want to know about them, whereas, up to the present, they do not even suspect my existence as an ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... shall know why I pay this L500. Because she who of all the world is the nearest and the dearest to me,"—she looked up into his face with amazement, as he stood stretching out both his arms in his energy,—"has in her impetuous folly committed a grievous blunder, from which she would not allow her husband to save her, this sum must be paid to the wretched craven. But I cannot tell the world that. I cannot say abroad that this small sacrifice of money was the justest means of retrieving the ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... And, what is a wiser and better thing, Can keep the living from ever needing Such an unnatural, strange proceeding, By showing conclusively and clearly That death is a stupid blunder merely, And not a necessity of our lives. My being here is accidental; The storm, that against your casement drives, In the little village below waylaid me. And there I heard, with a secret delight, Of your maladies physical and mental, Which neither astonished nor dismayed me. And I hastened ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... a political blunder. It stirred up the embers of Napoleonism. Ten years later they ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... August 24, 1572 A.D. (St. Bartholomew's Day), and extended to the provinces, where it continued for several weeks. Probably ten thousand Huguenots were slain, including Coligny himself. But the deed was a blunder as well as a crime. The Huguenots took up arms to defend themselves, and France again experienced all the ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... mischief as the man who turns the criminal into a hero. Frederic Graham did a weak, wicked, mean, and cowardly deed, not being in his general nature weak, wicked, mean, or cowardly, and was allowed to blunder on to a tolerable sort of something like happiness in the end. No one has a right to complain, for all of us get a great deal more and better than we deserve. We have no right to complain of Providence, but we have a right to complain of the poet who comes up and says not a word in reprobation ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... was hidden from Mister Masters was presently obvious to Mr. Blagdon and to others. So the spider, sleepily watching the automatic enmeshment of the fly, may spring into alert and formidable action at seeing a powerful beetle blunder into the web and threaten by his stupid, aimless struggles to set the fly at liberty and to destroy the whole fabric spun ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... course, and not for one moment to be considered, whether the Stralsund authorities might not have blundered. It was a dangerous notion to put into people's heads, that the Stralsund authorities, of whom he was one, could blunder. Blunders meant a reproof from headquarters and a retarded career; their possibility, therefore, was not to be entertained for a moment. Even should they have been made, it must not get about that they had been made. He accordingly suppressed ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... the Kamraviona to try if we could get rid of the annoying restraints which made our residence here a sort of imprisonment, I discovered that the whole affair was not one of blunder or accident, but that we actually were prisoners thus be design. It appeared that Kamrasi's brothers, when they heard we were coming into Unyoro, murmured, and said to the king, "Why are you bringing such guests amongst us, who will practise all kinds of diabolical sorcery, and bring ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... travelling over a passage with prodigious celerity, and clearing more bars than the keenest fox-hunter, to be in at the death. But the great trial was an anthem that had been prepared and arranged by Master Simon, and on which he had founded great expectation. Unluckily there was a blunder at the very outset; the musicians became flurried; Master Simon was in a fever, everything went on lamely and irregularly until they came to a chorus beginning "Now let us sing with one accord," which seemed to be a signal for parting company: ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... citadel held out until the 9th of December; the king heaped rewards on Marshal Bouffers: at the march out from Lille, Prince Eugene had ordered all his army to pay him the same honors as to himself. Ghent and Bruges were abandoned to the imperialists. "We had made blunder upon blunder in this campaign," says Marshal Berwick, in his Memoires, "and, in spite of all that if somebody had not made the last in giving up Ghent and Bruges, there would have been a fine game ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... imperfect obedience. To restrain them, when intoxicated with success and confident of their strength, would probably have been too hard a task even for him, as it had been, in the preceding generation, too hard a task for Montrose. The new general did nothing but hesitate and blunder. One of his first acts was to send a large body of men, chiefly Robertsons, down into the low country for the purpose of collecting provisions. He seems to have supposed that this detachment would without difficulty occupy Perth. But Mackay had already restored order ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... perceived his blunder, just twenty seconds too late. Now he was sorry for the boy and angered with himself, but it was too late to draw back. To avoid a conflict he would at this moment have sacrificed half his fortune, but not ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... myself," said the Superintendent, with a slight smile. "Owing to the inexcusable blunder, I'm afraid something about what it contains may leak out prematurely. Those pests, the reporters, are everywhere; you can't keep ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... distinct feeling that there has been an enormous blunder in the command. Want of foresight—the reinforcements were not there; they had not thought of supports. There were not enough guns to bar their way, nor enough artillery ammunition; with our own eyes we had seen two batteries cease fire in mid-action—they ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... blunder of the postmaster on account of the enclosures, some of which I wished to have got to your hands without delay, that they might have undergone the consideration and acting upon which were suggested in the letter accompanying ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... which they are sometimes compelled to pass. Our native American birds, at least some of them, suffer a good deal at the hands, so to speak, of the pestiferous English sparrows, which were introduced into this country by some egregious blunder. ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... clergyman, who, in a trembling voice, began the rite which was to unite Amyas Belamour to Aurelia Delavie. He intended to shorten the service, but his nervous terror and the obscurity of the room made him stumble in finding the essential passages, and blunder in dictating the vows, thus increasing the confusion and bewilderment of poor little Aurelia. Somehow her one comfort was in the touch of the hand that either clasped hers, or held the ring on her finger—a strong, warm, tender, trustworthy ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that there must be some mistake about this arrest. The man's conduct had appeared void of all criminal intent. The boy seemed to shun Oswald himself, through some unaccountable aversion. Probably the policeman's zeal had caused a serious blunder. The little fellow's strange scare, with hasty, ill-advised official action, resulted in arrest and possible detention of ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... Henceforth I will devote myself to the only real powers which can enlighten us. Yet there is humiliation in failure after so many years of study. It is folly to follow a partial truth of which we miss the keynote, though we sometimes blunder on ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... Prince, Lodowick, Duke of Richmond and Lennox. There appears to me to be a blunder here which Dr. Grosart and Mr. Hazlitt do not elucidate, by recording the birth of Lodowick, first Duke of Richmond, in 1574, his succession to the Lennox title in 1583, creation as Duke of Richmond in May, 1623, ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... Imperial-revolutionary system. There are many blunders in the above extract as we read it; blundering metaphors, blundering arguments, and blundering assertions; but this is surely the grandest blunder of all; and one wonders at the blindness of the legislator and historian who can advance such a parallel. And what are we to say of the legacy of the dying revolution to Napoleon? Revolutions do not die, and, on their death-beds, making fine speeches, hand over their ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... name, I've made a bigger blunder than the last!" said the squire, with an odd thrill ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... "a quest of swerers," meaning of course the jury who had condemned Cloudesly "there hanged to be." Another blunder committed by Copland is the omission of a word, so that a line is ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 184, May 7, 1853 • Various
... less debased, though scarcely more heartless, who countenance this inhuman logic. The average mercantile sentiment of this and other great Northern cities runs thus: 'True, Slavery is unjust and barbarous—it is at once a wrong and a mistake—but it is not our blunder. Its perils are braved and its evils endured by those who cherish it, hundreds of miles away; while to us it is a positive advantage. By obstructing the mechanical and manufacturing development ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Biffin, and the sportsman who tries to get on without it is positively courting disaster. The first thing he knows, he will be talking to well-informed people about a flock of sparrows or a covey of weasels, and their quiet smiles will show him that he has been guilty of a ludicrous blunder. If he had read his Biffin he would have known that the correct terms are a "susurration of sparrows" and a "pop of weasels." These are small matters, perhaps, but your sportsman cannot be too accurate. Mr. Biffin treats of practically every branch of ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 9, 1914 • Various
... matter of fact I never said a word; I hardly moved, but simply allowed her to depart. I could not help realising that this was henceforth to be the intolerable character of the conjugal relations I had resumed eight years before. I told her peremptorily to keep quiet and not be guilty of any blunder either in judgment or in act, and tried to make her realise to what a serious state of affairs this foolish occurrence had brought us. She really seemed to understand what I meant, and promised to keep quiet and not ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... very true,I should have been surprised had it been otherwiseCome, show me up stairs, Mrs. Hadoway, lest I make a blunder, and go where ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... from the soil of Bengal. He offered to treat with Clive; he was ready to make terms which from a military point of view were satisfactory; he was evidently convinced that he had underrated the power of England, and he was prepared to pay a heavy penalty for his blunder. ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... thy Benefactor the debt of thanksgiving, by the keeping of his holy commandments and by turning aside from every path whose end is destruction. For it is with kingdoms as with ships. If one of the sailors blunder it bringeth but small damage to the crew. But if the steersman err, he causeth the whole ship to perish. Even so it is with sovranty: if a subject err, he harmeth himself more than the state. But if the king err, he causeth injury to the whole realm. ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... point it may be urged that those exercises which quicken the action of the thoracic viscera, to any considerable degree, are simply exhaustive. This is another blunder of the "big-muscle" men. They seem to think you can determine every man's constitution and health by the tape-line; and that all exercises whose results are not determinable ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... ambitious?" she asked gently. And again, although she did not often blunder, she saw him wince. "I don't mean ambitious for yourself. But surely you have made a remarkable beginning at St. John's. Everybody admires and respects you, has confidence in you. You are so sure of yourself," she hesitated a moment, for she had never ventured to discuss religion ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... I did not care to trust Walkirk with this affair. It was plain that he did not thoroughly sympathize with me in the project. I was afraid he might make a blunder, or in some way fail me. Any way, this was a matter which I wished ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... failed in his last attempt to break away from the benumbing power of opium, and in his desperation had sought freedom in death. Let no man judge him, and least of all those who are strangers to the fascinating and infernal strength of his enemy. You may call it a grave mistake, a dreadful blunder, a doleful insanity, but do not assume to put him beyond the reach of mercy, or to decide that his lamentable end was not the iron door through which he may have passed to the ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... from Geronium; but the Romans were unable to follow directly across the plain, for at this time the Carthaginians greatly outnumbered them in cavalry, and they would, therefore, have to take the road round the foot of the mountains, which was nearly seventy miles long; and yet, by some unaccountable blunder, they neglected to place a sufficient guard over their great magazines at Cannae to defend them for even a few days against ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... "you are so surrounded by true affection that I never thought how my thoughtless use of that familiar phrase might be construed; but you must thank me for my little blunder, because it has served to show you what friends your noble qualities ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... toothpick. He was sure that those Neapolitans were recruits of the Bolognese Polizia; on the track of the Guidascarpi, possibly. As he was not unlike Angelo Guidascarpi in figure, he became uneasy lest they should blunder 'twixt him and La Scala; and the notion of any human power stopping him short of that destination, made Ammiani's hand perfectly firm. He drew on his gloves, and named the place whither he was going, aloud. 'Excellency,' said the waiter, while taking up and pretending to reckon the money for the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... than that in it, I fancy: he was misled by a printer's blunder, I suspect. Some months ago I found the passage which Tennyson seems to follow, in a cheap reprint of sir Thomas Malory's History of King Arthur—then just out, and could not make sense of it. Yesterday I found here this ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... manned by seven thousand men. Hideyoshi himself was perhaps not without misgivings. Six years previously, he had endeavoured to obtain two war-galleons from the Portuguese, and had he succeeded, the history of the Far East might have been radically different. Evidently, however, he committed a blunder which his countrymen in modern times have conspicuously avoided; he drew the sword without having fully ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... concealment of a fact of so much interest to her; and though she probably told the General, he never afterwards alluded to the episode. Indeed, Cecil's labours at Scutari were rather a tabooed subject, as Harry speedily discovered when one day he attempted to blunder out his gratitude ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... the leadership of Calhoun, came presently to regard the Missouri arrangement as a capital blunder on its part, and from the standpoint of that section this conclusion seems strictly logical. For the location of a slave line upon the Louisiana territory operated in fact as a decided check to the expansion ...
— Modern Industrialism and the Negroes of the United States - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 12 • Archibald H. Grimke
... drawn, and the new prosecuting attorney, in his haste, misspelled the name of the county—M Clean instead of M'Lean. His professional brethren were greatly amused at this evidence of inexperience; and made merry over the blunder. Finally, John T. Stuart, subsequently Douglas's political rival, moved that all the indictments be quashed. Judge Logan asked the discomfited youth what he had to say to support the indictments. Smarting under the gibes of Stuart, Douglas replied obstinately that he had nothing to say, as he supposed ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... many-coloured lines of clouds.(2) In the armoury of apologetics etymology has been the most serviceable weapon. It is easy to see that by aid of etymology the most repulsive legend may be compelled to yield a pure or harmless sense, and may be explained as an innocent blunder, caused by mere verbal misunderstanding. Brahmans, Greeks, and Germans have equally found comfort in this hypothesis. In the Cratylus of Plato, Socrates speaks of the notion of explaining myths by etymological guesses at the meaning of divine names as "a ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... such accidents truly, and serious things be they to encounter," answered Spike, hemming a little to clear his throat, as was much his practice whenever the widow ran into any unusually extravagant blunder; "yes, serious things to encounter. But the land-fall that I mean is a different sort of thing; being, as you well know, what we say when we come in sight of land, a'ter a v'y'ge; or, meaning the land we may happen first to see. ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... clerks of the kitchen;—and that he has no more pretensions as an author, than if his appointment had been to the mastership of the stag-hounds. When he takes state upon him with the public, therefore, in consequence of his office, he really is guilty of as ludicrous a blunder as the worthy American Consul, in one of the Hanse towns, who painted the Roman fasces on the pannel of his buggy, and insisted upon calling his foot-boy and clerk his lictors. Except when he is in his official ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... so abashed at her blunder, that she looked absolutely imploring, and Mr. Denis Oglethorpe smiled again. He felt inclined to make friends ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... only demanded that the return of these passengers be made at once with an apology, but did it in a way so offensive that a less balanced man in power would have lost his head and committed the fatal blunder. ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... different experience. Mrs. Brown's educational advantages had been limited to a knowledge of reading, writing and ciphering, with a something of grammar. Miss Brown's childhood had passed under the tutilage of accomplished masters. She could dance, execute a few showy pieces upon the piano without a blunder, utter glibly French and Italian phrases, and had, with the help of her teacher, finished, creditably, a landscape, a gorgeous sunset, of amber and crimson, and purple-tinted clouds, which hung in the most conspicuous position in her mother's drawing-room. Melinda read novels, frequented theatres, ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... the day with unwonted satisfaction. He had returned weary, hungry, and discontented, notwithstanding the fact that several brace of ducks hung on the piazza as trophies of his skill. He was in that uncomfortable frame of mind which results from charging one's self with a blunder. In the morning he had entered on the sport with his usual zest, but it had soon declined, and he wished he had remained at home. He remembered the children's intention of spending the day among the maples, and as the ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... found alone, and in a very disconsolate Condition. This Lady must, doubtless, said they to themselves, be the Queen of Babylon: And without listning to her Complaints, convey'd her instantly to my Husband Moabdar. Their gross Blunder at first incens'd his Majesty to the last Degree; but after he had view'd the Lady with an attentive Eye, he found she was extremely pretty, and was soon pacify'd. Her Name was Missouf. I have been since inform'd, that her Name in ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... hunt, returning with eight or ten deer carcasses, and perhaps an elk or a mountain sheep as well. I never became more than a fair hunter, and at times I had most exasperating experiences, either failing to see game which I ought to have seen, or committing some blunder in the stalk, or failing to kill when I fired. Looking back, I am inclined to say that if I had any good quality as a hunter it was that of perseverance. "It is dogged that does it" in hunting as in many other things. Unless in wholly exceptional cases, when we were very hungry, I never killed ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... of the sort. Dick, too, understood. He let Ripley get two or three feet in the lead. At Ripley, therefore, the second's interference hurled itself savagely. It was all done so quickly that the beguiled second had no time to rectify its blunder; for Fred Ripley was in the center of the squirming, interfering bunch and Dick Prescott had made a fair, firm, abrupt tackle. In an instant the ball was "down." Second had gained less than ...
— The High School Left End - Dick & Co. Grilling on the Football Gridiron • H. Irving Hancock
... so polite a husband, but I suppose they are all so the first fortnight, especially when married in so interesting and romantic a manner; I am very fond of the fancy of being thus married as it were; but I have a notion I shall blunder it out very soon: we were married on a party to Three Rivers, nobody with us but papa and Madame Villiers, who have not yet published the mystery. I hear some misses at Quebec are scandalous about Fitzgerald's being so much here; I will leave them in doubt a little, I think, merely to ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... the first place. On the day following that of your departure from Windermere, I was duly inducted by Cleon into my new duties. They are few in number, and by no means difficult. So far I have contrived to get through them without any desperate blunder. Another thing I have done of which you will be pleased to hear: I have contrived to ingratiate myself with the mulatto, and am in high favour with him. You were right in your remarks; he is worth cultivation, in so far that he is all-powerful ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... everything he says.' Horace Walpole's Letters, vi. 302. It is strange that Walpole should be so utterly ignorant of Johnson's courage and bodily strength. The date of Walpole's letter makes me suspect that Richard Burke dated his Jan. 6, 1775 (he should have written 1776), and that the blunder of a copyist has ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... of self-reproach and secret disturbance, vowed that the journey would do him good; that he was eager to see the old country once again. He had resolved, as the penance for his blunder, that he would not be the means of hindering his boy one day in his quest for Lucia. Nevertheless, the discussion grew warm, for Mr. Bellairs having vainly protested against a winter voyage for the Costellos, had his arguments all ready and in order, ...
— A Canadian Heroine - A Novel, Volume 3 (of 3) • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... in Australia. It is bad enough in England, where steeplechases only take place in winter, when the ground is soft, where the horses are properly schooled before being raced, and where most of the obstacles will yield a little if struck and give the horse a chance to blunder ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... time he went with a pale and anxious face to see Buttons. The young man promised secrecy, and when the Senator was telling his story tried hard to look serious and sympathetic. In vain. The thought of that scene, and the cause of it, and the blunder that had been made overwhelmed him. Laughter convulsed him. At last the Senator got up ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... way off to the right of it. My bump of direction tells me that we have been going to the right all of the time. Admitting that to be the case, I am afraid to retrace our steps. The Lord only knows what we might blunder into." ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... (this in a parenthesis, complimentarily intended)—"so it's all right. We can give you a better room lower down, if you're going to stay longer." Not knowing whether to laugh or to be embarrassed at this extraordinary conclusion of the blunder, Randolph answered that he had just come from the bank, adding, with a pardonable touch of youthful pride, that he was entering the bank's employment the ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... is worth your reading. I am smashed to atoms about Glen Roy. My paper was one long gigantic blunder from beginning to end. Eheu! Eheu! (524/1. See "Life and Letters," I., pages 68, 69, also pages ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... with horrified eyes. Maybe I was looking the same. It was plain enough now. He'd planned to poison the plants and drive us back. Murder of Hendrix had been a blunder when he'd thought it wasn't working properly. "What about Sam?" ...
— Let'em Breathe Space • Lester del Rey
... brought into action on one side. In the Mississippi Squadron sometimes only one-fourth could be used. To professional readers it may seem unnecessary to enter on such familiar and obvious details; but a military man, in making his estimate, has fallen into the curious blunder of making a fleet fire every gun, bow, stern, and both broadsides, into one fort, a hundred yards square; a feat which only could be performed by landing a ship in the centre of the works, in which case it could enjoy an all-round fire. The nine gunboats carried one heavy and one light ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... danger. I don't deny that Emily is as innocent of suspicion as ever. But the chances, next time, may be against us. How do you know to what lengths your curiosity may lead you? Or on what shocking discoveries you may not blunder with the best intentions? Some unforeseen accident may open her eyes to the truth, before you can prevent it. I ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... consider themselves the followers of the great Prophet in whose name they recite the Kalama, day in and day out, they will forfeit their title if they do not put their shoulders to the wheel and lift this cloud that is hanging on them. But we shall make a serious blunder. India will commit suicide, if we do not understand and appreciate the forces that are arrayed against us. We have got to face a mighty Government with all its power ranged against us. This composed of men who are able, courageous, capable of making ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... they have discovered the moderator of a presbytery; others, the bishop of a diocese; and others, the minister of an Irvingite congregation. But the basis on which all such theories are founded is a mere blunder as to the significance of an ecclesiastical title. The angels of the Seven Churches were neither moderators, nor diocesans, nor precentors, but messengers sent on an errand of love to an apostle ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... God and all good things were a very good and wise wish, Lettice," was Aunt Joyce's answer; "but to know evil things, this was the very blunder that our mother Eve made in Eden. Prithee, repeat it not. Now, Aubrey, ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... came towards them from the boat He was bent on being particularly polite to Miss Rutherford, feeling that he ought to atone for his unfortunate blunder with the boat He took off his cap ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... Absalom's blunder was fatal. He tried to land on his father's throne by treachery; he landed in a tree, caught by his head. He thought to win a crown; he got three hot darts between the ribs from Joab. He planned to have a pile ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... times a month (the best for the average) and still others may not be satisfied with less than three times a week. The human libido sexualis cannot be put into an iron mould, and you should pay no attention to religious fanatics who are ignorant of physiology and psychology and who can only blunder and bungle ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... there would be at least a possibility that in his earlier stages the man might blunder so seriously that the results of his blundering might be more than he could bear. The plan of the Deity is to give man a limited amount of free-will; if he uses that small amount well, he earns the ...
— A Textbook of Theosophy • C.W. Leadbeater
... tells me that it is no longer the fashion to refer to persons or things as being "simon-pure"; the fashion, as he says, passed out some years ago when a writer in a German paper "was led into an amusing blunder by an English review. The reviewer, having occasion to draw a distinction between George and Robert Cruikshank, spoke of the former as the real Simon Pure. The German, not understanding the allusion, gravely told his readers that George ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... blood mantled the cheek of James under this reproof. It is often the case that more shame is felt for a blunder than for a crime. In this instance the lad felt a sort of mortification at having done what Mr. Carman was pleased to call a silly thing, and he made up his mind that if they should ever over-pay him a thousand dollars at the bank, he should bring the amount to his employer, and let ...
— Tiger and Tom and Other Stories for Boys • Various
... Kunigunde has had a dozen at least, and only two are alive, my young Freiherr and my young Lady Ermentrude; and no wonder, you would say, if you could see the gracious Freiherrinn, for surely Dame Holda made a blunder when she fished her out of the fountain woman instead of man. She is Adlerstein herself by birth, married her cousin, and is prouder and more dour than our old Freiherr himself—fitter far to handle shield than swaddled babe. ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... means. He talks of credit being the vital element of national power; and from this he argues that the more "credit" a nation has—that is, the deeper it is in debt—the more powerful it becomes. In short, he confuses credit as opposed to discredit with credit as opposed to cash—a grievous blunder, surely. A nation's credit is like a merchant's; it becomes greater only as his debts become smaller; and people trust a government for the same reason as they trust an individual, mainly because every previous obligation has been ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... a word; I hardly moved, but simply allowed her to depart. I could not help realising that this was henceforth to be the intolerable character of the conjugal relations I had resumed eight years before. I told her peremptorily to keep quiet and not be guilty of any blunder either in judgment or in act, and tried to make her realise to what a serious state of affairs this foolish occurrence had brought us. She really seemed to understand what I meant, and promised to keep ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... him till't!" cried her mother, in the impotence and self despite of a mortifying blunder; "I'll ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... fails. Once more has the President on his hands the serious problem of finding the right man. This time the commission was given to General Joseph Hooker. With the later records before us, it is easy to point out that this selection also was a blunder. There were better men in the group of major-generals. Reynolds, Meade, or Hancock would doubtless have made more effective use of the power of the army of the Potomac, but in January, 1863, the relative ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... came and sat down by him, and talked about languages and literature. The writer, who was only a boy, was a little frightened at first, but, not wishing to appear a child of absolute ignorance, he summoned what little learning he had, and began to blunder out something about the Celtic languages and their literature, and asked the Lion who he conceived Finn Ma Coul to be? and whether he did not consider the "Ode to the Fox," by Red Rhys of Eryry, to be a masterpiece of pleasantry? Receiving no answer to these ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... toward the vanquished, in 1859; but, if we judge from what we know, which is all that any monarch can demand of the formers of opinion, Napoleon III. was guilty of a monstrous political and military blunder when he forced ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... accept an explanation, though it does not at all atone for what I said," continued the schoolmaster earnestly. "I am truly ashamed of myself for making such a stupid blunder." ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... On appearing before Velasquez, he had no thanks for all the trouble he had been at, and was even abused for not having made a settlement, though he had acted exactly according to his instructions. This was a capital blunder in Velasquez, as he seemed resolved to find a person fitted both for making discoveries and of betraying him by setting up for himself. One would have imagined that a man of so much good sense as Velasquez certainly had, would have had the judgment to retain in his employment a person ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... send the old lady packing, for the good of her health, and Mrs. Mackintosh and I'll help you and Cecil entertain, and we'll have a dance, and a marquee, and lots of punch. I dare say you've never been to a dance in your life," she rattled on, not giving him a chance to blunder out excuses. ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... mentioned was the one Darrin had been trying to get him to name. The German had unwittingly allowed himself to name the base port from which the mines were shipped. As soon as the German realized his blunder he used some ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock
... of newspapers from Mexico to Cape Horn during August, 1914, to the end of that year shows plainly that for several months public opinion had not cleared up, that the conflict seemed to be a frightful blunder, a terrific misunderstanding, that might have been avoided, and for which no one nation ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... life. My nose is turn-up, my mouth is large; I pocket other people's saucers and napkins; I am always making blunders. This is my last blunder. I shall never blush again. Farewell. Let the inscription on my tombstone be—'Died ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... king and the Parliament, which met again in February 1677 after a prorogation of fifteen months. The Country party stood in the way of such a reconciliation, but Danby resolved to break its strength by measures of unscrupulous vigour for which a blunder of Shaftesbury's gave an opportunity. Shaftesbury despaired of bringing the House of Commons, elected as it had been fifteen years before in a moment of religious and political reaction, to any steady opposition ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... Mr. Malone.—I love the memory of Edmond Malone, albeit he sometimes committed blunders. He committed a pitiable blunder when he broke his bow in shooting at the worthless Samuel Ireland; and he committed an {404} irreparable blunder when he whitewashed the monumental effigy of the matchless Shakspere. Of the blunder ascribed to him by a reverend ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 25. Saturday, April 20, 1850 • Various
... Mr. Morris. "Does the King, then, not realize that he is no longer the power in the state? The National Assembly will not tolerate Necker's dismissal. Will you not go instantly to Versailles and try to undo this fatal blunder of the King?" he asked. Monsieur de Castries ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... you; it costs you all the extra mileage money to offset their votes. As a final folly, you purpose deliberately to stir up the old factions. What was it Napoleon said? 'It is worse than a crime: it is a blunder.' I'll tell you now, not a Barela nor an Ascarate shall stir a foot in such a quarrel. If you want to bait Kit Foy, do it yourself—or set ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... were to succeed the mine explosion, but when I reached General Meade's headquarters I found that lamentable failure had attended the assault made when the enemy's works were blown up in the morning. Blunder after blunder had rendered the assault abortive, and all the opportunities opened by our expedition to the north side were irretrievably lost, so General Meade at once arrested the ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... they should march so slowly. The whole thing has been a hideous blunder, and the idea of encumbering a force of four thousand men with something like thirty thousand camp followers, and with a train of no less than nineteen thousand bullocks, to say nothing of other draught animals, is the most preposterous thing I ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... direction we are going. See that you do not paddle unconsciously in a curve. We shall certainly be pursued, and although our foes cannot see us well in the dark, some out of their number are likely to blunder upon us. If it comes to a battle you will notice that I have an extra rifle and pistol for you lying in the bottom of the canoe, and that I am something more than a supple dancer ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... march of the Roman legions: "They make a solitude, and call it peace." Strength! There are those in perdition at this moment who could tell them that what they call strength is the stupidity which adds to sin the increment of a huge blunder. ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... nevertheless her practical soul yearned over a well-dowered nun. When an "excellent novice" with a fortune of six thousand ducats presented herself at the gates of the poverty-stricken convent in Seville, Teresa, then in Avila, was consumed with anxiety lest such an acquisition should, through some blunder, be lost. "For the love of God," wrote the wise old saint to the prioress in Seville, "if she enters, bear with a few defects, for well does she ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... that we Frenchmen adore foreign women. As soon as we meet a Russian, an Italian, a Swede, a Spaniard, or an Englishwoman with a pretty face, we immediately fall in love with her. We enthuse over everything which comes from outside—clothes, hats, gloves, guns and—women. But what a blunder! ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... sensible he meant by crossing the river, and leaving his bow and arrows in my charge. If I owned such an arrangement the first thing I would do would be to fling it into the river. Whatever plan he had in mind when he swam over, must have been a blunder which is likely to ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... sometimes happen even in an easy passage. A difficult passage attracts more than usual of a translator's attention, and if he fails there, it is either because the difficulty cannot be overcome, or because he cannot overcome it. Mere inadvertence or sleepiness may sometimes cause a translator to blunder, when he would not have blundered if any friend had been ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... made that infernal blunder with the widow—confound her!—that is, I mean of course, bless her! It's all the same, you know. To-day you behold the miserable state to which I am reduced. To-morrow I will get a reply from her. Of course, she will consent to fly. I know very well how ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... noble face, but troubled and restless eyes, telling of a hurt soul. The other disciples were deeply impressed by his betrayal of the Master and of the common cause. Judas is the type of the lost leader. "Just for a handful of silver he left us, just for a ribbon to stick in his coat." Some leaders blunder and learn better; some sag to lower levels but plod on; some sell out. Judas could not bear to live. Read ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... first place, it is to be observed, that there seems to have been a blunder in this transaction; for according to the Hebrew idiom of the passage quoted above, the personage there spoken of, was to ride upon "an ass' colt;" whereas, the apostles, in order to be sure of fulfilling the prophecy, represent Jesus as riding upon an ass, and the colt, too! "They spread their ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... Milan. Instead of following up his advantage by promptly attacking the main army of the Imperialists, the French king dispatched a part of his force to Naples, and with the other turned aside to blockade the city of Pavia. This blunder enabled the Imperialists to reform their ranks and to march towards Pavia in order to join the besieged. Here on 24 February, 1525,—the emperor's twenty-fifth birthday,—the army of Charles won an overwhelming victory. Eight thousand French ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... I was beating for the body of my Jupiter; one of my men was finishing the head, another the legs; and it is easy to imagine what a din we made between us. It happened that a little French lad was working at my side, who had just been guilty of some trifling blunder. I gave the lad a kick, and, as my good luck would have it, caught him with my foot exactly in the fork between his legs, and sent him spinning several yards, so that he came stumbling up against the King precisely at the moment when his Majesty arrived. The King was vastly amused, but ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... to an order which all knew was a blunder, dashed into a valley lined with cannon, and charged an ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... to the serpents the secret of immortality. Since then all men have been mortal, but the serpents cast their skins every year and are immortal.[80] In this story we meet again with the incident of the reversed message; through a blunder or through the malice of the messenger the glad tidings of immortality are perverted into a melancholy message of death. A similar tale, with a similar incident, is told in Annam. They say that Ngoc hoang sent a messenger from heaven to men to say ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... pictured the stormy night and the simple old man who sought food and shelter, with the devoted little dog that "wasna 'is ain." Sick unto death he was, and full of ignorant prejudices and fears that needed wise handling. And there was the well-meaning landlord's blunder, humbly confessed, and the obscure and tragic result of it, in a foul and swarming rookery "juist ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... unfortunate but pardonable blunder," said Mr. Witham, "that I died, and reached the Paradise of Poets. I had, indeed, published volumes of verse, but with the most blameless motives. Other poets were continually sending me theirs, and, as I could not admire them, and did not like to reply ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... V., iv. 1, Pistol accosts the king with "Che vous la?" according to the first folio. Modern editors correct the intentional blunder. ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... and numbed and scarce awake, Out in the trench with three hours' watch to take, I blunder through the splashing mirk; and then Hear the gruff muttering voices of the men Crouching in cabins candle-chinked with light. Hark! There's the big bombardment on our right Rumbling and bumping; and the dark's a glare Of flickering horror ...
— Counter-Attack and Other Poems • Siegfried Sassoon
... a youngster,—and that, let me tell you, young friends, was some time ago,—they used to say that swallows lived in the mud all winter, as the eels do. The books made no such stupid blunder; only the ignorant people, such as never seem to use their eyes or their reason. It was one of the popular errors of the time. Silly as the notion seems, it has been held by a ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... hands, but there's a limit to the things a man will stand under the mess I'm laboring with. I'm going to do the best I can. What it will be I don't know. There's a deal of money at stake—my friends', the public's, my own—I'm responsible for it. I've made a terrible blunder. I am paying for it, but nothing that has happened has altered my idea of the duty I ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... gossip with some neighbor that lived on the opposite shore of the lake. And once a raven, roosting on the dry bough of a lightning-blasted pine, dreamed that the white moonlight was the light of dawn, and began to stir his sable wings, and croak a harsh welcome; but awakened by his blunder, and ashamed of his mistake, he broke off in the very midst of his discordant call, and again settled gloomily down amid his black plumes to his interrupted repose, making by his sudden silence the surrounding ...
— Holiday Tales - Christmas in the Adirondacks • W. H. H. Murray
... authors, and if my mind had not been tortured by my being a captive, and not knowing how long I was likely to remain so, I should have been comparatively happy. Our letters, when we did receive them, were always broken open and read to the commandant by one of the gendarmes who could blunder out a little English. If they contained anything against the French Government, or treated on politics, they never reached us. By these honourable means all our domestic concerns became known to the mighty chief, the ignorant, left-handed, ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... rendering throughout the most efficient services, and had the singular good fortune to increase his reputation. He assisted in driving the Americans out of Canada, and defeated them in the battle of Three Rivers, followed by that of Hubbardton, July 7, 1777. Had his views prevailed, the blunder of sending heavy German dismounted dragoons to Bennington, and the consequent disaster would never ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... me well enough, only you like to make me blunder where you can talk," said my wife, putting her hand in mine. "But I will try. Sometimes, after thinking about something for a long time, you come to a conclusion about it, and you think you have settled ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... had it, too, when lions tore them to pieces and bulls kited them on their horns in the Colosseum. Anyway, it was as plain as daylight that I had lost my time and money in bothering about Oppenstedt, and that I might as well give him up as the most incorrigible, stiff-necked, self-opinionated, blunder-headed ass and lunatic this side ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... course, what you mean. And, Billy, I'll confess that I've been sorry lots of times, since, that I spoke as I did to you, particularly when I saw how it grieved my brother William to have you go away. If I blundered then, I'm sorry; and perhaps I did blunder. At all events, that is only the more reason now why I am so anxious to do what I can to rectify that old mistake, and plead ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... Basil, not at all abashed by his blunder. "Nicer than lay figures to work with, eh? all those ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... every great nation is concerned. Such problems, however, are not simple ones; rather they are infinitely complex; and he who would set himself to analyse the processes by which the ultimate results are arrived at will blunder hopelessly if he takes account of ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... is eminently plain and practical, if not an all too obvious one. It is this: if all your preparation and confidence fails you at the crucial moment, and memory plays the part of traitor in some particular,—if, in short, you blunder on a detail of the story, never admit it. If it was an unimportant detail which you misstated, pass right on, accepting whatever you said, and continuing with it; if you have been so unfortunate as ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... he would say, to see how he would try to get out of the difficulty or flounder staggeringly through it. Her mother knew in an instant that her own speech had been a stupid blunder. She had put the man into exactly the position Joan would enjoy seeing him in. But he wasn't in a position, ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... gun and powder horn leaning against a newly cut stump, a mounted Indian, surprised at the sight of the plow, lance in hand, fleeing toward the setting sun, with the Latin motto, "Quae sursum volo videre," ("I wish to see what is above"). A blunder was made by the engraver, in substituting the word "Quo" for "Quae," in the motto, which destroyed its meaning. Some time after, it was changed to the French motto, "L'Etoile du Nord" ("Star of the North"), and thus remains until the ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... hysteria among policemen, and similar ascertained facts; it ends with a chapter that is generally called "The Remedy." It is almost wholly due to this careful, solid, and scientific method that "The Remedy" is never found. For this scheme of medical question and answer is a blunder; the first great blunder of sociology. It is always called stating the disease before we find the cure. But it is the whole definition and dignity of man that in social matters we must actually find the cure before we ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... and said: "Although not called on for a speech, I shall make a short one. I have learned a thing or two this evening. When I make a blunder I am not ashamed to acknowledge it. Mr. Hemstead and I both wished to bring about the same thing, only I went about it the wrong way, and he the right. What I then said as a threat, I now say as a promise. ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... Corpus Act—the announcement of which broke upon us so suddenly. The overlooking of it was a fatal inadvertance. Owing to it we were routed without a struggle, and were led into captivity without glory. We suffer not for a rebellion, but a blunder." ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... Great and Little Parks. Several villages of little note stand upon it. Of these Wokingham has the distinction of an ancient hostelry yclept the Rose; and the celebrity of the Rose is a beautiful daughter of the landlord of a century and a half ago. This lady missed her proper fame by the blunder of a merry party of poets who one evening encircled the mahogany of her papa. It was as "fast" a festivity as such names as Gay and Swift could make it. Their combined efforts resulted in the burlesque of Molly Mog. These two and some others contributed each a verse in honor ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... the unpardonable blunder, from her point of view, of not supporting the Southern States in the American War of Secession, a rival to England's world-wide Empire has appeared on the other side of the Atlantic in the form of the United States of North America, which are a grave menace to England's fortunes. ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... which it brings have passed away without improvement, and vice appears to prevail when the passions have subsided. The wretch, who, after having seen the consequences of a thousand errors, continues still to blunder, and whose age has only added obstinacy to stupidity, is surely the object either of abhorrence or contempt, and deserves not that his gray hairs should secure him from insult. Much more is he to be abhorred, who, as he has advanced in age, has receded from virtue, and become more wicked—with ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... "that was a stroke. Lord, how he will love you when he discovers the trick! What a boor he makes of himself to cover his designs! Here is a bag of trouble, and necessity has forced our hands into it. For all his gruffness and seeming impatience, D'Herouville has never yet made a blunder or ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... He suffered pangs of self-rebuke; it seemed to him that he ought to have found some better way, in word or deed, for manifesting the sympathy of true friendship. He had betrayed a doubt which must for ever affect Hugh's feeling towards him. But this was his lot in life, to blunder amid trying circumstances, to prove unequal to every grave call upon him. He tried vainly to see what else he could have done, yet felt that another man would have faced the situation to better purpose. One resolve, ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... help me out," she said to John as he bowed and seated himself. "'Some one has blundered,' and here is a whole bottle of champagne which must be drunk to save it. Are you prepared to help turn my, or somebody's, blunder ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... subject he necessarily falls into mistakes, and it is interesting to watch his gradual progress into fuller information and better nourished irony, without his ever needing to admit that he has made a blunder or to appear conscious of correction. Suppose, for example, he had incautiously founded some ingenious remarks on a hasty reckoning that nine thirteens made a hundred and two, and the insignificant Bantam, hitherto silent, seemed to spoil the flow of ideas by stating that the product ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... secret blanket bracket bucket goblet musket rocket gimlet closet carpet racket hornet mantle camel model parcel ravel panel saddle travel slumber chapel canter pickle lumber cinder printer master whisper helper sister corner barber under lobster farmer scamper winter number tumbler blunder jester pitcher milker farther monster marble cycle uncle thimble jumble grumble stumble tingle tickle speckle candle nimble tumble ankle twinkle single dangle dimple cackle buckle magic picnic handle bundle ...
— The Beacon Second Reader • James H. Fassett
... skipper of the Chih' Yuen, during which he ascertained that the vessel had fortunately struck only very lightly; and, as she had been considerably sheltered from the seas by the part of the reef through which she had somehow managed to blunder before striking, she had not bumped to any extent, and was making but little water. It was therefore to be hoped that her bottom was not so badly injured as Wong-lih had at first anticipated, and that, at the rising of the ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... bundling, and on your return home preach it to them, for experience has told us that city folks send more children into the country without fathers or mothers to own them, than are born among us; therefore, you see, a sofa is more dangerous than a bed.' The poor priest, seemingly convinced of his blunder, exclaimed, 'Nec vitia nostra, neo remedia pati possumus,' hoping thereby to get rid of his guests; but an old matron pulled off her spectacles, and, looking the priest in the face like a Roman heroine, said, 'Noli putare ...
— Bundling; Its Origin, Progress and Decline in America • Henry Reed Stiles
... burnt by mistake. The numbers and description tallied, but the destination was Frankfort. As the travellers quitted the Frankfort road at Clermont, the last stage before Varennes, this was a transparent blunder. Half an hour had been lost, but the first stage, Bondy, was reached at half-past one. Here Fersen, who had sat by his coachman, flourishing the whip, got down, and the family he had striven so hard to save passed out of his protection. He wished ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... the irresolute friendship of Lothario? though perhaps, as to the time and place where those several persons lived, that good historian may be deplorably deficient. But the most known instance of this kind is in the true history of Gil Blas, where the inimitable biographer hath made a notorious blunder in the country of Dr Sangrado, who used his patients as a vintner doth his wine-vessels, by letting out their blood, and filling them up with water. Doth not every one, who is the least versed in physical history, ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... perspicuity of perception, much force of character; and Franceska's, scarcely yet formed, showed that she was affectionate, romantic, and, of all things in the world, fond of horses and of boating. Emilia's was held as a great blunder, for she was said to have an eye devoted to temporal advantages, also volatile, yet of great determination, triumphing over every obstacle, and in ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in favor of Cornwall. Some of the members of the Legion insisted that Colonel Saylor as a candidate was using his connection with their organization too strongly. He made an egregious blunder in an address to the Clear Creek miners and when his speech was reported he ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... understands English 2. Head of firm's statement and has been taught American business and factory methods," says Mr. Sicher, "she doesn't hesitate and Statement in concrete blunder; she understands what she is terms told and ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... first. He had been furtively repairing the viewscreen and thinking dark thoughts the while. There was sick dread for him in the contemplation of the future, for after this last unfortunate blunder DeCastros would be certain to keep his promise and have him examined. This might very well be his last voyage, and Mr. Wordsley had known for quite a long time that he could not live anywhere except out ...
— The Marooner • Charles A. Stearns
... usual information, when the "stranger" barque was discovered to be no other than their old friend and faithful tender the Agrippina; and the Alabama continued her course, not a little amused at her own blunder in thus chasing her ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... produced a permanent impression upon Rex, much at variance with what he had felt towards herself, as distinguished from her outward appearance. He had next attributed his antipathy to jealousy of her; he wondered, now, how he could have made such a blunder. He had nothing but gratitude for her now, for the share she had taken in saving his brother's life, nothing but gratitude and a certain brotherly affection, as undefined as his ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... American novelist and artist, F. Hopkinson Smith, in his book, Dickens's London, fell into a similar blunder. Indeed, his book contains some glaring mistakes, owing, no doubt, to the fact, which he admits, that he gathered his information from any Tom, Dick or Harry he came in contact with during his wanderings. In describing ...
— The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick" - With Some Observations on their Other Associations • B.W. Matz
... to do some work at last," she rejoined. "Work at last. I'll blunder a bit, but I'll try a great deal, and perhaps I'll do some good.... And I'll be there to nurse you if you get fever or anything," she ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... canons of the law in regard to perpetuities or restraints upon alienation; or whether in his enthusiasm for the Society for the Propagation of Free Thinking, which he had established and intended to perpetuate, he had not been guilty of some technical slip or blunder that would enable me to seize upon its endowment for my own benefit. But the will, alas! had been drawn by that most careful of draughtsmen, old Tuckerman Toddleham, of 14 Barristers' Hall, Boston, and was as solid as the granite blocks of the court-house and as impregnable of legal ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... this classical blunder of so many eminent annotators is, that these words are not to be found in the usual college and school editions of Euripides. The edition from which the above correct extract is made is in ten volumes, published at Padua in 1743-53, with an Italian translation ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853 • Various
... farther, it will only be to the judgment of a select few, who are free from prejudices and capable of examining; his work. Nothing, indeed, can be a stronger presumption of falsehood than the approbation of the multitude; and Phocion, you know, always suspected himself of some blunder when he was attended with ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... been nailed upon Calvary, and Jesus die at a good old age, crowned with honour? It was not yet God's time in 1817, but God's time was helped forward, as it generally is, by this anticipation of it. It is a commonplace that a premature outbreak puts back the hands of the clock and is a blunder. Nine times out of ten this is untrue, and a revolt instantaneously quenched in blood is not merely the precursor, but the direct progenitor ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... another blunder. Lord Abinger, it seems, is too Conservative to resign. After all the editorial boasting about "exclusive information," "official intelligence," &c. it is very evident that the "Morning Twaddler" must not be looked upon ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... Directory in the summer of 1799, were temporary measures adopted to stem the tide of invasion and to crush revolts; but they were regarded as signs of a permanently terrorist policy, and their removal greatly strengthened the new consular rule. The blunder of nearly all the revolutionary governments had been in continuing severe laws after the need for them had ceased to be pressing. Bonaparte, with infinite tact, discerned this truth, and, as will shortly appear, set himself to found his government on ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... that side is his." The evasion came too late; persons who had inconvenient memories saw through the shuffling of a pseudo-prophet, who only managed to cast a retrospective gleam of insincerity over his fortune-telling, to convert blunder into bad faith, and to stultify his present along with his past position. The leek had to be eaten at last: why, after so many "prave 'ords" of superiority and defiance, confess that the eating of it had been more than ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... and experience are their invariable results; whereas, I doubt whether suffering purely mental has any good result, unless it be to make us by comparison less sensitive to physical suffering . . . Ten years ago, I should have laughed at your account of the blunder you made in mistaking the bachelor doctor for a married man. I should have certainly thought you scrupulous over-much, and wondered how you could possibly regret being civil to a decent individual, merely because he happened to be single, instead ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... 10,000 of their countrymen cut to pieces, retired into Scotland without loss.' Fifteen years after this was written Scott began the composition of 'Marmion,' and it is interesting to note that, so early in life as the date of this letter indicates, he was so keenly alive to the great blunder in military tactics made by James IV and his advisers, and so manifestly stirred to eloquent expression ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... things, let me warn you against a favourite blunder of your countrymen. Don't endeavour to explain peculiarities of action in this country by singularities of race or origin; don't try to make out that there are special points of view held that are unknown on the other side of the Channel, or that there are other differences ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... proportions must be altered; and I have no hesitation in calling that unmeaning exaggeration of parts in St. Peter's, of flutings, volutes, friezes, etc., in the proportions of a smaller building, a vulgar blunder, and one that destroys all the majesty that the building ought to have had—and still more I should so call all imitations and adaptations of large buildings on a small scale. The true test of right proportion is that it shall itself ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... necessary, I have availed myself of the opportunity thus afforded me by the publishers to revise it. Some slight revision was necessary to correct one or two errors which crept unavoidably into the earlier edition. By an oversight, an important typographical blunder went uncorrected into the former edition, making the date of the first use of the word "Socialism" 1835 instead of 1833. That error, I regret to say, has been subsequently copied into many important publications. Even more important were some errors in the biographical sketch ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... in a doctrine, means, that we understand what the propositions are, and accept them. But if through blunder we accept a wrong set of propositions, so as to believe a false doctrine, we nevertheless have Implicit (or Virtual) Faith in the true one, if only we say from the heart: "Whatever the Church believes, I believe." ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... Death or victory Was his device, "and there was no mistake," Except his last; and then he did but die, A blunder which the wisest men will make. Aloft, where mighty floods the mountains break, To stand, the target of the thousand eyes, And down into the coil and water-quake, To leap, like Maia's offspring, from the skies— ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... himself for making that stupid blunder, and tried to rectify it by saying he remember now that it WAS at noon Monday that the man gave him the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Hill, that black spot of bitter memories to every Briton, and of natural exultation and pride to the Boers; and on Colley's grave, the unfortunate commander, whose unhappy and most unaccountable military blunder led to the lamentable and fatal defeat, which cost him his life, and resulted in the miserable fiasco—the retrocession of the Transvaal to the Boers. It is impossible to estimate the damage done to British influence, prestige, and power by the political consequences resulting ...
— A Winter Tour in South Africa • Frederick Young
... that when the Catholic church flourished, the population was actually more numerous and richer, that the care of the priests and monks made pauperism impossible, and that ever since the hideous blunder perpetrated by the reformers everything has been going from bad to worse. When it was retorted that the census proved the population to be growing, he replied that the census was a lie. Were the facts truly stated, he declares, we should have a population of near twenty-eight million in England ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... to regret this blunder of the postmaster on account of the enclosures, some of which I wished to have got to your hands without delay, that they might have undergone the consideration and acting upon which were suggested in the letter accompanying ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... living picture. The father protecting his child like an eagle; Bartley cooled in a moment, and hanging his head apart, gloomy and alarmed at the mad blunder rage had betrayed him into; Colonel Clifford amazed and puzzled, and beginning to see the consequences of all this; Julia clasping her hands in rapture and thrilling interest at so romantic an incident; Fitzroy beaming with delight at his ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... monument of Bavaria is the Val Halla, a modern temple designed to receive memorials of all the great names of Germany. The idea is kingly, and so is the temple; but it is built on the model of the Parthenon—evidently a formidable blunder in a land whose history, habits, and genius, are of the north. A Gothic temple or palace would have been a much more suitable, and therefore a finer conception. The combination of the palatial, the cathedral, and the fortress style, would have given scope to superb invention, if invention was to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... of childhood, climbed up in the auto. It was a simple matter to even blunder on pushing the button that would set the self-starter in operation. The car had been left standing on a level bit of road, but, just ahead of it, was a rather steep slope. Mollie had neglected to leave the emergency brake set, and when the motor started there ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope
... have done, madam," George rejoins, with a laugh, "I made this same defence which I am making to you. I said I offered to the Prince the best soldier in the family, and the two gentlemen allowed that my blunder at least had some excuse. Who knows but that they may set me right with his Royal Highness? The taste I have had of battles has shown me how little my genius inclines that way. We saw the Scotch play which everybody is talking about t'other night. And when the hero, ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... idea may become, it can rest on no other or sounder basis than which is presented to us in the psychology of primitive man. Each stage of theistic belief grows out of the proceeding stage, and if it can be shown that the beginning of this evolution arose in a huge blunder, I quite fail to see how any subsequent development can convert this unmistakable blunder into a demonstrable truth." ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... these days it will be recognised as harsh to assign limits to the all-embracing boundlessness of truth, and it will be more reasonably assumed that each of the three possible causes of misquotation must have had its share in the apparent blunder. The art of writing things that shall sound right and yet be wrong has made so many reputations, and affords comfort to such a large number of readers, that I could not venture to neglect it; the Latin grammar, however, is a subject on which some of the younger members of the community ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... itself against the sceptic: the economist of 1800 was no longer quite sure of his ground. He was now suspected of being fallible; and, what seemed of worse augury, he was beginning himself to suspect as much. To one capital blunder he was obliged publicly to plead guilty. What it was, we shall have occasion to mention immediately. Meantime it was justly thought that, in a dispute loaded with such prodigious practical consequences, good sense and prudence ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... you mean by that charitable blunder, concerning the widow, in your last letter? I never knew before that a woman was a widow merely because her husband was transported, as he ought to be, for sheep stealing, or because he happened to live, by compulsion, in another country. However, no matter; ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... and pastry burn. Try not to mind the banter of your relations and friends at any possible failure. Many well-meaning efforts to acquire this useful knowledge have been nipped in the bud by the thoughtless, silly way in which some people will laugh at any mistake or blunder. A cake which has caught in baking, or a pudding with the sugar left out, will probably afford them an inexhaustible subject of mirth. Make up your mind, however, not to be discouraged by any of these things. Practice will give nimbleness to your fingers and strength to your memory. ...
— The Skilful Cook - A Practical Manual of Modern Experience • Mary Harrison
... be out of the country," she answered, briefly. "I go down to Savannah, secure Louise from this blunder—for there is really nothing to be proven against her as a spy—and then, farewell, or ill, to Carolina. I do not expect to enter it again. My arrangements are all made. Nothing has been forgotten. As to my good Louise, your informer has not been made ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... and their most necessary reforms," Newman declares and reiterates that this lack of local treasuries is a "hideous blunder," and adds, "every coin in every province is liable to be spent in some war." He urges other changes, which have come to pass in some measure, such as a Viceroy, a "prince of the blood royal," sent out to "receive their occasional homage." But ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... feet, and he voted against the man in the White House who was said to use gold and silver on his table and dress himself before costly French mirrors. Nor was he certain in his more serious vein whether after all Jackson had not made a sad blunder in choosing the New York politician to carry out his policies. Without real argument or any serious presentation of the issues the Whigs, appealing to what were considered Western prejudices, built log cabins on the public squares, wore coonskin caps, and sang Van Buren out of office to the tune ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... Kant's old friends, that for the space of more than thirty years, during which he had been in the habit of reading the newspaper published by Hartung, Lampe delivered it with the same identical blunder on every day of publication.—'Mr. Professor, here is Hartmann's journal.' Upon which Kant would reply—'Eh! what?—What's that you say? Hartmann's journal? I tell you, it is not Hartmann, but Hartung: ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... I am going to let you off so," said he; "you must give me half-a-dozen kisses at least to prove that you have forgiven me for making so great a blunder." ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... such a woman as Mrs. Ready. Who will venture to excuse such an eccentric proceeding? Would not the whole world blame you for your incorrigible blunder? It had, however, one good effect. It quickly cleared the room of your intrusive guest; who swept out of the apartment with a haughty "Good morning." And well she might be offended; she had accidentally heard the truth, which no one ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... on blunder when they have to choose by ballot some hare-brained candidate who solicits the honour of representing them, and takes upon himself to know all, to do all, and to organize all. But when they take upon themselves to ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... every door, I might almost say certainly every panelled door that was constructed twenty years since. I first discovered the secret of our blunder, when visiting a castle in France, that dated back from the time of the crusade. It was a chateau of the Montmorencies, that had passed into the hands of the Conde family by marriage; and the courtly old domestic, ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... charms of Livingstone's character, and one of the secrets of his power—his personal interest in each individual, however humble—appeared in connection with Shobo, the Bushman guide, who misled them and took the blunder so coolly. "What a wonderful people," he says in his Journal, "the Bushmen are! always merry and laughing, and never telling lies wantonly like the Bechuana. They have more of the appearance of worship than any of the Bechuana. ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... the benefit. disipar dissipate, scatter, put to flight, drive away; —se be dissipated, be scattered. disolver dissolve, dissipate, scatter, disperse. disparate m. folly, piece of folly, blunder. distante adj. distant, afar. distinguir distinguish, see clearly. distrado, -a distracted, absentminded. diverso, -a various, dissimilar, different. divertir amuse. dividir divide, separate, ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... his gun and powder horn leaning against a newly cut stump, a mounted Indian, surprised at the sight of the plow, lance in hand, fleeing toward the setting sun, with the Latin motto, "Quae sursum volo videre," ("I wish to see what is above"). A blunder was made by the engraver, in substituting the word "Quo" for "Quae," in the motto, which destroyed its meaning. Some time after, it was changed to the French motto, "L'Etoile du Nord" ("Star of the North"), and thus remains ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... all like following them, but my evil genius led me in that wretched town from one blunder to another, and so I went in ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... out. "However it is all to the north and east, and there is still opportunity for us to get safely away into the ravine. I cannot understand why our forces have not taken advantage of it—in that way they could have struck the enemy a stunning blow on the left. There's a blunder somewhere. But we can hold the house no longer; only before I go I must know that you believe ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... sleep that night. She tossed in a restless agony of remembering, and the pitiable party seemed a life-failure, as she lay thinking of it in the dark, a colossal blunder never to be obliterated. They were unlucky—the Monroes. They never could ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... other—and even as far as Leith and Portobello. I trembled. And my reason for trembling was that the celebrated bald expert had quite recently examined me for my Final in surgery. On that dread occasion I had made one bad blunder, so ridiculous that Toddy's mood had passed suddenly from grim ferociousness to wild northern hilarity. I think I am among the few persons in the world who have seen ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... so, indeed, or you wouldn't be sent for medicine, you're always making some blunder. You come here, and don't know what description ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... of Henry II. As Henry II lived in the twelfth century, and as neither Coleridge nor Wordsworth ever refer to the language of Henry II as their standard, the statement in the text may probably be considered as a blunder ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... of his mission without perpetrating, as he thought, any disastrous blunder, Mr. Sapp brought the interview to a close with a few commonplace remarks, and hurried away to enjoy in solitary self-communion the thick-crowding visions of ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... to spend the day with her the prospect gave me the greatest joy, but the aftertaste of the visit was generally bitter, for usually I committed some mortifying blunder in that family where I felt myself so misunderstood. Every time I wished to have Jeanne at my house for dinner it was necessary for my aunt Bertha, who was a person of authority in the eyes of Jeanne's parents, to arrange the ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... as meaning the new house or city,[1] a mistake natural to a Roman who was aware that it was in fact the new part of the city, and alternatively called by the Greek name [Greek: kainopolis], but an extraordinary blunder for a Jew, who would surely know that it meant the House of Olives, while the Aramaic or popular name for "new city" would be Bet-Hadta. He does not once refer to Mount Zion, but knows the hill by its Greek name of Acra. Yet again it is significant that he inserts in his geography pagan touches ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... any high table for the nobility, though there was a side-table for the children, at which, when the Shepherd of Ettrick was about to seat himself, his friend probably whispered that it was reserved for the "little lords and ladies, and their playmates." This blunder may seem undeserving of any explanation; but it is often in small matters that the strongest feelings are most strikingly betrayed—and this story is, in exact {p.088} proportion to its silliness, indicative of the jealous feeling which mars and distorts so many of Hogg's representations of Scott's ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... he has made. We all have our favorites in past history as well as in modern politics, and few lists would precisely duplicate each other. So the only thing which would seriously afflict the editor with a sense of having made a bad blunder would be, if some one should detect a really gaping chasm, a neglect to treat somewhere among the lives some important item of our national history falling within the period which the series is designed ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... the young man show me how to use it." She smiled rather ironically. "Naturally I was ignorant in the matter, and I didn't want to make a blunder in its use." ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... to cough, then looked out of the window, and softly whistled to himself. Lettice, meanwhile, cast about hastily in her mind for the possible bearing of what her brother might have to say. She was about to take advantage of his blunder, and decline to hear anything further; but for more than one reason which immediately occurred to her, she thought that it would be better ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... "I'm rejoiced, poor fellow, he's so much better than I expected; and it's all for the best that I find the bird flown, which spares me the vexation of confessing to him the blunder I made in my calculations this morning, which he must have ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... within a coffin, Pray, gentlefolks, forbear your scoffin'; A Boat a judge! yes, where's the blunder A wooden Judge is no such wonder! And in his robes you must agree, No Boat was better dekt than he. 'Tis needless to describe him fuller, In short he was an ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... mean to convey my decided opinion, that the friendship of Portugal is necessary to this country. If we deprive Portugal of the advantages of this wine trade for a revenue of 100,000 l., putting political economy and commerce out of the question, we shall make the greatest political blunder that has been seen for a long ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington
... was by a court-martial. As the corps passed from my command the next morning, and had been under by orders only a few days, I have never made any effort to fix, even in my own mind, the responsibility for that blunder. ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... explanation a little further. The three Matzoth Shimmurim used in the Haggadah Service were made with especial care, and in medieval times were denominated Priest, Levite, Israelite, in order to discriminate among them. Picard, by an amusing blunder, speaks of a gateau des levites; he, of course, means the middle cake. From several authorities it is clear that the three Matzoth were inscribed in some cases with these three words, in others with the letters Alef, Beth, Gimmel, in order ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... found to be an absolute necessity. Mere handicraft, however skilled, could not secure the requisite precision of workmanship; nor could the parts be turned out in sufficient quantity to meet any large demand. It was therefore requisite to devise machine-tools which should not blunder, nor turn out imperfect work;—machines, in short, which should be in a great measure independent of the want of dexterity of individual workmen, but which should unerringly labour in their prescribed ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... statement and allusion on the dominant topic. When he first adopts a subject he necessarily falls into mistakes, and it is interesting to watch his gradual progress into fuller information and better nourished irony, without his ever needing to admit that he has made a blunder or to appear conscious of correction. Suppose, for example, he had incautiously founded some ingenious remarks on a hasty reckoning that nine thirteens made a hundred and two, and the insignificant Bantam, hitherto silent, seemed to spoil the flow of ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... such as regularly come upon the tables of men of wealth, would have been just as nutritious, just as wholesome, and in every way just as good, save in the gratification to pride and palate. He was committing an immense economic blunder. Like thousands of others, he did so in the belief that ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various
... his brother-in-law's house and the Buntingford people. He had known well of the proposed marriage; but he was a man who could not think of two things at the same time, and thus had committed the blunder. ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... although founded on a blunder, and in all probability an intentional one, soon became a precept, and has been strictly obeyed to this day.[125] The word Jehovah is never pronounced by a pious Jew, who, whenever he meets with it in Scripture, substitutes for it the word Adonai or Lord—a practice ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... such gigantic blunder as that," returned Tom firmly, "then we'd deserve to be run out. We wouldn't have the nerve to put in another ...
— The Young Engineers in Colorado • H. Irving Hancock
... noting the familiar signal, smiled again. Then leaning forward in his chair he said: "Jeff, I have been keeping my eye on you ever since those days when our line was building into Rubio City and you handled the right-of- way for us. I have never caught you in a blunder yet. When it comes to sizing up a proposition all around I don't believe you have an equal. Now look here." With a quick movement he took a paper from a pigeon-hole in his desk and laid it before ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... without thinking of Shakspeare, who towers above them all. We have yet to discover an editor capable of doing him full justice. Some of Johnson's notes are very amusing, and those of recent editors occasionally provoke a smile. If once a blunder has been made it is persisted in. Take, for instance, a glaring one in the 2nd part of Henry IV., where, in the apostrophe to sleep, "clouds" ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.11.17 • Various
... uphill work at first. It was found that Adams could blunder on pretty well with the small words, but made sad havoc among the long ones. Still his condition was pronounced hopeful. As to Sally, she seemed to take up the letters at the first sitting, and even began to form ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... were hardly less fond of having their own way than the President was of having his. The incompatibility of temper was not altogether on one side in that family quarrel. But all were equally responsible for such a blunder as the enactment of the Alien and Sedition Laws. The provocation, it is true, was unquestionably great. Refugees from abroad had crowded to the United States, many of whom were professional agitators, and some were very ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... two farmers who had had a disagreement over a horse-trade. On the day of the trial, Mr. Logan, having bought a new shirt, open in the back, with a huge standing collar, dressed himself in extreme haste, and put on the shirt with the bosom at the back, a linen coat concealing the blunder. He dazed the jury with his knowledge of "horse points"; and as the day was sultry, took off his coat and "summed" up in his shirt-sleeves. Lincoln, sitting behind him, took in the situation, and when his turn came he remarked ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... little time they are. You take ordinary care of yourself and keep out of any more civil wars, and you have sixty more years, at least. Your six years at school are only one-tenth of that. I was fifty when I came here to this Creator's blunder of a planet. Say I had only twenty more years; I spent a quarter of them playing town drunk here. I'm the one who ought to be in a rush and howling about lost time, not you. I ought to be in such a hurry I'd take the Simon Bolivar to ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... going on in New Brunswick. The term of the legislature would expire in the following June; and the Tilley government had decided to dissolve and present the Quebec resolutions to a newly elected legislature, a blunder in tactics due, it may be, to over-confidence. The secrecy which had shrouded the proceedings of the delegates at first was turned to account by their opponents, who set in motion a campaign of mendacity and misrepresentation. The actual terms became known too late to counteract ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... highest kind of modern progress, and let them avoid what are the mere non-essentials of the present-day civilization, and, above all, the vices of modern civilized nations. Let these men keep open minds. It would be a capital blunder to refuse to copy, and thereafter to adapt to your own needs, what has raised the Occident in the scale of power and justice and clean living. But it would be a no less capital blunder to copy what is cheap ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... into the countries watered by the Dnieper. I am rather inclined to believe that this reference of the battle to an earlier period may be the correct explanation. But Danapri (Dnieper) may be only a blunder of Jordanes, who is often ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... was a patriot by saying: "I don't care if he's patriotic for the country, but is he patriotic for me?" Franz Josef is cold, pitiless, and does not hesitate to ruin in a moment his most faithful servitor if he is at any time guilty of failure, or commits a blunder. Even when a minister or general is forced to carry out an order in spite of strong protests, he has relentlessly broken him if any catastrophe has resulted. A notable case is that of the general who commanded the Austrian armies in the ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... the Superintendent, with a slight smile. "Owing to the inexcusable blunder, I'm afraid something about what it contains may leak out prematurely. Those pests, the reporters, are everywhere; ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... events, off their throats; and the crowd who followed the consul home were sincere enough when they hailed such a vigorous avenger as the 'Father of his Country'. But none the less it was that which politicians have called worse than a crime—it was a political blunder; and Cicero came to find it so in after years; though—partly from his immense self-appreciation, and partly from an honest determination to stand by his act and deed in all its consequences—he never suffered the shadow of such ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... will draw the conclusion that John's Gospel is not to be trusted in the given case, because he does not give us a certain incident, and others might draw the conclusion that the other three Evangelists are not to be trusted because they do give it us. And the whole fabric is built up upon a blunder, and would have been avoided if people had listened when John said to them: 'I knew a great many things about Jesus Christ, but I did not put them down here because I was not writing a biography, but preaching a gospel; and what I wanted to proclaim was that Jesus is the Christ, the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... thank him for saving you from my stupid blunder," answered the girl, artfully avoiding all possibility of personal obligation. "Would you like me to ...
— Wanted—A Match Maker • Paul Leicester Ford
... was found on our men by the Boers on October 30. Accordingly a very careful inspection was ordered, and a few Mark IV. bullets were found in our men's pouches, and at once removed. Their presence was purely accidental, and undoubtedly caused by a blunder in the Ordnance Department long before the war, and it was in consequence of this that some hollow-headed bullets were fired by the English early in the war ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... my flight, except the stress of blundering against trees and stumbling over the railings. To blunder against some trees is very stressful. At last I could go no further: I had run full tilt into a gasworks. I fell and ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... that I should make such a blunder!" exclaimed Flora. "I am sure I shall enjoy my party a great deal more now ...
— The Birthday Party - A Story for Little Folks • Oliver Optic
... at least be fairly lodged and fed, I can ensure a supper and a bed; Let us this night as one of pleasure date, And of surprise: it is an act of Fate." "Go on," the 'Squire in happy temper cried; "I like such blunder! I approve such guide." They ride, they halt, the farmer comes in haste, Then tells his wife how much their house is graced; They bless the chance, they praise the lucky son. That caused the error—Nay! it was not one, But their good fortune: cheerful grew the 'Squire, ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... shall act agreeably to circumstances, but avoid drawing ourselves into a false movement, which, if cavalry had command of the rivers, would give the enemy the advantage of us. His lordship plays so well, that no blunder can be hoped from him to recover a bad step ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... had seen the estimated cost of the establishment, further progress was arrested by want of funds. Before the end of the century everybody concerned had come to the conclusion that the villa of Brancifort was a great blunder,—the "settlers are a scandal to the country by their immorality. They detest their exile, ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... say, with many different calls, [sic no close to parenthesis] needs to have writing to refer to. Do not suppose for one moment that I do not trust you, my good fellow: nor that I think you have made any great blunder in what Accounts you did keep last year. I only mean that a man ought to be able to point out at once, to himself or to others, all the items of an Account; to do which, you know, gave you great Trouble—You must not be too proud to learn a little of some one used ...
— Edward FitzGerald and "Posh" - "Herring Merchants" • James Blyth
... improved, and many of your notions remind me of Aristotle. That philosopher was one of my most intimate acquaintances. I liked him as much for his terrible ill temper, as for his happy knack at making a blunder. There is only one solid truth in all that he has written, and for that I gave him the hint out of pure compassion for his absurdity. I suppose, Pierre Bon-Bon, you very well know to what divine moral truth ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... defect, people adduced the fact that, apparently, she had not anticipated the entry of Great Britain into the war at all, while her treatment of Belgium immediately afterwards was universally pronounced to be not a crime merely, but a blunder of the stupidest sort. It is perfectly true that Germany did not understand, and, as seems likely in the light of innumerable other atrocities, never will understand, the psychology of civilised peoples; she has never shown any signs up till now, at any ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... Nasirabad, as the Trigonometrical Survey maps do, there is no excuse whatever for this, which is a mere blunder—not the only one, unfortunately—and attributes to the city the name of a small village some ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... himself. But who is this, in the lunar cockpit before the Speaker's desk, demanding firmly to be heard—so firmly that Mr. Harper, with a glance at him, sits down again; so firmly that Mr. Speaker Doby, hypnotized by an eye, makes the blunder that will eventually cost ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the murder, and his undoubted doctoring of the latter's drink. Then, after the murder, how damaging is his conduct. He falls into a kind of fit on discovering that his nephew's engagement had been broken off, which he might well do if his crime turned out to be not only a crime but also a blunder. And his conduct to the girl is, to say the least of it, strange. Nor will his character help him. He frequents the opium dens of the East-end of London. Guilty, guilty, most certainly guilty. There is nothing to be said in arrest of judgment. Let the judge put on the black cap, and Jasper ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... said Martha, taking courage, and laying a timid hand on his arm. "Sure, I don't know what 'tis all about. I don't know what blunder he've made. But I'm thinkin', zur, you'll be sorry if you acts in haste. 'Tis wise t' count a hundred. Don't be too hard on un, zur. 'Tis like the blunder may be mended. 'Tis like he'll do better next time. ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... an unpardonable blunder," he replied. "What? Give you a letter of introduction? and when the police come, I suppose, I must forget the circumstance? No, indeed. Talk ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... say, that for some of us forgetting is the normal process, that one has to believe and forget and blunder and learn something and regret and suffer and so come again to belief much as we have to eat and grow hungry and eat again. What these others can get in their temples we, after our own manner, must distil through sleepless and lonely nights, ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... should have believed, as late as October fourth, that he would not be condemned to death. Even more pathetic that his friends and comrades should once more have made the blunder in crediting the enemy with a sense of justice. Time and again they had placed faith in the judicial powers, only to see their brothers killed before their very eyes. They made no preparation to rescue Ferrer, not ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... therefore, the knowledge of a fact is to be arrived at, it is, above all things, necessary that the inquiry bear a tint so neutral that the person to whom it is addressed shall find it impossible to reflect its colour in his reply. He will then sometimes, in his confusion, blunder into a truthful answer, but he does so generally with a bashful air, indicative of the painful consciousness that he has been reluctantly violating the rules of good breeding. A search after ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... thing, however, I must steadily caution you. All kinds of colour are equally illegitimate, if you think they will allow you to alter at your pleasure, or blunder at your ease. There is no vehicle or method of colour which admits of alteration or repentance; you must be right at once, or never; and you might as well hope to catch a rifle bullet in your hand, and put it ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... in obedience to an order which all knew was a blunder, dashed into a valley lined with cannon, and charged an army ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... same time. You and him was bound to fight at first, and then you both turned to to lick me, and what with keeping you apart and holding you off, and taking your valuables away from you all at the same time, and me all alone here as it was the night-man's day-off, I've made a blunder of it. Just take your change out of the wad, and call for a drink on me when you ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... America. As a matter of fact, there was an express-company case waiting which promised more money. But emulation counts for something, even in the thief-catching field; and since two members of his own staff had fired and missed their mark in St. Louis, there was a blunder to be retrieved. ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... but, in another quarter, Allcraft suddenly discovered that he had committed an egregious blunder. He had entrusted Planner with the secret of his critical position—had made him acquainted with the dishonest transactions of his father, and the consequent bankruptcy of the firm. Not that this disclosure had been made in any violent ebullition of unguarded feeling—from ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... exposed him to a severe reply. Mr. Pitt standing up again, said, "He would not undertake to determine whether youth could be justly imputed to any man as a reproach; but he affirmed that the wretch, who, after having seen the consequences of repeated errors, continues still to blunder, and whose age has only added obstinacy to stupidity, is surely the object of either abhorrence or contempt, and deserves not that his grey head should secure him from insults; much more is he to be abhorred, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... called him his "bed of down." His knowledge of human nature was however derived from a contemplation mainly of its weaknesses, and was therefore one-sided. He was often deceived, and made many a fatal blunder, shrewd politician though he was. He involved himself often in enterprises which could not be honorable or profitable, and which inflicted damage on his greatest interests. He often offended men who might have been useful friends, and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... subject to-night. Let me say this, not only to you gentlemen here, but to all British constituencies—that it is well you should have patience enough to listen to a speech about India; because it is no secret to anybody who understands, that if the Government were to make a certain kind of bad blunder in India—which I do not at all expect them to make—there would be short work for a long time to come, with many of those schemes, upon which you have set your heart. Do not dream, if any mishap of a certain kind were to come to pass in India that you can go on with that programme ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)
... it is to be offered, is universally taken to imply some movement in behalf of the Confederates. So completely, indeed, are the belligerents themselves impressed with this idea, that the South casts it in our teeth as a scandal and a blunder that no European arbitration has been yet interposed; while the President of the Northern States actually proclaims a day of thanksgiving for the deliverance of the country from 'foreign intervention,' which he identifies with nothing less than 'invasion.' The instincts of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... forgotten. He admired the History of the Indies. It is one of the few books that he has honoured with mention and praise in the text of his own work. But he points out that the "zeal of the philosophic historian for the rights of mankind" had led him into a blunder. It was not only Gibbon's scholarly accuracy which saved him from such blunders. Perhaps he had less zeal for the rights of mankind than men like Raynal, whose general views he shared. But it is certain that he did not write with their settled parti pris of making ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... week's hunt, returning with eight or ten deer carcasses, and perhaps an elk or a mountain sheep as well. I never became more than a fair hunter, and at times I had most exasperating experiences, either failing to see game which I ought to have seen, or committing some blunder in the stalk, or failing to kill when I fired. Looking back, I am inclined to say that if I had any good quality as a hunter it was that of perseverance. "It is dogged that does it" in hunting as in many other things. ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... was given with a slowness corresponding to the sedate passage of the needle. "Wendling, you think, cares nothing for women? Well, men who are like that cared once for one woman, and when that was over—But, pshaw! I will not talk. You are no thinker, Shon McGann. You blunder through the world. And you'll tremble as much to a woman's thumb ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Dr. Knapp points out that 'carreta' means a Spanish dray-cart, and that 'carita,' 'my dear,' was probably meant. But, careless as was the famous word-master over the spelling of words in the tongues that he never really mastered scientifically, he could scarcely have made so obvious a blunder as this, and there must have been some particular experience in the lives of husband and wife that led to the playful designation.[142] ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... the "Great Essay" style, she could use it with a dexterity strangely in contrast with the flat and fumbling manner in which poor Milly had been wont to express her ideas. But in the region of actual knowledge, she now and again perpetrated some immense and childish blunder, which made the teachers, who nursed and trained her like a jockey or a race-horse, tremble for the results ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... murder of the Earl of Norbury, on 1 Jan., set all tongues wagging. His Lordship was walking in the shrubbery, near his own house at Kilbeggan, in the county of Meath, talking to his steward, and pointing out to him some trees he wished to have cut down, when some miscreant, behind a hedge, fired a blunder-buss loaded with swan shot at him, and he fell, mortally wounded. He lived for 43 hours afterwards—but his assassin ran away and escaped; nor, in spite of large rewards ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... have said I was in trade, and had a good business. That's what you should have said. That's what you would have said had you been worth your salt. But it's blunder, blunder, outside and in [upstairs, downstairs, and in my lady's chamber]. You ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... ultimately convinced the British public that the War Office had spoilt a great opportunity in Ireland. But the fundamental blunder, the deep-seated cause which undermined the force of Redmond's appeal, was the refusal of recognition to the National Volunteers and the failure to fulfil the promise held out ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... were at work here no man can tell. Philosophers stumble, fools blunder, and the truth dances on ahead through Life's woodland of mysteries—one instant revealing itself in a golden shaft of sunlight, hiding the next with smothered laughter in the black shadow of a fern, while seekers after it tramp past in ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... given to her father in the rash presumption of his wealth! How could it ever be paid? And more than that, it had been given in a fraud. He had no money when he gave it, and no prospect of any but what he was to get from those worthless shares. Would anybody believe him that it was only a stupid blunder of his own? Yes, his partners might believe him; but, horrible thought, he had already implicated THEM in his fraud! Even now, while he was standing there hesitatingly in the road, they were entering upon the new claim he had NOT PAID FOR—COULD ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... the full moon in the heavens, or the towering Big Horn Mountains, he would have gained an approximate idea of where he was; but, despite his experience in the West, he galloped forward at an easy canter, with never a suspicion of the blunder he was making. ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... were grasping the real situation—groping for it, perhaps, but with a clear-sightedness and acumen which urged that a cautious tongue was expedient. If the duplicity was really as four-handed as it seemed, there could be no harm in waiting for the other fellow to blunder into exposure. Nothing could be explained, of course, until the conspirators found opportunity to consult privately under ...
— The Flyers • George Barr McCutcheon
... her and bit his lip. He was annoyed with himself for his blunder and with her for being anything but ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... cried Holmes, as I ran panting to his side. "Fool that I was not to allow for that earlier train! It's abduction, Watson—abduction! Murder! Heaven knows what! Block the road! Stop the horse! That's right. Now, jump in, and let us see if I can repair the consequences of my own blunder." ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Johnson told me. 'He looked close down at the shawls, as if he were short-sighted, though he could see as far as any man. "I beg your pardon, ladies," said he, "you're right. I am quite wrong. What a stupid blunder to make! And yet they did deceive me. Here, Johnson, take these shawls away. How could you be so stupid? I will fetch the thing you want myself, ladies." So I went with him. He chose out three or four shawls, of the nicest patterns, from the very same lot, marked in the very same way, ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... her letter back with a stamped legend across its face informing her with dreadful terseness that the party to whom the letter was addressed was deceased. She divined a blunder, but for all that, and with conflicting emotions, sought confirmation in the daily press. There, at the very end of the column, ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... at school, which for the time is the centre of their energies, their hopes, their disappointments and their temptations; but the loss to the masters who share their preparation would be irreparable. They may sometimes blunder from want of knowledge and experience, but their will to help is strong, and perhaps not least persuasive ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... and came to think over what had happened, I felt the self-condemnation of a criminal without being able to accuse myself of a crime. I believe with Miss Arbour that it is madness for a young man who finds out he has made a blunder, not to set it right; no matter what the wrench may be. But that Ellen was a victim I do not deny. If any sin, however, was committed against her, it was committed long before our separation. It was nine-tenths ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... features of Scotch Presbyterianism. Half cooked beans account for the religion of the Puritans. Fried bacon and saleratus biscuit underlie the doctrine of State Rights. Lent is a mistake, fasting is a blunder, and ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... "Does the King, then, not realize that he is no longer the power in the state? The National Assembly will not tolerate Necker's dismissal. Will you not go instantly to Versailles and try to undo this fatal blunder of the King?" he asked. Monsieur de Castries shook ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... is at times, or how wanting in judgment, may be seen when it tries to develop a callosity upon the foot as a result of the friction of the shoe, and overdoes the matter and produces the corn. The corn is a physiological blunder. Or see an unexpected manifestation of this intelligence when we cut off the central and leading shoot of a spruce or of a pine tree, and straightway one of the lateral and horizontal branches rises up, takes the place ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... merchantman, even with a strong crew, undoubtedly death and destruction, while even with our well-armed men and guns I began to have doubts. A slip in the manoeuvres, ever so slight a mistake on Captain Thwaites' part, or a blunder in the carrying out of his orders, might give one vessel the chance to make fast, and while we were arresting their onslaught there would be time for the others to get close in and throw their scores of bloodthirsty savages upon ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... watch the herd had grown restless, many of the cattle arising; and knowing that dawn was near at hand, the boys had pushed the sleepy ones off their beds and started them feeding. The incident had little effect on the irrepressible Parent, who seemed born to blunder, yet gifted with a sunny disposition which ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... that when this distinguished Doctor said, "We are not now justified in destroying a living child," he was speaking from a medical standpoint, and meant to say that such destruction is now scientifically unjustifiable, is a blunder in surgery. From a moral point of view it is not only now, but it was always, unjustifiable to slay a child as a means to save the mother's life; a good end cannot justify an evil means, is a truth that cannot be too emphatically ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... true,I should have been surprised had it been otherwiseCome, show me up stairs, Mrs. Hadoway, lest I make a blunder, and go where I ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... composer to her. After the death of her husband, she persuaded Haydn to sign a promise to marry her if his wife should die, but the composer afterward repudiated the agreement, very likely not wishing to repeat his first matrimonial blunder. ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... throw up their titles and their coronets on persuasion. Here is a case where argument has no power. You may exhaust it, you may prove slavery to be wrong morally, wrong socially, wrong politically, you may prove it to a demonstration that it is an economic blunder of the most gigantic proportions, you may make it clear as sunlight that it is demoralizing and ruinous, but you have done absolutely nothing toward its abolishment. Here and there a truly conscientious man or woman, ...
— The Future of the Colored Race in America • William Aikman
... word; I hardly moved, but simply allowed her to depart. I could not help realising that this was henceforth to be the intolerable character of the conjugal relations I had resumed eight years before. I told her peremptorily to keep quiet and not be guilty of any blunder either in judgment or in act, and tried to make her realise to what a serious state of affairs this foolish occurrence had brought us. She really seemed to understand what I meant, and promised ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... the outset, 'No, whatever happens, I will not usurp the place of God. I will not be the Priest-Patriarch of my children. They shall grow and I will grow beside them, helping but not cramping or overshadowing.' They grow more. But they blunder more. Life ceases to be a discipline and ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... he was doing," continued Malcolm Sage, "and Peters removed the passbook, put it in a drawer, first destroying the cancelled cheques. He made a blunder in not replacing the pass-book with something else. That was the last link in ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... enclosure. Yet one has also the feeling that such magnificence is right: to so lovely a word as Arundel, to the Premier Duke and Hereditary Earl Marshal of England, should fittingly fall this far-spreading and comely pleasaunce. Had Arundel Park been small and empty of deer what a blunder it would be. ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... out, tall as a tower, and bearing a shield of eight millstones, and as he walked he shouted: 'Ho! blunder-head! by what right do you come to our country and kill our people? Come! make two of me.' As the prince was despicable in his eyes, he tossed aside his club and rushed to grip him with his hands. He caught him by ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... spread to the ends of the earth, and remained there at the express wish of the Little Peoples. Bias or favouritism are abhorrent to him; as far as in him lies the Englishman weighs the pros and the cons of the case and gives his decision without partiality or prejudice. He may blunder at times, but the blunder is honest and is ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... only useless but actually detrimental; and, this being so, the action of the herd in destroying one of its members is not even to be regarded as an instinct proper, but rather as an aberration of an instinct, a blunder, into which animals sometimes fall when excited ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... only one thought—a thought lashed to the fore by his jealous rage, and defeated hopes. And poor Joyce, distraught and grief-crazed, realized not the terrible blunder he ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... a long season at the Exposition. A blunder was somewhere made in dating the arrival of the March King and his splendid instrumentalists, who came while yet the Boston Symphonists were playing in Festival Hall. As a result the finest of bands was placed in competition with the finest of orchestras. ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... window. There below, like a shadow, stood a saddled horse. Where was the knight? Had the stupid girl shown him into the drawing-room and left him there? Surely the well-trained servant had never been guilty of such a blunder before. Could it have been some one else who had come to see her father on business? She stole down the stairway in a tremor of apprehension, and strolled into the parlor in the most nonchalant manner imaginable. ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... fool, and that's all there is about it, Step-hen," he said, frankly. "Will you shake hands with me, and excuse the blunder I made when I felt sure you had hooked the old bag, just ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... his French of late, he stumbled at times, and she supplied the needed phrase, taking no note of a blunder. Now men of sweet blood cannot be secretly accusing or criticizing a gracious lady. Domestic men are charged with thinking instantly of dark death when an ordinary illness befalls them; and it may be so or not: but it is positive that the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... course not. Pardon the mistake. It seems to be my fate to blunder where you are concerned. (Icily) Good morning, ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan
... took occasion to go and study both sets, with a view to finding a flaw in Somerset's which might have been passed over unnoticed by the committee of architects, owing to their absence from the actual site. But not a blunder could he find. ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... if he met an English friend in Florence and brought him home to dine, then Ronald began to wish that Dora would leave off blushing and grow less shy, that she could talk a little more, and that he might lose all fear of her making some terrible blunder. ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... Bertrand was amused at Joan's naive way of referring to her advice as if it had been a valuable present to a hostile leader who was saved by it from making a censurable blunder of omission, and then he went on to admire how ingeniously she had deceived that man and yet had not told him anything that was not the truth. This troubled Joan, ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... An allusion and pun which occasioned the French translator of the present work an unlucky blunder: puzzled, no doubt, by my facetiously, he translates "mettant, comme on l'a tres-judicieusement fait observer, l'entendement humain sous la clef." The great work and the great author alluded ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... the Queen, and his welcome to Alexandra, Princess of Wales, all of which are of great excellence. His Charge of the Light Brigade, at Balaclava, while it gave undue currency to that stupid military blunder, must rank as one of the finest ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... silently a most exact Savings-bank, and official register correct to the most evanescent item, Debtor and Creditor, in respect to one and all of us; silently marks down, Creditor by such and such an unseen act of veracity and heroism; Debtor to such a loud blustery blunder, twenty-seven million strong or one unit strong, and to all acts and words and thoughts executed in consequence of that—Debtor, Debtor, Debtor, day after day, rigorously as Fate (for this is Fate that ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... touched fuzzy's dingy palm his first instinct was to take to his heels; but a second thought restrained him from that blunder of etiquette. It was his; it had been given him. It—and, oh, what an elysium it opened to the gaze of his mind's eye! He had tumbled to the foot of the ladder; he was hungry, homeless, friendless, ragged, cold, drifting; and he held in his hand the key to a paradise of the mud-honey that ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... homely tastes, an affectionate disposition, great perspicuity of perception, much force of character; and Franceska's, scarcely yet formed, showed that she was affectionate, romantic, and, of all things in the world, fond of horses and of boating. Emilia's was held as a great blunder, for she was said to have an eye devoted to temporal advantages, also volatile, yet of great determination, triumphing over every obstacle, and in ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and tied that in turn to a long, heavy slab of rock, and turned in. He would not risk losing his horse in this desert land. At best a posse could not reach Showdown before noon the next day, and rather than blunder into Showdown at night and take unnecessary risks, he decided to rest, and ride in at sunup, when he would be able to see what he was doing and better estimate the possibilities of getting food for himself and his horse and of finding ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... Newcastle. Monk magnified the importance of that, but took great care to postpone it. Wilkes, Clobery, and Knight, had not returned from London, and were rather slow to do so and face Monk after their blunder; and the two new Commissioners had not yet been appointed. Meanwhile letters and messages passed between the two Armies, and there were desertions from ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... classical blunder of so many eminent annotators is, that these words are not to be found in the usual college and school editions of Euripides. The edition from which the above correct extract is made is in ten volumes, published ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853 • Various
... Camors, "in taking you for my confidante in my ambitious projects, I have committed a blunder and an impertinence, which a slight contempt from you has mildly punished. But speaking seriously, Madame, I thank you with all my heart. I feared to find in you a powerful enemy, and I find in you a strong neutral, ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... We made a blunder, both of us, and don't let us make it worse by wrangling about it. There you are; people of that class bring infection into the house. If she stayed here a twelvemonth, we should have got to throwing things ...
— The Paying Guest • George Gissing
... Sometimes she seems to blunder still worse. She takes an egg which we suppose is going to turn into a frog, and she brings out of it a tadpole—neither fish, flesh nor fowl nor anything else. After a while the tadpole gets legs and has a long tail; it must lose that tail in order to become a frog. A benevolent ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... dealings with his buyers (often exhibiting that rarest quality of the successful trader, the art of linking one transaction with another), he was sometimes amusingly deficient in what is known as common sense. In later life he used to tell with infinite zest a story of a blunder of earlier years which might easily have led to serious if not fatal results. He had been suffering from nervous exhaustion and had been ordered to take a preparation of nux vomica. The dose was to be taken three times daily: in the morning, at noon, and in the evening. One ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... sometimes blunder on a lucky idee," answered Mr. Marble to one of my earnest representations, "and I've known chaps among 'em that were almost as knowing as dullish whites; but everything out of the common way with 'em is pretty much chance. As for Neb, however, I will say ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... I am afraid, Captain, that I have made a blunder. Mrs. Dillon came to me—most kindly of course—and made an offer to take care of a booth at the bazaar, and I refused her. You know my feeling against giving these Americans any ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... private conversation, and the remark speedily became public property, that he looked upon Burr as a dangerous man who ought not to be trusted with the reins of government. He pleaded with New York Federalists not to commit the fatal blunder of endorsing Burr in caucus, and he finally won his point; but he could not prevent his partisans from supporting Burr at ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... working out of those social and political problems with which the life of every great nation is concerned. Such problems, however, are not simple ones; rather they are infinitely complex; and he who would set himself to analyse the processes by which the ultimate results are arrived at will blunder hopelessly if he takes account of ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... of this entire force. He was a soldier by nature, and made all around him soldiers. As for the Commander-In-Chief, he does not understand you Americans, and will not use you as he ought; then he does not understand the nature of the warfare of this continent, and will be very likely to make a blunder. I'll tell you how it is, Corny; Howe had as much influence with Abercrombie, as he had with every one else; and an attempt will be made to introduce his mode of fighting; but such a man as Lord Howe requires another Lord Howe to carry out his own conceptions. That ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... a secret Conclave of Bishops recently held in Rome it was resolved that the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception would be reconsidered and abolished at the approaching General Council; in fact, that the definition was a mistake, and that the blunder of 1854 would be repaired in 1869." I told him, of course, that no such question could be entertained in the Council; that the doctrinal decrees of the Church were irrevocable, and that the dogma of the Immaculate Conception was defined once ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... so-called German drama. The olla podrida thus cooked up, was denounced, by the best critics in Germany, as the mere cramps of weakness, and orgasms of a sickly imagination on the part of the author, and the lowest provocation of torpid feeling on that of the readers. The old blunder, however, concerning the irregularity and wildness of Shakespeare, in which the German did but echo the French, who again were but the echoes of our own critics, was still in vogue, and Shakespeare was quoted as authority for the most anti-Shakespearean ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... have left in the mind of Vergil himself. It is surely needless to assume that the first of poetic artists has forgotten the very rudiments of his art in placing at the opening of his song a figure which strips all interest from his hero. Nor is it needful to believe that such a blunder has been unconscious, and that Vergil has had to learn the true effect of his episode on the general texture of his poem from the reader of to-day. The poet who paints for us the character of Dido must have felt, ere he could have painted it, that ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... on your account had been my motive. But my cares are at an end; and though I have laboured through two painful days, the thorns of which were sharpened, not impeded, by the storm, I am rejoiced at the blunder I made, as it has procured me the kindest, and most heart-dictated, and most heartfelt letter, that ever was written; for which I give you millions of thanks. Forgive my injurious surmise; for you see, that though you can wound my affection, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... When you were brought here I was still in durance vile, and Higgins was in his strait-jacket. On being released, my hands were full, as you can suppose. Moreover, I did not learn at once of your detention. The saddle and the valise caused me to suspect that a blunder had been committed. I cannot adequately express my regrets. In ten minutes," continued Dr. Pendegrast, turning a fat gold watch over on its back in the palm of his hand, where it looked like a little ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... defence in an eloquent and powerful speech at a special session of the Greek parliament. The accusation against him was not only that during the late war he had sacrificed Greek interests to Bulgaria but that he had committed a fatal blunder in joining her in the campaign against Turkey. His reply was that since Greece could not stand alone he had to seek allies in the Balkans, and that it was not his fault if the choice had fallen on Bulgaria. He had endeavored ...
— The Balkan Wars: 1912-1913 - Third Edition • Jacob Gould Schurman
... dissemble his startled expression in a grin that revealed his white teeth. "Ye can't forgive me that blunder, Mr. Caryll," ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... to do," he resumed, "and I'm sure you won't refuse me, is this. I'm inclined to dismiss the whole thing as a blunder. I believe Duplay's honest, but I think certain facts in his own position have led him to be too ready to believe a mere yarn. But I've consented to see Mina and hear what she has to say. And I said I should ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... with her husband, and a bond of mutual sympathy drew the composer to her. After the death of her husband, she persuaded Haydn to sign a promise to marry her if his wife should die, but the composer afterward repudiated the agreement, very likely not wishing to repeat his first matrimonial blunder. ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... stand for the broadest justice as Leonidas and his three hundred Spartans stood for Lacedaemon! But Hebrew David was thought to be punished for taking a census; nor is the story without significance. To reckon numbers alone a success is a sin, and a blunder beside. Russia has sixty millions of people: who would not gladly swap her out of the world for glorious little Greece back again, and Plato and Aeschylus and Epaminondas still there? Who would exchange Concord or Cambridge in Massachusetts for any hundred thousand square miles of slave-breeding ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... of minutes later and you'd have made me blunder against the fellow poking about here with his damned ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... Faith in a doctrine, means, that we understand what the propositions are, and accept them. But if through blunder we accept a wrong set of propositions, so as to believe a false doctrine, we nevertheless have Implicit (or Virtual) Faith in the true one, if only we say from the heart: "Whatever the Church believes, ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... On the other hand, a probably philo-Roman prince, Cunobelin (known to literature as Cymbeline), had just been succeeded by two sons, Caractacus (q.v.) and Togodumnus, who were hostile to Rome. Caligula, the half-insane predecessor of Claudius, had made in respect to this event some blunder which we know only through a sensational exaggeration, but which doubtless had to be made good. An immediate reason for action was the appeal of a fugitive British prince, presumably a Roman partisan and victim ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... learning, and over-ride inquiry by the mysterious letters Sax. or Ang.-Sax. tacked on to his exposition of an obscure word. There is no such Saxon vocable as dare, to stare. Again, what more frequent blunder than to confound a secondary and derivative sense of a word with its radical and primary—indeed, sometimes to allow the former to usurp the precedence, and at length altogether oust the latter: hence it comes to pass, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 188, June 4, 1853 • Various
... was still a little confused, by her blunder, and by his words. "What a happy life you and your mother must have had, cloistered here. I've been telling your mother that it's like a cloister. I've been scolding her a little for shutting herself up in it. And now that I have this chance of talking to ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... "That was my blunder, Mr. Twelvemough. Mr. Homos and I had talked it over conditionally, and I was not to speak of it till he had told you; but it slipped out in the excitement ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... might come about, and was equally implicated with my graceless self in this little conspiracy. But one thing yet—tell me before I go, Isabelle, Comtesse de Lineuil, whether you really do intend to accept the Baron de Sigognac as your husband—I don't want to run any risk of making a blunder at this stage of the proceedings, you understand, after having conducted the negotiations successfully up to this point. You do definitely and finally accept him, eh?—that is well—and now I will go to the prince. Engaged lovers sometimes have matters to discuss that ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... through the post, opened it, and, as she expected, found its contents were not of a kind to give her much satisfaction. In fact, in her emotion of anger and indignation she made a false step in her state-craft of a nature one can hardly imagine a person so astute as the Princess making. This blunder led to a ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... reasonably be called upon to render such an account, if any of their words were spoken for money; I only say this. If Aeschines in his private capacity has spoken wildly on some occasion or committed some blunder, do not be over-strict with him, but let it pass and grant him pardon: but if as your ambassador he has deliberately deceived you for money, then do not let him go, or tolerate the plea that he ought not to be called to account for what he said. {183} Why, for what, if not for ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... character and genius, had wide views and original ideas. Elected king of Denmark and Norway, he succeeded in subduing Sweden by force of arms; but he spoiled everything at the culmination of his triumph by the hideous crime and blunder known as the Stockholm massacre, which converted the politically divergent Swedish nation into the irreconcilable foe of the unional government (see CHRISTIAN II.). Christian's contempt of nationality in Sweden is the more remarkable as in Denmark proper he sided with the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... encouragement to come out openly on his side. They were Germans who lay on Burgoyne's left and Burgoyne sent Colonel Baum, an efficient officer, with five or six hundred men to attack the New Englanders and bring in the supplies. It was a stupid blunder to send Germans among a people specially incensed against the use of these mercenaries. There was no surprise. Many professing loyalists, seemingly eager to take the oath of allegiance, met and delayed Baum. When near Bennington ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... tolerably well established both in school and at Mrs. Crane's. Julia was perfectly delighted with her new quarters, for she said "everything was in style, just as it should be," and she readily adopted all the "city notions." But poor Fanny was continually committing some blunder. She would forget to use her napkin, or persist in using her knife instead of her four-tined silver fork. These little things annoyed Julia excessively, and numerous were the lectures given in secret to Fanny, ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... journalists, business men—and not one of them has made any attempt to justify or defend the action. Without exception, they say it is an outrage, and totally unwarranted,—at the very least, a most shocking political blunder. None of them, however, has come forward to the aid of the Chinese. A curious conspiracy of silence seems to reign,—not silence in one sense, for every one is talking freely with most undiplomatic candor, ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... friends at any possible failure. Many well-meaning efforts to acquire this useful knowledge have been nipped in the bud by the thoughtless, silly way in which some people will laugh at any mistake or blunder. A cake which has caught in baking, or a pudding with the sugar left out, will probably afford them an inexhaustible subject of mirth. Make up your mind, however, not to be discouraged by any of these things. Practice will give nimbleness to your fingers and strength ...
— The Skilful Cook - A Practical Manual of Modern Experience • Mary Harrison
... from bias? Did he think his will would be perfectly impartial? Gladly would he put off to another time the further examination of the count; but could he? His conscience told him that this would be another blunder. He renewed, then, the ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... save that he admitted being tired or having a headache, when she sought to enliven him, to draw him up to her own plane of merriment. He was reminding himself every hour of the night and day that he must make no irretrievable blunder, that he must do nothing to injure his wife needlessly. Appearances were against her, but ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... in a snow storm, and on a night so dark that it would have been impossible to keep together, to be sure of the way, or to distinguish friend from foe, to do a thing which he hesitated to do in the daytime and with his entire force, would have been a more serious blunder than either. Of course, if Preston had started, it would have been with the determination to succeed or lose his life in the adventure. That was his reputation and his character as a soldier. But the services and lives of such men are too valuable to be wasted in futile attempts. It ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... ignorance on the part of parents, teachers, and other advisors; ignorance on the part of employers. As a race, we do not know human nature; we do not know how to determine, in advance of actual, painful and costly experience, the aptitudes of any individual. We blunder a good deal even in trying to learn from experience. We do not know work; we do not know its requirements, its conditions, its opportunities, its emoluments. And so, in our ignorance, we go astray; we lead others astray. We neglect ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... What's a thousand-guinea carpet to a man who likes this sort of thing? Nothing. Yet as amici curiae, we would have thought that that Tottenham Road carpet might have been kept out of Court. Wasn't that a Blunder, MAPLE? ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various
... estimation, of annoying me by any future demonstrations of a style of admiration I neither desire, appreciate, nor intend to permit. If accident should ever thrust you again across my path, you will do well to forget that our minister committed the blunder of sending you here to-day. Mr. Laurance will please accept my thanks for this package of papers, which shall be returned to-morrow to the office of the American embassy. Resolved to forget the unpleasant incidents of to-day, Madame Orme is ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... indignation which encircled the globe when reports were printed that over a thousand people lost their lives on the Lusitania, found a sympathetic echo in the Berlin Foreign Office. "Another navy blunder," the officials said—confidentially. Foreign Office officials tried to conceal their distress because the officials knew the only thing they could do now was to make preparation for an apology and try to excuse in the best ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... bathing. Then Cupid is mistaken; then Cupid is disarmed; then he loses his darts to Ganymede; then Jupiter sends him a summons by Mercury. Then Chloe goes a-hunting, with an ivory quiver graceful at her side; Diana mistakes her for one of her nymphs, and Cupid laughs at the blunder. All this is, surely, despicable; and even when he tries to act the lover, without the help of gods or goddesses, his thoughts are unaffecting or remote. He talks not "like a man ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... presented herself to their View, on the Frontiers of Egypt. She was found alone, and in a very disconsolate Condition. This Lady must, doubtless, said they to themselves, be the Queen of Babylon: And without listning to her Complaints, convey'd her instantly to my Husband Moabdar. Their gross Blunder at first incens'd his Majesty to the last Degree; but after he had view'd the Lady with an attentive Eye, he found she was extremely pretty, and was soon pacify'd. Her Name was Missouf. I have been since inform'd, that her Name in the Egyptian Language signifies the Fair Coquet. And in Effect, ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... Bonaparte's agent arrived, and was completely the dupe of these adventurers, who plundered him of twelve hundred thousand livres. Though not many days passed before he discovered the imposition, prudence prevented him from denouncing the impostors; and this blunder would have remained a secret between himself, Bonaparte, and Talleyrand, had not the unusual expenses of Caumartin excited the suspicion of the Russian Police Minister, who soon discovered the source from which they had flowed. De Gausac had ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... myself for my stupidity in speaking her name. Such a blunder! Why, it might have been overheard by anybody on the line. No wonder she left me. Doubtless I had ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... reasoning was over," and that the first campaign should be opened by the presence of twenty thousand men. This was wise advice, because it was such advice as a wise man would have given under the circumstances. It was, however, a fortunate blunder in the English Government that they rejected it. They held Boston with the army they sent, and with a larger army they could have done nothing more. They might have made more frequent and more sanguinary forays into the country, but the result of the campaign would ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... and after a little further dialogue, in which the cool Highlander completely deceived the French sentries, the British were allowed to slip past in the darkness. The tiny cove was safely reached, the boats stole silently up without a blunder, twenty-four volunteers from the Light Infantry leaped from their boat and led the way in single file up the path, that ran like a thread along the face of the cliff. Wolfe sat eagerly listening in his boat below. ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... the qui vive till daylight, and prepared for the combat. The fishing implements were laid along the hammock nettings. The second lieutenant loaded the blunder busses, which could throw harpoons to the distance of a mile, and long duck-guns, with explosive bullets, which inflicted mortal wounds even to the most terrible animals. Ned Land contented himself with sharpening his harpoon—a terrible weapon ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... then decided to speak frankly. "Yes," he said, "your kindness gives you the right to know. To not tell you would show a lack of gratitude. I made a painful blunder before in not staying unflinchingly with my company. The more I think of it, the more I regret it, and the more I am decided not to repeat it, but abide with my comrades and share their fate in all things. I feel that I no longer have a choice in the matter; I must do it. But there goes the drum ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... seemed a great waste of stone and mortar. I felt as if I alone of all my townsmen had paid my tax. They plainly did not know how to treat me, but behaved like persons who are underbred. In every threat and in every compliment there was a blunder; for they thought that my chief desire was to stand the other side of that stone wall. I could not but smile to see how industriously they locked the door on my meditations, which followed them out ...
— On the Duty of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... instant; then he said: "You are mistaken; it was Octavius and not Antony who was on Sextus' galley with Lepidus." And he went on his way to the courtyard, confining his blame to the historical blunder. ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... such kind things to him, and at the same time shut the door between him and the great opportunity of his life? What did it all mean? Where had he failed? Surely there was some terrible misunderstanding! In his complete bewilderment he created quite the most dreadful blunder that is registered against him in his long ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... consolation in that," said Deppy, smiling for the first time. "It's annoying, however, to go about feeling all the time that one is likely to pass away because some stupid ass of an assassin makes a blunder in giving—" ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... afternoon Mr. Carleton was there. Fleda sat a little apart from the rest, industriously bending over a complicated piece of embroidery belonging to Constance, and in which that young lady had made a great blunder, which she declared her patience unequal to the task of rectifying. The conversation went gaily forward among the others, Fleda taking no part in it beyond an involuntary one. Mr. Carleton's part was rather reserved and grave, according to his ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... However, the blunder blind passion had led her into was partially repaired by Miss Rolleston herself. When she heard, next day, where Seaton was gone, she lifted up her hands in amazement. "What could papa be thinking of to send our benefactor to a hospital?" And, after meditating ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... Dr. Van Anden passed his hand across his eyes, and spoke in sadness and weariness. "I had no conception that you were not aware of it until this moment. It explains in part what was strangely mysterious to me; but even in that case, it would have been, as you said, a blunder, not a criminal act However, we can not undo that past. I desire, above all other things, to set myself right in your eyes as a Christian man. I think I may have been a stumbling-block to you. God only knows how bitter is the thought I have done wrong; I should have acknowledged ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... But they who blunder thus are raw beginners; A little genial sprinkling of hypocrisy Has saved the fame of thousand splendid sinners, The loveliest oligarchs of our Gynocracy;[638] You may see such at all the balls and dinners, Among the proudest of our aristocracy, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... there is no more effective fraud than a make-believe (13) of over-caution alien to the spirit of adventure. This itself will put the enemy off his guard and ten to one will lure him into some egregious blunder; or conversely, once get a reputation for foolhardiness established, and then with folded hands sit feigning future action, and see what a world of trouble you will thereby cause ...
— The Cavalry General • Xenophon
... liberties enormous, after ideas of their own, with the text of a friend thus honoured. But although they printed with intent altogether faithful, they did so certainly without any adequate jealousy of the printers—apparently without a suspicion of how they could blunder. Of blunders therefore in the Folio also there are many, some through mere following of blundered print, some in fresh corruption of the same, some through mistaking of the manuscript corrections, and some probably from the misprinting of mistakes, so that the corrections themselves ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... ask for information that will help them make good use of their courtship opportunity. They rightly feel that if they blunder in this period, there is little hope of their making their goal later. They have grown suspicious of a strong feeling of attachment, because they have been forced to see in the experiences of many of their friends that this has not guaranteed later happiness. They expect ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... Allhallowmas last, a fortnight afore Michaelmas?] [Theobald suspected that Shakespeare had written "Martlemas."] This correction, thus seriously and wisely enforced, is received by Sir Tho. Hammer; but probably Shakespeare intended a blunder. ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... though than I, for he had doubtless heard me blunder into the wall, and thought one of the marshal's men had followed him. This idea suggested he would probably then lay perfectly still and wait for the man to recover and go out. Or, the thought made me shiver—he might steal up and finish me with the dagger. As quietly as I could I ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... English 2. Head of firm's statement and has been taught American business and factory methods," says Mr. Sicher, "she doesn't hesitate and Statement in concrete blunder; she understands what she is terms told ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... with the wind in one's face at a kind of funeral goose step it is very easy to fall asleep. The odds were that we should blunder into some Turkish picket or patrol. Looking back it was hard to realize that the inky masses behind, like a column of following smoke, was an army on the march. The stillness was so profound one heard nothing ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... Roman; it calls for special knowledge as well as a sufficient training in Roman institutions generally. Each of these Roman subjects is like a language with a delicate accidence, which is always presenting the unwary with pitfalls into which they are sure to blunder unless they have a thorough mastery of it. I could mention a book full of valuable thoughts about the relation to Paganism of the early Christian Church, by a scholar at once learned and sympathetic;[4] who when he ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... Avon's first mishap of the kind, and he felt as though he could never face his comrades again, if they should discover the blunder, which, after all, was not so striking, when the attendant circumstances are borne ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... fellow scholars are up with thee, rather return once more into this Primer, and examine whether that which thou takest only for duplicates of the method, for a blunder in the teaching, ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... this letter in full and endeavored by its press reports afterwards to atone for its blunder. It had been feared that trouble over this question would arise but no other paper referred to it. The Picayune, Item and States were most generous with space and complimentary ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... goes on, to object against the Word naughty, (as apply'd in the Phrase naughty Master) [4th, change 6.] {I grow mortified, in Fear for our human Sufficiency, compar'd with our Aptness to blunder! For, here, 'tis plain, this Director of Another's Discernment is quite blind, Himself, to an Elegance,} one wou'd have thought it impossible not to be struck by?—-Faulty, wicked, abominable, scandalous, (which are the angry Adjectives, he prefers to that sweet one) wou'd ...
— Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela • Samuel Richardson
... was well known that a man had to be up very early in every sense if he wanted to keep an eye on a Putnam horse. Mat Woodburn might be old, but he was by no means sleepy; and Joses could not afford to blunder. ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... healthy frame, her blue eye and ruddy cheek, not from her was derived its moral being. It was an honest, gleeful little soul: a passionate, warm-tempered, bustling creature it was too, and of the sort likely to blunder often into perils and difficulties. One day it bethought itself to fall from top to bottom of a steep flight of stone steps; and when Madame, hearing the noise (she always heard every noise), issued from the salle-a- manger and picked it up, she said ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... go, may I ask in what manner I might serve as a witness?" Ere the words had fully crossed my lips I recognized that my smartness had caused me to commit an unpardonable blunder for a man who wished to show up well in an adventure of this sort. (But fate had a hand in it, as presently ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... very strange," said the soldier, taking off his cap, and rubbing his head to quicken his faculties, which seemed to have led him into some unaccountable blunder. "Will you be kind enough to inform me who lives in ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... In the two years during which he still remained in the Church his faith in her system fell rapidly to pieces. Within two months after the publication of the Encyclical he wrote that the Pope, like the other princes, seemed careful not to omit any blunder that could secure his annihilation.[351] Three weeks afterwards he denounced in the fiercest terms the corruption of Rome. He predicted that the ecclesiastical hierarchy was about to depart with the old monarchies; and, though the Church could not die, he would ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... beginning at the north end of the line, giving a hoot each time the mask was placed upon anyone. Great care was taken that the mask should be so arranged upon the face that the eyes might look directly through the eyeholes, for should any blunder occur the sight of at least one eye would be lost. It is scarcely on before it is removed. After the masks had been placed on all the faces it was laid beside Hasjelti's. The man personating Hasjelti sprinkled his mask and then Hostjoboard's with ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... affirm, that the genus old maid is one in whom the positive currents neutralize the negative currents? Your affinity is perhaps the plainest woman in the room. But beauty is a juggling sprite, entirely uncontrolled by electricity, and you are quite likely to make a mistake. It is absurd the way we blunder on in a scientific age. We touch a button, and are married. The judge touches another button, and we are divorced. If when we touched the first button it revealed us both negatives, we should start back in horror, for it is only ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... probably loses six months' interest, reckoning from the time his sugar leaves the plantation. This arrangement, several planters told me, was profitable to them; but it was discontinued—it was not to the advantage of the agents; its discontinuance was no doubt a blunder for the planters. Moreover, the Australian market has been too long neglected; but the advantage of possessing two markets instead of one is ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... that he had thrown away a valuable opportunity in mere idle gossip, nevertheless endeavored to look mysterious as he replied, "Oh, business gin'rally." Then in the faint hope of yet retrieving his blunder he inquired, "How ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... Memoirs, says that this Queen, already languishing, had lost her sleep, and was given soporific pills, on account of which Henrietta of France awoke no more; but it is probable that the servants, and not the doctors, committed this blunder.] ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... tree, spell-bound by Vivien." Tennyson, in his Idylls ("Vivien"), says that Vivien induced Merlin to take shelter from a storm in a hollow oak tree, and left him spell-bound. Others say he was spell-bound in a hawthorn bush, but this is evidently a blunder. (See ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... that Micaela had been disrespectful to her father, but they could not do less than admit that it had been a blunder, and they were full of sympathy ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... fruit and he will make no mistake, but take the choicest even without seeing it. In the same way, if you allow a girl who is well brought up to choose a husband for herself, if she is in a position to meet the man of her heart, rarely will she blunder. The act of nature in such cases is known as love at first sight; and in love, first sight is practically ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... their possibilities and tearing on again. But there are some creatures we meet that I'm glad to lose sight of. Not those who glare anarchically, unconsciously betraying their outlook on life; not the poor slow old people who blunder in the way, and stare vacantly up at our fiery chariot—so strange a development of the world for them; not the dogs that yelp, and are furious if we don't realize that they're frightening us. No, but the horrid little jeering boys, who run beside the car at their best ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... I have altered to Martin, as you prescribed; the blunder was my own, as well as a more considerable one, that of Lord Sandwich's death—which was occasioned by my supposing, at first, that the translation of Barba was made by the second Earl, whose death I had marked in the list, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... slowly down the road to the stable, and cursed the impulse that had made him blunder so. He had no compunctions for the lie, if only it had done any good. It had done harm; he could see now that it had. But he could not believe that it would make any material difference in Aleck's case. As the story had been repeated to Lite by half a dozen men, who ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... the bill dictates how long the debate shall last, who shall speak on each side, and whether any and what amendments shall be offered. Any member fit to be intrusted with the charge of an important measure would be deemed guilty of an inexcusable blunder if he surrendered the floor which the usages of the House assign to his control for an hour, without demanding ...
— The Spirit of American Government - A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And - Relation To Democracy • J. Allen Smith
... He saw his blunder even while he was speaking. But he was red-hot with indignation and didn't care a jot for the consequences. And Jake came at him. If the foreman's taunt had roused him, it was nothing to the effect of his reply. Jake ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... her plight, and, with a gesture, silenced her. She bustled her out into the vestibule, threw her a clean apron, bade her put it on, and proceeded to the cellar. She speedily caused—or thought she caused—all traces of the little girl's blunder to disappear. ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel
... Everybride and Everygroom. Their hearts sang and the manse was more gorgeous than any mansion on earth, and all the world was good and sweet, and they couldn't possibly ever make any kind of a mistake or blunder, for love was guiding them,—and ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... after the murder, how damaging is his conduct. He falls into a kind of fit on discovering that his nephew's engagement had been broken off, which he might well do if his crime turned out to be not only a crime but also a blunder. And his conduct to the girl is, to say the least of it, strange. Nor will his character help him. He frequents the opium dens of the East-end of London. Guilty, guilty, most certainly guilty. There is nothing to be said in arrest of judgment. Let the judge put on the black cap, and Jasper ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... of the cattle arising; and knowing that dawn was near at hand, the boys had pushed the sleepy ones off their beds and started them feeding. The incident had little effect on the irrepressible Parent, who seemed born to blunder, yet gifted with a sunny disposition which atoned for ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... show that the action brought against De Potter and the choice of The Hague as the seat of the Supreme Court did more to estrange the Belgian bourgeoisie from Dutch rule than the activity of French propagandists. The initial blunder of William I was to ignore the fact that Belgium was not merely a group of ownerless provinces, but a nation as strong in her soul, if not as happy in her fate, as the Dutch nation, deserving the same care and the same consideration. Had he acted as a national ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... very kind of you to put so much faith in me," said the middy; "but don't say any more, please, and don't believe in me too much for fear I should make some horrible blunder, and disappoint you ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... instant comprehended his blunder. For the first time Booverman's shot went wide of the mark, straight into the trees that bordered ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... Bridge, the Epistles of Phalaris, the import of {men} and {de}, the Catholic question, or the great roots of Christian faith; ending with the latest joke in the town or the West Raw, the last effusion by Affleck, tailor and poet, the last blunder of AEsop the apothecary, and the last repartee of the village fool, with the week's Edinburgh and Glasgow news by their respective carriers; the whole little life, sad and humorous—who had been born, and who was dying or dead, married or about ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... of Mexico. This was to oust Spain from her ancient claim on the gulf; but Beaujeu, the naval commander of the expedition, was not in sympathy with La Salle. Beaujeu was a noble by birth; La Salle, only a noble of the merchant classes. The two bickered and quarreled from the first. By some blunder, when the ships reached the Gulf of Mexico, laden with colonists, in December of 1684, they missed the mouth of the Mississippi and anchored off Texas. The main ship sailed back to France. Two others were wrecked, and La Salle in desperation, after several ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... dwell in all humble and faithful souls—they be His Church, Mistress Maude. I never read in no Scripture that He behote to write all the Pope's decretals, nor to see that no Archbishop of Canterbury should blunder in ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... record in all these respects is to be guilty of a grave disloyalty to the kingdom of the truth. With all these facts staring him in the face, the attempt of any intelligent man to maintain the theoretical and ideal infallibility of all parts of these writings is a criminal blunder. Nor is there any use in loudly asserting the inerrancy of these books, with vehement denunciations of all who call it in question, and then in a breath admitting that there may be some errors and discrepancies and interpolations. Perfection ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... silence of the author, and the blunder of his editor, seem to me to prove that Les Maximes are not as generally known and studied ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.02.23 • Various
... Exon, By special direction, Came down the world's wonder, Sir Salathiel Blunder, With a quoif on his head As heavy as lead; ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... the gig came alongside the schooner, the lieutenant offered his hand to Miss Lydia, and then helped the colonel to swing himself up on deck. Once there, Sir Thomas, who was still very much ashamed of his blunder, and at a loss to know what he had better do to make the man whose ancestry dated from the year 1100 forget it, invited him to supper, without waiting for his daughter's consent, and with many fresh apologies and handshakes. Miss Lydia frowned a little, ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... work will knock Morton into 'pi,'" was a remark that caught my ear as I fumed from the composing-room back to my private office. I had just irately blamed a printer for a blunder of my own, and the words I overheard reminded me of the unpleasant truth that I had recently made a great many senseless blunders, over which I chafed in merciless self-condemnation. For weeks and months my mind had been tense under the strain of increasing work ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... doubts the possibility of entering into a scientific knowledge of spiritual truth by following this formula, what then? It can only be because he is so unscholarly as to make the blunder in logic of assuming as untrue or impossible that which ...
— The Church, the Schools and Evolution • J. E. (Judson Eber) Conant
... woman!" He bent over her and kissed her, apparently unconscious that she instinctively drew back from his caress. "If you really will help me, no doubt I shall build things up again in no time, and this one blunder won't count for much. You are a worthy comrade for ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... instance, who, having made Pendennis an early confidant in his amour, gave him the whole story? Clive, Pendennis writes expressly, is travelling abroad with his wife. Who is that wife? By a most monstrous blunder, Mr. Pendennis killed Lord Farintosh's mother at one page and brought her to life again at another; but Rosey, who is so lately consigned to Kensal Green, it is not surely with her that Clive is travelling, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to-day made another sad blunder— What can be come over me lately, I wonder? The Prince was as cheerful as if all his life He had never been troubled with Friends or a Wife— "Fine weather," says he—to which I, who must prate, Answered, "Yes, Sir, but changeable rather, of late." He took it, I fear, for he lookt ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... alterations of the former the stones of the chapter-house, which had been doubtless much injured but not irreparably so. In the cathedral itself he erected a mass of masonry intended to support the central tower, which was, however, nothing but a hideous architectural blunder. In itself it was ugly to behold, and actually weakened by lateral pressure that which it was intended to support. He also presented an elaborate altar-piece and Grecian oak screen with scenic decoration above, boards painted to represent curtains, and wooden imitations of ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Hereford, A Description - Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • A. Hugh Fisher
... above how we had in some incomprehensible way omitted putting on the letter of credit the sub-manager's name. How could we have committed such a blunder? My answer is that this is only another example of the unforeseen "something" ever happening to defeat any anticipated benefit from ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... stood for a while trying to recall exactly what had happened. There was a slight scratch on his hand, and when he automatically touched it with his lips, it made them burn. The lit lamps in the Gray's Inn Road seemed to him a little unsteady, and the passers-by showed a disposition to blunder into him. ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... by the law and Gospel. Again, some that the two sacraments, baptism and the Lord's supper, were these two witnesses, and so on almost without end. These instances will suffice for our present purpose; for surely any of you reading God's own Word need not so blunder. ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... river; so he prayed to have it again ('twas but a small request, mark ye me), and having a strong faith, he did not throw the hatchet after the helve, as some spirits of contradiction say by way of scandalous blunder, but the helve after the hatchet, as you all properly have it. Presently two great miracles were seen: up springs the hatchet from the bottom of the water, and fixes itself to its old acquaintance the helve. Now had he wished to coach it to heaven in a fiery chariot like Elias, to multiply ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... into a thoughtful mood in his walk, and being more accustomed to riding than walking, in his absence of mind he made the blunder. ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... is too feeble just to say I am sorry. I heve been cursing the blunder with all my heart ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... episcopal palace at Farnham. Cobbett's main doctrine is that when the Catholic church flourished, the population was actually more numerous and richer, that the care of the priests and monks made pauperism impossible, and that ever since the hideous blunder perpetrated by the reformers everything has been going from bad to worse. When it was retorted that the census proved the population to be growing, he replied that the census was a lie. Were the facts truly stated, he declares, we should have a population ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... custom, I made rather an awkward blunder the other day; though I must observe, in my justification, that I had lately been in the agonies of searching for servants, and had just filled all the necessary departments pretty much to my satisfaction. Therefore, when the porter of the Senora de ——- brought ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... somewhat military in his nature not to be subdued, always manly and able, but rarely tender, as if he did not feel himself except in opposition. He wanted a fallacy to expose, a blunder to pillory, I may say required a little sense of victory, a roll of the drum, to call his powers into full exercise. It cost him nothing to say No; indeed, he found it much easier than to say Yes. It ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... Dartmouth College, to recite badly; to make a poor recitation. From the substantive bull, a blunder or contradiction, or from the use of the word as a prefix, signifying ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... was made and supported by Pansa to send a second embassy to him. And even Cicero at first consented to it, and allowed himself to be nominated with Servilius and three other senators, all of consular rank, but on more mature reflection he was convinced that he had been guilty of a blunder, and that the object of Antonius and his friends was only to gain time for Ventidius to join him with his three legions. Accordingly, at the next meeting of the senate, he delivered the following speech, retracting his former sanction of the proposed embassy. And he spoke so strongly against ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... profit, reap the benefit. disipar dissipate, scatter, put to flight, drive away; —se be dissipated, be scattered. disolver dissolve, dissipate, scatter, disperse. disparate m. folly, piece of folly, blunder. distante adj. distant, afar. distinguir distinguish, see clearly. distrado, -a distracted, absentminded. diverso, -a various, dissimilar, different. divertir amuse. dividir divide, ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... Audela is my kingdom, and very often, just for the sport's sake, do I and my servitors go secretly among you. As human beings we blunder about your darkened shadow world, bound by the laws of sight and sense, but keeping always in our hearts the secrets of Audela and the secret of our manner of returning thither. Sometimes, too, for the sport's sake, we imprison in earthen figures a spark of the true life of Audela: and then ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... Robinette. If I am guilty of those things, you don't want to have anything to do with me, and I don't want you to. But I am here to tell you that I am not guilty, and that it all has been a horrible blunder of circumstance. It is very true in one sense—" and his voice lowered—"that about two years ago in Boston, I was arrested and ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... indignation, in which even Chatham joined. The small minority of British settled in Quebec and Montreal made vehement protests, while the American Congress itself in 1774 committed the irreparable blunder of making the establishment of the Roman Catholic religion in Canada one of its formally published grievances against Great Britain. When war broke out, and the magnitude of the mistake was seen, efforts were made to seduce the Canadians by ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... engrossed her M[ajest]y's favours, without admitting any access but through her means? Had she heaped employments upon herself, her family and dependants? Had she an imperious, haughty behaviour? Or, after all, was it a perfect blunder and mistake of one person for another? I have heard of a man who lay all night on a rough pavement; and in the morning, wondering what it could possibly be, that made him rest so ill, happened to see a feather under him, and imputed the uneasiness of his lodging ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... Manning, was concerned, grew daily more complicated. She showed a decided inclination for Stratton's society, and when he came to know her better he found her frank, breezy, and delightfully companionable. He knew perfectly well that unless he wanted to take a chance of making some tremendous blunder he ought to avoid any prolonged conversation with the lady. But she was so charming that every now and then he flung prudence to the winds—and usually ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... peas with a knife. In her thankfulness that the tyrannic Rosamund had gone to Germany, and that Madame Piriac had vanished back into unknown Paris, Audrey was at pains to take to heart the lesson of a semi-hysterical blunder. ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... the side of Almagro's own interests, he evidently committed in this a gross blunder, of which he was soon to repent; but if we consider, what we should never lose sight of, the interest of the country, he had already committed a capital crime in the acts of aggression of which he ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... he gave an order to the men of his squad, he asked himself with terror, whether he had not inadvertently committed some gross blunder, whether some inferior might not ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... that night. She tossed in a restless agony of remembering, and the pitiable party seemed a life-failure, as she lay thinking of it in the dark, a colossal blunder never to be obliterated. They were unlucky—the Monroes. They never could do ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... already worked upon Sir Edward's mind about his Minister to Mexico as far as I could. Now that the other matter is settled and while Carden is behaving, I go at it. Two years ago Mr. Knox made a bad blunder in protesting against Carden's "anti-Americanism" in Cuba. Mr. Knox sent Mr. Reid no definite facts nor even accusations to base a protest on. The result was a failure—a bad failure. I have again asked Mr. Bryan for all the definite reports he has heard about Carden. That man, ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... said, "you are so surrounded by true affection that I never thought how my thoughtless use of that familiar phrase might be construed; but you must thank me for my little blunder, because it has served to show you what friends your noble ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... life. I can see that you are naturally consecrated to it. My son is a good steady fellow, but he lacks the divine gift. I am getting old. We need new fire, new brains, in the conduct of this business. I ask you to forgive the unlucky blunder we made lately, and devote ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... is a clever woman in spite her blunder about you; and had I dealt with her only I should have thought that she might have expressed herself as she did, and still have had the paper in her own keeping. I could not read her mind as I could read his. Women will lie ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... the house. Yes, it is handsome, grand. Youth and age together did not make any blunder of it. There is the tower, that was to be his study and library and place of resort generally. What crude dreams he had in those days! Science and poesy, art and history, were all a sad jumble in ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... to falsify Phillis's story that Saniel insisted on going to see Nougarede. What good would it do? That would be a blunder which sooner or later would show itself, and in that case would turn against him. He would have liked, with the authority of a physician, to explain that this testimony of a paralytic could have no more importance than that of a ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot
... only proper way to settle such a question was by a court-martial. As the corps passed from my command the next morning, and had been under by orders only a few days, I have never made any effort to fix, even in my own mind, the responsibility for that blunder. ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... into your mind above everything else, my friend. And try to grasp the fact, also, that the system we are now trying to change was a natural outgrowth of other conditions. It was not a wicked invention, nor was it a foolish blunder. It was a necessary and a right step in human evolution. But now it has in turn become unsuitable to the needs of the people and it must give place to something else. When a man suffers from such a disease as appendicitis, he does not ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... that boy yet? There's no counting on what he'll do next. I don't know how he'll ever get through the world, I'm sure, but I'll look after him while he's here at least. I owe him a huge debt of gratitude for this Christmas blunder. What an awful mess this place is in! But, Hannah, did you ever in the world see anything so delightful as that little Tommy Smithson stuffing himself with plum cake, not to mention Teddy Grant? It did me good ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... like Pius VII, or had he possessed the large scholarly qualities of Leo XIII, now reigning, the vast scandal of the Galileo case would never have burdened the Church: instead of devising endless quibbles and special pleadings to escape responsibility for this colossal blunder, its defenders could have claimed forever for the Church the glory of fearlessly initiating a ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... most interesting idea is suggested by the blunder of somebody over another puzzle. A boy was given a puzzle to solve by a friend, but he misunderstood what he had to do, and set about attempting what most likely everybody would have told him was impossible. But he was a boy with a ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... and scientific policy of producing, through wholesale reforms and improvements, more efficient and profitable laborers. They fail to see that the strength of the enemy will lie henceforth more frequently in deception than in repression. But even this is not their most fatal blunder. In attacking individualistic and reactionary rather than collectivistic and progressive capitalism, these Socialists are not only wasting their energies by assaulting a moribund power, but are training their forces to use weapons and to practice evolutions that will soon be obsolete and ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... practically not to be felt. This country is not run by votes. Do you think it is? It is governed by influence. It is governed by the ambitions and the enterprises which control votes. The young woman that thinks she is going to vote for the sake of holding an office is making an awful blunder. ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... of fool who is afraid to trust his senses.... As for my making it hard for you to approach the subject, as you say, it is true. It was simply moral cowardice. I understood that you wished to clear the matter up; and I was revolted at the notion of my injurious blunder being discussed. I tried to show you by my actions that it was as if it had never been. I hoped you would pardon me without any words. I can't forgive myself, and I never shall. And yet if you could know—' He stopped short, and then ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... things. If some important affair occurs, people try then to think, but to very little purpose; because, not having exercised their powers on small things, their powers lack the development necessary for great ones. Hence, thoughtless people, when forced to act in an affair of importance, blunder through it with no more chance of doing as they should than one would have of hitting a small or distant mark at a shooting-match, if previous practice had not given the power of hitting objects ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... with him without instinctively realizing that he was a much maligned person. No wonder that this impression was spread widely not only through the whole navy but also throughout the whole mercantile marine. What a blunder the whole ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... of humour with yourself for a blunder that might happen to any man—it was as much my good luck as a good hand would have been, and so fortune ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... perception, much force of character; and Franceska's, scarcely yet formed, showed that she was affectionate, romantic, and, of all things in the world, fond of horses and of boating. Emilia's was held as a great blunder, for she was said to have an eye devoted to temporal advantages, also volatile, yet of great determination, triumphing over every obstacle, and in much ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... represented as initiated into the highest mysteries of Freemasonry. This is of course not explained by Lessing's commentators, who give no clue to his identity.[489] It is evident that Lessing committed an enormous blunder in thus letting so important a cat out of the bag, for after the publication of the first three dialogues and whilst the last two were circulating privately in manuscript amongst the Freemasons, an order from the Duke of Brunswick forbade their publication ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... a dryness in the tone of this reply which warned Barrant that he had made a blunder in allowing his irritation to get the better of him. But his private opinion was that the letter was the outcome of some secret of the dead man's which he had imparted to his lawyer. He changed his mood with supple swiftness, in order to extract ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... her, groping for the meaning she was hiding behind her quiet manner. But her question struck fire from the flint of his resolution. "That power matter is a principle, and I am not wrong in it. As to the means I used last night, it was brass and blunder and I'm ashamed of ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... has all been a strange blunder, but it is perfectly clear how it happened. That man Beaton evidently had never seen Frederick Cavendish. He was simply informed that he would leave New York on that train. He met this Cavendish on board, ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... very few illustrations for Dickens; and the amusing blunder which he perpetrated in "The Battle of Life," in allowing the lady to elope with the wrong man, and the "horror and agony" of the author in consequence thereof, have been set forth in Forster's "Life." The mistake was ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... punishment for a grave offence against custom: violence is rare, and when resorted to is intended (except in [96] some extraordinary cases presently to be noticed) as a mere correction, the punishment of a blunder. In certain rough communities, blunders endangering life are immediately punished by physical chastisement,—not in anger, but on traditional principle. Once I witnessed at a fishing-settlement, a ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... feeling was their province; he denied that they should affect thought or dominate action. In others they were his opportunity, in himself a luxury that had never been dangerous, or an ailment that was troublesome but never fatal. He was hard on a blunder; as a necessary presupposition to effective negotiation or business he recognised a binding code of honour; he has frequently told me he did not understand the theological conception of sin. He had eaten of our salt ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... obliged the prebends to make certain declarations, which were fraudulent and misleading, so that it was difficult not to blunder in the replies, which were directed by Father Verart, the mainspring of all these plots. They made the prebends take an oath; the latter consented to this, and submitted to everything, in order to extricate themselves from so much annoyance and to be free ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... "An honest blunder is one thing; but pre-meditated meanness is quite another, Cameron. However, I appreciate your generosity. It is like you—on the same scale with the rest of your nature." Then to shift a subject that was embarrassing he remarked: "As for these young rascals ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... himself. He had been too near to Dumont, had been merged in Dumont's big personality. Whatever he did well seemed to Dumont merely the direct reflection of his own abilities; whatever he did ill seemed far more stupid than a similar blunder made by a less intimate subordinate—what excuse for Culver's going wrong with the guiding hand of the Great ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... that she still bent over the lock, motionless, saw in hand. In the instant she made a mental review of her proceedings and satisfied herself that she had been guilty of no professional blunder. The inopportune appearance of Mr. Cragg must be attributed to a blind chance—to fate. So the first wave of humiliation that swept over her receded as she gathered her wits to combat this ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... cried her mother, in the impotence and self despite of a mortifying blunder; "I'll raise ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... a pause, "I have been accustomed to think both celibacy and marriage good in their way. In the Church of Rome great good, I see, comes of celibacy; but depend on it, my dear Reding, you are making a great blunder if you are for introducing celibacy into ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... these three, faith, hope, love.' When Paul takes three nouns and couples them with a verb in the singular, he is not making a slip of the pen, or committing a grammatical blunder which a child could correct. But there is a great truth in that piece of apparent grammatical irregularity; for the faith, the hope, and the love, for which he can only afford a singular verb, are thereby declared to be in their ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... fact that there was no danger for the passengers, whatever there might be for the vessel, and assuring him that I could save both him and myself without difficulty[1] (though he can't swim), as the water, though deep, was not very rough,—the wind not blowing right on shore (it was a blunder of the Greeks who missed stays),—the Doctor exclaimed, 'Save him, indeed! by G—d! save me rather—I'll be first if I can'—a piece of egotism which he pronounced with such emphatic simplicity as to set all who had leisure ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... exclaimed in a low voice, "my blunder you know, but you do not know how much I am to blame. If you only knew what ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... father had given him a fortnight in Paris on his way to Germany, as the reward of acquiescence. That (from Herr Harrison's point of view) was a disastrous blunder. How could the dear old Pater be expected to know that Paris is, spiritually speaking, no sort of way even to South Germany? He should have gone to Brussels, if he was ever, spiritually speaking, to get ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... akin to romance in its paternal tenderness than seemed consistent with the granite-hewn strength and sternness of his general character. A thorough soldier, with a soldier's contempt for fine-spun diplomacy, he had been led into many a blunder when acting as a chief of party and of State; but his absolute single-minded honesty had more than redeemed such errors; "integrity and uprightness had preserved him," and through him the land and its rulers, amid difficulties where the finest statecraft might have ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... fault? Tis not my arrogance, But candor, Lord, that puts the blame on Thee. What right hadst Thou to make these people free And let all nature prompt them to advance?— Oh, no such blunder, Lord, hadst Thou called me, Instead of Wisdom, to ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... My blunder was this, I travelled to Bayreuth with an ideal in my breast, and was thus doomed to experience the bitterest disappointment. The preponderance of ugliness, grotesqueness and ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... of the grisly story. Mr. Kitson will advise you as to what steps you may take to free yourself. It was a most horrible blunder, and it was all the more tragic because you were the victim, you of all ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... repented afterwards," he said, "but at the moment, I could not but think of you; how you suit it out here." Now she coloured and drew back. Then she heard close by her: "You must not be angry, it always happens that when we wish to repair a blunder, we ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... fuzzy's dingy palm his first instinct was to take to his heels; but a second thought restrained him from that blunder of etiquette. It was his; it had been given him. It—and, oh, what an elysium it opened to the gaze of his mind's eye! He had tumbled to the foot of the ladder; he was hungry, homeless, friendless, ragged, cold, drifting; and he held in his hand the key to a paradise of the mud-honey that ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... much mischief; but thee'll find it isn't best to grieve over these mistakes. Why, my dear little Susan, I have lived eight years to thy one, and if I should sit down now and drop a tear for every blunder I have made, I don't know but I could almost make a fountain of myself, like that woman thee tells about in ...
— Little Prudy's Sister Susy • Sophie May
... him," Henley said, reluctantly. "I didn't make a point of looking him up. He ran about searching for me. I've washed my hands of that—that matter, Dixie. I ain't no hand at match-making, nohow. It ain't my turn. I get all mixed up, and blunder at it. I'll never set myself up to pick out a—a suitable mate for any woman again. There ain't none in existence—there ain't none half good enough for you, nohow. It makes me sick to—to think about a fellow like—well, no better in many ways than this here Long is—having the ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... then left it pallid. The shadow of her sorrow had been forgotten during the strenuous moments she had gone through; the tactless remark brought it back upon her with cruel emphasis. She turned aside and slipped through the door at the back of the hut while the doctor, oblivious to his blunder, went out ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... ministers and reside in Boston, were confused in this comment. The one, who had recently been South, but who did not preach the sermon, was read a severe lecture, because after partaking of the hospitality of the Southern people, he had spoken in so severe terms of them. It was an amusing blunder, but illustrates the fact that more and more even the Southern editor is coming to feel the importance of Northern criticism. It is a very hopeful sign. It is sometimes said that time will settle these monstrous inequalities that prevail in the South, but time ...
— American Missionary, Volume 44, No. 6, June, 1890 • Various
... Now what a Blunder would be committed in the Education of such a Family, if, with this different Turn of Mind in the Children, there should be no difference made in the Management of them, or their Disposal in the World. If all should be put ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill
... making haste to repair her blunder. "I've plenty of time to lay it myself. 'Twas only that when I saw you settin' up before it I thought mebbe you'd built ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... furiously, and Ruth, turning to him, saw it. She flushed too, fearing to have made she knew not what blunder, but she went on seriously, not pausing ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... is typical of many Californian towns. It was a blunder; the site has proved untenable; and, although it is still such a young place by the scale of Europe, it has already begun to be deserted for its neighbour and namesake, North Vallejo. A long pier, a number of drinking saloons, a hotel of a great size, marshy pools ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was smitten into the head of Coleman's servant to turn into the most inefficient dragoman, probably in the entire East. Coleman discerned it immediately, before any blunder could tell him. He at first thought that it was the voices of the guns which had made a chilly inside for the man, but when he reflected upon the incompetency, or childish courier's falsity, at Patras and his discernible lack of sense from Agrinion onward, he felt that the fault was elemental ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... attorney-general intended to do, and that those who did know are the ablest and most reliable men in the country. It is therefore utterly out of the question to assume that any one among them, any man of their intelligence and standing, could have made such a blunder. Really, my dear sir, if you will pardon my saying so, ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... On the day following that of your departure from Windermere, I was duly inducted by Cleon into my new duties. They are few in number, and by no means difficult. So far I have contrived to get through them without any desperate blunder. Another thing I have done of which you will be pleased to hear: I have contrived to ingratiate myself with the mulatto, and am in high favour with him. You were right in your remarks; he is worth cultivation, in ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... these letters, Stephen, the concentrated venom of years of brooding. My heart is black with rebellion against my lot and against the lot of woman. I have been given life and a fine position in the world, I made one fatal blunder in marrying to make these things secure, and now I can do nothing with it all and I have nothing to do with it. It astounds me to think of the size of our establishments, Stephen, of the extravagant way in which whole counties and great countries pay tribute ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... quite red. He felt that he had just committed a blunder. He had imagined that this was not my first meeting with the young girl, and here he gave me a certainty, when as yet I only dared dream of a hope. He held his tongue now; it was I who spoke ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... ascribing my success in my various missions to the possession of peculiar qualities. No such thing: I owe everything to the simple habit of always waiting till it is my turn to speak. And believe me, that he who plays before his turn at whist, commits as great a blunder as he who speaks before his turn during ...
— The Infernal Marriage • Benjamin Disraeli
... on the Bosporus, when we made that trip to the Black Sea in the Maud," added the lady, who seemed to be pleased because she had caught the captain in a blunder. ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... over many instances of similar misunderstanding of Benvenuto's easily intelligible though inelegant Latin, to a blunder which would be extraordinary in any other book, by which our translator has ruined a most characteristic story in the comment on the 112th verse of Canto XIV. of the "Purgatory." We must give ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... were easily found. It was unwise to give opera on an ambitious scale after the amusement season had worn itself out; it was nothing less than foolish to do so with an ill-equipped company, in a house that had lost its fashionable prestige and at prices so large that a fatal blunder had to be confessed by their reduction at the end of a week. Two seasons later, the opera was announced by the Metropolitan director, Mr. Stanton, but was not given, for reasons already mentioned. How it entered the fashionable home of opera we ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... almost sick with expectation. As soon as the fly had stopped at the little gate she heard his voice, and heard at once that it was quick, joyful, and telling much of inward satisfaction. He had a good-natured word for Janet, and called Thomas an old blunder-head in a manner that ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... because Wellington, finding his position could be bettered by retirement and concentration, decided upon withdrawal. But Ney could have been the victor in every sense, in spite of his indifferent tactics, if it had not been for the same blunder that the ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... down will come the whole machine of state, or, to say the least, it will get so much awry as never to work as well as at first; and therefore we will have none of it. If, on the other hand, one of our agents makes a blunder and falls, why, he will only break his own neck. He will, moreover, fall in the midst of us, and, should he escape with life, we can either catch him and throw him back again, or we can send a better hand up in his place, to serve out the rest of his time. They also maintain that one beam, ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... present fact, and one's morality consists in sheer revolt all along the line. The whole matter is in confusion. You have to accept Mrs. Walker's and Mrs. Gordon's view of the case, plainly and simply, or you get off into a sort of morass and blunder into quicksands." ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... carcasses, and perhaps an elk or a mountain sheep as well. I never became more than a fair hunter, and at times I had most exasperating experiences, either failing to see game which I ought to have seen, or committing some blunder in the stalk, or failing to kill when I fired. Looking back, I am inclined to say that if I had any good quality as a hunter it was that of perseverance. "It is dogged that does it" in hunting as in many other things. Unless in wholly exceptional cases, when we were very hungry, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... came out. We walked on and on along the lonely road, walked slow, and scarcely spoke. For my resolution was taken. Elinor should not be bound by any promises or confessions. Only, just as we were stepping over the door-sill, I heard a little sigh, and these few words would blunder out, "When I come back from the West, I shall—want to tell—" But there I left off, and didn't go into the house, but walked about the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... he exclaimed, "that the nearest salvage appliances are at Cherbourg! Thank God, the Ministry of Marine are alone responsible for that blunder. Dupre and his comrades have, it seems, thirty-six hours' supply of oxygen—if, indeed, they are still living, which I feel tempted to hope they are not. You see, Monsieur de Wissant, I was at Bizerta when the Lutin sank. A man doesn't want to remember ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... Reuben and what led to it, that she had grit, and that the mistake was excusable, and that a girl as pretty as she was didn't want to be as fly as Mr. Reuben had said. Her father had told her that he was proud of her, and he had not been so rude as to laugh at her blunder. ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... the protection of lower ground, which there led up to the works. This called forth such violent protest and condemnation from Colonel Carle, that the result was a serious mutiny in the One Hundred and Ninetieth. Both officers and men felt that it was a blunder and an outrage to be thus needlessly exposed; and when Carle cursed them as cowards, they resented it. Confusion followed. The officers, almost to a man, refused to obey orders, or do any thing, until the insult should be retracted. The men were becoming dangerous. Carle rode up to Adjutant ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... lad," he murmured as his nimble fingers grew busy, "ye've been drinkin' again! Nay, don't deny it! A' see ye comin' out of Hennessy's the forenoon. An' ye've a wife an' six children, the shame on ye to treat a puir woman so! Another blunder like this an' ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... account, and told them of the impropriety of laughing at me. One of the children immediately replied, "Please, sir, do you know what we were laughing at?" I replied in the negative. "Then, sir," says the boy, "I will tell you. Please, sir, you have made a blunder." I, thinking I had not, proceeded to defend myself, when the children replied, "Please, sir, you convict yourself." I replied, "How so?" "Why," says the children, "you said a right-angled triangle had one right angle, and that all its angles are acute. If it has one right angle, ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... fooled, let them go to the devil their own way, not laying the blame of their own folly on others! But having got you—would I ever have let you go for any power under Heaven? Why (as soon as you were free) did I marry you? I knew that, politically, it was a blunder: that over there it would go against us— prove the case. Half Ireland cared nothing for the verdict of an English jury. But when we married, they had to believe it then.... Well, I wanted them to believe it. I know my love would have waited, had I asked her. And it wasn't—it wasn't ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... the South. Mediation, in whatever form or under whatever name it is to be offered, is universally taken to imply some movement in behalf of the Confederates. So completely, indeed, are the belligerents themselves impressed with this idea, that the South casts it in our teeth as a scandal and a blunder that no European arbitration has been yet interposed; while the President of the Northern States actually proclaims a day of thanksgiving for the deliverance of the country from 'foreign intervention,' which he identifies with nothing less than ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... their own; to be on their guard; to have a reputation to maintain; to conceal the "dram of folly;" to be, to that extent, artificial in their relations with men. They dare not betray the "laughable blunder," which, said Charles Lamb, is the test your neighbour giveth you "that he will ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... Fred's eyes, which were steadily fixed on her, that he was, on that point, of his mother's opinion. She went on, however, still pretending to blunder. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... There is one blunder, as Kathleen, the daughter of the Earl of Elsmore, is referred to as Lady Kathleen. Her father would have had to be a Duke or a Marquess for that address to be correct. Her actual title does not sound so good, so perhaps Perkins can be forgiven for this solecism. ...
— The Irish Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... at the north end of the line, giving a hoot each time the mask was placed upon anyone. Great care was taken that the mask should be so arranged upon the face that the eyes might look directly through the eyeholes, for should any blunder occur the sight of at least one eye would be lost. It is scarcely on before it is removed. After the masks had been placed on all the faces it was laid beside Hasjelti's. The man personating Hasjelti sprinkled his mask and then Hostjoboard's with pollen, ...
— Ceremonial of Hasjelti Dailjis and Mythical Sand Painting of the - Navajo Indians • James Stevenson
... also for the fact that, systematic and logical thinker as he was, he perpetrates what might appear at first sight as a logical blunder. Instead of first proving the existence of God and then discussing his nature and attributes, as Saadia, Bahya, Ibn Daud and others did before him, he treats exhaustively of the divine attributes in the first book, whereas the proof of the existence of God ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... could have been mistaken about seeing and hearing the two bank thieves? Jimmie had something of a vivid imagination; but then Jack had never known him to make a blunder of ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel
... the railroad proceeds with systematic accuracy. There is no chance for the most careless person to commit a blunder, or make a mistake. At the proper time the conductor marches every body into their places and locks them in, gives the word, "All right," and away we go. Somebody has remarked, very characteristically, that ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... pleasant and genial theories; but M. Ghil informs us that Rimbaud was mistaken in many things, particularly in coupling the sound of the vowel u with the colour green instead of with the colour yellow. M. Ghil has corrected this very stupid blunder and many others; and his instrumentation in his last volume, "Le Geste Ingenu," may be considered as complete and definitive. The work is dedicated to Mallarme, "Pere et seigneur des ors, des pierreries, et des poissons," and other works are to follow:—the six tomes of "Legendes de Reves ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... the giants—the Titan forces of the earth—that be will give them Freia if they build him a castle, Valhalla, which he intends to fill with slain warriors in sufficient numbers to keep down his foes. This is his primary, essential, fatal blunder; for unless the gods eat of Freia's apples every day they must wither and their powers decay. But Wotan means to cheat the giants, and Loge, the deceitful god of fire, who is ultimately to destroy the whole of the present regime, has been sent ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... most terrible blow the established church had ever received in France. Never had a more disastrous blunder been committed by the Guises, than when they stirred Henry to imprison and try, and Francis to execute, the most virtuous member of the Parisian senate. Such strength of principle in the midst of affliction, such fortitude upon the brink of death, had never been seen before. The witnesses ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... alone of Versions; in Irenaeus and Origen (who contradict themselves), and in the Latin Fathers. All the Greek authorities, with the few exceptions just recorded, of which A and D are the only consistent witnesses, unite in condemning the evident blunder[16]. ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... having to clamber over the heaps of duffle that took up so much room aboard, the scouts saw that it was no false alarm. A number of men were hurrying toward them, splashing through water that was in places almost knee deep, even when they took the upper levels. Should they make a blunder, and stray off the ridges, it was likely they would speedily have ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... who are living their lives as we are living ours, in the shimmer of a globule in space, it is not enough that we should lift our faces to the sky and blunder and guess at a God there, because there is so much room between the stars, and murmur faintly, "Spiritual things are spiritually discerned." By the infinite bones of our bodies, by the seeds of the million years that flow in our veins, material things are spiritually discerned. There is not ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... "in taking you for my confidante in my ambitious projects, I have committed a blunder and an impertinence, which a slight contempt from you has mildly punished. But speaking seriously, Madame, I thank you with all my heart. I feared to find in you a powerful enemy, and I find in you a strong neutral, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... a blunder," whispered Storms, when the captain stepped beside him. "Those wretches mean mischief, and it is coming within ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... self-confession in art that there is no idealism there. How the Kaiser could go out day after day and confront these low conceptions of patriotism and of Germany, and not order them to be swept away, explains in great part how it was Germany made such a blunder as to go to war the way she did. One advantage of a revolution in Germany might be to sweep away these sad ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... Mrs. Veal was there. They wondered at Mrs. Bargrave's inquiry; and sent her word, that she was not there, nor was expected. At this answer Mrs. Bargrave told the maid she had certainly mistook the name, or made some blunder. And though she was ill, she put on her hood, and went herself to Captain Watson's though she knew none of the family, to see if Mrs. Veal was there or not. They said, they wondered at her asking, for that she had not been in town; they were sure, if she had, she would ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... gravely, yet very coldly, "perhaps it would be as well for you to know that you made quite a blunder yesterday, when you said I told you wrong; I hadn't the slightest notion of telling you, right or wrong. But I know how you came to think so. I was looking out a word in Mr. Burrows' dictionary, and stood just behind you, when ...
— Tip Lewis and His Lamp • Pansy (aka Isabella Alden)
... not see how a soldier can avoid exposing himself occasionally to the risk of being shot, sabred, or bayoneted. What blunder of mine ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... of the discussion of the miraculous element in the Bible.—Evaporation of the former evidential value of miracles.—Further insistence on this value a logical blunder.—The transfer of miracles from the artillery to the baggage of the Church.—Probability of a further reduction of the list of miracles.—Also of a further transfer of events reputed miraculous to ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton
... Christian religion and the Imperial-revolutionary system. There are many blunders in the above extract as we read it; blundering metaphors, blundering arguments, and blundering assertions; but this is surely the grandest blunder of all; and one wonders at the blindness of the legislator and historian who can advance such a parallel. And what are we to say of the legacy of the dying revolution to Napoleon? Revolutions do not die, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to explain," he said. "And, first of all, permit me to apologize to you, Major Brown, for a most abominable and unpardonable blunder, which has caused you menace and inconvenience, in which, if you will allow me to say so, you have behaved with astonishing courage and dignity. Of course you need not trouble about the bill. We will stand the loss." And, tearing the paper across, he flung the halves ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... did so, for the next moment the punt swerved violently, to blunder quickly down stream as it felt the strength of ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... bit on" like other people, and having tried all the turf-prophets in turn, with unsatisfactory results, I was delighted to hear from a friend that "a new DANIEL had come to judgment" in the person of a tipster on Punch, who was "wonderful good"—(it was just the time when she did blunder on to a winner)—and I made up my mind to follow the new Prophet DANIEL; but, by Jove! it resulted in a loss, and DANIEL landed me among the lions in no time! These are not jokes, but sober facts—I plunged heavily on all the "Selections," and am now in the pleasant position ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 12, 1892 • Various
... Our guide went first with great deliberation and groping his way with a stick, and after an ineffectual attempt to scale the rock above, F. and I also unwillingly followed his example. The water was piercingly cold as it swept against us, and the pain was so great that we were glad to blunder over as quickly as possible, without taking very much trouble about picking our steps. After passing this in safety we came suddenly upon a band of hill-men with their loads, from Thibet; they were the first natives we had encountered, and wild and weird-looking savages ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... not read them. If we feel ourselves weakening towards such idleness, let us spin tops. If we had to choose between Garvice and say Hegel or Locke for a niche in the Temple of Letters, we should make an unintelligible blunder if we did not elect Mr. Garvice without discussion. He is human, he is ingenuous and funny, and the philosophers are only loosening with the insinuations of moth and rust. The philosophers are like the great statesmen and the great soldiers—we should be happier without them. If we ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... lemon and white,—something terribly ferocious like 'Russian Wolf Hound' I think he is! But I've named him Beautiful-Lovely! And there's the neatest looking paper-white coach dog just perfectly ruined with ink-spots! Blunder-Blot, I think, will make a good ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... snubbed me, and would not eat with me, and on Monday a Walee (saint) picked out tit-bits for me with his own fingers, and went with me inside the tomb. The Patriarch has made a blunder with his progress. He has come ostentatiously as the protege and pronem of the Pasha, and he has 'eaten' and beaten the fellaheen. The Copts of Luxor have had to pay fifty pounds for the honour of his presence, besides no end of sheep, poultry, ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... break like that," said Billy, "that upsets him. It takes a smart fellow to be a rogue, and Pete isn't quite smart enough. Another time when he tried to get back on Jack he made some such blunder as this, and gave ...
— The Hilltop Boys on the River • Cyril Burleigh
... was so anxious to do what was right, and so ready to believe that every one knew better than himself, that he never ventured to admit to himself that he might be all the while on a hopelessly wrong tack. It did not occur to him that there might be a blunder anywhere, much less did it occur to him to try and find out where the blunder was. Nevertheless he became daily more full of malaise, and daily, only he knew it not, more ripe for an explosion should ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... the South began on the President a bitter, malignant and unceasing vilification for this, his first fatal and inexcusable blunder! ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... Leave behind sectarian lurches; Jump on board the car of Freedom, Ere it be too late to need them. Sound the alarm! Pulpits thunder! Ere too late you see your blunder! ...
— The Anti-Slavery Harp • Various
... longer necessary for abolitionists to contend against the blunder of pro-slavery,—that the colored people are inferior to the whites; for these people are practically demonstrating its falseness. They have men enough in action now, to maintain the anti-slavery enterprise, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... not a blunder of Shakespeare's, but a mistake of Johnson's, who considers the passage alluded to in a more literal sense than the author intended it. Sir Proteus, it is true, had seen Silvia for a few moments; but though he could form from thence some idea of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... Tortoise-Shell (LANE) would have made an excellent short story, but to pursue its farcical developments through three hundred pages requires a considerable amount of perseverance. The scene of Mr. PETER BLUNDER'S book is laid in tropical Jallagar, where the British Resident was keener on cats than on his duties. A male tortoise-shell was what he fanatically and almost ferociously desired, and to obtain ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 17, 1917 • Various
... insinuations exposed him to a severe reply. Mr. Pitt standing up again, said, "He would not undertake to determine whether youth could be justly imputed to any man as a reproach; but he affirmed that the wretch, who, after having seen the consequences of repeated errors, continues still to blunder, and whose age has only added obstinacy to stupidity, is surely the object of either abhorrence or contempt, and deserves not that his grey head should secure him from insults; much more is he to be abhorred, who, as he has advanced in ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... chuckle which preceded an invitation to inspect some candidate's egregious blunder; Irving would read and smile quietly, unaware that Barclay was watching him and wondering how appreciative he might ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier
... improves our position. Conde feels secure now; he dreaded only the passage of the Loire. Guise made a huge blunder which, in the future, will cost ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... either to accuse themselves or throw the blame on others, and the choice was quickly made. The disaster was attributed to all those who had foreseen the defeat and tried to prevent it. Every retreat of the army, every diplomatic blunder found an excuse in the machinations of the pacifists, and these unpopular gentry to whom no one listened were invested by their opponents with the formidable power of organising defeat. In order that none should be ignorant of this, a writing was hung about their necks with the word "Defeatist," ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... was a strange blunder to be made so near the time, about so remarkable a person, unless he concluded that whoever displeased Henry VIII. was of ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... like the Grange, its chief work is education. It brings mind in contact with mind; it gives chance for discussion and interchange of ideas; it trains in power of expression; it teaches the virtue of co-operation. Farmers blunder when they fail to encourage organization. Sometimes, out of foolish notions of independence, they neglect to unite their forces. They are utterly blind to their best interests when they do so. They should encourage organization if for no other reason than for the splendid ...
— Chapters in Rural Progress • Kenyon L. Butterfield
... wrong; they will be eager to go on—first to recover the loss on that article of account, and next to show their enemies, and in particular such of them as are their friends, that they didn't blunder. You will go to them to-morrow and ask if they can allow you a commission for bringing them an Australian settler on whose ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... returned Prince Marvel, laughing at his friend's eager face. "It appears the path we chose winds around in a circle, and so has brought us back to our starting-point. So we must make the best of a bad blunder and spend another night with our ugly friend ...
— The Enchanted Island of Yew • L. Frank Baum
... is therefore our duty—not because it is ours, and therefore, under the Constitution of the United States, her right and her fate. The admission of that ill-omened and unfounded claim would be, at the bar of politics, a colossal blunder; at the bar ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... all around, beyond the tent and in the far distance there was a provocative alluring darkness: if she only could get away, only could reach the shelter of that remote and sombre distance, she would hide, and wait, not blunder again, oh no! she would be prudent and wary, if only she could ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Preston and Taylor, at midnight, in a snow storm, and on a night so dark that it would have been impossible to keep together, to be sure of the way, or to distinguish friend from foe, to do a thing which he hesitated to do in the daytime and with his entire force, would have been a more serious blunder than either. Of course, if Preston had started, it would have been with the determination to succeed or lose his life in the adventure. That was his reputation and his character as a soldier. But the services and ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... with self-comparisons] [Theobald interpreted "him" as Cawdor; Johnson, in 1745, accused Shakespeare of forgetfulness on the basis of Theobald's error; and Warburton here speaks of "blunder upon blunder."] The second blunderer was ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... catch him in a trap! He's too old a fox for that.' I'm telling you, sir, what Johnson told me. 'He looked close down at the shawls, as if he were short-sighted, though he could see as far as any man. "I beg your pardon, ladies," said he, "you're right. I am quite wrong. What a stupid blunder to make! And yet they did deceive me. Here, Johnson, take these shawls away. How could you be so stupid? I will fetch the thing you want myself, ladies." So I went with him. He chose out three or four shawls, of the nicest patterns, from the very same ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... stated."—I consulted the Shakspere of Malone, and verified my recollections, when the query of "Mr. JEBB" appeared—but forbore to notice its misconceptions. Besides, one C., after an interval of two months, merely asserted that it was not a blunder of Malone; the other C. furnished, ...
— Notes & Queries No. 29, Saturday, May 18, 1850 • Various
... don't mean that we should repeat the blunder of last night. You may be sure he won't keep it in his cabin ...
— In A New World - or, Among The Gold Fields Of Australia • Horatio Alger
... goodness, yet we are to affirm that the notion of God slaying Job's children (or anybody's children, so far as that runs), or blotting out his prosperity, is obnoxious to reason and to heart. This drama perpetrates no such blunder. Satan sent these disasters; for with him is evil purpose. The very nobility of Job stings him to enmity and madness; for iniquity is his delight, and ruin his vocation and pleasure. A power without man working evil is consonant with history and experience, and to suppose ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... that errors of judgment must have occurred. Even had they not, differences of opinion between the Executive, bound by an oath to the strict performance of his duties, and writers and debaters must have arisen. It is not necessarily evidence of blunder on the part of the Executive because there are these differences of views. Mistakes have been made, as all can see and I admit, but it seems to me oftener in the selections made of the assistants appointed to aid in carrying out the various duties of administering ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant • Ulysses S. Grant
... Cloaths. Once coming in a little the worse for Wine (to which he was addicted) he endeavour'd to lampoon me by means of an Impromptu in verse, writ on the Surface of the Table; but lacking the Aid he usually had in his Composition, he made a bad grammatical Blunder. I told him, he shou'd not try to pasquinade the Source of his Poesy. At another Time Bozzy (as we us'd to call him) complain'd of my Harshness toward new Writers in the Articles I prepar'd for The Monthly Review. He said, I push'd every Aspirant off the Slopes of Parnassus. "Sir," ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... the things they are interested in. Of course the little ones cannot spell on their fingers; but I manage to read their lips. If I do not succeed they resort to dumb show. Sometimes I make a mistake and do the wrong thing. A burst of childish laughter greets my blunder, and the pantomime begins all over again. I often tell them stories or teach them a game, and the winged hours depart and leave us ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... well for you to cheer up," Skippy thought to himself. It hurt, there was no turning from it. It did hurt. What a blunder he ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... and it was touching to see how Sylvia treated him. She had, it appeared, conceived the idea that the calamity must be due to some blunder on his part, and then she had reflected that he was young, and that chance had thrown upon him a responsibility for which he had not bargained. He must be reproaching himself bitterly, so she had to persuade him that it was really not so bad as ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... dreadfully ashamed to make you the victim of my blunder," answered Miss Ellison penitently; and a little silence ensued. Then as if she had suddenly been able to alienate the case, and see it apart from herself in its unmanageable absurdity, she broke into a confiding laugh, very like ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... Light Brigade!' Was there a man dismay'd? Not though the soldier knew Some one had blunder'd. Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die. Into the valley of Death ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... skimming the prefaces and introductions of works for mottoes and embellishments to his thesis. He cannot learn anatomy by thrusting an exploring needle into the body. He will be very liable to misquote his author's meaning while he is picking off his outside sentences. He may make as great a blunder as that simple prince who praised the conductor of his orchestra for the piece just before the overture; the musician was too good a courtier to tell him that it was only the tuning ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... as of some consternation in the little company. The elderly ladies stopped talking abruptly and exchanged glances, though this was not of my observation at the moment, I think, but recurred to my consciousness later, when I had perceived my blunder. ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington
... Post has made another blunder. Lord Abinger, it seems, is too Conservative to resign. After all the editorial boasting about "exclusive information," "official intelligence," &c. it is very evident that the "Morning Twaddler" must not be looked ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... Mr. Pierce undertook to explain matters. Minor presumed that the artilleryman had made an actual blunder and was only enabled to correct it by a countermarch, and so rode back to his position in front of the centre of the reforming line, convinced that at last he ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... these countries, were as a drop in the bucket to the unenlightened many; and although no doubt there were numbers of the former who were well—meaning men, yet they were one and all guilty of that prime political blunder, in common with our Whig friends at home, of expecting a set of semi—barbarians to see the beauty of, and to conform to, their newfangled codes of free institutions, for which they were as ready as I am to die at this present moment. ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... cannot desire a life filled only with the objects which they set before him. Nor is the modern moralist, or as he prefers to style himself, "immoralist," Nietzsche, [Footnote: A sketch of Nietzsche's doctrine is given later, see chapter xxix.] guilty of less gross a blunder. He rails at morality as commonly understood, calling it "the morality of the herd," and he recommends isolation, the repression of sympathy, and a contempt for one's fellows. To be sure, the "herd" ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
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