"Fiasco" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... treated throughout with a lack of ceremony and confidence that is positively scandalous. Even now, I—the solicitor for the defence—am completely in the dark as to what defence is contemplated, though I fully expect to be involved in some ridiculous fiasco. I only trust that I may never again be associated with any of your hybrid practitioners. Ne sutor ultra crepidam, sir, is an excellent motto; let the medical cobbler ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... The miserable fiasco of a delirious Revolution went careering through the giddy maze of treachery and madness until a frenzied wave of rapine and disorder swept all the noblewomen of the Imperial household into a barricaded fortress around which lust and inebriety ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... managers if they could; but they couldn't. Laws were passed for the purpose of enabling the policy-holders to select their trustees, but the only result has been a ridiculous and rather expensive fiasco. As in politics, the rank and file select the managers selected for them by a few men who understand the situation. When many thousands of people own stock in a concern, they live all over this continent and in foreign parts, ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... gained by reading the scriptures. The one essential is insight, which comes as illumination after meditation. Though this doctrine had subsequently much success in the Far East, it was not at first appreciated and Bodhidharma's introduction to the devout but literary Emperor in Nanking was a fiasco. He offended his Majesty by curtly saying that he had acquired no merit by causing temples to be built and books to be transcribed. Then, in answer to the question, what is the most important of the holy doctrines, he replied "where all is emptiness, nothing can be called holy." "Who," asked the ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... the knocking had been resumed under more favorable auspices, word came from the unseen world that the fiasco in the church was ascribable to the very good reason that Knight had caused his wife's coffin to be secretly removed. "I will show them!" cried the desperate man. With clergyman, sexton, and undertaker, ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... night in those clothes, with the thermometer below zero, and at dawn still be able to chirp the only word that is left in his vocabulary. He can't last forever though. There has to be a finish to this lamentable fiasco sometime. We ...
— A Plea for Old Cap Collier • Irvin S. Cobb
... said Van, "who honored us once with a visit to the Monte Cristo fiasco. He's been lost on the desert and he's too done up to talk, so I want him to be fed and entertained. And of the two requirements, the feed's more important than the vaudeville show, unless your stunts can put ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... best. He may have been a Napoleon of peace, but his warmest friends could never describe him as a Napoleon of war, for his military forecasts have been erroneous, and the management of the Jameson fiasco certainly inspired no confidence in the judgment of any one concerned. That his intentions were of the best, and that he had the good of the Empire at heart, may be freely granted; but that these motives should lead him to cabal against, and even to threaten, the military governor, ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 'What a fiasco!' said the young lord. 'I wonder what the old boy means to say to me about it.' Then there was heard the clear tingle of a little silver bell, and Miles told Lord Nidderdale that his time ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... life presses hard on a man, and it pressed hard on Baxter now. Fate had played him a sorry trick. It had put him in a position where he had to choose between two courses, each as disagreeable as the other. He must either face a possible second fiasco like that of last night, or else he must abandon his post and cease to mount guard over his ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... strange dogs who cannot decide whether they wish to fight or be friends. For ten minutes, regardless of the jeers of the spectators and the proddings of their handlers, the great brown beasts rubbed heads as amicably as a yoke of oxen. Then, just as we had made up our minds that it was a fiasco and that there would be no bull-fight pictures, there was a sudden angry bellow, the two great heads came together with a thud like a pile-driver, and the fight was on. The next twenty minutes Hawkinson and I spent in alternately setting up his camera within range of the panting, straining animals ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... the contest ended in fiasco, but the next combat and the next were spirited and skilful The four victors in the first bout drew straws for the second. The winner of the first fight fell ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... himself in the chair and I fell to work on him mechanically. But my thoughts were with the man who was gone. What a fiasco it had been! After waiting all these years, I had met a man whom I suspected to be the very wretch I sought; I had actually been alone with him—and I had let ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... "Always keep me posted my dear Leander, as to what the laughers are saying and remember the proverb that 'he will laugh well who laughs last!' The majority of the people, even engineers, are rubbing their hands in expectation of the colossal fiasco that awaits us, and it is for that that the envious keep somewhat silent. I will predict to you that as soon as success is assured everybody will mount to the house tops and say 'I told you so! It was an idea of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various
... streets. Perhaps, he thought, he should have gone to the Spacemen's Club at the spaceport itself. On the other hand, he hadn't particularly wanted to see any of the other minor officers of his own class after the near-fiasco which had damaged the Naipor. Being a Guesser set him apart, even ...
— But, I Don't Think • Gordon Randall Garrett
... was, indeed, a brilliant fiasco; with a pre-eminent genius for diplomacy, he thought he could make England, by diplomacy alone, arbiter of Europe. Its position in 1521 was artificial; it had not the means to support a grandeur which was only built on the wealth left by Henry VII. and on Wolsey's skill. England owed her ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... cousin now, for she was telling him, dryly, yet with a mocking humour all her own, of her Paris fiasco that had delayed her return to London by a fortnight, and, by the expense it had entailed upon her, had deprived her of the new hat and dress that she had hoped in Paris to secure. Talking of Paris led to the letter she had sent him four or five days ago. 'About this ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... in a loud voice that there might be no question that our would-be terrorizers should hear me, for I was tiring of this nerve-racking fiasco. It had occurred to me, too, that the whole business was but a plan to frighten us back into the valley of death from which we had escaped, that we might be quickly disposed of by the savage ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... difficulty, by Hercules! yet refrain I do: either because I don't want to quarrel with Pompey—the impending question of Milo is enough in that direction—or because we have no jurors worthy of the name. I fear a fiasco: besides, there is the ill-will of certain persons to me, and I am afraid my conducting the prosecution might give him some advantage: besides, I do not despair of the thing being done both without ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... attackers forced some of their prisoners to stand in the line of fire, between them and the building. The police had closed the windows with feather beds and mattresses, and these the Fenian bullets could not penetrate. Within a few days the fiasco of a rising was at an end. I do not think any of the people in our neighborhood joined it. When the rebels retreated along the Wicklow road, they threw several pikes over the wall close to our lodge gates. The preference on the part of the Irishman of the last generation for the pike as a fighting ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... 14th of November Farragut reported to the Navy Department his return to New Orleans. The Government, however, had taken warning by the fiasco of the previous season; and, far from urging the admiral on, now sought to impress him with the need for caution. As the great object of opening the Mississippi and obtaining control of it remained, and necessarily ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... where, for various nautical reasons connected with the wind, the water, and the build of their respective ships, she had the legs of him. Next he lost her in the gut, and after that we know what happened. There was no disguising it; it was a most dreadful fiasco. To have one's vessel boarded, the expensive vessel in which so large a proportion of the gains of his honourable company had been invested, not only boarded, but fired, and the watchman stabbed by a single naked devil of unknown sex or character ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... There was the fiasco about Olga coming to the tableaux, which was the cause of her sending that very tart reply, via Miss Lyall, to Lady Ambermere's impertinence, and the very next morning, Lady Ambermere, coming again into Riseholme, perhaps for that very purpose, had behaved ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... rare a defect as mere cowardice; it was unpreparedness of mind and lack of military efficiency in the captains, combined with bad leadership on the part of the admiral, with a possible taint of ill will toward him as a rude and domineering superior, that caused this fiasco. Attention may here fitly be drawn to the effect of a certain cordiality and good-will on the part of superiors toward their subordinates. It is not perhaps essential to military success, but it undoubtedly contributes to the other elements of that success ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... alive, expectant of the best news, or at least in a fever of impatience, and that therefore 'twould be the more painful to tell her the truth. But when the captain's servant let the three of us in at the front door (Tom and I had waited while Falconer briefly reported our fiasco to General Clinton) and we found her waiting for us upon the stairs, her face was pale with a set and tragic wofulness, as if tidings of our failure had preceded us. There was, perhaps, an instant's last ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... accused were the case to go against him, it was imperative that the enquiry should be thorough down to the minutest detail.... The commandant well knew the weak points in his procedure. There was this confrontation, with the absurd testimonies of the two soldiers: it had proved a ridiculous fiasco. Also, he would have great difficulty in showing conclusively that Fandor had been a certain time at Chalons ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... important to the West, were regarded as mainly Indian affairs. This was a white man's victory and a white man's defeat. Hull's proclamation thenceforth became a laughing-stock. The American invasion had proved a fiasco. The first American army to take the field had failed at every point. More significant still, the Americans were shown to be feeble in organization and egregiously mistaken in their expectations. Canada, on ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... in the course of a few days when no result was forthcoming; but they were all back again presently when the Maxim Gorky fiasco came along. The distinguished revolutionist, Tchaykoffsky, as a sort of advance agent for Gorky, had already called upon Clemens to enlist his sympathy in their mission, which was to secure funds in the cause of Russian ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... some of the biographies of me that have been published from time to time, that I was chagrined at Coghlan's fiasco because it brought my success as Portia so soon to an end. As a matter of fact, I never thought about it. I was just sorry for clever Coghlan, who was deeply hurt and took his defeat hardly and moodily. He wiped out the public recollection of ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... the fiasco in the projection room, Tom Cameron arrived by motor-boat from the town across the bay. Now, Ruth was secretly very glad to see Tom. She always would be glad to see his sunny face, no matter how or when. ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... Fetichism feticxismo. Fetid malbonodora. Fetter kateno. Feud malpacego. Feudal feuxdala. Feudality feuxdaleco. Fever febro. Feverish febra. Few kelkaj, malmultaj. Fiance fiancxo. Fiance fiancxino. Fiasco fiasko. Fibre fibro. Fickle sxangxebla. Fictitious fiktiva. Fiddle violono. Fiddler violonisto. Fidelity fideleco. Fidget movadigxi. Fie! fi! Field kampo. Fierce kruelega. Fiery fervorega. Fife fifro. Fig figo. Fight batali. Figure ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... when we are sure of God's will, is usually a condition of success. Life is too short, and the work to be done too pressing and great, to allow of dawdling. 'I made haste, and delayed not, but made haste to keep Thy commandments.' Let us learn, too, from Adonijah's fiasco, to see the end of a thing before we commit ourselves to it, and to have the work done first before we ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... feeling about them, that makes tragedy and comedy, and death is more joyful in Rostand than life in Maeterlinck. The same apparent contradiction holds good in the case of the drama of 'L'Aiglon,' now being performed with so much success. Although the hero is a weakling, the subject a fiasco, the end a premature death and a personal disillusionment, yet, in spite of this theme, which might have been chosen for its depressing qualities, the unconquerable paean of the praise of things, the ungovernable gaiety of the ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... Mr. Rhodes might appropriately have been made before the raid, instead of afterwards when all was over. The regard for definite pledges, which in the Reformers was described as merely an excuse for backing out, would, if it had been observed by all, have made a sickening fiasco impossible. ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... the section and read my paper there to a large audience who cannot have understood ten words of it, but who looked highly edified, and now I have done. Our lodging has turned out admirably, and Ball's company has been very pleasant. So that the fiasco of our arrangements was all for ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... was so discouraged that he returned to Zamboanga and resigned. Pedro Gastambide then took command, but after having attacked Basilan Island fruitlessly, he retired to Zamboanga. The whole campaign was an entire fiasco. It was a great mistake to have declared a war of extermination without having the means to carry it out. The result was that the irate Sulus organized a guerilla warfare, by sea and by land, against all Christians, to which the ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... one was fooling him!—only he has managed—I'm convinced of that—to regain possession of the green box. As I impressed on you just after the fiasco, there was some one in one of the presses, and now it is evident that Caw captured that person after we had left. Unfortunately, it means that a fourth person has knowledge of the diamonds. Still, my friend, we ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... Busby's proposed means of checkmating a rival. In the words of Governor Gipps, this "silly and unauthorized act was a paper pellet fired off" at the hero of an even more pretentious fiasco. An adventurer of French parentage, a certain Baron de Thierry, had proclaimed himself King of New Zealand, and through the agency of missionary Kendall bought, or imagined he bought—for thirty axes—40,000 ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... for this. She had, since the social service fiasco, acknowledged to herself that she had grown in that short space very fond of Tom. She looked forward to seeing him, and when he was gone she went over with pleasure what he had said and how he had looked. She liked his drollery and his strength, she admired ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... me at all. The more I thought it over, the more I remembered how uncertain Haigh was, and how likely he was to bring about some fiasco out of sheer devilry. If I'd had a boat I should have cut ashore there and then, and made off to Talaiti de Talt without delaying a single moment. And as it was, with no boat, I more than once got to my legs with the intention of swimming, ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... thought he, this is a man of gold. He is not such a fool as he looks. He guesses that the treasury would like to take the commissariat out of the hands of the war office, and that all this was mixed up with the inquiry at Komorn. Then, after that horrible fiasco, the clattering swords are at the top of the tree, and would be very glad to get the manipulation of the lands on the military frontier into their own hands. They think it would be a good milch-cow, and the deficit caused by the bankruptcy of the Levetincz tenant gives them a pretext. And ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... just returned from Nice and Cannes, also from a very disappointing yachting cruise in the Mediterranean, which proved to be a complete fiasco. I must tell you about it. Lord Albert Gower had invited us to go to Spezia on his beautiful yacht. From there we were to go to Florence, and later make a little trip in Italy. We had all been asked to a dinner at the Duke de Vallombrosa's villa at ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... Harrison against the indignation which menaced his station as commander of the army. The new Secretary of War, John Armstrong, ironically referred to Procter and Harrison as being always in terror of each other, the one actually flying from his supposed pursuer after his fiasco at Fort Stephenson, the other waiting only for the arrival of Croghan at Seneca to begin a camp conflagration and ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... that there was more in the matter than met the eye, and that, in some mysterious way, he had actually obtained leave to visit Rutton that day. After all, the man didn't know very much about School rules, and the recollection of the recent fiasco in which he had taken part would make him think twice about playing the amateur policeman again, especially in connection ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... bear the stamp of truth: they seem to be forgeries. Knowing what we do of the Bāb, it is probable that he had the best of the argument, and that the doctors and functionaries who attended the meeting were unwilling to put upon record their own fiasco. ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne
... necessarily predictive—"prophetic inspiration being consistent with erroneous anticipations." Again a shudder went through the upholders of tradition in the Church, and here and there threats were heard; but the Essays and Reviews fiasco and the Colenso catastrophe were still in vivid remembrance. Good sense prevailed: Benson, Archbishop of Canterbury, instead of prosecuting the authors, himself asked the famous question, "May not ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... who was afraid or unwilling to fight for the whole rights of his country, and confusion has been the consequence. I am not going here to raise old debates over O'Connell's memory, who, when all is said, was a great man and a patriot. Let those of us who read with burning eyes of the shameless fiasco of Clontarf recall for full judgment the O'Connell of earlier years, when his unwearied heart was fighting the uphill fight of the pioneer. But a great need now is to challenge his later influence, which is overshadowing us to our undoing. For we find men of this time who lack moral courage fighting ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... also to be sympathised with? What was the object or the use of his being alive? He worked, saved, improved his mind, voted right, practised philosophy, and was generally benevolent; but to what end? Was not his existence miserable and his career a respectable fiasco? He too had lost zest. He had diligently studied both Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus; he was enthusiastic, to others, about the merit of these two expert daily philosophers; but what had they done ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... of Heinrich Conried Season 1903-1904 Mascagni's American Fiasco "Iris" and "Zanetto" Woful Consequences of Depreciating American Conditions Mr. Conried's Theatrical Career His Inheritance from Mr. Grau Signor Caruso The Company ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... real meeting of these two and Fate, with the help of Irish temper and the Pinckney conscience, was making a fine fiasco ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... hand, Mr. Julius, while willing enough to spend money for which he foresaw a satisfactory return, had no mind to risk it until assured of the support of local 'Society.' He could afford some thousands of pounds better than a public fiasco. ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... chosen was "The Caprice." Henri, who revealed rare talent, took the part of the husband; Noemi of the neglected wife. The curtain fell upon enthusiastic applause, and Madame Bourjot, who had feared that her daughter would be a fiasco, was delighted with her success. Amid the hum of voices she heard the lady sitting next to her say to her neighbour, "His sister, I know ... but for the part he is not sufficiently in love with her ... and too much with his wife. Did you notice?" ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... the cereal fiasco, Parnell Winston returned to Spindrift after another visit to Dr. Chavez. He called Steve Ames and spent a long time talking to the JANIG agent. Then he called the project team and the boys ...
— The Electronic Mind Reader • John Blaine
... here yet," he answered. I noted the tone of sub-acid pleasure in his voice. Evans would have enjoyed a fiasco. ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... could therefore, have fortified to perfection—and whose strategic importance should have been known in its smallest details. I think our generals, who had a sufficient force at their disposal, of which the mobility has become world-famed, should have been able to prevent such a fiasco as our occupation of the splendid line of defence in the Biggarsbergen turned out ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... snapped. "True or not, it is of no importance. I was tempted to agree with your theory of psionic-controlled attack on us, but the deadly fiasco you ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... flew swiftly by while I listened to her lively prattle, which, like the lark's singing, had scarcely a pause in it, her attempt at being still and moonlight having ended in a perfect fiasco. At length, pouting her pretty lips and complaining of her hard lot, she said it was time to go back to her prison; but all the time I was engaged in forcing back the bolt into its place she chattered without ceasing. "Adieu, Sun, husband of the moon," she said. "Adieu, sweet, sweet friend, buyer ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... Doctor Tanner said, scowling at Dal through his thick-rimmed glasses. "I want to know who was responsible for this fiasco, and why it occurred in the ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse
... Schubert placed on himself, coupled with the regard amounting to reverence which he entertained for Beethoven, was sufficient to deter the younger man. He indeed attempted a meeting in 1822, but the result was a fiasco owing to his extreme diffidence. Having composed some variations on a French air (opus 10) he desired to dedicate them to Beethoven and prevailed on Diabelli to arrange a meeting, as well as call with him on the master, ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... Matthews had returned to Bombay, after the Alibagh fiasco, he applied himself to what, to him, was the principal reason for his coming to India, viz. private trade. For the Company's interests he did not care a button; in fact, anything that injured the Company found ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... of vicarious assassination; in the atrocity of conception unequalled, almost incredible. He has no anxiety as to its success. For himself he is more than ever determined; while Roblez, restrained by the fiasco following his ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... Emperor attacked the town and conquered it without much difficulty. The victory was unfortunately stained by the inhuman excesses of the Imperial troops, and Charles's hold on Tunis was very short-lived. In 1541 came the miserable fiasco of the Spanish expedition to Algiers. Here, also, the Knights behaved with their usual bravery; but Charles's disregard of the advice of his Admiral, Andrea Doria, resulted in the failure of the whole expedition. In these and other expeditions the Knights took ...
— Knights of Malta, 1523-1798 • R. Cohen
... boy I craved less for bread than for fame; and I consecrated my life and soul to art. I thought that I was in the right way, for I had written eight operas, which the Italians lauded to the skies. But the 'Caduta de Giganti' was a failure, and 'Artamene' likewise. This double fiasco enraged me (you know my bad temper, Marianne). I could not bear to be so misconceived. I was determined to show the English that, in spite of them, I was an artiste. I longed to bring them to my feet, as Jupiter ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... got none,' replied Davis; and wandered for some time in aimless discussion of the difficulties in their path, and useless explanations of his own fiasco. ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... being frightened, dropped the line and fled, and although M. de Laubardemont, the exorcists, and the spectators waited, expecting every moment that the cap would rise into the air, it remained quite firm on the owner's head, to the no small confusion of Pere Lactance, who, all unwitting of the fiasco, continued to adjure Beherit to keep his word—of course without ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... last and following the counsels of Seward, saw the majority of Congress yield slowly to influences which favored compromise. Calhoun died early in April, and though his followers maintained their position resolutely, their Whig allies were deserting them, and the Nashville convention proved a fiasco when it assembled in June. President Taylor died on the 9th of July, and the last obstacle to the success of Clay and Webster was removed. Millard Fillmore, the Vice-President, a close friend of Clay, became President; the Cabinet was reorganized, Webster becoming Secretary ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... character? Supposing, when the time came, he could not be found.... Into what a dismal fiasco the play would turn. All his interest would have been thrown away. His solicitors would have been investigating a lost cause. Forest would have been sent packing back to ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... contrary, were awkward and abashed, and did not venture to notice the encouragement that greeted their entrance. There were players as composed as the most hardened virtuosi; others, again, who were overcome by stage-fright to such an extent that they barely escaped a total fiasco. ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... inquiring shrewdness, that lit up his faded eyes and made them for a moment almost young. He had caught a sound of vexation in her voice, which reminded him oddly of the sound in her singing voice when Miss Filberte was making a fiasco of the accompaniment. Lord Holme was visible and audible in the hall. His immense form towered above his guests, and his tremendous bass voice dominated the hum of conversation round him. Lady Holme could see from ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... for a moment before she replied; something in his voice, though still she could not see his face clearly, startled her. It sounded changed, somehow, full of something suppressed, something serious. But she could not risk a second fiasco; she had to play her high cards out, and hope for ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... repine over that. He turned instinctively to Hinde for advice, and Hinde was generous with it. He was generous, too, with more profitable things. He put work in John's way as often as he could, and in spite of the fiasco over the Abbey ceremony, had offered employment on the Herald to him, but John had refused it, feeling that his novel would never reach its end if he were tied to a newspaper. When, however, the book was completed, ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... ambitious kind than the destruction of Fort Frederick. This was nothing less than an attempt to capture Fort Cumberland, where Lieut. Col. Joseph Goreham was in command with a detachment of the Royal Fencible Americans. This attempt was in the end a miserable fiasco, but it occasioned much alarm at the time and was the cause of some distress to the loyal ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... things great men have written; with such experience I will charge my mind to the full. Nor will I try to give anything in return. Once, in the delusion that Art, loving the recluse, would make his life happy, I wrote a little for a yellow quarterly and had that succes de fiasco which is always given to a young writer of talent. But the stress of creation soon overwhelmed me. Only Art with a capital H gives any consolations to her henchmen. And I, who crave no knighthood, shall write no more. I shall write no more. ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... comic vein, Mrs. Kemp sighed, "It's too bad, Milly." The sigh implied that Milly had damaged herself for the provincial marriage market, perhaps irretrievably. She might marry, of course, probably would, being sobered by this fiasco, but after such a failure, nothing ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... deposited her at the entrance to the Palace of King Tournesol. She ascertained that Prince Mirliflor was within and went at once to his apartments. He received her with his usual respect, but there was a reserve in his manner which showed that the memory of his late fiasco was still rankling. His reserve increased perceptibly after she had explained the purpose of her visit. He altogether declined to consider a second matrimonial venture on her recommendation, hinting ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... consideration; it reconciled me to myself and to my fellow-men; and as I steered round the railings at the Tron, I could not withhold my lips from smiling publicly. Yet, in the bottom of my heart, I knew that magazine would be a grim fiasco; I knew it would not be worth reading; I knew, even if it were, that nobody would read it; and I kept wondering how I should be able, upon my compact income of twelve pounds per annum, payable monthly, to meet my share in the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his grandfather, was worn out by the difficulties of siege warfare; and in 1240 he turned southward to reduce the States of the Church. One more attempt he made on Lombardy in the winter of 1247-1248. But a disastrous fiasco destroyed his hopes and gave a mortal blow to his prestige. For five months he blockaded Parma, and the city was at the last gasp, when he imprudently dismissed a part of his troops. The garrison saw their opportunity, and made a desperate sortie while the Emperor was absent on a hunting expedition. ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... and began pacing his room with noiseless rapidity; not since the night of the Old Bohemian dinner to Reuben Rosenthall had Raffles exhibited such excitement in my presence; and I was not sorry at the moment to be reminded of the fiasco to which that banquet had been ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... his name is Rupert, and I had reason to believe that he was once engaged in the navy-yard. When I found out I was entirely correct in my supposition I had him sent here, and I looked forward with the most joyous anticipations to being present when you first saw him. But it was all a fiasco! I suppose some people might think I was unwarrantably meddling in the affairs of others, but as it was in my power to create a most charming romance, I could not ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... which stands for perfidious Albion. "Frappe a Londres" is printed on one part of it, and "La Descente dans Angleterre" upon another. Struck to commemorate a conquest, it remains now as a souvenir of a fiasco. But ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the piratical line. But the spirit that inflamed the whole British fleet was that of Drake, Hawkins, Frobisher, Seymour, and Howard, and the inspiration came mainly from the two former. On the Spanish side, as a naval battle, it was a fiasco, a mere colossal clerical burlesque. Neither naval strategy nor ordinary seamanship was in evidence on the part of the chief commander or his admirals. The men fought with rough-and-tumble heroism. The sailors were only second in quality to our own, ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... missionaries or conservative white men cannot give what Young China needs. After throwing off the native superstitions of centuries, it would be a dismal fiasco to take on the European superstitions which have been discarded here by all progressive people. It is only where progressive Chinese themselves are in control that there is scope for the renaissance spirit of the younger students, ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... After the fiasco of 1614, affairs went from bad to worse. Nobles and Huguenots contended between themselves, and both against the court favorites. As many as five distinct uprisings occurred. Marie de' Medici was forced to relinquish the government, but Louis XIII, on reaching maturity, gave evidence ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... made strange trips to-night. The sixteen arms pulled him, not only over the chalk line, but all over the stage. They played havoc with him. And then the manager had to go on and make a speech, besides, because the "Purse of Gold" aroused dissatisfaction. The fiasco was hideous. ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... dawn, and planted itself on the kopjes surrounding the town, much to the surprise of the inhabitants. The invaders possessed themselves of the keys of the town, and endeavoured with great parade to hoist the Free State flag. The ceremony was a fiasco, however, as before the flag reached the top of the staff, the halyard, which had been secretly cut partly through by some loyalists, broke, so that the flag, flying a little above half-mast, could neither be hoisted properly nor hauled down again. Ultimately the ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... discovered her methods and promptly published them. The bullet detainer also lasted only a short time only. When my opening added a third sensational surprise, one of the London dailies asked, "Is this going to be another Georgia Magnet fiasco?" ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... India was much greater than after the fiasco of the Ilbert Bill in Lord Ripon's time, and there had been a vast if still unsuspected change since those days in the whole atmosphere of India. Disillusionment in the 'eighties was mainly confined to a small group of Western-educated Indians who had hoped for ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... and Labor Party leaders; the crisis is the result of the resignation of Lord Fisher as First Sea Lord of the Admiralty, due to differences between him and Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty; Churchill has been much criticised, particularly for the fiasco at Antwerp and the policy pursued in the Dardanelles, while the loss of the Lusitania has ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... has never been divulged Foote determined to counterbalance Blair's visit to Richmond by a visit of his own to Washington. In attempting to pass through the Confederate lines he was arrested by the military authorities. With this fiasco Foote passes from ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... general carry to battle a better plan of battle than Fighting Joe Hooker's at Chancellorsville (May 2-3, 1863), and rarely has one marched from a battle that had proved for his own side a more lamentable fiasco. Taking the offensive with vast advantage in numbers, he proposed to hold Lee in place with one of his wings while he thrust the other behind Lee's left, between the Confederate army and Richmond. But he ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... reminds me forcibly of the state of things in the Crimean War, when a powerful English fleet set out with a great flourish of trumpets against Cronstadt and St. Petersburg, but did nothing except bombard Bomarsund, a place nobody cared about. The English Press had great difficulty in excusing the fiasco of its world-renowned fleet." ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... did not guess the greatness of the disaster. Then he realised that the theatre was intensely quiet, and that he would have to explain that the last item of his programme was even more of a fiasco than the rest. Owing to a sudden indisposition—his skin tingled at the thought of the hooting. His tongue rasped upon cracking lips as he braced himself ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... of Alexander Hypsilantes, the son of the Greek Hospodar of Wallachia, under the pretence that he was supported by Russia, to upset the Turkish government in Moldavia and Wallachia was a miserable fiasco distinguished for massacres, treachery, and cowardice, and it was repudiated by the Tsar of Russia. Very different was the intensity of the passion with which the inhabitants of modern Greece arose to destroy the power of their Othoman masters. In ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... comfort her, but it was not so easily done. It was not the one misfortune but the whole fiasco that had upset her so; she had promised herself so much from her great plan. "It isn't all lost yet," he said to comfort her. "We'll just keep on and you'll see it'll ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... tittle, however humdrum, with the critical reflections and censorious observations arising therefrom, remembering that, though the fabulous and mountain-engendered mouse was no doubt at the time considered but a fiasco and flash in the pan by its maternal progenitor, nevertheless that same identical mouse rendered yeomanry services at a subsequent period to the lion involved in the compromising intricacies ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... no small measure of contempt. He would no doubt have preferred to conclude the present difficult transaction entirely in his own way and alone; but equally there was no doubt that the Committee of Public Safety did not trust him quite so fully as it used to do before the fiasco at Calais and the blunders of Boulogne. Heron, on the other hand, enjoyed to its outermost the confidence of his colleagues; his ferocious cruelty and his callousness were well known, whilst physically, owing to his great height ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... agitation for the Repeal of the Union. After he had disappeared from the scene, his work was taken up by those of his followers who advocated physical force; and in 1848 an actual rebellion broke out, headed by Smith O'Brien. It ended in a ridiculous fiasco. The immediate cause of its failure, as A.M. Sullivan has pointed out, was that the leaders, in imitation of the movement of half a century before, endeavoured to eliminate the religious difficulty and to bring about a rising in which Orange and Green ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... active development or retrogression. Suffice to say, I was terribly cut up over the way my first serious affair of the heart turned out, and tried my best to hate myself for letting it worry me. Somehow I was able to attribute the fiasco to an inborn sense of shyness that has always made me faint-hearted, dilatory and unaggressive. No doubt if I had gone about it roughshod and fiery I could have played hob with the excellent jeweller's peace of mind, to say the least, but alas! I succeeded ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... Henry Strachey, and two of my greatest friends, the present Sir Bernard Mallet and his younger brother Stephen Mallet, had set up house. I remember to this day owning to my brother that though I had intended my review of Gulliver's Travels to be epoch-making, it had turned out a horrible fiasco. However, I somehow felt I should only flounder deeper into the quagmire of my own creation if I rewrote the two reviews. Accordingly, they were sent off in the usual way. Knowing my father's experience in such matters, I did not expect to get them back in type for many weeks. ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... After the fiasco in Talland Cove Captain Arbuthnot had formed up his Dragoons and given the word to ride back to Bodmin Barracks, their temporary quarters, whence Mr. ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... compartments. As member of the War Cabinet and Secretary of the Labour Party, he seems to have resembled one of those twin salad bottles from which oil and vinegar can be dispensed alternately but not together. The attempt to combine the two functions could only end, as it began, in a double fiasco. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug. 22, 1917 • Various
... was no length to which she would not go against him; she fancied that there was no weapon which she would not stoop to pick up if it would hurt him. And presently she was tried. A week had passed since the great fiasco. Again it was the eve of Sunday, and in the usual course of things a priest would appear to celebrate mass on the following day. This risk James was now unwilling to run. His fears painted that as dangerous which had been done safely Sunday by ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... his way more lightsomely, albeit still under some oppression: for the house stood formidably high, and he feared all converse with women. For lack of practice he had no presence of mind in their company, Moreover, his recent fiasco in ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... learn to dance," he said, "in spite of all your taunts and jibes. That little fiasco last ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... sorry indeed to carry out, though I should certainly have done so if he had given me the chance I sought. It must be understood that my second attempt to photograph the flight of the soul had proved as great a fiasco as the first. Suddenly I hit upon a perfectly conceivable (even though it seem a wilfully grotesque) explanation of my failure. What if the human derelicts I had so far chosen for my experiments ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... can you lose by his opera," the prince replied, "supposing it be a perfect fiasco?" The manager named ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... least he had treated her badly; he followed her without further hesitation, trusting to his agile mind to keep her off the subject of Madame Zattiany. This he would do at the cost of rudeness itself, for he would not permit fiasco at ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... Dixon, with a hazy impression that he had been asked to join in some sort of round game, and had refused the offer, returned again to his Liddell and Scott, and continued to wrestle with the somewhat obscure utterances of the chorus in AEschylus' Agamemnon. The results of this fiasco on Trevor and Clowes were widely different. Trevor it depressed horribly. It made him feel savage. Clowes, on the other hand, regarded the whole affair in a spirit of rollicking farce, and refused to see that this was a serious matter, in which the ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... wrath, culminating in the shock of the sudden tragedy, and the realization that he had brought it all on himself, were too much for him. He was a broker and one of the most prominent financiers in the city, but with the divorce fiasco and the death of Mrs. Armstrong, he began to brood. He shunned the friends who were left to him, neglected his business and ultimately failed. Sinking lower and lower in the scale of things, he finally ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... 'twixt cup and lip &c (disappointment) 509. blunder &c (mistake) 495; fault, omission, miss, oversight, slip, trip, stumble, claudication^, footfall; false step, wrong step; faux pas [Fr.], titubation^, bevue [Fr.], faute [Fr.], lurch; botchery &c (want of skill) 699 [Obs.]; scrape, mess, fiasco, breakdown; flunk [U.S.]. mishap &c (misfortune) 735; split, collapse, smash, blow, explosion. repulse, rebuff, defeat, rout, overthrow, discomfiture; beating, drubbing; quietus, nonsuit^, subjugation; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... cut the tree down to the living shoots. But, in the first place, the great system of English Toryism was far too large for narrow minds; the importation required time, and in France a tardy success is no better than a fiasco. So far, moreover, from adopting a policy of redemption, and looking for new forces where God puts them, these petty great folk took a dislike to any capacity that did not issue from their midst; and, lastly, instead of growing young again, the Faubourg ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... for instance, hers had been at Arrowthorne, when her poor, unprogressive, hopelessly impracticable Christopher came there to visit her, and was so wonderfully undeceived about her social standing: what a fiasco, and what a cuckoo-cry would his utterances about marriage seem then. Christopher had often told her of his expectations from 'Arrowthorne Lodge,' and of the blunders that had resulted in consequence. Had not Ethelberta's affection for Christopher partaken less of ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... disappointed; and when succeeding numbers brought further brain-racking profundities, there was a large ebullition of disgust. Cotta began to write of complaints and cancelled subscriptions; and ere long it looked as if the Horen would prove a big fiasco. ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... extreme lassitude, and with it his despair, had vanished. He brightened perceptibly. "You wonder," he exclaimed, catching her hand and kissing it, "now I can tell you about it." With his arm about her he described all his experiences, the fiasco of the Jensen affair and his subsequent interviews with Fifth Avenue dealers. "They are all Jews, Mary. Some are decent enough fellows, I suppose, though I hate the Israelites!" ("Silly boy!" she interposed.) "Others are horrors. ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... Audrey had been learning steadily in the Quarter that the attitude of the public had no importance whatever. She suffered from the delusion that the public was staring at her and saying to her: "You, you silly little thing, are responsible for this fiasco. We condescended to come—and this is what you have offered us. Go home, and let your hair down and shorten your skirts, for you are no better than a schoolgirl, after all." She was really self-conscious. ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... fully realise the necessity of getting funds. The other affair, though we worked it so well, proved a miserable fiasco." ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... and that the city had been abandoned by the Confederates. No commander responsible for such a ridiculous performance could retain the confidence of an army in the field, and Sherman assured Grant that Halleck would not long survive the fiasco. This advice was sorely needed, for Grant had grown tired of being constantly humiliated and had already requested Halleck to relieve him from duty when Sherman persuaded him to remain and ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... in his heart, he saw a book upon his work-bench; and picking it up, Abner Sawyer faced the pitiful fiasco of Jimsy's Christmas gift. With a great lump in his throat and his eyes wet he ...
— Jimsy - The Christmas Kid • Leona Dalrymple
... we to explain the fact that in spite of the failure of Socialism in the past, in spite of the gigantic fiasco presented by Russia, in spite, moreover, of the declaration by the Bolsheviks themselves that Communism had failed and must be replaced by "a new economic policy," that is to say by a return to "Capitalism,"[736] there should still be ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... realized his error too late. The following year, conceiving it then to be his special mission to borrow our dead hero's policy, he attacked Sackett's Harbour, but his "cautious calculation" was, of course, rewarded by ignoble defeat, and ultimately, after the Plattsburg fiasco, by a court-martial. In his civil administration of Canada Sir George Prevost may have been a success; as a soldier he was ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... following the regiment moved back to its old quarters near the fort, and remained there till ordered to Washington. In this unfortunate fiasco the regiment lost about two hundred men by desertion, from which depletion it never recovered. When ordered to the seat of war, I think there were not much above 700 men, and the regiment never saw the time ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller
... Jameson's party, while the bulk was held in reserve with an extensive mobilization of burghers to resist other supposed opposition of an altogether more formidable but yet undefined character. When nothing further transpired, the feeling uppermost with the people was unbounded derision at that impotent fiasco, and a loathing contempt for the cowering Johannesburg rabble who betrayed and sacrificed the insensate doctor. It was loudly asserted that the combined forces of the two Republics were competent to resist an invasion a hundred times stronger ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... Denoisel, and slightly carried away by seeing the large audience, played her touching part as the neglected wife very passably. This was a great relief to Mme. Bourjot, who was seated in the front row anxiously watching her daughter. Her vanity had been alarmed by the thought of a fiasco. The curtain fell, and amid the applause were heard shouts for "All the actors!" Her daughter had not made herself ridiculous, and the mother was delighted with this great success and gave herself up complacently ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... however, "living on love" became more and more uncomfortable, and in October the fiasco of a little dinner for Henry Houghton made Maurice say definitely that, when their lease expired, they would board. Mr. Houghton had come to Mercer on business, bringing Edith with him, as a sort of spree for the child; and when he got ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... of poultry raising are practiced, and where the stock is of the best, but when a plant is located in a newly settled region where the poultry stock is small and feed scarce, the venture is pretty apt to prove a fiasco. ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... the next morning threw some dubious light upon the matter in a paragraph headed, "Another Police Fiasco." ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... but could not say, that she had never really tried to manage it; that as long as things had gone on without any open fiasco, and they had been able to enjoy themselves, and the servants had not been bad-tempered, she had been quite content. She could not make that confession now, and if she had it would not ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... about him—exactly what I could not recall. When I reached the savoury, I had concluded, so far as I had centred my mind on it at all, that the whole thing was a culminating irony, as, indeed, was the savoury in its way. After the wreck of my pleasant plans and the fiasco of my martyrdom, to be asked as consolation to spend October freezing in the Baltic with an eccentric nonentity who bored me! Yet, as I smoked my cigar in the ghastly splendour of the empty smoking-room, the subject came up again. Was there anything in it? There were certainly no alternatives ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... is the happy man, and Miss Altifiorla is the lady about to become Lady Geraldine. Miss Altifiorla is descended from an Italian family of considerable note in its own country. Her great grandmother was a Fiasco, and her great great grandmother a Disgrazia. We are delighted to find that Sir Francis is to ally himself to a lady of such high birth." Now Miss Altifiorla was well aware that there was an old feud ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... the acceptance of The Broken Jug by Goethe for the Weimar theatre was turned to bitterness when, because of unintelligent acting and stage management, this brilliant comedy failed wretchedly; the disappointed author held Goethe responsible for this fiasco and foolishly attacked him in a series of spiteful epigrams. He longed to have his Arminius performed at Vienna, but the Austrian authorities were too timid to risk the production of a play that openly preached German unity and a war of revenge against the "Roman tyranny" of Napoleon. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... time, to have no repetition of the Glacier Park fiasco, where Bill, our cook, had deserted us at a bad time—although it is always a bad time when the cook leaves. So now we had two cooks. Much as I love the mountains and the woods, the purple of evening valleys, the faint pink of ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... of you," said the lady. "It was very unfortunate that your sister's death deprived you of a home. An absurd thing, altogether, that fiasco of ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... stars were huffy because they hadn't been asked before, and they said they had colds or they wanted to go to their grandmothers' funerals, or some such excuse. Back comes the Mater almost in tears and says she really doesn't know whatever she's going to do about it, and there never was such a fiasco, etc. Then Babbie suggested 'Send for Mavis and Merle, they'll help you out.' Mother jumped to it like a drowning man at a rope. So I trotted off immediately after breakfast to ask if ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... tavern and I went in and nerved myself with a stiff drink, also I had a bottle filled with liquid courage, which I took along with me. Just by way of making a second fiasco impossible I took three more drinks while I was in the bar, then I galloped away and soon ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... attempt to found a colony upon Socialistic lines. I admit that I have never very closely studied the doctrine of Socialism; but if Wilde's views are to be accepted as its gospel, my common sense tells me that the experiment which we are about to make can result in nothing but a ghastly fiasco. The text of his preaching is Social Equality. Equality! There has never been, and never will be such a thing so long as this world endures and mankind is what it is; and all attempts to make and keep men equal are foredoomed to ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... Bravo. Brigade. Brigand. Broccoli. Burlesque. Bust. Cameo. Canteen. Canto. Caprice. Caricature. Carnival. Cartoon. Cascade. Cavalcade. Charlatan. Citadel. Colonnade. Concert. Contralto. Conversazione. Cornice. Corridor. Cupola. Curvet. Dilettante. Ditto. Doge. Domino. Extravaganza. Fiasco. Folio. Fresco. Gazette. Gondola. Granite. Grotto. Guitar. Incognito. Influenza. Lagoon. Lava. Lazaretto. Macaroni. Madonna. Madrigal. Malaria. Manifesto. Motto. Moustache. Niche. Opera. Oratorio. Palette. Pantaloon. Parapet. ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... Charlotte County militia. These troops remained in arms on the frontier for nearly three months, and were disbanded by a general order dated June 20th. The Fenian raid on New Brunswick proved to be a complete fiasco. The frontier was so well guarded by the New Brunswick militia and by British soldiers, and the St. Croix so thoroughly patrolled by British warships, that the Fenians had no opportunity to make any impression upon the province. It ought to be added that ...
— Wilmot and Tilley • James Hannay
... "After the bird fiasco," said Sir Lulworth, "the militant section made a demonstration of a more aggressive nature; they assembled in force on the opening day of the Royal Academy Exhibition and destroyed some three or four hundred of the pictures. This ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... become one of the most wealthy and respectable farmers in the State, and that his rancho was well worth visiting.) Thompson, he said, hadn't the sailor in him; and he never could laugh enough at his fiasco in San Diego, and his reception by Bradshaw. Faucon was a sailor and a navigator. He did not know what had become of George Marsh (ante, pp. 255-258), except that he left him in Callao; nor could he tell me anything of handsome Bill Jackson (ante, p. 104), nor of Captain ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... business to attend to. We said Sourabaya, of course, and took it for granted that he would stay with one of the Tesmans. One of us even wondered what sort of reception he would get; for it was known that Julius Tesman was unreasonably bitter about the Tropical Belt Coal fiasco. But Davidson set us right. It was nothing of the kind. Heyst went to stay in Schomberg's hotel, going ashore in the hotel launch. Not that Schomberg would think of sending his launch alongside a mere trader like the Sissie. But she had been meeting a coastal mail-packet, ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... and they then employed his money to erect a building for the mechanical engineering department. Fisbee was left with nothing. His wife and her kinsfolk exhibited no brilliancy in holding a totally irresponsible man down to responsibilities, and they made a tragedy of a not surprising fiasco. Mrs. Fisbee had lived in her ambitions, and she died of heartbreak over the discovery of what manner of man she had married. But, before she died, she wisely provided ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... temporarily, made himself scarce. However, we need feel no anxiety concerning his whereabouts, for he reappeared in good time and a motor-car. From which it becomes evident that you have not overrated their pertinacity; the fiasco of the cab-chase is ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... Close as Pederson had come, even he was an irrelevance now. But ECAIAC didn't know. Poor Ekky! Her first real failure, a fiasco—she really deserved a better fate. Beardsley's heart went out to her, as he observed Arnold in his defeat and Mandleco in his frustration and the huddle of techs in their ...
— We're Friends, Now • Henry Hasse
... consult him, matters might have taken a different turn. But, as I have already shown, he preferred to be able to say at a given moment that he had known nothing about it. At least, this must have been what he meant to do. But events proved too strong for him. The fiasco was too complete for Rhodes to escape from its responsibilities, though it must be conceded that he never tried to do so once the storm burst. He faced the music bravely enough, perhaps because of the knowledge that no denial ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... After the Eagle Ridge fiasco, Peter, as cheerful as ever, journeyed over into Wyoming to try his luck once more. He moved up into the hills, spent a month in looking about him, narrowed his localities to one gulch, and built himself a log cabin in which to live. Then he made ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... she was not actively at fault. Her sense of fair play made her try sincerely to make the best of what had all along been an inevitable fiasco. She did not sin in deed against the man to whom she had sold herself, but in thought it was hardly possible for her to give him anything but tolerance, or to feel much beyond the callous indifference ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... of the elder Jeffries' trouble with his scapegrace son, and he eyed, with some interest, this young man who had made such a fiasco of his career. ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... a divinity than Miss Shirley Sumner! She called this morning to explain that last night's fiasco was none of her making, and quite innocently she imparted the information that old Pennington lighted out for San Francisco at one o'clock this morning. Wherefore ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... deficiency, shortcoming, lack; omission, pretermission, default, nonperformance, neglect, dereliction nonfulfillment, nonobservance; nonsuccess, miscarriage, frustration, abortion, foil, fizzle, fiasco; deterioration, decline, declension, retrogression; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... inflicted defeats upon them at Bergen (September 19), and at Castricum (October 6). York thereupon entered upon negotiations with Brune and was allowed to re-embark his troops for England, after restoration of the captured guns and prisoners. The expedition was a miserable fiasco. ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson |
