"Flounder" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... king, and, with steel muscles tensed beneath the armpits of his antagonist, bear down mightily with his open palms upon the back of the thick bullneck, so that the king ape could but shriek in agony and flounder helplessly about upon the thick mat ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... remarkable tenacity of life. Though his tail was chopped, and even his entrails taken out, in neither of which operations it exhibited any sign of sensation, yet no sooner was a bucket of salt water poured on it to wash the deck, than it began to flounder about and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... increase, for, in the words of old Robert Binnell, Water Bailiff of the City of London in 1757, we may "venture to affirm that there is no river in all Europe that is a better nourisher of its fish, and a more speedy breeder, particularly of the flounder, than is the Thames." Eels were also taken in considerable numbers between Hammersmith and Kew; but the main supply of London eels came from Holland even in the days of London salmon. In a very old print of the City, with traitors' heads by the dozen on London Bridge, "Eale Schippes," exactly like ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... flounder through that perplexity for a time, fearful, I suppose, to hurt my feelings by showing me how little I knew of it, and finally he hinted at three cairns he was acquaint with, each elevated somewhat over the general run of the country, and if not the harbourage a refugee would make for, at least ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... about Zola's immorality. The thing I cannot stand is his morality. If ever a man on this earth lived to embody the tremendous text, "But if the light in your body be darkness, how great is the darkness," it was certainly he. Great men like Ariosto, Rabelais, and Shakspere fall in foul places, flounder in violent but venial sin, sprawl for pages, exposing their gigantic weakness, are dirty, are indefensible; and then they struggle up again and can still speak with a convincing kindness and an unbroken honour of the best things in ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... want the pleasure of seeing how you look as you flounder through the rapids; and then, again, I may pick up a few points as to ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... christened after my mother," said Priscilla gently; and this was strictly true, for the deceased Grand Duchess had also been Priscilla. Then a feeling came over her that she was getting into those depths where persons with secrets begin to flounder as a preliminary to letting them out, and seized with panic she got ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... not always with results in agreement with the strict Mendelian doctrine, so that I am not venturing to criticise without experience. I have not hesitated to reprint the figure, published many years ago, of a Flounder showing the production of pigment under the influence of light, because I thought it was desirable that the reader should have before him this figure and those of an example of mutation in the Turbot for comparison when following the ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... and file of the people any real idea of what a "trust" is. So vague is the general understanding of the "trust's" functions and purposes that the most intelligent and honest statesmen struggle and hopelessly flounder when they attempt to define them, and we have at the present time the able chief of our nation talking of regulating them by law, when, as a matter of fact, a "trust" is, top, sides, bottom, outsides, and insides, an absolutely illegal institution, ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... the black horse stumbled, the laden car ran on top of him like a landslip, and, with an abortive flounder, he collapsed beneath it. Once down, he lay, after the manner of his kind, like a dead thing, and the covered car, propped on its shafts, presented its open mouth to the heavens. Even as I sped headlong to the rescue in the wake of Robert and Croppy, I fore-knew that Fate had ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... at you, you dear child you!" she said. "But I remember so well how I use to flounder through just such needless anxieties, and life looks so different, so very different, to me now from what it did then! What should you think of a man who, having just sowed his field, was astonished not to see it at once ripe ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... of his Holiness's dignity. How incomprehensible Englishmen are! I should have sworn that he would have piqued himself on calling the Pope the w- of Babylon, and have begun his remonstrance, with "you old d-d-." What extremes of absurdities! to flounder from Pope Joan to his Holiness! I like your reflection, "that every body can bully the Pope." There was a humourist called Sir James of the Peak, who had been beat by a felony, who afterwards underwent the same operation from a third hand. "Zound," said Sir James, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... no cause to fear! Amedee received his degree on the same day with his friend Maurice, and both passed honorably. A little old man with a head like a baboon—the scientific examiner—tried to make Amedee flounder on the subject of nitrogen, but he passed all the same. One ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... would be interesting to know just what scheme the heaven-born inventor would have put in motion for the capture of Miltiades, but just then he stepped into one of his own extraordinary traps, set for the turkey of course, and, with one foot held fast, began to flounder about with cries of ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... Pigs live in the streets, and there are irrepressible conflicts between them and the hundreds of dogs. Water-carts, drays, army-wagons, and artillery go hub deep in the mud. Horses tug and strive, rear, kick, and flounder. Teamsters lose their footing. Soldiers wade leg deep in the street. There are sidewalks, but they ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... Nature not refus'd, Had Father Thames not begg'd to be excus'd, A pretty tunnel underneath his bed, And left him running, grumbling, over head; Had scratch'd a track out, like a grubbing mole, Through a long, dark, and damp and dirty hole— Like rats in sewers, had flounder'd through the mud, Instead of sailing, duck-like, o'er the flood; But bubbling springs chok'd up the project deep, And trickling waters on ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... fish called the flounder, perhaps you may know, Has one side for use and another for show; One side for the public, a delicate brown, And one that is white, which he always ...
— Stevenson Memorial Cook Book • Various
... absurdities. The clergyman has a multitudinous companionship, moreover, among novelists, essayists, and poets whose safety lies in more or less fantastic generalization when they come to talk about music. How they flounder when they come to detail! It was Charles Lamb who said, in his "Chapter on Ears," that in voices he could not distinguish a soprano from a tenor, and could only contrive to guess at the thorough-bass from its being "supereminently harsh and disagreeable;" ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Carlyle described us as "forty million Americans, mostly fools." He declared we would flounder on the ballot-box, and that the right of suffrage would be the ruin of this Government. The "forty million of fools" had done tolerably well for the small amount ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... the messenger. But the trail grew more and more indistinct as it neared the summit, until at last it utterly vanished. Still he kept up his speed toward the active little figure—which now seemed to be that of a mere boy—skimming over the frozen snow. Twice a stumble and flounder of the mustang through the broken crust ought to have warned him of his recklessness, but now a distinct glimpse of a low, blackened shanty, the prospector's ruined hut, toward which the messenger was making, made him forget all else. The distance ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... floundering and wounding and suffering, out of the breeding darknesses of Time, that will presently crush and consume him again. Why not flounder with the rest, why not eat, drink, fight, scream, weep and pray, forget Hugh, stop brooding upon Hugh, banish all these priggish dreams of "The Better Government of the World," and turn to the brighter aspects, the funny and adventurous ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... for in the latter case, instead of being assisted by reason, our real help in all study, we have to rely upon memory or our power of imitation, and to do simply as we are told without thinking about it. The consequence is that at the very first difficulty we are left to flounder about in the dark, or to remain inactive till the master comes ...
— The Theory and Practice of Perspective • George Adolphus Storey
... DAWKER. He'll kick and flounder—but you leave him to ask what you want, ma'am; don't mention this [He puts the deed back into his pocket]. The Centry's no mortal good to him if he's not going to put up works; I should say he'd be glad to save ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the paternal ire. "Stewart, I asked you to be candid with me. You're leaving me to flounder ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... have known houses burst asunder from the foundations giving way. I have seen a palace separated from the very steps that led up to its door. And in spring, when the snow melts which has been collecting for months, the horses can scarcely flounder along through the rivers ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.
... Michael's Place and Brompton Crescent are built was known by the name of "Flounder Field," from its usual moist and muddy state. This field contained fourteen acres, and is said to have been part of the estate of Alderman Henry Smith, which in this neighbourhood was upwards of eighty-four acres. He was ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... "back" is the first of their men to go into action. He brings the ball back deftly and prettily, slipping in and out among his own men, who get beside him as a sort of bodyguard, ready at any moment to carry on the ball. It is ludicrous to see Ricketts and Winter and Callonby flounder about after him. The fellow is like an eel. One moment you have him, the next he's away; now you're sure of him, now he's out of all reach. Ah! Stansfield's got him at last! No he hasn't; but Winter has—No, Winter has lost him; and—just look—he's past all the School forwards, no ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... ever beheld, sweeping through his green bath in harmonious curves, now turning his black glistening back to me, now exhibiting his fair white chest, in every movement active and graceful, turned out to be our old homely friend the flounder, whom we have all gobbled up out of his bath of water souchy at Greenwich, without having the slightest idea that he ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... have patience with a suffering brother!" remarked Bob, and seated himself, with a few words in Gaelic which drew a hearty laugh from the men about him, on a heap of turf to watch the unyielding flounder in the peat-hole, where there was no room to swim. He had begun to think the man would drown in his contumacy, when his ears welcomed ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... here to fish or to talk?" Rick asked. They were anchored a few hundred yards off the reef tip and had been for almost an hour. In that time Cap'n Mike had made a good haul of four blacks, one flounder and a porgy. Rick and Scotty had caught two ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine
... a dog that can't make up his mind whether to follow or no. For 'twas near day now, an' his face plain at that distance. Fearin' he'd come on again, I pulled hot foot the few steps between me an' home. But when I came to the door, I went cold as a flounder. ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Quelle betise! I will cure you. I will be your friend and put you all right. Now, we will just drive down to Richmond; we will have a light dinner, a flounder, a cutlet, and a bottle of champagne, and then we will go to the French play. I will introduce you to Jenny Vertpre. She is full of wit; perhaps she will ask us to supper. Allons, mon ami, mon cher Armine; allons, mon brave!' Ceremony was a ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... second for reflection. As Brooks rushed headlong forward, Charles hurriedly interposed his stick between his legs, and leaving him to flounder, started off ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... centrifugal force of its rotation, ceased, so that passengers, most of whom were assembled in the main salon, which occupied the entire midship section, drifted away from the curved floor, whose contour followed that of the outer skin, to flounder in helpless confusion. ...
— In the Orbit of Saturn • Roman Frederick Starzl
... Tescheron's office convinced me that Jim could not afford to alienate the affections of such a father-in-law. As I advanced toward the small box in which Mr. Tescheron sat wrapped in his scaly ulster, I caught a glimpse of a live flounder, who appealed to me in whispers, as he made an effort to turn over and find some cooler ice. I did not interrupt him. He spoke ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... said the child. "And afterward I fished a little, but I didn't catch anything, 'cept an old flounder, and he winked at me, so I put him back. And then I thought a long time—oh! a very long time, sitting like Patience on the doorstep. And suddenly, Daddy Captain, I thought about those boxes of clothes, and how you said they would be mine when I was big. And I measured myself ...
— Captain January • Laura E. Richards
... reared, backed away into the ditch, collapsed there on his quarters, and recovered himself with the grunt and flounder of a hippopotamus ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... had riven solid walls asunder within the thick black mass of overhanging vapour, and so had let loose upon us the waters of a lake. In a moment the whole pit of the amphitheatre was awash, knee-deep, and before those who were standing there could flounder to the steps leading upward they were buried to their waists—and this although the water was pouring out through the vent provided for it with such violence that we could hear the rush and gurgle of it above the dashing and ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... well toward evening, almost the hour of sundown, before Chick and Ten-Ichi were carried to the quicksand pit; and then a procession followed them. The hands and feet of the prisoners were not bound, for it was desired that they should flounder in the quicksand in order to hasten its work; and without ceremony they were hurled into the midst of it, one, ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... through half-closed eyes toward the faint line of shore that appeared and disappeared to leeward; or listened to Job's long tales of adventure up and down the high seas; or fished with hand-lines over the taffrail, happy if they pulled up even a goggle-eyed flounder. Twice they ran into fog, and on those days, when the wet dripped dismally off the shrouds and the watch on deck sang mournful airs in the gray gloom, the two lads settled into big chairs in the cabin, beneath a mighty brass oil-lamp, and while Bob sat bemused over Captain Dampier's Voyages, ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... clean white cotton stockings, in this heavenly mood, under the green trees, and beside the still waters, out of which beautiful salmon trouts were sporting and leaping, methought in a moment I fell down in a trance, as flat as a flounder, and I heard a voice visibly saying to me, "Thou shalt have a son; let him be christened Benjamin!" The joy that this vision brought my spirit thrilled through my bones, like the sounds of a blind ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... that what I had hoped was true. He was "bluffing." He wanted me to flounder into some admission, and to make him a promise in order to save the man I loved. I was only a woman, he'd argued, no doubt—an emotional woman, already wrought up to a high pitch of nervous excitement. Perhaps he had expected to have easy work with me. And I don't think that my silence ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... grassed than they really were. At length, we got on a polygonum flat of great size, in the soil of which our horses absolutely sunk up to the shoulder at every step. I never rode over such a piece of ground in my life, but we managed to flounder through it, until at length we got on the somewhat firmer but still heavy plain. It was very clear, however, that our horses would not go a day's journey over such ground. It looked exactly as I have described it—an immense ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... indignant exclamation caused the deputy to flounder for a moment in attempting to explain that he had misquoted his own sentiments, and then he went on ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... Irresponsible, indolent reviewers, Look, I come to the test, a tiny poem All composed in a metre of Catullus, All in quantity, careful of my motion, Like the skater on ice that hardly bears him, Lest I fall unawares before the people, Waking laughter in indolent reviewers. Should I flounder awhile without a tumble Thro' this metrification of Catullus, They should speak to me not without a welcome, All that chorus of indolent reviewers. Hard, hard, hard is it, only not to tumble, So fantastical is the dainty metre. Wherefore slight me not wholly, nor believe me Too presumptuous, ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... DAB. The sea-flounder. An old general term for a pleuronect or flat fish of any kind, but usually appropriated to the Platessa limanda. The word is familiarly applied to one ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... superstition that one must love, and be loved, before one could marry. No aphorism could be further removed from the truth. The glaring realism dawned upon him that it was quite possible for a person to flounder through this world and be entirely immune from the love epidemic; that few people ever marry the one they do really love, that some are never sought after by one of the opposite sex during their whole ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... followed us into the bog and had done fairly well at first, but when he neared us he too sank to his belly and could only flounder about. We were in this predicament when Du-seen and his followers approached the edge of the horrible swamp. I saw that Al-tan was with him and many other Kro-lu warriors. The alliance against Jor the chief had, therefore, been consummated, and this horde was already marching upon the Galu city. ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... other for a moment. They had passed through much together—danger, excitement, and now they were dabbling in sorrow. It would appear that this same sorrow runs like a river across the road of our life. Some of us find the ford and plash through the shallows—shallow ourselves—while others flounder into deep water. These are they who look right on to the greater events, and fail to note the trivial details of each little step. Paul was wading through the deep water, and this good friend of his was not inclined to stand upon the bank. It is while passing through this river that ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... fearsomely rattled the door, and shaken the cabin, and swept howling on. But she never in the world would have attended. Not in that emergency! She would not, for anything, have peeped out of the windows, in perfectly proper curiosity, to watch the Bottle River jacks flounder into town. Not she! Pattie Batch was busy. Pattie Batch was so desperately employed that her swift little fingers demanded all the attention that the most alert, the brightest, the very most bewitching gray eyes ...
— Christmas Eve at Swamp's End • Norman Duncan
... from the same writer how both eyes of the flounder get, quite unintentionally, on the same side of the head. The writer makes much of this case (see p. 306), and we are not disposed to ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... the roads from any shelter. The steady rain in which we had traveled for eight hours then became a violent thunder-storm; all the brooks and ditches by the way were over their banks, and our horses could hardly flounder under their loads through the heavy going; while we, in the darkness, could not see the road, even where it could he followed, save when the lightning flashes showed it, and so, not being able to walk, rode perforce. My horse refused a ditch a foot wide, and when we came ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... speak in perfect candour now. I swear to you that, given a man clear-eyed enough to see that a woman by ordinary is nourished much as he is nourished, and is subjected to every bodily infirmity which he endures and frets beneath, I do not often bungle matters. But when a fool begins to flounder about the world, dead-drunk with adoration of an immaculate woman—a monster which, as even the man's own judgment assures him, does not exist and never will exist—why, he becomes as unmanageable as any other maniac when a frenzy is upon him. For then the idiot hungers after a life so ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... providence. The very notion of a state of probation has darkness in it. The all-knower has no need of satisfying his eyes by seeing what we will do, when he knows before what we will do. Methinks we might be condemn'd before commission. In these things we grope and flounder, and if we can pick up a little human comfort that the child taken is snatch'd from vice (no great compliment to it, by the bye), let us take it. And as to where an untried child goes, whether to ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... her maiden or her married time: and sprightlier as well. She chatted deliciously, and drew Redworth to talk his best on his choicer subjects, playing over them like a fide-wisp, determined at once to flounder him and to make him shine. Her tender esteem for the man was transparent through it all; and Emma, whose evening had gone happily between them, said to her, in their privacy, before parting: 'You seemed ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... twilight. I find a greater comfort in uncertain hope and a more uncertain faith. If I ever really and truly believed in spiritualism and then found, as so many people have done, alas! that the prophet of it was himself a fraud, I should be cut, as it were, from all my spiritual bearings, to flounder hopeless and broken-hearted mid the desolate wastes of agnosticism. I cannot give myself unless I am convinced that the sacrifice is for something which I must believe in spite of all doubt; not entirely what I want to believe because belief is full ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... consume also considerable quantities of other supplies, especially flour, rice, sugar, coffee, crackers, &c., purchased from the traders. Of fish, halibut and salmon, dried and smoked, are mainly depended on, though many other varieties are eaten in their season—herring, flounder, trout, rock cod, true cod, clams, mussels, &c. Pollock, called by the Hydas skill, are caught off the west coast, principally for their oil, which is extracted by boiling them in large wooden tanks by means of heated stones. Dried herring ...
— Official report of the exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands - for the government of British Columbia • Newton H. Chittenden
... duffer in these matters. It is a wise child who knows his own father, and I am wise enough to know my own ignorance. Don't you know," with a smile, "it is easier to hold one's tongue and listen in an intelligent manner than flounder about out of one's depth among the billows of cuneiform inscriptions and the insurmountable precipice of ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... commonly divided into three services, comprising a considerable choice of fish (particularly turbot, flounder, mullet, and lampreys), poultry and game (from chicken, duck, pigeon, and peacock, to partridges, pheasants, ortolans, and fieldfares), hare, joints of the ordinary meats, as well as of wild boar and venison, a kind of haggis, ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... had some excellent ideas in home living and housebuilding. Their houses were, generally speaking, very sensibly contrived,—roomy, airy, and comfortable; but in their water arrangements they had little mercy on womankind. The well was out in the yard; and in winter one must flounder through snow and bring up the ice-bound bucket, before one could fill the tea-kettle for breakfast. For a sovereign princess of the republic, this was hardly respectful or respectable. Wells have come somewhat nearer in modern times; but the idea of a constant supply of fresh water by the simple ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... feeling something on the line, I drew up with great eagerness and vigor. It was two of those broad-leaved sea-weeds, with stems like snakes, both rooted on a stone,—all which came up together. Often these sea-weeds root themselves on muscles. In the morning, our pilot killed a flounder with the boat-hook, the poor fish thinking himself secure on ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of good use, and has enabled us to do great things. But the use is at an end, and the stage is over. Ask yourselves if you do not sometimes feel in yourselves a sense, that in spite of the strenuous efforts for good of so many excellent persons amongst us, we begin somehow to flounder and to beat the air; that we seem to be finding ourselves stopped on this line of advance and on that, and to be threatened with a sort of standstill. It is that we are trying to live on with a social organization of which the day is over. ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... presume the fish to be Shad a la Delmonico, Halibut a la Meniere or Turbans of Flounder—it is passed in the platter, followed by rolls and Cucumber Ribbons, Dressed Cucumbers or Sliced Cucumbers, as the case may be. Then the fish course is taken from the table and we come ...
— Prepare and Serve a Meal and Interior Decoration • Lillian B. Lansdown
... is mystical. Such an experience may suffuse the best equipped mind, if its primordial energies, its will and emotions, much outrun its intelligence. Just as at the beginning pure inexperience may flounder intellectually and yet may have a sense of not going astray, a sense of being carried by earth and sky, by contagion and pleasure, into its animal paradise; so at the end, if the vegetative forces still predominate, all articulate experience may be lifted up and carried down-stream bodily by the ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... the way it had shaped during dinner, and Tommy would have acted wisely had he now gone out to cool his head. "If you moved me?" she repeated interrogatively; but, with the best intentions, he continued to flounder. ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... a score of years yet," jovially remarked Major Hawke, as he gazed at the well-preserved outer man of his uneasy entertainer. "The harpoon is deeply fixed in the old whale," mused Hawke, as he followed Hugh Johnstone. "He begins to flounder now." ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... talked if there were no word for a gentleman in either! There were always stories to be told of Bertha's narrow escapes of being overtaken by them in garden or corridor, till Maria, infected by the panic, used to flounder away as if from a beast of prey, and being as tall as, and considerably stouter than, Phoebe, with the shuffling gait of the imbecile, would produce a volume of sound that her sister always feared might attract notice, ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... over those silkworms. She was goin' to write somethin' about 'em for some kind of a paper, an' it meant a good deal to her, an' I had kept a record of all the projec's she'd written me to do with 'em—only to have Cast Steel an' flint fool Bill Andrews flounder in with ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... were alone, the Quaker turned to me. "Man, Andrew," he said, "it was a good thing that I had a Bible upbringing. I can manage the part fine, but I flounder among the 'thees' and 'thous.' I would be the better of a drink to wash my mouth of the accursed pronouns. Will you be alone to-night about the darkening? Then I'll call in to see you, for I've much to ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... with a rush as he neared the bank, for suddenly from a reed-bed above them there was a wallow and a flounder, with a tremendous disturbance in the water, as something shot down towards the ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... river, which enable the foot passenger to skip with ease from one to the other until he gets across; but if the stones are placed too far apart in attempting to span the distance one is liable to miss the mark and fall in the water and flounder about until he is again able to get a foothold. 'Tis the same with written language, the reader by means of paragraphs can easily pass from one portion of connected thought to another and keep up his interest in the subject until he gets ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... eel, carp, char, skate, tench, trout, brill, bream, pike, and many others, plain monosyllables: salmon, dory, turbot, gudgeon, lobster, whitebait, grayling, haddock, mullet, herring, oyster, sturgeon, flounder, turtle, plain dissyllables: only two trisyllables worth naming, anchovy and mackerel; unless any one should be disposed to stand up for halibut, which, for ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... in this country, except one of eight miles to a tomb! Hence we all have to flounder about on awful roads in motor-cars, which break down and have to be dug out, and always collapse at the wrong moment, so we have to stay ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... recently constructed on the English coast near Brighton. For the longer and much more important service across the Channel submarine rails may be laid down as in the cases mentioned, but in addition it will be necessary to provide for static stability by fixing a flounder-shaped pontoon just below the greatest depth of wave disturbance, and just sufficient in buoyancy to take the great bulk of the weight of the structure off the rails. In this way passengers may be conveyed across straits like the Channel ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... a bit afraid it meant that I'd walked in myself, and hadn't heeded His warnings. Sometimes, I think, when folks do that, He leaves them to flounder awhile before He ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... this noontide of Kate's struggle, must have been the very crisis of the whole. Despair was rapidly tending to ratify itself. Hope, in any degree, would be a cordial for sustaining her efforts. But to flounder along a dreadful chaos of snow-drifts, or snow-chasms, towards a point of rock, which, being turned, should expose only another interminable succession of the same character—might that be endured by ebbing spirits, by stiffening limbs, by the ghastly darkness that ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... soil of the wilderness; but it is a good way to the college and the library, and much work must be done. I am near to nature and can write upon these themes with ease and success; this is my proper field, as I well know. But bookish themes—how I flounder about amid them, and have to work and delve long to get down to the real truth about them in ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... brings them into trouble. Once I found a herd of seven up to their backs in soft snow, and tired out,—a strange condition for a caribou to be in. They were taking the affair philosophically, resting till they should gather strength to flounder to some spruce tops where moss was plenty. When I approached gently on snowshoes (I had been hunting them diligently the week before to kill them; but this put a different face on the matter) they gave a bound or two, then settled deep in the snow, and turned their ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... teemed with many kinds of fish and shellfish which were both edible and palatable. Varieties which the colonists soon learned to eat included sheepshead, shad, sturgeon, herring, sole, white salmon, bass, flounder, pike, bream, perch, rock, and drum, as well as oysters, crabs, and mussels. Seafood was an important source of food for the colonists, and at times, especially during the early years of the settlement, ...
— New Discoveries at Jamestown - Site of the First Successful English Settlement in America • John L. Cotter
... an' suvved kettenescrus 'dree the panni. And yeck penned as yuv was a boro mush, an' the waver rakkered ajaw sa yuv was a borodiro mush, and sar pookered sigan ket'nus how lengis were borodirer mushis. Adoi the flounder shelled avree for his meriben "Mandy's the krallis of you sar!" an' he shelled so surrelo he kaired his mui bongo, all o' yeck rikkorus. So to akovo divvus acai he's penned the Krallis o' the Matchis, and rikkers his mui bongo sar ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... ideas fly from you when you attempt to express them, that you stammer and flounder about for words which you are unable to find, you may be sure that every honest effort you make, even if you fail in your attempt, will make it all the easier for you to speak well the next time. It is remarkable, if one keeps on trying, how quickly he will conquer his awkwardness and self-consciousness, ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... peculiar sort of fish called the "sting-rae." These curious creatures have a sharp bony spike about two inches in length near the tail and this I found admirably adapted for arrow-heads. The body of the fish resembled a huge flounder, but the tail was long and tapering. They would come close in-shore, and I would spear them from the rocks with a Papuan fishing-spear. The smallest I ever caught weighed fifteen pounds, and I could never carry ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... what does Jeremiah do but just walk plump over the edge. I had all but got to him, by good luck, and of course I went straight for him and caught him before he sank. I induced him not to kick and flounder, and got him inside a life-belt they threw from the pier, and then I settled to leave him alone and swim to the steps, because you've no idea how I felt my clothes, and it would have been all right, only a ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... let me hold her in my arms and kiss her," he mused. "When I do that the third time it must be when there will be no remorse to hound me afterward." He looked down the winding Walnut toward the whirlpool. "I'd rather swim that water than flounder here." ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... boy wanted to die in his mother's arms. He had got his time down to a week, when the 'screw' clapped as many marks on to him as added a month to his imprisonment. Then he lost heart, and dropped down like a flounder, and when they picked ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... never have wooed by kisses and won, or he would not have flounder-flatted so just and humorous, nor less pleasing than humorous, an image into so profound a nihility. In the name of love and wonder, do not four kisses make a double affirmative? The humour lies in the whispered ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... but the foggy stars, they missed the stakes and her horse had to swim, but they managed to flounder safely back to the ford each time; and after a little while her mount rose, straining through the red mud of the shore, struggled, scrambled madly, and ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... part of the day's work, the steward chopped down with his knife, catching the log-line between the steel edge and the rail. At once, no longer buoyed up by the Elsinore's two-knot drag ahead, the wounded men began to swim and flounder. The circling hosts of huge sea-birds descended upon them, with carnivorous beaks striking at their heads and shoulders and arms. A great screeching and squawking arose from the winged things of prey as they strove for the living meat. And yet, somehow, I was not very profoundly shocked. ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... religion, for the purpose of jumping into another? See what good this philosophical friskiness has done you, and on what sort of ground you are come at last. You are so wonderfully sagacious, that you flounder in mud at every step; so amazingly clear-sighted, that your eyes cannot see an inch before you, having put out, with that extinguishing genius of yours, every one of the lights that are sufficient for the conduct of common men. And for what? Let our friend Spiridion ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... out so funnily that it sounded just like some queer old flounder trying to talk, and we thought he was joking. But he wasn't at all. Sometimes he is very nice and tells us the longest yarns about when he shipped on a whaler, but this time he was busy and the rudder-gudgeons didn't behave right, I think, so he let ...
— Us and the Bottleman • Edith Ballinger Price
... flounder, Johnny?" said a little girl of eleven, dressed in coarse and ragged garments, as she stooped down and looked into the basket of the dirty young fisherman, who sat with his legs hanging over the ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
... given for a combat a l'outrance,' said Henry; but, as they were about to flounder back on their big farm-horses, he raised his voice to a thundering sound: 'Solely on this condition, that he who slays his neighbour, be he Trenton or Kitson, shall hang for the murder ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... well over our knees, and every now and then up the tops of our thighs so there was too little holding ground for us or snipe. We walked in line, laboriously, halting every now and then to wait for one or the other to flounder out of a deep place; and when the sun got up the glare from the water made me think of sunstroke; however, we persevered and managed to get fourteen couple before lunch time, and I found my American five-shooter the very thing for ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... Trout Brook Trout Grayling Pickerel Northern Pike Shad Menhaden Spanish Mackerel Pompano Bluefish Crappie Calico Bass Rock Bass Sunfish Small-mouth Black Bass Large-mouth Black Bass Wall-eyed Pike Weakfish Red Drum Kingfish Tautog Rosefish Tomcod Haddock Ling Cusk Summer Flounder Flatfish Muscallonge Northern Muscallonge Striped Mullet Common Mackerel Bonito Sauger Yellow Perch White Bass Striped Bass White Perch Sea Bass Scup Spotted Weakfish Croaker Bergall Spadefish Whiting Cod Burbot Hake Halibut Sand ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... over his replies, to grope, to flounder. The agony of his soul was in his face. And then, in a moment of tortured desperation he rose from his seat, tall, gaunt, disordered, and clasped his hand to his forehead as if driven to the utmost bound of his endurance and to the ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... abed—full of interest—read the debates and get excited over them, though don't 'versteh'. By reading keep in a state of excited ignorance, like a blind man in a house afire; flounder around, immensely but unintelligently interested; don't know how I got in and can't find the way out, but I'm having a booming time ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... two o'clock in the morning that I was suddenly conscious of a feeling of suffocation. I tried to call out, but there was something which prevented me from uttering a sound. I struggled to rise, but I could only flounder like a hamstrung horse. I was strapped at the ankles, strapped at the knees, and strapped again at the wrists. Only my eyes were free to move, and there at the foot of my couch, by the light of a Portuguese lamp, whom should I see but ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... not my idea of sympathy! You stood by and watched me flounder without making a effort to help. It's not at all pleasant to be snubbed before a roomful of strangers. You might easily have remarked that it was a fine day, or that the train was punctual. Anything is ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... smiled a thin smile all to himself behind the stove. Big John Radway depended so much on the moral effect of approval or disapproval by those with whom he lived. It amused Dyer to withhold the timely word, so leaving the jobber to flounder between his easy nature and his sense ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... little door in the back street, and the stone stairs that led to the whitewashed passage; and then she gave, as near as she knew, a full account of all that had taken place. Only when she came to describe Bim and to tell of what he said, did she flounder. Bim had spoken in a foreign language, and the translation of Yakoff had conveyed very little to her. But in this part of the narrative the old man was less interested. Again and again he returned to ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... until it spread its wings and fluttered away gaily to leeward. Soles and other flat-fish similarly resemble the sands or banks on which they lie, and accommodate themselves specifically to the particular colour of their special bottom. Thus the flounder imitates the muddy bars at the mouths of rivers, where he loves to half bury himself in the congenial ooze; the sole, who rather affects clean hard sand-banks, is simply sandy and speckled with grey; the plaice, who goes in by preference for a bed of mixed pebbles, has red and ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... was so plaguy rough," continued the Clockmaker, "that he'd been the better, if it had been hammered and mauled down smoother. I'd a levelled him as flat as a flounder." ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... our general ideas and laws, fixed and external objects, principles, persons, and gods, are so many symbolic, algebraic expressions. They stand for experience; experience which we are incapable of retaining and surveying in its multitudinous immediacy. We should flounder hopelessly, like the animals, did we not keep ourselves afloat and direct our course by these intellectual devices. Theory helps us to bear our ignorance ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... void I lay weightless, as though upon an infinitely soft feather bed. I could kick, flounder, but not endow myself with motion. I craned my neck, gazed around through the ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings
... had taken him up as short and as sharply as that, but he tried not to flounder in her grasp. "I don't think there's anything I've done in any such calculated way as you describe. Everything has come as a sort of indistinguishable part of everything else. Your coming out belonged closely to my having come before you, and my having come was ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... thing of my own here!" declared Frank. "If we except, of course, my fire stick and the remains of a flounder." ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... very little by himself, but in another minute Hetty was kneeling on the horse's head, while, at more than a little risk from the battering hoofs, he loosed some of the harness. Then, the Badger was allowed to flounder to his feet, and Clavering proceeded to readjust his trappings. A buckle had drawn, however, ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... which was going to pieces alongside one of the ruined wharves. We looked down the hatchway into the hold, and could see the flounders and sculpin swimming about lazily, and once in a while a little pollock scooted down among them impertinently and then disappeared. "There is that same big flounder that we saw day before yesterday," said I. "I know him because one of his fins is half gone. I don't believe he can get out, for the hole in the side of the schooner isn't very wide, and it is higher up than flounders ever swim. Perhaps ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... disembarking—the sand and the Touaregs. The sand, because you have no sooner set your foot on shore than you flounder about in it as if it were a mire; and it pursues you everywhere—in the country, in the streets, and in the houses. The Touaregs are impressed on you because, though you never see them, everything recalls them. The town is in ruins, but its wretchedness is overpowered ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... differ so entirely in hue from those of the greatly clearer Conon, into which its peaty waters fall, and whose scaly denizens are of silvery brightness. No fish seems to possess a more complete power over its dingy coat than a very abundant one in the estuary of the Conon—the common flounder. Standing on the bank, I have startled these creatures from off the patch of bottom on which they lay—visible to only a very sharp eye—by pitching a very small pebble right over them. Was the patch a pale one—for a minute or so ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... either side, and leading from town to town, and the monotonous perspective of which is so desolating to heart and eye; backwards or forwards, it is always the same, with a flat sameness of outlook to right and left, and every 450 seconds the chime would boom and flounder heavily by, with a dozen sharp railway whistles after it, like swordfish after a whale, piercing it through ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... here in the cove; though the two pairs of Neighbor Loons, who built year after year farther up the lake, chose places on the island near the water-line in the spring; and when the water sank lower later on, they were left high and dry where they had to flounder back and forth to and from the nest, as awkward on land as they were graceful ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... reminiscences of the gay days of his youth stirred Hoccleve's muse to unwonted vivacity. In the London Lick-penny Lydgate, if Lydgate's it be, wrote humorous satire with success. Skelton himself, though in his (much too respectfully spoken of) play Magnificence he could flounder with the worst of his predecessors, in his light and railing rhymes was nimble enough, and ranged easily from vigorous invective of Wolsey to pretty panegyrics of fair ladies. Now and again also these good souls ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... except triumphantly. In moments of real despair we are inwardly dumb. But observe the holders of imaginary conversations. They are conquerors to the last one. They administer stinging rebukes that leave the adversary writhing. They rise to Alpine heights of pure wisdom and power, leaving him to flounder ignobly in the ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... where the onyx tub and walls Dazzle the air. I enter then her room And stand against the closed door, do not pry Upon her in the bath. Give her the chance To fly me, fight me standing face to face. I hear her flounder in the water, hear Hands slap and slip with water breast and arms; Hear little sighs and shudders and the roughness Of crash towels on her back, when in a minute She stands with back toward me in the doorway, A sea-shell glory, pink and white to hair Sun-lit, a ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... all alike: how happens it, once more, that the baptism of civilization has not been equally efficacious for all? Does this not show that progress itself is a privilege, and that the man who has neither wagon nor horse is forced to flounder about for ever in the mud? What do I say? The totally destitute man has no desire to improve: he has fallen so low that ambition even ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... the flounder. He looks as if he might have once been a fish of respectable, perhaps even beautiful shape and proportions, that had met with an accident. He is a shore frequenter, especially when young, and I ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... a mile or so too far, I reckon, for Father Slatter to trudge after me, and if he had come, I'd have serven him of the poker, or twain if need be. I guess he should have loved rather to flounder back through the snow. ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... Old Scratch was there too. I saw him as plain as I see you; he ran out afore me, and couldn't stop or look back, as long as I said catekism. He was in his old shape of the sarpent; he was the matter of a yard long, and as thick round as my arm and travelled belly-flounder fashion; when I touched land, he dodged into an eddy, and out of sight in no time. Oh, there is no mistake, I'll take my oath of it; I see him, I did upon my soul. It was the old gentleman hisself; he come there ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... fate of such As find our common nature—overmuch Despised because restricted and unfit To bear the burthen they impose on it— Cling when they would discard it; craving strength To leap from the allotted world, at length They do leap,—flounder on without a term, Each a god's germ, doomed to remain a germ In unexpanded ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... was the eve of execution. The soul feels that there is much to decide at such a time, but under the nettling merciless load the soul will either flounder pitifully and decide nothing, else lie numb and in a half death vaingloriously believe that it has decided everything. So may the condemned be open-eyed or blind. Or, according to the police reporter, be either coward or stoic. But it really depends in large ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... the flounder (Pleuronectes flesus), the only flat-fish which ascends British rivers. It is common a long way up such rivers as the Severn, far above tidal influence, and it will take almost any flesh-bait used on the bottom. A flounder of 1 lb is, in a river, a large ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... me for letting this thing run!" he went on. "Of course it tickles me to death to see Eldridge flounder; but that isn't all. This is the best thing that could happen to them out there! I'm just patriotic enough to wish them more of it. It's good medicine! At last every man jack of them is up against something he's ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... the river was growing rougher and ruder; ever its backbone was beginning to puiver and flounder like a whale underfoot, with its liquescent body of cold, grey, murky water bursting with increasing frequency from its shell of ice, and lapping hungrily ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... parties, so popular in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, which must have been very delightful. Tom Hood was among the guests on many occasions. Before being Brompton Grove, this part of the district had been known as Flounder's Field, but why, tradition ...
— The Kensington District - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... tolerant and kind, lending him money, advancing him what he required, taking up or renewing notes for him, until the boy, heavily in his debt, plunged more heavily still in sheer desperation, only to flounder the deeper at every struggle to ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... Southwell Primus, while Johnson, in an agony, yelled to White to hurry his shapeless stumps. Moles, with a last tremendous stretch, touched the rope, and Johnson plunged splendidly to his work. I took up my position on the mat and helped White to flounder out. ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... what would happen, and at the first blow "Big Bill" muttering between his clenched teeth, "I'll settle his hash for him," started for the scene of action. "Stop that!" he roared, "stop that, you old hypocritical scoundrel! You hit that boy another lick and I'll knock you as flat as a flounder!" ...
— Grandmother Elsie • Martha Finley
... away from under me, so that if I had not been obeying orders by hanging tight I should most certainly have plunged forward against the horses. We seemed to slide and slither down a steep declivity, then hit water with a splash, and began to flounder forward. The water rose high enough to cover the floor of the Invigorator, causing the Captain to speculate on whether Redmond had packed in the shells properly. Then the bow rose with a mighty jerk and we scrambled ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... similar instances. Many flat fish, as for example the flounder and the skate, are exactly the colour of the gravel or sand on which they habitually rest. Among the marine flower gardens of an Eastern coral reef the fishes present every variety of gorgeous colour, while the river fish even of the tropics rarely if ever have gay or conspicuous markings. ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... launches, Sings the vessel to the ocean, And these words the hero utters: "Like a bubble swim these waters, Like a flower ride the billows; Loan me of thy magic feathers, Three, O eagle, four, O raven, For protection to my vessel, Lest it flounder in the ocean!" Now the sailor, Lemminkainen, Seats himself upon the bottom Of the vessel he has builded, Hastens on his journey homeward, Head depressed and evil-humored, Cap awry upon his forehead, Mind dejected, heavy-hearted, That he could ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... much briskness as he can, and finds a sculpin on the hook. The boys come around him, and eye his motions, and make pitying or impertinent remarks at his ill-luck—the old man answers not, but fishes on imperturbably. Anon, he gathers up his clams or worms, and his one sun-baked flounder—you think he is going home—but no, he is merely going to another corner of the wharf, where he throws his line under a vessel's counter, and fishes on with the same deathlike patience as before. He seems not quiet so much as torpid,—not kindly nor unkindly feeling—but ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... of the banks, and to remain in a state of torpor till the rising of the stream after the rains enables it to resume its active habits. At this period the natives of the Gambia, like those of Ceylon, resort to the river, and secure the fish in considerable numbers as they flounder in the still shallow water. A parallel instance occurs in Abyssinia in relation to the fish of the Mareb, one of the sources of the Nile, the waters of which are partially absorbed in traversing the plains of Taka. During the summer its bed is dry, and in ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... the respite has been short, it has been valuable; local inconvenience acts as a sedative to the nerves. Besides, there is less silence. The track that was parched and spongy has now become soft and slippery. Horses flounder and slide. Wet mackintoshes swish against the animals' flanks, and hoofs are raised with a rinsing, sucking sound. But there is man's work afoot. As the rain-mists sufficiently clear, the "Robber" is able to take his bearings. ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... coves where the white fisher hamlets now nestle. Reefs white as lace fret line the coast. Lonely as death, bare as a block of marble, Gull Island is passed where another crew in later years perish as castaways. Gray finback whales flounder in schools. The lazy humpbacks lounge round and round the ships, eyeing the keels curiously. A polar bear is seen on an ice pan. Then the ships come to those lonely harbors north of Newfoundland—Griguet and Quirpon and Ha-Ha-Bay, rock girt, treeless, always windy, desolate, ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... bandied. Now I think on it, 'twere possible his legs were cushioned thus to hide a senile thinness! 'Tis human nature when badgered by excess of limit to flounder into limitless excess. Look upon the Burgomaster at thy feet with a surfeit of good round legs, he is unfortunate for being in excess, he cannot whittle down. 'Tis a queer being with whom he dances,—here comes a queen, see, she stops beneath ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... the early days of his Circuit journeys: "Yet there are some of us who like the procession, though it can never be anything but mean and ludicrous, and who fancy that a line of soldiers, or the more civic array of paltry policemen, or of doited special constables, protecting a couple of judges who flounder in awkward gowns and wigs through ill-paved streets, followed by a few sneering advocates and preceded by two or three sheriffs or their substitutes, with their swords, which trip them, and a provost and some bailie-bodies trying to look grand, the whole defended ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... than anything that any of them had ever seen in the Arctic Seas; and when Joe brought his club down on the skull of the foremost with a terrible thwack, it refused to tumble over, but continued to splutter and flounder towards the sea. Dr Hayward, however, used his spear at this moment with such effect that the seal fell, and another blow from the Herculean club finished ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... attempted to cross a narrow neck of the slough. His mount had begun to sink and flounder, had been urged forward until the danger was obvious. Then, too late, the rider had flung off and turned back, sinking until his feet and legs were gripped by the layer of deep soft sand below. It was one of the rarest but most terrible accidents of ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... tells me that it is the practice of muleteers in the neighbourhood of Erzeroum, when their animals lose their way and flounder in the deep snow, to spread a horse-cloth or other thick rug from off their packs upon the snow in front of them. The animals step upon it and extricate themselves easily. I have practised walking across deep snow-drifts on this principle, with ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... charmant," he cried, going with an immense flounder into the midst of the amused trappers, and slapping those next to him on the back. "Give me veapon, do, mes amis—gun, pistol, anyting—cannon, ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... not advocate the elimination of regional considerations, but it has become apparent that without centralized executive action the management of this great business, like the management of any other great business, will flounder in incapacity and languish under a division of council. A plain and unmistakable reassertion of this principle of unified control, which I have always been advised was the intention of the Congress to apply, is necessary to increase the efficiency ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Calvin Coolidge • Calvin Coolidge
... third reason that influenced the young navigators in deciding to take the longer course across the Atlantic. This concerned the fogs such as can always be met with off the Newfoundland Banks, and which are often so dense that vessels flounder through them for several days ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... Flaubert's fiction, a meaning more amply expressed in Salammbo, where not one foolish woman alone but thousands on thousands of men, women, and children, mingled with charging elephants and vipers, flounder and fight in indescribable welters of blood and filth, and go down to rot in a common pit. If I read Flaubert's meaning right, all human history is there; you may show it by painting on broad canvas a Carthaginian ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... unescapable conviction of His reality, and have swayed their wills to live in conformity to His perfect Goodness; and it is also true that when for any cause this clue of rationality is missed or lost, men flounder about in the fog and pass through periods of inward tragedy amounting often to despair. But the approach of Reason still leaves much to be desired. It points to something deeper than the transitory flux of things, it raises our minds to some sort of ultimate ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... light as a golden puff ball, but it must not be used in a family who have a habit of coming late to breakfast, because, if allowed to stand, this particular omelette grows presently as flat as a flounder. ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... the seaside. I used to catch flat fish sometimes, with a long string line, it was like swimming a kite. If you go out in a surf boat, take care it does not "flounder" and get "squamped," as some people say, ...
— Neighbor Nelly Socks - Being the Sixth and Last Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... sometimes, in excess of friendliness or exhortation, "Jack." He wondered if it had been the social idealism of Anne that had made them attain the proper title, or if, when the crust of renewed convention broke through, they would, under the stress of common activities, flounder about as they did before he went away, in an ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... it was that she brought him to the point, but the widow had netted him so close that he didn't even try to flounder. ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... An awful sense of helplessness takes possession of you. If it were daylight, you could pass around the deep drifts, even in this chaos; but now a drift looks the same as the prairie grass swept bare. You plunge headlong into it, flounder through it, creeping on hands and knees, with your face sometimes buried in the snow, get on your feet again, ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick |
