"Flounder" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... slim little silhouette against the darkening sky, her hands clasped in amazement. Suddenly she turned and came tearing down the hill, floundering through sand, falling and picking herself up, only to flounder and fall again, finally rolling down the last ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... flounder, and managed to kick Sam in the face. Partly as a measure of self-defense, he seized ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... 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 was lessening between ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... [2] calwar. Salwar, No. 167. R. Holme says, "Calver is a term used to a Flounder when to be boiled in oil, vinegar, and spices and to be kept in it." But in Lancashire Salmon newly taken and immediately dressed is called Calver Salmon: and in Littleton Salar is a young salmon. [3] lewe water. ...
— The Forme of Cury • Samuel Pegge
... waiting horses; also how, when threatened by a hostile patrol, Hilary, Mandeville, Maxime and Charlie had hurried back on foot into the wood and hotly checked the pursuit long enough for their fellows to mount the team, lay a shoulder to every miry wheel and flounder away with the prize. But beyond that keen moment when the four, after their one volley from ambush, had sprung this way and that shouting absurd orders to make-believe men, cheering and firing from behind trees, ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... no definite intention, but he moved a pace forward, and Courthorne touched the horse with his heel. It backed, and then, growing afraid of the blackness about it, plunged, while Winston for the first time saw that there was a gap in the loosely-laid planking close behind it. Another plunge or flounder, and horse and rider would ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... meat now more than when he had only himself to think of. But it would not do to fire his rifle there. So he broke off a cedar branch and threw it. He crippled the rabbit, which started to flounder up the slope. Venters did not wish to lose the meat, and he never allowed crippled game to escape, to die lingeringly in some covert. So after a careful glance below, and back toward the canyon, he ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... 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
... history." The slower motions of the owl prove to the natural historian that it consumes less oxygen than the eagle. By the same physiological principle he can tell that the herring is the most active among fish, and the flounder the slowest, by merely seeing the gills of each: those of the herring being very large, prove that it consumes much oxygen and is very active; while the flounder, with its small gills, consumes but little, and is very slow in its motions as a necessary consequence. ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... bed betimes who know that a bugle will sound the reveille at 5.30 in the morning. The end of the entertainment is planned to allow time for a final cup of tea or a glass of Horlick's Malted Milk before we go out to flounder through ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... himself of all superfluous clothing, buckling himself up in a watch-coat, strapping his pack on his shoulders, containing his papers and provisions, and taking gun in hand, he left the horses to flounder on, and struck manfully ahead, accompanied only by Mr. Gist, who had equipped ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... mount through the forest, alert for the telltale yelp. There it is, a whine and faint, stifled guttural sounds, but so indistinct and so obscured by the prattle of the stream and the murmuring tree tops that I fail to locate it. So I flounder on through vines and underbrush, wondering where my dogs have gone. I blow the horn and Dixie answers with a pathetic howl, away off to the right. I run and blow the horn again; again that puppy whine. Teddy doesn't answer and I wonder how Dixie could have been lost, though after all, he is only ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... win the prize by his genius or by his good fortune. But what is the chance of success or failure; of obtaining popularity, or of holding it, when achieved? One man goes over the ice, which bears him, and a score who follow flounder in. In fine, Mr. Pendennis's was an exceptional case, and applies to himself only: and I assert solemnly, and will to the last maintain, that it is one thing to write a novel, and another to get ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... that the world is full of books of the highest value for cultivation, entertainment, and information, which the utmost leisure we can spare from other pressing avocations does not suffice to give us knowledge of, it does seem to be little less than a moral and intellectual sin to flounder about blindly in the flood of new publications. I am speaking, of course, of the general mass of readers, and not of the specialists who must follow their subjects with ceaseless inquisition. But for most of us who belong to the still comparatively few who, really ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... 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, ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... what such an object might be, and, having made up my ideas on the matter, I was content; further knowledge would, however, incline me to think, and occasionally to decide, that the idea I had formed was incorrect, and I would alter it. Thus did I flounder about in a sea of uncertainty, ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... friends, a gentleman whom I knew to possess an enviable flow of silver speech, and obtested him, by whatever he deemed holiest, to give me at least an available thought or two to start with, and, once afloat, I would trust to my guardian-angel for enabling me to flounder ashore again. He advised me to begin with some remarks complimentary to the Lord Mayor, and expressive of the hereditary reverence in which his office was held,—at least, my friend thought that there would be no harm in giving ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... definition of a "trust" which conveys to the rank 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, created outside ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... from these sidelong pits and moving about, huge and misshapen lumps, bear-like, that flounder and growl. They are "us." We are muffled like Eskimos. Fleeces and blankets and sacking wrap us up, weigh us down, magnify us strangely. Some stretch themselves, yawning profoundly. Faces appear, ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... going to get blunted and useless, and there's things in him going to grow up and queer him for life. He needs to think right, and we folks here can't teach him that way. Not even Father Jose. There's jest one thing to teach him, and that's Life itself—on his own. If I figger right he'll flounder around. He'll hit snags. He'll get bumped, and, maybe, have some nasty falls. But it's the only way for a boy ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... where our progress had been already so much impeded. Smoke arose from various parts of the lower country—a proof that at least some dry land was there. We were provided with horses only, and therefore desperately determined to flounder through or even to swim if necessary, we thrust them down the hill. On its side we met an emu which stood and stared, apparently fearless as if the strange quadrupeds had withdrawn its keen eye from the more familiar enemies who bestrode them. In the lower country we saw also ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... 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 ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... sea-eggs, for which the women dive with much dexterity, and fish, which they train their dogs to assist them in catching. These dogs are sent into the water at the entrance to a narrow creek or small bay, and they then bark and flounder about and drive the fish before them into shallow ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... rein, and after a flounder or two the pony started the load and struggled up the ascent. Leaving the woman at the top, voluble with thanks, Vane came down and ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... excellent than wine, which, however, I leave in its old pre-eminence; I tasted the other indeed but once, but it seemed to me to set my mouth on fire—such is not for my drinking), and drank to the fishers, crying, "What say you, children—shall we not go and flounder again upon the Ruegenwald strand?" Upon which ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... Castln.; in New Zealand, to Rhombosolea monopus, Gunth., and Peltorhamphus novae-zelandiae, Gunth.; in Tasmania, to Ammotretis rostratus, Gunth., family Pleuronectidae. Rhombosolea monopus is called the Flounder, in Tasmania. ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... 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, ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... too fine clothes. I don't like being continually placed in a position of inferiority through my ignorance—an old fool of a boatman saying 'Bless me!' when I have to admit that I don't know the difference between a sole and a flounder. I don't want to know. I don't want to be continually told. I wish these people would meet me on my own ground. I wish the Macleods would begin to talk after dinner about the Lord Chamberlain's interference with the politics of burlesque, and then perhaps they would not be so glib. ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... a battle with the waves that for many minutes, that seemed hours to the frightened girl, hung in the balance; but at last the swimmer beneath her forged steadily and persistently toward the sandy beach to flounder out at last with an unconscious burden in ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Betty, and the stout boy thought he could do the same. Two or three heavy jumps landed him, not among the bulrushes as he had hoped, but in a pool of muddy water where he sank up to his middle with alarming rapidity. Much scared, he tried to wade out, but could only flounder to a tussock of grass and cling there while he endeavored to kick his legs free. He got them out, but struggled in vain to coil them up or to hoist his heavy body upon the very small island in ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... you were to convert your son, and the 'Independant' were to start writing in defence of Bonapartism, it would deal the party a rude blow. The 'Independant' has already been condemned, its title alone suffices to enrage the middle classes of Plassans. Let dear Aristide flounder about; this only moulds young people. He does not appear to me to be cut out for carrying on the role of a martyr for any length ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... not so sure and if the evidence were not so convincing that it had been done by Adams, I'd say flatly that it is impossible. We have no approach which holds any hope at all. What we've done so far, you might best describe as flounder. But if Adams turned the trick, it must be possible. There may be, as a matter of fact, more ways than one. We'd ...
— Project Mastodon • Clifford Donald Simak
... over snow; once or twice we had to flounder through drifts, and once a brief bitter snowstorm blotted out sight for twenty minutes, while we hugged each other on the ledge, clinging wildly against wind ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... upon which 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 native of Wandsworth, where he is buried. It has been asserted ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... liquid filth, ankle-deep, leg-deep, neck-deep,—in a word, of unknown bottom, on which the lamplight does not even glimmer, but which I have occasionally watched, in the gradual growth of its horrors, from morn till nightfall. Should I flounder into its depths, farewell to upper earth! And hark! how roughly resounds the roaring of a stream, the turbulent career of which is partially reddened by the gleam of the lamp, but elsewhere brawls noisily through the densest gloom. O, should I be swept away in fording that impetuous and unclean ...
— Beneath An Umbrella (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... salmon, grayling, porpoise, electrical eel, horned silure, pilot fish, mackerel, trout, red char, smelt, carp, bream, road goldfish, pike, garfish, perch, sprat, chub, telescope carp, cod, whiting, turbot, flounder, flying scorpion, sole, sea porcupine, sea cock, flying fish, trumpet fish, common eel, turtle, lobster, crab, shrimp, star fish, streaked gilt head, remora, lump fish, holocenter, torpedo. No. 6, then gives the class to No. 7; and as variety is the life and soul of ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... left the burden of the conversation to him. He might flounder, or be completely stalled, as often as he pleased; it was no part of ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... matchis jalled 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
... batt common to the United States is also found on this side of the Rocky mountains.- Beside the fish of this coast and river already mentioned we have met with the following speceis viz. the Whale, Porpus, Skaite, flounder, Salmon, red charr, two speceis of Salmon trout, mountain or speckled trout, and a speceis similar to one of those noticed on the Missouri within the mountains, called in the Eastern states, bottle-nose. I have no doubt but there are many other speceis of fish, which ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... seek to recapitulate the interlacing growth of my apprehension of the world, as I flounder among the half-remembered developments that found me a crude schoolboy and left me a man, there comes out, as if it stood for all the rest, my first holiday abroad. That did not happen until I was twenty-two. I was a fellow of Trinity, and the Peace of Vereeniging ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... 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
... 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 ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... vigorously executed might possibly have succeeded and have caused him to be numbered with the benefactors of Europe,—he dallied with the thought until it was too late, fell into the pit which he had digged for himself, and, in trying to flounder out, met his death at the hands of an assassin who had a grudge against him. Thus even his death was pitiful rather than tragic. It does not appear to be the work of that high Nemesis which Schiller noticed ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... the shallow curl of the waves on the beach, and clambered over the high bow of the dory. Amos baited their lines, and with a word of advice as to the best place to sit, he again turned to his own fishing and soon pulled in a big, flopping, resisting flounder. ...
— A Little Maid of Province Town • Alice Turner Curtis
... and I flounder about; thrice one of them, load and all, goes down with a squidge and a crash into the side grass, and says "damn!" with quite the European accent; as a rule, however, we go on in single file, my shoes giving out a mellifluous squidge, and ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... where we must cross a soft mound formed of the powdery dust thrown off by the avalanche in its rush. Leo slipped over safely, but I, following a yard or two to his right, of a sudden felt the hard crust yield beneath me. An ill-judged but quite natural flounder and wriggle, such as a newly-landed flat-fish gives upon the sand, completed the mischief, and with one piercing but ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... considerable trouble with their teachers. They do not like grammar, frequently do not care for geography and history. They flounder dolefully in these studies and are in a state of more or less continual rebellion and disgrace. Because of their intense activity and restlessness, they irritate the teacher. She wants quiet in the school-room. Their surreptitious playing, ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... the night deepened, the wind rising brought a heavier rain. The trail became increasingly difficult to follow; rough at best, it was now almost impassable. Sheets of water trickled over stretches of rock causing the horse to slip and flounder. In other places rivulets shooting out of crevices cut the loose earth from under the horse's feet. Leg-tired, the horse finally resented being headed into the driving rain and went forward slipping, hesitating and groping like a ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... his too short life, when he found this special path of his (and it is impossible to say whether the actual finding was in the case of Jonathan or in the case of Joseph), he did but flounder and slip. When he had found it, and was content to walk in it, he strode with as sure and steady a step as any other, even the greatest, of those who carry and hand on the torch of literature through the ages. But it is impossible to derive full satisfaction from his feats in this part of the ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... say, it still kept its feet; but, now seemingly overcome by surprise, and knowing the advantage its pursuers would have over it upon the slippery ice, it began to plunge and flounder, and once or twice came to its knees. The hungry pursuers appeared to recognise their advantage at once, for their howling opened with a fresh burst, and they quickened their pace. Their sharp claws enabled them to gallop over the ice at top speed; and one ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... with his messmates, for it is not those who are most capable of arguing who are most fond of it; and, like all arguers not very brilliant, he would flounder and diverge away right and left, just as the flaws of ideas came into ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... 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
... most of whatever artist there is in me has been given to turbine machines and boat building and the problem of flying, and do what I will I fail to see how I can be other than a lax, undisciplined story-teller. I must sprawl and flounder, comment and theorise, if I am to get the thing out I have in mind. And it isn't a constructed tale I have to tell, but unmanageable realities. My love-story—and if only I can keep up the spirit of truth-telling all through as strongly as I have now, you shall have it all—falls ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... you know why great Sea Lions Flounder on the rocky islands, Standing by the Golden Gateway? Why they fight in baffled fury, Barking ever ...
— The Legends of San Francisco • George W. Caldwell
... rapidly over the savannahs, where the swallows were skimming over the top of the long grass to frighten up the insects which rested there. After another flounder across the San Jose plains, I reached San Ubaldo without incident, excepting a tumble with my mule in the mud. Much of the land between Pital and the lake is well fitted for the cultivation of maize, sugar, and plantains, and near the river at Acoyapo the soil is very fertile. ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... 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
... terrific blow with an ax would crack one of the glass helmets. Then the denuded Quabo would flounder convulsively in the air till it drowned. But there were all too few of these individual victories. The main body of the Quabos, rank on rank, dragging their water-hose behind them, came on with ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... dilemma, I turned to one of my three friends, a gentleman whom I knew to possess an enviable flow of silver speech, and obtested him, by whatever he deemed holiest, to give me at least an available thought or two to start with, and, once afloat, I would trust to my guardian-angel for enabling me to flounder ashore again, He advised me to begin with some remarks complimentary to the Lord-Mayor, and expressive of the hereditary reverence in which his office was held—at least, my friend thought that there would ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... 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 can hope for ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the water is not conquered after all! I 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 of mud in ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.
... from top to bottom. The evil dream has become a concrete tragi-comedy which is worse. It is inextricable, heavy, crushing. I flounder from detail to detail of it; it drags me along. Behold what is. Behold, therefore, what will be—exploitation to the last breath, to the limit of wearing out, ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... his superior enlightenment, would think she oughtn't to like; or to pass by something at which the truly initiated mind would arrest itself. She had no wish to fall into that grotesqueness—in which she had seen women (and it was a warning) serenely, yet ignobly, flounder. She was very careful therefore as to what she said, as to what she noticed or failed to notice; more careful than she ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... the soul from an unknown region to an unknown end, then consciousness 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 ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... proper, 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, a variety of the vegetables ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... 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 was ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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 ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... fastened a circle of cleats to catch their feet. Then with a boy on the main fife-rail (his head out) holding slack, eighteen men—three to a bar—would inhale all the air their lungs could hold, and, with a "One, two, three," would flounder down, push the capstan around a few pawls, and come up gasping, and blue in the face, to perch on their bars and recover. It went slowly, this end, but in three days more they could walk around ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... training as an accountant, and this was what gave him the place over us. Rebels, as a rule, are astonishingly ignorant of arithmetic and accounting, generally. They are good shots, fine horsemen, ready speakers and ardent politicians, but, like all noncommercial people, they flounder hopelessly in what people of this section would consider simple mathematical processes. One of our constant amusements was in befogging and "beating" those charged with calling rolls and issuing rations. It was not at all difficult at times to make ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... I 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 how not ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... granite islands in huge herds. Polar bears flounder from icepan to icepan. The arctic hare, white as snow but for the great bulging black eye, bounds over the boulders. Snow buntings, whistling swans, snow geese, ducks in myriads—flacker and clacker and hold solemn conclave on the adjoining rocks, ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... came over 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 ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... 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
... is among the obscurities of 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 condemned before commission. In these things we grope and flounder; and if we can pick up a little human comfort that the child taken is snatched from vice (no great compliment to it, by the by), let us take it. And as to where an untried child goes, whether to join the assembly of its ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... come on one of those snug 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
... 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
... confessional for controlling the women; she has the intellectual machinery, the purgatory and the code of slave-ethics. She has the supreme advantage that the rank and file of her mighty host really believe what she teaches; they do not have to listen to table-rappings and flounder through swamps of automatic writings in order to bolster their hope of the survival of ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... already repudiated, and only do not recognise now, because they have so inadequately re-expressed it. We shall see that their system has no motive power at all in it, or that its motive power is simply the theistic faith they rejected, now tied up in a sack and left to flounder instead of walking upright. We shall see that their system is either nothing, or that it is a mutilated reproduction of the very thing it professes to be superseding. Once set it upon its own professed foundations, ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... 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 who is ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... rattle of blocks as the ladder was hoisted in, and the deck quivered as the engines began to throb. Jake heard the screw slowly flounder round and the wash beneath the poop as the steamer moved out to sea, but there was nobody except their colored crews on board the boats that dropped astern. Kenwardine had had his chance and lost it. He had been too bold and now must ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... And Mooween knows, as well as any other fisherman, the kind of night on which to go fishing. He knows also the virtue of keeping still. As a big salmon struggles by, Mooween slips a paw under him, tosses him to the shore by a dexterous flip, and springs after him before he can flounder back. ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... I may 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 high-pitched ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... 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
... 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 the world: Rabelais, of ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... Frying.—Brook trout, black bass, cod steaks, flounder fillet, perch, pickerel, pompano, smelts, whitefish steak, pike, ...
— Foods That Will Win The War And How To Cook Them (1918) • C. Houston Goudiss and Alberta M. Goudiss
... 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
... allowing his voice to express his impious mood, "if we keep on monkeying out here! If we've got to flounder out here ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... been about 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
... to which I have referred. I have made some Mendelian experiments myself, 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
... out who the person is, and the name, if possible. He, therefore, gets the card and shows it to me by some magical twist. Sometimes he manages to whisper the name. Often I fail to grasp either the whisper or the card; then I am lost, and flounder hopelessly about without bearings of any kind, asking leading-questions, cautiously feeling my way, not knowing whether I am talking to a person of great importance or the contrary. When at last my extreme wariness and diplomacy get hold ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... spoke, 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 ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... he assured his hostess. But this did not satisfy Miss Warren, who, with apparent innocence, questioned the two men until Papa La Branche began to bog and flounder in his explanations. Fortunately for the men, she was diverted for the moment by discovering that the table was set for ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... bathroom, where Nouronihar and her damsels were bathing. Nouronihar induced the old eunuch to rest himself on the swing, when the girls set it going with all their might. The cords broke, the eunuch fell into the bath, and the girls made off with their lamps, and left the meddlesome old fool to flounder about till morning, when assistance came, but not before he was half dead.—W. Beckford, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... and, at last, actually got a frock, belonging to one of our people that was towing, overboard. At the same time they immediately shewed a knowledge of bartering, and sold some fish they had (amongst which was an extraordinary flounder, spotted like porphyry, and a cream-coloured eel, spotted with black) for small nails, of which they were immoderately fond, and called them goore. But, indeed, they caught with the greatest avidity bits of paper, or any thing else that was thrown to them; and if what was thrown fell into ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... flounder and half-way through his recital bogged down helplessly. He had met Sanchia Murray, had gone with her to the Montezuma House, had seen Mr. ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... 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, and ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... 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 ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... fool than he rose! To create Preternatural Suspicion, this was his function in the Revolutionary Epos. But now if he have lost his cornucopia of ready-money, what else had he to lose? In thick darkness, inward and outward, he must welter and flounder on, in that piteous death-element, the hapless man. Once, or even twice, we shall still behold him emerged; struggling out of the thick death-element: in vain. For one moment, it is the last moment, he starts aloft, or is flung aloft, even into ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... here pours down, even its forlorn shabbiness is softened into something of romantic indistinctness. But daylight is dreadfully disenchanting. The rows of tumble-down houses, the sandy, unpaved streets—through which you flounder as in the deserts of Sahara, unless you choose to try sidewalks that have as many ups and downs as a range of mountains, each man building to the height that pleases himself—the large parade, without armament ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... ready victim. To tell the truth, no one but the Jam-wagon was particularly sorry. If there was a sump-hole in sight, that horse was sure to flounder into it. Sometimes twice in one day we had to unhitch the ox and pull him out. There was a place dug out of the snow alongside the trail, which was being used as a knacker's yard, and here we took him with a broken leg and put a bullet in his brain. While we waited there were six ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... between a stork and a swan—a melancholy water-fowl brought from Astracan by the Russian ambassador." This writer tells us, "It was diverting to see how the pelican would toss up and turn a flat fish, plaice or flounder, to get it right into its gullet at its lower beak, which being filmy stretches to a prodigious wideness when it devours a great fish. Here was also a small water-fowl, not bigger than a more-hen, that went almost quite erect like the penguin of America. ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... 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
... there were also limitations to them. Even in such matters as the splitting of hard rock and the driving of massive piles into the river-bed, the higher intelligence of the man of intellect had its effect. Gordon smoked his pipe out as he watched Nasmyth flounder into the stream among the other men, pushing a little car loaded with broken rock that apparently ran along a submerged track. Then he strolled back toward ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... 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 join the assembly of its ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... the remoteness and obscurity of their illustrations; they soothe the ear by the monotony of the same everlasting round of circuitous metaphors. They are the mock-school in poetry and prose. They flounder about between fustian in expression and bathos in sentiment. They tantalise the fancy, but never reach the head nor touch the heart. Their Temple of Fame is like a shadowy structure raised by Dulness to Vanity, or like Cowper's description of the Empress of Russia's palace of ice, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... placing her under restrictions that never before had entered into her gay life. Veath would treat her as if she were of fragile glass and it would not be long until the whole boat would be staring at the beautiful girl who was going to the heathen. Remorse struck him and he tried to flounder out of ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... Come in, take a cheer. I am glad to see you. I 'lowed you'd come. Old Dr. Flounder used to say he larnt lots o' things of me. But most of the doctors sence hez been kinder stuck up, you know. But I know'd you fer ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... me for laughing 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 for the harvest, because his neighbor's, after long months ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... finally, Mr. Diston persuaded Dean Drone to come, and as soon as Mr. Smith and Alphonse saw him they landed him with a fried flounder that even the apostles ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... Flounder comes from the verb, which in turn is derived from flounce, a word which is lost in antiquity. Tarpon (and the form tarpum) may be an Indian word; while there is no doubt as to grouper coming from garrupa, a native Mexican name. Chubb (a form of cub) meant a chunky mass or lump, referring ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... "Helgir fiskar," i. e. "sacri pisces," id. p. 148. The Danish phrase is "helleflyndre," i. e. "holy flounder." The English halibut is hali holy but flounder. This word but is classed as Middle English, but may still be heard in the north of England. The fish may have been so called "from being eaten particularly on holy days" (Century Dict. s.v.); or possibly from a pagan superstition ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... a phantom she had slipped away amid the underbrush, leaving him to flounder blindly in the labyrinth. Once she laughed outright, a clear burst of girlish merriment ringing through the silence, and he leaped desperately forward, hoping to intercept her flight. His incautious foot slipped along the steep edge of the shelving bank, and he went down, ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... Sunday hat on, and a pair of 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 man grinding "Rule ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... thinks, will think his way into light. He may turn many a somersault, but he will come right side up at last. But people in general do not think, and if they refuse to be walled in by other people's thoughts, they inevitably flop and flounder into pitiable prostration. So important is it, that a poor creed is better than none at all. Truth, even adulterated as we get it, is a tonic. Bring forward something tangible, something positive, something ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... rather walk for miles on shingle Or flounder knee-deep in a bog Than listen to a speech from PRINGLE Or hearken to the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 9, 1917 • Various
... comfort was at an end. Being constructed of materials so slight, and resting upon a foundation so infirm, the treading of the first corps unavoidably beat it to pieces; those which followed were therefore compelled to flounder on in the best way they could; and by the time the rear of the column gained the morass all trace of a way had entirely disappeared. But not only were the reeds torn asunder and sunk by the pressure of those who had gone before, but ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... thought Hinduism is definite and unmistakeable. In whatever shape it presents itself it can be recognized at once. But it is so vast and multitudinous that only an encyclopedia could describe it and no formula can summarize it. Essayists flounder among conflicting propositions such as that sectarianism is the essence of Hinduism or that no educated Hindu belongs to a sect. Either can easily be proved, for it may be said of Hinduism, as it has been said of zoology, ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... away: as far as the eye could reach, the bluest of skies melting into the bluest of seas, which broke its foam-flecked edge against the flat, brown reefs that fringed the shore. Then, downhill—with a trip and a flounder that sent the sand man-high—and at last you were on what Laura and Pin thought the most wonderful beach in the world. What a variety of things was there! Whitest, purest sand, hot to the touch as a zinc roof in summer; rocky caves, and sandy caves ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... paternal ire. "Stewart, I asked you to be candid with me. You're leaving me to flounder around ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... Colonel Wingate and Commander Keppel having returned on board, all the troops were ordered to disembark. The steamers were made fast to the banks, and planks were placed ashore. They were of little use, for officers and men had to flounder and wade through the shallows before they reached firm ground 300 yards from the bank. Four of the guns of Peake's battery were also landed. The force having been formed up was marched a short distance to the south. It was halted behind and exactly covering the French ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... 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
... 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 aspects of the war, the ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... to lift up and enlighten the Japanese peasant, science as already known and faith in one God, Creator and Father of all things, must go hand in hand. Education and civilization will do much for the ignorant inaka or boors, but for the cultured whose minds waver and whose feet flounder, as well as for the unlearned and priest-ridden, there is no surer help and healing than that faith in the Heavenly Father which gives the unifying thought to him who ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... which I know myself, I remember by the names of herring, rock, sturgeon, shad, oldwife, sheepshead, black and red drums, trout, taylor, greenfish, sunfish, bass, chub, plaice, flounder, whiting, fatback, maid, wife, small turtle, crab, oyster, mussel, cockle, shrimp, needlefish, bream, carp, pike, jack, mullet, eel, conger eel, perch, ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton
... or protection. That's the thought I can't endure, Diane. Try to be just to me. If I make mistakes, if I flounder about, if I say things that offend you, it's because I can't rest while you're exposed to danger. Alone, as you are, in this great city, surrounded by people who are not your friends, a prey to criticism and misapprehension, when it is no worse, it's as if I ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... supperless the hero sate, Blasphem'd his gods, the dice, and damn'd his fate; Then gnaw'd his pen, then dasht it on the ground, Sinking from thought to thought, a vast profound! Plung'd for his sense, but found no bottom there, Yet wrote and flounder'd on in mere despair. Round him much embryo, much abortion lay, Much future ode, and abdicated play; Nonsense precipitate, like running lead, That slipt through cracks and zigzags of the head; All that on ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... a good show," continued Slim, doing his best to appear at ease. The frantic corrections of his companions only made him flounder about the more. ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... to have a care against seeking to hurry myself right out of the flounder class and right ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... have to hurry over our little incidents: how the wagon couldn't go on by way of the shore, and had to flounder back over the rocks, and crawl out of the canon to the upper road; how Kitty and I set out vain-gloriously to walk to Broadlands by the river-trail, and Harshaw set out to walk with us; and how Kitty made it difficult for ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... 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 ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... a wild flounder over the sodden ground, three hundred yards of it, with shell-holes where the rain took you up to your armpits, but the Reedshires had tasted the glories of conquest, and there was no holding them back, if, indeed, anyone had wished ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... morass to flounder through, by the look of this coast," said Joe. "We be without weapons, ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine |
