"Blundering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his income, his lady had objected to the cutting of a pickled mango, and that I had taken an opportunity to ask the price of it, and found it was only two shillings; so here was a very poor saving. JOHNSON. 'Sir, that is the blundering oeconomy of a narrow understanding. It is stopping one ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... his; he is destroying the present possibility of attaining to that higher life which is the destiny of the soul. The Christ in him can find no expression. And yet, my friends, realise this, however startling it may seem, sin itself is a quest for God—a blundering quest, but a quest for all that. The man who got dead drunk last night did so because of the impulse within him to break through the barriers of his limitations, to express himself, and to realise more abundant ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... among the Dutch. At the same instant the soldier recognized him as a Frenchman, and oblivious of the Mohawks' presence blurted out his discovery in Iroquois dialect, vowing that for all the paint and grease, this youth was a white man below. The fellow's blundering might have cost Radisson's life; but the youth had not been a captive among crafty Mohawks for nothing. Radisson feigned surprise at the accusation. That quieted the Mohawk suspicions and they were presently deep in the beer pots of the ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... declared the other. "I saw the masts of a ship standing right in our path. I got this little craft turned just in time! That's what we get for blundering along so fast!" ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... struck by the mixture of indecision and blundering haste which he had shown, and by his impoliteness. Evidently he was not a gentleman, she thought, or he would surely have obeyed his first impulse and allowed her to get into the train before him. It seemed, too, as if he were determined ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... Literature! But who, and what is the pursuer, A Jesuit cursing Popery: A railer preaching charity; A reptile, nameless and unknown, Sprung from the slime of Warburton, Whose mingled learning, pride, and blundering, Make wise men stare, and ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 16, February 16, 1850 • Various
... which crosses the head of Market Strand, and, dropping his arms, stood for a moment us if in doubt of his bearings. He was flagrantly drunk, but not aggressively. He reminded me of a purblind owl that, blundering Into daylight, is set upon and mobbed by ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... MSS. I really rejoice to hear that you and Mr. Bendall have escaped alive from those ground floor abominations stinking of half rotten leather. I know the two Paris MSS. [of The Scented Garden] (one with its blundering name): they are the merest abridgments, both compressing Chapter 21 of 500 pages (Arabic) into a few lines. I must now write to Gotha and Copenhagen in order to find out if the copies there be in full. Can you tell me what number of pages they contain? Salam to Mr. Bendall, and best ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... equivocally, in the function of another. Yes; and words, if they are not watched, will do deadly work sometimes. There are masked words droning and skulking about us in Europe just now,—(there never were so many, owing to the spread of a shallow, blotching, blundering, infectious "information," or rather deformation, everywhere, and to the teaching of catechisms and phrases at schools instead of human meanings)—there are masked words abroad, I say, which nobody understands, ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... In the usual blundering way, Mr. Pettigrew dates one letter of Dudley's 'September 27.' If that date were right, it would suggest that TWO coroner's inquests were held, one after Amy's burial (on September 22), but Mr. Gairdner says that the real date of the letter is September 12.* ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... odours, came to her mixed with the chill air from the dark hills around, already spiced with keen atoms of frost, soon to appear in spangly spikes. Beneath the bridge the river flowed maunderingly, blundering out unintelligible news of its parent bog and all the dreary places it had come through on its way to the strath of Glamerton, which nobody listened to but one glad-hearted, puzzle-brained girl, who stood looking down into it from the bridge ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... shone the universal arbitress of Europe. How different is her present situation! her debts are enormous, her taxes intolerable, her people discontented, and the sinews of her government relaxed. Without conduct, confidence, or concert, she engages in blundering negotiations; she involves herself rashly in foreign quarrels, and lavishes her substance with the most dangerous precipitation; she is even deserted by her wonted vigour, steadiness, and intrepidity; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... 'Don't you realize the explosive stuff that is lying about? Ivery knows enough to make the next German peace offensive really deadly—not the blundering thing which it has been up to now, but something which gets our weak spots on the raw. He knows enough to wreck our campaign in the field. And the awful thing is that we don't know just what he knows or what he is aiming for. This war's a packet of surprises. Both sides are struggling for the ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... who could also handle a pen, thought it convenient to oblige and encourage me. Bradford still printed the votes, and laws, and other publick business. He had printed an address of the House to the governor, in a coarse, blundering manner; we reprinted it elegantly and correctly, and sent one to every member. They were sensible of the difference: it strengthened the hands of our friends in the House, and they voted us their printers for ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... could. Of the Germany to come, he knew nothing. Military Germany was his abhorrence. What he liked was the simple character; the good-natured sentiment; the musical and metaphysical abstraction; the blundering incapacity of the German for practical affairs. At that time everyone looked on Germany as incapable of competing with France, England or America in any sort of organized energy. Germany had no confidence in herself, and no reason to feel ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... did he abandon four thousand francs in gold to encumber himself with a bundle of linen? The gold was abandoned. Nearly the whole sum mentioned by Monsieur Mignaud, the banker, was discovered, in bags, upon the floor. I wish you, therefore, to discard from your thoughts the blundering idea of motive, engendered in the brains of the police by that portion of the evidence which speaks of money delivered at the door of the house. Coincidences ten times as remarkable as this (the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... determine the relative severity of different kinds of toil, for all our crude attempts to determine the relative strain on different persons of the same kind of toil, yet not only will the ratio, dealing, as it does, with our subjective feelings, be a blundering one, but a system based upon it will involve inequalities greater, because more insidious, than those of the ...
— The Altruist in Politics • Benjamin Cardozo
... fortunately phlegmatic, and did not demand those little tributes of affection in the shape of smiles and whispers, secret glances, silent pressures, which his position might have exacted; but he would now and then pay her a blundering compliment in a manner that could not be misinterpreted, or even make some direct allusion to their future settlement in life, which embarrassed her still more. The young girl, as we have hinted, was by no means incapable ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... kind of environment in which primitive man moves, and also to understand why ideas concerning the supernatural exert such an enormous influence in early society. In a world where everything was yet to be learned, man's first attempts at understanding himself and his fellows were necessarily blundering and tentative. His first attempts at explanation are expressed in terms of his own nature. He sees himself, his own passions, strengths, and weaknesses reflected in the nature around him. This is the outstanding, dominating fact in primitive life. Leave out this consideration and primitive ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... gradually it became known among his fellows that their leader held a grievance against the sheriff, that he was biding his opportunity to play even with Johnny Behan for that blundering piece of thoughtlessness. John Ringo was the biggest man among them all, the brains of the whole crowd; they wanted to see in what manner he would settle the score. And finally the time came when ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... the organ, considered as an optical instrument, is not ideally perfect; so that, if it were an artificial production, opticians would know how to improve it. And as for instinct, numberless cases might be adduced of imperfection, ranging in all degrees from a slight deficiency to fatal blundering. ...
— The Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution • George John Romanes
... to have had a shrill voice, and his action was animated, but not ungraceful. He has left behind him some speeches, among which are ranked a few that are not genuine, such as that on behalf of Quintus Metellus. These Augustus supposes, with reason, to be rather the production of blundering short-hand writers, who were not able to keep pace with him in the delivery, than publications of his own. For I find in some copies that the title is not "For Metellus," but "What he wrote to Metellus;" whereas the speech is delivered in the name of Caesar, vindicating ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... too good ground to visit your impatience on me," he said, "and I confess I've stood the ordeal badly. Your contempt has cut me to the quick. But don't, I beg, add to my humiliation by such a reproach. I'm blundering, but not wholly reprobate." ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... for some reason or other — and Heaven knows what ingenuity men exercise to torment themselves — Dirk had got it into his head that his wife cared for Strickland, and with his genius for blundering he might quite well have offended her so that, to anger him, perhaps, she had taken pains to foster ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... much good sense to be affronted at insult; he is too busy to remember injuries, and too indolent to bear malice.... If he engages in controversy of any kind his disciplined intellect preserves him from the blundering discourtesy of better though less educated minds, who, like blunt weapons, tear and hack instead of cutting clean.... He may be right or wrong in his opinion, but he is too clear-headed to be unjust; he is as simple as he is forcible, and as brief as he is decisive. Nowhere shall we find greater ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... obligation, our first practical return was to pass a repressive measure, for fear, forsooth, that if it was not passed then it might be pigeon-holed and forgotten. India asked for bread and we gave her a stone—a stupid, blundering act, openly deprecated at the time by all moderate unofficial opinion in India. What was the result? The Punjab disturbances and the preventive massacre of the Jallianwala Bagh. I do not propose to dwell on this deplorable and sadly mishandled matter, save to say that so far from ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... recording against him? I have had some confidences from my female friends as to their opinion of other men whom I have observed trying to make themselves amiable, and it has occurred to me that though I can hardly be so blundering as Lippus and the rest of those mistaken candidates for favour whom I have seen ruining their chance by a too elaborate personal canvass, I must still come under the common fatality of mankind and share ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... everything she had said; it was all his fault that she had got this to bear. With the best intentions in the world he had proved himself a blundering fool. ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... logs of their wide-throated chimney, heard the trees in the neighboring forest cracking with frost, with a sound like the report of a pistol. Le Jeune's ink froze, and his fingers were benumbed, as he toiled at his declensions and conjugations, or translated the Pater Noster into blundering Algonquin. The water in the cask beside the fire froze nightly, and the ice was broken every morning with hatchets. The blankets of the two priests were fringed with the icicles of their congealed breath, and the frost lay in a thick coating ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... well-balanced nature—infernally cool it was, indeed! Pardon me, but I am beside myself with rage and self-loathing. True, I have not been intentionally false, but there are circumstances in which folly, weakness, and stupid blundering are nearly as bad, and the results quite as bad. What can you say of the man who pays open suit and makes a distinct offer and pledge to a lady, and the retreats from that suit and breaks that pledge, and through no fault whatever in the lady herself? What can you say of that man when ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... lately been much mortified with contemplating an unlucky imperfection in the very framing and construction of my soul; namely, a blundering inaccuracy of her olfactory organs in hitting the scent of craft or design in my fellow-creatures. I do not mean any compliment to my ingenuousness, or to hint that the defect is in consequence of the unsuspicious simplicity ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... the weaver; if we sum up, however inadequately, the state of things whence it arose, and whence it helped to deliver us, we may think that the greatest music is scarcely reverent enough to accompany these poor blundering rhymes. ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... time, however, to learn what it meant, for, with a shout like a war-whoop, Johnnie's voice was heard below, and presently, as it were, driving his little brothers and sisters before him, Johnnie himself came blundering up-stairs at full speed with Crayshaw on his back. "Bolt it, bolt the door," panted Crayshaw; and down darted one of the girls to obey. "And you kids sit down on the floor every one of you, that you mayn't be theen ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... of Carthaginian citizens, amongst whom were some of the most distinguished officers of the Sicilian army, became the victims of the infuriated multitude; Carthage was already besieged on two sides, and the Carthaginian army marching out of the city was totally routed in consequence of the blundering of ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... many definitions are here to be given for each part of speech? 3. How is the following example parsed? "The best and most effectual method of teaching grammar, is precisely that of which the careless are least fond: teach learnedly, rebuking whatsoever is false, blundering, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... out, upsetting cups and rattling spoons in violent efforts to be quiet and helpful; but it suited Mrs. Jo, because just then her heart was very tender; and remembering that many of her boys were fatherless or motherless, she yearned over them, and found comfort in their blundering affection. It was the sort of food that did her more good than the very thick bread-and-butter that they gave her, and the ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... The war was on, not only between Germany and the Entente, but between the Foreign Office and the Army and Navy. This internal fight which began in July, 1914, became Germany's bitterest struggle and from time to time the odds went from one side to another. The Army accused the diplomats of blundering in starting the war. The Foreign Office replied that it was the lust for power and victory which poisoned the military leaders which caused the war. Belgium was invaded against the counsel of the Foreign Office. But when the Chancellor was confronted ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... not understand? I might as well leave a thief to take care of my gold carcanet as leave thee alone with Belasez. I shall come back to find the child gone off with some vile dog of a Christian, and thee tearing thy garments, like a blind, blundering ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... Love is blind; and on the strength of that popular delusion novel heroes and heroines go blundering through three volumes of despair with the plain truth directly under their absurd noses: but in real life this theory is not supported; for to a living man the countenance of a loving woman is more eloquent than any language, more trustworthy ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... in spite of the modern school of philology, which has shown us the right way, much wild guessing continues to be prevalent. It is not, however, often that we can point to such a brilliant instance of blundering etymology as that to be found in Barlow's English Dictionary (1772). The word porcelain is there said to be "derived from pour cent annes, French for a hundred years, it having been imagined that the materials were matured underground for that ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... That stupid, blundering fellow bumped squarely into her at last. And how he escaped is still a mystery. The old cat always claimed that when she found Benjamin wasn't a bird she was so surprised that she let him go. And as for Benjamin himself, he never ...
— The Tale of Kiddie Katydid • Arthur Scott Bailey
... At last, after blundering about like this for many days, getting their clothes torn and their faces covered with mud, they walked right into the King's back-garden by mistake. The King's men came running up ...
— The Story of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... done there would be at least a possibility that in his earlier stages the man might blunder so seriously that the results of his blundering might be more than he could bear. The plan of the Deity is to give man a limited amount of free-will; if he uses that small amount well, he earns the right to a little more next time; if he uses it badly, suffering ...
— A Textbook of Theosophy • C.W. Leadbeater
... victorious plundering hunt, or else the accumulated seizures from refractory Wakungu, are brought in; for there is no more common or acceptable offering to appease the king's wrath towards any refractory or blundering officer than a present of a few young beauties, who may perhaps be afterwards given as the reward of good service to ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... the destruction of the bridge, and the passage of relief-ships, by blowing up the bridge with a sort of floating mines. The explosion was successfully carried out with terrific effect; a thousand Spaniards were blown to pieces; but by sheer blundering the opening was not at once utilised, and Parma was ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... letter to the same friend, in 1797, and which was put unsealed under cover to Colonel Burr, I expressed a satisfaction that Mr. Jefferson, since he was not president, had accepted the vice presidency; "for," said I, "John Adams has such a talent for blundering and offending, it will be necessary to keep an eye over him." He has now sufficiently proved, that though I have not the spirit of prophecy, I have the gift of judging right. And all the world knows, for it cannot help knowing, that to judge rightly and to write clearly, ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... skating, and in particular to the pleasure he was going to have in teaching Mr. Grant, who had never done any sliding except on the soles of his nailed shoes: when the time came, he acquired the art the more rapidly that he never minded what blunders he made in learning a thing. The dread of blundering is ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... with a blush, was in trade. He was neither handsome nor accomplished. The most his best friends could say of him was, that he was "a very worthy young man." He was not an orator: he had an atrocious delivery, and rarely got through the briefest epistle, or collect even, without blundering over a preposition. His demeanour in pulpit and reading-desk was that of a prisoner at the bar, without hope of acquittal, and yet he had won Miss Granger—that prize in the matrimonial market, which many a stout Yorkshireman had been eager ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... several types of Buddhism, and Mongolia, Thibet, Nepaul, Ceylon, Burmah, and Siam present each some special features of the system. How important that one should understand these differences in order to avoid blundering, and to wisely adapt his efforts! In India, under the common generic name of Hinduism, there are also many sects: worshippers of Vishnu, worshippers of Siva, worshippers of Krishna. There are Sikhs, and Jains, and devil worshippers; among the Dravidian and other pre-Aryan ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... misanthropical answer of Chremylus is neither here nor there, and only diverts us from the real question, and that is, "Whether Fortune be a heavenly, Christian angel, or a blind, blundering, old heathen deity?" For my part, I hold with Dante; for which, if I were so pleased, or if at this period of my memoirs I had half a dozen pages to spare, I could give many good reasons. One thing, however, is quite clear, that whether Fortune ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... work[3]—which was lashed by the New York Review for its astounding ignorance of the most celebrated letters of Junius, and for quoting a judicial opinion of Lord Kaimes's as a speech in the House of Lords—the reviewer, whose blundering intrepidity is only saved from the ridiculous by the honesty of his attempt, comes down on a nobler quarry, and thwacks the memory of Lord Camden as if he had been another Thersites. Sir Joseph Yates gets a sound drubbing from the same ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... much better not have spoken, blundering old papa that he was. And both daughters thought so, as they saw Max raise his eyebrows and gather in all the details of the little plot in one sweeping glance at the faces around him. He drank his coffee, but ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... of training and careful preparation. Every man is rehearsed in his work until he can do it perfectly, quickly and without noise. Materials are carefully checked up and distributed and, each man having a certain specified task and no other, there is no confusion or blundering. They all know that, when a flare goes up near by, they must "freeze" in whatever position they may be. Movements of any kind would be sure to discover them to the enemy lookout, but lacking that movement it is a hundred-to-one shot ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride
... himself, when Ethenwald tries to pass off the kitchen-maid as Alfrida: the trick is detected, Dunstan counsels forgiveness, and Edgar generously renounces his claim. There is but one scene of "Kempe's applauded merriments," and this consists merely of a blundering dispute, whether a mock petition touching the consumption of ale shall be presented to the King by ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... covered by a multiflora rose, weighted with masses of its small, delicate blossoms; within a few feet of it a bed of mignonette grew, and the sun-warmed breathing of all these fragrant things was a luxurious accompaniment to the booming of the bees, blundering and buzzing in and out of their flowers, and the summer languid notes of the stray birds which lit on the branches and called to each other among ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... each of us is in our inmost spirits capable of receiving. By the light which He sheds on the Word, by many a suggestion through human lips, by many a blessed thought rising quietly within our hearts, and bearing the token that it comes from a sacreder source than our poor, blundering minds, He still ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... indifferent and unscrupulous person. I wrote it after some days of indisposition and uneasiness, and when I felt weak and unfit to write. While writing to him, I was at the same time intending to answer your note, which I suppose accounts for the confusion of ideas, shown in the mixed and blundering address. ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... not been with them; but Fat Joe had been unable to convince the chief engineer of the East Coast Company that their repetition was in any way a thing of sinister import. Steve had merely smiled at his dogged belief in a veiled campaign of opposition, blaming the minor catastrophes upon blundering incompetence which they could hope to combat by unflagging vigilance alone. And now, when the finding of the roll of estimates upon the floor and the blood clotted crease in Garry Devereau's forehead ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... small active harm in the somewhat passive soul of John Eddring's assistant, William Carson, the large-handed young man who acted as clerk and stenographer and rendered more or less blundering service about the office. Perhaps there was more of curiosity than evil in his nature. It was curiosity in the first place which gave him personal knowledge of a certain list of judgment claims against the Y.V. railway, ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... fail to make a reputation through their habitual blundering, carelessness in writing prescriptions, failure to give minute instruction. The world is full of blunderers; business men fail from a disregard of trifles; they go to the bank to pay a note the day after it has gone to protest; ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... Aunt Jemima?" said this blundering young man, clumsily beating about the bush, and thus scaring the bird quite as much as if he had thrust his hand boldly into ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... in the army's march from Gien.[56] Relating a conversation he held with the Maid after the coronation, he makes her speak as if her brothers were awaiting her at Domremy, whereas they were with her in France.[57] Curiously blundering, he attempts to prove that Jeanne had visions by relating a story much more calculated to give the impression that the young peasant girl was an apt feigner and that at the request of the nobles she reproduced one of her ecstasies, like the Esther of ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... run through the straits in the night, and was three miles from Carthagena when she was captured, which she certainly never would have been but for Jack's fortunately blundering against the cape with his armed vessel, so that Captain Wilson and Mr Sawbridge (both of whom were promoted, the first to the rank of post-captain, the second to that of commander), may be said to be indebted to Jack for their good fortune. ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... met Major Howard; this officer could give no reason for the running,—had never seen the like. Another officer swears they are flying from a shadow. Lee tries to account for it,—troops confused by contradictory intelligence, by disobedience of orders, by the meddling and blundering of individuals,—vague excuses all, the plain truth being that they had given way to a panic. But for Washington's fierce commands and threats, the retreat might have become ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... to read Galen in the original; who knows all the plants, from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop upon the wall; but who finds himself, with the issues of life and death in his hands, ignorant, blundering, and bewildered, because of his ignorance of the essential and fundamental truths upon which practice must be based. Moreover, I venture to say, that any man who has seriously studied all the essential branches of medical knowledge; who has the needful acquaintance with the elements ...
— American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology • Tomas Henry Huxley
... that retreat before our merciless enemy became to me at last like a dream, during which I have some recollection of staggering along with my arm in Mr Raydon's, and the people about us tottering and blundering along as if drunk with horror and exhaustion. Every now and then men went down, but they struggled up again, and staggered on, a crew of wild, bloodshot-eyed creatures, whose lips were parched, and white with foam; and then something cool was ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... wouldn't ask him to dinner, or let their names appear with his in the papers; they would be careful how they spoke of him in the palaver, or at their clubs. What can we expect, then, when we have only poor gallant, blundering men like Garibaldi and Mazzini, and righteous causes which do not triumph in their hands; men who have holes enough in their armour, God knows, easy to be hit by respectabilities sitting in their lounge-chairs, and having ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... with a fondness for the company of some of the resident landlords in his neighbourhood, replied, "It's in the blood, you see. My poor mother, God rest her soul! she always had a liking for the quality. As for my dear father, he was just a blundering peasant ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... brooks—their notes drop, drop, drop, like his: for the woods—they sob like him. At length, nothing remains but to blow the Hautboys; and just as the chorus arrives at its fulness, they come maundering in. They have a sweet old blundering 'cow song' to themselves—a silly thing, made of the echoes of all pastoral sounds. There's a warbling waggoner in it, and his team jingling their bells. There's a shepherd driving his flock from the fold, bleating; and the lowing ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... ingenuous for the Osborns, for one of them at least had no patience with her. To Captain Osborn her existence and presence in the near neighbourhood were offences. He told himself that she was of the particular type of woman he most disliked. She was a big, blundering fool, he said, and her size and very good nature itself got on his nerves ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... returning through France from his crusade, took an active part in negotiating the treaty. Just as the king was disposed to make the justiciar the scapegoat of his failure, Hubert's old enemy appeared once more upon the scene. The responsibility for blundering must be divided among the English magnates, and not ascribed solely to their monarch. If Hubert saved Henry from reckless adventures, he certainly deserves a large share of the blame for ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... in to the base of the mountain all traces of the exodus was lost, though bush instinct, supplemented by the actions of the dogs, gave sense of its direction. Blundering down into a ravine where blanched vegetation betokened complete seclusion from the sun, we clambered up the opposing steep emerging from an entanglement of jungle on a high and open ridge which commanded an unimpeded view to the west—a scene of theatrical ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... Ralph replied in his less perfect signs, prompted by Nick with blundering impetuosity; and, at the end of the parley, a perfect harmony prevailed. Two great rough men, with hearts as simple and trusting as those of infants, led this stranger into their home, and ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... sneer, one must have oneself looked on the absolute perfection of proportion and harmony of its every part, which really does suggest the idea that the whole might be lifted bodily in one piece from its place on the soil Whether the Austrian had the wit to answer "You are blundering, boy! you are taking me for ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... boy,' he returned; 'but I mean to say that they are managed and decided by the same set of people, down in that same Doctors' Commons. You shall go there one day, and find them blundering through half the nautical terms in Young's Dictionary, apropos of the "Nancy" having run down the "Sarah Jane", or Mr. Peggotty and the Yarmouth boatmen having put off in a gale of wind with an anchor and cable to the "Nelson" Indiaman in distress; and you shall go there another ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... the Kansas and Nebraska question: as shown in the corruptions which pervade some of the departments of the government: as shown in disgracing meritorious naval officers through prejudice or caprice; and as shown in the blundering mismanagement of our ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... flank and rear, hasty preparations were made by the federal army for retreat. And thus was Forrest's military wisdom corroborated. "Let me flank them out," was military genius. "No, charge them out," was dare-devil blundering! ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... her and seen Quicksands; say you, I should have thought of that before condemning Gerard his fancy; but there, life is a school, and the lesson ne'er done; we put down one fault and take up t'other, and so go blundering here, and blundering there, till we blunder into our graves, and there's an end ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... street, and, of course, a dirty one, ill-lit, and, apparently, at the moment of my appearance, deserted. I had gone, perhaps, half-way down its tortuous length, blundering more than once into the kennel, wondering what fantastic whim had brought me into such unsavoury quarters, and what would happen to me if, as seemed extremely possible, I lost my way. On a sudden my ears were saluted by sounds which proceeded from a house which I was passing,—sounds ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... command all I wanted. You and he were Major Generals; I, only a Brigadier; and Brigadiers are plenty as blackberries in season. It is to be supposed that if I could procure money, clothing and supplies for Indians, you and he could do so for white troops. Both of you come blundering out to Arkansas with nothing, and supply yourselves with what I procure. Some officers would be ashamed so to supply deficiencies caused by their own want of foresight, ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... escape though." half faltered the anxious poet. "Now! now!" he continued, with eager delight at having got so far so well; but, what was his horror, when his unlucky pupil, instead of shaking his own blundering head, in strict but unfortunate interpretation of his orders, took that of Sir Christopher within his hands, shook it long and manfully, and then walked off with a look of exultation at having so exactly complied with his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... he shouted, and actually let drive with his musket. The ball missed, but by pure blundering one of the buck-shot took effect, and the brave retreated out of the melee with a sensation as if his head had been split. Some time later he was discovered sitting up doggedly on a rock, while a comrade ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... taxes, both in blundering unfairness and in evil fame, came the Land Tax or Taille, producing for the twenty-four districts a revenue of about forty-five million livres, or with its accessory taxes, of about seventy-five ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... straight," laughed the consul. "Say that a blundering German boy, who said he was a Boy Scout from Philadelphia, nearly dragged me out of bed about midnight and informed me that other Boy Scouts were in trouble at the telegraph office. I knew that Ned was expected here, and so lost no time ...
— Boy Scouts on Motorcycles - With the Flying Squadron • G. Harvey Ralphson
... do so. The curious obstacle, limiting even his power, is a rare specimen of conservatism in its purest form. So wise were our ancestors, that nothing of theirs shall ever be touched. Infallible legislators can make immutable laws; the rest of us must be content to learn by blundering, and to grow by changing. The man who says, 'I never alter my opinions,' condemns himself as either too foolish ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... the two little girls, and hospitable offers showered on all, she was amused by perceiving that good Mrs. Harewood was endowed with exactly the same grotesque order of ugliness as her son William; but she was even more engaging, from an indescribably droll mixture of heedlessness, blundering, and tender motherliness. ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that the leading men, seeing a newspaper now in the hands of one who could also handle a pen, thought it convenient to oblige and encourage me. Bradford still printed the votes, and laws, and other publick business. He had printed an address of the House to the governor, in a coarse, blundering manner, we reprinted it elegantly and correctly, and sent one to every member. They were sensible of the difference: it strengthened the hands of our friends in the House, and they voted us their printers for the ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... uncertainly;—there was time to go back! The task of telling part of the truth to this mild old man, whose eye was like a sword, suddenly daunted her. She would wait a few days.—she began to open her umbrella, her fingers blundering with haste,—but retreat was cut off: Dr. Lavendar, on his way to the dining-room, with Danny at his heels, saw ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... silently trying to make his own ideas square with the contradictions of the other seven. Other squads may have been repressed volcanoes, but still they were repressed, with the corporal making his mistakes in his own way, but learning by blundering how the thing should be done. As for Squad 8, Knudsen was guarding the corporal's peace of mind. Once when Bannister had mistaken the order, and I burst out with a whispered "Too far!" Knudsen snapped at me, ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... discontent in the North which they strove in every way to develop; they were gaining in assurance just in proportion as the war feeling was dying out; and they were reaping the usual advantage of the opposition party in a period of financial depression. Learning wisdom from the blundering course of 1868 and the disastrous experiment of 1872, they were now to uplift the banner of pure Democracy under Democracy's most ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... Ramillies: "Dieu a donc oublie tout ce que j'ai fait pour lui?" Read your Renan; remind yourself at every turn that it is quite possible after all the egotist may turn out to be in the right of it, and you will find at any rate that the world gets on excellently well without your blundering efforts to set it straight. And so we get back to the Archbishop's maxim—adapted, no doubt, to English requirements,' and he shrugged his great shoulders expressively: 'Pace Mr. Elsmere, of course, and the ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... by so great an interval of time,—the one terminated by Periander of Corinth, the other undertaken by Pisistratus,—are, with the usual blundering of Mr. Mitford, jumbled together into the same event. He places Alcaeus in the war following the conquest of Sigeum by Pisistratus. Poor Alcaeus! the poet flourished Olym. 42 (611 B. C.); the third tyranny of Pisistratus may date somewhere about 537 B. C., so ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... I went on. "That's the folly. It seems to me that some one among your generals must be blundering very badly if Antwerp is to be so scandalously neglected. The lesson that it might teach if properly handled! The enormous value of its example to those parts of the civilised world that are still on the fence!—Holland, ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, September 9, 1914 • Various
... difficulties and discomforts from this wide conflagration, which seemed to embrace the whole wilderness. The sun was for a great part of the time obscured by the smoke, and the loftiest mountains were hidden from view. Blundering along in this region of mist and uncertainty, they were frequently obliged to make long circuits, to avoid obstacles which they could not perceive until close upon them. The Indian trails were their safest guides, for though they sometimes appeared to lead them out of their direct course, they ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... the deck one night, And there beheld a moving sight. It made the very men grow pale, Their shudder almost rent the sail! For lo! they saw a mighty whale! It drew a shriek from Olaf brave, Then plunged beneath the briny wave, And, while the women loudly shouted, Up came its blundering nose and spouted. Then underneath our keel it went, And glared with savage fury pent, And round about the ship it swum, Striking each man and woman dumb. Stay—one there was who found a tongue And still retained her strength of lung. Freydissa, beauteous matron bold, Resolved ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... exercise:—facts which it was equally in accordance with nature that the Fatherland should fail to perceive. For the causes which gradually determined American resistance we must look, (as regards us), not to the blundering English legislation after 1760,—to the formalism of Grenville, the subterfuges of Franklin,—but to the whole course of our commercial policy since the Revolution: As regards the Colonies, to the extinction of the power of France in America by the Treaty of Paris in 1763: ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... and, overcome by the prescience of approaching separation, they both sobbed bitterly there upon the sofa. Presently came a knock at the door, and Augusta sprang up and turned to hide her tears. It was the maid-of-all-work bringing the tea; and, as she came blundering in, a sense of the irony of things forced itself into Augusta's soul. Here they were plunged into the most terrible sorrow, weeping at the inevitable approach of that chill end, and still appearances must be kept up, even before a maid-of-all-work. ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... in, and they rode boldly forward to the chief inn of the place. The yard was filled with soldiers. Charles, as the groom of the party, alighted, took the horses, and purposely led them in a blundering way through the midst of the soldiers to the stable. Some of the red-coats angrily cursed him for his rudeness, but he went serenely on, as if soldiers were no ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... imagination of mankind is and how obstructive to progress is their fool good-heartedness, go among them as a capable mind with a physical handicap. You'll size them up, yourself included, as the most blindly wall-butting set of blundering organisms that ever felt their way through an ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... inexorable, letting him do what he would, but fixed as Fate upon his purpose. Over Hankley Down, through Thursley Marsh, with the reeds up to his mud-splashed withers, onward up the long slope of the Headland of the Hinds, down by the Nutcombe Gorge, slipping, blundering, bounding, but never slackening his fearful speed, on went the great yellow horse. The villagers of Shottermill heard the wild clatter of hoofs, but ere they could swing the ox-hide curtains of their cottage doors horse and rider were lost amid the high bracken ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... winced even at the remembrance. But he had decided upon a fixed policy, and he was not a man to flinch from consequences. Miss Deane must be taught to despise him, else, God help them both, she might learn to love him as he now loved her. So, blundering towards his goal as men always blunder where a woman's heart is concerned, he blindly persisted in allowing her to make such false deductions as she chose ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... work shops. But such was the natural energy of Affiffi, that when he was set to work beside the slow, dilatory, and stupid native workmen, he became greatly irritated. The contrast between the active energetic movements which he had seen at the Bridgewater Foundry and the ineffective, blundering, and untechnical work of his fellows was such that he could not stand it any longer. So one fine day he disappeared from the works, took refuge on board a British steamer, and at the risk of his neck made his way back to the ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... the way accordingly, blundering over heaps of rubbish, and encountering all the embarrassments of a ruinous street, in lighting the way to Sir Aymer, who, giving his horse to one of his attendants, and desiring Fabian to be ready at a call, scrambled after as well as the slowness ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... to raise such an idea in his mind. But, on the other hand, his conspicuous impartiality leads him to give abundant testimony that throughout these wars thoughtful Dutch officers were continually praising the order and precision of the English tactics, and lamenting the blundering and confusion of their own. It may be added that Dr. Gardiner's recent researches in the same field equally failed to produce any document upon which we can credit the Dutch admirals with serious tactical reforms. Even De Ruyter's ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... scrape. He was a great favorite here. Father and he were famous friends. Father said that Philip had no end of nonsense in him and was always blundering into something, but he was a royal good fellow and would come ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 3. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... read," responded Teacher, but her spirit was crushed and the children reflected her depression. Still, they were marvellously good and that blundering note had said, "Discipline is his lay." ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... how the blundering, pseudo-picturesque, pseudo-classical minds of Claude and the Renaissance landscape-painters, wholly missing Homer's practical common sense, and equally incapable of feeling the quiet natural grace and sweetness of his asphodel meadows, tender aspen poplars, ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... education which goes to secure direct self-preservation is in great part already provided for. Too momentous to be left to our blundering, nature takes it into her own hands, but there must be no such thwarting of nature as that by which stupid school-mistresses commonly prevent the girls in their charge from the spontaneous physical activities they would indulge in; and so render ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... ridge. Guns flashed at dawn and dusk along the flat tidal reaches haunted of black mallard and teal; the smokeless powder cracked through alder swamp and tangled windfall where the brown grouse burst away into noisy blundering flight; where the woodcock, wilder now, shrilled skyward like feathered rockets, and the big northern hares, not yet flecked with snowy patches of fur, loped off into swamps to the sad undoing of several ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... bad matter worse by trying to save one's pride, is a rare wisdom. Still, Lombard might have exercised it at another time. But there are days when the magnetisms are all wrong, and a person not ordinarily deficient in tact, having begun wrong, goes on blundering like a schoolboy. Piqued at the sudden shock to the pleasant day-dream, in which he had fancied himself already virtually assured of this young lady,—a day-dream which she was not really accountable for ...
— Deserted - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... life in the West Virginia hills. "There's a heap o' things happens around this country that are mighty skeery." Suddenly in the gloaming a bat wings overhead, darts inside the shack. You can hear it blundering around among the rafters. An owl screeches off in the hollow somewhere. "Do you believe in ghosts and haynts?" There are apprehension ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... no "speculation" in her eyes. Plain figures make desperate work with airy "somehows." It is a matter of no small skill and experience to get your books home, and into their proper places, undiscovered. Perhaps the blundering express brings them to the door just at evening. "What is it, my dear?" she says to you. "Oh! nothing—a few books that I cannot do without." That smile! A true housewife that loves her husband can smile a whole arithmetic at him at one look! Of course she insists, in the kindest ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... of my own reflections, was I allowing myself to say! I silently cursed myself for a blundering fool. The girl's gray face, the pinched look of it, frightened me. I started from ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... in high dudgeon, and he was left to curse his ill-timed jest. What a blundering fool he had been! Her first, timid little advance,—and he had met it with boorish, clownish wit! A scurvy jest, indeed! She was justified ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... everlasting enmity of the disappointed ninety-nine, to say nothing of their numerous friends and allies; why, you would be cut up to minced meat amongst them all; and nine-tenths of the reviews and newspapers would be ringing their changes of abuse upon your name, as one of the most blundering blockheads ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... his forehead. Had this stuttering static anything in kind with those other formless events? If not, what terrified creature was invoking his aid in this blundering fashion? ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... that dinner with even more haste than we had sat down. All lights in the town were put out at eight-thirty, and we didn't want to go crawling and blundering about in the dark with our ambulance car. There was a general feeling that the faster we ran ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... happened—something of no common kind. This was a something which was far, very far, more serious than those old troubles which had oppressed him. This was something far different from those old perplexities—the entanglements with three engagements. Amid all those he was nothing but a big, blundering baby; but now he seemed like a sorrow-stricken man. Where was the light of his eyes, the glory of his brow, the music of his voice? Where was that glow that once used to pervade his fresh, open, sunny face? Where! It was Jack—but not the Jack of ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... herself about the kitchen. Her mood of racking apprehension had disappeared. Indian stoicism had again the guiding hand. She waved Peter from the fire that she was kindling, as if he were a blundering incompetent. But she let him slice the bacon and grind the coffee as one lets a child help. Alida came in, white-faced and anxious over the long absence of her husband, but conscientiously hospitable nevertheless. ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... What a blundering donkey I had been not to see it before! I was very thrifty in those days, and the thought of having been the cause of needless expense worried me. So instead of the crepe de Chine and miniver, which had been used for the black dress, I had for the white dress Bolton sheeting and rabbit, and ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... caught Annixter about the shoulders with one arm, gripping his hand hard. This absurd figure, with dangling silk suspenders, lathered chin, and tearful eyes, seemed to be suddenly invested with true nobility. Beside this blundering struggle to do right, to help his fellows, Presley's own vague schemes, glittering systems of reconstruction, collapsed to ruin, and he himself, with all his refinement, with all his poetry, culture, and education, stood, a bungler at the ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... water. Without any effort of mine, that great Goth, Mr. Houghton, submitted himself to my inspection, and instead of being horrified, I have been laughing at him ever since. He struck me as an exceedingly harmless creature, with large capabilities for blundering. He would not step on a fly maliciously, yet poor Mrs. Robertson acted as if I were near an ogre who might devour me at a mouthful. How she did manoeuvre to keep that big fellow away! and what a homily she gave me on our way home! ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... much arrant nonsense has been talked in that pure element's name, that we are in danger of overlooking its wonderful value as a curative means. It is one of the most powerful agents at the command of the practitioner, and should no more he trifled with than arsenic or opium. Used by a blundering, shallow-pated empiric it may be worse than useless—may do, as in many cases it has done, incalculable mischief to a patient. In the hands of a clear-sighted, experienced, scientific man, who administers it according to well-known laws of physiology and therapeutics, ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... less convinced. Annesley clutched the banisters in the sudden weakness of a great revulsion from panic to relief. She might have known that he would somehow rescue her, even from her own blundering. ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... physical conditions under which the House of Commons meets and plays at government, are ridiculously obsolete. Every disputable point is settled by a division, a bell rings, there is shouting and running, the members come blundering into the chamber and sort themselves with much loutish shuffling and shoving into the division lobbies. They are counted, as illiterate farmers count sheep; amidst much fuss and confusion they return to their places, and the tellers vociferate the result. The waste of time ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... in the carving of a chicken. Intruding thus, he by degrees Claimed too the butcher's larger fees. 90 And now his over-weening pride In every province will preside. No talk too difficult was found: His blundering nose misleads the hound. In stratagem and subtle arts, He overrules the fox's parts. It chanced, as, on a certain day, Along the bank he took his way, A boat, with rudder, sail, and oar, At anchor floated near the shore. 100 He stopp'd, and turning to his train, Thus pertly vents ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... read 'Mrs. Grant.' Dr. Verrall, in the pages of the Cambridge Review, defended 'Miss Grant,' provided that 'Miss' were placed between inverted commas, as well as the previous 'Miss Crawford'; he believed Mrs. Rushworth to have been a blundering kind of person, who desired to invite Miss Crawford, but while naming 'Miss Crawford' addressed herself to Mrs. Grant. Otherwise (if we read 'Mrs. Grant'), Dr. Verrall argued, there was not the slightest occasion for Mrs. Grant to decline the invitation on her own account, ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... said he, as a great bull-headed, black-and-white brute, surnamed Don, came blundering up and tried to put his muddy paws on my dress. Sir Guy's affectation of the "paternal," and his odious way of calling one "my dear," provoked me intensely; and I gave Don such a crack over his double nose with my parasol as broke the ivory handle of that ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... stillness began to ascend. His long, soft strides were made without noise or effort, whether the ground were moss, or a tangle of vines, or loose stones, or the trunks of fallen trees, I had prided myself on my hill-craft, but beside the Indian I was a blundering child, I might have made shift to travel as fast, but it was the silence of his progress that staggered me, I plunged, and slipped, and sprawled, and my heart was bursting before the ascent ceased, and we stole to the left along the ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... him anything like such a concourse, and he could hear muttered exclamations from the archers, who walked by Sir Giles's orders in a double line on each side the horses, their pikes keeping off the blundering approach of bullocks or sheep. 'By the halidome, if the Scots were among them, they might victual their ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... poisoned the humanity which it inspired, the soil of the buccaneer could raise nothing which was not exuberant with vengeance. Slave-Insurrection was a mere accidental episode in the closing scenes of this bad and blundering career. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... and framework of a system for improving the condition of the English people. Their immediate object was to abolish intolerable abuses of power by the governing classes, and radically to reform on scientific principles the haphazard blundering administration which was assumed to be the source of all evil. Mr. Stephen describes and explains, in short, the rise, progress, and ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... feared and detested him. It has been said that even His Royal Highness would have granted hospitality, and it would have saved the nation over which he ruled the blight of eternal execrations had he been strong enough to stand against the blundering decision ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... led, by Mr Root, into the middle of his capacious school-room, and in the midst of more than two hundred and fifty boys: my name was merely mentioned to one of the junior ushers, and the master left me. Well might I then apply that blundering, Examiner-be-praised line of Keats to myself, for ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... even a one-sided attraction is supposed to exist, no remark should be made about it. The lady friend who tells a girl that a man "is very much taken with her," strikes a fatal blow at the unconscious grace with which the girl would otherwise have received him. The blundering brother who blurts out: "My sister says that girl's awfully gone on you, old chap!" probably makes his chum fight shy of the girl, or indulge in a little fun at her expense. It should be remembered that a nearer acquaintance does not always confirm ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... village, over the bridge; and the men never found this out. They might have changed horses in five minutes, and proceeded, without having wakened a single person in the place; instead of which, the carriages actually stood five-and-thirty minutes on the top of the hill, while this blundering was going on. The king argued with the postilions about proceeding another stage: but their horses were so tired, they would not ...
— The Peasant and the Prince • Harriet Martineau
... is a positive denial of unimaginable periods of time for Mr. Darwin's evolution to try its blundering experiments. We are empowered to say positively, No! There is no such length of time for you, Mr. Darwin, on this little globe at least. This rotating world had a beginning; so had our moon; and our sun, too, began to burn one day. And there are data ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... secessionists, who would have been open rebels except for the presence of the troops. No woman had ever shown her face within the walls of its hospital. The routine of duty had probably been obeyed, but there had been little sympathy and only the blundering care of men, entirely ignorant of the needs of the sick. The men were dying rapidly, and the number in the hospital fast diminishing, not by convalescence, ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... saw only a world of brown water, streaked with white froth, hurling down upon them. It rose above the foot-board and swilled to the level of the seat. The horses, with heads lifted high, were often, for an anxious moment or two, free of the shifting bottom and swimming. A tree, blundering down- stream, struck the near wheel, and they were nearly capsized, the water rushing in over their knees. As they tilted Andreas gave a cry, and shifted in his place. Anna called to her horses and ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... ma'am," said the gentleman mentioned, shaking his head despairingly. "That's Bill Brisket all over. I come blundering in, and the first thing I do is to blurt out secrets; then, when I try to smooth ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... well-informed, if they are visibly trying to meet popular feeling, and actually removing some of the causes of dissatisfaction, no matter how slowly they proceed, provided they are seen to be proceeding, they have little to fear. It takes stupendous and persistent blundering, plus almost infinite tactlessness, to start a revolution from below. Palace revolutions, interdepartmental revolutions, are a different matter. So, too, is demagogy. That stops at relieving the tension by expressing the feeling. ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... act of blundering to his feet, checked abruptly, as if arrested by something in the peremptory tone. "What for?" he asked, ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... blundering bat once stuck her head Into a wakeful weasel's bed; Whereat the mistress of the house, A deadly foe of rats and mice, Was making ready in a trice To eat the stranger as a mouse. 'What! do you dare,' she said, 'to creep in The very bed I sometimes sleep in, Now, after all the provocation ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... they had chosen me if they thought me a blundering and, perhaps, mischievous zealot, I picked up a parcel, undirected, and broke ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... this—upon my word! What in heaven's name is the matter with you all? Here has been that blundering booby William, pushed his father and me down-stairs, and Martha seems the only one that would care a farthing if we had ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... defeat by yielding quietly to Leonetta the supremacy she apparently insisted upon having. Thus, while she kept a steady eye upon Denis Malster, whose manner had captivated her from the start, she was content, or rather discontent, to note step by step Guy Tyrrell's blundering innocence in ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... thought, just as Mrs. Ocumpaugh has, that the child had somehow found her way to the water and was drowned. But if all this is true we shall have to face a worse evil. A conspiracy against such a tender little being as that! A conspiracy, and for what? Not to extort money, or why these blundering efforts to make the ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... about, he wasn't anything,—he wasn't anything at all. This was not what he had been looking forward to with such complacency and confidence. He was like a lost soul. No one to tell him what to do! No one to valet! No one to call him a blundering idiot! No one to despise except himself! And he had waited thirty years for the day to come when he could be his own man, with the power to tell every one to go to the devil—and to do so himself ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... The task of dealing fairly and justly with this territorial complication should never be committed to the blundering legislation of man alone. His success as a legislator and executive for woman in the past does not inspire a confidence that in this most serious problem he will be any the less an unbiased judge ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... purpose of defending the cause of women. I knew that if, with the view of inculcating ideas favorable to their emancipation and to a broad and thorough system of education for them, I had gone to work in a blundering way, I should at best, have been regarded as nothing more than an author of a theory more or less plausible. I was therefore, obliged to clothe my ideas, to disguise them under a new shape, in biting, incisive words that should lay hold on the mind of my readers, awaken their ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... ever such a combination of negligence and blundering? And now, gentlemen, what is about to happen? All we know is that her Majesty's ministers are doing everything in their power to evade the cognizance and criticism of Parliament. They have received an answer to their "friendly communication"; ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... was sent up to Dundee by order of General Symons for practice in field firing. As Mark IV. was not for use in a war with white races all these cartridges were called in as soon as Kruger declared war, and the officers responsible thought they were every one returned. By some blundering in the packing at home, however, some of this Mark IV. must have got mixed up with the ordinary, or Mark II., ammunition, and was found on our men by the Boers on October 30. Accordingly a very careful ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle |
