"Bungled" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and a couple more before she succeeded in heaving the saddle upon the back of the flinching sorrel. Because she took up the saddle by horn and cantle instead of doing it as Jean had taught her, she bungled its adjustment upon the horse's back. Then the sorrel began to dance away from her, and Robert Grant ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... seventy-five field niggers, and go by de tool shed and git our hoes, or maybe go hitch up de mules to de plows and lay de plows out on de side so de overseer can see iffen de points is shart. Any plow gits broke or de point gits bungled up on de rocks it goes to de blacksmith nigger, den we all git on down ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... must come to some decision about the allotment scheme on his property in Saundersfoot. He must go over and help Colonel Bellairs not to make a fool of himself about the disputed right of way across his property where it joined Wentworth's own land. Colonel Bellairs always bungled into business matters of the simplest nature as a bumble bee bungles into a spider's web. For Colonel Bellairs to touch business of any kind was immediately to become hopelessly and inextricably involved in it, with much furious buzzing. His mere presence entangled the plainest matter ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... all I wanted to do for you, that I regarded her as a very dear friend, nothing more. And because I looked upon her this way, I foolishly went to her once to confess my love for another; her dearest and most intimate friend, and ask if she thought I had a chance for success. I must have bungled strangely, for she mistook my meaning and thought I was speaking of herself and in a way she accepted me; and before I had time to explain, her mother came in and I have never seen her since; but ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... French's first experience of actual warfare was a bitter one. If ever the British Government bungled one of their military enterprises more thoroughly than another, it was the Nile Expedition of 1884-5. What began as a forlorn hope ended in complete failure, and in three short months French experienced the miseries of retreat, ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... no friend of Poritol's; nor was it likely that, as protector of the interests of his countrymen, he would go so far as to accompany them on their errands unless much was at stake. Perhaps Poritol was Alcatrante's tool and had bungled some important commission. It occurred to Orme that the secret of the bill might be connected with the negotiation of a big business concession in Alcatrante's country. "S. R. Evans" might be trying to get control of rubber forests ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... wonderful effect by which the darkness of Westminster Hall was suddenly illuminated by an ingenious arrangement of sconces that caught fire and carried on the message of light with great rapidity. The heralds in whose hands the ceremonial arrangements lay bungled their business badly, causing fierce heartburnings by confusions in precedence, and displaying a lamentable ignorance of the names and the whereabouts of many wearers of stately and ancient titles. ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... depths of dumpy ugliness unworthy the name and dignity of mountains. I had formulated the idea that there should be world landscape-gardeners appointed, to work on a grand scale, and alter hills or mountains which Nature had neglected or bungled. But to-day, as we steamed down the long, narrow Lac de Bourget, sitting shoulder to shoulder, the light breeze fluttering butterfly-wings against our faces, I could not see that there was anything for the most fastidious taste ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... can,—even if I was silly enough to let my scow run into a reef to-night, that wasn't here in my day. They sent me to take charge of the job and to straighten out its mixups and to try to win where the others had bungled. I was doing it, too,—and it would have been a big feather in my cap, at Washington, when my good sense went to pieces on a reef named Claire Standish,—a reef I hadn't counted on, any more than I counted on the reef that stove in my scow, an ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... only one shoe of that pair, my dear captain! We're a distrustful flock, we birds of prey. Come along! Why sit there sulking, like a spoiled child? You've made an ass of yourself, following me to Paris; sadly though you bungled that job in London, I gave you credit for more wit than to poke your head into the lion's mouth here. But—admitting that—why not be graceful about it? Here am I, amiably treating you like an equal: you might at least ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... telegram—reply paid—asking him to fix a day. The answer named a day of the week and a day of the month which did not agree; whereupon Mr. Knowles wrote by the safer medium of the post for an explanation, thinking that the post-office clerks must have bungled the message, ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... he jammed it through, that young chap did—and was funny, oh, as funny as you can think, for hours, in front of hundreds of people. He never missed a cue, never bungled a line, and all the time seeing, up there in the light-housekeeping rooms, in the last room of them all, how she lay, in ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray
... realized that their exclusive control of taxation and legislation was not inconsistent with Imperial Union, but essential to it. Grattan and his Irish friends, ignorant of the true solution, honestly thought, in the intoxication of the moment, that they had solved the problem so disastrously bungled for America. The facts of ethnology and geography seemed to have been recognized. Ireland and England, united by a Crown which both reverenced, stood together, like Britain and the Dominions of to-day, as sister nations, with the old irritating ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... "will say that you bungled it, others that I behaved abominably, but—but we know ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... web. His editor told him he was engaged to report football, not to play it with the paper. But he couldn't help it. He had got, he said, the ensanguined habit. Still, I was not to imagine that he bungled things. He jolly well knew his way about. In his wildest flights there was a homing impulse; he was preparing a place for himself all the time (that it happened to be my place didn't seem to afflict him in the least). Like St. Paul, he knew how to abound and he knew how to abstain. His abstinence, ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... week crammed with various engagements, numerous tasks, constant labour, little businesses, many of them with their own attendant anxiety, it is easy to say that there is no time to do anything that one wants to do, and to feel that the matters themselves will be handled amiss and bungled. But if one can only keep the mind off, or distract it by work, or beguile it by a book, a walk, a talk, how easily the thread spins off the reel, how quietly one comes to harbour on the Saturday evening, ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... by the most indulgent on the ground that the residents were spinsters, and could not know a mother's heart. No one born and reared in the community could possibly have made a mistake like that. No one who had studied the ethical standards with any care could have bungled ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... "You bungled, you fool kids!" he said in disgust, "and Huldah, what did you want to let on to mudder for that he thought we was hers? You ought to have torn up the note he left and just said he'd put twenty-five thousand in the ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... his uniform, and so distinguished, although I suppose that he isn't really handsome—at least, not like Dr. Bentley. He isn't so wonderful as Don; but I think that he is more understanding. He seemed to realize just how I felt this morning, and he was as sweet and considerate as a woman when I bungled things awfully in the operating room. The head nurse gave me a deserved call down, however, and it was perhaps just as well that she did, for my mind needed to be 'brought back.' Only my body was in ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... unintended complaint, have put me completely beside myself again. It has been troubling me for over a year and I should like to get clear out of here. Nothing pleases me any more. The more distinctions I receive the more I feel that it is all vanity. My life is bungled, and so I have thought to myself I ought to have nothing more to do with strivings and vanities, and ought to be able to employ my pedagogical inclinations, which after all are my most characteristic quality, as a superintendent of public morals. ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... and she disliked to have the appearance of unconventionality. After the first minute she was not so much afraid as annoyed. Her voice became frigid, though her dignity was somewhat damaged by the fact that she bungled in ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... still with no result, and then she tried the small latch. Perhaps the man had done some blundering thing when he had been examining it. She remembered hearing several clicks. She turned the handle again and again. There was no key in the keyhole, so he could not have bungled with the key. She was quite aghast at the embarrassment of ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and I feared I had bungled. Yet my meaning should have been transparent even to a child. To make sure she had not ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... related and each term explained. How troops were set in battle, how a siege Was ordered and conducted. She complained Because he bungled at the fall of Liege. The curious names of parts of forts she knew, And aired with conscious pride her ravelins, And counterscarps, and lunes. The day drew on, And his dead fish's fins In the hot sunshine turned a mauve-green hue. At last Gervase, guessing ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... man, if she takes that bungled mug of yours in her lap, you can be sure you're loved. You needn't jump out of your boots! Brace up now, for I'm going to bring the girls." As I got up to go I heard him groan. I went round behind the stones and found the girls. "Come on," I said. "He's awake now, but a little queer. ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... orders and old Masters seeing to their proper execution by the busy hands and active feet, the skipper meanwhile standing on the poop, superintending matters with his keen eye, and woe to the lubber who bungled at a hitch or left a rope's ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... ships on the high seas; but the Admiralty maintained that some of these men are officers in the German Army and are now receiving officers' pay. I think that that is probably true. Nevertheless, the Admiralty had bungled the case badly and Sir Edward simply rode over them. They have a fine quarrel among themselves and we got all we ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... everywhere was ignorance and confusion. Lord John Drummond's hopeful scheme for seizing Edinburgh Castle (September 8) was quieted pulveris exigui jactu, "the gentlemen were powdering their hair"—drinking at a tavern—and bungled the business. The folly of Government offered a chance: in Scotland they had but 2000 regulars at Stirling, where "Forth bridles the wild Highlandman." Mar, who promptly occupied Perth, though he had some 12,000 broadswords, continued till the end to make Perth his headquarters. ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... He bungled through the Latin in a grating, irresolute sort of way, with several false quantities, for each of which the next boy took him up. Then he began to construe;—a frightful confusion of nominatives without verbs, accusatives translated as ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... there had been no formed purpose, that he had only amused himself by considering how he could do such a deed without detection, if the deed were to be done. He had simply been thinking over the blunders of others, the blindness of men who had so bungled in their business as to have left easy traces for the eyes and intelligence of the world outside, and had been assuring himself how much better he could manage if the necessity of such an operation were to come ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... wished for your company, I never did it more earnestly than when I rode over Flodden Edge. I know your taste for these things, and could have undertaken to demonstrate that never was an affair more completely bungled than that day's work was. Suppose one army posted upon the face of a hill, and secured by high grounds projecting on each flank, with the river Till in front, a deep and still river, winding through a very extensive valley ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... Morris, do not flatter yourself it was at all on account of your disposal of the rugs, for the moment you had left a very handsome young lady came along, and, looking at me, said, with such a pleasant smile, 'Why, what a pretty rug you have there; but how the steward has bungled it about you! Let me fix it,' and with that she gave it a touch here and a smooth down there, and the result was really so nice that I hated to go down to breakfast. It is a pity you went away so quickly ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... smile. He even lost color with wrath. "Garvey has dared to play you some trick!—I did not dream—" he went on, eagerly, "Garvey kept the letters in his hands, and bungled over the name, so I did ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... lines to the gallows in an open ambulance, sitting on his coffin. I happened to be not far from the point where he passed through, and saw him plainly. For one so young, he displayed remarkable coolness and courage when in the immediate presence of death. The manner of his execution was wretchedly bungled, in some way, and the whole thing was to me indescribably repulsive. In the crisis of the affair there was a sudden clang of military arms and accouterments in the line not far from me, and looking in that direction I saw that a soldier in the front rank had fainted ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... emerge at all, and then her women friends would send wreaths for the coffin and carriages to the funeral, and would whisper mysteriously together in their boudoirs, and look askance upon the doctor who had attended her. For of course he had bungled shockingly, or everything would have gone off as right as rain ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... get? A dozen mullet-headed miners. You bag the mud-hens and the big game runs to cover. I wanted Glenister, but you let him slip through your fingers—now it's war. What a mess you've made! If I had even ONE helper with a brain the size of a flaxseed, this game would be a gift, but you've bungled every move from the start. Bah! Put a spy in the bull-pen with those prisoners and make them talk. Offer them anything for ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... blunders. He had walked blindly into the pit his enemies had dug for him. Peter must have failed to get my message to him, and he knew nothing of last night's work or my mad journey to Italy. We had all bungled, the whole wretched bunch of us, Peter and Blenkiron and myself ... I had a feeling at the back of my head that there was something in it all that I couldn't understand, that the catastrophe could not be quite as simple as it seemed. But I had no power ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... I am transferring my irritation at the landlord who sold my school to her. I beg her pardon. Nor am I really annoyed with the landlord; the person I am annoyed with is myself. I bungled that school business. ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... off down the hall in no pleasant frame of mind. The whole affair had been bungled by his stupidity. He passed through the door which Hartmann presently opened at the end of the hall, and found himself in a long narrow passage, lit by a single electric lamp. Hartmann closed the door carefully behind him, and came on down the corridor, ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... laugh, you fool?" cried his cousin, "you lose more than I. You've bungled it worse than even I did. If you had a spark of feeling, you would be shaking in your boots with vexation. But I'll tell you one thing—I'll have that eight hundred pound—I'll have that and go to Swan River—that's mine, anyway, and your friend must have forged to cash it. Give me the eight hundred, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... must not be bungled," he said sternly. Then, to Jean, "and you are to see that it is not bungled. If this Victor makes one false move, you ...
— The Boy Allies in the Trenches - Midst Shot and Shell Along the Aisne • Clair Wallace Hayes
... with a feeling that he had bungled his job, fell back a pace, while she drove away without so much as ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... in the presence of the Polish Prince Alasco.[93] Make them tell you how they answered to his syllogisms; how the pitiful professor, whom they put before them on that grave occasion as the Corypheus of their university, bungled fifteen times with fifteen syllogisms, like a chicken in the stubble. Make them tell you with what rudeness and discourtesy that pig behaved; what patience and humanity he met from his opponent, who, in truth, proclaimed himself a Neapolitan, born and brought ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... chase began. Priscilla had a long start of us, for we had bungled at the wall, but we ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... well aware also that his chief, the United States Marshal, had not been zealous in the pursuit of Dysert's criminals, and that Black's friend, Congressman Dellmey Baxter, was known to have under his protection several members of the society. Therefore, if he bungled the job, he was likely to lose his official head; and if he were not swift and sure in his movements against the gang, his physical head would not be worth the lead that would undoubtedly come crashing into it from behind, before ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... one morning on the stage drilling my "corps" as usual. One most refractory spirit, to whom but a few words were entrusted, and who bungled even those, I was endeavouring to train into something ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... at the gate of the house of the deceased; and although I bungled about the passages, yet, following the man who seemed to act as the confidential servant, I came to the little door which leads into the anderun. I permitted him to do what he no doubt was daily accustomed to do, and just as he had opened the door, and I had advanced two or three paces, ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... Queen got him into place. He uses the Abbe even yet, for instilling all his notions into her mind. That he has imposing talents and patriotic dispositions, I think is certain. Good judges think him a theorist only, little acquainted with the details of business, and spoiling all his plans by a bungled execution. He may perhaps undergo a severe trial. His best actions are exciting against him a host of enemies, particularly the reduction of the pensions, and reforms in other branches of economy. Some think the other ministers are willing he should stay in, till he has effected this odious, yet ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... was so great! Like a man who has put his last dollar upon the hazard, he was ready to snatch his gold from the boards. The whole thing seemed weakly tenuous at dress-rehearsal, and Royleston, half-drunk as usual, persistently bungled his lines. The children in the second act squeaked like nervous poll-parrots, and even Helen's sunny brow was darkened by a frown as her leading man stumbled along to a dead halt ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... Armada—it seems strange that he should return to the scene of his past exploits to die. He was with Hawkins in the campaign of 1595 against Spain in the New World. Things had not gone well. He had not approved of Hawkins's plans of attack, and the venture was being bungled. Sick of the equatorial fever, or of chagrin from failure, Drake died off Porto Bello in the fifty-first year of his age. His body {167} was placed in a leaden coffin, and solemnly committed to that sea where he had won his ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... imagined seated in the fateful chair, dreading the pain but hoping for the relief of an extraction. But, as Tacitus said, that morning she saw all things cross and terrible. The dentist, instead of doing his work deftly, bungled it, or else it was the fault of the patient's jaw. At any rate, the tooth broke off in the forceps, and the dentist had to confess to his patient that all the pain he had given her was useless. He had left in the root! "Ah, mademoiselle," he exclaimed, ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... trained to the business, it's fearfully hard to slip your hand deftly into some one else's pocket. Margery bungled, and Janet, impatient at her slowness, loosened slightly her own hold. On the instant, Willie Jones wrenched one arm free, dived into his pocket, and before his captors knew what he was about had pulled up the nickel and popped ...
— A Little Question in Ladies' Rights • Parker Fillmore
... excellence of his performance, but in the sureness with which he avoids defects; and these defects he has learned by experimental failures. The hand that evokes such perfect music from the instrument has often failed in its touch, and bungled among the keys. And if a man derives skill from his own failures, so does he from the failures of other men. Every unsuccessful attempt is, for him, so much work done; for he will not go over that ground again, but seek some new way. Every disappointed effort fences in ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... he said. "I don't want the others to know it, but I've just had the adventure of my life. I attacked a German. Great Scott! what an opportunity! and I bungled ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... ambitious, he would have smiled, and felt truly that they had bungled in the word. Such and such things were simply his appurtenances; in London, the regard due to a gentleman who to a certain distinction in his manner of amusing himself added the achievement of a successful comedy, three lampoons quoted at all London tea-tables, and a piece of Whig invective, ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... the only noteworthy incident there was my humorous interview with the French Consul. I addressed that dignified functionary in execrable French, telling him that I was a French subject and wanted to be sent back to Europe. I bungled a great deal, and when my French failed I helped myself out with English. The Consul waited patiently till I had finished, stroking his beard the while, and looking at me in the ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... Mr. Swann, lying on his back and apparently addressing the ceiling, "twice I have given this young man invaluable assistance, and each time he has bungled." ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... as if you'd bungled things, Hopkins. But I'm not interested in this campaign. Excuse me; if there's nothing you want, I've got a ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... a bungled job, for the country edition had already gone out, including the supplies for England and Scotland, so that the only copies seized were those intended for Dublin and ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... of course, but it meant a pretty full day! Susanna's mind reverted uneasily to the consideration that she had already bungled matters. Oh, well, if she was late, she was late, that was all; and if Jim was furious, why, Jim would simply have to be furious! And she began her ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... she looked up, and her satisfaction slumped abruptly into perturbation. Tom was leaning back against the corral rails, with his arms folded—and just why must he lift his eyebrows and smile like Lance? She was going to hand him the bag, but her fingers bungled and she dropped it in the six-inch dust ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... the back of his hand across his wet eyelids. His lips were growing numb, and he bungled over ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... a heavy toll, his eyes looked up in uncomprehending life. Conscience bent her face close to his and there was breath on his lips and nostrils. Eben had been a Machiavelli in spirit only. In effect he had bungled. ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... interminable. For the first time since she had ridden in public Arithelli bungled over her tricks. She jumped short, miscalculated distances, and once barely saved herself ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... alleged revelation 1800 years after her death, is of glaring evidence: two or three additional shiffle-shuffles towards defence of saying the Athanasian curse in church and unsaying it out of church, are hardly noticed. Swift has bungled his satire where he makes Peter a party to finding out what he wants, totidem syllabis and totidem literis, {35} when he cannot find it totidem verbis[75] This is Protestant method: the Roman plan is viam faciam; the Protestant plan is viam inveniam.[76] The public at large begins to be ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... people who can be trusted to help me kidnap Beatty and smuggle her over the Canadian frontier. I bungled the thing once. I don't mean ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... speaker, and the little he did say was a good deal bungled. Still there was a manly ring about his speech which pleased the better disposed section of his audience, some of whom did not even belong ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... and depend for his income upon winning about three good criminal prosecutions a year; the rest of his time to be spent reading up criminal psychology and taking his aunt to see pictures. The commonplace scene-shifter who places behind people the scenery of real life has bungled Sir Henry, thereby robbing him of much interest. What a net a man with his classic patience and enormous ferret instinct for minutiae could have woven about some cunning but once too often embezzler! Instead we have Drayton, K.C., pushing himself methodically through a series ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... he sent the ball to him, waist-high. Then the back got to him, and he came down with a thud, with a vision, seen from the corner of his eye, of the ball bounding forward out of the wing three-quarter's hands into touch. Rand-Brown had bungled the pass in the old familiar way, and ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... in some manner bungled the job? Or had he passed it up? He must find out how much the greener knew. The boss guessed that if the other had unearthed the plot, he would force ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... activities and indefatigable powers. But it had found itself without materials for work. Of the scholastic philosophy and the chivalric poetry of the Middle Ages there remained but little that could be utilized: the few bungled formulae, the few half-obsolete rhymes still remaining, were as unintelligible, in their spirit of feudalism and monasticism and mysticism, as were the Angevin English and the monkish Latin in which they were written ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... was bungled at the very start. "After getting over the Marsh, where we were wet up to the knees," says Lieutenant Barker, "we were halted in a dirty road and stood there till two o'clock in the morning, waiting for provisions to be brought from the boats and to be divided, and which most of the men threw away, ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... as nicely in leading-strings as need be—this raw boy, whose hot-headedness, simplicity, and indolence rendered him as easy a pigeon to pluck as one could desire; how comes it, I say, that he has taken alarm in this sudden manner, so as to refuse to come here any more? you've bungled this matter most shamefully, sir, and ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... few animals myself over in the Peninsula, but not having had any advice I guess I bungled the job somewhat. Anyhow, they said down in St. Louis, where I sent my bunch, that they were misfits, and I suppose it must have been so, if a fellow was to judge from the size of the check they sent on. Since then I've been told that all animals can't be skinned ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... the very defectiveness of the Roman poetry, which cannot be denied, may be explained and so may in some degree be justified. It is no doubt pervaded by a disproportion between the trivial and often bungled contents and the comparatively finished form; but the real significance of this poetry lay precisely in its formal features, especially those of language and metre. It was not seemly that poetry in Rome was principally in the hands of schoolmasters and foreigners and was ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... to Catrina, who received him with a half-concealed frown. The countess bridled and looked at her daughter with obvious maternal meaning, as one who was saying, "There—you bungled your prince, but I have procured ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... had flowed so smoothly from her lips? To her knowledge she had never deliberately lied before. She would have supposed that, because of this fact, falsehood would come difficult to her, that she would have bungled, hesitated, stammered. But it was the reverse that had been the case. The facility with which she had uttered the lie was what now began to disturb and to alarm her. It argued some sudden collapse of her ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... of games. To illustrate, the author has known the game of Three Deep, which is one of the best gymnasium games for men, to be played with great interest and ability by a class of six-year-old boys; and the same game stupidly and uninterestedly bungled over by a class of much older boys who had not had previous training in games and were not alert and resourceful. Similarly, the comparatively simple game of Bombardment may be interesting and refreshing for a class of tired business men, while high-school pupils coming ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... learnt from Monsieur Alphonse later—indeed, our friendship was based on the patience with which I listened to his talk of that young lady—was dressed on this particular afternoon in white, but such matters as these bungled between two men will interest no one. Her hair she wore half in curls, according to the hideous custom of that day. Is it not always safe to abuse the old fashion? And at no time safer than the present, when the whole world gapes with its great, foolish mouth after every novelty. I remember that ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... dangers and the chances that lay before him. The situation had its menaces, both obvious and unforeseen, but the more he thought it over the more he realized that the emergency called for action, at once decisive and immediate. He had already bungled and hesitated and misjudged. Blind feeling had warped his judgment. Until then he had blocked out his path of action only crudely; there had been little time for the weighing of consequences and the anticipation of contingencies. He had acted ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer |
