"Bungled" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... 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 to ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... 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 ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... 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 ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... he bungled sadly—his hearing suddenly failing as well as his memory, there was a dead stop. In vain the prompter, the scene-shifter, the candle-snuffer, as loud as they could, and much louder than they ought, reiterated ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... sciences is purposely attainable by men, that the defect of natural parts may be supplied by the help of acquired: as if it were probable that nature, which had been so exact and curious in the mechanism of flowers, herbs, and flies, should have bungled most in her masterpiece, and made man as it were by halves, to be afterward polished and refined by his own industry, in the attainment of such sciences as the Egyptians feigned were invented by their god Theuth, as a sure plague and punishment to mankind, ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... The stake for which he played 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 again ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... foot-pavement rocked beneath him; and thinking that he might perhaps lessen his sufferings by walking, he went straight on through the vegetables again. He lost himself among them. He went along a narrow footway, turned down another, was forced to retrace his steps, bungled in doing so, and once more found himself amidst piles of greenery. Some heaps were so high that people seemed to be walking between walls of bundles and bunches. Only their heads slightly overtopped these ramparts, and passed along showing whitely or blackly according ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... 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
... of a romantic or critical kind had originally occurred. He was really almost reaching out in imagination—as against time—for something that would do, and saying to himself that if it didn't come this sketch of a fresh start would show for quite awkwardly bungled. They would separate, and now for no second or no third chance. They would have tried and not succeeded. Then it was, just at the turn, as he afterwards made it out to himself, that, everything else failing, ...
— The Beast in the Jungle • Henry James
... Lord Northallerton had recently invited me to his October pheasant-shooting. During the last few days a youth, who grotesquely reproduces Mrs. Smith's most prominent features, has mysteriously tenanted the kitchen, ill-cleaned my boots, and bungled over the studs in my shirts. This morning a letter came with the crest and the Northallerton postmark. Really, Smith, considering that you have now breathed the same air as myself for eight long years, I did not expect to be called on for an explanation. Besides, you have ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... with its hereditary and circumstantial conditions, was itself so perfectly the mental equivalent of those conditions. Thus the perfection of his egotism, tight as a drum, saved him. Had it been a little less complete, he would have faltered and bungled; as it was, he had the naive certainty of a child, to whose innocent apprehension the world and self are one, and ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... amazing 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 ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... some extent shame the ill even here. The death of Dea, with its sequel, is very nearly perfect; it only wants the verse of which its author was such an absolute master, instead of the prose, where he alternately triumphed and bungled, to make it so. And one need not be a common paradoxer to take either side on the question whether on the whole the omen, if not the actuality, of L'Homme Qui Rit or that of Les Travailleurs de la Mer was the happier. For, while the earlier and better book showed how faults were hardening and ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... and thinner) on which he weaved his fantastic 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 Belfry • May Sinclair
... 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, of failure, and of ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... 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 ablatives, and ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... not 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 it into ...
— A Little Question in Ladies' Rights • Parker Fillmore
... bungled our lives, made grave mistakes, it's better to abide by them courageously than defy—well, the ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... hear it from me than from a stranger," the Colonel said when he had finished. "I entered the army with the reputation of my father behind me; my reputation can only harm you. Men will nudge one another and say, 'There's the son of old Parsons, who bungled the affair against the Madda Khels.' You must show them that you're of good stuff. I acted for the best, and my conscience is at ease. I think I did my duty; but if you can distinguish yourself—if you can make them forget—I think I shall die ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... sifting if Mr. Finn is to be hung while it's being done? I don't think anything of the police. Do you remember how they bungled about that woman's necklace? I don't mean to give him up, Mr. Erle; and I expect you to help me." Then the Duchess returned home, and, as we know, found Madame Goesler ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... Beaton says, make it plain," he said shortly. "The less attention we attract the less talk there will be, and this is too damn serious an affair to be bungled. You hear?" ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... any outsider 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 ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... found his courage returning as he clambered up the side of the Revenge and followed Joe aft to the quarter-deck. Unless they bungled it, there was a chance that they might escape when the pirates made their landing on the coast to refresh themselves and refit the ship. The mate on watch greeted them good-humoredly enough and bade them enter the cabin where the captain awaited them. Jack was all a-flutter again but he managed ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... that Pete had bungled seemed to worry him much more than his condition. He felt that it was a reflection on his craftmanship. The plain-clothes man naturally thought that Pete was incorrigible, failing to appreciate that it was the ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... to have bungled this business very badly," he said airily. "Please don't be too hard on me. I shall make the amende when I see you in Bristol. Au revoir, cheres dames! Tell them to keep me some dinner. I may not be so very far behind, since ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... last Mr. Granger mounted the pulpit and began to read his sermon, of which the text was, "But the greatest of these is charity." Geoffrey noticed that he bungled over some of the words, then suddenly remembered Beatrice had told him that she had written the sermon, and was all attention. He was not disappointed. Notwithstanding Mr. Granger's infamous reading, and his habit of dropping his voice at the end of a sentence, instead of raising it, the beauty ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... itself; but our public- service monopolies have too often followed the "public- be-damned" policy. The long-suffering community puts up with inadequate and crowded streetcars, inconvenient train service, a bungled and high- handed telephone system. Railway managements have sometimes been criminally indifferent to public safety, finding it less expensive to lose occasional damage suits than to install safety appliances. Efficiency in serving the public has likewise been sacrificed to dividends; and ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... done! Lucrezia Borgia could not have bungled less! He lay doubled up in the chair, with a long Genoese dagger buried in his heart, and it was ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... thinking of, Gashwiler. They say she knows, or pretends to know, something about the grant. She may have got hold of some of her uncle's papers. Those Greasers were always d——d fools; and, if he did anything foolish, like as not he bungled or didn't cover up his tracks. And with his knowledge and facilities too! Why, if I'd—" but here Mr. Wiles stopped to sigh over the inequalities of fortune that wasted opportunities ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... 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
... possible way how to avoid suspicious management and faulty performance: consequently, the forgery is anything but plain and palpable; nay, it is wonderfully obscure and monstrously difficult: nevertheless, like all forged documents, it is bungled—ay, in spite of the pains taken to keep free from bad and blundering work, it is, occasionally (as will be seen in the present book, from this point until the close), clumsily, ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... the command of General Ross. So utterly helpless was the Democratic Administration at Washington, that during the two years of warfare hardly any steps had been taken to protect the Capitol, or the country round about; what little was done, was done entirely too late, and bungled badly in addition. History has not yet done justice to the ludicrous and painful folly and stupidity of which the government founded by Jefferson, and carried on by Madison, was guilty, both in its preparations for, and in its way of carrying on, this war; nor is it yet ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... you haven't had experience enough to warrant my trusting so important a matter to you," answered the showman, knowing how serious a bungled act might be, and how it would be likely to weaken ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... himself for the ease and dexterity with which he had permitted himself to be outwitted by Tabnit, St. George turned blindly from the office with some vague idea of chartering all the tugs in the harbour. It came to him that he had bungled the matter from first to last, and that Bud or Bennietod would have used greater shrewdness. And while he was in the midst of anathematizing his characteristic confidence he stepped in the outer hallway and saw that which caused that confidence to balloon ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... who tried it this way in Scotland was found out," he said; "and—" He did not like, even in his mind, to add that the "French fellow, consequently, suffered the extreme penalty of the law. But then he was a fool, and boasted beforehand, and bungled it infernally. Still, it's not absolutely safe: the other plan I thought of first was better. By gad! I wish I could be sure she had not taken the stuff. Perhaps she hasn't. Anyway, she must be asleep again now; and, besides, there are the other oranges ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... absolute silence, unconscious—unaware of any thing round me; living only in my thoughts, and with a resolution growing ever stronger and stronger within me. I will not tell her! I will never tell any one. I, that have hitherto bungled and blundered over the whitest fib, will wade knee-deep in falsehoods, before I will ever let any one guess the disgrace that has happened to me. Oh that, by long silence, I could wipe it out of my own heart—out of the book of unerasable ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... flimsy excuse with a wave of relief and thankfulness to Cissie. He had to restrain himself as he strode across the room and swung together the two halves of the somber curtains in order to preserve an appearance of an exhibit. His fingers were so nervous that he bungled a moment at the heavy cords, but finally the two draperies swung together, loosing a little cloud of dust. He drew together a small aperture where the hangings stood apart, and then turned away in ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... 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 yesterday morning. You might have had an opportunity of ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... 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. When the King expressed his annoyance at some of the blunders, Lord ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... of the day found some of Morris's definitions obscure, modern readers will find them more precise than those of most of his predecessors. All who had gone before—Cowley, Barrow, Dryden, Locke, Addison, and Congreve (he does not mention Hobbes)—Morris felt had bungled the job. And although he apologizes for attempting what the great writers of the past had failed to do, he has no hesitation in setting forth exactly what he believes to be the proper distinctions in the meanings of such terms as wit, humour, judgment, invention, raillery, and ridicule. The mathematician ...
— An Essay towards Fixing the True Standards of Wit, Humour, Railery, Satire, and Ridicule (1744) • Corbyn Morris
... luxuries as a straw bed; and I doubt whether you ever went hungry to bed as I have done many and many a time, for in the days when my father hoped to make an armourer of me I was sent off supperless whenever I bungled a job or neglected his instructions. I wonder what the earl can want you for in ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... presence was resented. At all events I soon realised that my first day in the cook-house would undoubtedly be my last. I had to serve out the bread, and ostensibly, either from lack of experience or nervousness, I bungled my task. The men had to go by the boiler in single file, passing on to the table to receive the bread, where serving was carried out so dexterously that the moving line never paused—until it got to my table. But there was method in my bungling. I was ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... unsaid. Things . . . matters were so fixed that I could not explain; and I had to listen. She said things that I did not believe she could have said to me, to anyone. Things that I did not think she could have thought . . . I dare say she was right in some ways. I suppose I bungled in my desire to be unselfish. What she said came to me in new lights upon what I had done . . . But anyhow her statements were such that I felt I could not, should not, remain. My very presence must have been a trouble to her hereafter. There ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... 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 show gratitude enough to ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... so fatally against me. The dead Salvationist, whose identity I had so lightly and so disastrously adopted, had possessed a veneer of cheap modern education. It should have been easy to demonstrate that my learning was on altogether another plane to his, but in my nervousness I bungled miserably over test after test that was put to me. The little French I had ever known deserted me; I could not render a simple phrase about the gooseberry of the gardener into that language, because I had ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... to his work next morning quite unfitted for an especially delicate piece of dissection which he had in hand. He bungled it, and Weissmann transfixed him with a glare of disapproval. "My boy, these social gayeties do not consort ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... understood. He went back to his seat, sobbing with the hysterical weakness of a sick man. "He's bungled the business, Colonel," he said bitterly. "Oh, God! If you had only ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... day we stumbled on deck in the foggy dawn, the dim island five miles off seemed only dawning too, a shapeless thing, half-formed out of chaos, as if the leagues of gray ocean had grown weary of their eternal loneliness, and bungled into something like land at last. The phrase "making land" at once became the simple and necessary expression; we had come upon the very process itself. Nearer still, the cliffs five hundred feet in height, and the bare conical hills of the interior, divided everywhere by cane-hedges ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... 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 must ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... that this was not going to be the conventional massacre by any means. The First had scored an unconverted try five minutes after the kick-off, and it was after this that the Second began to get together. The school back bungled the drop out badly, and had to find touch in his own twenty-five, and after that it was anyone's game. The scrums were a treat to behold. Payne was a monument of strength. Time after time the Second had the ball out to their three-quarters, and just after half-time ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... beginning of a 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
... trained to pursue carriers, but the doves had a fair start and might be able to get away. The two birds of prey which the men brought were moreover not the type of hawk used especially to hunt pigeons, but young falcons or tercels. The men bungled in handling them; they evidently belonged to the castle, not to the troop. When they finally rose into the air, Pere Azuli, the veteran blue pigeon, and Rien-du-Tout, the little dun-colored stray Peirol had trained, were almost out of sight. ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... bow under her chin, smoothing her hair from the flying strings. Lucy's eyes were dancing, her face turned toward Bart's, her pretty lips near his own. There was a knot or a twist, or a collection of knots and twists, or perhaps Bart's fingers bungled, for minutes passed before the hat could be fastened to suit either of them. Martha's head had all this time been thrust out of the easement, her gaze apparently fixed on a birdcage hung from a hook ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... 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 ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... that great worldly lights might learn by experience how fatal bungled entertainments can be, but such is not the case. Many well-intentioned people continue sacrificing their friends on the altar of hospitality year after year with never a qualm of conscience or a sensation of pity for their victims. One practical lady of my acquaintance asks her guests ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... went dry, and he tried to remind him of their former meeting. Under any circumstances it would have been difficult for him to talk of memories so intimate; now it was torture for him. He bungled his sentences, could not find words, said absurd things which made him blush. Hassler let him flounder on and never ceased to look at him with his vague, indifferent eyes. When Christophe had reached the end of his story, Hassler went on rocking his knee in silence for a moment, as though ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... swear he is not,' Lyle answered. 'I may have bungled in some things, but I have searched this house thoroughly. Nevertheless,' he added, 'we must go over it again, from the cellar to the roof. We have the real clew now, and we must forget the others and work only it.' As he spoke he began again to search the drawing- room, turning over even the ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... of a class who run for cover before a battle begins, and can never be kept in the fighting-line except with the bayonet in the small of their backs. Others were irritable and strenuous, bitter in their denunciations of the Johannesburg conspirators, who had bungled their side of the business and who had certainly shown no rashness. At any rate, whatever the merits of their case, no one in England accused the Johannesburgers of foolhardy courage or impassioned daring. They were so busy in trying to induce Jameson to go back that they had ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... easily she had lied to her friend upon the evening of her return. How was it that the lie 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 whole system of morals, some fundamental ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... tolling to be done on both sides in that game. Slavens turned his back again, with a true pastoral show of secrecy concerning his money, although he bungled it so that Shanklin could see him pulling the five-dollar note from the middle of his roll, as if searching for the next smallest bill. This he put ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... inference. A grand step towards the deification of a lady, made by 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 ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... between you. Only," added the young man, pressing the Englishman's hand and looking fixedly at him, "see that it holds a chance of certain death for one of us. Otherwise I shall complain that it has been bungled." ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... 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 know what ...
— The Boy Allies in the Trenches - Midst Shot and Shell Along the Aisne • Clair Wallace Hayes
... Peyronnet must be 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! ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... hardly more at rest when he left her and walked to his rooms. He carried the regret of a protector of England who had bungled his task and let the wards of his suspicion break loose. The fault was not his, but he would never escape the reproach. He had no taste for taking revenge on the young woman. It would not salve his pride to ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... slightly, and took up the work without any enthusiasm. She made the first correct mystic passage with needle and thread; when she came to the loop she failed to go right, and the effect was bungled and incomplete. ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... ... was...." He, too, bungled over the tense, but she pretended not to notice his confusion. "What are you going to be—or do? I hope your dreams are as wild ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... Look here—the slander base detect; Not haughty man is so erect. That Peacock yonder, see how vain The creature's of his gaudy train. If both were stripped, I'd pledge my word A Goose would be the finer bird. Nature, to hide her own defects, Her bungled work with finery decks. Were Geese set off with half that show, Would men admire the Peacock? No!" Thus vaunting, 'cross the mead she stalks, The cackling breed attend her walks; The sun shot down his noontide beams, The Swans were sporting in the streams. ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... 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 ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... night, a cracking arm and then . . . His imagination never took him beyond that point. Sufficient of the old Adam of gentility still remained to prevent him picturing the final tableau. You see, Reginald Simpkins had not as yet killed anything larger than a rat, and even then he had bungled. . . . ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... schemes which might be suggested; on the contrary, he distinctly stated his approval of the scheme developed in the bill introduced by Senator Davis and passed by Congress. Reconstruction, as it was actually conducted later on, was wretchedly bungled, and was marked chiefly by bitterness in disputation and by clumsiness in practical arrangements, which culminated in that miserable disgrace known as the regime of the "carpet-baggers." How far Lincoln would have succeeded in saving the country from these humiliating processes, no ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... 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 I shall never forget the eyes which looked at me so gladly, smiting me so cruelly ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... said, throwing down the skull of a man over whom the tired executioners had evidently bungled badly, "I'm glad I didn't serve the old kings of Mur. But the same game goes on in a small way to-day in Africa, for when I was campaigning on the West Coast I came across it not a fortnight old, only there they had ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... one had credited to them, had driven a galley from their camp under the ground, intending so to make an entrance into the heart of the city. In their clumsy ignorance, and having no one of sufficient talent in mensuration, they had bungled sadly both in direction and length, and so had ended their burrow under this chamber of the captain of the gate. The great flagstone in its fall had, it appeared, crushed four of them to death, but these ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... writings, his perpetual and unlimited abuse of man's body and soul, his denial of every human virtue, the filth he pours upon every phase of human nature, and the doctrine he insinuates—that man has fallen indeed, but fallen, not from the angel, but from the animal, or, rather, is just a bungled brute,—were not enough to shew that either his notions were grossly erroneous and perverted, or that he himself deserved, like another Nebuchadnezzar, to be driven from men, and to have a beast's heart given unto him. Sometimes he reminds us of an impure ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... 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 ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... to me, and at this point a hitch occurred. He did his part, the letting go, all right. It was in my department, the taking hold, that the thing was bungled. Aunt Elizabeth slipped from my grasp like an eel, stood for a moment eyeing me satirically with her head on one side, then fled and entrenched herself in some bushes at the end of ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... been prepared to preach, Or rather, to make a nice serious speech; But it might as well have been written in Dutch for her, For the wind and the weather, conspiring together, Turned out to be, altogether too much for her; One half she forgot, and she bungled the rest of it, Though I finally managed to pick out the best of it. She asked her companion, who stood in the lee of her, For the wind spread her skirts to the bigness of three of her, "Who sent these ships to the rescue of those, Who have ...
— Nothing to Say - A Slight Slap at Mobocratic Snobbery, Which Has 'Nothing - to Do' with 'Nothing to Wear' • QK Philander Doesticks
... been 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 ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... he answered, still without getting up. There was no other chair near the awning, so I had to remain standing. I told him my name, hoping that Hassan had either not done so already, or else that he might have so bungled the pronunciation as to make it unrecognizable. I detected no sign ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... and drew his dagger from the sheath. I laid aside my doublet, and he followed my example, but his hands moved listlessly and his fingers bungled at the fastenings. I waited for him in some wonder, it not being like him to come ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... all adored him, for he never snubbed youngsters, or made light of their doings. If, during practice, a fellow bowled, batted, or fielded well, Steel took care to encourage him; but if any one played carelessly, or bungled, Steel scowled, and that unlucky man's name disappeared for a season from the list of candidates for a ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... in this criminal's voice and attitude confused the listener. For the life of her she could not deal with the situation in any ordinary fashion; it seemed like a dramatic incident bungled by ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... hand at once, lieutenant. It shall be cut out without delay; and in three hours, if Mr. Drummond will call here, it shall be tacked together in readiness for the first trying on. By eight o'clock tomorrow morning it shall be ready to be properly fitted, and unless my men have bungled, which they very seldom do, it shall be ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... supplied with war material of every description. It is almost refreshing to notice the ability, the energy, the determination which up to this point had characterized all the movements of the originator and mainspring of the movement, M. Louis Riel. One hates so much to see a thing bungled, that even resistance, although it borders upon rebellion, becomes respectable when it is carried out with ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... glanced out into the street, nodded with satisfaction, closed his desk with a bang—greatly to the relief of Miss Brown, who would now have leisure to recopy the letters she had bungled—and vanished into ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... did me best, Jack. I know I bungled the job, but youse don't want to cast dem t'ings up to me. Dere's more dan me orter be in de pen. Dere's no good in de pot callin' de kettle black, ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... you would have to sweep me up!" said Horace, who had a strong conviction that anything in which the Jinnee was concerned would be bungled somehow. "And if you're so anxious to destroy this Jarjarees, why don't you challenge him to meet you in some quiet place in the desert and settle him yourself? It's much more in your line than it is ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... people did not laugh; they were too angry. Their money had gone to paint the hall and consequently they felt themselves bitterly aggrieved by the mistake. Public indignation centered on the Pyes. Roger Pye and John Andrew had bungled the matter between them; and as for Joshua Pye, he must be a born fool not to suspect there was something wrong when he opened the cans and saw the color of the paint. Joshua Pye, when thus animadverted upon, retorted that the Avonlea taste in ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... carried us out of Marseilles. A serang of lascars, with whistle, chain, shawl, and fluttering blue clothes, was at work on the baggage-hatch. Somebody bungled at the winch. The serang called him a name unlovely in itself but awakening delightful memories in ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... clergyman writes suggesting that we may go further and find a positive advantage in this proximity: "I am glad that you do not agree with the man who considered that Nature had bungled by using the genitals for urinary purposes; apart from teleological or theological grounds I could not follow that line of reasoning. I think there is no need for disgust concerning the urinary organs, though I feel that the anus can never be attractive to the normal mind; but the anus is quite ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... of American 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 ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... pot of roses with buds and full bloom to perfume the dark cell, and he promised to write often; while Buck on his part could only say over and over; "Oh, Mikky! Mikky! Ef we wos oney kids agin! Oh, Mikky, I'll git out o' here yit an' find ye. Ye'll not be ashamed o' me. Ef I oney hadn't a bungled de job. It were a bum job! Mikky! A ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... who bungled, the other day, when I suggested your giving Mrs Polsue a duplicate list of the names and addresses. I thought it would please her and save you half the secretarial labour; and now it appears that you like the ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... after Hiram roused the packing room of the flour mill with the master's eye, he was in the cooperage, the center of a group round one of the hooping machines. It had got out of gear, and the workman had bungled in shutting off power; the result was chaos that threatened to stop the whole department for the rest of the day. Ranger brushed away the wrangling tinkerers and examined the machine. After grasping the problem in all its details, ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... would be sufficient to account for the tale. And it has no bearing, anyway. I should not have brought it up, for I have known good men funk in my time—buck fever, as it were. And now let us dismiss it all from our minds. I merely wished to suggest, and I suppose I have bungled. But understand this, Frona," turning her face up to his, "understand above all things and in spite of them, first, last, and always, that you are my daughter, and that I believe your life is sacredly yours, not mine, yours to deal with and to make or mar. ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... bringing it home to themselves, they merely picked up and paid an ordinary Sicilian stabber who had no heart in the matter, who probably never heard of me before in all his life, and had no partisan hatred to drive him on. So he dallied, and bungled; and then you two intervened, and his game was hopeless. He'll not try it again, you may ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... evening had nearly convinced her that he was in no financial difficulties whatever—that her father and Mr. Arnault were either mistaken or else were deceiving her. "If the latter is the case," she had thought, "they have so bungled as to enable me to test the truth of their ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... Tools for you, Ge'mmen and Ladies, They'll fit you quite handy, whatever your trade is; (Except it be Cabinet-making;—no doubt, In that delicate service they're rather worn out; Tho' their owner, bright youth! if he'd had his own will, Would have bungled away with them joyously still.) You see they've been pretty well hackt—and alack! What tool is there job after job will not hack? Their edge is but dullish it must be confest, And their temper, like Ellenborough's, none of the best; But you'll find them good hardworking Tools, upon trying, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... of course impossible to say whether these oppositions were inevitable or whether they were indications that Hull-House had somehow bungled at its task. Many times I have been driven to the confession of the blundering Amiel: "It requires ability to make what we seem agree with what ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... the post after an absence of twenty-five days; and I was mortified to learn that my substitute had most stupidly bungled affairs. A number of Indians had come in during my absence who were considered our best friends, and entering our hut without noticing our opponent, threw down their bundles, thereby clearly indicating, according to the usual custom, ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... 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 ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... heavenly to be convinced! Who taught you to see things at a glance,—things I have toiled and bungled over and don't know now if I am right! ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote |
