"Bungling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... give us welcome. Their scouts we killed, then found their body sleeping; And as they lay confused, we stumbled o'er them, And took what joint came next, arms, heads, or legs, Somewhat indecently. But when men want light, They make but bungling work. ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... the two girls laughing gaily as Marie made her first bungling attempts to drive; but later, Marie was aglow with exultation and Eveley with deep pride, because the little foreigner showed real aptitude ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... architecture, more intact but also more hidden than in our days, whose dignity of proportion and grace of detail—vast rosetted arches and slender rows of fluted pillars—our modern and Hellenicised taste has treated with too ready contempt. For this Vitruvian art, unoriginal and bungling in the eyes of our purists, was yet full of the serenity, the ampleness which the Middle Ages lacked, and affected the men of the fifteenth century much like a passage of Virgil after a canto of Dante. It formed the fit setting for those remains of antique sculpture ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... Kerry's foot with the report of a toy pistol. He swore perfunctorily, and gazed greedily at the cave-opening just ahead. He was a bungling woodsman at best; and now, stalking that greatest of all big game, man, the blood drummed in his ears and his heart seemed to slip a cog or two with every beat. He stood tense, yet trembling, for the space in which a man might count ten; surely if there were any one inside the cave—if ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... had been gone a week, Mrs. Grant was milking the cows, of which they kept twenty. Ethan was helping her, and Fanny, not yet a proficient in the art, was doing what she could to assist. Doubtless she was rather bungling in the operation, for the cow was not ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... slave state. It had not seceded, and it was important that it should not do so. The same was true of Kentucky and Maryland. It is easy to see, upon reading Fremont's proclamation, that it is the work not of a soldier, but of a politician, and a bungling ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... By an absurd and bungling practice, which obtains in our political life, the Administration elected in November does not take office until the following March, an interval which permits the old Administration, often beaten and discredited, to continue in office for four months after ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... their prospective night's work, in no graver light—they carried it out artistically, with a completeness, a skill, worthy of a better cause. Several days had they been hatching this, laying their plans, arranging the details; it would be their own bungling fault if it miscarried. But the college boys were ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... the officers of the highest rank are there stationed; and the enemy have an ungentlemanly way of target-shooting at their buttons. If we should chance to engage a ship, then, who could tell but some bungling small-arm marks-man in the enemy's tops might put a bullet through me instead of the Commodore? If they hit him, no doubt he would not feel it much, for he was used to that sort of thing, and, indeed, had a bullet in him already. Whereas, I was altogether unaccustomed to having blue ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... letters. But I have put as many irons in against this folly of the disarming as I could manage. It did not reach my ears till nearly too late. What a risk to take! What an expense to incur! And for how poor a gain! Apart from the treachery of it. My dear fellow, politics is a vile and a bungling business. I used to think meanly of the plumber; but how he shines ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... If I were, there would be one great question solved, for he would never have put his name to it, of course, until he was ready to cash it. In a way it looks a little like his writing, but it may be, and I think it is, a rather bungling forgery. It is more than likely that in the wallet in which he kept the bills of exchange he may have had some papers to which he had signed his name, and the signature was ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... a queue of waiting women. They would be there until the early morning, many of them, and it was possible that then the bread would not be sufficient. And this not from any real lack, but simply from the mistakes of a bungling, peculating Government. No wonder ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... I go to sleep and dream what a jolly thing it is to have you here." Then, pretending to sleep, he watched her with careful hands examine his belongings, with a contemptuous little smile at this piece of bungling mending or an anxious frown over that frayed place. Then how neatly she folded and laid back all the good, and seated herself with a pile before her and began to sew! When he opened his eyes ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... her taste the herb-tea as she sweetened it. Crimes which escape social vengeance are many enough, and as a rule they are of this order—to wit, murders committed without any startling sign of violence, without bloodshed, bruises, marks of strangling, without any bungling of the business, in short; if there seems to be no motive for the crime, it most likely goes unpunished, especially if the death occurs among the poorer classes. Murder is almost always denounced by its advanced guards, by ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... shall never forget it. My cheeks burned with shame. I said, "Oh! my God, if these are the leaders, we need not wonder at the people." A man occupying such a position to dare to say it! The Lord have mercy on him. No wonder the Lord's work is done in such a bungling way! I say those who want to be successful in winning souls require to watch not only days but nights. They want much of the Holy Ghost, for it is true still, "This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting." We have grown wiser ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth
... laying of the left hand on the heart and of the right on the pit of the stomach—with which incompetent actors always fill up their idle intervals, and how he would beg them, in Wotan's name, rather to do nothing than do that. But to take the first bungling representation of the "Ring" as an ideal to be approached as closely as possible, to insist on competent actors and actresses standing doing nothing when some movement is urgently called for, is to deny to Wagner all the advantages of the new acting which modern stage singers have ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... a form of excuse of my bungling half-English horrid French, talked over me and at me, forgot me, and recollected me, all within a minute, and fished poor Temple for intelligible replies to incomprehensible language in the same manner, then threw her head back to gather the pair of us in her sight, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and all admitted his patience, whether it was in bungling, in harvesting his graft, or whether it was a form of slackness. Nor could they help doing so, for patience, a wonderful purposeful patience, was his greatest characteristic. Every other feature of his personality was subservient ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... The exchange of messages between King George and Prince Hussein—one promising unfailing support, and the other unfailing allegiance—completed the transaction, one of the greatest triumphs of British statesmanship, compared with which the recent statecraft of the Germans is mere amateur bungling. Marshal von der Goltz Pasha, who has now exchanged his Governorship of Belgium for the position of chief military counsellor on the Bosphorus, will find it harder than ever—with his rabble army under Djemal Pasha—to "liberate" ...
— The Illustrated War News, Number 21, Dec. 30, 1914 • Various
... funny folk, you home-bred Boers," he said; "but perhaps you are right. After all, what does it matter who keeps the warrant, provided that the thing is well done? Mind that there is no bungling, ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... Shanghai, and it taught the lesson that even good European troops cannot ignore the recognized rules and precautions of war. After this engagement the siege languished, and the French abstained from taking any further part in it. But the imperialists continued their attack in their own bungling but persistent fashion, and at last the insurgents, having failed to obtain the favorable terms they demanded, made a desperate sortie, when a few made their way to the foreign settlement, where they found safety, but by far the greater number perished ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... and cocks should all be of the best description in so important a work as the fitting-up of a public bath. Ordinary bungling plumbing is here out of place. Lead piping should be discarded for all but very cheap work, and iron employed in its stead, with proper screwed joints, angles, and tees. Should there be sufficient means, copper piping should be employed for anything under 1 in. internal diameter, and gunmetal should ...
— The Turkish Bath - Its Design and Construction • Robert Owen Allsop
... afford to "fall down" on this conspicuous case. Public interest had increased rather than diminished during the progress of the investigation, and the newspapers had already begun to hint that the Central Office was "bungling the job." ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... established. The result is a rifle, compared with which, as manufactured by a dozen rifle-makers in the United States, the Mini, the Enfield, the Lancaster, or even the Sharpe's, and more recent breech-loaders, are bungling muskets. The last adopted form of missile, the sugar-loaf-shaped, of which the Minie, Enfieid, Colonel Jacob's, and all the conical forms are partial adaptations, has been, to our personal knowledge, in use among our riflemen more than twenty years. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... upon its own mere motion, with cause or without cause, can withdraw from the Union as a partner may dissolve a copartnership—then the Constitution itself is a stupendous failure, the men who made it were bungling journeymen and not master-mechanics, and to institutions of our country, so far from deserving our gratitude and admiration, are worthy only of our contempt. The hour has come, and the men have come, to settle these issues, fraught ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... brother who was, and with whom he had associated constantly while he was studying and practising for his degree; hence he became acquainted with many useful facts and modes of action connected with the healing art, of which the world at large is ignorant. Perceiving that one of the pirates was bungling a very simple operation, he stepped forward, and, with that assurance which results naturally from the combination of conscious power and "cheek," took up the ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... her feelings. He was only aware that she was crying, and tried in a bungling way to soothe her. But now that she had given way, she sat down in the ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... of legislation kept bungling on, irresponsive to the principal needs and interests of the times. An ineffectual start was made on two subjects presenting simple issues on which there was an energetic pressure of popular sentiment—Chinese immigration and polygamy among the Mormons. Anti-Chinese ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... works where they occur, and it is only by reading works where they are lacking that we realize all their importance. But here, as soon as we reflect, we are astonished to perceive that this great emotion is expressed in language strong, confident, and correct, with no hesitation and no bungling. The lively sequence of these complaints implies that they were poured forth all at once, in a single outburst; and yet the perfection of the style seems impossible of attainment without some study and some retouching. It is sometimes said that a strong passion at once creates ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... of mind when the captain proposed that we should land upon the island. I saw he had something to say, and only feared it might be consolation; for I could just bear my grief, not bungling sympathy; and yet I had no choice but to accede ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... being synonymous with bungling and silly notions and star-gazing, and it hit Tom in a dangerous spot. He answered with a kind of proud independence which ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... dragging in her train Austria, her confederate and her dupe. Palmerston, who controlled our foreign policy at the time, waited till the last moment, blustered, found himself impotent to move without French support, and left Denmark smarting with a sense of betrayal which lasted till 1914. By such bungling Morier knew that we were incurring enmity on both sides and lowering our reputation for courage as well ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... into his pocket and stared at her with a glint of anger in the blue-gray of his eyes. He lifted his broad shoulders. "Or wise man enough to do my own work when needs be, and when I'd have no bungling? I'm going to square with you, girl. Square with you for meddling, for a bullet-hole in each shoulder. If there's a fool in our little junketing party, it's a girl who thought she ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... be noted that Sir John Willoughby does not attribute his failure to the bungling of his employes that is said to have taken place. The man that was despatched to cut the telegraph wires failed to do so, with the result that the Boers were provided with the news of the invasion eight hours before the Reform leaders ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... grievance if a gentleman's butler or footman performs his duties about his master's table or carriage in such unformed style as to suggest that his habitual occupation may be ploughing or sheepherding. Such bungling work would imply inability on the master's part to procure the service of specially trained servants; that is to say, it would imply inability to pay for the consumption of time, effort, and instruction required to fit a trained servant for special service under the ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... course that means my brother Philip's consent," exclaimed George Sheldon, with contemptuous impatience. "What a slow, bungling fellow you are, Hawkehurst! Here is an immense fortune waiting for you, and a pretty girl in love with you, and you dawdle and deliberate as if you were going to the dentist's to have a tooth drawn. You've fallen ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... pretty musical little laugh at Smellie's elaborate assumption of mock gallantry and his bungling efforts to pronounce ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... This Protean scoundrel: drag him into court, You'll only find yourself the more his sport: He'll laugh till scarce you'd think his jaws his own, And turn to boar or bird, to tree or stone. If prudence in affairs denotes men sane And bungling argues a disordered brain, The man who lends the cash is far more fond Than you, who at his bidding sign ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... this last work, viz. rigging and fitting my masts and sails; for I finished them very complete, making a small stay, and a sail, or foresail, to it, to assist if we should turn to windward; and, what was more than all, I fixed a rudder to the stern of her to steer with. I was but a bungling shipwright, yet as I knew the usefulness and even necessity of such a thing, I applied myself with so much pains to do it, that at last I brought it to pass; though, considering the many dull contrivances I had for it that ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... The Author rose to accompany me, casting a withering look upon Mr. Nicholas Jelnik, who despised The Author for a bungling and intrusive idiot, and let his glance convey the fact. He was sorry for me, with a compassionate understanding of what I had been through. But I wanted neither his sorrow nor his compassion. He had punished The Author, but he hadn't saved me from a ridiculous and painful situation. ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... politic was capable of continuous energy. During the eighteenth century the British empire spread round the world. Under Chatham it had been finally decided that the English race should be the dominant element in the new world; if the political connection had been severed by the bungling of his successors, the unbroken spirit of the nation had still been shown in the struggle against France, Spain, and the revolted colonies; and whatever may be thought of the motives which produced the great revolutionary wars, no one can deny the qualities of indomitable ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... the quack graciously. "But nature also provides it with the great door from which your answer has come. Your teeth are a bungling piece of workmanship. They appear with pain, decay with time, and so long as they last torture those who do not industriously attend to them. But art will correct nature. See this box—" and he now began to praise the tooth-powder and cure for toothache he had invented. Next he passed ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... says, "This is a colossally cerebral book. By the side of Tripe, Balzac is a bungling beginner and Zola ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 21st, 1917 • Various
... Virgin of the Sagrario comes round, and I dream of a fine mass worthy of the Cathedral, the Canon Obrero attacks me and begs for something Italian and simple, an affair of half-a-dozen musicians that I must pick up in the town, and then I have to conduct a few bungling musicians, raging to hear how the miserable orchestra sounds under these vaults, which were built for something grander. In the end, friend Luna, it is dead, ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... into a more consequential whiffet than ever, by being taken into the confidence of a haughty young nobleman; while, on the other side, the stultifying effects of Bertram's pride are seen in that it renders him the easy dupe of a most base and bungling counterfeit of manhood. It was natural and right, that such a shallow, paltry word-gun should ply him with impudent flatteries, and thereby gain an ascendency over him, and finally draw him into the crimes and the shames that were to whip down his pride; and it ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... is his darling weapon he seems always afraid of it, and is never sure of his aim till he is quite close to his object. I have mentioned this fact to several Europeans who had accompanied various tribes to battle, and they all informed me they made a sad bungling use of the musket; their aim would be surer if they had large and ferocious animals to hunt or contend with. There is another circumstance that operates against their acquiring skill in the use of the gun: they are so fond of cleaning, scrubbing, ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... ships from England, several convicts brought out recommendatory letters from different friends. Of these some were genuine, and many owed their birth to the ingenuity of the bearers. But these last were all such bungling performances as to produce only instant detection and succeeding contempt. One of them addressed to the governor, with the name of Baron Hotham affixed to it, began ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... floor or upon the ground, he avoided bringing his toes in contact with the surface, as if they were too tender or delicate for such coarse uses, but sat upon the hind part of his feet. Said toes had a very bungling, awkward appearance at such times; they looked like hands encased in gray woolen gloves much too large for them. Their round, flattened ends, especially when not in use, had ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... feeble, and he loved to stroll in the woods more than to plough or sow. This idleness was much against his father's inclination and judgment; and, indeed, it was the foundation of all his vices. When he could be prevailed upon to do any thing it was in a bungling manner, and so as to prove that his thoughts were fixed on any thing except his business. When his assistance was wanted he was never to be found at hand. They were compelled to search for him among the rocks and bushes, and he was generally discovered sauntering along the bank ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... last marvellous accident quite stuns me. One would think, and I have no doubt of it, that this bungling devil which possesses Lelio takes delight in defying me, and leads him into every place where his presence can do mischief. Yet I shall go on, and notwithstanding all these buffets of fortune, try who will carry the day. ...
— The Blunderer • Moliere
... thee, wretch! I recalled a crowd of scoundrels who were not a patch upon me, and yet were rolling in money. There was I in serge, and they in velvet; they leaned on gold-headed canes, and had fine rings on their fingers. And what were they? Wretched bungling strummers, and now they are a kind of fine gentlemen. At such times I felt full of courage, my soul inflamed and elevated, my wits alert and subtle, and capable of anything in the world. But this happy turn did not last, it would seem, for so far I have not been ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... productions of the present epoch are smoother, more free from faults, more systematic than the creations of the sixth century. The literati and the friends of literature of this period not altogether unjustly looked down on their predecessors as bungling novices: but while they ridiculed or censured the defective labours of these novices, the very men who were the most gifted among them may have confessed to themselves that the season of the nation's youth was past, and may have ever and anon perhaps felt ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... the excuse that the footlights dazzled her, she was turning every moment towards the audience to look for her son. Perhaps there would be a duel with the Prince, if he was there. And all her fault—all through her stupid bungling. ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... succession of embarrassed phantoms was established in office to enable the king to evade the demands of the Allies. They increased in severity from the surrender of the fleet to that of the army's batteries and then to its disbandment; but they were backed by inadequate force and bungling diplomacy. On 1 December detachments of Allied troops, landed at the Piraeus, were driven back with bloodshed, and well into the new year the King continued to defy the Entente and push Greece deeper into anarchy. ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... happiness had led her to this collapse. This man was Nigel. He thought he had saved her from her worst self. But really he had stirred this worst self from sleep. In London she had been almost a good woman, compared to the woman she was now. His bungling search after nobility of spirit had roused the devil within her. She longed to let him know what she really was. Often and often, while they two had been isolated together on the Loulia, she had been on the edge of telling him at least some fragments of the truth. ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... government, the people of Holland cannot easily overcome a feeling of vague distrust that the nation which in the past has so often abused them cannot entirely be counted upon to treat them justly this time. Incidentally, I may say that the bungling of Mr. Churchill in Antwerp, which we know much better than do the people of England, is another reason why we are a bit afraid of the island across ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... frightened. But now everything was calm and peaceful. The glass hung in fragments about the leaden sashes; the chair and priere-dieu of the lady abbess had altogether an innocent and comfortable air, and the images, of which there were several, as horrible as a bungling workman and a bloody imagination could produce, though of a suffering appearance, were really insensible to pain. While we were making this reconnoissance a bugle sounded on the main, and looking out, we saw the Oberwinter postilion coming round the nearest bend in the river. ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... mended her idol discreetly and permanently, so that for the outward world it would still present the same uncompromising surface, so that no inquisitive or bungling touch could bring to light the grim, disfiguring fracture which it had sustained, it is probable that she would have chosen this part, and hidden the grief of her life from the eyes of all save those ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... where the bungling comes in," Littleson answered. "I offered her a hundred thousand dollars for that paper. She took the tip and got it somehow. How could I tell that she had another ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... knew that he was making a mighty effort to restrain comment on the bungling amateur detective work of the son of ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... to thirty in his preoccupation. He speeded again, but was soon forced to stop and ask his way into Primrose Meadows. The vague directions of a farmer's son lost him nearly eight precious minutes, during which his friend, Captain Strawn of the Homicide Squad, might be bungling things rather badly. But at last he found the ornate pair of pillars spanned by the painted legend, "Primrose Meadows," and drove through them into what soon became a rutted lane. Almost a quarter of a mile from the entrance ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... said to me once about women receiving a kiss. Don't you? Why, that instead of our being charmed by the fascination of their bearing at such a time, we should immediately doubt them if their confusion has any GRACE in it—that awkward bungling was the true charm of the occasion, implying that we are the first who has played such a part ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... delay, Voltaire committed the folly of undertaking to steal away. He and his niece were arrested and imprisoned in an inn, where they were subjected to very unpleasant treatment. The action of Frederick was unworthy of a king. Its meanness was intensified by the bungling stupidity of the resident. The people of Frankfort grew indignant, and the burgomaster began to show resentment, for Frankfort was a free city and the King of Prussia had no right to trespass upon its privileges. It was mean in a ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... third—'the biggest widow's cap of all'—would be for Aunt Mai. She did well to be angry; she was deserted in her hour of need; and after all, could she be sure that even the male sex was so impeccable? There was Dr. Sutherland, bungling as usual. Perhaps even he intended to go off one of these days, too? She gave him a look, and he shivered in his shoes. No!—she grinned sardonically; she would always have Dr. Sutherland. And then she reflected that there was one thing more that ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... for all the party were so excited by what they had seen and heard, and so anxious to start in pursuit quickly, that they retarded their own progress by the bungling manner in which they ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis
... degree of tacit intimacy between them which would not otherwise have occurred in a fortnight, perhaps never. But he had done it with an assurance almost, if not quite, hypnotic, and he had removed his hand—a move, she recognized, which offered more opportunities for bungling than the initial venture—with the exact degree of insouciance, of abstraction, but at the same time not without a slight lighting of the eyes expressive alike of humility and gratitude. Lurking in her mind was an irritation over the position in which she had been placed, ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... method be correct, power can be attained with patience; if wrong, the throat and voice may be absolutely ruined. This point will be considered later, but we must at once express the opinion that a bungling attack in which main force is substituted for the proper method is one of the most dangerous, as it is one of the most serious errors in the technique of modern singing, and the same may often be charged ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... scrambled into the priest's robe which the discomfited Higgins resigned to him. Evidently the bungling actor was in disgrace, for he was told to go to the office and get his pay ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... the customary rubrica or flourish at the sides of his name. This is the case with the instruments I have examined, in which his signature, written probably by his secretary, or his title of Marques, in later life substituted for his name, is garnished with a flourish at the ends, executed in as bungling a manner as if done by the hand of a ploughman. Yet we must not estimate this deficiency as we should in this period of general illumination,—general, at least, in our own fortunate country. Reading and writing, so universal ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... the night had taught her a new humility. She came to Jacqueline as a suppliant, begging to be forgiven not only for her moment of cruel anger but for her stupid and bungling interference in her child's life. Nothing was very clear in her mind except that Philip must be told the truth, and that, whatever happened, she and her child would bear ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... abrogation. Article 21 ordained between the two countries free trade in fish-oil and in all salt-water fish. Both sides assumed that mere reciprocity would advantage the United States the more, so that by Article 22 a commission was provided for to award Canada a proper balance in money. By bungling diplomacy on our part the real power in this commission was swayed by M. Maurice Delfosse, Belgian minister at Washington, a gentleman certain to favor Great Britain at our expense. As a consequence, we were forced to pay for reciprocity to ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... war there is a right side and a wrong side; sometimes, perhaps, more frequently, there is right and wrong on both sides, due to bungling diplomacy and the blindness of prejudice. But in every case justice demands the triumph of one cause and the defeat of the other. To determine in any particular case the side of right and justice is a very difficult matter. And perhaps it is just as ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... the eaves, and at every seam along that tabling, making five upon each side. Work an eyelet, or put a grommet, in the doubled cloth of the seam; knot the end of the guy-line to prevent its pulling through: tying the rope makes too bungling a job, and splicing it is too much work. The six guy-lines in the body of the tent should be about nine feet long, the four corner ones about a foot longer. The fiddles[19] should be made of some firm wood: pine and spruce will not last long enough ...
— How to Camp Out • John M. Gould
... he was bungling horribly, but he knew no other way of getting on in his attempt. He was terrified by the openness of his tactics. It seemed to him that any man must be able to perceive what he was driving at, but he desperately assured himself that ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... much wine at dinner, and too much whiskey after dinner. Perhaps the frequent libations he had taken increased his zeal, but they diminished his discretion in a corresponding ratio. He had begun his work too soon, and had done it in a very bungling manner. If whiskey was a curse to him, it was a blessing to me, for in his sober senses he would not have exposed himself and his plans by robbing my valise so early on ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... "let's see. If you doctors have made the curative arts effective, and if you really do heal disease, then I must support you, of course. But, while there is nothing quite so important to the average mortal as his health, yet I know that there is hardly anything that has been dealt with in such a bungling way. The art of healing as employed by our various schools of medicine to-day is the result of ages and ages of experimentation and bitter experience, isn't it? And its cost in human lives is simply incalculable. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... the greatest pains are taken to make death as nearly as possible instantaneous, and any bungling which prolongs the agony excites indignation and horror in the public mind. But the most revolting feature of death by crucifixion was that the torture was deliberately prolonged. The victim usually lingered a whole day, sometimes two or three days, ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... confessions, she saw many sentences which bore the stamp of bungling fabrication: they had that emphasis and repetition in self-accusation which none but very low hypocrites use to their fellow-men. But the fact that these sentences were in striking opposition, not only to the character of Savonarola, ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... is so, far from it; but I do say it seems so. Yes, Autolycus would seem a needy varlet acting upon the persuasion that less is to be got by invoking pockets than picking them, more to be made by an expert knave than a bungling beggar; and for this reason, as he thinks, that the soft heads outnumber the soft hearts. The devil's drilled recruit, Autolycus is joyous as if he wore the livery of heaven. When disturbed by the character and career of one thus wicked and thus happy, ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... dear," said I, "I flattered myself on being an artist in life. I am humbler now and acknowledge myself a wretched bungling amateur. But I still recognise the ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... to see how perfectly insane your scheme was," she said. "You have to support your act with a whole series of bungling lies. Possibly Marcus, like a fool, has mentioned it in Monte Carlo, and we shall have the detectives out here asking why you ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... produced by the line of the back and tail at every light bound of the athletic little creature. He never moves abruptly or jerks himself impatiently, as the red squirrel is continually doing. On the contrary, all his movements are measured and deliberate, but swift and sure. He never makes a bungling leap, and his course is marked by a number of sinuous curves almost equal to those of a snake. He is here one minute, and the next he has slipped away almost beyond the ability of our eyes ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... Excitement makes me content to be, and careless about doing. My truest and best life is in myself, and I can only live it in circumstances of tranquil monotony. People talk so much about making the most of life, but their attempts are curiously bungling. What they call living is for the most part more pain than pleasure to them; for the truth is, that life should not be lived by men of mind, but contemplated; it is the spectator, not the actor, who enjoys and profits. The actor has his moment ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... gritted his teeth with suppressed rage. It was only a chance that it hadn't happened when he himself was behind, but he couldn't see that. No; it was the Colonel's bungling—tryin' to spare himself; leanin' on the bar instead o' liftin' the sled, as he, the Boy, would ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... however, shows this fascination for the super-empirical at its height and culmination. It was an attempt, though a bungling attempt, to pass from an abstract God to a God of character, and it was a circuitous way of getting round the ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... might have made me, scarcely less than thou, A god among my brethren weak and blind,— 210 Scarce less than thou, a pitiable thing To be down-trodden into darkness soon. But now I am above thee, for thou art The bungling workmanship of fear, the block That awes the swart Barbarian; but I 215 Am what myself have made,—a nature wise With finding in itself the types of all,— With watching from the dim verge of the time What things ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... to settle with him. But, we're wasting time with all this twaddle of mine. Let us be moving. There is one point on which we must all agree. The deadliest marksmen in the world fired those shots. No bungling on that ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... on one side of the chimney, which, our readers are aware, is generally built on the outside of the structure, in Virginia, was a small window, one-half of which, in the decay of the glass panes, had been boarded up to exclude the wind and the rain. The job had evidently been performed by a bungling hand, and had never been more than half done. The wood was as rotten as punk; and without difficulty, and without much noise, the fugitive succeeded in removing the board which had covered the lower ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... else that otherwise I might have told you about myself. If one has to tell such things at all, it is better to be silent about them. As to the Carlsruhe plan you are probably sufficiently enlightened. Devrient has thought it desirable to make an excuse for the bungling and neglectful way in which he has taken up the idea of a first performance of "Tristan" at his theatre, by saying that it is impossible to execute the work. To that ALSO I do not reply. Why should I speak? I know my fate and my position, and ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... The men shouted contradictory directions to one another. Two of them made a bungling rush at the figure, which had the result of forcing it out of its orbit in the centre of the room, and sending it crashing against the walls and furniture. A stream of blood showed itself down the girl's white frock, and followed her along the floor. The affair ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... day our troops deliberately and slowly evacuated part of Hill 72, but most of it we unexpectedly managed to hold, and are likely now to stick to. Had we thoroughly defeated the Turks, as we should have done had there been no bungling, the end of this part of the campaign might have been in sight, but now we are held up, and how we are to get out of the fix will sadly ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... still to watch, hoping against hope. Kennedy walked disconsolately through the station, and I followed. In a secluded part of the waiting-room he sat down, his face drawn up in a scowl such as I had never seen. Plainly he was disgusted with himself - with only himself. This was no bungling of Burke or any one else. Again the counterfeiters had escaped from the hand ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... same cock. The principal feat, however, in which this fervent votary of Plutus appeared before the public, was his nearly fatal affair with Mary Benson, otherwise Mrs. Maria Theresa Phepoe. In April 1795, this ill-fated-woman projected a rather bungling scheme, in order to frighten her old acquaintance and visitor, Courtois, out of a considerable sum of money. One evening, when she was certain of his calling, she had her apartment prepared for his reception in a species of funereal style—a bier, a black velvet pall, black ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... think women will bring in elements of brightness, picturesqueness, and purity very much needed. Women have a power of investing simple ordinary things with a charm; men are bungling narrators compared with them. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... him, shut and locked her bedroom door, struggled with bungling fingers into her walking-dress, pinned on her hat, thrown an old silk waterproof around her shoulders, had slid back the bolt of her chamber opening into the hall, crept down the ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... about it. He said the man had suffered death the first time to "all intents and purposes," so that fulfilled the requirements of the law, and they were wrong when they hanged him again. Laddie said it was a piece of bungling sure enough, but the law said a man must be "hanged by his neck until he was dead," and if he weren't dead, why, it was plain he hadn't fulfilled the requirements of the law, so they were forced to ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... a mutilated tragedy: it ends with the speech of Antony over the dead body of Caesar, borrowed from Shakspeare; that is to say, it has no conclusion. And what a patched and bungling thing is it in all its parts! How coarse-spun and hurried is the conspiracy! How stupid Caesar must have been, to allow the conspirators to brave him before his face without suspecting their design! That Brutus, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... all are ready to take him as chief), he might secure to himself a long and honourable possession of power. Then it is said he can't whistle off these men merely because it is convenient, but he had better do that than keep them on bungling through all the business of the country. Besides, I have some doubts of his tender-heartedness in ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... had to intrust the firing of that gun to a bungling, thick-headed, stupid idiot of a fellow, who don't know muzzle from vent; and the wonder is that he didn't blow one of his ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... one," returned Stephano. "I concealed myself so well that I knew I might bid defiance to those bungling sbirri—although their scent was sharpened by the hope of the reward set on my head by the prince. While I thus lay hidden, I beheld a scene that would have done good to the heart of even such a callous fellow as ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... McClernand was appointed to this command by President Lincoln in person, who had no knowledge of what was then going on down the river. Still, my relief, on the heels of a failure, raised the usual cry, at the North, of "repulse, failure, and bungling." There was no bungling on my part, for I never worked harder or with more intensity of purpose in my life; and General Grant, long after, in his report of the operations of the siege of Vicksburg, gave us all full credit for the ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... possesse at least, that which all other men have not; which is, that I know the utmost difference betweene them and my selfe: all which notwithstanding, I suffer my inventions to run abroad, as weake and faint as I have produced them, without bungling and botching the faults which this comparison hath discovered to me in them. A man had need have a strong backe, to undertake to march foot to foot with these kind of men. The indiscreet writers of our age, amidst their triviall [Footnote: Commonplace.] compositions, intermingle ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... girl. Pack old Dame Jellicot into the embrasure of yonder window," said the knight, "on that side of the door, and we will ensconce ourselves on this, and we shall have time to finish my explanation, for they have bungling engineers. We had a clever French fellow at Newark would have done the job in the firing of ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... of the suggestion; floundered along, bungling terribly. Committee tried to help him out; that didn't help matters much. To have a Member in one part of the House filling up an awkward pause by suggesting "dried fruit," another "coffee," a third ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 2, 1891 • Various
... she closed the door. So carefully that he did not hear it, she locked the door; no more than in Hannigan's case did she want Barlow to come bungling into a scene before ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... has persistently disregarded the wishes of the people, and the best interests of the entire community; and we have at last reached a point where to stand still is as ruinous as to go on—as we are going—to certain destruction and annihilation. Look at the finances, entirely destroyed by the bungling and injudicious course of the honorable Mr. Memminger, who has proceeded upon fallacies which the youngest tyro would disdain to refute. Look at the quartermaster's department,—the commissary department,—the State department, and ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... English to my compatriots, it might not unnaturally have been different. At Turin and at Genoa there are no such stoppages at all; but in any other part of Italy, give me an Austrian in preference to a native functionary. At Naples it is done in a beggarly, shambling, bungling, tardy, vulgar way; but I am strengthened in my old impression that Naples is one of the most odious places on the face of the earth. The general degradation oppresses me ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... seemed, in the past, a cowardly thing to avail himself of his knowledge—it was like going with his debts unpaid. But now, in the bright, moonlit room it no longer appeared so. He had finished his task, had ended the bungling, and had heard a clear call ringing with commendation and approval. There was nothing to hold ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... or Asia Minor excavations! no more cosmopolitan Wissenschaft! On that fatal August 4 a whole world went down submerged beneath the waves of war, and the Squire cared for no other. His personal chagrin showed itself in abuse of the bungling diplomats and 'swashbuckler' politicians who, according to him, had brought us into war. So that when Aubrey applied for a commission, the Squire, mainly to relieve his own general irritation, had quarrelled with him for ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sensation—it was like a great, absorbing Force taking him into its control and erasing forever the bungling past. He purposely drifted for an hour in the storm. He was like a moving part of it, and when at last he reached home, he stood in the vestibule for many moments extricating himself—it was more that than shaking the snow off. He ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock |
