"Blunder" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... miles, as from its elevated position the lamp is 190 feet above the sea. From this point to Limasol the beach is low and sandy, and has always been accepted as the most favourable point for a disembarkation of troops. With historical facts before us there is small excuse for the blunder committed in landing our army of occupation, during the extreme heat of July, at Larnaca instead of Limasol. At the former port there is not a tree to throw a shade, and the miserable aspect of the surrounding country must have had a most depressing effect upon the ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... them amongst the grass. We arrived at the spot I sought, and there encamped. Our provisions were nearly out; the sun having reduced the men's sugar, and melted the bacon, which had been boiled before we set out. This was an unfortunate blunder. Bacon, in such warm weather, should be carried uncooked, and our's might have then been very good. The men jocosely remarked, that, although we had out-manoeuvred the natives, the weather had been so hot ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... Jedediah Cleishbotham," or nothing! It was in vain that he remonstrated. Janet was firm, and hunting up Maude's letter, written more than three years before, she bade him write down the name, so as not to make a blunder. But this he refused to do. "He guessed he could remember that horrid name; there was not another like it in Christendom," he said, and on the Sunday morning of which we write he took his baby in ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... bad enough before, letting everybody else aboard know that all he has to do is push you over. But it was an awful blunder to let him know it, the ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... 25th of October; the citadel held out until the 9th of December; the king heaped rewards on Marshal Bouffers: at the march out from Lille, Prince Eugene had ordered all his army to pay him the same honors as to himself. Ghent and Bruges were abandoned to the imperialists. "We had made blunder upon blunder in this campaign," says Marshal Berwick, in his Memoires, "and, in spite of all that if somebody had not made the last in giving up Ghent and Bruges, there would have been a fine game the year after." The Low Countries ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... but still she did not believe it. It could not be that after all her boastings she should have made so gross a blunder. 'I hope you do love me,' she said; 'indeed, you are bound to do so, for you promised that you would ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... To remedy the blunder of having left Dantzic behind in the hands of the Prussians, Lefebvre was despatched with his new corps to beleaguer it. Savary drove the Russians from the Narew and out of Ostrolenka; Mortier threatened Stralsund and stopped the Swedes, who, as members of ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... survived a storm of indignation, in which even Chatham joined. The small minority of British settled in Quebec and Montreal made vehement protests, while the American Congress itself in 1774 committed the irreparable blunder of making the establishment of the Roman Catholic religion in Canada one of its formally published grievances against Great Britain. When war broke out, and the magnitude of the mistake was seen, efforts were made to seduce the Canadians by hints of a coming British tyranny, but the Canadians ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... be very nice about it," the girl went on. "He came in to tea with us—Mr. Meadows and me—almost every evening. And he always had something amusing to relate, some blunder of Scotland Yard or some ripping mystery. I think he found it immense fun to be Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department. I loved the talk: Mr. Meadows was always interested and Sir Henry likes ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... please all parties; and—what is far more difficult—she succeeded. Twice a week she received the bourgeoisie of Provins at her house in the Upper town. This intelligent young woman of twenty had not as yet made a single blunder or misstep on the slippery path she had taken. She gratified everybody's self-love, and petted their hobbies; serious with the serious, a girl with girls, instinctively a mother with mothers, gay with young wives and disposed to help them, gracious to all,—in short, ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... spoil. At the appointed hour Bonaparte's agent arrived, and was completely the dupe of these adventurers, who plundered him of twelve hundred thousand livres. Though not many days passed before he discovered the imposition, prudence prevented him from denouncing the impostors; and this blunder would have remained a secret between himself, Bonaparte, and Talleyrand, had not the unusual expenses of Caumartin excited the suspicion of the Russian Police Minister, who soon discovered the source from which they had flowed. ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... all. A glance at the Hatfield maze will show that there are three of these detached hedges or islands at the centre, so this method will never take you to the "centre" of that one. But the rule will at least always bring you safely out again unless you blunder in the following way. Suppose, when you were going in the direction of the arrow in the Hampton Court Maze, that you could not distinctly see the turning at the bottom, that you imagined you were ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... Leave behind sectarian lurches; Jump on board the Car of Freedom, Ere it be too late to need them. Sound the alarm! Pulpits thunder! Ere too late you see your blunder! ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark
... two farmers who had had a disagreement over a horse-trade. On the day of the trial, Mr. Logan, having bought a new shirt, open in the back, with a huge standing collar, dressed himself in extreme haste, and put on the shirt with the bosom at the back, a linen coat concealing the blunder. He dazed the jury with his knowledge of "horse points"; and as the day was sultry, took off his coat and "summed" up in his shirt-sleeves. Lincoln, sitting behind him, took in the situation, and when his turn came he remarked to the jury: "Gentlemen, Mr. Logan ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... at seeing so many innocent beings perish before arriving at years of discretion, and without having received baptism. They argued that such a practice, which was worse than a crime, because it was a theological blunder, could not be carried on in a state of slavery. "This style of reasoning," says Las Casas, "proves absolutely nothing; for God knows better than men what ought to be the future destiny of children ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... Metz as his base, and stupidly putting himself in position to be driven back to it, when there was no possible obstacle to his joining forces with MacMahon at Chalons; while the third and greatest blunder of all was MacMahon's move to relieve Metz, trying to slip 140,000 men along the Belgian frontier. Indeed, it is exasperating and sickening to think of all this; to think that Bazaine carried into Metz—a place that should have been held, if at all, ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... have heard no language but what is good, must be correct. On the contrary, children who hear a mixture of low and high vulgarity before their own habits are fixed, must, whenever they speak, continually blunder; they have no rule to guide their judgment in their selection from the variety of dialects which they hear; probably they may often be reproved for their mistakes, but these reproofs will be of no ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... woman!" whispered Lady Delacour "she was to have been at the drawing-room to-day but for a blunder of mine: ready dressed she was, and I didn't call for her! Ah, Mad. de Pomenars, I am actually ashamed to see you," continued her ladyship; and she went forward to meet Clarence Hervey, who really made his entree with very composed assurance and grace. He ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... no blunder, I resolved, before proceeding further, to learn what I could of the character and antecedents of the suspected one, and this from the only source ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... especially, was a miniature sacrament; and the story of that premature audacity of Elsa with Lohengrin never failed to touch his sense of awe. "What's in a name?" for him, was a significant question—a question of life or death. For to mispronounce a name was a bad blunder, but to name it wrongly was to miss it altogether. Such a thing had no real life, or at best a vitality that would soon fade. Adam knew that! And he pondered much in his childhood over the difficulty Adam must have had "discovering" the ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... to those who know next to nothing of it. They know enough to have pedestals of their own; to be on their guard; to have a reputation to maintain; to conceal the "dram of folly;" to be, to that extent, artificial in their relations with men. They dare not betray the "laughable blunder," which, said Charles Lamb, is the test your neighbour giveth you "that he will not betray or ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... was necessary for Peggy to begin at the beginning, and in the course of twenty minutes or so, the good man began to understand. As the extent of his blunder gradually dawned upon him, he threw back his head and broke into a hearty guffaw whose enjoyment was contagious. Peggy joined him, and then there was an exultant note in her laughter. Observation had taught her that when a man is laughing, it is one of the hardest things in ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... He saw his blunder even while he was speaking. But he was red-hot with indignation and didn't care a jot for the consequences. And Jake came at him. If the foreman's taunt had roused him, it was nothing to the effect of his reply. Jake crossed the room in a couple of strides ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... thought, Dagaeoga, but keep straight in the direction we are going. See that you do not paddle unconsciously in a curve. We shall certainly be pursued, and although our foes cannot see us well in the dark, some out of their number are likely to blunder upon us. If it comes to a battle you will notice that I have an extra rifle and pistol for you lying in the bottom of the canoe, and that I am something more than a ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... had made a bad blunder, which I attempted to rectify by reaching Buffalo that night; but Tom Barrett had won the game. I was arrested at Fort Erie, handcuffed, jailed, tried, convicted of attempted assault and illicit whiskey-trading on the Grand River Indian Reserve—and spent the next five years in Kingston ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... event; it was a proceeding utterly without precedent. Nothing but the most extraordinary circumstances could have called it forth. The blunder of the jury must have been open, glaring, painfully notorious, indeed, when such an astonishing course was adopted by the whole ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... that St. James's pilgrims are distinguished by scallop-shells, but it is a blunder to suppose that other pilgrims are privileged to wear them. Three of the popes have, by their bulls, distinctly confirmed this right to the Compostella pilgrim alone: viz., Pope Alexander III., Pope Gregory ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... now but one thought, one ferocious desire: to avenge himself upon those who have denied him—and even upon all mankind! Really, Mr. Hart, your governments of Europe and America committed a stupendous blunder in refusing to pay Roch the ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... and introductions of works for mottoes and embellishments to his thesis. He cannot learn anatomy by thrusting an exploring needle into the body. He will be very liable to misquote his author's meaning while he is picking off his outside sentences. He may make as great a blunder as that simple prince who praised the conductor of his orchestra for the piece just before the overture; the musician was too good a courtier to tell him that it was only the tuning ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... not give their names purposely, since I have no wish that the actual perpetrators of the terrible blunder that I am about to describe should be known to posterity. After all, they acted honestly according to their lights, and were but tools in the hand of that villain ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... not have turned them out of hand fast enough. The enlightened few, in these countries, were as a drop in the bucket to the unenlightened many; and although no doubt there were numbers of the former who were well—meaning men, yet they were one and all guilty of that prime political blunder, in common with our Whig friends at home, of expecting a set of semi—barbarians to see the beauty of, and to conform to, their newfangled codes of free institutions, for which they were as ready as I am to die at this present moment. Bolivar, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... bodies, took up arms before the appointed night, and was repulsed by the soldiers quartered in his village. The alarm was given, and the Spaniards were all put on the alert. The cacique fled to Guarionex for protection, but the chieftain, enraged at his fatal blunder, put him to ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... looks toward the house. Yes, it is handsome, grand. Youth and age together did not make any blunder of it. There is the tower, that was to be his study and library and place of resort generally. What crude dreams he had in those days! Science and poesy, art and history, were all a sad jumble in his brain, and now he has found his life-work. He hopes that he ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... the Karl der Grosse, our best and biggest. Run down in the night by a British liner that blundered into the fighting in trying to blunder out. They're fighting in a gale. The liner's afloat with her nose broken, sagging about! There never was such a battle!—never before! Good ships and good men on both sides,—and a storm and the night and the dawn and all in the open ocean full steam ahead! No stabbing! No submarines! Guns ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... gig came alongside the schooner, the lieutenant offered his hand to Miss Lydia, and then helped the colonel to swing himself up on deck. Once there, Sir Thomas, who was still very much ashamed of his blunder, and at a loss to know what he had better do to make the man whose ancestry dated from the year 1100 forget it, invited him to supper, without waiting for his daughter's consent, and with many fresh apologies and handshakes. Miss Lydia frowned a little, but, after all, she was ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... an insight into the true state of the case, and I felt much easier on the subject. That Marble ever intended to serve under the British flag, I had not supposed for a moment; but I was not sure that regret for the blunder he had already made, might not lead him into some new mistake of equally serious import, under the impression that he was correcting the evil. As for Neb, I knew he would never desert me; and I had not, from the first, ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... on numerous occasions, to laugh heartily at a much less amusing blunder, but on this occasion I sought his usually expressive face in vain for even the ghost of a smile. To add to my annoyance and the constraint of the situation, old Robbins found it necessary to again ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... an army is likely to be a mere encumbrance in war, it is perhaps even a still graver blunder to maintain one during that conflict of preparation which is at present the European substitute for actual hostilities. It consumes. It produces nothing. It not only eats and drinks and wears out its clothes and withdraws men from industry, but ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... less debased, though scarcely more heartless, who countenance this inhuman logic. The average mercantile sentiment of this and other great Northern cities runs thus: 'True, Slavery is unjust and barbarous—it is at once a wrong and a mistake—but it is not our blunder. Its perils are braved and its evils endured by those who cherish it, hundreds of miles away; while to us it is a positive advantage. By obstructing the mechanical and manufacturing development of the South, it dooms her products, her commerce, her navigation, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... his fashion. It must have taken a great effort—premature, therefore mistaken, according to my judgment—for him to screw himself up to the pitch of proposing for a girl of whose answering regard he was uncertain. Having made the blunder and paid the penalty, he is not at all likely to put his fate to the touch again, so far as Dora is concerned. He is not the style of pertinacious, overbearing fellow who would persecute a woman with his ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... in his exasperation, was guilty of the colossal blunder of showing this letter and allowing it to be copied. His indignation drove him to every ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... An allusion and pun which occasioned the French translator of the present work an unlucky blunder: puzzled, no doubt, by my facetiously, he translates "mettant, comme on l'a tres-judicieusement fait observer, l'entendement humain sous la clef." The great work and the great author alluded to, having ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... why we didn't find this place the other night," he said aloud. "I guess we were in too big a hurry. That's the trouble with us boys. We blunder along without using our heads. But, I guess I had better not boast until after I have gotten back safely from Forsythe," he laughed. "I may need some good advice myself ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... needn't think I am going to let you off so," said he "you must give me half a dozen kisses at least, to prove that you have forgiven me for making so great a blunder." ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... necessary, I have availed myself of the opportunity thus afforded me by the publishers to revise it. Some slight revision was necessary to correct one or two errors which crept unavoidably into the earlier edition. By an oversight, an important typographical blunder went uncorrected into the former edition, making the date of the first use of the word "Socialism" 1835 instead of 1833. That error, I regret to say, has been subsequently copied into many important publications. Even more ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... came differently to what we expected. Still we did our duty. Had we come to grief through any blunder or fault of mine or any of our officers there might have been cause for regret and heartburnings. Our orders were very simple—to hold the trenches at all costs until relieved. We carried out these orders and held the line. When finally ordered out we ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... that you are able to do all this work," he said, with an attempt to turn the corner of his blunder. ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... occurred. Even had they not, differences of opinion between the Executive, bound by an oath to the strict performance of his duties, and writers and debaters must have arisen. It is not necessarily evidence of blunder on the part of the Executive because there are these differences of views. Mistakes have been made, as all can see and I admit, but it seems to me oftener in the selections made of the assistants appointed to aid in carrying out the various duties of administering the Government—in nearly ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... my lords, have heaped one blunder upon another; they have disgusted the nation both by the means and the end; and have insulted the senate with no other view than that of plundering the people. They have ventured, without the consent of the senate, to pursue measures, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... recognized in him the English rancher of good family; usually a man of fine courtesy within reasonable bounds; always a hard hitter when those bounds are exceeded. Y.D. knew that he had made at least a tactical blunder; his sensitiveness about his brand would arouse, rather than allay, suspicion. His cheeks burned with a heat not of the afternoon sun as he submitted to this unaccustomed discipline, but he could not bring himself to express ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... I could have counted on hitting him where I liked. I trust I shall not blunder against his vitals now. However, if I do, he has ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... meet with a young, beautiful, and wealthy woman of fashion who would be willing to teach me, what you women can explain so well—life. I shall find a M. de Trailles everywhere. So I have come to you to ask you to give me a key to a puzzle, to entreat you to tell me what sort of blunder I made this morning. I ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... exclaimed Publius annoyed. "But you might—it seems to me—be rather more zealous in helping me to preserve her from the misfortune which threatens her through your own blunder. We cannot bring her here, but I think that I have thought of a safe ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... tastes, an affectionate disposition, great perspicuity of perception, much force of character; and Franceska's, scarcely yet formed, showed that she was affectionate, romantic, and, of all things in the world, fond of horses and of boating. Emilia's was held as a great blunder, for she was said to have an eye devoted to temporal advantages, also volatile, yet of great determination, triumphing over every obstacle, and in much ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the place, but for fear I might get another kick from Badger, I passed it by. A flat house with narrow lattice windows and black curtain at the entrance, near the gate, is the place where I ate dango and committed the blunder. A round lantern with the signs of sweet meats hung outside and its light fell on the trunk of a willow tree close by. I hungered to have a bite of dango, but ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... failed to put in an appearance at St. Wennys—and would he come down to Mallow Court? With Peter once more at hand, she felt sure he would be able to charm Nan's bitterness away and even prevent her, in some magical way of his own, from committing such a rash blunder as marriage with Trenby could ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... Long Parliament did nothing but blunder and talk, so he marched into the House one day with a company of soldiers, and sternly ordered the members all off, calling out, as he pointed to the mace that lay before the Speaker's chair, "Take away that bauble." After that he called together a fresh Parliament; but there were very few ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... or victory Was his device, "and there was no mistake," Except his last; and then he did but die, A blunder which the wisest men will make. Aloft, where mighty floods the mountains break, To stand, the target of the thousand eyes, And down into the coil and water-quake, To leap, like Maia's offspring, from the skies— For this all vulgar flights he ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... not, the bombardment of the Venetian churches is a blunder for which the Austrians will pay dearly in loss of international good-will. A century hence these shattered churches will be pointed out to visitors as the work of the modern Vandals, and lovers of art and beauty throughout the world will execrate the nation ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... While it would not be acceptable for formal social correspondence, it does very well on more intimate letters and saves the necessity of writing each time the home address. It is best to use printed letterheads, rather than commit the blunder now so common, among those who do not habitually use engraved paper, of omitting the address from the letter. This, in case the letter is misdirected, and travels to the Dead-Letter Office, prevents effectually its restoration to ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... was all for the coming of the railway, Wilson had seized the chance to put him in a false position. He knew Gourlay could not put forty words together in public, and that in his dilemma he would blunder and give ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... unless every purchaser who takes land with a bad title which he believes to be good is a criminal. But, probably wrong technically, certainly needless and disastrous, it will always remain for New Zealand the classic example of a blunder worse than ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... was amused at Joan's naive way of referring to her advice as if it had been a valuable present to a hostile leader who was saved by it from making a censurable blunder of omission, and then he went on to admire how ingeniously she had deceived that man and yet had not told him anything that was not the truth. This ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... sure where he is going to get his catch, so he picks out the place, or run-way, where the game has been in the habit of coming. He hides his traps about that place, and trusts to luck that the animal will blunder ...
— Tom Swift and his Photo Telephone • Victor Appleton
... raised by authority above what it will yield with a profit to the buyer, that commodity will be the less dealt in. If a second blundering interposition be used to correct the blunder of the first, and an attempt is made to force the purchase of the commodity (of labour for instance), the one of these two things must happen, either that the forced buyer is ruined, or the price of the product of the labour, in that proportion, is raised. ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... this sort of theory is a blasphemy against the intellectual dignity of man. It is a blunder as well as a blasphemy; for it goes miles out of its way to find a bestial explanation when there is obviously a human explanation. It is as if a man told me that a dim survival of the instincts of a quadruped was the reason of my sitting on a chair with ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... See how it can err! Was there ever such a boundless, unlimited blunder in the whole annals of penny fiction? Probably not. I remember nothing like it in all the learned pages of the London Journal and the Family Herald. Mrs. Henry Wood and Miss Braddon never dreamed of aught like this. Philippa must be told. ...
— Much Darker Days • Andrew Lang (AKA A. Huge Longway)
... of superstition hugged their chains Culpable audacity and exaggerated prudence The wisest statesmen are prone to blunder in affairs of war ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger
... trials of the same character. Nothing ever annoyed her so much as a little blunder she made, the week after the opening of the session. I have not yet mentioned that there was already a universal dissatisfaction among the women, on account of their being liable to military service. The war seemed to have hardly begun, as yet, and conscription was already ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... exclusion, by shewing the consequences to Christianity of a Pagan Emperor attaining the throne. It would seem, that one of the sheriffs had mistaken so grossly, as to talk of Julian the Apostle; or, more probably, such a blunder was circulated as true, by some tory wit. Wood surmises, that Hunt had some share in composing Julian. Ath. Ox. II. ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... on Burnet i. 393. Dartmouth says that it was from Fagel that the Lords extracted the hint. This was a slip of the pen very pardonable in a hasty marginal note; but Dalrymple and others ought not to have copied so palpable a blunder. Fagel died in Holland, on the 5th of December 1688, when William was at Salisbury and James at Whitehall. The real person was, I suppose, Dykvelt, Bentinck, or Zulestein, most ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... possibly it had never before fallen into the hands of a man who was so little qualified to govern Rigganites, as was the present rector, the Reverend Harold Barholm. A man who has mistaken his vocation, and who has become ever so faintly conscious of his blunder, may be a stumbling-block in another's path; but restrained as he will be by his secret pangs of conscience, he can scarcely be an active obstructionist. But a man who, having mistaken the field of his life's labor, ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... consequences,—lessons which, unfortunately, seem to have but little effect on cabinets, owing to their shifting personelle, England following up the disasters of Carthagena with the still greater blunder of the Walcheren expedition, where, out of England's small available physical war material, nearly forty thousand men were either left to fatten the swamps of Walcheren, or to wander through England in after years on the pension-list, ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... you don't mind, I'll sit here a while longer and think things over, Lester. Perhaps I'll blunder on ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... out of humour with yourself for a blunder that might happen to any man—it was as much my good luck as a good hand would have been, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... these ethical qualities that Buddhism owes its marvellous success.[Note 10] A system which knows no God in the western sense; which denies a soul to man; which counts the belief in immortality a blunder and the hope of it a sin; [69] which refuses any efficacy to prayer and sacrifice; which bids men look to nothing but their own efforts for salvation; which, in its original purity, knew nothing of vows of obedience, abhorred intolerance, and never sought the aid of the secular arm; yet spread ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... prima donna's courtesy ere she sings; Prologues in metre are to other pros As worsted stockings are to engine-hose. "The world's a stage,"—as Shakespeare said, one day; The stage a world—was what he meant to say. The outside world's a blunder, that is clear; The real world that Nature meant is here. Here every foundling finds its lost mamma; Each rogue, repentant, melts his stern papa; Misers relent, the spendthrift's debts are paid, The cheats are taken in the traps they ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... vigor, and many a gallant fight for health has gone unrewarded. But in the great majority of cases a wise conduct of life would retain robust strength for the threescore or more years of our allotted course, increase it for those who start poorly equipped, and regain it for those who by mischance, blunder, or imprudence have lost their heritage. Yet half the world hardly knows what real health is. Our hospitals and sanitariums are crowded, our streets are full of half-sick people-hollow chests, sallow faces, dark-rimmed ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... the enclosed is worth your reading. I am smashed to atoms about Glen Roy. My paper was one long gigantic blunder from beginning to end. Eheu! Eheu! (524/1. See "Life and Letters," I., pages 68, 69, also pages ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... had made the serious blunder of speaking of Queen Louise in a manner wanting in proper respect for a woman, and especially for a woman in misfortune. Josephine, who was full of tact, was much pained by this lack of generosity, and reproached her husband for it. Napoleon sought to excuse himself, writing, November ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... its mark on him with more than usual severity. His stature was small, and his limbs ill put together. Among boys little tenderness is shown to personal defects; and the ridicule excited by poor Oliver's appearance was heightened by a peculiar simplicity and a disposition to blunder which he retained to the last. He became the common butt of boys and masters, was pointed at as a fright in the play-ground, and flogged as a dunce in the school-room. When he had risen to eminence, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... some diamonds with you a short time ago, which should have been delivered to Tiffany & Co. Mr. Hafferman read the order without his spectacles, and it's rather a good joke on him, for he thought it was signed Venner & Co. The blunder was partly owing to the fact, no doubt, that Mr. Venner called to see him yesterday ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter
... dismounted in the encounter,—in what manner we are not told,—and would have been cut down by a British sergeant, but for his wearing a uniform that resembled that of a British colonel. He was helped to a horse at a most fortunate moment. He did not know, in consequence of the blunder of Clarke, that the dragoons whom he had fought and beaten, were only an advanced guard of a body of infantry. Horses and men were in his hands, and, dividing his force, he sent off one party of his men in charge of the prisoners ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... was anxious to make amends for his blunder of a moment before. "Shall I send the bank watchmen to go on each floor in turn and ask everybody to ...
— The Runaway Skyscraper • Murray Leinster
... you know, that we are a couple of old fools, to be troubling ourselves about Aggie's future, at present. Still, in a matter which concerns us both so nearly, we cannot be too careful. If we had a woman with us, we could safely leave the matter in her hands; as it is, we must blunder on, ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... episcopal palace at Farnham. Cobbett's main doctrine is that when the Catholic church flourished, the population was actually more numerous and richer, that the care of the priests and monks made pauperism impossible, and that ever since the hideous blunder perpetrated by the reformers everything has been going from bad to worse. When it was retorted that the census proved the population to be growing, he replied that the census was a lie. Were the facts ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... its commanders in terms of its own suffering. And then, when another extravagant promise of victory turns out to be the customary bloody defeat, you may find that a mutiny breaks out over some comparatively minor blunder, [Footnote: The Allies suffered many bloodier defeats than that on the Chemin des Dames.] like Nivelle's offensive of 1917, because it is a cumulative blunder. Revolutions and mutinies generally follow a small sample of a big series ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... "The blunder was not a life and death matter. In the mountains where we don't see one woman a year it might happen that any man expecting one young lady should mistake another for her. Miss Brock is full of mischief, and the temptation to her to let ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... conclusion respecting Oliver's bravery as the majority in the Fifth, did not allow his conscience to trouble him as to his share of the morning's business. He never had liked Oliver, and lately especially he had come to dislike him. He was therefore glad to have made him smart; and now, since the blunder in the cricket match, he felt greatly inclined to repeat the blow, particularly as there did not seem much to fear ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... could be more sincere, to serve the Church, to place its claims on adequate grounds, to elevate the standard of duty in its clergy, and in all its members. To have missed the aim of the movement and to have been occupied and irritated by obnoxious details and vulgar suspicions was a blunder which gave the measure of those who made it, and led to great evils. They alienated those who wished for nothing better than to help them in their true work. Their "unkindness" was felt to be, in Bacon's phrase,[77] injuriae potentiorum. ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... him as criticising the Greek of all Payne's lines, and not discovering that "the lines" were Pindar's {275} until after publication. Byron was too much of a scholar to make this blunder himself: he either accepted the facts from report, or else took satirical licence. And why not? If you want to laugh at a person, and he will not give occasion, whose fault is it that you are obliged to make it? Hallam did criticise ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... point it may be urged that those exercises which quicken the action of the thoracic viscera, to any considerable degree, are simply exhaustive. This is another blunder of the "big-muscle" men. They seem to think you can determine every man's constitution and health by the tape-line; and that all exercises whose results are not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... coming performance and mentally rehearsing her part. It was not really difficult, but it was tricky, for unless she sprang through the paper-covered hoops at just the right moment, it would be an awkward blunder. However, after many rehearsals, she felt pretty sure of herself, and looked forward ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... tempered man is not quite the proper person for you; his modesty will be easily confounded.—The talkative man will be apt to forget himself, and blunder out something ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... of some social importance, so long as it is believed by large numbers to be essential to the right ordering of life. Whether true or false, beliefs are facts—mental and social facts, and the scheme of things which leaves them out of account is making a blunder of the ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... View, on the Frontiers of Egypt. She was found alone, and in a very disconsolate Condition. This Lady must, doubtless, said they to themselves, be the Queen of Babylon: And without listning to her Complaints, convey'd her instantly to my Husband Moabdar. Their gross Blunder at first incens'd his Majesty to the last Degree; but after he had view'd the Lady with an attentive Eye, he found she was extremely pretty, and was soon pacify'd. Her Name was Missouf. I have been since inform'd, that her Name in the Egyptian ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... cause, to him could point appeal. His mistress was the thing of uses tried. Frigid the netting smile on whom he wooed, But on his Policy his eye was lewd. That sharp long zig-zag into distance brooked No foot across; a shade his ire provoked. The blunder or the cruelty of a deed His Policy imperative could plead. He deemed nought other precious, nor knew he Legitimate outside his Policy. Men's lives and works were due, from their birth's date, To the State's ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... sturdy old Commodore Jones will blunder along with the American liners, CYANE and UNITED STATES, and haul down that proud Mexican ensign. He will hoist for the first time, on October, 19, 1842, the stars and stripes over the town. Even though he apologizes, the foreigners will troop back there like wolves around the dying bison of the ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... looked rather sharply at me, and said with equal sharpness, "You don't belong about here." I was alarmed, and thought I had betrayed myself. A fip in Maryland was six and a quarter cents, called fourpence in Massachusetts. But no harm came from the "fi'penny-bit" blunder, and I confidently and cheerfully went to work with my saw and buck. It was new business to me, but I never did better work, or more of it, in the same space of time on the plantation for Covey, the negro-breaker, than I did for myself in these ...
— Collected Articles of Frederick Douglass • Frederick Douglass
... made a terrible blunder. She wasn't my mistress. I killed Crimtyphon for quite another reason. She had ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... the Roman legions: "They make a solitude, and call it peace." Strength! There are those in perdition at this moment who could tell them that what they call strength is the stupidity which adds to sin the increment of a huge blunder. ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... cradle of the revolution, and set sail for Halifax, in Nova Scotia. Before they departed the British troops destroyed Castle William, but they left their barracks uninjured, with a large quantity of cannon and ammunition, of which Washington was in want. This was a great blunder; for if they could not have been carried away they should have been destroyed. And this was not the only blunder committed. In sailing away, Howe left no cruizer in Boston Bay to warn the ships expected from ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Wonstead blunder in to follow his example, and for the first time in months the other was dumb, not uttering a word as he stowed away for the breakthrough which should take them back into normal space and the star worlds. Raf tore a ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... wealthy client of mine. One of his detectives arrested her on a charge of shoplifting. The girl, mind you, is of excellent family and irreproachable character. My client and his lawyer tried to show Captain Clinton that he had made a serious blunder, but he brazened it out, claiming on the stand that the girl was an old offender. Of course, he was forced at last to admit his mistake and the girl went free, but think of the humiliation and mental anguish she underwent! It was simply a ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... Various were the impediments which obstructed the embarkation of the troops for several weeks, while Mr. Pitt expressed the greatest uneasiness at the delay, and repeatedly urged the commander-in-chief to expedite his departure; but a sufficient number of transports, owing to some blunder in the contractors, had not yet arrived. The troops expressed an eager impatience to signalize themselves against the enemies of the liberties of Europe; but the superstitious drew unfavourable presages from the dilatoriness of the embarkation. At last the transports arrived, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... recounting of these cold wanderings, of days and nights with nothing but snow and rain, and always the hounds of fear on every hand, that I had forgotten to exercise my mind upon the blunder and the shame of Argile's defeat at Inverlochy. So far is this from the fact that M'Iver and I on many available occasions disputed—as old men at the trade of arms will do—the reasons of a reverse ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... What was wrong? He saw the Eagles and the Foxes carrying their loads slowly, with precious care. All at once he understood. Oh, what a blunder ...
— Don Strong, Patrol Leader • William Heyliger
... in a position to perceive the magnitude of the blunder of which the American people were guilty in constructing this most mischievous quantity of fixed capital in the form of railways. They acted precisely like a landowner who had an estate of L10,000 a year, and spent L20,000 on drainage. It could not be made out of savings, ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... old inducement would be always at work. Why not kill them both, while he had the choice? It would be more troublesome to produce proof of the death of either, later. But he mistrusted his skill in dealing with fatal illness. A blunder might destroy everything. Stop!—he knew something better than that. Had not the transport that brought him out passed a drowned body afloat, and wreckage, even in the English Channel? Shipwreck was the thing! He decided on sending Nicholas Cropredy, his wife's brother-in-law, ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... moment that the rabble would have attacked the Tower. We supposed, of course, that the drawbridge would be raised as soon as we had passed over it, but whether the order was not given for it or whether it was misunderstood I know not, but the blunder has cost the lives of the archbishop, the lord treasurer, and others, the insult to the princess, and the disgrace of the Tower having been in the hands of this rascaldom. Well, I must be off there and see what is ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... knows that I am as anxious to push on as you, but we have already made one blunder and we can't afford another; when the time comes that it is safe to trot you shall do so and ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... shrugged and smiled, replying that his compatriots all spoke French like Parisians, enquiring, after a moment's thought, if they learned it, la bas, des negres, and laughing heartily when Durham's astonishment revealed her blunder. ...
— Madame de Treymes • Edith Wharton
... to the hobbles, and tied that in turn to a long, heavy slab of rock, and turned in. He would not risk losing his horse in this desert land. At best a posse could not reach Showdown before noon the next day, and rather than blunder into Showdown at night and take unnecessary risks, he decided to rest, and ride in at sunup, when he would be able to see what he was doing and better estimate the possibilities of getting food for himself and his horse and of finding refuge in some ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... I am sent. I am under orders, Messieurs, and until I report in Paris I know not what duty I am to perform. But I am charmed to see you again, and rest assured I shall not repeat my lamentable blunder." ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the War Front - Or, The Hunt for the Stolen Army Films • Victor Appleton
... words. I will not urge that all speakers would reasonably be called upon to render such an account, if any of their words were spoken for money; I only say this. If Aeschines in his private capacity has spoken wildly on some occasion or committed some blunder, do not be over-strict with him, but let it pass and grant him pardon: but if as your ambassador he has deliberately deceived you for money, then do not let him go, or tolerate the plea that he ought not to be called to account for what he said. {183} Why, for what, if not for his words, is ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... that the genus old maid is one in whom the positive currents neutralize the negative currents? Your affinity is perhaps the plainest woman in the room. But beauty is a juggling sprite, entirely uncontrolled by electricity, and you are quite likely to make a mistake. It is absurd the way we blunder on in a scientific age. We touch a button, and are married. The judge touches another button, and we are divorced. If when we touched the first button it revealed us both negatives, we should start back in horror, for it is only before engagement that two negatives make an affirmative. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... neighbor that lived on the opposite shore of the lake. And once a raven, roosting on the dry bough of a lightning-blasted pine, dreamed that the white moonlight was the light of dawn, and began to stir his sable wings, and croak a harsh welcome; but awakened by his blunder, and ashamed of his mistake, he broke off in the very midst of his discordant call, and again settled gloomily down amid his black plumes to his interrupted repose, making by his sudden silence the surrounding silence more silent ...
— Holiday Tales - Christmas in the Adirondacks • W. H. H. Murray
... preventing the tremendous waste that this process involves. English literature is a comparatively recent addition to the secondary curriculum. Its possibilities of service are almost unlimited. Shall we wait for ten or fifteen generations of teachers to blunder out the most effective means of teaching it, or shall we avail ourselves of these simple principles which will enable us to concentrate this experience within one ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... finally surrendered, but not until she had exhausted the means of defence and life. At that time, few men in America but were in the habit of denouncing the French President for his indifference to the Italian cause. He was charged with having been guilty of a blunder and a crime. His consent to the expedition to Rome aggravated his offence, for it was an act of intervention on the wrong side. But the passage of ten years enables us to be more just to him than it was possible for us to be in 1849. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... to work his way to land, and this he began doing by using his hands as paddles. It was slow progress; and he was of the opinion that he had made a rather foolish blunder in permitting himself to be "carried out to sea" in this fashion. He was disturbed still further by the appearance of the sky. Dark, threatening clouds were gathering and sweeping across it, frequently shutting out the light of the moon and causing the most grotesque shadows to whisk over ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... the provinces when I said you ought to be President. You said old Winkelstein had been in the position too long to be ousted. And yet I felt certain your superior English would tell in the long run in such a miserable congregation of foreigners, and when Winkelstein had made that delicious blunder about the 'university' of the Exodus instead of the 'anniversary,' and I went about laughing over it in all the best circles, the poor man's day was over. And when we came to London, and seemed to fall again to the bottom of the ladder ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... explanation a little further. The three Matzoth Shimmurim used in the Haggadah Service were made with especial care, and in medieval times were denominated Priest, Levite, Israelite, in order to discriminate among them. Picard, by an amusing blunder, speaks of a gateau des levites; he, of course, means the middle cake. From several authorities it is clear that the three Matzoth were inscribed in some cases with these three words, in others with the letters ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... at himself as he hurried back to the station, and his face burned hotly as he thought of the chance such a blunder on his part would have given Quade and Culver Rann to circulate the stories with which they largely played their scoundrelly game. He sent another and longer telegram. This time it was ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... the moon,' returns Colonel Sterett, 'cannot be deemed wonders in any proper sense. They're merely interestin' details which any gent gets onto who brings science to his aid. But usin' the word "wonders," I does once blunder upon a mir'cle which still waits to be explained. That's a shore-enough marvel! An' to this day, all I can state is that I sees it ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... but this, as well as a farce produced at Dublin in 1720 by Charles Shadwell and entitled The Plotting Lovers; or, The Dismal Squire, cannot claim to be anything but translations. Miller's Mother-in-Law, again, includes much of Monsieur de Pourceaugnac; and Thomas Sheridan's Captain O'Blunder; or, The Brave Irishman, produced at Goodman's Fields, 31 January, 1746, is a poor adaptation. Mrs. Parsons abbreviated Moliere to The Intrigues of a Morning, played at Covent Garden, 18 April, 1792, a jejune effort. Les Femmes Savantes was rather racily transformed by Thomas Wright into ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... Carleton was there. Fleda sat a little apart from the rest, industriously bending over a complicated piece of embroidery belonging to Constance and in which that young lady had made a great blunder which she declared her patience unequal to the task of rectifying. The conversation went gayly forward among the others; Fleda taking no part in it beyond an involuntary one. Mr. Carleton's part was rather reserved and grave; according to ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... fatal blunder To be blind to this appalling Tragedy you wrong by calling The result of spells—no spells Are such signs, but miracles Outside man's experience falling. He came here because he yearned With his pure and holy breath To give life, and so found death. ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... was well known that a man had to be up very early in every sense if he wanted to keep an eye on a Putnam horse. Mat Woodburn might be old, but he was by no means sleepy; and Joses could not afford to blunder. ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... be severe were it not sheer gossip, and gossip dictated by a feeling of intense hostility to Louis Philippe, who committed the unpardonable blunder of not bestowing any particular regard upon the prince's secretary, though, with others, he had been specially introduced to him. In that case, and if M. Colmache really was, as he says, present in the chamber when this interview took place, we can only express our ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... the fatal blunder of mistaking the enchantment of desire for that of love. Angelique was so happy in reconciling the voice of her heart with that of duty, by giving way to a liking that had grown up with her from childhood, that the deluded man could not discern which of the two spoke the louder. ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... constituencies—that it is well you should have patience enough to listen to a speech about India; because it is no secret to anybody who understands, that if the Government were to make a certain kind of bad blunder in India—which I do not at all expect them to make—there would be short work for a long time to come, with many of those schemes, upon which you have set your heart. Do not dream, if any mishap of a certain kind were to ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)
... seize his old schoolmate by the hand, proclaim his friendship for him and assure Mr. Westall and the rest that they had committed the worst kind of a blunder—that they had made as great a mistake in arresting this boy for a horse-thief, as Nels and his fellow wood-cutters had made in suspecting him of being Tom Percival, simply because he happened to have in his possession a watch chain that somewhat resembled Tom's. But two things restrained ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... dignitary than the Common Serjeant[8], personally to convey to us the invitation on the first day of Michaelmas term at our inn. Sir Thomas Chambers, when he occupied this office, was accustomed to commit a most amusing blunder. Whether moved by some idea of his own dignity, or acting under civic instruction, I am unable to say, but when he came to perform his task he addressed himself solely to the Judges, not even naming the Serjeants, although the former were asked only in that ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... giving out my suspicions; but we've made a blunder in letting that fellow get away tonight; but it's all up now unless some other of the games against ...
— The Dock Rats of New York • "Old Sleuth"
... lies Judge Boat within a coffin, Pray, gentlefolks, forbear your scoffin'; A Boat a judge! yes, where's the blunder A wooden Judge is no such wonder! And in his robes you must agree, No Boat was better dekt than he. 'Tis needless to describe him fuller, In short he was an ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... living their lives as we are living ours, in the shimmer of a globule in space, it is not enough that we should lift our faces to the sky and blunder and guess at a God there, because there is so much room between the stars, and murmur faintly, "Spiritual things are spiritually discerned." By the infinite bones of our bodies, by the seeds of the million years ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... instance, he "floundered all the summer among the extinct mine-shafts of Scotch politics—the most damnable set of pitfalls mortal man was ever set to blunder through in the dark." His study opened on the garden, from which the sea-view is one of the finest in England. Froude loved Devonshire folk, and enjoyed talking to them in their own dialect, or smoking with them on the shore. He was particularly fond of the ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... chance," she exclaimed. "They've got it all settled! You are the rising light, which is to astonish the world—and I'm your youthful blunder. I stay at home and take care of the baby, and they all feel sorry ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... she muttered to herself, "I have made a grievous blunder; it may be I have ruined Cornelius, the tulip, and myself. I have given the alarm, and perhaps awakened suspicion. I am but a woman; these men may league themselves against me, and then I shall ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... of this was uncanny. He played, it seemed, a spiritual Blind Man's Buff. On every side of him things filled the air; once and again he would touch them, sometimes he would fancy that he was alone, clear, isolated, when suddenly something again would blunder up against him. And always with him, driving him into the bustle of his fellow men, flinging him, hurling him from one noise to another noise, was the terror of silence. Let him once be alone, once waiting ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... all that—so far as it's true," said Beth with startling candor, "but we know it isn't true at all, and you've got to confess that you made some ridiculous blunder or else that ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... of brilliantly dressed young women came running from the nearest room, all in fancy costume and all of them masked. Evidently a fancy-dress party was about to begin in the house. Garrison realized his blunder. ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele |
