"Blunder" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... reach our destination you will refrain from giving the least hint, by word or action, that the sixteenth century has passed away. If you feel unable to carry out this deception, we must leave you here. The slightest blunder would ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... larger reason for their marvel. They could rise above their hatred for sin more easily than their race prejudice; so can we. The Samaritans were an inferior people. Degraded they were. They had been degraded for centuries. The Jews shunned them. Socially our Lord was making a great blunder, perhaps a fatal blunder, in talking to this Samaritan woman. His cause was in its infancy. The hand of social prejudice would surely throttle it. Why antagonize the existing order of society? How much better to utilize ...
— American Missionary, Volume XLII. No. 11. November 1888 • Various
... not play pieces that are away beyond your grasp. This is the greatest fault in our American musical educational systems of to-day. Pupils are permitted to play works that are technically impossible for them to hope to execute without years of preparation. What a huge blunder ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... came in. She crossed immediately to the desk. As Thomas looked up, she smiled at him. It was the first smile of the kind he had witnessed, coming in his direction, since before that blunder on the tennis-courts. ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... difficulty in holding his wrath. Perceiving that something was amiss, Mr. Kenby made a pretext to accompany Bagley a part of his way, with the design of leaving him in a better humor. In magnifying his newly discovered Bagley, Mr. Kenby committed the blunder of taking too little account of Turl; and thus Turl found himself suddenly alone ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... sentence. Ah, do not interrupt me, doctor, and upon your life, upon Jacques's life, do not say a word of what I am going to tell you. A suspicion which should cross M. Galpin's mind would destroy my last hope; for it would give him an opportunity of correcting a blunder which he has committed, and which justifies me in saying to you, 'Even if the count should give evidence, even if sentence should be passed, nothing would be ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... he had not profited by his experience; he was incapable of doing so. His length of service and reputation for hard work had saved him from dismissal, but Chillingwood was less fortunate; subordinates in Government service generally are less fortunate when their superiors blunder. ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... heard, and hurried To find the hole by which she came, And seem'd to find it not the same; So round she ran, most sadly flurried; And, coming back, thrust out her head, Which, sticking there, she said, "This is the hole, there can't be blunder: What makes it now so small, I wonder, Where, but the other day, I pass'd with ease?" A Rat her trouble sees, And cries, "But with an emptier belly; You entered lean, and lean ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... to a young girl? Is he not her Cure? More than that, her Confessor. Her confessor! Has he still the right to call himself so? And the weather-beaten soldier, the disciple of Voltaire, the malevolent, unmannerly father? Come, another blunder! he sees clearly that he cannot dream of stopping. And then, after what he has done, what would he dare to say? He will pass by therefore rapidly, without even turning his head; she will see him, ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... not the clear-cut blunder of which I spoke. The real blunder is this. Mr. Wells deserves a tiara of crowns and a garland of medals for all kinds of reasons. But if I were restricted, on grounds of public economy, to giving ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... political correspondence in rhyme. Mrs. Browning sternly reproached those who had ever doubted the good faith of the King of Sardinia, whom she acclaimed as being truly a king. Swinburne, lyrically alluding to her as "Sea-eagle of English feather," broadly hinted that the chief blunder of that wild fowl had been her support of an autocratic adventurer: "calling a crowned man royal, that was no more than a king." But it is not fair, even in this important connection, to judge Swinburne by Songs Before Sunrise. ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... In some of the Boston hotels, the prominent book on the parlor table is "Webster's Unabridged Dictionary." You may be left in doubt about the Bostonian's character, but need not doubt his capacity to parse a sentence, or spell without any resemblance of blunder the word "idiosyncrasy." ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... replied Jack. 'Takes better care of his sixpences than that. Up in the dark, breakfast by candlelight, grope our ways to the stable, and blunder along the deep lanes, and through all the by-roads in the ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... flood]. Now Ceridwen came in and saw that her whole year's work was lost. She took a pestle and struck the blind man so hard on the head that one of his eyes fell out on his cheeks. "You have unjustly deformed me," cried Morda; "you see that I am guiltless. Your loss is not caused by my blunder." "Verily," said Ceridwen, "Gwyon the Small it was that robbed me." Immediately she pursued him, but Gwyon saw her from a distance and turned into a hare and redoubled his speed, but she at once became a hound, forced him to turn around and chased him towards ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... set trash of phrase Ineffably—legitimately vile, That even its grossest flatterers dare not praise, Nor foes—all nations—condescend to smile,— Nor even a sprightly blunder's spark can blaze From that Ixion grindstone's ceaseless toil, That turns and turns to give the world a notion Of endless torments and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... cloth a single broken thread ruins a whole web; it is traced back to the girl who made the blunder and the loss is deducted from her wages. But who shall pay for the broken threads in life's great web? We cannot throw back and forth an empty shuttle; threads of some kind follow every movement as we weave the web of our fate. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... 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 loudly clear his ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... was not ready to surrender, though he knew now that he had committed a woful blunder. In fact, the knowledge that he was dealing with Frank Merriwell aroused him to a fierce resistance. He felt that it would simply be ruinous to be held and recognized by Merriwell, and he began to fight like ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... the heavens, or the towering Big Horn Mountains, he would have gained an approximate idea of where he was; but, despite his experience in the West, he galloped forward at an easy canter, with never a suspicion of the blunder he was making. ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... sedition. Both Aaron and Miriam had received a portion of the prophetic genius that distinguished Moses, and they naturally thought that they should have some share in the government, at least to make a few suggestions, when they thought Moses made a blunder. Miriam was older than Moses, and had at this time the experience of 120 years. When Moses was an infant on the River Nile, Miriam was intrusted by his parents to watch the fate of the infant in the bulrushes and the daughter of Pharaoh in her daily walks by, the ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... Another blunder little less extraordinary occurs in Chapter vi., in which the ordinances of Rienzi's Buono Stato ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... sir," he said, becomin again affable, to reconcile me, I suppose, to the unfortunate blunder, an' speakin wi' great volubility, "my name is Smith, which, I suppose, is yours too, sir. I'm from London. Now, you see, my dear sir, my brother Bob, who lives in Ireland, and whom I haven't seen for some years, was to have met me here last night, agreeably to ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... the gulf; but Beaujeu, the naval commander of the expedition, was not in sympathy with La Salle. Beaujeu was a noble by birth; La Salle, only a noble of the merchant classes. The two bickered and quarreled from the first. By some blunder, when the ships reached the Gulf of Mexico, laden with colonists, in December of 1684, they missed the mouth of the Mississippi and anchored off Texas. The main ship sailed back to France. Two others were wrecked, and La Salle in desperation, after several trips seeking the Mississippi, ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... genial chuckle which preceded an invitation to inspect some candidate's egregious blunder; Irving would read and smile quietly, unaware that Barclay was watching him and wondering how appreciative he might be ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier
... She ever knew full well what she desired to gain or to avoid, and once having fixed her mind upon any object, she showed an adroitness and brilliancy of resource, a control of herself and others, the which there was no circumventing. She never made a blunder because she could not control the expression of her emotions; and when she gave way to a passion, 'twas because she chose to do so, having naught to lose, and in the midst of all their riotous jesting with her the boon companions of Sir ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... made with me I could not see that it weakened his wits or his muscles. I was told that such journeyings were not at all uncommon, the coolies taking work wherever offered, and going on and on as new jobs turned up. With all its shortcomings the Manchu Government did not make the blunder of imposing artificial restraints upon the movements of the people, and since no passports were required within the empire, men could come and go at their own will. The part of the commercial traveller in creating the American nation has been noted. Who can tell what ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... now how she could ever have looked with approval on her rash act. She wondered what demon of interference and meddling had possessed her, to make her blunder into people's lives, upsetting them. She wondered that she was allowed to go around loose. She was nothing more nor less than a menace to society. Here was an estimable young man, obviously the sort of young man who would always have to be assisted through life by his relatives, ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... be in a towering rage because such a blunder had been made, and called upon the fleetest runners ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... nothing of the call that had loosed from its lethargy the essential Jan. But the roar spoke of doom and Bill flinched; wavered in his attack, as a horse will momentarily waver at a high leap. That peril might have passed. But it was part of a double blunder. The leap had been wrongly conceived. It had come too soon. And now the leaper balked, conscious of error; conscious also, dimly, of some terrific change in Jan, heralded by his ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... old fortress in Provence—only the fortress had forty small rooms, and its modern prototype had seventy large ones, and now every window was blazing with lights. A man does not let himself be caught twice in such a blunder; and having visited a "shooting-lodge" which had cost three-quarters of a million dollars and was set in a preserve of ten thousand acres, he was prepared for Adirondack "camps" which had cost half a million and Newport "cottages" which had ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... in the House of Commons, attacked the policy of the ministry from beginning to end. Everything was a blunder or a mishap of some description or other; the government had invaded Russia with 25,000 troops without providing ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... such thing had happened as was popularly supposed (and "everybody" received the announcement with the remark that she knew all along it couldn't be so), and that a grievous and absurd but most mortifying blunder had been made. It was a most unpleasant ghost to "down," the shadow of that scandal, for it would come up to the surface of garrison chat at all manner of confidential moments; but no man or woman could safely speak of it to Chester. It was ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... noticed any deficiencies, but if he met an English friend in Florence and brought him home to dine, then Ronald began to wish that Dora would leave off blushing and grow less shy, that she could talk a little more, and that he might lose all fear of her making some terrible blunder. ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... how damaging is his conduct. He falls into a kind of fit on discovering that his nephew's engagement had been broken off, which he might well do if his crime turned out to be not only a crime but also a blunder. And his conduct to the girl is, to say the least of it, strange. Nor will his character help him. He frequents the opium dens of the East-end of London. Guilty, guilty, most certainly guilty. There is nothing to be said in arrest of judgment. Let the judge put on the black cap, and Jasper ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... United States; that the two opposing parties had been represented by the passengers of the Excelsior; and that one party had succeeded, headed by the indomitable Perkins. If she could be able to convince them of their blunder, would it be wise to do so? She thought of Mrs. Brimmer's supplication to be ranged "on her side," and realized with feminine quickness that the situation might be turned to her countrymen's advantage. But which side had Todos Santos favored? It ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... Holiday found one clear ray of comfort. With all their vagaries, their rash impulsions, their willful blindness, their recklessness, they had each run splendidly true to type. Not one of the three had failed in the things that really count. He had faith that none of them ever would. They might blunder egregiously, suffer immeasurably, pay extravagantly, but they would each keep that vital spirit which they had in common, untarnished and ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... specimen of the genus. I certainly have placed him in the country, and scenes which I know best myself, for the simple reason, that I knew them better than any others, and therefore was less likely to blunder in writing ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... work at first. It was found that Adams could blunder on pretty well with the small words, but made sad havoc among the long ones. Still his condition was pronounced hopeful. As to Sally, she seemed to take up the letters at the first sitting, and even began to form some correct notion of the power ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... it. Nor was this due to the perfection of his rhetorical art. He really did feel what he expressed. Sometimes, of course, like all statesmen, he had to maintain a cause whose weakness he knew, as, for instance, when it became necessary to defend the blunder of a colleague. But even in such cases he did not simulate feeling, but reserved his earnestness for those parts of the case on which it could be honestly expended. As this was true of the imaginative and emotional side of his eloquence altogether, so was it especially ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... power to inspect and sum up existed only on her own side. This pretty woman neither knew what inquiries to make nor cared for such replies as were given. Being swift to reason and practical in deduction, Mademoiselle Valle did not make the blunder of deciding that this light presence argued that she would be under no supervision more serious. The excellent Benby, one was made aware, acted and the excellent Benby, one was made aware, acted ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... among pages and clerks of the kitchen;—and that he has no more pretensions as an author, than if his appointment had been to the mastership of the stag-hounds. When he takes state upon him with the public, therefore, in consequence of his office, he really is guilty of as ludicrous a blunder as the worthy American Consul, in one of the Hanse towns, who painted the Roman fasces on the pannel of his buggy, and insisted upon calling his foot-boy and clerk his lictors. Except when he is in his official duty, therefore, the King's ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... arms on the instant. One gets at truth only by experiment, and through repeated mistakes. Why except women's hearts from the same law? I give his opinion, not his words. He doesn't talk of "women's hearts." You know his trick of suggesting when it comes to talk of the feelings. I slid into a worse blunder and sympathised with him. He replied that it didn't make the difference to him which I might think. I felt as if a stream of ice-water had been turned down my back on Christmas Day. However, he went on in a sort of shame-faced style, like a schoolboy caught talking sentiment. "One owes her a debt ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... to Lord Shelburne, which has been so often mentioned, and which he really did make to him, was only a blunder in emphasis: "I wonder they should call your Lordship Malagrida, for Malagrida was a very good man;" meant, I wonder they should use Malagrida as a term ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... that these enlightened intentions remained, down to the year 1800, secret except to those Powers. But statesmen err when they bury their good intentions in the secrecy of archives and allow public opinion to sympathize with the enemy. Here was Pitt's most serious blunder. At the outset of the struggle, and throughout its course, he scorned those tactful arts and melodramatic ways which win over waverers and inspire the fainthearted. Here he showed himself not a son of Chatham, but a Grenville. The results of this ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... account also for the fact that, systematic and logical thinker as he was, he perpetrates what might appear at first sight as a logical blunder. Instead of first proving the existence of God and then discussing his nature and attributes, as Saadia, Bahya, Ibn Daud and others did before him, he treats exhaustively of the divine attributes in the first book, whereas the proof of the existence of God does not appear ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... the Latin of Hakluyt, pelles rubes, are probably the zaphilines pelles, or sables, of other travellers; converted into red skins by some strange blunder.—E. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... may I ask in what manner I might serve as a witness?" Ere the words had fully crossed my lips I recognized that my smartness had caused me to commit an unpardonable blunder for a man who wished to show up well in an adventure of this sort. (But fate had a hand in it, as presently you ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... platform, grasping the back of his chair, a curious mocking Mephistophelian glitter about his eyes, his lips wreathed into a half smile. There was no hurry for him to get Denzil Cantercot arrested now. Wimp had made an egregious, a colossal blunder. In Grodman's heart there was a great glad calm as of a man who has strained his sinews to win in a famous match, and has heard the judge's word. He felt ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... means to do," he wrote to Atticus. "I do not think he knows himself. Certainly none of us know.—It is all panic and blunder. We are uncertain whether he will make a stand, or leave Italy. If he stays, I fear his army is too unreliable. If not, where will he go, and how and what are his plans? Like you, I am afraid that Caesar ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... Grateful, yes, but with a faint hint, too, that Ted had been rather fortunate, a little honoured perhaps in having enjoyed the privilege of assisting, however slightly, in the launch of my career. At one time I had gladly regarded it as a present. That, it seemed, was a blunder of my remote infancy. Honest Ted's pound was a loan, of course, and like any other honourable man I should naturally repay ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... the Straits and Zeebrugge. When the weather is fine we can see deep down into the water, a hundred feet or so, and quite easily make out a submerged U boat. I was testing a new plane fitted with a 90 h.p. R.A.F. engine—" He paused and quickly glanced at her, for he realised his blunder the instant the slip had been made. Madame was all eager attention—what did she know of the marques of aeroplane engines!—"It was a day of rotten luck for me. I spotted nothing, and late in the afternoon my engine began to overheat and miss fire. ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... however, was not, as we have said, contemplated. It was not supposed by Lee that his adversary would adopt the bold plan of crossing the Blue Ridge to assail Jackson; thus, to leave that commander in the Valley, instead of being a military blunder, was a stroke of generalship, a source of embarrassment to General McClellan, and a standing threat against the Federal communications, calculated to clog the movements of their army. That Lee aimed at this is obvious from his ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... not a few to say, "How ill-instructed the poor children were!—actually mingling the gospel and the fairy tales!" "Happy children," say I, "who could blunder into the very heart of the will of God concerning them, and do the thing at once that the Lord taught them, using the common sense which God had given and the fairy tale nourished!" The Lord of the promise is the Lord of all true parables ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... shielded from all anxiety, kept, innocent on all questions of sex, was no preparation for married existence, and left me defenceless to face a rude awakening. Looking back on it all, I deliberately say that no more fatal blunder can be made than to train a girl to womanhood in ignorance of all life's duties and burdens, and then to let her face them for the first time away from all the old associations, the old helps, the old refuge on the mother's breast. That "perfect innocence" ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... sorry for the stricken child,—though his eyes still twinkled, "it was just a mistake. But remember after this, my child, to speak to God when you pray. Remember that you are talking to Him. Then you will not make such a blunder.—So many of us," he said reflectively, "ministers as well as others, pray into the ears of the people, and forget we are ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... unfortunate family; and the hills and waters around are sad with the memories of his lady's heroic efforts and sufferings. So, when Prince Charles came again, in 1745, they were moved neither by his beauty nor his romantic daring: they would take no part at all in his brilliant blunder. ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... street. Up to that point Rita was real. I killed her at that point and she became unreal. This statement cures me. Nevertheless, my sanity is a myth. I have invented it, by arbitrarily identifying the moment of its departure. But it is better that way than to blunder on without knowing how mad I am or whether I am mad at all, or whether I ever have been mad. A lie believed in is an ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... journey improves our position. Conde feels secure now; he dreaded only the passage of the Loire. Guise made a huge blunder which, in the future, ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... Perhaps the greatest blunder of the present day, upon the part of scientists, is their attempt to bring into disrepute the cosmogony given in the Bible by a scientific cosmogony, which leaves off as "unknown" the only active world-forming force. They arrogantly assume ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 7, July, 1880 • Various
... cough, then looked out of the window, and softly whistled to himself. Lettice, meanwhile, cast about hastily in her mind for the possible bearing of what her brother might have to say. She was about to take advantage of his blunder, and decline to hear anything further; but for more than one reason which immediately occurred to her, she thought that it would be better to let ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... whether this be the dedication of the cloister, or the name of one of the city gates, near which it stood. I have translated it in the former sense; but fearful of having made some blunder, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... of Sanchia's crowd,' he said with high assumption of carelessness. 'But here is what I can't understand! Your father told Sanchia; she has raced off and staked; and as sure as fate, they are on the wrong hill! Sanchia wouldn't make a blunder like that!' ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... the midst of dinner? There's a man opposite staring at us now! You're not as tactful as you were the night of the burglar. Then, you did just the right thing, cleverly and bravely. For that I can forgive you a good deal—but not everything. Now you make one blunder after another." ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... for booksellers, to be sold. The price is 1800 francs a copy, or about $600, the total expense of the edition being 296,000 fr. or not far from $55,000. The publication of the work on so expensive a scale, unaccompanied by an edition cheap enough for ordinary readers, is a great blunder; at least the reputation of the author suffers from it. The book does not reach those for whom it is written, while of Layard's work at least 10,000 copies have been sold, exclusive of the ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... all qualities in a military commander, that of deriving substantial fruits from victory instead of barren trophies, he had not manifested. If it had been a great stroke of art to seize reach Deventer, it was an enormous blunder, worthy of a journeyman soldier, to fail to seize the Bourtange marshes, and drive his sword into the fiery vitals of the republic, thus placed ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... understand; but 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, yet remains amiably self-satisfied, and unconscious ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... educators. So of an organization like the Grange, its chief work is education. It brings mind in contact with mind; it gives chance for discussion and interchange of ideas; it trains in power of expression; it teaches the virtue of co-operation. Farmers blunder when they fail to encourage organization. Sometimes, out of foolish notions of independence, they neglect to unite their forces. They are utterly blind to their best interests when they do so. They should encourage organization if for no other reason than for the ...
— Chapters in Rural Progress • Kenyon L. Butterfield
... widowhood. She told no more infantile perilous tales about husbands who ate peas with a knife. In her thankfulness that the tyrannic Rosamund had gone to Germany, and that Madame Piriac had vanished back into unknown Paris, Audrey was at pains to take to heart the lesson of a semi-hysterical blunder. ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... "You make a blunder like that again, and you'll be sorry for it," he bullied, shaking an angry fist at Phil, who turned a pair of surprised eyes ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... Anxious to make 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 which offered—Mr. ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... permission sought. When he began to unfold the object of his visit, to obtain permission to capture Henry and Donelson, Halleck silenced him so quickly and sharply that he said no more, and returned to Cairo believing his commander thought him guilty of proposing a military blunder. But, persisting still, he telegraphed on the 28th that, if permitted, he would take Fort Henry and establish and hold a camp there. Next day he wrote to the same effect in detail. On the 28th, Commodore A.H. Foote, flag-officer of the gunboat fleet, ...
— From Fort Henry to Corinth • Manning Ferguson Force
... used to think, when I first came here, that I'd been a fool; but now, somehow, at times like this, I wonder if I didn't blunder into the wisest act of my life." The prairie spirit had taken hold of him. "And the longer I stay the more it grows upon me that such a life as this, where one's success is not the measure of another's failure, is ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... is in writing that the scholar is liable to slip; in oral speech he seldom makes a blunder. In fact, there are many people who are perfect masters of speech,—who never make a blunder in conversation, yet who are ignorant of the very principles of grammar and would not know how to write a sentence correctly on paper. ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... the arts of woodcraft, and were proving apt pupils. They were both going to volunteer to join Rogers' bold band of Rangers, for they had grown almost disheartened at the regular army service, where one blunder and disaster was invariably capped by another; and the life of the Rangers did at least give scope for personal daring and adventure, and might enable them to strike a blow now and again at the enemy who had wrought ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... they don't commit murders—not in Europe, at any rate," said Mr. Flexen. "In the East and in the United States it's different perhaps. Murder is always as much of a blunder as a crime. It makes people so keen after the criminal. No: no really intelligent ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... from getting the faintest hint of who the Spaniard might be, and yet his tongue seemed determined to get him into trouble in spite of all he could do. He made several efforts to creep out of his scrape, but the old man's eye was upon him and he made blunder after blunder. Presently the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... odd I should blunder into your house to get my bandaging. My first stroke of luck! Anyhow I meant to sleep in this house to-night. You must stand that! It's a filthy nuisance, my blood showing, isn't it? Quite a clot over there. Gets visible as it coagulates, ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... their present plan they would be adding another to the list. And as to their power to help us positively, it is nil. Their initial omission to send a formidable military force to Poland was an irreparable blunder, for it left them without an executive in eastern Europe, where they now can help none of their protegees against their respective enemies. Poles, Rumanians, Jugoslavs are all left to themselves. From the Allies they may expect inspiriting telegrams, but little else. In fact, the utmost they ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... torture! She could regard them now dispassionately, albeit with wonder. She marvelled now that she had ever given herself to such a man. By the light of experience she realized how tragic had been her blunder, and now that the awful sense of shock and desolation had passed she could be thankful that no heavier penalty had been exacted. The man had been taken swiftly, mercifully, as she believed. He had been spared much, and she—she had been delivered from a fate far worse. ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... that notion out of your mind, and don't ever meddle with it again. Tilbury set that trap for you. Don't you know it's a trap? He is on the watch, and fully expecting you to blunder into it. Well, he is going to be disappointed—at least while I ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... feeling so far as it could be spared without injustice being done to the country, Booth must have expected to find his act condemned by every rational Southern man as a worse than useless crime, as a blunder of the very first magnitude. Had he succeeded in getting abroad, Secession exiles would have shunned him, and have treated him as one who had brought an ineffaceable stain on their cause, and also had rendered their restoration ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... Beust, the Saxon Minister, was at this time in Berlin and met Bismarck for the first time; they were discussing the conduct of the Austrian Government in shooting Robert Blum, a leading demagogue who had been in Vienna during the siege. Beust condemned it as a political blunder. "No, you are wrong," said Bismarck; "when I have my enemy in my ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... money touched fuzzy's dingy palm his first instinct was to take to his heels; but a second thought restrained him from that blunder of etiquette. It was his; it had been given him. It—and, oh, what an elysium it opened to the gaze of his mind's eye! He had tumbled to the foot of the ladder; he was hungry, homeless, friendless, ragged, cold, drifting; and he held ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... the inscription is in shockingly bad Latin; Calpurnia is made conqueror of the Cimbri, not her father, by a grammatical blunder; and one would suspect a forger would have avoided such a grotesque error, which is quite in agreement with other blunders made by the sculptors of monuments in the Alyscamps, who were clearly ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... hunted by a village posse. And bloodhounds! The adventurous side of this rather pleased him. It simply narrowed down to this—it behooved him to loiter no longer in the green world of spring. Penance or no penance he must now try penitential speed. How on earth had he ever managed to blunder into a country all ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... wonder Was some heart-chord snapped asunder When the threads were soft and silken? Did some fatal boyish blunder Plant a canker in my bosom That hath ever burned ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... sovereign, and one of whom, Egmont, had performed distinguished services for his country and king, was profound. A wave of mingled rage and sorrow swept over the land. It was not only an act of cruel injustice, but even as an act of policy a blunder of the first magnitude, which was sure to bring, as it did bring, ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... to their sovereign on his accession, "Nos que valemos tanto como vos," etc., frequently quoted by historians, rests on the authority of Antonio Perez, the unfortunate minister of Philip II., who, however good a voucher for the usages of his own time, has made a blunder in the very sentence preceding this, by confounding the Privilege of Union with one of the Laws of Soprarbe, which shows him to be insufficient, especially as he is the only, authority for this ancient ceremony. See Antonio Perez, ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... blower and bloat, a gas-bag and fanfaron, a Gascon and a carajo, alma miserabile, and a pudding-head, a sacre menteur and a verfluchte prahlerische Hauptesel, a brassy old blunder-head and a spupsy, un sot sans pareil and a darned old hoffmagander; a pepper-pot-pourri, a thafe of the wurreld and an owld baste, the divil's blissing ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... 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 ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... you do, great or small, will be like some of those hollow images of the gods that one hears of in barbarian temples—looked at in front, fair, but when you get behind them you find a hollow, full of dust and spiders' webs and unclean things. Be sure of this, every sin is a blunder. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... saw what a misleading blunder she had committed towards Loveday in playing to the yeoman. Perhaps she had sown the seeds of ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... consciousness of her blunder dawned upon her, Nattie would gladly have sank into oblivion. But as that was impossible, she took a fresh blank, ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... in quoting prices from Mark Lane, call it Cinquefoil, a very different plant, (Potentilla) of rather a noxious quality. See Gleanings on Works of Agriculture and Gardening, p. 88, where a curious blunder occurs of this kind. ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... messengers returning with the emperor's refusal. Godfrey, the bravest and most determined of the leaders of the Crusade, was not a man to swerve from his word, and the country was given up to pillage. Alexius here committed another blunder. No sooner did he learn from dire experience that the Crusader was not an utterer of idle threats, than he consented to the release of the prisoner. As he had been unjust in the first instance, he became cowardly in the second, and taught his enemies (for so ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... I don't know anything about him," I corrected myself. It was my first blunder: the doctor glanced up at me quickly and then turned his attention again to the body. Like a flash there had come to me the vision of the woman with the bronze hair and the tragic face, whom I had surprised in the vestibule between the cars, somewhere in the small hours of the morning. I ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... "Forward, the Light Brigade!" Was there a man dismay'd? Not tho' the soldier knew Some one had blunder'd: Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die: Into the valley of ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... and after a little further dialogue, in which the cool Highlander completely deceived the French sentries, the British were allowed to slip past in the darkness. The tiny cove was safely reached, the boats stole silently up without a blunder, twenty-four volunteers from the Light Infantry leaped from their boat and led the way in single file up the path, that ran like a thread along the face of the cliff. Wolfe sat eagerly listening in his boat below. Suddenly from the summit he saw the flash of the muskets and ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar. I felt as if I alone of all my townsmen had paid my tax. They plainly did not know how to treat me, but behaved like persons who are underbred. In every threat and in every compliment there was a blunder; for they thought that my chief desire was to stand on the other side of that stone wall. I could not but smile to see how industriously they locked the door on my meditations, which followed them out again without let or hindrance, and they were really all that was dangerous. As they ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... a 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. 'T is a lesson that he ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... style of woman,' soliloquized Percy, as he saw the carriage drive off. 'Gentleness, meekness, and a dash of good sense, is the recipe for a rational female—otherwise she is a blunder of nature. The same stamp as her sister, I see; nothing wanting, but air and the beauty, which, luckily for Arthur, ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "We all agreed that this Gilbert fellow was as cool a customer as we'd ever met. Now the chances are he'll grasp the situation at a glance, laugh at his blunder, put your bag safely away, and hustle to remedy the mistake so as not to be left out of the tournament. Believe that, Will, for ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... afraid, Captain, that I have made a blunder. Mrs. Dillon came to me—most kindly of course—and made an offer to take care of a booth at the bazaar, and I refused her. You know my feeling against giving these Americans ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... about the minutiae of the ius divinum to which the Romans had become habituated under priestly rule—religio in that sense in which it is least really religious. He will find a Flamen Dialis resigning his priesthood because he had made a blunder in putting the exta of a victim on the altar;[696] only too ready, it may have been, to take an opportunity of getting free of those numerous taboos which deprived the priest of Jupiter of all possibility of active life. Such a conjecture finds support in the curious fact that his successor ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... responsible for the worst features of Scotch Presbyterianism. Half cooked beans account for the religion of the Puritans. Fried bacon and saleratus biscuit underlie the doctrine of State Rights. Lent is a mistake, fasting is a blunder, and bad ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... the Christian religion and the Imperial-revolutionary system. There are many blunders in the above extract as we read it; blundering metaphors, blundering arguments, and blundering assertions; but this is surely the grandest blunder of all; and one wonders at the blindness of the legislator and historian who can advance such a parallel. And what are we to say of the legacy of the dying revolution to Napoleon? Revolutions do not die, and, on their death-beds, making fine speeches, hand over their property to young officers of ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... is absurd!" cried Durtal, "the greatest blunder ever introduced into the symbolism of the elements. The medieval sages were mistaken, for snow is pure and cold is chastity. It is the sun, on the contrary, that is the active agent in developing the germs of rottenness, the ferment ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... What do you imagine that I should think of it! The whole thing seems to me the most ghastly blunder—the most horrible anomaly. You—in these surroundings! Married to a man so entirely beneath you, and with whom you ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... of indignation which encircled the globe when reports were printed that over a thousand people lost their lives on the Lusitania, found a sympathetic echo in the Berlin Foreign Office. "Another navy blunder," the officials said—confidentially. Foreign Office officials tried to conceal their distress because the officials knew the only thing they could do now was to make preparation for an apology and try to excuse in the best possible ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... the case of tinned dog, etc., but by some blunder he or his man put the label on the wrong box, and it went per rail, per coach, per camel, and the last stage per boot, and reached my friends' camp on Christmas Eve, to their great joy. My friend broke the case open by the ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... age.' I went away with my steadfast friend, George W. Benson, assured that the legislators of the State had been guilty of a most unrighteous act, and that Miss Crandall's persecutors had also committed a great blunder; that they all would have much more reason to be ashamed of her imprisonment than she or her friends could ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... to ministerial disregard of physical laws and its 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
... Oliver, and realized his blunder. He glanced quickly at Myra, and was relieved to observe that she ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... new-born Democrat, all opinion on that subject was "expressly pretermitted" in the June Platform! Mr. Watkins was in such a hurry to join the Forney, Pierce, and Catholic Democracy, that he did not stop to examine even the Platform which most disgusted him! But this is not the worst blunder which he committed in that speech. He turned to the new Platform, and asked, ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... is to 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 ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... and apprehension were somewhat mitigated when I observed that Edd was dirty, ragged, and almost as much disheveled as I was. I had feared he would see in my appearance certain unmistakable evidences that I had made a tenderfoot blunder and then run for my life. But Edd took my loss of hat, and torn coat, and general bedraggled state as a matter of course. Indeed I somehow felt a little pride at his acceptance of me ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... last, in a superb silk dress, the broad luster of which would have been beautiful, only the effect was broken and frittered away by six rows of gimp and fringe. But why blame her? This is a blunder in art as universal as it is amazing, when one considers the amount of apparent thought her sex devotes to dress. They might just as well score a fair plot of velvet turf with rows of box, or tattoo a blooming ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... to dissemble his startled expression in a grin that revealed his white teeth. "Ye can't forgive me that blunder, Mr. Caryll," said he. ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... relieved their confusion by seconding Burns's praise. The poet saw his mistake, but had the good sense not to try to repair it. Years afterwards he told Professor Walker that he had never spoken of this unfortunate blunder, so painful to him had ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... unsaddling his horse, and shaking down some litter for the poor wearied animal, he heard Smith observe to Ganlesse,—"By my faith, Dick, thou hast fallen into poor Slender's blunder; missed Anne Page, and brought us a great ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... given which lay within the power of the officers of this club. Very well, then, far as it was from my original intention, I present my personal grievance and I claim redress. The vote of censure which the committee has passed upon me I regard as merely a stupid and offensive blunder; the implication conveyed by listening to a servant in relation to a charge against a member is an insult to him as a gentleman, which, to me personally, seems too intolerable to be endured. I came into this club as to a body of gentlemen, and I have ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... witchcraft. An examination being instituted, a waxen image was discovered in his chamber with a hair of the color of the earl's drawn through the body; also, an old woman in the neighbourhood, a reputed witch, being required to recite after a prompter the Lord's Prayer in Latin, was observed to blunder repeatedly in the same words. But these circumstances, however strong, not being deemed absolutely conclusive, the poor old woman was apparently suffered to escape:—after the gentleman of the horse, or his instigators, we do not find ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... purpose; but the villany of the latter is finely defeated in his mistaking a silly, forward girl, Miss Glossop, for Penelope, and accordingly prevailing on her to elope with him to Lord Spoonbill's villa, where the blunder is soon discovered by his lordship, who in return is horsewhipped by the father of Miss Glossop; and Darnley and Penelope are ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Volume 12, No. 329, Saturday, August 30, 1828 • Various
... Kamraviona to try if we could get rid of the annoying restraints which made our residence here a sort of imprisonment, I discovered that the whole affair was not one of blunder or accident, but that we actually were prisoners thus be design. It appeared that Kamrasi's brothers, when they heard we were coming into Unyoro, murmured, and said to the king, "Why are you bringing such guests amongst us, who will practise all kinds of diabolical sorcery, ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... abashed at her blunder, that she looked absolutely imploring, and Mr. Denis Oglethorpe smiled again. He felt inclined to make ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Bad blunder all I have to say, It is a most unchristian way To rig Miss Moll Carew— She has my hat, my cut of hair, Just such an ulster as I wear, And heaven knows ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... ago, addressed 'to the most impudent man living,' was universally acknowledged to be dedicated to our commentator." Warburton had always the Dunciad in his head when a new quarrel was rising, which produced an odd blunder on the side of Edwards, and provoked that wit to be as dull as Cooper. Warburton said, in one of his notes on Edwards, who had entitled himself "a gentleman of Lincoln's Inn,"—"This gentleman, as he is pleased to call himself, is in reality a gentleman only of the Dunciad, or, to ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... teachings of the previous fifty thousand years. He asks us to believe that God muddled men's minds with a mysterious series of revelations cloaked in fable and allegory; that He allowed them to stumble and to blunder, and to quarrel over these "revelations"; that He allowed them to persecute, and slay, and torture each other on account of divergent readings of his "revelations" for ages and ages; and that He is ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... that the Shibprakash objection stood first for hearing. It was opened by the appellant's pleader, who rose armed with a huge account book and bundle of receipts, in order to prove that his client owed nothing to Government, and that the sale proceedings were a blunder from beginning to end. Asu Babu waited till his turn came, and then informed the Collector that he would find, on examining his books, that the appellant was Rs. 1 11. 0. in arrears at the date of the sale. The Collector ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... that Venice 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. He was not firm ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... the girl with eager promptness, that must have come from shame from the blunder she had made. Lemuel was twenty, the 4th ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... et ther's bahn ta be sum play-acters at t'Fleece Inn Garritt, and ther bahn ta act 'Catherine fra t'Padding Can, er Who's ta tak t'screws;' ta be follered bi 'Alpaca, er t'smashing up o' t'engines.'" But Billy's blunder was perhaps for the best; for, seeing that this was about the time when hand woolcombing was on the decline, and engines were being brought out, the people had an idea that the announcement had ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... work—a bout at wrestling, be it Caesar's Bridge, the Epistles of Phalaris, the import of {men} and {de}, the Catholic question, or the great roots of Christian faith; ending with the latest joke in the town or the West Raw, the last effusion by Affleck, tailor and poet, the last blunder of AEsop the apothecary, and the last repartee of the village fool, with the week's Edinburgh and Glasgow news by their respective carriers; the whole little life, sad and humorous—who had been ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... murmured as his nimble fingers grew busy, "ye've been drinkin' again! Nay, don't deny it! A' see ye comin' out of Hennessy's the forenoon. An' ye've a wife an' six children, the shame on ye to treat a puir woman so! Another blunder like this an' ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... are more courteous than the French. Here the stranger, let him come from what country he may, and be ever so unacquainted with the people and language, he is sure of a civil reply to any question that he may ask. With the exception of the egregious blunder I have mentioned of the cabman driving me to the Elysee, I was not laughed at ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... horse, fastened his rope 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 out-of-the-way ranch or homestead. ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... had made any such gigantic blunder as that," returned Tom firmly, "then we'd deserve to be run out. We wouldn't have the nerve to put ...
— The Young Engineers in Colorado • H. Irving Hancock
... jackknife. When the liquor went to his head he would lie down on his bed and stare out of the window until he went to sleep. He drank alone and in solitude not for pleasure or good cheer, but to forget the awful loneliness and level of the Divide. Milton made a sad blunder when he put mountains in hell. Mountains postulate faith and aspiration. All mountain peoples are religious. It was the cities of the plains that, because of their utter lack of spirituality and the mad caprice of their vice, were cursed ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... distinct address to Christ as the Hearer of Prayer. And, note, last of all, about this matter, the singular grammatical irregularity in my text, which is something much more than a mere blunder or slip of the pen. The words which follow, viz., 'comfort' and 'stablish,' are in the singular, whilst these two mighty and august names are their nominatives, and would therefore, by all regularity, require a ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... think aloud before such a woman as Mrs. Ready. Who will venture to excuse such an eccentric proceeding? Would not the whole world blame you for your incorrigible blunder? It had, however, one good effect. It quickly cleared the room of your intrusive guest; who swept out of the apartment with a haughty "Good morning." And well she might be offended; she had accidentally heard the truth, which no one else in the town ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... be an expert in legerdemain, and he came to Brown's prepared to perform some of his best feats. When the company assembled in the drawing-room after tea, he determined to redeem the fearful blunder that he ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... to come to close quarters, and ventures on a remark on Sanskrit grammar. It is the only passage in all his writings, as far as I remember, where, instead of indulging in mere sheet lightning, he comes down upon me with a crashing thunderbolt, and points out a real grammatical blunder. He says ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... repeated. "This afternoon I tried to stop the duel you are to fight with my brother, and I am told that I made a very serious blunder. I should like to try and correct it. When I spoke of my brother's skill, I mean his skill with the pistol, I knew you were ignorant of it and I thought if you did know of it you would see the utter folly, the wickedness of this duel. But instead ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... nor compassion for the youth and innocence of the Duke d'Enghien, to perceive the imprudence, as well as wickedness, of the proceeding. The remark of the callous Fouche had passed into a proverb, "It was worse than a crime—it was a blunder." ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... instinct. Set a greedy man before a dish of fruit and he will make no mistake, but take the choicest even without seeing it. In the same way, if you allow a girl who is well brought up to choose a husband for herself, if she is in a position to meet the man of her heart, rarely will she blunder. The act of nature in such cases is known as love at first sight; and in love, first ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... 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
... modern sovereign ever enjoyed. He was now thirty-three years of age,—supreme in France, and powerful throughout Europe. The French were proud of a man who was glorious both in peace and war; and his consulate had been sullied by only one crime,—the assassination of the heir of the house of Conde; a blunder, as Talleyrand said, rather than a crime, since it arrayed against him all the friends of Legitimacy ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... Arabella. It did not take the former long, after Mr. Bennett once explained just how things stood, to comprehend exactly the situation, and to form and mature his plans accordingly. He had committed a blunder, as Mr. Bennett termed it, in giving up Miss Tenant, but that was a conventional mistake, if, which it is very doubtful, Hiram ever admitted that it was a mistake. Here, however, he could bring his keen knowledge of human nature to play, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... boy," cried Brace, with a good-humoured laugh. "Disgraced! You, a mere calf in just learning your drill. If you had been in the troop for four or five years, and made such a blunder, why, it would have been rather disgraceful; but for you! Why, we are quite proud of the rapid way you are ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... celerity, and clearing more bars than the keenest fox-hunter, to be in at the death. But the great trial was an anthem that had been prepared and arranged by Master Simon, and on which he had founded great expectation. Unluckily there was a blunder at the very outset; the musicians became flurried; Master Simon was in a fever, everything went on lamely and irregularly until they came to a chorus beginning "Now let us sing with one accord," which seemed to be a ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... through the trees of the avenue; and there was a strong sweet smell of wet earth and grass. Rose had drawn the hood of her waterproof over her head, and her face gleamed an indistinct whiteness from its shelter. Oh this leaping pulse—this bright glow of expectation! How had she made this stupid blunder about his going? Oh, it was Catherine's mistake, of course, at the beginning. But what matter? Here they were in the dark, side by side, friends now, friends always. Catherine should not spoil their last walk together. She felt a passionate ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... world having the great and beautiful quality of fewness, we can provide an equally fair setting in the quality of refinement. And refinement is not to be achieved but by rejection. One who suggests to me that refinement is apt to be a mere negative has offered up a singular blunder in honour of robustiousness. Refinement is not negative, because it must be compassed by many negations. It is a thing of price as well as of value; it demands immolations, it exacts experience. No slight or easy charge, then, is committed to such of us as, having apprehension ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... I made another blunder—in England. I should have had more courage and have faced the risk. But you might have turned ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... have tried a dozen times before giving up. There were no landmarks in that all-concealing grayness, and only by sheerest chance would anyone blunder into this valley—unless hypnotically summoned, like ...
— Where the World is Quiet • Henry Kuttner
... sir, I have two vessels waiting for cargoes of India-rubbers there, under a blunder-headed captain, who will do nothing he has not been bidden to,—obey his orders if he breaks his owners. You smile, sir? Why, I should have made thirty thousand dollars this winter, sir, by my India-rubbers, if we had not had this devilish mild, open weather, you and Miss Julia ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... king exercises his functions as ruler over both kingdoms through a council of state, composed of an equal number of Swedes and Norwegians, whose duty it is to advise the sovereign, and, in accordance with a peculiar feature of monarchy, to take the responsibility when any blunder is made; for "the king can do no wrong." If anything is wrong, some one else did it. Having the same king, who rules over each nation separately, is the only connection between Norway and Sweden. The former pays about one hundred and twenty thousand dollars of his civil list, ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... seen the estimated cost of the establishment, further progress was arrested by want of funds. Before the end of the century everybody concerned had come to the conclusion that the villa of Brancifort was a great blunder,—the "settlers are a scandal to the country by their immorality. They detest their exile, and ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... responsibility that would rest upon you," protested the colonel. "A single blunder on your part might ...
— George at the Fort - Life Among the Soldiers • Harry Castlemon |
