"Bungled" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to the measure sent, adding that Aldobrandini was "probably not born to wear a dagger at his belt." He bade his brother present it to Filippo Strozzi, as a compliment from the Buonarroti family; but the matter was bungled. Probably Buonarroto tried to get some valuable equivalent; for Michelangelo writes to say that he is sorry "he behaved so scurvily toward Filippo ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... brimstone to me. An ugly, contraband knave, smuggled into the world by some lewd prank of the devil—with his malicious little pig's eyes, foxy hair, and nut-cracker chin, just as if Nature, enraged at such a bungled piece of goods, had seized the ugly monster by it, and flung him aside. No! rather than throw away my daughter on a vagabond like him, she may—God ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... dry, and he tried to remind him of their former meeting. Under any circumstances it would have been difficult for him to talk of memories so intimate; now it was torture for him. He bungled his sentences, could not find words, said absurd things which made him blush. Hassler let him flounder on and never ceased to look at him with his vague, indifferent eyes. When Christophe had reached the end of his ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... the trouble it brings and the injury to the firm and to Mr. Eggleston, for I don't forget he's my partner. I didn't think it would end in ruin. I bungled ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... good chase began. Priscilla had a long start of us, for we had bungled at the wall, but we were bound to ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... Queen-Regent bestowed on him the Grand Cross of San Fernando, with the pension of 10,000 pesetas (nominal value L400). But no one in Spain and few in Manila as yet could foresee how the fulfilment of the Agreement would be bungled. According to a letter of Pedro A. Paterno, dated March 7, 1898, published in El Liberal of Madrid on June 17, 1898, it would appear that (up to the former date) the Spanish Government had failed to make any payment to Paterno on account of the P900,000, balance of indemnity, ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... listened with the most eager attention, did not speak for a minute. The sense of failure was strong upon him. How he had bungled ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... to listen. She said things that I did not believe she could have said to me, to anyone. Things that I did not think she could have thought . . . I dare say she was right in some ways. I suppose I bungled in my desire to be unselfish. What she said came to me in new lights upon what I had done . . . But anyhow her statements were such that I felt I could not, should not, remain. My very presence must have been a trouble to ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... principle of the inviolability of American ships on the high seas; but the Admiralty maintained that some of these men are officers in the German Army and are now receiving officers' pay. I think that that is probably true. Nevertheless, the Admiralty had bungled the case badly and Sir Edward simply rode over them. They have a fine quarrel among themselves and we got all we wanted and ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... depend for his income upon winning about three good criminal prosecutions a year; the rest of his time to be spent reading up criminal psychology and taking his aunt to see pictures. The commonplace scene-shifter who places behind people the scenery of real life has bungled Sir Henry, thereby robbing him of much interest. What a net a man with his classic patience and enormous ferret instinct for minutiae could have woven about some cunning but once too often embezzler! ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... redeem his promise. He therefore, showed Bobby a few of the simpler wrestler's tricks which Bobby adopted and brooded over in his manner. The first game of robber and policeman thereafter, he tried one on Johnny, but bungled it and got sat on harder than ever. Bobby's trouble in the practice of such matters arose from the fact that he was too analytical. Before an idea could become part of his make-up, he had to revolve it over in his mind, examining ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... annoyance. "I don't want you to; I don't, myself. I've bungled the matter as I might have known I would. I was trying to put into words an undefined uneasiness of mine, a quite formless desire to have you possessed of the whole case as it had come up in my mind. I've made a mess of it," said Ferris rising, with a rueful air. "Besides, I ought ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... flirtations its varying governments in different centuries have carried on with Ravenna, or Naples, or Florence. You can imagine no Residenz for Austria but the Kaiserstadt,—the gemuthlich Wien. But there are other capitals where men have arranged things and consequently bungled them. The great Czar Peter slapped his imperial court down on the marshy shore of the Neva, where he could look westward into civilization and watch with the jealous eye of an intelligent barbarian the doings of his betters. Washington ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... the absolute silence, unconscious—unaware of any thing round me; living only in my thoughts, and with a resolution growing ever stronger and stronger within me. I will not tell her! I will never tell any one. I, that have hitherto bungled and blundered over the whitest fib, will wade knee-deep in falsehoods, before I will ever let any one guess the disgrace that has happened to me. Oh that, by long silence, I could wipe it out of my own heart—out of the book ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... feeling that he had bungled his job, fell back a pace, while she drove away without so ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... great worldly lights might learn by experience how fatal bungled entertainments can be, but such is not the case. Many well-intentioned people continue sacrificing their friends on the altar of hospitality year after year with never a qualm of conscience or a sensation of pity for their victims. One practical lady of my acquaintance asks her guests alphabetically, ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... likely that you would have to sweep me up!" said Horace, who had a strong conviction that anything in which the Jinnee was concerned would be bungled somehow. "And if you're so anxious to destroy this Jarjarees, why don't you challenge him to meet you in some quiet place in the desert and settle him yourself? It's much more in your line than it is ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... bungled sadly—his hearing suddenly failing as well as his memory, there was a dead stop. In vain the prompter, the scene-shifter, the candle-snuffer, as loud as they could, and much louder than they ought, reiterated the ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... be convinced! Who taught you to see things at a glance,—things I have toiled and bungled over and don't know now if I am ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... him to fix a day. The answer named a day of the week and a day of the month which did not agree; whereupon Mr. Knowles wrote by the safer medium of the post for an explanation, thinking that the post-office clerks must have bungled the message, and ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... with, I was thoroughly dissatisfied with myself. I had bungled the affair dreadfully. This was not the time for explanations; I should not have attempted them. It would have been better, much better, to have accepted the inevitable as gracefully as I could, paid the bills, ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... how you have bungled! You bait the trap, the poor man walks into it, and you allow another to forestall you. Not only that, but you actually allow Japan to come into the game, and but for Mr. Lutchester's appearance we might both of us have been left plante la. No, Mr. Fischer! You don't deserve the formula, ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... belonged to the settled classes, Larry might have adorned a "Broadway show." Instead, through his father's influence, he had attempted finance—and remained an amateur, a "gentleman." But now, Margaret said to herself, over there, away from trivial society,—the bungled business career ended,—Larry might turn to his gift seriously. He was only thirty-two,—not too old, with hard work and steady persistence, which she would supply, to achieve something. For she would have been content to have him in the Broadway show; it mattered not to her now what he ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... effects, which will give Tom Ostrello his patent back, and also give some patent rights to Mr. Langmore's estate. I can tell you, Matlock Styles was a deep one. It was only once in a great while that he drank and bungled." ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... animals myself over in the Peninsula, but not having had any advice I guess I bungled the job somewhat. Anyhow, they said down in St. Louis, where I sent my bunch, that they were misfits, and I suppose it must have been so, if a fellow was to judge from the size of the check they sent on. Since then I've been told that all animals can't be skinned alive. ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... next. He bungled through the Latin in a grating, irresolute sort of way, with several false quantities, for each of which the next boy took him up. Then he began to construe;—a frightful confusion of nominatives without verbs, accusatives translated ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... nothing more. And because I looked upon her this way, I foolishly went to her once to confess my love for another; her dearest and most intimate friend, and ask if she thought I had a chance for success. I must have bungled strangely, for she mistook my meaning and thought I was speaking of herself and in a way she accepted me; and before I had time to explain, her mother came in and I have never seen her since; but I shall never forget the eyes which looked at me so gladly, smiting ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... Elephant is a noble animal. His docility is perfect. He climbed up and down places so steep that a good horse would have bungled at them, pulled down trees when he was told to do it, held others which were slanting dangerously across the track high above our heads till we had safely passed under them, lifted fallen trees out of his way, or took huge steps over them, and slid down a steep bank into the Perak with great ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... wish, Mr. Fletcher would make no changes, and that they were free to remain on if they thought proper. Mike approved of this arrangement—it saved him from a task of finding new servants, a task which he would have bungled sadly, and which he would have had to attempt, for he had decided to enjoy all the pleasures of a country place, and to act the country gentleman until he wearied of the part. Life is but a farce, and the more different parts you play in that farce the more you enjoy. Here was a new farce—he ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... to turn and look once more, while the old gentleman, still benevolent, said, "Yer langwidge means pleasanter than it sounds, kid." He glanced at the boy's holster, and knew he need not keep a very sharp watch as to that. Its owner had bungled over it once already. All the old gentleman did was to place himself next the boy on the off side from the holster; any move the tenderfoot's hand might make for it would be green and unskilful, and easily anticipated. The company lined up along ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... wavered; decided to yield to them on this last point; ultimately, on the last day of 1860, yielded instead to severe pressure from Black, and decided to reinforce Anderson on Fort Sumter. The actual attempt to reinforce him was bungled; a transport sent for this purpose was fired upon by the South Carolina forces, and returned idle. This first act of war, for some curious reason, caused no excitement. The people of the North were intensely relieved that Buchanan ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... were blameable for those acts.' There are well-authenticated cases of atrocities committed by Alexander Macdonell: in 1781 he ordered his men to shoot down a prisoner taken near Johnstown, and when the men bungled their task, Macdonell cut the prisoner down with his broadsword. When Colonel Butler returned from Cherry Valley, Sir Frederick Haldimand refused to see him, and wrote to him that 'such indiscriminate vengeance taken even upon the treacherous and cruel enemy they are engaged against is ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace
... last second, he bungled, hesitated; Hilma shrank from him, supple as a young reed; Annixter clutched harshly at her arm, and trod his full weight upon one of her slender feet, his cheek and chin barely touching the delicate pink lobe of one of her ears, his lips brushing ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... not trained to the business, it's fearfully hard to slip your hand deftly into some one else's pocket. Margery bungled, and Janet, impatient at her slowness, loosened slightly her own hold. On the instant, Willie Jones wrenched one arm free, dived into his pocket, and before his captors knew what he was about had pulled up the nickel and ...
— A Little Question in Ladies' Rights • Parker Fillmore
... gone to the Council, and ring up again. This time he would probably get the nurse and confide to her his number in Mantua. Next morning Juliet and her nurse had only to drop in at the nearest drug store, and confide to Romeo the whole plot which Balthazar so sadly bungled. All that was needed was a telephone, and Romeo would have understood that Juliet was only feigning death for the sake of ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... found his courage returning as he clambered up the side of the Revenge and followed Joe aft to the quarter-deck. Unless they bungled it, there was a chance that they might escape when the pirates made their landing on the coast to refresh themselves and refit the ship. The mate on watch greeted them good-humoredly enough and bade them enter the cabin where the captain awaited them. Jack was all a-flutter ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... Johnnie had laid the case before Miss Whitford and restated it under the impression that she could not have understood that his confidence ebbed. Even then he felt that he must have bungled it in the telling and began to marshal his facts a third time. He had expected an eager interest, a quick enthusiasm. Instead, he found in his young mistress a spirit beyond his understanding. Her manner had a touch of cool disdain, almost of contempt, while she listened ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... then, the point is that you don't know the whole truth, or even half of it. That's just what he couldn't tell you. I should have told you. That's where I bungled it. You know he left it to me; he said I was to ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... something of an Iago toward his Hero in respect of all he has done for him. The publication of the Reminiscences is indeed a mystery to me: for I should [have] thought that, even in a mercantile point of view, it would indispose others, as me it did, to the Biography. But Iago must have bungled in his work so far as I, for one, am concerned, if the result is such as I find it—or unless I am very obtuse indeed. So I tell Mr. Norton; who is about to edit Carlyle's Letters to Emerson, and whom I should not ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... little surprise myself, Corbett," said Sinclair. "Unfortunately our agents on Earth bungled it." ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... quiet, Rona!" urged Ulyth, laying her hand on the arm of her too partial friend. "My pendant has a defect in it. I bungled, and couldn't get it right ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... was hardly more at rest when he left her and walked to his rooms. He carried the regret of a protector of England who had bungled his task and let the wards of his suspicion break loose. The fault was not his, but he would never escape the reproach. He had no taste for taking revenge on the young woman. It would not salve his pride to visit on her pretty head the thwarted punishments ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... lying before me, with its splendid "red-letter," its "seemly designs," and, what is more precious, its "Index." Shenstone, who had greatly pleased himself with his graphical inventions, at length found that his engraver, Mynde, had sadly bungled with the poet's ideal. Vexed and disappointed, he writes, "I have been plagued to death about the ill-execution of my designs. Nothing is certain in London but expense, which I can ill bear." The truth is, that what is placed in the landskip over the thatched-house, and the birch-tree, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... forgiven by the most indulgent on the ground that the residents were spinsters, and could not know a mother's heart. No one born and reared in the community could possibly have made a mistake like that. No one who had studied the ethical standards with any care could have bungled so completely. ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... Bandinello used for his Hercules and Cacus was quarried for our incomparable Michel Agnolo Buonarroti. He had made the model for a Samson with four figures, which would have been the finest masterpiece in the whole world; but your Bandinello got out of it only two figures, both ill-executed and bungled in the worst manner; wherefore our school still exclaims against the great wrong which was done to that magnificent block. I believe that more than a thousand sonnets were put up in abuse of that detestable performance; and I know that your most illustrious Excellency remembers the fact very well. ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... shall I face him!). You would not like the Book at all, I think. But I must now tell you an odd thing, which will also be a sad thing to you. I left London last Tuesday fortnight for Bedfordshire, meaning to touch at Hertford in passing; but as usual, bungled between two Railroads and got to Bedford, and not to Hertford, on the Tuesday Evening. To that latter place I had wanted to go, as well to see it, as to see N. Newton, who had made one or two bungled efforts to see me in London. So, when I got to Bedford, ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... hot-headedness, simplicity, and indolence rendered him as easy a pigeon to pluck as one could desire; how comes it, I say, that he has taken alarm in this sudden manner, so as to refuse to come here any more? you've bungled this matter most shamefully, sir, and must take ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... am all bungled up here. I don't know quite what to do about London this season. As I understood what you wanted, I replied as I did. You know how I hate to lose any of your work for anybody or anywhere. Now you understand. That is splendid ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... probably be found—as might have been anticipated by Maggini had he known beforehand of the course to be taken by his art, which was at the time almost a local one—that a repairer has at one time thought it necessary to lift the ribs from one or the other plate, and almost, of course, bungled over it. This will be seen in the irregularity of the fitting of the ribs, which have been ruthlessly cut or torn out of the groove, some portions being left in. Taking them out was found to be unprofitable ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... guess, I conjecture that Jasper had one of his "filmy" seizures, was "in a frightful sort of dream," and bungled the murder: made an incomplete job of it. Half-strangled men and women have often recovered. In Jasper's opium vision and reminiscence there was no resistance, all was very soon over. Jasper might even bungle the locking of the door of the vault. He was apt to have a seizure after ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang
... to me, and at this point a hitch occurred. He did his part, the letting go, all right. It was in my department, the taking hold, that the thing was bungled. Aunt Elizabeth slipped from my grasp like an eel, stood for a moment eyeing me satirically with her head on one side, then fled and entrenched herself in some bushes at ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... hereditary and circumstantial conditions, was itself so perfectly the mental equivalent of those conditions. Thus the perfection of his egotism, tight as a drum, saved him. Had it been a little less complete, he would have faltered and bungled; as it was, he had the naive certainty of a child, to whose innocent apprehension the world and self are one, and ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... at such chances for dissent—for all the good it really did them; but the Prince's distinction was in being one of the few who could check himself before acting on the impulse. This, obviously, was what counted in a man as delicacy. If her friend had blurted or bungled he would have said, in his simplicity, "Did we do 'everything to avoid' it when we faced your remarkable marriage?"—quite handsomely of course using the plural, taking his share of the case, by way of ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... of Ts'i, at the first attempt, bungled his plans badly. He would not strike at the root of things, Confucius; perhaps retained too much respect for him; perhaps simply did not understand; but at that harmless mutton Marquis Ting who Confucius had successfully camouflaged up to look like a lion. To that end he formally ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... permissible to the very highest rank of new wealth. Lucille, as I learnt from Monsieur Alphonse later—indeed, our friendship was based on the patience with which I listened to his talk of that young lady—was dressed on this particular afternoon in white, but such matters as these bungled between two men will interest no one. Her hair she wore half in curls, according to the hideous custom of that day. Is it not always safe to abuse the old fashion? And at no time safer than the present, when the whole world gapes with its great, foolish mouth after every novelty. I remember ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... hopped back into the car and threw over my clutch. The car started with a little jerk that I didn't quite relish, and on looking over the side I saw that the new wheel was wobbling, not very much indeed, but just enough to show me that I had bungled my work. I immediately cut down my speed and proceeded for the rest of the journey at something ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... in the road, looking after her retreating figure. He had bungled. If he had begun in the right way, she would have been compelled to listen. What could he do to obtain a hearing? After two years of silence he could not wonder at her refusal to listen ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... best, Jack. I know I bungled the job, but youse don't want to cast dem t'ings up to me. Dere's more dan me orter be in de pen. Dere's no good in de pot callin' de ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... again, still with no result, and then she tried the small latch. Perhaps the man had done some blundering thing when he had been examining it. She remembered hearing several clicks. She turned the handle again and again. There was no key in the keyhole, so he could not have bungled with the key. She was quite aghast at ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... had recently invited me to his October pheasant-shooting. During the last few days a youth, who grotesquely reproduces Mrs. Smith's most prominent features, has mysteriously tenanted the kitchen, ill-cleaned my boots, and bungled over the studs in my shirts. This morning a letter came with the crest and the Northallerton postmark. Really, Smith, considering that you have now breathed the same air as myself for eight long years, I did not expect to be called on for an explanation. Besides, you have destroyed ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... the bare thread of statement (wearing thinner and thinner) on which he weaved his fantastic web. His editor told him he was engaged to report football, not to play it with the paper. But he couldn't help it. He had got, he said, the ensanguined habit. Still, I was not to imagine that he bungled things. He jolly well knew his way about. In his wildest flights there was a homing impulse; he was preparing a place for himself all the time (that it happened to be my place didn't seem to afflict him in the least). Like St. Paul, ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... of actual warfare was a bitter one. If ever the British Government bungled one of their military enterprises more thoroughly than another, it was the Nile Expedition of 1884-5. What began as a forlorn hope ended in complete failure, and in three short months French experienced ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... trusted. Perhaps after all the man had escaped that night. Perhaps it was this very person who had created the furore at the meeting. Who was he? How did he get in? Why were proper steps not taken to safeguard the room against all possibilities of this nature? Bah! Anderson had bungled the thing from the start. He was a boy sent on ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... of Festubert, Neuve Chapelle, Loos, and all minor attacks which led to little salients, were but experimental adventures in the science of slaughter, badly bungled in our laboratories. They had no meaning apart from providing those mistakes by which men learn; ghastly mistakes, burning more than the fingers of life's children. They were only diversions of impatience in the monotonous routine of trench warfare by which our men strengthened the mud walls ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... little arm stretched over her pillow and toward her mother as if feeling for the dear presence. Somehow the picture comforted Mary-Clare. She was strangely at peace. After her bungling—and she knew she had bungled with Larry—she had secured safety for Noreen and herself. It was right: the other way would have bent and cowed her and ended as so many women's lives ended. Larry never could understand, but God could! Mary-Clare had a simple faith and ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... all, and then her women friends would send wreaths for the coffin and carriages to the funeral, and would whisper mysteriously together in their boudoirs, and look askance upon the doctor who had attended her. For of course he had bungled shockingly, or everything would have gone off as right as rain ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... for the ease and dexterity with which he had permitted himself to be outwitted by Tabnit, St. George turned blindly from the office with some vague idea of chartering all the tugs in the harbour. It came to him that he had bungled the matter from first to last, and that Bud or Bennietod would have used greater shrewdness. And while he was in the midst of anathematizing his characteristic confidence he stepped in the outer hallway and saw that which caused that confidence ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... He went back to his seat, sobbing with the hysterical weakness of a sick man. "He's bungled the business, Colonel," he said bitterly. "Oh, God! If you ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... bravery was not of the physical order; and she disliked to have the appearance of unconventionality. After the first minute she was not so much afraid as annoyed. Her voice became frigid, though her dignity was somewhat damaged by the fact that she bungled ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... that we may go further and find a positive advantage in this proximity: "I am glad that you do not agree with the man who considered that Nature had bungled by using the genitals for urinary purposes; apart from teleological or theological grounds I could not follow that line of reasoning. I think there is no need for disgust concerning the urinary organs, though I feel that ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... difficult operation he had ever performed. He bungled it considerably, but in the end he succeeded passably well. He extracted the loose tooth with his bayonet forceps and prepared the roots of the broken one as if for filling, fitting into them a flattened piece of platinum wire to serve as a dowel. But this was only the beginning; altogether ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... said. "I don't want the others to know it, but I've just had the adventure of my life. I attacked a German. Great Scott! what an opportunity! and I bungled it through being ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... tale. And it has no bearing, anyway. I should not have brought it up, for I have known good men funk in my time—buck fever, as it were. And now let us dismiss it all from our minds. I merely wished to suggest, and I suppose I have bungled. But understand this, Frona," turning her face up to his, "understand above all things and in spite of them, first, last, and always, that you are my daughter, and that I believe your life is sacredly yours, not mine, yours to deal with and to make or mar. Your life is yours to live, and in so far ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... contrary, everywhere was ignorance and confusion. Lord John Drummond's hopeful scheme for seizing Edinburgh Castle (September 8) was quieted pulveris exigui jactu, "the gentlemen were powdering their hair"—drinking at a tavern—and bungled the business. The folly of Government offered a chance: in Scotland they had but 2000 regulars at Stirling, where "Forth bridles the wild Highlandman." Mar, who promptly occupied Perth, though he had some 12,000 broadswords, continued till the end to make Perth his headquarters. ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... Paris. I would say he was a painter, if he had not been equally a sculptor, a musician, an architect, a writer of verse, and a university coach. A doer of so many things is inevitably suspect; you will imagine that he must have bungled them all. On the contrary, whatever he did, he did with a considerable degree of accomplishment. The landscapes he painted were very fresh and pleasing, delicately coloured, with lots of air in them, and ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... detail—Harry Van Horn. Laramie, the man Doubleday and Pettigrew would have chosen, they had failed to enlist, and what was more serious—though this, perhaps, Doubleday did not realize—they had likewise failed to rid themselves of; Tom Stone had bungled. ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... roused the packing room of the flour mill with the master's eye, he was in the cooperage, the center of a group round one of the hooping machines. It had got out of gear, and the workman had bungled in shutting off power; the result was chaos that threatened to stop the whole department for the rest of the day. Ranger brushed away the wrangling tinkerers and examined the machine. After grasping the problem in all its ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... you think—that," she said. "It would have been all right. I bungled horribly with my feet and slipped and fell." Tears were starting from Jack's eyes and she saw them. "No! No! I'm all right," she said, "just a bit dizzy. I am sorry. I was going—to—bring—it back to you—so nicely and prove I was not an expatriate." She shivered slightly ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... isn't the sort you're thinking of, Gashwiler. They say she knows, or pretends to know, something about the grant. She may have got hold of some of her uncle's papers. Those Greasers were always d——d fools; and, if he did anything foolish, like as not he bungled or didn't cover up his tracks. And with his knowledge and facilities too! Why, if I'd—" but here Mr. Wiles stopped to sigh over the inequalities of fortune that wasted opportunities on the less ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... not smile. He even lost color with wrath. "Garvey has dared to play you some trick!—I did not dream—" he went on, eagerly, "Garvey kept the letters in his hands, and bungled over the name, so I did not once fairly ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... inference. A grand step towards the deification of a lady, made by alleged revelation 1800 years after her death, is of glaring evidence: two or three additional shiffle-shuffles towards defence of saying the Athanasian curse in church and unsaying it out of church, are hardly noticed. Swift has bungled his satire where he makes Peter a party to finding out what he wants, totidem syllabis and totidem literis, {35} when he cannot find it totidem verbis[75] This is Protestant method: the Roman plan is viam faciam; the Protestant plan is viam inveniam.[76] The public at large begins ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... hard to follow. It looked as if the worn fangs of the lion failed to make his hold on the wonderful, leathern, loose armor of the little honey-badger, and that he bungled the stroke of his terrible paw. Be that as it may, the honey-badger certainly went straight in, right under the lion's guard, right under the lion, and rearing, he bit home, and hung like a ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... much-condemned husband, or of keeping her own, now that she bore his name. True, her marriage had, probably, made possible her younger sister's exceptional and unhoped-for match. But Michael himself felt that he had sadly bungled a most important affair. Perceiving his wife's uselessness for his purpose, all the little admiration he had ever had for the fragile girl changed speedily into an angry despite. For the moment, he put her and his social ambitions away together, and turned back ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... ahead of them (Plate XVI., Position I.). Captain Chevalier carefully points out that their failure was a fair offset to the failure of the French rear on the 12th of April,[185] but fails to note in this connection that the French van, both on that occasion and again on the 3d of September, bungled as well as the rear. There can remain little doubt, in the mind of the careful reader, that most of the French captains were inferior, as seamen, to their opponents. During this part of the engagement the fourth ship in the French order, the ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... their exclusive control of taxation and legislation was not inconsistent with Imperial Union, but essential to it. Grattan and his Irish friends, ignorant of the true solution, honestly thought, in the intoxication of the moment, that they had solved the problem so disastrously bungled for America. The facts of ethnology and geography seemed to have been recognized. Ireland and England, united by a Crown which both reverenced, stood together, like Britain and the Dominions of to-day, as sister nations, ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... for it. I was warned against you before I ever saw you; and, so, I tried to play your own game from the start." (I hope I had the grace to blush; I think I had.) "But the other night, somehow, the game got too fast for me—and I—well, I bungled. But whether you believe me or not, Major Dalberg, I want to say, as a solace to myself, at least, that you are the only man ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... her satisfaction slumped abruptly into perturbation. Tom was leaning back against the corral rails, with his arms folded—and just why must he lift his eyebrows and smile like Lance? She was going to hand him the bag, but her fingers bungled and she dropped it in the six-inch dust ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... Horror was first made popular by Poe, and he has had almost no successful imitators. It is unhealthy and morbid, full of a terrible charm if well done, but tawdry and disgusting if bungled. It requires a daring imagination, a full and facile vocabulary, and a keen sense of the ludicrous to hold these two in check. The plot is used only to give the setting to the story. Most any of Poe's tales would serve as ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... has only just reached me in a roundabout way. She had been ailing for some time. They suspected drains, and had workmen in, with assurance that all had been put right. Since H.'s death the drains have again been examined, and it was found that the men who came before so bungled and scamped their work that an abominable state of things was made much worse."—Those fellows will shout nobly for the Empire one of these days!—"I never saw her, but she spoke of me just before the ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... But she bungled a bit there, for Mason lifted his head and blinked dazedly at her for a moment, recognized her ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... say, one never really knows one's ground, and one may make mistakes occasionally. But then one's mistakes sometimes turn out assets in the long-run: if we had never bungled away our American colonies we might never have had the boy from the States to teach us how to wear our hair and cut our clothes, and we must get our ideas from somewhere, I suppose. Even the Hooligan was probably invented in China centuries before we thought of him. England must wake ...
— Reginald • Saki
... chagrin did Karl and Caspar behold the spectacle of the bearcoot's departure; and for a while they were under the impression that Ossaroo had bungled the business with which he ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... game in his hands and have bungled it! To have been surprised by that simple strategy, taken off his guard by a feigned collapse! The wily old Turk for all his champagne had ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... "Mar bungled it from start to finish. He had the game in his own hands and dribbled away his chances like a ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... for which he played was so great! Like a man who has put his last dollar upon the hazard, he was ready to snatch his gold from the boards. The whole thing seemed weakly tenuous at dress-rehearsal, and Royleston, half-drunk as usual, persistently bungled his lines. The children in the second act squeaked like nervous poll-parrots, and even Helen's sunny brow was darkened by a frown as her leading man stumbled along to a ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... a—female, much taller than he, and as stalwart as dear woman can be; an especially common-looking person, bungled as to her dress, which was tawdry-fine, unseasonable for the place as well as time, inappropriate to herself, inharmonious in its composition, and every way most vilely put on; a clumsy and, as I presently perceived, a loud person, whose face, still showing traces of the coarse ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... the diff'rence yere whar the ground is soft, Cap," he said, pointing to some tracks plainer than the others. "This yere hoss had a rider, but the rest of 'em was led; thet's why they've bungled up ther trail so. An' it wa'n't ther same bunch thet went back east what come from thar—see thet split hoof! thar ain't no split hoof p'inting ther other way—but yere is the mark of the critter thet puts her foot down so fur outside thet we've been a trailin' from Sheridan, an' she's p'inting ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... probable that she would allow the matter to end where it stood. Even if she were willing, it was more than certain that Jusseret had not entered into the undertaking without some sufficient end in view. Having entered it, he would not relinquish it because the first attempt had been bungled. ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... Paul bungled that affair of his," Mayenne went on at his own pace. "It might have been a blunder to kill you; it had certainly been a pity. Though we Lorraines have two murders to avenge, I have changed my ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... Regular amphitheater of mountains. Reminds one of the Psalmist's description of Jerusalem." Darting here and there, trying to get snap-shots, were two "kodak fiends," two city girls who pointed the thing at you, bungled over it, reset it, pressed the button, and giggled as they flew off. They fairly bubbled over with delight as they saw Job, and debated how much to offer to get him to sit for a scene of rustic simplicity out ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher |
