"Bungle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lest we bungle. As the plan was mine, I take the choice of parts. There is a stain upon my conscience, M'sieu." McElroy spoke simply from his heart, as was his wont. "Throughout this long journey it has lain heavy. Though I hold against you one grave offence, yet I grieve deeply ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... to a chopper. "The conditions say with steel," he said; "only with steel, and I should bungle with a knife. You must look the other way. Now ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... wrought out,' he thought to himself. 'Even damnation may be finely imagined for me in the night. I have come so far. Now I must get clarity and courage to follow out the theme. I don't want to botch and bungle ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... flask from Mr. Andersen's hands, and see what we can draw out of that. This, you know, is a liquid which we have just made up from copper and nitric acid, whilst our other experiments were in hand; and though I am making this experiment very hastily, and may bungle a little, yet I prefer to let you see what I do rather than ...
— The Chemical History Of A Candle • Michael Faraday
... with this one," said his father, pointing to a red-and-white heifer. "She is better-natured than the others, and, as I dare say your fingers will bungle a little at first, that is ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... happens to me to-night, Lang, keep all this business to yourself until my son comes home. Tell him. No one else. We want to get to the bottom of this thing ourselves without any one else butting in to bungle ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... a horse without a bit; This backs the sluggish ass, or bullock slow; These mounted on the croup of centaur sit: Those perched on eagle, crane, or estridge, go. Some male, some female, some hermaphrodit, These drain the cup and those the bungle blow. One bore a corded ladder, one a book; One a dull file, or bar ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... Mr. Farmerson, you permit him to snub YOU, in my presence, and then accept his invitation to take a glass of champagne with you, and you don't limit yourself to one glass. You then offer this vulgar man, who made a bungle of repairing our scraper, a seat in our cab on the way home. I say nothing about his tearing my dress in getting in the cab, nor of treading on Mrs. James's expensive fan, which you knocked out of my ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith
... Billy Bungle (that was his name) was not by any means an idiot. He knew perfectly well that two and two made four, and yet, such a queer chap as he was, he would take any amount of pains ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... that an affianced lover could be expected to like. You must introduce me to Douglas Dale as your cousin, and by the name of Carton. It is sufficiently like my real name to prevent the servants knowing my name is changed, since they always bungle over the 'Carrington.' As Victor Carrington, Dale might refuse to know me, and certainly would not form any intimacy with me, and that he should form an intimacy with me is essential ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... colleges, broad enough in most places for three boats to row abreast. I expect I will take to boating furiously: I have been down the river three or four times already with some other freshmen, and it is glorious exercise; that I can see, though we bungle and cut crabs desperately ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... made him as smart as Josh, with that underlying streak of Yankee blood in his veins. Hanky was willing to try to accomplish anything that came his way; but being a bit clumsy in his actions there was always a chance that he would bungle his job, and fail to attain the ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... by her tail. "I'm going to holler awful, and make you sit up and tell me about that little boy that ate the giant, and Cinderella,—how she lived in the stove-pipe,—and that man that builded his house out of a bungle of straws: and—well, there's some more, but I don't remember 'em just now, ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... his published letters, (he then commanded a Brigade in McCall's Division), writes October 24th, "Regarding Ball's Bluff, as far as I can gather, the whole affair was a bungle from beginning to end. The worst part of the business is that at the very time our people were contending against such odds, the advance of McCall's division was only 10 miles off and had we been ordered forward instead ...
— Ball's Bluff - An Episode and its Consequences to some of us • Charles Lawrence Peirson
... might have summoned Montignac by a single stroke, and despatched him in the doorway. But now that my own position was easier, I saw that such a manoeuvre, first contemplated when only a desperate stroke seemed possible, was full of danger to mademoiselle. I might bungle it, whereupon Montignac would certainly attempt one blow against her, though it were his last. I must, therefore, use the governor to release her from her perilous situation; but first I must use ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... scratched and rather grimy hands. "A kitchen-maid's are more capable! But I can learn, and I will, however much I bungle. Now, as the universal provider, I am going out ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... and speedily too, or the resultant mischief cannot be undone. I appeal to you because you are a woman, and we men are prone to bungle in these matters." ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... folly, balourdise[obs3]; botch, botchery[obs3]; bad job, sad work. sprat sent out to catch a whale, much ado about nothing, wild-goose chase. bungler &c. 701; fool &c. 501. V. be unskillful &c. adj.; not see an inch beyond one's nose; blunder, bungle, boggle, fumble, botch, bitch, flounder, stumble, trip; hobble &c. 275; put one's foot in it; make a mess of, make hash of, make sad work of; overshoot the mark. play tricks with, play Puck, mismanage, misconduct, misdirect, misapply, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... your service, my good man," he said. "Dispatch the business quickly and do not, I pray you, bungle ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... tigers creeping Through the glade Where our prey lay sleeping, Unafraid, In some Eastern jungle? Better so. I am sure the snarling Beasts could never bungle Life as men do, darling, ...
— Songs from Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... this before? I might have known. It's the long green he's after. I wonder who told him about the two thousand." He scratched his head in sudden perplexity. "I wonder what's got into Dick Cronk. He's too blamed good, all of a sudden. That brother of his might try the job, but—no, he'd bungle it. Besides, he'd probably stick a knife into Davy if the kid made a motion." He began chewing a fresh cigar; his pop-eyes were leveled with unseeing fierceness at a certain patch in the "main top"; his brain was seeing nothing but that packet of ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... scout and notwithstanding his suspense and almost panicky apprehension, he was not going to act impulsively or thoughtlessly. He knew that if he could only present a convincing case to his superiors, they would forgive him his presumption. If he made a bungle it might go hard with him. Anyway, he could not, or would ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... head "done" by a Celestial executioner. The Coreans, on the contrary, have not developed the same skill in these difficult matters; and, what with their blunt and short swords, what with their misjudgment of distances, they bungle matters most cruelly. Of course, they are, nevertheless, supposed to kill their victims with single blows, instead of raining them down by the dozen, hacking the unfortunate creatures in a most fearful manner, and lopping off ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... step there; but it was just like me to bungle," continued Gaston. "I knew that the Jew, Henriques, often had transactions with the Marquis de Fleury. I took the diamonds to another Jew from whom I concealed my name, and suggested his taking them to Henriques, hinting that the marquis would ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... men carried off the first brigade along with it in hopeless rout. Ramses and Menna were left with only a few picked chariots of the household troops, and the whole Hittite army was coming on. But though King Ramses had made a terrible bungle of his generalship, he was at least a brave man. Leaping into his chariot, and calling to the handful of faithful soldiers to follow him, he bade Menna lash his horses and charge the advancing Hittites. ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Ancient Egypt • James Baikie
... "Bungle, my dear! You are too little to recollect—in fact, you weren't there. But the furniture was actually in the vans and on the move before the lease for Wickham Place was signed, and Emily took train with baby—who ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... many instructions,' said Kendal, returning the letter with a smile, 'I shall bungle it. Don't make me nervous. I can't promise you to succeed, and you mustn't bear me ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the noise from an opened dam, a torrent of commonplace things. He praised Scribe's works, which they had put on the stage again; he announced that the famous Guillery, his senior in the comedy line, would be execrable in this performance, and would make a bungle of it. He complained of being worried to death by the pursuit of a great lady—"You know, stage box Number Six," and showed, with a conceited gesture, a letter, tossed in among the jars of paint and pomade, which smelled of musk. Then, ascending ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... would the world be without us women?" thought Janice—and gave up all idea of running away and leaving Frank to bungle the situation. ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... cal'late. And then Bos'n turns up right in your own town, right acrost the road from you! By the big dipper! it's enough to make a feller believe that the Almighty does take a hand in straightenin' out such things, when us humans bungle 'em—it ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... devils that suggest by treasons Do botch and bungle up damnation With patches, colours, and with forms being fetch'd From glistering ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... out that she distinguished the right one, the one that should have been shown him, as blue or green or purple, and intimated that her other friend, her fellow-Olympian, as Berridge had thought of him from the first, really did too clumsily bungle matters, poor dear, with his officiousness over the red one! She went on really as if she had come for that, some such rectification, some such eagerness of reunion with dear Mr. Berridge, some talk, after all the tiresome music, of questions really urgent; while, thanks to the supreme strangeness ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... will strike the reader that I am setting out to discuss the queer, unwise love relationship and my bungle of a marriage with excessive solemnity. But to me it seems to reach out to vastly wider issues than our little personal affair. I've thought over my life. In these last few years I've tried to get at least a little wisdom out of it. And in particular I've thought over this part of my life. I'm ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... accident in the Park, the man said. The pony had swerved and thrown little Lord Elster: thrown him right under the other pony's feet, as it seemed. The servant made rather a bungle over his news, but ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... think his German friends will let him forget it. They will find it hard to forgive a bungle that leaves a first-class munition factory absolutely undamaged in the hands of their enemies. I don't envy Schenk his job of persuading them that he ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill
... R. C. burst out. "Look at him! When the leader broke I thought he was lost. I'm sick yet. Didn't you almost bungle that?" ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... for continuance and benefit of the buyers. Neither is there anything that hurteth the common sort of our artificers more than haste, and a barbarous or slavish desire to turn the penny, and, by ridding their work, to make speedy utterance of their wares: which enforceth them to bungle up and despatch many things they care not how so they be out of their hands, whereby the buyer is often sore defrauded, and findeth to his cost that haste maketh waste, according to ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... stroke. Well, there is one, and another, and another. The prominence remains, you see; the evil is as great as ever, greater, indeed. But this is not all. Look at the warp which the plate has got near the opposite edge. Where it was flat before it is now curved. A pretty bungle we have made of it! Instead of curing the original defect, we have produced a second. Had we asked an artisan practised in 'planishing,' as it is called, he would have told us that no good was to be done, but only mischief, by hitting down on the projecting part. He would have taught ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... plainly visible; that the visitor must see and be scornfully amused by it. Yet, with really extraordinary cordiality, he was holding out his right hand in salutation. Here again my awkwardness made me bungle. What he meant by his gesture I could not think. Some amusing trick, perhaps. It did not occur to me in that moment of self-abasement that he wished ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... lest Nature bungle, That in certain ways she errs: The cobra in the jungle, The crotalus in the sod, Evil and good are hers;— Murderers and torturers! Ye, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... is all familiar to her. So of any other ordinary business. Yet when it comes to teaching, anything like definite study or observation of the mode of doing it, is almost unknown! It is really no exaggeration to say that many teachers bungle in their work as egregiously as would a woman who should put yarn into a churn, and expect, after a proper amount of churning, ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... a match at Cricket was played between the gentlemen of Saffron Walden and Stanstead Abbots, for 44 guineas, when the latter were bungle beat, that is, ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... unmistakable farce, if not a disastrous break down. Even the government journals themselves, without waiting for "Scene II.," (though coming off immediately) raised a shout of condemnation of the discreditable bungle, and demanded that it should be forthwith abandoned. Considering the course ultimately taken by the government, these utterances of the government organs themselves, have a serious meaning and are of peculiar importance. The ultra-orange Evening ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... he said firmly, "we're going to move. I'll have enough to buy a young bungle-house up on the hill, even if I don't get anything from Archer. And then I'm going to make up to you for this year—see if ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... rendered 'interior.' It is all the more essential, therefore, that the worshipper shall not have his first sight of hero and room simultaneously. The room must, as it were, be an anteroom, anon converted into a presence-chamber by the hero's entry. And let not the hero be in any fear that he will bungle his entry. He has but to make it. The effect is automatic. He will stand out by merely coming in. I would but suggest that he must not, be he never so hale and hearty, bounce in. The young man must not be startled. If the mountain had come to Mahomet, it would, we may ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... of him yet," announced Phil after a bit, rising to his feet; while a look of growing concern began to come upon his face. "I was silly to let him take the risk. Ought to have known Larry would bungle it, if there was half a chance. And now, Tony, what had we better do, follow his tracks, or head straight in the direction that shot ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... same ideas through the medium of Spanish, Lawrence made such a bungle of it that Manuela, instead of expressing sympathy, began to struggle so obviously with her feelings that the poor Englishman gave up the attempt, and good-naturedly joined his companion in a little burst of laughter. They were in the midst of ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... trough all right, but I seen her,—the pretty lady,—your girl,—standing in the aisle right ahin' the c'ndct'r, jes' es I wuz pullin' the trigger knowed her right off, 'ith her eyes shinin' like two stars; an' I couldn't run no resks. I ain't never bin no bungler at my trade, but I hed to bungle this time 'cause I couldn't shoot your girl! So I turned it jes' in time an' took it mese'f. She seen how 'twas 'ith me that time at your house, an' she he'ped me git away. I sent her word I'd do the same ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... question or two about the catastrophe. "Scandalous sort of bungle," he pronounced it, being alike ignorant of the strength of the rapids, and fain, as an honest soldier of Haviland's army, to take a discrediting view of anything done by Amherst's. He ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... forbid him to refer to the matter again or even send him away altogether. And he felt he was not strong enough to risk that. No, he must know where he stood first. He must understand his position, so as not to bungle the thing. Hilliard was right. They must find out what the syndicate was doing. ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... said, "but you will have to be very careful and not overdo the matter, for she isn't the kind that is easily fooled. She's had to keep her eyes and wits sharpened, else she wouldn't be on a newspaper, so I want you to be very careful and not bungle. Make a neat ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... "There's been a bungle, and the sooner we are rid of it the better. There's a boat at ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... I turned the garment That no rent should be left behind, My eye caught an odd little bungle Of mending ...
— Separation and Service - or Thoughts on Numbers VI, VII. • James Hudson Taylor
... there watching the house," he went back to it after the moment. "I was sure the girl would come out again. 'She'll bungle it,' I said to myself. 'She'll never be able to put it through.' But time passed—and she did not come out!"—inconsistently enough that came with a ring of triumph. "And then the next day—after the wonder had grown and grown—I ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... but I know every idea I have would desert me directly I faced an audience. I'm all right with a definite part that I've got into my head, but I can't make up as I go along, and it's no use asking me. I'd only bungle and stammer, and make an utter goose of myself, and spoil the whole thing. Hallo! There's the supper ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... I'm going to up and see her, without it's hurting the will. Here! Take your hand off the bell-pull. Five thousand's waiting for you, If you'll only listen a minute, and do as I bid you do. They'll try to prove me crazy, and, if you bungle, they can; And I've only you to trust to! (O God, why ain't he a man?) There's some waste money on marbles, the same as M'Cullough tried — Marbles and mausoleums — but I call that sinful pride. There's some ship bodies for burial — we've carried 'em, soldered ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... Frederick? Has a journeyman been preparing these staves for his 'mastership,' or a stupid apprentice who only put his nose into the workshop three days ago? Pull yourself together, lad: what devil has entered into you that you are making a bungle of things like this? My good oak wood,—and this your masterpiece! Oh! you awkward, imprudent boy!" Overmastered by the torture and agony which raged within him, Frederick was unable to contain himself any longer; so, throwing the adze from him he said, "Master, ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... neither here nor there. He will commit in one meal every betise that a senllion fresh from the plow-tail is capable of, and he will continue to repeat those faults. He is as complete a heavy-footed, uncomprehending, bungle-fisted fool as any mem-sahib in the East ever took into her establishment. But he is according to law a free and independent citizen—consequently above reproof or criticism. He, and he alone, in this insane city, will wait at table (the Chinaman ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... remarked," said the monk, "I could not order my speech to propose anything of this kind to a young maid; I should so bungle that I might spoil all. You must even ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... travelled; this time with Renton in company, and Renton mad as fire. It all turned out to be a bungle by some clerk that had taken to drink and forgetfulness; but it cost us a month or two before the Government of Senor Orrego, having no case, decided to do us justice without troubling the Courts. Renton and ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Public-house Compensation Bill shall be hereafter known and alluded to as the Bung Bungle'd Bill. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 12, 1890 • Various
... with knots, by which I can measure the exact places in which the tent-pegs should be struck, for the eye is a deceitful guide in estimating squareness. (See "Squaring.") It is wonderful how men will bungle with a tent, when they are not properly ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... girl loves a man she ought to be willing to trust him over a dreadful bungle until he could straighten things out and make good again—that's true, ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... you didn't bungle," said the older man. "I never witnessed a finer—ahem! In fact, we all agree on that. My boy, you have a great future before you. You are one ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... towns, nor navigable rivers. Armies were maneuvered and victories won upon the maps in the office of the Secretary of War. Generals were selected by some inscrutable process which decreed that dull-witted, pompous incapables should bungle campaigns and ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... don't know that I had better dwell on that hypothesis at all; it's all very well to talk of facing the worst; but in a case of this kind a man's first duty is to his own nerve. Is there any answer to No. 3? Is there any possible good side to such a beastly bungle? There must be, of course, or where would be the use of this double-entry business? And—by George, I have it!" he exclaimed; "it's exactly the same as the last!" And he hastily ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of Froude's Disease be what they may, another point claims our attention. The man of the sanest and best-balanced mind is liable to bungle the simplest kinds of critical work if he does not allow them the necessary time. In these matters precipitancy is the source of innumerable errors. It is rightly said that patience is the cardinal virtue of the scholar. Do not ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... second when I entertained a wild notion of getting fractious. A fellow hates to make a bungle of the first decent trust he's had in a long time; but I was in a tight place, and I couldn't figure where I'd delay giving up beyond the length of time it would take the gentleman with the Winchester to drill me. ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... jealous of you!" sobbed Merle stormily. "I wanted us both to win! What does Muriel know about a decent game of hockey, or how to conduct a society, or run a school magazine? It's idiotic that she should be chosen. Neither she nor Iva nor Nesta has ever been at a big school. A precious bungle they'll make of their meetings. I know you'll be there—but you're so gentle you'll never stand up against them, and they'll have everything their own silly way. 'The Moorings' won't be very much changed if it's just to be run upon the same old lines. I shan't bother to try and help. I might ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... the matter with me to-day," he said under his breath. "This is the first time I ever tried to mock anybody and made such a bungle of it.... Perhaps I'm trying to sing too fast," he added. "So I'll ...
— The Tale of Bobby Bobolink - Tuck-me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... I'm not yet quite ready to spring my trap," she replied. "When the time comes, I must have assistance, but I want to get all my evidence shipshape before I call on the Secret Service to make the capture. I can't afford to bungle so important a thing, you know, and this ten dollar bill, so carelessly given the storekeeper, is going to put one powerful bit of evidence in my hands. That was a bad slip on old Cragg's part, for he has been very cautious in covering ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... Joe. Almost every evening he would sit down at his piano and start playing idly. As a rule he played dance music, popular songs from Broadway. But sometimes leaning back he would drift into other music. And though his hand would bungle and only sketch it, so to speak—in his black eyes, scowling slightly over the smoke of his cigar, would come a look which Ethel liked. But vaguely she felt that Amy did not, that it even made her uneasy. For almost invariably at such times, Amy would come behind ...
— His Second Wife • Ernest Poole
... Kitwater. "If you know where he is, you ought to be with him yourself instead of down here. You are paid to conduct the case. How do you know that your man may not bungle it, and that we may ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... dreadful poverty and sometimes starve, instead of trying to understand the causes of their misery and to find out a remedy themselves, spend all their time applauding the Practical, Sensible, Level-headed Business-men, who bungle and mismanage their affairs, and pay them huge salaries for doing so. Sir Graball D'Encloseland, for instance, was a 'Secretary of State' and was paid L5,000 a year. When he first got the job the wages ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... manage to keep him out of the weeds and land him—a silvery "Loch Leven," about three-quarters of a pound, and in excellent condition. Only two years ago he was put into the stream with five hundred others as a yearling. The next two rising fish are too much for us, and we bungle them. One sees the line, owing to our throwing too far above him, and the other is frightened out of his life by a bit of weed or grass which gets hitched on to the barb of the hook, and lands bang on to his nose. These accidents will ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... Whereas an omnipotent moving power, as it could dispatch its work in a moment, so would it always do it infallibly and irresistibly, no ineptitude and stubbornness of matter being ever able to hinder such a one, or make him bungle or fumble in anything. ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... whisper telling him to wait, and turning, he saw that the head cashier had entered the room noiselessly without his noticing it. Thorpe evidently knew what he was about, and did not intend to let the clerk bungle the matter. ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... the Marquis is sceptical. I'll admit that I'm pitiably foolish, but I don't want Mrs. Durrand to know how I've bungled her matter until the bungle is corrected." ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... a bungle of a camp but if the single occupant realized it he did not seem to care a whit for he sat serenely in the doorway of the tent so interested in a book that he did not hear Paul Nez and his young ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump
... of lightness and strength, had not the violinist's technique reached such marvellous fineness of power. For it is the accomplished artist who is fastidious as to his tools; the bungling beginner can bungle with anything. The fiddle-bow, however, affords only one example of a rule which is equally well exemplified by many humbler tools. Quarryman's peck, coachman's whip, cricket-bat, fishing-rod, trowel, all have their intimate ...
— Progress and History • Various
... joy. "Bet that old basket would hold all the other cats too. Wish I had the bunch of 'em—Spotty, and Almira, and Popocatepetl, and Bungle, and Starboard, Port, Hard-a-Lee and Main-sheet! And Almira's got four kittens of her own somewhere. And so's Popocatepetl. Whew! ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... willing," I said, before I had a chance to bungle it worse, "quite willing to exchange information on your people for the same about my own. However, I doubt that your people will find this planet congenial to an invader who ignores the natives as you ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... ear, "when that woman comes down, follow her! I'm afraid you will bungle the business, and I would not ask you to attempt it if big things were not at stake. ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... country without plan, preparation, or vocation, to make a living. They usually start to build a bungalow but seldom get further than the bungle. Don't build anything without plan. Get a comfortable house proof against cold and heat as soon as possible and, above all, well ventilated. At present the air in the country is good, because the farmers shut all the bad air up in ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... it's a wise father knows his own son. And he is not wise, you know. Are you, most reverend? No, faith, or you would never have begot me. No, faith, nor enlist me to do murder neither. For I do but bungle it, you see. And make a fool of my Lord Sunderland, God ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... the courtyard overhead; then the furious shouts of the soldiers, and, finally, the mad cries of the crowd. "Damn it—they've given us the slip." "Yes; they've crawled off like rats from a sinking ship." "Curse it all, it's only a bungle." This in the Spanish tongue, and then in the tongue of his own country Ben Aboo heard the guttural shouts of his own people: "Sidi, try the palace." "Try the apartments of his women, Sidi." "Abd er-Rahman's gone, but Ben ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... seemed somehow to have missed a trail that was to have cut the distance greatly. Billy clung breathlessly to his cramped position and waited. He hoped they wouldn't get out and try to find the way, for then some of them might see him, and he was so stiff he was sure he would bungle getting out of the way. But after a breathless moment the car started on more slowly, and finally turned down a steep rough place, scarcely a trail, into the deeper woods. For a long time they went along, ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... jerked so that you might have fancied she must send his ribs through the skin. I say it was nothing, because he performed this feat nearly every winter night, after the midnight haul, and the spectacle grew common. I never knew him bungle over a rope or make a bad slip, and it was simply a pleasure to see him steer. He never threw away an inch, and his way of stealing foot by foot was worthy of any jockey. Sometimes when I was at the wheel and running a little to leeward of another vessel, he would say, "I reckon ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... the business of his beloved Forest. His beautiful sorrel, Star, with his silver-mounted caparisons, was a familiar figure on all the trails. When a man wanted his first Special Privilege, he wrote the Supervisor. The affair was quite apt to bungle. Then California John saw that man personally. After that there was no more trouble. The countryside dug up the rest of California John's name, and conferred on him the dignity of it. John had heard it scarcely at ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... and friends, who have destroyed her chances for her. Fischer, for instance," he went on, fingering his wineglass. "I have always looked upon Oscar Fischer as a brilliant and far-seeing man. He was one of those who set themselves deliberately to win America for the Germans. A more idiotic bungle than he has made of things I could scarcely conceive. He has reproduced the diplomatic methods which have made Germany unpopular throughout the world. He has tried bullying, cajolery, and false-hood, and last of all he has plunged into crime. No German-American will henceforth ever have ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... not interfere, where even parents may not. Make your own matches, and let others make theirs; especially if you have bungled your own. One such bungle is one ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... still. I'm going to up and see her, without it's hurting the will. Here! Take your hand off the bell-pull. Five thousand's waiting for you, If you'll only listen a minute, and do as I bid you do. They'll try to prove me a loony, and, if you bungle, they can; And I've only you to trust to! (O God, why ain't he a man?) There's some waste money on marbles, the same as McCullough tried— Marbles and mausoleums—but I call that sinful pride. There's some ship bodies for burial—we've carried 'em, soldered and packed; Down in their wills they wrote ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... boostin' the Rowley proposition to Mr. Robert good and hard, almost gettin' him enthusiastic over it! I was smeared, that's all! My first stab at makin' myself useful in my new swing-chair job has been brushed aside as a beginner's bungle; and there sits Mr. Robert, prob'ly wonderin' if he hadn't made a mistake in takin' me ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... us, lad. She shall be delivered! The Lord is with us; but don't you bungle His plans!" ejaculated Father Holland for the twentieth time; and each time the French trapper looked waggishly over his shoulder ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... has seen butchery come quite too close to his own flesh! Still somewhat unnerved, he prepares himself for the task with clumsy movements and halting fingers. The master bids him hurry—Jean takes his time, he's not going to bungle the job.... ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... canny to bungle, With footsteps too cunning to swerve, They swing through the heights of the jungle, These stalwarts of infinite nerve; Blithe sailors who heed not the breezes Which play round their riggings and spars, Lithe gymnasts who live on trapezes And ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 11, 1914 • Various
... the rural, saw the head of a horse top the rise. In the saddle sat Ramon, hatless, his black hair flung back from his forehead, a gun in his hand. Waring drew a deep breath. Would Ramon bungle it by calling out, or would he have nerve enough to make an end ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... Muro is such an innocent old love," she went on, "that he did it badly. He had been told to do it by the Jesuits and he made a bungle of it. He thought that he could make a schoolgirl answer a question if she did not want to. And no one was afraid of him. He is a dear, good, old saint, and will assuredly go to Heaven. He is not a ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... boastfully to me, or been showy. Please don't imagine that. He knows where he comes in, and doesn't pretend to be anybody or anything beyond what he is. Only it seems to me there is a streak of something original in him—almost of genius. He makes me feel sure he will never bungle any chance which comes in his way. And he has time to do so much, if chances do come"—this with a note of exultation. "His life is all before him, you see. He is so beautifully ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... you are to be trusted with a job like this," said Braddle. "I did think Potter was better up in his work, I did. A pretty bungle ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... river in the night. Vauquelin was a patriot hero, who had done well at Louisbourg the year before, and who was to do well at Quebec the year after. But, of course, he was not a member of the Bigot gang. So he was set aside in favour of a parasite, who made a hopeless bungle of ...
— The Passing of New France - A Chronicle of Montcalm • William Wood
... with ammunition and all war supplies. They knew that they had invented some wonderful guns which were large enough to batter down the strongest forts in the world. They did not have very much respect for the ability of the Russian generals. They had watched them bungle badly in the Japanese war, ten years before. If once France were brought to her knees, they did not fear Russia. Then after France and Russia had been beaten, there would be plenty of time, later on, to ...
— The World War and What was Behind It - The Story of the Map of Europe • Louis P. Benezet
... Marie, uncomfortably—"well, you see, she seems to be right. I did bungle it, didn't I? It was Hartley who came and pulled us out ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... precise. He used no slang, and retained scarcely a word of his boyhood's vernacular. The only emotional expression he permitted himself was a chuckle of glee over an intellectual misstatement or a historical bungle. Novels, theaters, music possessed no ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... many ways to blind, but he was never clever at it, by making a shew of Religion, (though he cheated his wife therewith:) for he was, especially by those that dwelt near him, too well known to do that, though he would bungle at it as well as he could. But there are some that are arch villains this way; they shall to view live a whole life Religiously, and yet shall be guilty of these most horrible sins: And yet Religion in it self is never the worse, nor yet the true professors of it. ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan
... you that, given a man clear-eyed enough to see that a woman by ordinary is nourished much as he is nourished, and is subjected to every bodily infirmity which he endures and frets beneath, I do not often bungle matters. But when a fool begins to flounder about the world, dead-drunk with adoration of an immaculate woman—a monster which, as even the man's own judgment assures him, does not exist and never will ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... his labours, the tattooer could make his sitter suffer in more ways than one. He could adroitly increase the acute anguish which had, as a point of honour, to be endured without cry or complaint; or he could coolly bungle the execution of the design, or leave it unfinished, and betake himself to a more generous customer. A well-known tattooing chant deals with the subject entirely from the artist's standpoint, and ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... they are not willing to take time for thorough preparation. Half-trained lawyers stumble through their cases, and make their clients pay for experience which the law school should have given. Half-trained clergymen bungle away in the pulpit, and disgust their intelligent and cultured parishioners. Many an American youth is willing to stumble through life half prepared for his work, and then blame society because he ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... regulate life by fear, considering only the desire to remain undisturbed of those who are decayed and petrified. I do not know if I make my meaning clear. As our habit, we ignore or minimize all sex difficulties as much as we can; we hesitate and compromise and bungle over every reform because we are afraid of what may happen if we probe down to the real bottom of what needs to be done. We have neither the courage of our bodies or of our souls. This is why so often ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... general poor politicians and miserable plotters. They seldom, even in verse or fiction, manage a state plot well. Scott, at least, has completely failed in his treatment of the Popish plot in "Peveril," and they always bungle it in reality. They are either too unsuspicious or too scheming, too shallow or too profound. That mixture of transparency and craft, of simplicity and subtlety, requisite to all deep schemes, and which Poe (himself a confused compound of the genius, the simpleton, and the scoundrel) has ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... shorter than usual, chiefly because I don't stammer and bungle, and take half an hour to read twenty verses of the Bible, and also because I discarded all the endless repetitions and unmeaning phrases, which took up half the time of their unmeaning harangues. About an hour sufficed ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... his last difficulty safely removed. He could rely on Grey not to bungle that matter of roll-call. Grey had ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... loose in a vein of pure fantasy,—he ventured on the whimsical, the sprightly, the paradoxical. The poor fellow sent to interview him might as well have tried to grasp a bundle of sunbeams or a handful of quicksilver. His report turned out a frightful bungle; the wretched Bond, made clumsy, fatuous, pointless, sodden, when he had meant to show himself as witty and brilliant as possible, was completely crushed. With Joyce going for next to nothing and Bond for worse than nothing, the Art Circuit could hardly be said to shine. It paled, ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... Dick, with a look of mingled rage and astonishment. "I bungle the loading of pistols! I, that have stepped more ground and arranged more affairs than any man in the ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... come," cried the lieutenant, "don't bungle like that;" and he drew his sword. "Let ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... influenced by Mrs. Whaling's statements), and he determined on a diversion. He felt morally certain that the only "confidential" communication the veteran post commander had received from any superior in a week was the stinging rap from division headquarters anent the bungle he had made in Ray's affair, and on general principles he felt that he couldn't ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... Bungle away at it then, and bring it to me (TURNS TO GO). Oh, Life! Here I am, proud as Greek god, and yet standing debtor to this blockhead for a bone to stand on! Cursed be that mortal inter-indebtedness which will not do away with ledgers. I would be free as air; and I'm ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... well as far from yours, a pitch shot seems very often to be either inadequate or impossible. Usually it will be better to aim at going very near to the stymie with the object of getting up dead, making quite certain at the same time that you do not bungle the whole thing by hitting the other ball, or else to play to the left with much cut, so that with a little luck you may circle into the hole. Evidently the latter would be a somewhat ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... had so managed to bungle the slinging in of a small torpedo-boat on the "Vortigern", that the boat had broken the crutches in which she rested, and was herself being repaired in the dockyard under the ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... 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 opium, in moments of excitement, and HE HAD BEEN AT THE OPIUM DEN THROUGH THE NIGHT OF DECEMBER 23, for the hag tracked him from her house in town to Cloisterham on December 24, the day of ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang
... rock and watched Casey distractedly bungle his cooking. She must have had a great deal of initiative for a squaw, for she plunged straight into the subject which most nearly concerned Casey, and she was frank to the point of appalling him with her bluntness. Casey is a rather ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... savages will not make a bungle of things," the Colonel said; "I wonder who has started them upon the war-path?" Then going to the door he raised ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... Evil smiled sardonically when they noted that the light which she evoked for her pious exercise lit the hand of Moussa Isa to murder, providing opportunity. Moussa Isa weighed chances and considered. He did not want to bungle it and lose his revenge and his life too. Would he be seen if he struck now? The light fell on the very spot for the true infallible death-stroke. Should he strike now, here, in the midst of ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... it, Richard? What makes you so white and queer?" his mother asked, trying to pull on her stockings, and in her trepidation jamming her toes into the heel, and drawing her shoe over the bungle thus made at the ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... lesson he began to put his plan into execution. He set himself conscientiously to hit the notes awry, or to bungle every touch. Melchior cried out, then roared, and blows began to rain. He had a heavy ruler. At every false note he struck the boy's fingers, and at the same time shouted in his ears, so that he was like to deafen him. Jean-Christophe's ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... forms and aptitudes to whatever passes through her hands, that whether she designs for the plough, the caravan, the cart—or whatever other creature she models, be it but an asse's foal, you are sure to have the thing you wanted; and yet at the same time should so eternally bungle it as she does, in making so simple a thing as a ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... it all right. I gave Bradley very clear instructions. But, in any case," he added easily, "I'd prepared for the possible contingency that the old fool might bungle matters." ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... Stirling to Haines. He had been ordered to take two troops and arrest the unoffending visitors on their way. "The Sioux will be mad, and the Crows will be madder. What a bungle! and how like the way we manage Indian affairs!" ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... 'the vermin' by one or two hotheaded guesses of his own. But I am sure, both from the general matter of the letters, and from Squire's own bodily presence, that he did not forge them. Carlyle has made a bungle of the whole business; and is fairly twitted by the Athenaeum for talking so loud about his veneration for Cromwell, etc., and yet not stirring himself to travel a hundred miles to see and save such memorials ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... of Fardale. Hans Dunnerwust returned with a stock of tales of astounding adventures, which he managed to bungle badly in the telling. And now I suppose Barney Mulloy will take his turn. Between them they will make you out one of the most ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... indeed, had climbed the altitudes of life; the cracksman still stumbled in the valleys. If he had a ready cunning in the planning of an enterprise, he must needs bungle at the execution; and had he not been associated with George Smith, a king of scoundrels, there would be few exploits to record. And yet for the craft of housebreaker he had one solid advantage: he knew the locks and bolts of Edinburgh as he knew his primer—for had he not fashioned ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... do it nicely enough. He could pull off a hunting accident that would fool the world. Trust him not to bungle it. Next day would be the day, in the woods above Sycamore Creek. Grandfather Jonathan Forrest, the straight-laced Puritan, had died of a hunting accident. For the first time Dick doubted that accident. Well, if it hadn't been an accident, the old fellow had ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... no intention of picking out a tree for himself, as Steve suggested; at least not so early in the game. Time enough for that when he found he had made as bad a bungle of the affair as his ...
— With Trapper Jim in the North Woods • Lawrence J. Leslie
... couldn't place you at all. I saw that you recognized one of us when you came in, and that you were watching our table pretty attentively in the glass. I had a horrible suspicion for a moment that you were a Scotland Yard man, and were going to bungle the whole business by arresting Hoffman. That was why I sent you my card; I knew if you were at the Yard you'd ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges |
