"Flounder" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of tombs and chapels to see," continued Jim, "with more than an average crop of historical legends concerning them; and the vergers have all the characteristics of that class: once upset them in their parrot-like description, and they flounder about in most comical manner. The last time I was here they showed me the tomb of St. Gengulphus, with an effigy of that eminent clergyman—considerably damaged about the nose—in stone, on the top. I appealed to the verger gravely to know if it ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... what you are saying! This is really the first, last and only rule. If you "stop" you can't chatter or expound or flounder ceaselessly, and if you think, you will find a topic and a manner of presenting your topic so that your neighbor will be ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... that is what I showed to friends who were even more surprised than I by these ingenious tactics. The egg hanging from the ceiling, at a distance from the provisions, has naught to fear from the caterpillars, which flounder about below. The new-hatched larva, whose suspensory cord is lengthened by the sheath of the egg, reaches the game and takes a first cautious bite at it. If there be danger, it climbs back to the ceiling by retreating inside the scabbard. This ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... when it was that she brought him to the point, but the widow had netted him so close that he didn't even try to flounder. ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... in. There was no lack of ammunition aboard the Seamew, and there seemed to be no lack of porpoises anxious to serve as moving targets. And, indeed, Mart soon found that he need spend no worry over leaving wounded fish to flounder ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney
... mother," said Priscilla gently; and this was strictly true, for the deceased Grand Duchess had also been Priscilla. Then a feeling came over her that she was getting into those depths where persons with secrets begin to flounder as a preliminary to letting them out, and seized with panic she ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... communication trench. But it is always unpleasant to step off the duck-boards in wet weather. Seeing that the enemy may have fixed rifles trained on you at any bend of the trench, it is unwise to carry a light; and in a dark night and an unaccustomed trench you are almost sure to flounder. ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... Longstreet began to flounder and half-way through his recital bogged down helplessly. He had met Sanchia Murray, had gone with her to the Montezuma House, had ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... very pleasant till we struck Millbank sound There we were hit with a heavy sea on our starboard-beam. The old ship would leap almost out of the ocean and then fall back like a wounded duck. she would flounder, pitch, rool and dive come to the surface and wipe off the brine slick as a mole. I felt a little disturbed in the locality of my abdomen, also my appetite failed me for a few days; I was standing one morning on deck by the hand rail just leaning ...
— Black Beaver - The Trapper • James Campbell Lewis
... tub and walls Dazzle the air. I enter then her room And stand against the closed door, do not pry Upon her in the bath. Give her the chance To fly me, fight me standing face to face. I hear her flounder in the water, hear Hands slap and slip with water breast and arms; Hear little sighs and shudders and the roughness Of crash towels on her back, when in a minute She stands with back toward me in the doorway, A sea-shell glory, pink and white to hair Sun-lit, a lily crowned with powdered ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... Violette had no cause to fear! Amedee received his degree on the same day with his friend Maurice, and both passed honorably. A little old man with a head like a baboon—the scientific examiner—tried to make Amedee flounder on the subject of nitrogen, but he passed all the same. One can hope ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... reminiscences of the gay days of his youth stirred Hoccleve's muse to unwonted vivacity. In the London Lick-penny Lydgate, if Lydgate's it be, wrote humorous satire with success. Skelton himself, though in his (much too respectfully spoken of) play Magnificence he could flounder with the worst of his predecessors, in his light and railing rhymes was nimble enough, and ranged easily from vigorous invective of Wolsey to pretty panegyrics of fair ladies. Now and again also these good souls ceased their search for polysyllables, ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... (oscillation) 314. restlessness &x. adj. fidgets, disquiet; disquietude, inquietude; unrest; agitation &c. 315. moon, Proteus, chameleon, quicksilver, shifting sands, weathercock, harlequin, Cynthia of the minute, April showers[obs3]; wheel of Fortune; transientness &c. 111[obs3]. V. fluctuate, vary, waver, flounder, flicker, flitter, flit, flutter, shift, shuffle, shake, totter, tremble, vacillate, wamble[obs3], turn and turn about, ring the changes; sway to and fro, shift to and fro; change and change about; waffle, blow ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... floundering and wounding and suffering, out of the breeding darknesses of Time, that will presently crush and consume him again. Why not flounder with the rest, why not eat, drink, fight, scream, weep and pray, forget Hugh, stop brooding upon Hugh, banish all these priggish dreams of "The Better Government of the World," and turn to the brighter aspects, ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... quantity of fat it contains, fish may be divided into two classes: (a) dry, or lean fish, and (b) oily fish. Cod, haddock, smelt, flounder, perch, bass, brook trout, and pike are dry, or lean fish. Salmon, shad, mackerel, herring, eel, halibut, lake trout, and white fish are oily fish. (This latter group contains from 5 to 10 ...
— School and Home Cooking • Carlotta C. Greer
... sperm whale every now and then rose between us and the islands, and spouted up a high double jet into the air, like a blast of steam, and then, with a heavy flounder of his broad tail, slowly sank again; and a boat here and there glided athwart the scene, and a sleepy sail arose with a slow motion and a fitful rattle, and a greasy cheep, on the mast of some vessel, getting all ready to weigh, while ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... pedantic in style and execution. They startle and confound the understanding of the reader by the remoteness and obscurity of their illustrations; they soothe the ear by the monotony of the same everlasting round of circuitous metaphors. They are the mock-school in poetry and prose. They flounder about between fustian in expression and bathos in sentiment. They tantalise the fancy, but never reach the head nor touch the heart. Their Temple of Fame is like a shadowy structure raised by Dulness to Vanity, or like Cowper's description ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... should be a bit afraid it meant that I'd walked in myself, and hadn't heeded His warnings. Sometimes, I think, when folks do that, He leaves them to flounder awhile before He ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... cowslips for Betty, and the stout boy thought he could do the same. Two or three heavy jumps landed him, not among the bulrushes as he had hoped, but in a pool of muddy water where he sank up to his middle with alarming rapidity. Much scared, he tried to wade out, but could only flounder to a tussock of grass and cling there while he endeavored to kick his legs free. He got them out, but struggled in vain to coil them up or to hoist his heavy body upon the very small island in this sea of mud. Down they splashed again, and Sam gave a dismal groan as he thought ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... come out here to fish or to talk?" Rick asked. They were anchored a few hundred yards off the reef tip and had been for almost an hour. In that time Cap'n Mike had made a good haul of four blacks, one flounder and a porgy. Rick and Scotty ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine
... Atlantic and Mediterranean, I was unable to observe miralets, triggerfish, puffers, seahorses, jewelfish, trumpetfish, blennies, gray mullet, wrasse, smelt, flying fish, anchovies, sea bream, porgies, garfish, or any of the chief representatives of the order Pleuronecta, such as sole, flounder, plaice, dab, and brill, simply because of the dizzying speed with which the Nautilus hustled through ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... to help in the entertainment of the company; but, for my part, I throw myself upon your mercy. I wouldn't, for the world, hint that we are more solid than the girls, but 'tis very certain that we are more lumbering. If I were to begin a tale, I'd flounder through it, like a whale with a harpoon in its body; while any of the girls, even down to little Anna, would glide along, like a graceful, snow-white swan upon a silver lake—happy in her element, and giving pleasure to all who witnessed her ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... there's fishing on the seaside. I used to catch flat fish sometimes, with a long string line, it was like swimming a kite. If you go out in a surf boat, take care it does not "flounder" and get "squamped," as some people say, instead ...
— Neighbor Nelly Socks - Being the Sixth and Last Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... stock, and at least two purely automatic social speeches of this sort, no man needs to flounder altogether hopelessly for words in any ordinary emergency of life. Thus with no more mental interruption than the two-minute break in time, the Senior Surgeon then resumed ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... with the effort to keep a certain distance behind those they were pursuing, the scouts pressed on. Jimmy seemed to have a harder time than any of the others, but then that was nearly always the way; for if there was any hole to flounder into, or thorny thicket to get stuck in, Jimmy could be depended on to do his share of the adventure. Not that he purposely chose to get mixed up in all these skirmishes with unpleasant things; but he was one of those unlucky chaps whose ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... us into the bog and had done fairly well at first, but when he neared us he too sank to his belly and could only flounder about. We were in this predicament when Du-seen and his followers approached the edge of the horrible swamp. I saw that Al-tan was with him and many other Kro-lu warriors. The alliance against Jor the chief ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... superior's throat is hoarse with raving. He has a clear and powerful voice, which often serves him in good stead. The congregation has a knack of getting out of time and tune when the melody is unfamiliar; this, in turn, distracts the choir, who flounder hopelessly, until the schoolmaster drags them back by putting full steam on the harmonium and singing at the top of his voice. Every Sunday afternoon, at least, he was obliged to display his vocal prowess in this manner. After every one of ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... arranged now," he assured his hostess. But this did not satisfy Miss Warren, who, with apparent innocence, questioned the two men until Papa La Branche began to bog and flounder in his explanations. Fortunately for the men, she was diverted for the moment by discovering that the table ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... green bath in harmonious curves, now turning his black glistening back to me, now exhibiting his fair white chest, in every movement active and graceful, turned out to be our old homely friend the flounder, whom we have all gobbled up out of his bath of water souchy at Greenwich, without having the slightest idea that he ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... For a few moments the boats would float, plunging the men beyond their depths. They would swim and flounder perhaps a boat's length, clinging to the gunwale, before the boat would once more run aground. Again they would drag their clumsy burden a hundred yards over sand that sucked hungrily at their sodden boots. This passed, ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... an ax would crack one of the glass helmets. Then the denuded Quabo would flounder convulsively in the air till it drowned. But there were all too few of these individual victories. The main body of the Quabos, rank on rank, dragging their water-hose behind them, came on with the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... not turn and come back. At the highest point of the hill she stood as if transfixed, a slim little silhouette against the darkening sky, her hands clasped in amazement. Suddenly she turned and came tearing down the hill, floundering through sand, falling and picking herself up, only to flounder and fall again, finally rolling down the last few yards ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... plaguy rough," continued the Clockmaker, "that he'd been the better, if it had been hammered and mauled down smoother. I'd a levelled him as flat as a flounder." ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... lying beside him. Canute helped him put it on and gently wrapped his head in his big muffler. Then he picked him up and carried him out and placed him in his buggy. As he tucked the buffalo robes around him he said: "Your horse is old, he might flounder or lose his way in this ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... colony always sails under the lee of its mother. Talk does it all, friend Harris. Talk, talk, talk; a man can talk himself into a fever, or set a ship's company by the ears. He can talk a cherry into a peach, or a flounder into a whale. Now here is the whole of this long coast of America, and all her rivers, and lakes, and brooks, swarming with such treasures as any man might fatten on, and yet his Majesty's servants, who come among us, talk of their turbots, and their ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... prize by his genius or by his good fortune. But what is the chance of success or failure; of obtaining popularity, or of holding it, when achieved? One man goes over the ice, which bears him, and a score who follow flounder in. In fine, Mr. Pendennis's was an exceptional case, and applies to himself only: and I assert solemnly, and will to the last maintain, that it is one thing to write a novel, and another ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... said Vavasor respectfully, "that any two persons in the concert-room can be as much unlike each other as that flounder shuddering along the sandy bottom, and that yard of eel sliding through the water like ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... his soul. Carl would walk the floor with his hands in his pockets when kindred spirits—especially students who had gone through the mill, and as seniors or graduates looked back outraged at certain courses they had had to flounder through—brought up the subject of Economics ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... took some time!" said the child. "And afterward I fished a little, but I didn't catch anything, 'cept an old flounder, and he winked at me, so I put him back. And then I thought a long time—oh! a very long time, sitting like Patience on the doorstep. And suddenly, Daddy Captain, I thought about those boxes of clothes, and how you said they would be mine when I was big. And I measured myself against the doorpost, ...
— Captain January • Laura E. Richards
... a third reason that influenced the young navigators in deciding to take the longer course across the Atlantic. This concerned the fogs such as can always be met with off the Newfoundland Banks, and which are often so dense that vessels flounder through them for several ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... Government appears to Flounder sadly in the mud-banks of this fishery question, still there is some hope that coercive measures may yet be taken for restraining the Dominion fishermen from having every thing on their own hook. Rumor has it that the monitor Miantonomah, Captain SCHUFELDT, is awaiting orders ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various
... well to lose your way; but in case this unpleasant luck befall you, set systematically to work to find it. Throw terror to the idiots who always flutter and flounder, and so go wrong inevitably. Galton the Plucky says,—and he has as much cool wisdom to impart as a traveller needs,—when you make the unlively discovery that you are lost, ask yourself the three ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... were. At length, we got on a polygonum flat of great size, in the soil of which our horses absolutely sunk up to the shoulder at every step. I never rode over such a piece of ground in my life, but we managed to flounder through it, until at length we got on the somewhat firmer but still heavy plain. It was very clear, however, that our horses would not go a day's journey over such ground. It looked exactly as I have described it—an immense concavity, with numerous small channels running down ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... a little fish, however, called a sand dab—he is a tiny, flounder-shaped titbit hailing from deep water; and for eating purposes he is probably the best fish that swims—better even than the pompano of the Gulf—and when you say that you are saying about all there is to be said for a fish. And the big crabs of the Pacific side are the hereditary princes ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... bill with it," said Frank, "and very good-natured he was to take the monster off my hands; it had already hugged two soldiers and one groom into the shape of a flounder. I tell you what," resumed Frank, after a short pause, "I have a great mind even now to tell my father ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... say, it still kept its feet; but, now seemingly overcome by surprise, and knowing the advantage its pursuers would have over it upon the slippery ice, it began to plunge and flounder, and once or twice came to its knees. The hungry pursuers appeared to recognise their advantage at once, for their howling opened with a fresh burst, and they quickened their pace. Their sharp claws enabled them ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... Menhaden Spanish Mackerel Pompano Bluefish Crappie Calico Bass Rock Bass Sunfish Small-mouth Black Bass Large-mouth Black Bass Wall-eyed Pike Weakfish Red Drum Kingfish Tautog Rosefish Tomcod Haddock Ling Cusk Summer Flounder Flatfish Muscallonge Northern Muscallonge Striped Mullet Common Mackerel Bonito Sauger Yellow Perch White Bass Striped Bass White Perch Sea Bass Scup Spotted Weakfish Croaker Bergall Spadefish Whiting Cod Burbot Hake Halibut Sand ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... high-velocity bullet into the tree behind which Quintana stood; but before he could fire again Quintana's shot in reply came ripping through the juniper and tore a ghastly hole in the calf of his left leg, striking a blow that knocked young Hastings flat and paralysed as a dead flounder. ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... Men go to bed betimes who know that a bugle will sound the reveille at 5.30 in the morning. The end of the entertainment is planned to allow time for a final cup of tea or a glass of Horlick's Malted Milk before we go out to flounder through the mud ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... reared, backed away into the ditch, collapsed there on his quarters, and recovered himself with the grunt and flounder of a hippopotamus emerging ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... the Marechal's own Cabinet; sat there, an hour, talking to the Marechal [little admiring the Marechal's talk, as we shall find], still insisting on the incognito,"—to which Broglio, put out in his high paces by this sudden thing, and apt to flounder, as I have heard, was not polite enough to conform altogether. "What shall I do, in this sudden case?" poor Broglio is thinking to himself: "must write to Court; perhaps try to detain—?" Friedrioh's chief thought naturally is, One cannot be away ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... As find our common nature—overmuch Despised because restricted and unfit To bear the burthen they impose on it— Cling when they would discard it; craving strength To leap from the allotted world, at length They do leap,—flounder on without a term, Each a god's germ, doomed to remain a germ In unexpanded ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... the matchis jalled an' suvved kettenescrus 'dree the panni. And yeck penned as yuv was a boro mush, an' the waver rakkered ajaw sa yuv was a borodiro mush, and sar pookered sigan ket'nus how lengis were borodirer mushis. Adoi the flounder shelled avree for his meriben "Mandy's the krallis of you sar!" an' he shelled so surrelo he kaired his mui bongo, all o' yeck rikkorus. So to akovo divvus acai he's penned the Krallis o' the Matchis, and rikkers his mui bongo sar ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... a tuneful tongue, Such happy intonation, Wherever he sat down and sung He left a small plantation; Whenever in a lonely grove He set up his forlorn pipes, The gouty oak began to move And flounder into hornpipes." ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... head. "It's a awful hard sayin', Mr. Gael. It's awful hard to say you had ought to be somethin' a person can't manage for themselves. I mean—" poor Joan, the inarticulate, floundered, but he left her, rather cruelly, to flounder out. "I mean, that's an awful hard sayin' fer a homely ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... drifting wilderness nearly blinded her, the deep snow was unutterably fatiguing. There was but one thing in her favor—the night, for February, was mild. She was all in a glow of warmth, but what if she should get lost and flounder about here until morning? And what would papa ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... to flounder, panting so that the swift rise and fall of her breast was an outward token of inward emotion. Steve Packard stared and flushed hotly and began to feel his own anger ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... catches a horse and rides him far away. Then, too often, his owner blames him for the delay, and for a time gives him only half-feed to "teach him not to fool along." Generally the return horse must also be a good snow horse, able to flounder and willing to make his way through deep drifts. He may be thirsty on a warm day, but he must go all the way home before having a drink. Often, in winter, he is turned loose at night on some bleak height to go back over a lonely trail, a task which he does not like. Horses, like most animals and ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... mood, she left the burden of the conversation to him. He might flounder, or be completely stalled, as often as he pleased; it was no part of ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... remedy. There are other cases in which men find by experience that it helps them to be more honest and candid with themselves, with GOD, and with the Church, if they go to confession from time to time as a piece of self-discipline and a needed spiritual tonic. Yet others discover that they flounder less in spiritual things, and that their religious life is deepened and made stronger, if they place themselves for a time under wise direction. Systematic direction, of course, has obvious dangers. It may tend to destroy independence of character. ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... was committed. As when he wrote poetry the grappling-hooks of rhyme dragged him into statements he had not dreamed of at the start and was afraid of at the finish—so now he stumbled into a proposal he could not clamber out of. He must flounder through. ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... to hurry over our little incidents: how the wagon couldn't go on by way of the shore, and had to flounder back over the rocks, and crawl out of the canon to the upper road; how Kitty and I set out vain-gloriously to walk to Broadlands by the river-trail, and Harshaw set out to walk with us; and how Kitty made it ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... going to pieces alongside one of the ruined wharves. We looked down the hatchway into the hold, and could see the flounders and sculpin swimming about lazily, and once in a while a little pollock scooted down among them impertinently and then disappeared. "There is that same big flounder that we saw day before yesterday," said I. "I know him because one of his fins is half gone. I don't believe he can get out, for the hole in the side of the schooner isn't very wide, and it is higher up than flounders ever swim. Perhaps ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... Beautiful, fresh sand-dabs, but an hour or two out of the water, were five cents a pound, while sea bass, fresh cod, mackerel, and similar fish went at the same price. Small fish, or white bait, went by quantity, ten cents securing about half a gallon. Smelt, herring, flounder, sole, all went at equally low prices, and as each buyer secured his allotment he went hurrying off through the mist, as silently as the floating gulls. When these were all supplied the rest of the fish and crabs were taken up to the ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords
... era of modern scientific discovery, with all its fruitful new generalizations, the still more highly generalized laws of epistemology and of the spiritual constitution of man might well baffle the physicist and lead his intellect to "flounder.'' It is fundamentally necessary, in order to avoid such floundering, that the "knowledge'' of things sensible should be kept distinct from the "knowledge'' of things spiritual; yet in practice they are constantly confused. When the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... houses were, generally speaking, very sensibly contrived,—roomy, airy, and comfortable; but in their water-arrangements they had little mercy on womankind. The well was out in the yard; and in winter one must flounder through snow and bring up the ice-bound bucket, before one could fill the tea-kettle for breakfast. For a sovereign princess of the republic this was hardly respectful or respectable. Wells have come somewhat nearer in modern times; but the idea of a constant supply of fresh water ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... it, she tried at first to tell me, and then, seeing me flounder, asked for more information about ours. She soon found that we had many, that they varied widely, but had some points in common. A clear methodical luminous mind had my Ellador, not only reasonable, ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... thin third day; Swearing and supperless the hero sate, Blasphem'd his gods, the dice, and damn'd his fate; Then gnaw'd his pen, then dasht it on the ground, Sinking from thought to thought, a vast profound! Plung'd for his sense, but found no bottom there, Yet wrote and flounder'd on in mere despair. Round him much embryo, much abortion lay, Much future ode, and abdicated play; Nonsense precipitate, like running lead, That slipt through cracks and zigzags of the head; All that on Folly Frenzy could beget, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... the smoke the deed conceals, Bertram his ready charger wheels; But flounder'd on the pavement-floor The steed, and down the rider bore, And, bursting in the headlong sway. The faithless saddle-girths gave way. 'Twas while he toil'd him to be freed. And with the rein to raise the steed. That from ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... Henry Hudson landed here, and many another Dutchman has been 'landed' and made regrettable discoveries right on this same spot. It has a bathing beach where the gals show what they've got and fat men flounder and cavort far beyond their capacities. Up from the beach is the midway proper—a carnival or street fair, with bandstands and dance platforms, peep shows, free shows, and legits. At the proper season these ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... his mount to do the same thing; but to make it absolutely certain that no unwise flounder on the part of Domino might betray them, he sat upon the horse's head, soothing him by little pats on his ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... tunnel underneath his bed, And left him running, grumbling, over head; Had scratch'd a track out, like a grubbing mole, Through a long, dark, and damp and dirty hole— Like rats in sewers, had flounder'd through the mud, Instead of sailing, duck-like, o'er the flood; But bubbling springs chok'd up the project deep, And trickling waters ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... thicket. MacRae did not try to follow. He did not even move. He looked after her a minute. Then he sat down on the log again and stared at the steady march of the swells. There was a sense of finality in this thing which made him flounder desperately. Still, he assured himself, it had to be. And if it had to be that way it was better to have it so understood. Betty would never look at him again with that disturbing message in her eyes. He would not be troubled by a futile longing. But it hurt. He had never ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... cavalcade under the command of Van Braam, and furnished him with money for expenses; then disencumbering himself of all superfluous clothing, buckling himself up in a watch-coat, strapping his pack on his shoulders, containing his papers and provisions, and taking gun in hand, he left the horses to flounder on, and struck manfully ahead, accompanied only by Mr. Gist, who had equipped himself ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... "Give me a flounder, Johnny?" said a little girl of eleven, dressed in coarse and ragged garments, as she stooped down and looked into the basket of the dirty young fisherman, who sat with his legs hanging over the edge of ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
... prevent delay, and struggled through the thick matted seaweed to the boat. The water was deeper than he expected, and when he came to the boat he needed the aid of the boatmen to climb over the gunwale. Instead of giving him this aid the rascals allowed him to flounder there, and kept looking to the shore, where the constable had by this time appeared with his musket. The moment he showed himself, the three boatmen cried out together, 'We surrender!' and invited him on board; where he instantly took up a hatchet—no ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... flounder (Pleuronectes flesus), the only flat-fish which ascends British rivers. It is common a long way up such rivers as the Severn, far above tidal influence, and it will take almost any flesh-bait used on the bottom. A flounder of 1 lb is, in a river, a large one, but ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... have already repudiated, and only do not recognise now, because they have so inadequately re-expressed it. We shall see that their system has no motive power at all in it, or that its motive power is simply the theistic faith they rejected, now tied up in a sack and left to flounder instead of walking upright. We shall see that their system is either nothing, or that it is a mutilated reproduction of the very thing it professes to be superseding. Once set it upon its own professed foundations, and the entire quasi-religious structure, with its visionary hopes, ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... what does Jeremiah do but just walk plump over the edge. I had all but got to him, by good luck, and of course I went straight for him and caught him before he sank. I induced him not to kick and flounder, and got him inside a life-belt they threw from the pier, and then I settled to leave him alone and swim to the steps, because you've no idea how I felt my clothes, and it would have been all right, only a horrible heavy petticoat got loose and demoralised ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... seem to think this funny, nor did Mrs. Doane, but the father was chuckling to himself as they sat down to their baked flounder. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Diston persuaded Dean Drone to come, and as soon as Mr. Smith and Alphonse saw him they landed him with a fried flounder that even the ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... dry the sensation he had begun to taste. He would do it, moreover—that would be the refinement of his art—not only without the betraying anxiety of a single question, but just even by seeing her flounder (since she must, in a vagueness deeply disconcerting to her) as to her real effect on him. She was distinctly floundering by the time he had brought her—it had taken ten minutes—down to a consciousness of ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... to educate all the most promising stocks of the nation out of existence. But now what do we owe to her in the matter of providing the right kind of intellectual, moral, spiritual, psychical environment? It is a pity to flounder with so many adjectives, but nearly all the available ones are forsworn and fail to express my meaning. Let us, however, speak of the spiritual environment, seeking to free that word from all its lamentable associations of superstition and cant, and to associate it rather ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... dead as in life they slept, warriors and princes of high renown. A pleasant land it is in sooth of murmuring waters, fishful streams where sport the gurnard, the plaice, the roach, the halibut, the gibbed haddock, the grilse, the dab, the brill, the flounder, the pollock, the mixed coarse fish generally and other denizens of the aqueous kingdom too numerous to be enumerated. In the mild breezes of the west and of the east the lofty trees wave in different directions their firstclass foliage, the wafty sycamore, the Lebanonian cedar, the exalted planetree, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... kick and flounder—but you leave him to ask what you want, ma'am; don't mention this [He puts the deed back into his pocket]. The Centry's no mortal good to him if he's not going to put up works; I should say he'd be glad to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... whole staff, and not leave us Mr. Cecil Walpole, or any other like incapacity, behind him, as a director of the Poor-Law Board, or inspector-general of gaols, or deputy-assistant-secretary anywhere, and we assent freely to the change that sends this man to the East and leaves us here to flounder on with such aids to our mistakes as a Liberal Government can safely afford ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... the heaven-born inventor would have put in motion for the capture of Miltiades, but just then he stepped into one of his own extraordinary traps, set for the turkey of course, and, with one foot held fast, began to flounder about with ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... climbed slowly over snow; once or twice we had to flounder through drifts, and once a brief bitter snowstorm blotted out sight for twenty minutes, while we hugged each other on the ledge, clinging wildly against wind ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... came over with a rush as he neared the bank, for suddenly from a reed-bed above them there was a wallow and a flounder, with a tremendous disturbance in the water, as something shot down towards the ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... to drive him away with the whip; but he paid no heed to the stinging lash, and the man had not the heart to strike harder. Dave refused to run quietly on the trail behind the sled, where the going was easy, but continued to flounder alongside in the soft snow, where the going was most difficult, till exhausted. Then he fell, and lay where he fell, howling lugubriously as the long train of sleds ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... dawn—has not yet performed its morning office upon my limbs: and this wakeful brute (one would think he was guarding the golden fleece) starts crowing before night has fairly begun. But he shall pay for it.—Yes; only wait till daylight comes, and my stick shall avenge me; I am not going to flounder about after ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... 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 exist—why, he becomes as unmanageable as any other maniac when a frenzy is upon ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... is given for a combat a l'outrance,' said Henry; but, as they were about to flounder back on their big farm-horses, he raised his voice to a thundering sound: 'Solely on this condition, that he who slays his neighbour, be he Trenton or Kitson, shall hang for the ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... on golf or racing, on shooting, fishing, and the gymkhana. Or, if you wish to divert it, you must ask him definite questions about matters of fact. Probably you will get precise and intelligent replies. But if you put a general question he will flounder resentfully; and if you generalise yourself you will see him dismissing you as a windbag. Of the religion, the politics, the manners and customs of the country in which he lives he will know and care nothing, except so far as they may touch his affairs. He will never, if he can help ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... good for a score of years yet," jovially remarked Major Hawke, as he gazed at the well-preserved outer man of his uneasy entertainer. "The harpoon is deeply fixed in the old whale," mused Hawke, as he followed Hugh Johnstone. "He begins to flounder now." ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... the way it had shaped during dinner, and Tommy would have acted wisely had he now gone out to cool his head. "If you moved me?" she repeated interrogatively; but, with the best intentions, he continued to flounder. ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... Frying.—Brook trout, black bass, cod steaks, flounder fillet, perch, pickerel, pompano, smelts, whitefish ...
— Foods That Will Win The War And How To Cook Them (1918) • C. Houston Goudiss and Alberta M. Goudiss
... him, and he is uneasy under it, and what I dread is that in making attempts to set himself right, and to clear his character with a party who will never forgive him for what he has done, and to whom whatever he says will be words cast to the winds, he will flounder, and say something which will elicit from Lord Grey some declaration that may make matters worse than ever. What I hope and trust is that the Government and our people will confine themselves to civil generalities, and pledge themselves de part et d'autre to nothing, and that they ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... seems to need a little stir and amusement. I think, perhaps, after all, the most remarkable being exhibited in the reptile house is Tyrrell. I don't think much of the Indian snake-charmers now. See a cobra raise its head and flatten out its neck till it looks like a demoniac flounder set on end; keep in mind that a bite means death in a few minutes; presently you will feel yourself possessed with a certain respect for a snake-charmer who tootles on a flute while the thing crawls about him. But Tyrrell comes along, without a flute—without ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... bay, and Murguia had had his steamer built of light draft especially, to profit by any outlet offering least danger from the vigilant patrol outside. The skipper had already chosen his course. Because of the gale, he calculated that the blockaders would get a considerable offing, lest they flounder mid the shoal waters inshore. He knew too, even if it were not so dark, that a long, foamy line of surf curtained the bay from any watchful eye on the open sea. By the time she reached the beach channels, La Luz had full speed on. Then, knifing the higher and higher waves, she ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle |
