fool mistake

After Koretz made his own “fool mistake” in 1908, investing in a bogus land deal in Panama, he came up with a “big idea” about that faraway country’s Bayano region, and then bigger ideas after that, until his syndicate had 5,000 employees, plans for a pipeline spanning Panama, orders for a dozen tankers to transport oil to the States and increasingly generous buyout offers from Standard Oil — each declined in turn, or so Koretz said.

"I fear me I've done made a fool mistake an' I reckon I'll say farewell ter you-all, now."

Take dogs, now: Why is it when one of 'em, daylight or dark, cuts the trail of a anamile, he never makes the fool mistake of back-trackin' it, but is shore to run his game the way it's movin'?

I don’t see how come we to make such a blame’ fool mistake.

I didn't do a thing," he growls; "'Twas just a fool mistake, And he'd have captured me, of course, If he had been awake.