"Conjecture" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... personal charm must have been in earlier life we can only conjecture from the rapturous praises bestowed on him by his friends, even during his lifetime.... And his influence was not confined to the American mind. I have watched it growing in England. I can still remember the time when even experienced ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... Jackson, and the military force also was on a much more extended scale. Why a diminution has thus been made in the means of protection and defence, when there appear to be such strong grounds for their augmentation, merely with reference to the internal state of the colony, it is no easy matter to conjecture. ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... no HANSARD of this Session; all is conjecture and tobacco-smoke. What we know is, not the least effect, except an internal trouble, was produced on the royal mind by the St.-Mary-Axe Discovery. Some Question there might well be, inarticulately as yet, of Grumkow's fidelity, ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... to all those differences I spoke of, they soon lost the common ground they had at first, and were unable to meet sanely and dispassionately. I fancy too—this is pure conjecture—that he had succeeded in driving Alima beyond her best judgment, her real conscience, and that after that her own sense of shame, the reaction of the thing, made her ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... now, and for all its terrestrial activities; but otherwise, I conceive that it is independent, that its essential existence is continuous and permanent, though its interactions with matter are discontinuous and temporary; and I conjecture that it is subject to a law of evolution—that a linear advance is open to it—whether it be in its phenomenal or ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... those researches for preliminary information concerning the Cimbri which turned out so vain. Indeed, as we drew near the lurking-places of that ancient people, all knowledge relating to them diffused itself into shadowy conjecture. The barber and the bookseller differed as to the best means of getting to the Sette Communi, and the caffetiere at whose place we took breakfast knew nothing at all of the road, except that it was up the mountains, ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... and there an oar or coil of rope: appeared, at first, to indicate that the inhabitants of these miserable cottages pursued some avocation on the river; but a glance at the shattered and useless condition of the articles thus displayed, would have led a passer-by, without much difficulty, to the conjecture that they were disposed there, rather for the preservation of appearances, than with any view to their being ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... reticence of the President elect in the matter of his cabinet has left free course to speculation and conjecture as to its composition. That he fully comprehends the importance of the subject, and that he will carefully weigh the claims of the possible candidates on the score of patriotic services, ability, and fitness for ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Defoe's pen (over two hundred pamphlets and books, most of them of considerable length, are known to be his; and it is more than probable that much of his work was anonymous and has perished, or could be only partly disinterred by laborious conjecture) he found time to engage twice in business, once as a factor in hosiery and once as a maker of tiles. In each venture he seems to have been unfortunate, and his business experience is alluded to here only because his practical knowledge of mercantile matters is evident ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... ancient tips almost overgrown and characterless, with lusty young gums flourishing amongst its scattered boulders. Waddy venerated the old Red Hand as something so ancient that its history left openings for untrammelled conjecture, and the boys associated it with not a few of the mysteries of those grand far-off ages when dragons abducted beautiful maidens and giants were quite common outside circuses. The mouth of the shaft was covered with substantial timbers, save for ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... celebration; that is, when any one was sufficiently energetic to get up and get into church in time. What happened upon those other days, when the rector was abandoned to the rows of empty pews, was still a matter of profane conjecture. Discussed in whispers, it was agreed to be a subject best left to the disclosing ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... Flora convinced that it was this unfortunate attachment, in which for a moment she had felt herself so supremely blest, that was the source of her misfortunes. But then, how had Nisida discovered the secret? This was an enigma defying conjecture; for Francisco was too honorable to reveal his love to his sister, after having so earnestly enjoined Flora herself not to ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... maintained by the curious who pressed near 'Maso; for, while they respected their guest and friend, and would rather listen to her surmises than to those of any other person, they had such a prompting desire to hear their own voices that not a minute escaped without a question, or a conjecture, both volubly and quite audibly expressed. The interjections, too, were somewhat numerous, as the guesses were crude and absurd. One said it was a vessel with despatches from Livorno, possibly with "His Eccellenza" on board; but she was reminded that Leghorn ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... dreams as divine portent. He refers to the skilled interpretations of dreams as a true divination; but adds that, like all other arts in which men have to proceed on conjecture and on artificial rules, it is ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... superstitious to the true. "Satisfied that we had a mass of Lias clay before us, we set vigorously to work, in order either to find additional characteristic fossils, or obtain data on which to form a conjecture as to the history of this out-of-the-way deposit; and our labor was not without its reward. We shall now present a brief account of the specimens we picked up. Observing a number of stones of different sizes, that had been thrown out, as they were struck, by the workman's shovel, we immediately ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... of his address, from which I gather that, owing to a superstitious dislike which the Gipsies entertain towards the Census, and the successfully cunning attempts on their part to baffle the enumerators, it is only by conjecture and guesswork that we can form any idea of the number of Bohemians in this country. The result of Mr. Smith's diligent inquiries has led him to the assumption that there are not less than 4,000 Gipsy men and women, and from 15,000 to 20,000 Gipsy and 'arab'—that is to say, tramp—children ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... questions and answers as a matter of justice, and of justice favorable to the prisoner. In the case of Mr. Hastings, the prisoner's counsel did not join your Committee in their endeavors to obtain the publicity we demanded. Their reasons we can only conjecture. But your Managers, acting for this House, were not the less bound to see that the due Parliamentary course should be pursued, even when it is most favorable to those whom they impeach. If it should answer the purposes ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... {0a} On many points Mr. Bisset agreed with Mr. Barbe in his 'Tragedy of Gowrie House,' and my replies to Mr. Barbe serve for his predecessor. But Mr. Bisset found no evidence that the King had formed a plot against Gowrie. By a modification of the contemporary conjecture of Sir William Bowes he suggested that a brawl between the King and the Master of Ruthven occurred in the turret, occasioned by an atrocious insult offered to the Master by the King. This hypothesis, for various reasons, does not deserve ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang
... not this the oddest thing in the world? No, not the oddest. The effect which you tell me was produced on you by my casual mention of an unknown girl swinging in a hammock is certainly as strange. You can conjecture how that passage in your letter of Friday startled me. Is it possible, than, that two people who have never met, and who are hundreds of miles apart, can exert a magnetic influence on each other? I have read of such psychological phenomena, but ...
— Marjorie Daw • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Ar. "Anakati-h." [This is a very plausible conjecture of the translator for the word written in the text: "'Anfakati-h" the hair between the lower lips and the chin, and then ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... temptations that human nature could furnish, it might naturally be supposed, that Delia had long since resigned her heart. But in this conjecture, however natural, the reader will find himself mistaken. She seemed as coy as Daphne, and as cold as Diana. She diverted herself indeed with the insignificant loquaciousness of Mr. Prattle, and the aukward gallantry of the Squire; but she never bestowed upon either a serious thought. ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... found his name written in each, with here and there a note or a correction, all in his own handwriting. He took up the half-written letter again and glanced through it once more, but it brought no relief. He could not even conjecture how the interrupted sentence on the third page ought ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... right of recalling a governor-general, which from non-use had almost become obsolete, and in thus acting in direct opposition to the views and wishes of her majesty's government have never been fully developed; and the public have therefore been driven to conjecture on the subject. The most probable opinion, perhaps, may be, that the directors were offended at his evident mania for military achievements. Throughout the whole of his administration he showed his desire of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... huntsman—which is, perhaps, its most popular shape—sometimes in the form of a monstrosity, partly man and partly beast—and sometimes it is seen ill defined and only partially materialized. To what order of spirits it belongs is, of course, purely a matter of conjecture. I believe it to be some malevolent, superphysical, creative power, such as, in my opinion, participated largely in the creation of this and other planets. I do not believe it to be the Devil, because I do not believe in ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... eare, And with perswasive accent thus began. I should be much for open Warr, O Peers, As not behind in hate; if what was urg'd 120 Main reason to perswade immediate Warr, Did not disswade me most, and seem to cast Ominous conjecture on the whole success: When he who most excels in fact of Arms, In what he counsels and in what excels Mistrustful, grounds his courage on despair And utter dissolution, as the scope Of all his aim, after some dire ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... interpretations. It would seem to imply that Christ in the spirit carried a special message to the antediluvians who had been disobedient and had perished in the Flood. What that message was we are not told, and human conjecture may not supply what the Spirit of God has seen fit to conceal. While the passage is a difficult one, the inference is not warranted which some have drawn from it, that those who are disobedient to Christ and reject His Gospel may, though they die impenitent, nevertheless obtain salvation ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds
... around the door of the "Lugger Inn" when we drove up. It appeared that the coroner had just arrived, and the inquest was to begin at once. Meanwhile, the folk were busy with conjecture. They made way, however, for my uncle, who, being on such occasions a person of no little importance, easily gained us entry into the Red Room where the inquiry was about to be held. As we stepped along the passage, the landlord's parrot, looking more than ever ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... you no conjecture? Has she perhaps established any connections—abroad? Had she any friends at all, of which ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... conjecture; all booksellers are not so shrewd as I had imagined, for some did refuse to sell this volume; consequently others sold a larger ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... given tongue on conjecture, like some youthful hound. In a little hollow of leaves, which the boy had scraped out, lay Master Compton and Miss Ruperta, on their little backs, each with an arm round the other's neck, enjoying the sweet sound ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... The king remarked that this portrait bore a strong resemblance to Bragelonne, for it had been taken when the count was quite a young man. He looked at it with a threatening air. La Valliere, in her misery far indeed from thinking of this portrait, could not conjecture the cause of the king's preoccupation. And yet the king's mind was occupied with a terrible remembrance, which had more than once taken possession of his mind, but which he had always driven away. He recalled the intimacy existing between the two young people from their birth, ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... two towers, both of which are ruinous, it is built of slabs and rough blocks of limestone, between which are layers of slate, much like the Bactrian pillar, and very superior to modern buildings: what its use was, it would be difficult to conjecture as it is out of musket shot of the ghat, which it only commands by being above it. There is no water on the top, nor is there any well-marked path up to it: curious mortar-like excavations were observed in a mass ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... with Galbraith's partnership in it, had become known here or there, got passed on from one to another, with modifications and embellishments according to fancy, and grown to be a monument of scandal and conjecture. But nothing is more capricious than the heat-lightning of gossip, and it just chanced that, up to the morning of Rose's little triumph, no one beyond Galbraith and Rose herself even suspected the identity with Dane of the ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... encouragement, at least. Of course she had seen my accident, from above; of course she had sent the harvest laborer to aid me home. It was quite natural she should imagine some special romantic interest in the lonely dell, on my part, and the gift took additional value from her conjecture. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... were able to feel that you were not personally interested in your charges proving to be true. That, of course, does not affect the case, as far as Rollitt is concerned. The evidence against him is merely conjecture, so far." ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... regard to Etymology. Much has been attempted, and something has been done, toward analysing single vocables, particularly names of places. But this analysis seems to have been too often made rather in a way of random conjecture than by a judicious regard to the analogy of Derivation and Composition. The passion for analysing has even induced some to assert that all true Gaelic Primitives consist of but one syllable, that all Polysyllables are either ...
— Elements of Gaelic Grammar • Alexander Stewart
... their honor, the purity of their motives, and the integrity of their lives; and he judged, as a jurist would, that a man who had all the virtues of citizenship ought not to be oppressed and treated as unfit for civil office or even as a criminal by the state. This is no conjecture, for it is confirmed by the testimony he bears to the influence exercised over him by the martyred Etienne de la Forge. He thus saw that a changed mind meant a changed religion, and a changed religion a change of abode. Cop had to flee from Paris, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... not at all, It is in the Bills that the Town are to Sit upon the Stage, & sure Sir Conjecture the World must Allow you to be a ...
— The Covent Garden Theatre, or Pasquin Turn'd Drawcansir • Charles Macklin
... little postern he found some trace of her he sought. The pass-key of Clara was left in the lock. It was then plain that she must have passed that way; but at what hour, or for what purpose, Mowbray dared not conjecture. The path, after running a quarter of a mile or more through an open grove of oaks and sycamores, attained the verge of the large brook, and became there steep and rocky, difficult to the infirm, and alarming to the nervous; often approaching ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... memento by the Norman, he roughly clapped to him with so fierce an encounter, that they both fell to the ground, and with the violence of the fall were forced to breathe; in which space the Norman called to mind by all tokens, that this was he whom Saladyne had appointed him to kill; which conjecture made him stretch every limb, and try every sinew, that working his death he might recover the gold which so bountifully was promised him. On the contrary part, Rosader while he breathed was not idle, ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... over his reply, endeavouring shrewdly to conjecture what could be the object of all this questioning, yet finally concluding that the truth would ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... the romantic school, where history was honeycombed with imagination and conjecture; and the first important book he gave to a pupil in 1850 was Creuzer's Mythology. In 1845 he denounced the rationalism of Lobeck in investigating the Mysteries; but in 1857 he preferred him as a guide to those ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... the devil!" said the young man impatiently, "say what you have to say, then; though whom you take me for, or what earthly concern you have with me, a stranger to you, or with my actions and motives, of which you can know nothing, I cannot conjecture for ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... protestations as left him no room to doubt my honour and beneficence; but he still persisted in declaring himself the son of an obscure mechanic in Bohemia; an origin to which surely no man would pretend who had the least claim to nobility of birth. While I was thus undeceived in my conjecture touching his birth and quality, I was confirmed in an opinion of his integrity and moderation, and looked upon him as a man of honour, in despite of the lowness of his pedigree. Nevertheless, he was at bottom a most perfidious wretch, and all this modesty and self-denial were the ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... sides—but stood as a mark to be shot at, or one panic struck. Some of the men fired, but without any precise object, for the Indians were scattered, and hid by the grass and bushes. What would have been the final result it is difficult to conjecture, if Logan, Harrod, Bulger, and a few others, had not mounted some of the pack-horses and scoured the woods, first in one direction then in another; rushing on the Indians wherever they could find them, until very fortunately Blackfish was killed; ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... not wish to love Hetty Gunn. He did not approve of loving Hetty Gunn; but love her he did with the whole strength of his soul. In this one brief hour, he had become aware of it. What would be its result, in vain he tried to conjecture. One moment, he said to himself that it was not in Hetty's nature to love any man; the next moment, with a lover's inconsistency, he reproached himself for a thought so unjust to her: one moment, he rated himself soundly for his weakness, ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... evidence. For although her heavenly visitants were simply sensorial illusions, there yet remains something unexplained. How came she to foresee the path she was destined to follow? The inquiry would launch us on a broad and wild sea of conjecture, for the navigation of which we have not yet the requisite charts on board, and it ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... I have heard from common report induces me to believe that Bannerworth Hall cannot be a desirable residence for yourself, or your amiable sister. If I am right in that conjecture, and you have any serious thought of leaving the place, I would earnestly recommend you, as one having some experience in such descriptions of property, to ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... and if I conjecture rightly, Simon Slade will be a poorer man, in a year from this time, than ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur
... been asked, could Johnson allude? Possibly to some anecdote or some conversation of which all trace is lost. One conjecture may be offered, though with diffidence. Gibbon tells us in his Memoirs, that at Oxford he took a fancy for studying Arabic, and was prevented from doing so by the remonstrances of his tutor. Soon after this, the young man fell in with Bossuet's controversial writings, and ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... tarry and sup with his Excellency and my grandfather, and I sat perforce a fourth at the table, scarce daring to conjecture as to the outcome of my escapade. But as luck would have it, the Governor had been that day in such worry and perplexity, and my grandfather also, that my absence had passed unnoticed. Nor did my good friend the captain utter a word to them of what he knew. But afterwards he called ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... One of Malbihn's blacks it was who first recognized his fellow black in the person of Baynes' companion. Then Malbihn guessed who the white man must be, though he could scarce believe his own reasoning. It seemed beyond the pale of wildest conjecture to suppose that the Hon. Morison Baynes had followed him through the jungle with but a single companion—and yet it was true. Beneath the dirt and dishevelment he recognized him at last, and in the necessity ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... now, millions of them, clear and brilliant; and it was quite evident that Thor had set his mind on an "all-night hike," a kuppatipsk pimootao as a Cree tracker would have called it. Just how it would have ended for Muskwa is a matter of conjecture had not the spirits of thunder and rain and lightning put their heads together to give him ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... which only disappeared to make way for them. Scarsdale House is supposed to have been built by one of the Earls of Scarsdale (first creation), the second of whom married Lady Frances Rich, eldest daughter of the Earl of Warwick and Holland, but there is not much evidence to support this conjecture. At the same time, the house was evidently much older than the date of the second Scarsdale creation—namely, 1761. The difficulty is surmounted by Mr. Loftie, who says: "John Curzon, who founded it, and ...
— The Kensington District - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... P'an, who had instigated some person or other to come and lodge a complaint against Pao-y. And when she also unexpectedly heard Hsi Jen's disclosures on the subject, she became more positive in her surmises. The one, who had, in fact, told Hsi Jen was Pei Ming. But Pei Ming too had arrived at the conjecture in his own mind, and could not adduce any definite proof, so that every one treated his statements as founded partly on mere suppositions, and partly on actual facts; but, despite this, they felt quite certain that it was (Hseh P'an) ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... been removed in this revised edition. The student of etymology seldom passes a day without coming across some piece of evidence which throws new light on a difficult problem (see Chapter XVI), or invalidates what had before seemed a reasonable conjecture. I have to thank many correspondents for sending me information of value and for indicating points in which conciseness has led to misunderstanding. Some of my correspondents need, however, to be reminded that etymology and genealogy are separate sciences; so that, ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... the reading [Greek: hupo kerdei balon]. I conjecture it to mean, 'do not in their eagerness for trade choose an unfavourable and dangerous time for their voyage, but wait for the ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... set off, on his part, upon post horses, recommending his men to use all diligence. However rapidly they might travel, they could not arrive before him. He had time, in passing along the Rue des Petits-Champs, to see a thing which afforded him plenty of food for thought, and conjecture. He saw M. Colbert coming out from his house to get into his carriage, which was stationed before the door. In this carriage D'Artagnan perceived the hoods of two women, and being rather curious, ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... he really made love to her?—had he meant what she had assumed him to mean? The girl lost herself in a torment of memory and conjecture, and meanwhile Mr. Flaxman sat opposite, talking away, and looking certainly as little love-sick as any man can well look. As the lamps flashed into the carriage her attention was often caught by his profile and finely-balanced head, by the hand lying on his knee, or the little ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... ceasing his labor stood up leaning on the spade, which was nearly as high as himself, "that many of the seeds which fall upon the ground do not grow, yet, strange to tell, retain the power of growth. I suspect myself, but have not had opportunity of testing the conjecture, that such fall in their pods, or shells, and that before these are sufficiently decayed to allow the sun and moisture and air to reach them, they have got covered up in the soil too deep for those same influences. They say fishes a long time bedded in ice will come to life ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... justice would hardly have taken much account of Carlisle's generous theory that perhaps the man didn't know what he was doing. By the same token, it would scarcely reopen the case now to admit that kind conjecture.... ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... the volume. When he, in his turn, held the volume towards her hand, she almost snatched it from him, and ran towards the house, without a word of thanks or leave-taking—whether from eagerness, or doubt of the propriety of accepting the offer, Hugh could not conjecture. He stood for some moments looking after her, and then retraced his steps ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... Impossible to conjecture what intimate connection it might not have with the disappearance of Marian Blessington, what a flood of light it might not loose ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... Virginia, so that, in his Historie of Travaile, Strachey merely took back his own. He did not take back his own; he made use of Smith's MS., not yet published, if Mr. Arber and I rightly date Strachey's MS. at 1610-15, or 1611-12. Why Strachey acted thus it is possible to conjecture. As a scholar well acquainted with Virginia, and as Secretary for the Colony, he would have access to Smith's MS. of 1608 among the papers of the Council, before its publication. Smith professes himself "no scholer".(2) On the other hand, Strachey ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... "The devil's children have the devil's luck." I cannot find—or, to this moment learn, beyond vague conjecture—where the French fleet are gone to. All my ill fortune, hitherto, has proceeded ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol II. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson
... energy and dexterity. Cecil imagined that Ralegh had solicited from Cobham the original retractation. Messages, he suspected, had passed between the two in which Ralegh had 'expostulated Cobham's unkind using of him.' The correctness of his conjecture for the past is unknown. It was true of the present. Ralegh managed to have a letter, inclosed in, or fastened to, an apple, thrown, in November, four nights before they came to Winchester, into Cobham's window in Wardrobe ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... unit she sinks easily into the background, is merged with other unemphatic things, but as sought she is always in the foreground, not only in her own, but in others' eyes. Be she ever so unnoticeable, she then gains, at least, the compliment of conjecture. The significance of her personal drama has a universal interest; the issues of her situation are those that appeal ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... cabinet-councils, and more especially those of female politicians, prevents the cautious historian from presuming to decide. But arguing from general causes, and from the established characters and ruling passions of the parties concerned, we may safely conjecture that the baronet did not at this time make any decisive proposal to the lady, but that he kept himself at liberty to advance or recede, as circumstances should render it expedient. His ruling passion was avarice; and though he had been allured by the hints which ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... until you feel its incomparable excellence."[22] Its nobility is revealed by its insatiable hungers, its surpassing dignity is declared by its endless wants, its inability to live by bread alone. "As by the seed we conjecture what plant will arise, and know by the acorn what tree will grow forth, or by the eagle's egg what kind of bird; so do we by the powers of the soul upon earth, know what kind of Being, Person, and Glory will be in the Heavens, where its latent powers shall ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... be? Either thou art most ignorant by age, Or thou wert born a fool. Camillo's flight, Added to their familiarity,— Which was as gross as ever touch'd conjecture, That lack'd sight only, nought for approbation, But only seeing, all other circumstances Made up to th' deed,—doth push on this proceeding. Yet, for a greater confirmation,— For, in an act of this importance, 'twere Most piteous to be wild,—I have despatch'd in post To sacred Delphos, to ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare
... in their conjecture. As he approached with his staff, the officer who had charge of them ordered his men to halt and draw on ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... you're dead, you know. Well, what of it? Less money in the funds than was reckoned; dear old gentleman doesn't cut up as well as they hoped! And meanwhile our friend B——! Does it dawn on you at all, from our friend B——'s point of view, Sergeant? I may be wrong, but that's my provisional conjecture. The question remains how he's got the old gent ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... though that would have been his last conjecture. "Mine is James Pinkerton; I am delighted to have the pleasure of ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... ship but the expectation of a more painful death, by being dashed against precipices, which, even in the calmest day, it is impossible to ascend. Dunlap, one of the survivors, declared, that about half past ten, as nearly as he could conjecture, one of the men who had been below, came to him on the forecastle, and told him it was all over. A few minutes afterwards the ship took a lurch, like a boat nearly filled with water and going down; on which Dunlap ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... as a secret factor for some English merchants, who traded thither in an underhand manner in those days. To this person Mr Nicholas Thorne appears to have sent armour and other articles which are specified in the memorandum or letter above mentioned—This Thomas Tison, so far as I can conjecture, appears to have been a secret factor for Mr Thorne and other English merchants, to transact for them in these remote parts; whence it is probable that some of our merchants carried on a kind of trade to the West Indies even in those ancient ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... where they would be; but under the circumstances, as Baar had told his men, she believed the guards would disappear from the vicinity. This conjecture proved to be correct. The guards, not wishing to be concerned in the affair at all, had simply disappeared. We saw nothing of Baar and his men on the way up the mountain, although I had hoped we might ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... in human affairs; and as the transactions in which he is engaged are more important, with the greater anxiety does he inquire after precedents, and the more timorously does he proceed, when he is obliged to regulate his conduct by conjecture ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... startling marvel of the whole. It is said that a false deck of thick plank may be easily blown into the air, when a number of small iron boxes, open at the top, and filled with gunpowder, are placed beneath. How this could be done and yet kept secret is indeed a wonder, and we must therefore conjecture that the marquis had some other device in his mind. Certain it is, that the idea of converting vessels into traps of destruction, or of so defending them as to destroy assailants after boarding the decks, has not ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... whether the stars are fixed in the sky, or float freely in the air; of what size and of what material are the heavens; whether they be at rest or in motion; what is the magnitude of the earth; on what foundations is it suspended or balanced;—to dispute and conjecture upon such matters is just as if we chose to discuss what we think of a city in a remote country, of which we ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... leave—not one. I could linger no longer that day, excepting for short earnest prayer, in which she took no part. We agreed to meet the following day at noon in a certain restaurant, where we could enjoy privacy. She kept the appointment, but something—I could only conjecture—something had cooled her ardor. I apparently made very little headway with the Master's message. She was silent, obdurate, and she soon left. The next day I followed her up, only to learn from the scrub-woman that Saidie was ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... I heard her question the vakeel, "Whether the men were willing to march?" Perfectly ready, was the reply. "Then order them to strike the tent, and load the animals; we start this moment." The man appeared confused, but not more so than I. Something was evidently on foot, but what I could not conjecture. The vakeel wavered, and to my astonishment I heard the accusation made against him, that, "during the night, the whole of the escort had mutinously conspired to desert me, with my arms and ammunition ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... completely gutted, not an article remaining in her, while attempts had been made apparently to set her on fire. This made us conjecture that she had been visited by Malay pirates, or perhaps by the Papuans from the neighbouring shore, though we saw no canoes by which they might have crossed over. The important point was thus settled, we had found the wreck of the "Amphion." We ...
— The Mate of the Lily - Notes from Harry Musgrave's Log Book • W. H. G. Kingston
... again. Martha Wallingford sat so still that she gave the impression of a doll made without speaking apparatus. It did not seem as if she could even wink. Then Alice Mendon, who disliked Margaret Edes and had a shrewd conjecture as to the state of affairs, but who was broad in her views, pitied Margaret. She arose with considerable motion and spoke to Daisy Shaw at her right, and broke the ghastly silence, and immediately everything was in motion and refreshments ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... me but little satisfaction on some points respecting the occurrence on the 18th of last month which I desire to have cleared up. Perhaps you two can tell me what I want to know. As intimate friends of Barton's you probably know, or can conjecture a good deal. Have no scruple as to speaking the truth. What you say in this room shall never be named again by me. Besides, you are aware that the law allows no one to be tried ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... impossible to conjecture just what her emotions may have been as she discerned the lights of a flier speeding rapidly out of the distance from that very direction, as though impelled toward her garden by the very intensity ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... admitted, are in no instance more obvious than in those sciences which more particularly belong to the healing art. It therefore is necessary, that some conciliatory explanation should be offered for the present publication: in which, it is acknowledged, that mere conjecture takes the place of experiment; and, that analogy is the substitute for anatomical examination, the only sure ...
— An Essay on the Shaking Palsy • James Parkinson
... would think that we, or perhaps I should say I, had been so lately employed in chasing her away. As little would any one, looking at the blandness of Vick's profile, as she slumbers on the window-seat in the sun, conjecture of her master-passion for the calves ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... from all Northbury gossip. The servants at the Manor who, of course knew everything did not dare to breathe a syllable of their conjectures. The bravest Hartite and Beatricite would not have dared to intrude their budgets of wild conjecture on Mrs. Bertram's ears. Consequently she lived through these exciting days in comparative calm. Soon the great tension would be over. Soon her gravest alarms would be lulled to rest, Now and then she ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... established truth—of the ultimate success and complete triumph of the North in the present contest. For in any other event all these facts are dumb, and the inferences to be drawn from them vague and unsatisfactory, absolutely no better than mere random conjecture. And as the war has now become the great fact in our history, and its effects must modify our whole social life for many years to come, its results must not be neglected in an investigation of this kind, but, on the contrary, claim ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... every conjecture of this kind must be very uncertain, all I can do is to lay before Congress the relative expense, as far as I can learn it, between the different places at which our Ministers reside, taking ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. XI • Various
... knew what I meant, and that I was quite right in my conjecture, as regarded men, at least; a man who did not stop to think what the effect, upon himself and his own, his giving must have, would be a fool or a madman; but women could often give as recklessly as they spent, without ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... personified to him the Cinderella of the continents, the drudge with a destiny worthy of her charms and her good-temper. He is writing a monograph on the Song of Solomon, he tells me. He follows certain scholars in his conjecture that the Shulamite was given back to a humble shepherd by Solomon, when she had conquered the latter by the power of her impassioned chastity. But he has his own theory as well that the true lovers were both of African blood, that she came from the ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... I am disposed to believe that instead of the large horse bell, mentioned in the text, a large hawks bell ought to be substituted. It is difficult, perhaps impossible to estimate the population of St Domingo at this period, and thence to form a conjecture as to the amount of the tribute. From the preceding account of the number of subordinate caciques, and the large force opposed to Columbus, perhaps Hispaniola might then contain 500,000 inhabitants of all ages, half of whom, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... something quite as interesting, and I really think quite as important. And this was my lady's making friends with Harry Gregson. I do believe she did it for Mr. Horner's sake; but, of course, I can only conjecture why my lady did anything. But I heard one day, from Mary Legard, that my lady had sent for Harry to come and see her, if he was well enough to walk so far; and the next day he was shown into the room he had been in once before under ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... him to consult my timepiece; but the performance lasted so long that I was finally obliged to throw myself on my back on the ground to relieve the strain upon me, so that I might continue to follow his movements. I venture the conjecture that the show lasted from fifteen to twenty minutes; at least, it seemed that long to me in my tense state of body and mind. Finally he shot down like an arrow, making my head fairly whirl, and landed lightly on the ground, where he skipped about ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... a historian of a medium such as this are too patent to need pointing out. Pretension and conjecture will be avoided, because unnecessary. The most trifling thought or deed of any person connected with the history of the ring is laid open to direct inspection. Were there more such talismans as this, the profession of authorship would become no less easy than delightful, and criticism ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... like an eye constantly fixed on M. Madeleine. An eye full of suspicion and conjecture. M. Madeleine had finally perceived the fact; but it seemed to be of no importance to him. He did not even put a question to Javert; he neither sought nor avoided him; he bore that embarrassing and almost oppressive ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... were always in evidence, rowing gondolas with clumsy oars, meeting the steamboat at the wharf several times a day, and filling the miniature garden of the hotel with rustic greetings and early Salzkammergut attitudes. After much conjecture, I learned that they were the family and friends of a newspaper editor from Vienna. They had the literary ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... authority to support the conjecture, that it was founded in the days of the Apostles by St. Peter himself; others that it was erected by King Lucius about the year 170. And by some it is said to have been built by King Sebert, the first Christian ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... in conjecture, and still thinking of a royalist conspiracy, took his landlady's remark as an opening, and he began to study her as he seated himself beside her. He was struck by the singular dexterity with which she worked. Although everything about her bespoke the great lady, she showed the dexterity ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... believe St. Paul to be the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Luther's conjecture is very probable, that it was by Apollos, an Alexandrian Jew. The plan is too studiously regular for St. Paul. It was evidently written during the yet existing glories of the Temple. For three hundred years the church did not affix St. ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... consideration of the question was resumed. In answer to the objection that negro voting would "lead to the amalgamation of the races or social equality," he said: "On this subject there is nothing left to conjecture, and no ground for alarm. Negro suffrage has been very extensively tried in this country, and we are able to appeal to facts. Negroes had the right to vote in all the Colonies save one, under the Articles of Confederation. ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... conceive that a person of common understanding will be strongly impressed with the persuasion that the satellites are placed in the system with a view to compensate for the diminished light of the sun at greater distances. Mars is an exception; some persons might conjecture from this case that the arrangement itself, like other useful arrangements, has been brought about by some wider law which we have not yet detected. But whether or not we entertain such a guess (it can be nothing ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... conjecture (as we shall ultimately find), that it cannot be bought, nor sold. Everything else is bought and sold for Labour, but labour itself cannot be bought nor sold for anything, being priceless.[25] The idea that it is a commodity to be bought or sold, is the alpha and ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... 1841, it seemed that Taper was right. There was a great clamour in every quarter, and the clamour was against the Whigs and in favour of Conservative principles. What Canadian timber-merchants meant by Conservative principles, it is not difficult to conjecture; or West Indian planters. It was tolerably clear on the hustings what squires and farmers, and their followers, meant by Conservative principles. What they mean by Conservative principles now is another question: ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... apparatus by your notes, and this took some time. You know you have written me in detail about what you were working on, so when I was summoned by Detective Phillips, who said you had mentioned my name to him as the only one who could help, I could make a good conjecture as to what had occurred. I heard the stories of all concerned, and realized that you must have dematerialized Miss Crawford by mistake, and then, unable to bring her ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... man. The manner in which his plays were sent into the world—for it is not known that he edited or authorized the publication of a single one of them,—and the dates at which they respectively appeared, are mere matters of conjecture. ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... derive from them very little claim to the praise of an inventor. To search into the antiquity of this kind of poetry is not my present purpose; that it has long subsisted in the east, the Sacred Writings sufficiently inform us; and we may conjecture, with great probability, that it was sometimes the devotion, and sometimes the entertainment of the first generations of mankind. Theocritus united elegance with simplicity; and taught his shepherds to sing with so much ease and harmony, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... My own private conjecture, I confess, has rather grown to be, on much reading of those RULHIERES and distracted Books, that the Czarina,—who was a grandiose creature, with considerable magnanimities, natural and acquired; with many ostentations, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... repair of the inextinguishable wrong you have done me. I only ask you not to fancy that I am to be beguiled by arguments or denials or moved by threats, or that one word I here write is founded on conjecture or inference. Grovelling at my feet, in sobs of shame and with prayers for pardon, Isabel has told me all. Has told me all, Leonard Byington, my once trusted friend. Now, though prostrated on her bed, she rejoices in the double forgiveness ...
— Bylow Hill • George Washington Cable
... government, after it shall be tried by experience and the evidence of facts. What length of time this trial may require is impossible to ascertain; yet we have, I acknowledge, some thing of experience here by which we may form a kind of conjecture. ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... conge with a good grace, and it was almost unthinkable that Jack should have no other reason for his hatred. Yet she could not bring herself even to consider the possibility that the reason was the one he had advanced. She came again to the dead end of conjecture. She could believe in Jack's judgment up to a point—beyond that she could ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... Galumum, Arpi and Etana, are so Amoritic in appearance, that one may hazard the conjecture of their western origin. May Gilgamesh likewise belong to the Amurru [65] region, or does he represent a foreigner from the East in contrast to Enkidu, whose name, we have seen, may have been Baal-Tb in the West, with which region he is according to the Epic so familiar? ...
— An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic • Anonymous
... to such occasional and accidental crosses, and their fleeting existence to changes of fashion; or again, whether the varieties which arise after a long course of continued self-fertilisation are weakly and soon perish, I cannot even conjecture. It may, however, be noticed that several of Andrew Knight's varieties, which have endured longer than most kinds, were raised towards the close of the last century by artificial crosses; some of them, I believe, were still, in 1860, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... the Museo-Biblioteca de Ultramar, Madrid; pressmark, "170-20-3a, caja no. 22." It has not, so far as is known, ever been published. Nothing indicates positively the name of the person to whom it was written; but we may reasonably conjecture, from the style of address, that it was probably sent to the president of the Audiencia of Mexico. As Legazpi's own account of his voyage and achievements, this document possesses special interest ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume II, 1521-1569 • Emma Helen Blair
... unless, indeed, she had turned to him, which was, of course, out of the question; but certain fugitive conscious blushes upon the young face in front of her, certain castings down of long lashes and timid upward glances, made Molly shrewdly conjecture that Mr. Landale, through all the apparent devotion with which he listened to Tanty's continuous flow of observations, was able to bestow a certain amount of attention upon her ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... nevertheless he trembled greatly when he heard what I had to tell him. But I took good care to keep back the name of young Marwood de Whichehalse; neither did I show my knowledge of the other men; for reasons of my own not very hard to conjecture. ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... Bentomiz and glittering in the last rays of the setting sun. During the night they had been alarmed and perplexed by signal-fires on the mountain and by the sound of distant battle. When the morning broke the Moorish army had vanished as if by enchantment. While the inhabitants were lost in wonder and conjecture, a body of cavalry, the fragment of the army saved by Reduan de Vanegas, the brave alcayde of Granada, came galloping to the gates. The tidings of the strange discomfiture of the host filled the city with consternation, but Reduan exhorted the people to continue ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... passages we might conjecture, even if we knew nothing more about him, that Sulpicius was a man of very fine clay, of real humanitas in the widest sense of that expressive word; and this is entirely borne out in other ways.[179] Emerging at last from retirement, he stood again ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... cheap manufacture. His belongings were like hers now. She was bringing him a little closer to her in such ways,—food and lodging and raiment. But not in thought and being. Behind those deep-set eyes passed a world of thought, of conjecture and theory and belief, ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... cause of conjecture to a prisoner: it seemed to Mary that this young man's face was not unknown to her, and that he had seen her already; but though great the care with which she questioned her memory, she could not ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... Kent stared at him. Was he right, after all, in his conjecture; had the man been Philip Rochester? It would seem so, for who else, after taking refuge elsewhere, would have telephoned a warning of burglars to the hotel office? "Have you any idea who sent ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... enough to draw tears from any Fassmann that were there;—Fassmann and we not far from weeping without words. "Thereupon they ranked themselves two and two, and marched into the Town," straight to the Church, I conjecture, Town all out to participate; "and there the two reverend gentlemen successively addressed them again, from appropriate texts: Text of the first reverend gentleman was, And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... a heavy task," I finally remarked, "and you offer very little assistance in the way of conjecture. Yet you must have ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... 2: This word has been much discussed. The older etymologists explained it as meaning worth stealing. A more improbable conjecture is that it means worth a stall or place. It is used of ships in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. As applied to men, Skeat thinks it meant good or worthy at stealing; but the etymology is ...
— Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book - with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary • C. Alphonso Smith
... which was immediately drawn out. The government, however, while granting absolution to the nation, determined to make some exceptions in their lenity; and harsh as their resolution appeared, it is not difficult to conjecture the reasons which induced them to form it. The higher clergy had been encouraged by Wolsey's position to commit those excessive acts of despotism which had created so deep animosity among the people. The overthrow of ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... position where he could study the advancing figures with his field-glass, had not spoken. The lieutenant who was next in command to him had walked out after him, and stood near him, from time to time dropping a word or two of conjecture in a half-audible tone; but the Colonel had not answered a word; perhaps none was expected. Suddenly he took his glass down, and gave an order to the lieutenant: "Take two men and meet them at the turn yonder; learn their business; and act as your best judgment advises. If necessary to bring the ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... and one of the slowest of created mortals. How he ever came to go into the cavalry was beyond the wildest surmises of his comrades. Why his supernatural slowness and clumsiness did not result in his being killed at least once a day, while in the service, was even still farther beyond the power of conjecture. No accident ever happened in the company that Seitz did not have some share in. Did a horse fall on a slippery road, it was almost sure to be Seitz's, and that imported son of the Fatherland was equally sure to be caught under him. Did somebody tumble over a bank of a dark night, it was Seitz that ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... marriage the miseries of life lost half their bitterness, nor had it returned at her death. Instinctively he felt that outsiders, those even who respected him as an honest man, believed that, somehow or other, they could only conjecture how, he must be to blame for the circumstances he was in—either this, or providence did not take care of the just man. Such was virtually the unuttered conclusion of many, who nevertheless imagined they understood ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... conjecture of a time When creeping murmur and the poring dark Fills the wide vessel of the universe. From camp to camp, through the foul womb of night The hum of either army stilly sounds,[1] That the fix'd sentinels almost receive ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... favoured lover of hers. The said Abbe was rather a coxcomb; he had a handsome face, and wrote poetry. Madame de Pompadour was the theme of his gallant verses. He sometimes received the compliments of his friends upon his success with a smile which left some room for conjecture, although he denied the thing in words. It was, for some time, reported at Court that she was in love with the Prince de Beauvau: he is a man distinguished for his gallantries, his air of rank and fashion, and his high play; he is brother to the little ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 2 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... little, there arrived in town a vaulted box, in which the dullest fancy might conjecture a piano. Greatly indeed were heads shaken. If doom were easily invoked, Jane would hardly have lived to unpack the treasure and help to lift ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... be the object of our present criticism, we must confess we know not. Whether it be a brother man, or whether our words of praise may win us the kind regards of a 'gentle ladye,' we can only conjecture. Our process must be in rem, not in personam. 'It'—for thus perforce we must speak of our Unknown—weareth an iron mask of inscrutable mystery, as complete as that of the all-baffling Junius. The field, however, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... dagger; and underneath his plain habit the Scotsman observed that he concealed a jazeran, or flexible shirt of linked mail, which, as being often worn by those, even of peaceful professions, who were called upon at that perilous period to be frequently abroad, confirmed the young man in his conjecture that the wearer was by profession a butcher, grazier, or something of that description, called upon to be much abroad. The young stranger, comprehending in one glance the result of the observation which has taken us some ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... 8. A conjecture in what number of years England and Ireland may be fully peopled, as also all America, and lastly the ...
— Essays on Mankind and Political Arithmetic • Sir William Petty
... "you ought to know that when I make such a statement I have some better foundation for it than mere conjecture. It was to some purpose that I watched M. de Coralth during your absence. When the servant handed you that card he turned extremely pale. Why? Because he knew whose card it was. After you left the room his hands trembled like leaves, and his mind was no longer occupied with the game. ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... says: "The yearning does not seem to be a desire for the pleasures of the senses, the one taking delight in his intercourse with the other; far from it, it is obvious that each soul is craving for something which it cannot express in words, but can only divine and conjecture." And the mysterious Diotima revealed to Socrates an entirely novel principle in erotic life; the principle which guides man beyond the pleasures of the senses and—through love—leads him to the divine. "The slave ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... remained about twelve months and explored the adjacent country, became so discouraged and exhausted by fatigue and famine, that they abandoned the country. Sir Richard Grenville returning shortly afterwards to America, and not being able to find them, and at a loss to conjecture their fate, left in the island another small party of settlers and again set ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... doing something for himself with this valuable diplomatic information. One fine day the clerk was missing and with him certain papers. Then there ensued a period of months during which the firm and their employers could only conjecture the full extent ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... Lamarckian hypothesis of a Creation undertaken once and for all, in place of a continuous creative intenention. This book, opposing natural law to miracle, carried complete conviction to the young and eager. Audacious spirits even hazarded the conjecture that primitive life itself might have originated in a natural way: had not, but recently, an investigator who brought a powerful voltaic battery to bear on a saturated solution of silicate of potash, been startled to find, as the result of his experiment, numberless small mites ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... Do me the favour to talk to me—talk of what you will—or of nothing. Only preserve the appearance at least of talking. I would not wish to stand by myself, and yet I conjecture that there will be goings on here worthy of our ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... of this biographical fable are facts, rumors, and poetry. They are connected together and harmonized by the help of suggestion, conjecture, innuendo, perversion, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... surprised, a few weeks later, to receive from Hilda her own cheque for eighty pounds odd! More mystery! An absolutely incredible woman! Whence had she obtained that eighty pounds? Needless to say, she offered no explanation. He abandoned all conjecture. But he could not abandon the image. And first Auntie Hamps said, and then Clara, and then even Maggie admitted, that Edwin was sticking too close to business and needed a change, needed rousing. Auntie ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... Harris claims (and Sir James Frazer seems to approve of the suggestion) that the Hebrew word duda-im was derived from dodim, "love"; and, on the strength of this derivation, he soars into a lofty flight of philological conjecture to transmute dodim, into Aphrodite, "love" into the "goddess of love". It would be an impertinence on my part to attempt to follow these excursions into unknown heights ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... equator, according to his astrolabe. The true distance of Cipango or Japan was sixty-eight hundred miles still farther, or beyond both North America and the Pacific. How much beyond that island, in its supposed geographical position, Columbus expected to find the Asiatic main we can only conjecture from the restorations which modern scholars have made of Toscanelli's map, which makes the island about 10 deg. east of Asia, and from Behaim's globe, which makes it 20 deg.. It should be borne in mind that the knowledge of its position ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... to inspect the flock. There was no road, and only an endless succession of trees, and of gently rising and falling country. How my brother and his men used to manage to hit upon the site of the location is more than I can conjecture. People accustomed to the bush seem to acquire, like the natives, the faculty of knowing exactly the direction, position, and distance of the spot they want ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... to the present day it has been impossible to reach a final verdict concerning the author of the Quicunque and the time and place of its origin. Koellner's Symbolik allocates it to Gaul. Loofs inclines to the same opinion and ventures the conjecture that the source of this symbol must be sought in Southern Gaul between 450 and 600. (Herzog, R. E., 2, 177.) Gieseler and others look to Spain for ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... still, while Mr Johnson sprang out, and we saw him through the windows cordially welcomed by a really very handsome-looking lady of somewhat large proportions, whom we had no doubt was the Baroness herself. In this conjecture we were right, and Mr Johnson soon returning, introduced us in due form to her. She received us most graciously and kindly, indeed in the most good-natured manner, and told us that we were welcome to stay at her house as long ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... worn,) no spare anchor to trust to, the sheet anchor being broken in the shank, and only an old worn-out bower cable (kept to be surveyed) which was bent to it. The Defence, I believe, was differently situated in this respect; but that is a mere conjecture. Thus the situation of the Cressy was very alarming, which had most sensibly struck every individual on board; the officers particularly, who had been so strongly impressed with our perilous situation for some time before, lamenting and verbally stating to ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... said or might have said must be left to conjecture. In the midst of his eulogy on the living, the preacher in the house began his eulogy of the dead. Those who heard what he said were much edified, and those who failed to hear made a decorous pretence ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... locality who supposed themselves to have been burning of an invisible fire in their entrails, and he adds that some cut off a hand or a foot when the burning began, that it should go no further. What may have been the malady with which these people suffered must be a matter of conjecture. ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... tempted into these boundless regions of ignorance or conjecture, by a fancy which delights in creating rather than in merely retaining the forms which are presented before it: we are the dupes of a subtilty, which promises to supply every defect of our knowledge, and, by filling up a few blanks in the story of nature, ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D. |
