"Conjecture" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dissatisfaction by disappointing. Some advantage gained may put off clamour for some months: but I think, the longer it is suspended, the more terrible it will be; and how the war should end but in ruin, I am not wise enough to conjecture. France suspends the blow, to make it more inevitable. She has suffered us to undo ourselves: will she allow us time to recover? We have begged her indulgence in the first: will she grant the ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... that have been discovered in these catacombs, sufficiently establish the fact, that a people altogether different from the present aborigines once inhabited these regions. At what period this by-gone people flourished still remains a matter of mere conjecture, for to the present time no discovery has been made that could lead ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... has requested of Tricotrin an introduction. It is agreed. Tricotrin has presented his friend, and invited the chanteuse to drink a bock—a glass of beer.... A propos, you take a liqueur, monsieur, yes? What liqueur you take? Sst, garcon!... Well, you conjecture, no doubt, what I shall say? Before the bock was finished, they were in ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... remain of the fortunes of Verrazzano. Ramusio affirms, that, on another voyage, he was killed and eaten by savages, in sight of his followers; and a late writer hazards the conjecture that this voyage, if made at all, was made in the service of Henry the Eighth of England. But a Spanish writer affirms that, in 1527, he was hanged at Puerto del Pico as a pirate, and this assertion is fully confirmed by authentic documents ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... the Fuzby population. It would be long to tell the various little causes which led to Mr Kenrick's unpopularity among them. Every clergyman similarly circumstanced may conjecture these for himself; they resolved themselves mainly into the fact that Mr Kenrick was abler, wiser, purer, better, more Christian, than they. His thoughts were not theirs, nor ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... Harry and Laura had also been "interviewed" and there was a statement from Philip himself, which a reporter had knocked him up out of bed at midnight to give, though how he found him, Philip never could conjecture. ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 6. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... arrow, and the other, of Queen Anne's time, that of a savage standing by a bell, and it has been conjectured that this latter sign may have suggested the name. But as the inn was known as "Ye Belle Savage" some sixty years previously this is hardly likely. Another conjecture as to its origin was made by Addison in The Spectator, who, having read an old French romance which gives an account of a beautiful woman called in French "La Belle Sauvage" and translated into English as "Bell Savage," considered the name ...
— The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick" - With Some Observations on their Other Associations • B.W. Matz
... Carlingford, having nothing in the world to do with the place? and coming to Carlingford, why was papa sought out, of all people, to be his tutor? Certainly the circumstances were such as invited conjecture, especially when added on to Sophy's allusions. He took Ursula in to dinner, which fluttered her somewhat; and though he was much intent upon the dinner itself, and studied the menu with a devotion which ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... and his short figure was rigidly erect. The cause of his excitement—she had noticed it—was some word uttered by Seitz Siebenburg. Her father was the only person who had understood it, but she was not mistaken in the conjecture that it referred to her and the Swiss knight, and she believed it to be ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... not less remarkable between the commerce of the Latins and that of the Etruscans appears in their respective routes or lines of traffic. As to the earliest commerce of the Etruscans in the Adriatic we can hardly do more than express the conjecture that it was directed from Spina and Atria chiefly to Corcyra. We have already mentioned(24) that the western Etruscans ventured boldly into the eastern seas, and trafficked not merely with Sicily, but also with Greece proper. An ancient ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... "My conjecture was right," he said. "They intended, no doubt, to keep some large merchantman they had captured, fill her with the contents of their prizes, and then with the papers and manifests of cargo they could go almost anywhere and dispose of their ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... you, and I think to myself, thinks I, 'There is a man—or at least the semblance of a man,—a breathing thing at least, with anthropoid features and dimensions,—who is never, never, never tormented by the feeling—'Now, tell me, what feeling do you conjecture I mean?" ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... was of brawn and eke of bones," as Chaucer says, in his picture of the Miller. He could beat any boy in school in wrestling, and no doubt could flog any of them in a fist-fight, though on this point I speak only from conjecture, as this part of boys' amusements is not always as well known to their teachers as it is to the boys themselves. The Professor, after some little manipulation of the cranium, read off the boy's character with tolerable accuracy. Any one, however, with a grain of observation, who had seen the ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... in Asia three years afterwards, on military service under the Lacedaemonian king Agesilaus, is a fact attested by himself; but at what precise moment he quitted Athens for his second visit to Asia, we are left to conjecture. I incline to believe that he did not remain many months at home, but that he went out again in the next spring to rejoin the Cyreians in Asia—became again their commander—and served for two years under the Spartan general ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... information. In Egypt he settled for seven years, during which he studied the mathematical and physical systems of the ancient schools. The extent to which he was influenced by the Magi and the Eastern astrologists is a matter of pure conjecture. He returned from his travels impoverished; one tradition says that he received 500 talents from his fellow-citizens, and that a public funeral was decreed him. Another tradition states that he was regarded ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... by none. It is the temper that usually spoils all. A collection in any way approaching completeness, of the pamphlets this contention has produced in England, would contain tens of thousands of volumes; full of curious learning and anecdotes, of wide reading and conjecture, of shrewdness and wit; yet these books are certainly the last we would seek to save from fire or water. Could they be piled into scales of moral measurement a single copy of the Imitatio, of the Holy Dying, of the Saint's Rest, would outweigh them all. ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... living by one's wits. Returning from the army in Flanders with forty shillings in his pocket, he suddenly started into high life in the most dashing style, eclipsed every body by his equipage, stud, table, and dress. As he was not known at the gaming-table, conjecture was busy on the subject of his finances; and he was charitably supposed to have commenced his career by robbing a Dutch mail of a package of diamonds. Still he glittered, until involved in a duel with Mississippi Law; the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... 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 sail ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... barrow (a funeral mound), glen, havoc, kiln, mattock, pool. It is worthy of note that the first eight in the list are the names of domestic— some even of kitchen— things and utensils. It may, perhaps, be permitted us to conjecture that in many cases the Saxon invader married a British wife, who spoke her own language, taught her children to speak their mother tongue, and whose words took firm root in the kitchen of the new English household. The names of most rivers, mountains, lakes, ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... all the stars in the Pleiades these are the most likely to have a measurable annual parallax. One is a star a little above the seventh magnitude, distinguished as s Pleiadum; the other, of about the eighth, is numbered 25 in Bessel's list. Dr. Elkin has not omitted to remark that the conjecture of their disconnection from the cluster is confirmed by the circumstance that its typical spectrum (as shown on Prof. Pickering's plates) is varied in s by the marked character of the K line. The spectrum of its fellow traveler (No. 25) ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various
... rest from many pendulous days Of swinging on the sick unquiet deep, Why left he me, so lone, so unattended? What converse had he with felonious Night, That underneath her dark consenting cloak, He stole unchallenged from his Ariadne? If, out of hope, I cannot answer that, Slant-eyed Conjecture at my elbow stands, To whisper me of things I would not hear. Ah me, my Theseus, wherefore art thou gone! Ah me, my Theseus, whither art thou gone! Oh how shall I, an unacquainted maid, So uninformed of whereabout I am, And in a wild completely solitary, Hope to ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... poet, "who is Redbud, my young friend? I should conjecture that she was a young lady, from the name.—Stay, is there not a Miss Redbud Summers, daughter of the ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... 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 foundation for ...
— An Essay on the Shaking Palsy • James Parkinson
... those of Pope, who took his revenge by damning them, not with 'faint' but with fulsome and ironical praise, in the Guardian; and the subjoined fragment from Sappho, which is, particularly in the first stanza, melody itself. Some conjecture that it ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... to their welfare until the second morning, when Loving's horse came into camp, whinnying for his mates. There were blood-stains on the saddle, and the story of a man who was cautious for others and careless of himself was easily understood. Conjecture was rife. The presence of the horse admitted of several interpretations. An Indian ambush was the most probable, and a number of men were detailed to ferret out the mystery. We were then seventy miles below ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... imperfectly stated by himself) far from frivolous, would condescend to give some information upon them; but the conclusion of a sentence so importantly begun, and which leads to such expectations, is, "that to these conjectures it would be of little use to reply." This is all he says to public conjecture. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... or date was attached to this strange paper, but the purport of it was sufficiently clear so, without wasting time in fruitless conjecture, the young men immediately sprang on their horses, and rode down the hill in ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... conjecture," Thornton thought, as he took his leave of Mrs. Meredith who could not face Anna then, but paced restlessly up and down her spacious rooms, wondering how much Thornton had suspected and what the end ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... Count Romanzoff, Mr. Adams informed him that he had received instructions from the American government to remain at St. Petersburg under the commission he had heretofore held; and that he had been mistaken in supposing that his colleagues had other destination, independent of this mission. His conjecture had been founded on the doubt whether the President would have appointed this mission solely upon the supposition that the mediation would be accepted by the British government; but he was now instructed that the President, considering the acceptance of the British government as probable, ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... that the men of the later Middle Ages did not value early books as such; they were difficult to read, and often in bad condition. At first they were apt to be made into palimpsests; but when good new parchment became abundant and comparatively cheap, this practice was dropped. I conjecture that there is no important palimpsest whose upper writing is later than the eleventh century. The fate of the early books is rather obscure to me, but I see that bits of them were not uncommonly used for lining covers and fly-leaves for MSS. of the thirteenth ...
— The Wanderings and Homes of Manuscripts - Helps for Students of History, No. 17. • M. R. James
... hands with us at random. This impression was fully confirmed by the subsequent behaviour of the bashful young gentleman in question, which we noted particularly, with the view of ascertaining whether we were right in our conjecture. ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... My conjecture is correct. Still gagged and bound I am at last lifted by the legs and shoulders. My impression, however, is that I am not being raised over a ship's bulwark, but on the contrary am being lowered. Are they going to drop me overboard to drown ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... flash the subterfuge in it, and her soul recoiled from it with incredulous pain. "Why should he be afraid to have people see us together? What does it mean? What reason can he possibly have?" Scores of questions like these crowded on her mind, and hurt her sorely. Her conjecture even ran so wide as to suggest the possibility of his being engaged to another woman,—some old and mistaken promise by which he was hampered. Her direct and honest nature could conceive of nothing less than this which could explain his conduct. Restlessly ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... period," continues Grote, "these poems, or indeed any other Greek poems, first began to be written, must be matter of conjecture, though there is ground for assurance that it was before the time of Solon. If, in the absence of evidence, we may venture upon naming any more determinate period, the question a once suggests itself, What were the purposes which, in that state ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... than Ken Ward. In fact, Ken was so full of importance and responsibility that he quite divided his time between foolish pride in his being chosen to "size up" the great college teams and fearful conjecture as to his ability. ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... which the fete was to have been held had been erected on a headland between Castle Raa and a precipitous declivity to the sea, and the only reasonable conjecture is that the unhappy lady, going out on Thursday night to superintend the final preparations, lost her way in the darkness and fell over ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... closed suddenly, and again Jasper found himself in the dark, fully understanding now that he was a prisoner, but why, he could not form a conjecture. ...
— Frank and Fearless - or The Fortunes of Jasper Kent • Horatio Alger Jr.
... of the origin of these arts; all is conjecture. They doubtless had their beginning long before mention is made of them in history, but these crafts—spinning and weaving—modified and complicated by inventions and, in modern times transferred largely from man to machine, were distinctively ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... far remoter than he found it from our understanding. The thought demands in English a vehicle crystal-clear; but Aeschylus in the Greek is not crystal-clear: so close-packed and vast are the ideas that there are lines on lines of which the best scholars can only conjecture the meaning.—In all this criticism, let me say, one is but saying what has been said before; echoing Professor Mahaffy; echoing Professor Gilbert Murray; but there is a need to give you the best picture possible of this man speaking from the eternal.—Unless ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... to Chopin one of the three Sonatas, Op. 31 (I am not sure which it was), the latter remarked that he had formerly thought the last movement VULGAR. From this Mr. Halle naturally concluded that Chopin could not have studied the works of Beethoven thoroughly. This conjecture is confirmed by what we learn from Lenz, who in 1842 saw a good deal of Chopin, and thanks to his Boswellian inquisitiveness, persistence, and forwardness, made himself acquainted with a number of interesting ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... read the Popple story overnight, and that made you think you saw a hedgehog when you were only half awake," said Mrs. Norbury, hazarding a conjecture that probably came very near ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... was to be carried or what was to be his fate Ernest could not conjecture, nor did he speculate much. It was enough for him to know that he was in the power of one of the ...
— The Young Bank Messenger • Horatio Alger
... first granted property rights to married women, were actuated less by a sense of justice towards women than by enlightened selfishness. The effect of so much freedom on women themselves was a matter for grave conjecture. It was not suggested by any of the American debaters, as it was later on the floors of the English Parliament, that women, if they controlled their own property, would undoubtedly squander it on men whom they preferred to their husbands. But it was prophesied that women ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... and John Knox." The whole of this section indeed is written somewhat hastily, like a scroll-copy, probably by Richard Bannatyne, his Secretary, from dictation; but whether it was merely rewritten in 1571, or first added in that year to complete Book Fourth, must be left to conjecture. ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... it would probably mean that she would have to give it up. That would be hard to bear—all the harder because Mittie knew at least something of the true state of affairs. She knew how persistently Fred Ferris had come after her sister, and she must at least conjecture a little of what her sister felt for Fred. Nobody knew all that Joan felt, except Joan herself; but Mittie had seen quite enough to have made her ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... very best thing that can be said to her," answered the squire. "I will merely say that M. Rudolph wishes to see her; that will not cause her to conjecture anything—to foresee anything: it is the ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... consciously profited from the results of bribery; and, moreover, it is not probable that his methods in the East were different, except in form, from the debauching and exploitation that he made a system of in the fur regions. It is not outside the realm of reasonable conjecture to suppose that he either helped to debauch, or connived at the corruption of legislatures, just as in another way he ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... Tiovulfingacester of Venerable Bede; but Smith, the learned editor of the Cambridge edition of Bede, inclines to the opinion that Southwell is the town indicated by the pious and industrious monastic. The passage in Bede leaves every thing to conjecture: he simply relates that a truth-speaking presbyter and abbot of Pearteneu, (most likely, Partney, near Horncastle, in Lincolnshire,) named Deda, said that an old man had told him, that he, with a great multitude, was ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... had they come? Not along the road in either direction: the unbroken, deep dust assured that. Not down the mountain from above, for the cliff rose sheer for at least three hundred feet. Jimmy Gaynes, following unconsciously the general train of conjecture, craned his neck over the edge of the road. The broken jagged rock and shale dropped off an hundred feet to a tangle of ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... deserted and denuded of poppet legs and engine-houses, its comparatively 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
... and wear their hair long. They eat nothing but roots, ride about on buffaloes, conversing only among themselves, being afraid of all others, having no houses, and live more like wild beasts than men, and these we conjecture to have been the original ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... was going abroad, but he did not say where exactly: the reader will readily conjecture that he made straight for Frankfort. Thanks to the general extension of railways, on the fourth day after leaving Petersburg he was there. He had not visited the place since 1840. The hotel, the White ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... you shall be with Me in Paradise"? May we not dwell on the wonder and joy and gratitude and love which must have shaken that world within the veil, as the loving conqueror came in amongst them? And may we not reverently follow Him still in thought when He returned to earth and, as we conjecture, somewhere in the Forty Days after the Resurrection, told His disciples of His marvellous experience? I am not laying down this as a statement of Scripture, but I think it is a fair conjecture, for how else could they have learned it? And if we are right; think ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... to the walls, and must have darkened the windows. It was about seven o'clock—not late to my London notions—but, after knocking for some time at the door and receiving no reply, I was driven to conjecture that the occupant of the house was gone to bed. So I betook myself to the nearest church I had seen, three miles back on the road I had come, sure that close to that I should find an inn of some kind; and early the next morning I set off back to Coldholme, by ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... ancient Venetian costume, looking on at the ceremony of the Bucentaur. The Frenchman, who plainly discerned that some strange and painful mystery stood between the Prince and the Duchess, was racking his brain with shrewd conjecture to discover ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... Gyllenborg truly states his intention, it must be confessed that the "foreigners, and gentlemen of our own country" had not much upon which to congratulate themselves. Why Swift should have chosen the Count de Gyllenborg to whom to address the dedication must also remain a matter for conjecture. The Count had been sent out of the British Isles for instigating a conspiracy for a Jacobite insurrection in Great Britain. Swift wrote his dedication three years after the Count's expulsion. Knowing ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... impulse to write, but that in writing, and more especially in revising, every line is submitted to her own severe scrutiny. I am not sure that she has not destroyed some of her best work, though this is of course only conjecture. At all events, while she makes no mistakes, I sometimes feel that there is too much repression. She is one of our best American sonnet-writers. Such a poem as After Rain is a work ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... particularly successful. A white, agonized face was all that I remembered, and afterward a white, senseless face, belonging to a prostrate figure, which I was trying to raise. This was all. What that face might look like in repose, I found it impossible to conjecture. ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... the first oaks still put forth their leaves, man lost the perfect knowledge of the One True God, the Ancient Absolute Existence, the Infinite Mind and Supreme Intelligence; and floated helplessly out upon the shoreless ocean of conjecture. Then the soul vexed itself with seeking to learn whether the material Universe was a mere chance combination of atoms, or the work of Infinite, Uncreated Wisdom:... whether the Deity was a concentrated, and ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... my reading of the best authorities upon the history of science, Newton discovered neither gravitation, nor the law of gravitation; nor did he pretend to offer more than a conjecture as to the causation of gravitation. Moreover, his assertion that the notion of a body acting where it is not, is one that no competent thinker could entertain, is antagonistic to the whole current conception of attractive and repulsive forces, and therefore ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... he will not allow the Cranes, yet upon second Thoughts did admit of Pygmies here: For this Story of the Pygmies and the Cranes having made so much noise, he thinks there may be something of truth in it; and then gives us his Conjecture, how that the Pygmies may be those Dwarfs, that are to be met with beyond the Fountains of the Nile; but that they do not fight Cranes but Elephants, and kill a great many of them, and drive a considerable Traffick for their teeth with the Jagi, who sell them to ...
— A Philological Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients • Edward Tyson
... love? There were no visitors at the Chateau des Noires-Fontaines, the political troubles had put an end to all society, and Amelie went nowhere alone. Madame de Montrevel could get no further than conjecture. Roland's return had given her a moment's hope; but this hope fled as soon as she perceived the effect which this event ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... yet was Walter troubled. He lived in love's eternal present, and did not look forward. Even jealousy had not yet begun to show itself in any shape. He was not in Lady Lufa's set, and therefore not much drawn to conjecture what might be going on. In the glamour of literary ambition, he took for granted that Lady Lufa allotted his world a higher orbit than that of her social life, and prized most the pleasures they had in common, which so few were ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... little of the economy of the spiritual world, of the manner in which spirit can operate on spirit, and consequently of the nature of that influence which superior beings are capable of exercising upon others in this world, that we could at best only make a vague conjecture. It is sufficient for all moral purposes to ascertain the fact, that such an influence is possible to evil spirits, and permitted by Providence, that it forms a part of the trial of good men in this state ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... redoubt and taken his 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
... him to go to windward, to find him alive upon my return. He was certainly as low as he could well be when I left him, and what would be the effect of the medicines that I gave him, I hardly then dared to conjecture. Yet I knew that he must die without them. I was not a little rejoiced, therefore, and relieved, upon our return, to see him decidedly better. The medicines were strong, and took hold and gave a check to the disorder which was destroying him; and, more ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... reduced us all to awestruck silence, and, I hope, gave the speaker an unforgetable lesson as to the duty of not speaking lightly in matters affecting female reputation. He collapsed; and I do not recollect that he ventured any comment upon a letter of the next morning which proved his conjecture to be correct. The principle was ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... of them, had pronounced the horsemen to be Indians—the most probable supposition under the circumstances—it was but a random conjecture, and for some time ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... it will be very handsome. At the 'Change did several businesses, and here I hear that newes is come from Deale, that the same day my Lord Sandwich sailed thence with the fleete, that evening some Dutch men of warr were seen on the back side of the Goodwin, and, by all conjecture, must be seen by my Lord's fleete; which, if so, they must engage. Thence, being invited, to my uncle Wight's, where the Wights all dined; and, among the others, pretty Mrs. Margaret, who indeed is a very pretty lady; and though by my vowe it costs me 12d. a kiss after the first, yet I did adventure ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... it not that the blood of the venous artery, having only been in the lungs after it has passed through the heart, is thinner, and rarefies more readily, and in a higher degree, than the blood which proceeds immediately from the hollow vein? And what can physicians conjecture from feeling the pulse unless they know that according as the blood changes its nature it can be rarefied by the warmth of the heart, in a higher or lower degree, and more or less quickly than before? And if it be inquired how this heat is communicated to ...
— A Discourse on Method • Rene Descartes
... be as well to silence all conjecture at once, by stating that I am a woman of——no, I won't say how old, because everybody will date me from this time forward, and I shall not always be willing to tell how old I am! I am not very young now, it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... to be acquainted, and, with his surly smile, said two or three words, which I, who was standing by, did not understand. The Gypsies smiled in return, and giving the reins of their animals to their mounted companion, immediately set about the task which the king of the flash-men had, as I conjecture, imposed upon them; this they soon accomplished. Who could stand against such fellows and such whips? The fight was soon over—then there was a pause. Once more Thurtell came up to the Gypsies ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... in our time received what I may call some fireside embellishments; but these are the facts, and the parish knows little beyond them. I (as you conjecture) know a great deal more; and yet there is a sense in which I know nothing more. You and I, my old friend, have come to an age when men do not care to juggle with the mysteries of another world, but knowing that the time is near when all accounts ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... a wild conjecture. The more he thought of it the more certain Ren became that there was some intelligence down there that had already made contact with the ...
— Unthinkable • Roger Phillips Graham
... is, and what is its quality, has never been revealed to any one since the day of creation, being an arcanum in the treasuries of God alone; but this has been discovered, that the soul resides in a man as a queen; yet where her palace is, has been a matter of conjecture among the learned. Some have supposed it to be in a small tubercle between the cerebrum and the cerebellum, which is called the pineal gland: in this they have fixed the soul's habitation, because the whole man is ruled from those two brains, and they are regulated by that tubercle; ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... Governor desired to bridge over all these troubles by giving the regiment a commander who knew nothing about them. I presume that some one said to the Governor about this time, "Why don't you get Sheridan?" This, however, is only conjecture. I really do not know how my name was proposed to him, but I have often been told since that General Gordon Granger, whom I knew slightly then, and who had been the former colonel of the regiment, first suggested the appointment. ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 1 • Philip H. Sheridan
... enjoyed Anawrata's confidence. The story implies that there was a party in Pagan which knew that the prevalent creed was corrupt and also looked upon Thaton and Ceylon as religious centres. As Anawrata was a man of arms rather than a theologian, we may conjecture that his motive was to concentrate in his capital the flower of learning as known in his time—a motive which has often animated successful princes in Asia and led to the unceremonious seizure of living saints. According to the story he broke up the communities ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... me and enjoy me, even as thou hast seen. Art thou not therefore incensed against me, because of this, albeit by the virtue of Fire and Light, Shade and Heat, I love thee more than ever and have made thee my portion of the world?" He answered (being drunken), "Thy conjecture of the cause of my rage is correct, and it had no reason other than this." With this she embraced him and kissed him and made great show of love to him; then she lay down to sleep and he by her side Presently about midnight she rose from the carpet- bed and King Badr Basim was ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... tradition should have survived the revolutions, which, since that period, have taken place in this island. King Leir, and whatever surmises may have been founded on the similarity between his name and the present name of the place, may safely be left to those who are more fond of the flights of conjecture than the ...
— A Walk through Leicester - being a Guide to Strangers • Susanna Watts
... This was the question which Basil and Lucien put to each other, not without some feelings of anxiety. Perhaps, thought they, Francois has sprung a deer, or trampled up a flock of turkeys? So the brothers were fain to conjecture; but their conjectures were soon ended by Francois himself, who was heard far off through the woods, shouting in ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... year. The limits of time, therefore, between which the "Chronicle" was written are clearly circumscribed; and if it is impossible to define the exact year in which this particular entry was made, it is not, I fancy, beyond the legitimate bounds of critical conjecture. ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... which if discovered would cost him his head. When one learns this and then thinks back in the light of this knowledge, his conduct throughout the play appears absolutely inconceivable; so that one is driven to the conjecture that Schiller did not think of him all along as an out-and-out traitor, but added this touch at the last, along with others, for the purpose of accenting his ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... colour was caused by little gelatinous balls, about the fifth of an inch in diameter, in which numerous minute spherical ovules were imbedded: they were of two distinct kinds, one being of a reddish colour and of a different shape from the other. I cannot form a conjecture as to what two kinds of animals these belonged. Captain Colnett remarks, that this appearance is very common among the Galapagos Islands, and that the directions of the bands indicate that of the currents; in the described case, however, the line was caused by the wind. The only ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... begotten, creating in them, through the abundance of ill humours, divers languishing diseases. Wherefore, health is no better discerned than by the genitals of the man; for which reasons midwives, and other skilful women, were formerly wont to see the testicles of children, thereby to conjecture their temperature and state of body; and young men may know thereby the signs and symptoms of death; for if the cases of the testicles be loose and feeble, which are the proofs of life, are fallen, but if the ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... by Lieutenant Ruducoff of the Russian navy, and is here to be freighted with wheat to supply that settlement with breadstuff. Sitca is situated in a high northern latitude, and has a population of some four or five thousand inhabitants. A large portion of these, I conjecture, are christianized natives or Indians. Many of the crew of this vessel are the aborigines of the country to which she belongs, and from which she last sailed. I noticed, however, from an inscription, that the brig was built at Newburyport, Massachusetts, ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... chaste and artistic, and true in the imitation of nature. What could have induced the executive committee of the Great Exhibition to decide upon excluding works of such elaborate labour and beauty, and these the works of an English artist, of the first standing, we are totally at a loss to conjecture. We say "excluding," for it is tantamount to exclusion to tell Mrs. Peachey that she must place such volatile work in a top gallery, exposed to the heat of a July sun, or withdraw them, although she had been previously allocated space on the basement of the building. ...
— The Royal Guide to Wax Flower Modelling • Emma Peachey
... in thought, her blue eyes dark with conjecture. "I don't know," she said at length. "Sometimes I think I do, and sometimes I think I don't. He's very good-looking in a tall, blond, pliable way, and he can be very amusing when he wants to be. I ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... men. When Tickell, Addison's friend, published the first book of the "Iliad," in opposition to Pope's version, Addison gave it the preference. This moved Pope's indignation, and led him to assert that it was Addison's own composition. In this conjecture he was supported by Edward Young, who had known Tickell long and intimately, and had never heard of him having written at college, as was averred, this translation. It is now, however, we believe, certain, from the MS. which still exists, that Tickell was the real author. ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... Caesar's pursuit. The books on the Alexandrian, the African, and the Spanish wars, which continue the narrative down to Caesar's final victory at Munda in southern Spain, are by other and inferior hands. The question of their authorship has been the subject of much controversy and conjecture. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... Barbican's happy conjecture had probably hit the nail on the head. The divergency even of a second may amount to millions of miles if you only have your lines long enough. The Projectile had certainly gone off its direct course; ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... as through a golden mist, he saw the drama of life sublimated, himself an actor of dignity and worth; and a few moments later he entered the president's office with a poise in which there remained no trace of anxious conjecture. ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... on the subject of their mission continued to discuss it from various angles. In this way they often hit upon suggestions, because one remark would bring out another until some fellow chanced to open up a new field of conjecture. ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... variegated with diversity of unmeaning similitudes, nor glaring with the varnish of unnatural metaphor. The whole is plain and uniform; so much so, indeed, that I should hardly be surprised if some morose readers were to conjecture that the poet had been thus simple rather from necessity than choice; that he had been restrained, not so much by chastity of judgment, as ...
— English Satires • Various
... was obliged to supply many of the details by conjecture, she was so hazy and vague ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... the women were seating themselves, as St. George with beating heart took his way up the aisle. What the paper contained he could not even conjecture; but there was a paper and it did contain something which he had a pleasant premonition would be invaluable to him. Yet he was still utterly at loss to account for his own presence there, and this he coolly ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... His conjecture proved correct. On ascending a ridge which gave him a view of a beautiful valley beyond, his eye rested ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... have sometimes thought; yet as you never said anything, I restrained my own dim misgivings, which could not claim the sure guide of vision. What papa has seen or guessed I will not inquire, though I may conjecture. He has minutely noticed all Mr. Nicholls's low spirits, all his threats of expatriation, all his symptoms of impaired health—noticed them with little sympathy and much indirect sarcasm. On Monday evening Mr. Nicholls was here to tea. I vaguely felt without ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... doubtfull affaires of the world; yet I confesse that notwithstanding that great respect that is due to it, I have in some cases lesse regarded it when it did not appear to comply with the capacityes of ordinary men, persuading my selfe that conjecture well fram'd and adjusted by a plausible Air is more rellishing to ingenious persons, then an obscure and fainting truth, of which sort there is a very great ...
— A Philosophicall Essay for the Reunion of the Languages - Or, The Art of Knowing All by the Mastery of One • Pierre Besnier
... present, however, I believe that conservatism is advisable, and that great harm may be done by misrepresentation. Sound growth of a northern nut industry will be built upon facts and honest experience and not on conjecture, hearsay, or even on enthusiasm, however necessary this may be. I believe that we should encourage people to plant nuts for pleasure, plant nuts as a hobby, plant them for shade and for posterity, but under present ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... and the fondest conjecture that I could indulge in, was, that he had returned home. I, therefore, shouldered my musket, and followed my companions to Dunse, whom I overtook upon the moors. It would be impossible for me to describe my feelings by the way—they were torture strained to its utmost extremity, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... they had a little controversy, they were immediately agreed on this point (of the Passover) without any disputation." [557:1] What the "certain other matters" were which created the chief dissatisfaction, we are left obscurely to conjecture; but we may presume that they must have been of no ordinary consequence, when so eminent a minister as Polycarp, now verging on eighty years of age, felt it necessary to make a lengthened journey by sea and land with a view to their adjustment. He obviously considered that Anicetus ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... motives, the details of what she said and did. Beneath the satisfaction of her curiosity, of course, there was all the time a pang—a pang not to be silenced. In her flights of idle fancy she had often suspected something not unlike the truth, basing her conjecture on the mystery which had always hung round that Paris visit, partly on the world's general experience of what happened to handsome young men. For, in her heart of hearts, had there not lurked all ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... exhortations for averting the Divine anger by the only methods which suggested themselves to my mind. These exhortations, by the event, I perceive have not had that regard paid to them I had reason to expect. Indeed, I am the more confirmed in this conjecture, by a lad whom I lately met at a neighbouring baronet's, where I sojourned the two last days of the year, with my good friend ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... the quarter-deck with him whilst we were in Sicilian waters I thought I could see the summits of the Alps beautifully lighted by the rays of the setting sun. Bonaparte laughed much, and joked me about it. He called Admiral Brueys, who took his telescope and soon confirmed my conjecture. ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... "Esoteric Buddhism," which are alleged to create an "historical difficulty," were not made by Mr. Sinnett's correspondent to bolster a western theory, but in loyalty to historical facts. Whether they can or cannot be accepted in those particular localities where criticism seems based upon mere conjecture (though honoured with the name of scientific hypothesis), is something which concerns the present writers as little as any casual traveler's unfavourable comments upon the time-scarred visage of the Sphinx can affect the designer of that sublime symbol. The sentences, "the Greeks and Romans ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... oscillatory motion which we discover in all magnetic phenomena, whether in those of the inclincation, declination, and intensity of these forces, according to the hours of the day and the night, and the seasons and the course of the whole year, leads us to conjecture the existence of very various and partial systems of electric currents on the surface of the Earth. Are these currents, as in Seebeck's experiments, thermo-magnetic, and excited directly from unequal distribution of heat? or should we not rather regard ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... lakes and marshes from which the waters escaped by cracks or depressions in the subtending older rocks, had been in that condition during an enormously long period. I have recently been enabled, through the apposite discovery of Dr. Kirk, the companion of Livingstone, not only to fortify my conjecture of 1852, but greatly to extend the inferences concerning the long period of time during which the central parts of Africa have remained in their present condition, save their degradation by ordinary atmospheric agencies. My view, as given to this Society in 1852, was mainly founded on the original ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... The player on his right would then stake against it any article which he deemed of equal value; and if the leader accepted the bet he would signify it; his opponent had then to guess the number of pebbles taken by the first Indian; and if his conjecture was correct, became the possessor of the articles wagered. If he failed to guess the right number, the holder of the stones was the winner; then the next savage seized the pebbles, and so it went round and round the circle, the winners venting their exultation in yells and laughter, ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... bitter-flavoured memory of this, and other in no way dissimilar episodes, lingering in my throat, it need not be a matter of conjecture that for a time I greeted warily all who bore a title, a mark of rank, or any similar appendage; who wore a uniform, weapon, brass helmet, jewelled crown, coat of distinctive colour, or any excessive superfluity of pearl or metal buttons; ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... of grammar, how supremely repulsive they are! It is impossible to glean any sense from them, as the Editor mixes up Nipperwick's view with Sidgeley's reasoning and Spreckendzedeutscheim's surmise with Donnerundblitzendorf's conjecture in a way that seems to argue a thorough unsoundness of mind and morals, a cynical insanity combined with a blatant indecency. He occasionally starts in a reasonable manner by giving one view as (1) and the next as (2). So far everyone is happy and satisfied. The trouble commences ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... some simple and casual way; he would fall in love at sight, and speedily prosper in his wooing; they would be married,—privately, for Maud blushed and burned to think of her home at such times,—and then they would go to New York to live. She never wasted conjecture on the age, the looks, the manner of being of this possible hero. Her mind intoxicated itself with the thought of his wealth. She went one day to the Public Library to read the articles on Rothschild and Astor in the encyclopedias. She even tried ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... suggested that the suicidal tendency is dependent on heat; but June is not the hottest month, nor is December the coldest. Durkheim has tested this conjecture by comparing temperatures with suicides in France, Italy, and Prussia. He finds that, in all three of these countries, suicides reach their maximum in June and their minimum in December, while the temperature does not rise to its maximum ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... this decision. What were the two going to do on land when the steamer was the property of others?... Would he not have to sail on an inferior boat, running the same risks?... He decided to undo his work, and was about to counsel Ferragut again, declaring that his ideas were mere conjecture and that he must continue living as he was at present, when the captain gave the order for departure. The repairs were not yet ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Tailleur, as having been appropriated by a captain who cut folk's coats according as he wanted the cloth. How the builders climbed to this height, how they managed to carry up their material, and how they achieved the building of these towers, is impossible to conjecture. The tradition is, that when the English quitted Peyrousse they destroyed the means of ascent, and since 1443 no human being has been able to climb the rock and visit the towers, that for nearly five hundred years have had no other denizens than ravens and jackdaws. But that ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... prince, or his successors, perhaps adopted this emblem as a trophy of their conquest, whence it has remained ever since among the most remarkable of the royal insignia. A learned friend, who has a valuable collection of Oriental coins, and whose information and opinion have enabled me to make this conjecture, believes that the emblematical representation of Sol in Leo was first adopted by Ghias-ud-din Kai Khusru bin Kaikobad, who began to reign A.H. 634, A.D. 1236, and died A.H. 642, A.D. 1244; and this emblem, he adds, is supposed ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... hands are cold as ice; the blood has curdled in my heart; that word compromise has a bad savor when truth and right are in question." When the Civil War came, in her seventieth year, she had "an intense desire to live to see the conclusion of the struggle," but could not conjecture "how peace and good neighborhood are ever to follow from this bitter hate." "It is delightful to see the gallantry of some of our men, who are repeating the heroic deeds that seemed fast receding to fabulous ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... will mention what surprised me most on that day. Indeed, as it appeared later, every one was surprised at it, too. We all knew that the affair had aroused great interest, that every one was burning with impatience for the trial to begin, that it had been a subject of talk, conjecture, exclamation and surmise for the last two months in local society. Every one knew, too, that the case had become known throughout Russia, but yet we had not imagined that it had aroused such burning, such intense, interest ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... misery, asking himself whither and for what? Whither had they taken her, and why? The Bristol road once left, his theory was at fault; he had no clue, and felt, where time was life and more than life, the slough of horrible conjecture rise to ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... of these, Mary Braddock was living. Staring up at the dim, flickering shadows on the ceiling, he traveled in horrid conjecture from one to the other of these immense wildernesses. Ahead of him stalked the ugly figure of Robert Grand, who knew—who perhaps had known all the time; at his side was the knowledge that the five years had come to an end. Was Mary Braddock, after all, in a ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... to the post-office since you left the chateau in such an abrupt and inexplicable manner. I am lost in conjecture about your sudden departure, which was both unnecessary and unprepared. It is doubtless because you do not wish to tell me the reason that you refuse to see me. I know that you are still at Pont de l'Arche, and that you ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... cool enough fell to conjecture. Grannie had no resource but groans. Nancy was moaning by her side. The rest were full of their own troubles. Blind ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... soon brought him into contact with the mounted force. His real intentions are still a matter of conjecture. Whether he had been ordered to attack the Egyptian brigade, or to drive back the cavalry, or to disappear behind the Kerreri Hills in conformity with Ali-Wad-Helu, is impossible to pronounce. His action was, however, clear. He could not safely assail the Egyptians with a powerful cavalry force ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... days, or months, or years. This to attain, whether Heaven move or Earth, Imports not, if thou reckon right; the rest From Man or Angel the Great Architect Did wisely to conceal, and not divulge His secrets, to be scanned by them who ought Rather admire. Or, if they list to try Conjecture, he his fabric of the Heavens Hath left to their disputes, perhaps to move His laughter at their quaint opinions wide Hereafter, when they come to model Heaven, And calculate the stars; how they will wield The mighty frame; how build, unbuild, contrive To save appearances; how gird the Sphere ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... watched them in the changing lights and her active mind formed many a conjecture ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... the senior Mr. North had been just behind her when she greeted his son and the latter's opening remarks had given him food for lively conjecture. Dexterously, considering his bulk, he had insinuated himself into and through a screening group of people and rejoined his hostess near the door. Where and when could that boy of his have ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... highest order. Shortly before he died, at the age of forty, he seemed to have ripened into more earnest views and purposes, and, had he lived to fulfill his prime, it is reasonable to hazard the conjecture that he would have richly earned a far loftier niche in the pantheon of music than can now be given him. A rich, pleasure-loving, Oriental temperament, which tended to pour itself forth in dreams ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... the charge, she answered meekly that it was impossible she could have taken the linen, as she had passed the whole day in the hay-field with the other servants; that a stranger might easily have taken advantage of a moment when there was no one in the kitchen to commit the theft. This conjecture turned out to be the true one, but the farmer's wife was not to be turned from ...
— The Basket of Flowers • Christoph von Schmid
... scene we conjecture that the little drama has arrived at the desired conclusion, and therefore we add no further scene to that ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... the Order assure us that after some months' residence in Egypt, the holy Patriarch went to Palestine, and visited the holy places, but they enter into no particulars. What we may safely conjecture is, that God, who led him into the Holy Land, seemed to say to him, as He had said to Abraham: "Arise and walk through the land in the length and in the breadth thereof, for I will ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... intellectual anarchy. Cicero represents at once the doctrine of the later Academy and the general attitude of Roman society when he says, "My words do not proclaim the truth, like a Pythian priestess; but I conjecture what is probable, like a plain man; and where, I ask, am I to search for anything more than verisimilitude?'' And again: "The characteristic of the Academy is never to interpose one's judgment, to approve what seems most probable, to compare together different ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... native to the Hawaiian manner of thought, is the contradiction of a plausible conjecture—aole ka! "not so!". Both these forms occur in narrative or in dialogue. The four following are found ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... Ballarat), and little had been done in true ship-shape style all night. All hands had taken their spell at everything as the fancy seized them; not a bell had been struck from first to last; and I can only conjecture that the fire raged four or five hours, from the fact that it was midnight by my watch when I left it on my cabin drawers, and that the final extinction of the smouldering keel was so soon followed ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... trunks was either lost or stolen, she is not certain which. As she pays no personal attention to her baggage, she was not aware of her loss for several days. So much is fact. Now we come to mere conjecture. A plausible conjecture seems to be that the gowns in the trunk were sold to a second-hand dealer, and these gowns, being attractive, the dealer must have immediately resold to various purchasers, and one of these purchasers ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... when he wrote it. Still, this is only conjecture. We have only circumstantial evidence. ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... implied appeal to true scientific principles, an underlying assertion of the paramount importance of the experimental method, a consistent attack upon a priori reasoning, loose statement, and vague conjecture. But of course, mixed with all this, and covering it all, there is a bubbling, sparkling fountain of effervescent raillery—cruel, personal, insatiable—the raillery of a demon with a grudge. The manuscript was shown to Frederick, who laughed till ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... of the common people, but so far as we can conjecture, certainly not for them; Milton was not of them, but was wholly for them, being indeed regarded as an anarchist; Burns was a peasant, and Shelley a blue-blood, but both were with the popular cause. Browning ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... any of your readers assign the origin of this jocular appellation? I would hazard the conjecture, that it may be corruption of Hogen Mogen, High Mightinesses, the style, I believe, of the States-General of Holland; and that it probably became an expression of contempt in the mouths of the Jacobites for the followers of William III., from whence ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 206, October 8, 1853 • Various
... avoid the word "law"; but in the land of science they are singularly fond of it. Thus they will call some interesting conjecture about how forgotten folks pronounced the alphabet, Grimm's Law. But Grimm's Law is far less intellectual than Grimm's Fairy Tales. The tales are, at any rate, certainly tales; while the law is not a law. A law implies that we know the nature of the generalisation and enactment; ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... has not given them a sight that can extend to so many people, to discern which excels the rest, nor to penetrate into our bosoms, where the knowledge of our wills and best value lies they must choose us by conjecture and by groping; by the family, wealth, learning, and the voice of the people, which are all very feeble arguments. Whoever could find out a way by which they might judge by justice, and choose men by reason, would, in this one thing, establish ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... help laughing. "Upon my word," said she, "I should not have supposed that my opinion of any one could have admitted of such difference of conjecture, steady and matter of fact as I may call myself. I have really a curiosity to see the person who can give occasion to such directly opposite notions. I wish he may be induced to call here. And when he does, Mary, you may depend ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... It was all conjecture on her part, but she felt it to be the truth. The more she thought over it, the more she felt ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel
... 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
... evidence that cannot be here quoted, to prove that the splendid personage presented is a Neapolitan nobleman of the highest rank, Giovan Francesco Acquaviva, Duke of Atri. There is the more reason to accept his conjecture since it helps us to cope with certain difficulties presented by the picture itself. It may be conceded at the outset that there are disturbing elements in it, well calculated to give pause to the student of Titian. The handsome patrician, a little too proud of his rank, his magnificent ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... blue; while the tall man in blue, Adjutant von Nordenfels, "from the moment she stood before the officers in her cold protest and unrelenting pride," was madly in love with the countess. The feelings of these two young people being thus from the first removed from the region of doubt and conjecture, what few slight obstacles contrive to separate them for a time carry little weight with the reader. There is a dearth of incident which the side-play of the coquettish maid, Nathalie's femme-de-chambre, fails to relieve. The marquis and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... Benedictine Fathers have had serious doubts about admitting it into the Acta Sanctorum. On the other hand, the editors of the French text, the translation of which we have before us, go so far as to conjecture that there is a historic germ for the whole Legend in certain incidents of the War of Charlemagne against Didier. But as the whole connection of the Legend with the Charlemagne Cycle is late, we need not attribute ...
— Old French Romances • William Morris |
