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More "Conjecture" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Mary's previous conjecture had been right, then. Boyne must have gone to the gardens to meet her, and since she had missed him, it was clear that he had taken the shorter way by the south door, instead of going round to the court. She crossed ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... not speak by conjecture. It is not alone that the voices of statesmen and of newspapers reach me, and that the voices of foolish and intemperate agitators do not reach me at all. Through many, many channels I have been made aware what the plain, struggling, workaday folk are thinking, upon ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... town, and had almost accomplished her errand when the crash and whir of wheels drew her to the window that looked out on the lawn. Her father had gone to the plantation early that morning, and she had scarcely time to conjecture whom the visitor would prove, when Hugh's loud voice rang through the house, and, soon after, he came clattering in, with the end of his pantaloons tucked into his boots, and his whip trailing along in true boyish fashion. As he threw down his hat, scattering the petals of a ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... of cabins, in the remote region bordering on the new country, knew still less about it; as they had not penetrated its wilderness, and were destitute of that general knowledge which prevents the exercise of the exaggerations of vague conjecture. There was, indeed, ample room for the indulgence of speculation upon the features which the unexplored land was characterized. Its mountains, plains, and streams, animals, and men, were yet to be discovered ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... have something better to grow. The first point you have to determine by growing the two side by side and weighing the product; the nutritive value of each will have to be determined by chemical analysis. Until these determinations are actually made a comparison of desirability is nothing but conjecture. There are several other potatoes which are sometimes more profitable here and there for early crop when grown in an early locality. If you are not in an early locality you are obliged to produce for the main crop, and nothing, to our knowledge, sells as well ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... Saturn, we 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 more), we see in other parts ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... she should know any secret about me, a stranger from a strange age? In the second place, even if she should know such a secret, how account for the agitating effect which the knowledge of it seemed to have upon her? There are puzzles so difficult that one cannot even get so far as a conjecture as to the solution, and this seemed one of them. I am usually of too practical a turn to waste time on such conundrums; but the difficulty of a riddle embodied in a beautiful young girl does not detract from its fascination. In general, no doubt, maidens' ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... of many exotic Geraniums producing (although in vigorous health) imperfect pollen seems to be connected with the period when water is given them{254}; but in the far greater majority of cases we cannot form any conjecture on what exact cause the sterility of organisms taken from their natural conditions depends. Why, for instance, the cheetah will not breed whilst the common cat and ferret (the latter generally kept shut up in a small box) do,—why the elephant will not whilst the pig will abundantly—why the partridge ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... saved. That legion of devils that was in the possessed, with all the sins which he had committed in the time of his unregeneracy, could not take away his life before his conversion (Mark 5). How many times was that poor creature, as we may easily conjecture, assaulted for his life by the devils that were in him, yet could they not kill him, yea, though his dwelling was near the sea-side, and the devils had power to drive him too, yet could they not drive him further than the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the skeletons and mummies, 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 ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... crock, cradle, darn, dainty, mop, pillow; 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 ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... of religion moved quite sharply in his chair when I told him (as he understood it) that I had to run upstairs and do what was wrong, but should be down again in a minute. Exactly of what occult vice they silently accused me I cannot conjecture, but I know of what I accuse myself; and that is, of having written a very shapeless and inadequate book, and one quite unworthy to be dedicated to you. As far as literature goes, this book is what ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... than from scot and lot householders; and from ten pound householders in the country towns than from ten pound householders in London. Experience, I say, therefore, is on our side; and on the side of our opponents nothing but mere conjecture and mere assertion. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... offered but little for the eye to rest on at that distance. At first, Jack thought the young man was actually endeavouring to get nearer to her, though it must have been a forlorn hope that should again place him in the hands of Spike. It was, however, a more probable conjecture that the young man was endeavouring to reach the margin of the passage, where a good deal of rock was above water, and near to which he had already managed to reach. At one time Jack saw that the mate was obliged to swim, and he actually lost sight of him for a time. His form, however, ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... conjecturable, if not apparent, that they were his wife and daughter, and that he was the worse for the vintage of their home acre, and would be the better for being got into the house and into bed. The conjecture enlisted the worthier instincts of the witness on the side of the mother and daughter; but he was in no hurry to have the animated action brought to a close, and was about to tell his cabman to drive very, very slowly, when suddenly the cab descended into a valley, and when the ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... outstretched arms; the rustling noise, occasioned by his passage through the herbage, ceased; and Rita, aghast at this extraordinary and mysterious occurrence, again found herself alone. We will leave her to her astonishment and conjecture, whilst we follow the gipsy to the place whither he had been so involuntarily and unceremoniously conveyed, a description of which will furnish a key to his seemingly ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... there, leaning back upon the railings, and looking up at Lady Glencora's windows. What did he expect to see? Or was he, in truth, moved by love of that kind which can take joy in watching the slightest shadow that is made by the one loved object,—that may be made by her, or, by some violent conjecture of the mind, may be supposed to have been so made? Such love as that is, I think, always innocent. Burgo Fitzgerald did not love like that. I almost doubt whether he can be said to have loved at all. There was in his breast a mixed, feverish desire, which he took no trouble to analyse. ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... time, Annixter had come up to the city and had gone at once to a certain hotel on Bush Street, behind the First National Bank, that he knew was kept by a family connection of the Trees. In his conjecture that Hilma and her parents would stop here, he was right. Their names were on the register. Ignoring custom, Annixter marched straight up to their rooms, and before he was well aware of it, was "eating crow" ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... we can only conjecture. Without doubt the growing scarcity of food in autumn is the controlling factor with many of them; and this would seem to be an excellent reason for leaving the region of their summer sojourn. Cold weather alone would not drive all of them ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... passage the orator has appended a note, in which he says: "This was thrown out as a conjecture of what possibly might happen; and the insurrections of San Domingo tend to prove this danger to be more considerable than has generally been supposed, and sufficient to alarm ...
— Anti-Slavery Opinions before the Year 1800 - Read before the Cincinnati Literary Club, November 16, 1872 • William Frederick Poole
... smouldering maternal instinct was strong enough in her to lead her to quash her husband's conjecture, she was not disposed on second thoughts to be more candid than necessary. Mr. Cartlett had no other idea than that his wife's child by her first husband was with ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... solebant." As we have already seen, the object of the examination of a victim's entrails was simply to ascertain its fitness to be offered; but by Cicero's time the Etruscan art of divination by this method must have penetrated into private life. I think we may conjecture that in the life of the family on the land the auspicia, as the word itself implies, were worked chiefly by observation of birds. Nigidius Figulus, the learned mystic of Cicero's time, wrote a book, ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... 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 the Universe an extended immateriality; or whether He was a personal existence, an Omnipotent, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... hopeless. Often, I admit, it develops into permanent insanity, but there are many examples of complete recovery. Our first business must be to assure ourselves that we are right in this conjecture. I may be entirely wrong, for the unexpected is what I have been taught to look for in every case of mystery that has come under my observation. But I believe I have the material at hand to prove the personality of ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... she felt that, artistically considered, there was no comparison whatever between the two men. The face of the elder compelled attention and study, and loosed in the observer's mind a whole stream of conjecture and unanswerable questions. The face of the younger began and ended perhaps in the attractions of youth and high spirits. It was a face of which, should the mind back of it prove wanting, you might tire, and learn to look ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... not know them, but I conjecture them. Your friend is in slavery: you will go and release him. But I am unable to talk now." The friar, whose voice had become feebler and feebler, sank down on the stone bench against the wall from which he had risen to touch Tito's ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... true! My conjecture is true! Speak to me, Miss Wharton; I conjure you, in mercy to my feelings, to tell me—do you love Dunwoodie?" There was a plaintive earnestness in the voice of Miss Singleton that disarmed Frances of all ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... this interpretation. Bianchi, [This antiquarian is now imprisoned for Life, for having robbed the Gallery and then set it on fire.] who shows the gallery, thinks the statue represents the augur Attius Navius, who cut a stone with a knife, at the command of Tarquinius Priscus. This conjecture seems to be confirmed by a medallion of Antoninus Pius, inserted by Vaillant among his Numismata Prestantiora, on which is delineated nearly such a figure as this in question, with the following legend. ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... the binding of other copies; and this, he says, "will account for similar copies having been found in the libraries of so many persons, which from time to time has occasioned so much speculation." With Mr. Cramp's conjecture I do not concern myself; but I should be much obliged if he would inform me, through your Journal, in what libraries, and where, these many vellum-bound copies have been found, and where I can find the speculations to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 75, April 5, 1851 • Various
... things, neither the welkin, nor the earth, nor the points of the compass, could any longer be seen. Stupefied by the dust, all the troops became blind. Neither the foe, O king, nor we, could distinguish each other. For this reason, the kings began to fight, guided by conjecture and the names they uttered. Deprived of their cars, car-warriors, O king, encountering one another, lost all order and became a tangled mass. Their steeds killed and drivers slain, many of them, becoming ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... entered his study about a quarter to seven, with a companion whom he had found waiting for him on the door-step, it would have been impossible for him to conjecture the presence of his wife. He did not light another lamp. The first words of his visitor had startled him into forgetting that the room was dark—perhaps, as the interview went on, he was glad of the obscurity into which his face was thrown. And the sounds of the low-toned conversation did ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... 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 upon hearing my opinion; but I am determined ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... heavy footsteps where he had stood with his visitor. But the footsteps crossed the ledge, and their sound died away up the path Nan had taken. De Spain could not see the intruder. It was impossible to conjecture who he was or what his errand, and de Spain could only await whatever should develop. He waited several minutes before he heard any sign of life above. Then snatches of two voices began to reach him. He could distinguish Nan's voice and at intervals the heavier ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... pained, intensely pained, for the old man too. Perhaps he had meant her to be so, and that was her punishment. Jonquil could give her no information as to whither his master had gone, but he offered a conjecture that he had most probably gone ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... increasing Appetite the Mind has to Knowledge, and to the extending its own Faculties, which cannot be accomplished, as the more restrained Perfection of lower Creatures may, in the Limits of a short Life. I think another probable Conjecture may be raised from our Appetite to Duration it self, and from a Reflection on our Progress through the several Stages of it: We are complaining, as you observe in a former Speculation, of the Shortness of Life, and yet are ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... into the nature of the gods and demons, like people with no knowledge of art trying to get at the intention of artists from opinion and fancy and probabilities. For if[816] it is no easy matter for anyone not a professional to conjecture why the surgeon performed an operation later rather than sooner, or why he ordered his patient to take a bath to-day rather than yesterday, how is it easy or safe for a mortal to say anything else about the deity than that he knows best the time to cure vice, and applies ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... know the origin of this word, which does not seem to be derived from China. If we may make a conjecture, we will say that perhaps a poor phonetic transcription has made chinina from the word tinina (from tina) which in Tagal signifies tenido ["dyed stuff"], the name of this article of clothing, generally of but one color throughout. The chiefs wore these garments of ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... boots it concerning all this conjecture about the stars, since the earth is soon to come to an end, as is shown by our Holy Scriptures, and man's business is to prepare his soul ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... shown that a man does this or declines to do that for reasons best known to himself,—a reserve which is extremely conducive to the social interests of a community, since the conjecture into the origin and nature of those reasons stimulates the inquiring faculties, and furnishes the staple of modern conversation. And as it is not to be denied that, if their neighbours left them nothing to guess at, three-fourths ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... concerning this goddess than did the learned John Selden, who, writing two hundred and twenty-odd years ago, "De Dis Syris," says, on page 296 of that work, "I cannot conjecture whether Babia, who seems to have been reverenced among the Syrians as goddess of childhood and youth, is identical with the Syrian Venus or not, and I do not remember to have met with any mention of this deity except in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... the words deprived them of any sting. Doubtless the self-respect of the woman was in no way wounded by the master's recoil. For the rest, we know so little of the new conditions of his bodily nature, that nothing is ours beyond conjecture. It may be, for anything I know, that there were even physical reasons why she should not yet touch him; but my impression is that, after the hard work accomplished, and the form in which he had wrought and suffered ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... dead when he wrote it. Still, this is only conjecture. We have only circumstantial evidence. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... trunks, drove away at ordinary speed. The conclusion to which these good people came, was that the party were obliged to go out in the storm for the purpose of catching one of the late evening trains out of the city; and they may have been very nearly correct in the conjecture. ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... they say, is a little rivulet here in our country in Chaeronea, running into the Cephisus. But we know of none that is so called at the present time; and can only conjecture that the streamlet which is now called Haemon, and runs by the Temple of Hercules, where the Greeks were encamped, might perhaps in those days ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... and conjecture, the origin of the Chinese people remains undetermined. We do not know who they were nor whence they came. Such evidence as there is points to their immigration from elsewhere; the Chinese themselves have a tradition of a Western origin. The first picture we have of ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... son of Sir Henry Sidney, Lord Deputy of Ireland, and President of Wales, a person of great parts, and of no mean grace with the Queen; his mother was sister to my Lord of Leicester, from whence we may conjecture how the father stood up in the sphere of honour and employments, so that his descent was apparently noble on both sides; and for his education, it was such as travel and the University could afford none better, and his tutors infuse; for, after an incredible proficiency ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... flag. Instead, however, of steering for the harbour where the "Lady Alice" lay, she kept round the island to another on the other side. What she was, or why she had come to the island, I could not conjecture, I was about to return when I caught sight of a speck of white canvas above the horizon. "That probably is the 'Eagle,'" I thought. "In a few days I shall have to bid my kind friends farewell and go back to my ...
— The Two Whalers - Adventures in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston
... in Clarence Bulbul, who has lately taken upon himself the rank and dignity of Lion of Our Street, I have always been at a loss to conjecture. ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... imitation is indeed so great, that it has been argued that Fielding must have had his materials ready-made to his hands, and was merely a transcriber of local manners and individual habits. For this conjecture, however, there seems to be no foundation. His representations, it is true, are local and individual; but they are not the less profound and conclusive. The feeling of the general principles of human nature, operating in ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... long as he was visible, but my feet were rooted to the spot. My musing was rapid and incongruous. It could not fail to terminate in one conjecture, that this person was asleep. Such instances were not unknown to me, through the medium of conversation and books. Never, indeed, had it fallen under my own observation till now, and now it was conspicuous, and environed ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... might not be he that we find in the book of Chronicles (2 Chron 24:21); but one of that name that lived in the days of Christ, possibly John Baptist's father, or some other holy man. My reasons for this conjecture, are, 1. Because the murderers are convict by Christ himself: Zecharias, whom ye slew between the altar and the temple. 2. Because Christ makes a stop at the blood of Zecharias, not at the blood of John the Baptist: wherefore, if the person here mentioned were not murdered after, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... now was greater than ever, and she could account by no possible conjecture for a conduct so extraordinary. Hitherto, whenever she had visited in St James's-square by appointment, the air with which he had received her, constantly announced that he had impatiently waited her arrival; he had given up other engagements to stay with her, he had openly ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... also anxious to leave the city, which she knew was in a fresh ferment of gossip and conjecture on the subject of her lost husband, the deceased governor-elect. The news from the Indian Territory had renewed all the public interest in the mystery ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... awarded as a proper monthly allowance to the woman whose services to Mr. Sharon had commanded but $500 per month it is difficult to conjecture. It was benevolence itself to give $60,000 to a troop of lawyers enlisted under the command of Tyler, who had agreed to conduct the proceedings wholly at his own cost, for one-half of what could ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... The documents do not say. They confine themselves to reporting that that very evening Francis had a vision which decided him to return to Assisi.[8] Perhaps it would not be far from the truth to conjecture that once fairly on the way the young nobles took their revenge on the son of Bernardone for his airs as of a future prince. At twenty years one hardly pardons things like these. If, as we are often assured, there is a pleasure unsuspected by the ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... the next historian who takes cognizance of our hero, and the only other that requires any attention, has a passage which may be considered in connection with the foregoing. In his "Historia Majoris Britanniae" he remarks, under the reign of Richard the First: "About this time [1189-99], as I conjecture, the notorious robbers, Robert Hood of England and Little John, lurked in the woods, spoiling the goods only of rich men. They slew nobody but those who attacked them, or offered resistance in defence of their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... in a long-drawn, hysterical wail. The other women who had been listening began to weep. Mrs. Pointdexter, when she and Mrs. Zelotes moved on, was sobbing softly, but Mrs. Zelotes's face, though moved, wore an expression of stern conjecture. ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... corn-laws. We shall not believe, until we hear it from their own lips, that any portion of the Cabinet have advocated any scheme fraught with danger and injustice to the best interests of the country: nor shall we indulge in any conjecture as to the real nature of the policy that may have been under discussion, where conjecture must be so vague, and where it must so soon give place to authentic information. We shall merely say, that any measure calculated to place agriculture and industry generally, in a disadvantageous and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... realized very soon whither the journey was leading, and at thought of actually facing those terrors which loomed so large in conjecture his pulses began to leap. He had a suspicion of O'Neil's intent, but dared not voice it. Though the scheme seemed mad enough, its very audacity fascinated him. It would be worth while to take part in such an undertaking, even if it ended in failure. And somehow, against his judgment, ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... warrant his intervention, and would demand his leadership in peace or war; but under no circumstances is his authority valid qua joint proprietorship. The consent of the numerous joint-owners is even under most favorable conditions a matter of conjecture. ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... Hannah was right in her conjecture, came to the window, and mother and daughter stood gazing out for some minutes, and trying to penetrate the thick gloom which hung over the wild, ...
— The Voyage of the "Steadfast" - The Young Missionaries in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston
... not; Billy had got another mistress. 2. The second observation is upon the name she assumes, Richard Carr. Commentators are much divided upon this head; why she chose that name in preference to any other. I must confess they talk rather silly on this topic; I conjecture the name was given here because it was a good rhyme to tar; this is no mean or inconsiderable reason, as the poets will all testify. But let the reader decide this at his ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... diversion, the same privilege may be allowed to some beings above us, who may deceive, torment, or destroy us, for the ends, only, of their own pleasure or utility. This he again finds impossible to be conceived, but that impossibility lessens not the probability of the conjecture, which, by analogy, is so strongly confirmed. I cannot resist the temptation of contemplating this analogy, which, I think, he might have carried further, very much to the advantage of his argument. He might have shown, that these "hunters, whose ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... SUM. A bare conjecture, builded on per-haps.[54] In laying thus the blame upon the moon, Thou imitat'st subtle Pythagoras Who, what he would the people should believe, The same he wrote with blood upon a glass, And turn'd it opposite 'gainst the new moon, Whose beams, reflecting on it with full ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... entire separation from the rest of France, a telegram came bringing them the order to march. The news was well received, for anything was preferable to the prison life they were leading in Belfort. And while they were getting themselves in readiness conjecture and surmise were the order of the day, for no one as yet knew what their destination was to be, some saying that they were to be sent to the defense of Strasbourg, while others spoke with confidence ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... journal; but our disappointment and chagrin were great, when, on opening the book, we discovered it to be an old nautical publication of the last century. The title-page was missing, but its contents were chiefly tables of logarithms. It was a thick royal quarto, which led us to conjecture that it was a journal; between the leaves we found a few loose papers of very little consequence indeed; one of them contained two or three observations on the height of the water in the Gambia; one was a tailor's bill on a Mr. Anderson; and another was addressed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 542, Saturday, April 14, 1832 • Various
... am happy to hear you have found so agreeable an acquaintance as Miss Cooper. I doubt not but that I should like her. So you were a sleighing with the Doctor? Remember there are two Doctors in Cooperstown, and you leave me to conjecture which! ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... her: Was there real danger? Were the guerrillas coming? Would a start be made at once for the ranch? Why had the cowboys suddenly become so different? Madeline answered as best she could; but her replies were only conjecture, and modified to allay the fears of her guests. Helen was in a white ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... 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
... and developments of being there may be for God's chosen ones in worlds to come, we dare not conjecture, but this we know. Carleton had even then, as I saw him marked for an early change of ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... the support of the work, they called to their aid the individuals of our holy province. Nothing more than a sign was necessary to make them hasten thither, expressing their thanks for the opportunity. Although I have been unable to ascertain the year with certainty, I have foundation for the conjecture that in the chapter celebrated in the year 1662, the Franciscan fathers invited our Recollect family to take the above-mentioned missions of the Contracosta. They alleged that they were unable to attend to so many villages, whose care devolved upon them, because of the lack ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... with spies and set criminal intrigues everywhere afoot against our national unity of counsel, our peace within and without, our industries and our commerce. Indeed, it is now evident that its spies were here even before the war began; and it is unhappily not a matter of conjecture, but a fact proved in our courts of justice, that the intrigues which have more than once come perilously near to disturbing the peace and dislocating the industries of the country, have been carried on at the instigation, with the support, and even under the personal ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... such occupation as he could—office work of various kinds, but I suppose his reserved, gloomy ways rendered him unpopular; and even our own people, when it comes to business, prefer an active man who has a ready word for every one. I conjecture much of this, for he is not inclined to talk about himself. Poor as I am, I'm glad they accepted my invitation, and I mean to do all in my power to get him employment here. I have a little influence yet with some people, and perhaps a place can be found or made for him. He and his daughter ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... for conjecture, time now only for action. She sprang for the door, had it open in a trice, and before the cabby was really enthroned upon his lofty box, the girl was on the step, fair troubled face upturned to him in ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... slightly, with outstretched wings, as if about to soar at the moment of commencing hovering. The planes of the wings are then inclined, and meet the air. At the instant of stopping, the tail is depressed. It appears reasonable to conjecture that the slight soaring is to assist the tail in checking his onward course, and to gain a balance. Immediately the wings beat rapidly, somewhat as they do in ordinary flight but with a more forward motion, and somewhat as ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... Highest, some duty to discharge with the applause of a satisfied conscience. That the Deity, who himself must be supposed to feel love and affection for the beings he has called into existence, should delegate a portion of those powers, I for one cannot conceive altogether so wrong a conjecture. We would then find reality in Milton's sublime machinery of the guardian saints or genii of kingdoms. Nay, we would approach to the Catholic idea of the employment of saints, though without approaching the absurdity of saint-worship, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... shale, I laid open a smooth angular bone, hollowed something like a grocer's scoop; a three-pronged caltrop-looking bone, that seems to have formed part of a pelvic arch; another angular bone, much massier than the first, regarding the probable position of which I could not form a conjecture, but which some of my geological friends deem cerebral; an extremely dense bone, imperfect at each end, which presents the appearance of a cylinder slightly flattened; and various curious fragments, which, with what our Scotch museums have not yet acquired,—entire ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... to celebrate this double marriage, and as yet only one of the brides appearing, there was much of wondering and conjecture, but they mostly thought that Ganymede was ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... comment at Greengates; but while Lady Laura openly labelled Anstice as capricious and inclined to rate his own value too highly, Sir Richard more charitably supposed that the poor fellow was overworked; and Iris, after a day or two spent in futile conjecture as to the sudden cessation of his visits, accepted the fact of Anstice's defection with a composure ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... experience has been. Moreover, what do you mean by a 'living Reality'? The flesh and blood, bone and substance that perishes in a brief seventy years or so and crumbles into indistinguishable dust? Surely, ... if, as I conjecture from your words, you have seen one of the fair inhabitants of higher spheres than ours, . . you would not drag her spiritual and death unconscious brightness down to the level of the 'reality of a merely human life? Nay, if ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... same vein of improbable conjecture) you were to meet a mild, hard-working little priest, named Father Brown, and were to ask him what he thought was the most singular luck of his life, he would probably reply that upon the whole his best stroke was at the Vernon Hotel, where ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... thought and conjecture there were two types of astronomers—those who supplied the facts, and those who supplied the interpretation through the logic of mathematics. So Ptolemy was dependent upon Hipparchus, Kepler on Tycho Brahe, and Newton in much ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... as you may conjecture from my mode of life, I have nothing to offer to Miss Hazeldean correspondent with her own fortune, whatever that ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... "There crowds conjecture manifold. But, as knowledge, this comes only,—things may be as I behold Or may not be, but, without me and above me, things there are; I myself am what I know not—ignorance which proves no bar To the knowledge that I am, and, since I am, can recognize What to ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... may venture to conjecture the frame of mind in which a lady or gentleman first enters upon an engagement, we should say that it was this sense of startled suspense. They feel as Guy Faux would have felt after lighting the train of gunpowder—that they have done something which they may probably never repeat in their ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... state of mind had become is matter for exorbitant conjecture. Jane, arriving at his locked door upon an errand, was bidden by a thick, ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... done; Miss Trevor watching the apparently somewhat heartless operation with tightly clasped hands. Leslie's conjecture as to the creature's sagacity was fully justified; for upon finding himself in the water the dog at once began to paddle feebly toward the boat, and in less time than it takes to tell of it a couple of men had seized him and dragged him into the boat, in the bottom of which ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... long before I had fully grasped their general character. What Latin vowels could or could not form elision in Horace, Propertius, or Ovid, was a subject that cost me much labour, and yet left very small results as far as I was personally concerned. One clever conjecture, or one indication to show that one MS. was dependent on the other, was rewarded with a Doctissime or Excellentissime, but a paper on Aeschylus and his view of a divine government of the world received but a ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... reassured by this conjecture, I take my stand at the foot of the rock, under a broiling sun; and, for half a day, I follow the evolutions of my flies. They flit quietly in front of the slope, at a few inches from the earthy covering. They go from ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... 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, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... he came to study for himself the campaigns of Washington and Napoleon, we may be certain that the teaching he found there was made doubly impressive when read by the light of what he had seen himself. Nor is it mere conjecture to assert that in his first campaign his experience was of peculiar value to a future general of the Southern Confederacy. Some of the regiments who fought under Scott and Taylor were volunteers, civilians, ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... moon is convex or concave; 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 never heard ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... only conjecture," replied Sumichrast; "perhaps the stream flowing beneath the base of the rocks had excavated ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... of speculative physics. This would be the reality which is there for knowledge; although on this theory it is never known. For what is known is the other sort of reality, which is the byplay of the mind. Thus there would be two natures, one is the conjecture and the ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead
... did the Brethren mean by this? We are left largely to conjecture. My own personal impression is, however, that the Brethren feared that if Wesley took Communion with them he might be tempted to leave the Church of England ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... cavaliers, had yet in them as much blasphemy, and more determined malevolence. At other times he thought some unexpected alarm, or perhaps some drunken cavalier revel, had caused the family of Woodstock Lodge to make later hours than usual. To this conjecture, which appeared the most probable of any, his mind often recurred; and it was the hope that Tomkins would still appear at the rendezvous, which induced him to remain at the borough, anxious to receive communication from ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... troubles, and mention two pictures, a lawyer and his wife, said to have been painted there; they are whole lengths, and certainly in his later manner, but I could not gather any authentic account to build conjecture upon, as the intercourse between Amsterdam and Yarmouth has been kept up from olden time, and a Dutch fair held every three years on the shore. The ancestors of the family in whose possession they still are, may have visited Holland; but, amongst ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet
... point of view. Then I dare say his immense wealth would cast a spell over almost any woman. Mabel had some hundreds a year of her own; just enough, perhaps, to let her realize what millions really meant. But all this is conjecture. She certainly had not wanted to marry some scores of young fellows who to my knowledge had asked her; and though I don't believe, and never did believe, that she really loved this man of forty-five, she certainly did want to marry him. But if you ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... had worn black stockings instead of her one beloved pair of white, went on in thought, unhappy, humiliated Suzanna. If only—but in conjecture Suzanna was lost. The cramped toe exerting its right, thrust itself through again. One fleeting, horrified glance told the child that two toes now peeped out on a world that would be scandalized should ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... enemies had sought you without rest; they were on your track, and had I left you there any longer, you would have been found some day stabbed or shot in the park. The steward informed me that all kinds of suspicious people had gathered in the neighborhood of the palace and the garden, and I conjecture that they were the emissaries of your enemies. On this I took you away from that place, and have brought you here for your greater safety. Now allow me one question. Do you know who ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... experience would seem to justify them in declaring that, throughout the inhabited world, no such house exists. I, knowing at all events of one, admit the possibility that there may be more; yet I feel that it is to hazard a conjecture; I cannot point with certainty to any other instance, nor in all my secular life (I speak as one who has quitted the world) could I have ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... 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 have never left Madame Taverneau's house. So that when she ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... once that when walking 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. The Alps! ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... circumstance a week's amusement to the fashionable world. Reflection and disappointment succeeded, and a revival was more than once spoken of; but the recent marriage of the bachelor put an end to all conjecture, and the poor lady was for some time left to bewail in secret her single destiny. Who can say, when a lady has the golden ball at her foot, where she may kick it? Circumstances which have occurred since the above was written prove that the lady has ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... in the expression of the fourth stanza of this Ode in the Latin. Tentare cannot stand without an object, and to connect it, as the commentators do, with deos is awkward. I was going to remark that possibly some future Bentley would conjecture certare, or litare, when I found that certare had been anticipated by Peerlkamp, who, if not a Bentley, was a Bentleian. But it would not be easy to account for the corruption, as the fact that the previous line begins with cervice would ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... her; and it was fatal. What Sarah would have said if she could have seen Blue Bonnet's method of getting a drink is hard to conjecture. Hardly had she time to spring to her feet when voices were heard close ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... their spirit, a conjecture can be made from the unheard-of cruelty, which it is evident that they have hitherto exercised towards most good men. And in this assembly we have heard that a reverend father, when opinions concerning our Confession were expressed, said in the senate of the Empire that no plan seemed to him ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... after, filled with disappointment and mortifying conjecture as to the cause of her non-appearance, Thurston presented himself before Jacquelina at Luckenough. He happened to find her alone. With all her playfulness of character, the poor fairy had too much self-respect to relate the scene ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... youth, or the Civil War, and the days when he and mother were young married people and all of us children were jolly little things—and the city was a small town with one cobbled street and the others just dirt roads with board sidewalks." This was George Amberson's conjecture, and the others agreed; but they were mistaken. The Major was engaged in the profoundest thinking of his life. No business plans which had ever absorbed him could compare in momentousness with the plans that absorbed him now, for he had to ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... lives still. But not with the life of the universal soul. Oh no! There have been mystics in China, but the Chinese are not mystical. What he was he still is, an eating and drinking creature, and, one might even conjecture, a snob. For if one visits the family chapel of the Changs—another of the sights of Canton—one sees ranged round the walls hundreds of little tablets, painted green and inscribed in gold. These are the memorials of the deceased. ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... are not left to mere conjecture. The wonderful history of the Erie Canal, and a comparison of the circumstances connected with the operations of that great work with those under which this enterprise will be inaugurated and accompanied, furnish sufficient data for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... their meeting her at the house of her friend. The gay trifling of Miss Osgood aided greatly both in cooling his spleen and removing his melancholy, till in the course of a month he even proceeded so far as to make her the confidant of what she already knew, though only by conjecture and inference. Delafield at this time was so urgent, and secretly so determined to prevail, in order that his pride if not his affections might be soothed, that in an unguarded moment he induced the inconsiderate Maria to betray, we will not say the confidence of her ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... Locke and with Leibnitz. When she was very small, in spite of frequent conferences with learned members of the Church of England, she became persuaded of the truth of Catholicism and joined the Roman communion. We may conjecture that this coincided with the conversion of her kinsman, Lord Chancellor Perth, but as events turned out it cannot but have added to the sorrows of that much-tried woman, her mother. (It should be stated that Catharine resumed the Anglican faith when she was twenty-eight ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... found this conjecture: Cromwell held an intercepted letter from the King to Mr. Roles, addressed to him under his alias, Mr. Upton, expressed in terms of entire confidence (Thurl. iii. 75); but Roles was not arrested. And the suspicion inspired ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... some heavy reward had been promised to Cornwood for his services, or he would not endanger the liberal wages he was paid for his services on board of the Sylvania. But I knew nothing about the matter, and it was useless to conjecture ...
— Down South - or, Yacht Adventure in Florida • Oliver Optic
... determined him, in the first desolation of his loss, to seek the family which seemed to have been so bound to his own. Morose and taciturn as his father had been, surely he would sometimes have spoken of his old friend if—Worn out at last with conjecture; beaten back, bruised and breathless, from an enigma which he could not solve; exhausted by listening with strained attention for some movement in the next room, he threw himself on his bed, dressed as he was, and fell into a heavy sleep, which lasted far into the forenoon ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... is impossible to forecast in what direction philosophy will move. The summary history we have been able to trace sufficiently shows, as it seems to us, that it has no regular advance such that by seeing how it has progressed one can conjecture what path it will pursue. It seems in no sense to depend, or at all events, to depend remarkably little, at any period, on the general state of civilization around it, and even for those who believe in a philosophy of history ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... [Footnote 6: I conjecture: de morte cognati adolescentis subito tacens tanti criminis descriptione destitit, ne tamen ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... ancient ornaments and implements in the Egyptian Gallery of the Louvre, I saw an object of startling interest. A fragment of the Iliad, written nearly three thousand years ago! One may even dare to conjecture that the torn and half-mouldered slip of papyrus, upon which he gazes, may have been taken down from the lips of the immortal Chiun. The eyes look on those faded characters, and across the great gulf of Time, the soul leaps into the Past, brought into shadowy nearness ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... latest news of the Benders and the Guerins and handed over the two letters from these friends she happened to have in her purse that he might read and enjoy them at his leisure. In short, Betty poured out much of the pent-up excitement and doubt and conjecture of the last few weeks to Bob, who was as hungry to hear as she was to ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... 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
... they belonged to persons who had attained their full size, whereas in the mound adjoining were found the skeletons of persons of all ages, and, secondly, they were here in the utmost confusion, as if buried in a hurry. May we not conjecture that they belonged to the people who resided in the town, and who were victorious in the engagement? Otherwise they would not have been thus honorably buried ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... structure of the heart and the arrangement and action of its valves. But still they are like persons purblind or groping about in the dark, for they give utterance to various, contradictory, and incoherent sentiments, delivering many things upon conjecture, ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... stern parents and wholesome laws as to age, girls might more often marry their first loves. It is difficult to conjecture what the state of civilisation might be, if it were common for people to marry their first loves, regardless of "age, colour, or previous ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... try to give some account of the circumstances which attended upon his disappearance. Should any one ever chance to read the words which I put down, I trust they will remember that I do not write from conjecture or from hearsay, but that I, a sane and educated man, am describing accurately what actually occurred before my very eyes. My inferences are my own, but I shall be answerable ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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, ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... quite correct in her conjecture that Mignon would not allow matters to rest as they were. From the moment that Constance had been announced as the Princess she had made a vow that by either fair or unfair means she would supplant "that white-faced cat of a Stevens girl," who had been awarded the ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... which to envelop my head—it all happened in accordance with the playbill. At first I tried to keep some idea of distance and direction, but I soon got confused and had to give it up. I could only conjecture that the course was a long one, for I heard a clock striking nine just as the cab stopped, and our pace had ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... the builder's? Was it some imagined form, the synthesis of a hundred different visions of natural things; or was it some conception of reality, unrelated to sensual experience, remote altogether from the physical universe? These are questions beyond all conjecture. In any case, the form in which he expresses his emotion bears no memorial of any external form that may have provoked it. Expression is no wise bound by the forms or emotions or ideas of life. We cannot know exactly what the artist feels. We only know what he creates. ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... That her conjecture was correct was evident the next day; for about noon a carriage stopped at the door of the dilapidated house in —— street; and a visitor, who seemed to bring with her an additional share of Christmas sunshine, was shown up to the Connors' tenement. She was followed by a tall footman, ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... conjecture what it is," replied Solomon Eagle. "But come to the small door near the northern entrance of the cathedral at midnight. I will meet ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... distinction. An infant citizen of our own republic, straight-haired, pale-eyed and freckled, duly darned and catechised, marching into a New England schoolhouse, is an object often seen and soon forgotten; but I think I shall always remember with infinite tender conjecture, as the years roll by, this little unlettered Eros of the Adriatic strand. Yet all youthful things at Torcello were not cheerful, for the poor lad who brought us the key of the cathedral was shaking with an ague, ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... all, these testimonies belong to the region of conjecture. Let me close this chapter by a narrative of fact, derived from the late Lord de Ros, who was an eye-witness of the events which he narrated. Arthur Thistlewood (whose execution for the "Cato Street Conspiracy" ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... Voltaire's pamphlet, there is an 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 the tears ran down his cheeks. But, between his ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... is not left to conjecture. The narrative of what occurred is supplied by Kasi Raj Pandit, a Hindu writer in the service of the Nawab Vazir, and an eye-witness of the whole campaign. He was present in both camps, having been employed in the negotiations which took place between the Mahrattas and Mohamadans; and ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... heat, was a brown waif of a boy; not asleep or even drowsy, but wide awake indeed, silently watchful as a prairie owl of every movement about him, every low-spoken word. What whim of satirist chance had put him there, what fate for good or evil, they could only conjecture, could not know, could never know; yet there he was, strangest figure in a land that knew only the bizarre, with whom the unbelievable was the normal. Slowly now, weary to death with the long, long day, depressed with the inevitable ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... except for a few incoherent mumblings. What she might say, what distressing family secret she might repeat in William's hearing, should she take another talkative turn, was beyond conjecture. ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... than reveal. There is a lady, a real lady if I ever saw one, living in the Chateau here in the greatest privacy. I and the Intendant only see her. She is beautiful and full of sorrow as the picture of the blessed Madonna. What she is, I may guess; but who she is, I cannot conjecture, and would give my little finger ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Abraham remains at Hebron, near the wood of Mamre, Lot departs for the valley of Siddim, which, if our imagination is bold enough to give Jordan a subterranean outlet, so that, in place of the present Dead Sea, we should have dry ground, can and must appear like a second Paradise,—a conjecture all the more probable, because the residents about there, notorious for effeminacy and wickedness, lead us to infer that they led an easy and luxurious life. Lot lives among ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... preparation. Near a river was found a gigantic block, much larger than any in the city, which was probably on its way thither, to be carved and set up, when the labours of the workmen were arrested. It is difficult to conjecture how these vast masses were transported over the irregular and broken surface of the country, and particularly how one of them was set up on the top of a mountain two ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... drawing diagrams which have no meaning for them, and so forth. But in this school every child is, as a rule, actively employed. And bearing in mind that "unimpeded energy" is a recognised source of happiness, the visitor will probably conjecture that there is a close connection between the activity of the children and ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... be glad if any one could offer a conjecture as to the Bishop's meaning in this last sentence? I have shown it to several people, but no one has been able to think ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 58, December 7, 1850 • Various
... the French Minister at Washington, had supplied the seditious in Canada with money. It was even broadly stated that the plenipotentiary's correspondence had been intercepted by the agents of the government. And that which was not said is more difficult of conjecture than ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... one had seen me take it, that the whole was a mere conjecture—a plan to worm a confession out of me. Hence I denied ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... visible, nor were there any signs of her. The last gun had been fired during the night. All that we could see was the outline of a gaunt iceberg—an ominous spectacle. Not knowing what else to do we rowed on as before, keeping in what seemed our best course, though this was mere conjecture, and we knew all the time that we might be going wrong. There was no compass in the boat, nor could we tell the sun's position through the thick snow. We rowed with the wind, thinking that it was blowing toward ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... Mauser rifle, which has wonderful range, and ten millions of smokeless powder cartridges. Marksmen could sweep the decks of a ship with Mausers at the distance of a mile, and with the smokeless cartridges it would have been mere conjecture where the sharpshooters were located. There are rows of armor-piercing steel projectiles from Germany still standing around rusting in the Spanish batteries, and they never did any more than they are doing. It is said—and there is every probability of the truth of the story—that some of ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... through a course of history, if the science were comprised in a set of chronological tables? No: it is the hearts of men we should study. It is to their actions, as expressive of disposition and character, we should attend. But by what is it that we can be advanced thus far, but by specious conjecture, and plausible inference? The philosophy of a Sallust, and the sagacity of a Tacitus, can only advance us to the regions of probability. But whatever be the most perfect mode of historical composition, it is to the simplest ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... 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
... final rupture, of which we can only conjecture the cause, as no satisfactory explanation is forthcoming. The original "Confession" in the "Medecin de Campagne," which is the history of Balzac's relations and parting with Madame de Castries, is in the possession of the Vicomte de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul. The present ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... intenser sense of adventure. Hitherto we had always been told beforehand where we were going and how much we were to be allowed to see; but now we were being launched into the unknown. Beyond a certain point all was conjecture—we knew only that what happened after that would depend on the good-will of a Colonel of Chasseurs-a-pied whom we were to go a long way to find, up into the folds of the ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... property; but even if they should be both able and willing, still it would only remain a positive deficit made good, and no new facility would be derived for alleviating the existing burthens. The burthens and distresses must still remain what they were before. He spoke not now upon conjecture, or loose calculation, he had brought his authority with him. These were the records from which he derived his statements—the official returns of the Treasury; and if false, the Chancellor of the Exchequer was present to contradict them. He was glad, he ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... if I conjecture rightly, Simon Slade will be a poorer man, in a year from this time, than he ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur
... there be any power in the National Government to withhold this institution,—as in the recent Slave Act,—it must be by virtue of the Constitution. Nor can it be by mere inference, implication, or conjecture. According to the uniform admission of courts and jurists in Europe, again and again promulgated in our country, slavery can be derived only from clear and special recognition. "The state of Slavery," said Lord Mansfield, pronouncing judgment in the great case of ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... Baron; "let us be cautious of reflecting upon Edmund; there is a greater hand in this business. My conjecture was too true; It was in that fatal apartment that he was made acquainted with the circumstances of Lord Lovel's death; he was, perhaps, enjoined to reveal them to Sir Philip Harclay, the bosom friend of the deceased. The mystery of that apartment is disclosed, the woe to the guilty is accomplished! ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve
... to the [Greek: ekklesiastikos kanon], and then find the following definition of the Canon: [Greek: kanon de ekklesiastikos he sunodia kai sumphonia nomon te kai propheton te kata ten tou kuriou parousian paradidomenei diathekei], we may conjecture that the Judaisers were those Christians, who, in principle, or to some extent, objected to the allegorical interpretation of the Old Testament. We have then to think either of Marcionite Christians or of "Chiliasts," that is, the old Christians who were still numerous in Egypt ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... entertain 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, That the fixed sentinels almost receive The secret whispers of each other's watch: Fire answers fire, and through ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... for this identity in the properties of such a multitude of bodies, each of them unchangeable in magnitude, and some of them separated from others by distances which Astronomy attempts in vain to measure, I cannot conjecture. My mind is limited in its power of speculation, and I am forced to believe that these molecules must have been made as they are from the ...
— Five of Maxwell's Papers • James Clerk Maxwell
... ambition marked her as the one to share the future with him. There was as little doubt in his mind that she would accept him, as there was in hers that he would make the proposal; and when a week later, he received a telegram confirming his conjecture, the answer came as ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... affrightedly forgotten the pact of Christian names, and it was "Monsieur le Capitaine" and, of course, the "vous" which she had never dreamed of changing. Even so poor a French scholar as Lady Auriol could not be misled into such absurd paths of conjecture. ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... more numerous or splendid retinue, in which Sil{e}nus was the principal person; of whose descent, however, we have no accounts to be relied on. Some say he was born at Malea, a city of Sparta; others at Nysa in Arabia; but the most probable conjecture is, that he was a prince of Caria, noted for his equity and wisdom. But whatever be the fate of these different accounts, Sil{e}nus is said to have been preceptor to Bacchus, and was certainly a very suitable one for such a deity, the old man being ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... little surprised that Miss JOAN VIVIAN-REES should so overplay her Trixie. Her work is certainly in general not like that, and I conjecture the influence of some baleful autocrat of a producer. It seemed to me that Miss MILDRED EVELYN'S Milly was, all things considered, a capable and consistent study of a desperately unsympathetic character, a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 25th, 1920 • Various
... observe, however, that the first dancers in Aix-la-Chapelle appeared in July with St. John's name in their mouths, the conjecture is probable that the wild revels of St. John's Day, A.D. 1374, gave rise to this mental plague, which thenceforth has visited so many thousands with incurable aberration of mind ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... in his conjecture entirely correct. He emerged from beneath the debris of his possessions, shaken and bruised, and was aware that the aft-deck (that spacious vestibule giving admittance on either side to officers' cabins, and normally occupied by a solitary ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... strong impulse that I should sometime recover my liberty, though it was impossible to conjecture by what means, or to form any project with the least hope of succeeding. The ship in which I sailed was the first ever known to be driven within sight of the coast; and the king had given strict orders, that if ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... notwithstanding his sympathetic suavity of manner and his air of being intelligently impressed by what he heard. Not long afterwards, however, it transpired that the aged rector of Broadmorlands having died, the living had been given to Ffolliott, and, hearing it, Sir Nigel was not slow to conjecture that quite decently utilisable tools would lie ready to his hand if circumstances pressed; this point of view, it will be seen, being not illogical. A man who had not been a sort of hermit would have heard enough of him to be put on his guard, and one ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... in the many languages, e.g. Halewijn (Dutch), Ulver, Olmar, Hollemen (Danish), Olbert (German), and Elf-knight in English, has caused some speculation as to a common origin. Professor Bugge has gone so far as to conjecture that the whole story is an offshoot of the tale of Judith and Holofernes, the latter name being the originals of the variants given above. While this hypothesis is perhaps too startling to be accepted without further evidence, it must be allowed that there are resemblances ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... unreasonable to conjecture that the uniformly high physical standard of the Punans and their seemingly exceptional immunity from disease are due to their exposed mode of life, and to the consequently severe selection exercised upon them ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... announcement disturbed them much, except in speculation as to the fate of the child, "Can he live now?" was asked of Stumpy. The answer was doubtful. The only other being of Cherokee Sal's sex and maternal condition in the settlement, was an ass. There was some conjecture as to fitness, but the experiment was tried. It was less problematical than the ancient treatment of Romulus and Remus, ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... flowers of Catasetum do not secrete nectar, and he conjectured that in place of it the insects gnaw a tissue in the cavity of the labellum which has a "slightly sweet, pleasant and nutritious taste." This conjecture as well as other conclusions drawn by Darwin from Catasetum have been confirmed by Cruger—assuredly the best proof of the acumen with which the wonderful floral structure of this "most remarkable of the Orchids" was interpretated far ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... 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. Paul's name ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... containing 76,560 square kilometres, with 302,315 inhabitants; but the last figures can be only guess-work, since regarding the unconquerable tribes of the interior, such as we are now trying to escape from, all is conjecture." ...
— The Search for the Silver City - A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan • James Otis
... write more; for I do not know, I cannot conjecture, how you may receive what I have written, thinking of me as you now do. It seems strange to remember that at this time yesterday, in this very chair, I was writing to you. Oh how differently! Is it possible that it was only ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... Don Quixote's exploits, we reverentially visited any known spot which these had rendered famous. Amongst such was the VENTA of Quesada, from which, or from Quixada, as some conjecture, the knight derived his surname. It was here, attracted by its castellated style, and by two 'ladies of pleasure' at its door - whose virginity he at once offered to defend, that he spent the night of his first sally. It was here that, in ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... poisonous? Sharks Saw-fish Fish of brilliant colours Curious fish described by AElian (note) Fresh-water fish, little known,—not much eaten Fresh-water fish in Colombo Lake Immense profusion of fish in the rivers and lakes Their re-appearance after rain Mode of fishing in the ponds Showers of fish Conjecture that the ova are preserved, not tenable Fish moving on dry land Instances in Guiana (note) Perca Scandens, ascends trees Doubts as to the story of Daldorf Fishes burying themselves during the dry season The protopterus of the Gambia Instances in the fish of the Nile Instances ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... continued activity of healing must have served greatly to strengthen the determination of the disciples to cling to Jesus, let the leaders say what they would. We can only conjecture what various teachings filled the days, and what personal fellowship the disciples had with him who spake as never man spake. There was need for advance in the faith of these loyal friends. Their enthusiastic declaration when the multitudes turned away ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... to Bazarov. He, contrary to his habit, was talking a good deal, and obviously trying to interest her—again a surprise for Arkady. He could not make up his mind whether Bazarov was attaining his object. It was difficult to conjecture from Anna Sergyevna's face what impression was being made on her; it retained the same expression, gracious and refined; her beautiful eyes were lighted up by attention, but by quiet attention. Bazarov's bad manners had impressed her unpleasantly ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... it was Henry VI., the founder of Eton College and King's College, Cambridge, whose life ended in such tragedy towards the close of the fifteenth century. His Queen is not mentioned from beginning to end, and for this and other reasons I am inclined to particularise still more, and conjecture that the period of which the book treats must be prior to the year 1445 A.D., when the King married at the ...
— The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary • Robert Hugh Benson
... out of our course; no conjecture could be formed as to our whereabouts. The crew had lost heart, and were utterly exhausted by ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... of our hills, they answered that they were another language. As Tahmunt said that he traded at Quebec, my companion inquired the meaning of the word Quebec, about which there has been so much question. He did not know, but began to conjecture. He asked what those great ships were called that carried soldiers. "Men-of-war," we answered. "Well," he said, "when the English ships came up the river, they could not go any further, it was so narrow there; they must go back,—go-back,—that's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... choose some for our diversion, the same privilege may be allowed to some beings above us, who may deceive, torment, or destroy us, for the ends, only, of their own pleasure or utility. This he again finds impossible to be conceived, but that impossibility lessens not the probability of the conjecture, which, by analogy, is so strongly confirmed. I cannot resist the temptation of contemplating this analogy, which, I think, he might have carried further, very much to the advantage of his argument. He might have shown, that these "hunters, whose ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... of Howara on the road to Gharendel. The nonexistence, at present, of twelve wells at Gharendel must not be considered as evidence against the just-stated conjecture; for Niebuhr says that his companions obtained water here by digging to a very small depth, and there was a great plenty of it, when I passed; water, in fact, is readily found by digging, in every fertile valley in Arabia, and wells are thus easily formed, which ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... 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, and ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... annihilation; and during those first few moments in which the brain, like a Samson shaking himself, is trying its strength, he had some dim notion of an unusual nocturnal proceeding. But the realities of his situation soon displaced conjecture on ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... documents do not say. They confine themselves to reporting that that very evening Francis had a vision which decided him to return to Assisi.[8] Perhaps it would not be far from the truth to conjecture that once fairly on the way the young nobles took their revenge on the son of Bernardone for his airs as of a future prince. At twenty years one hardly pardons things like these. If, as we are often assured, there is a pleasure unsuspected by the profane in getting ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... 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 Marechale: for all these reasons, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 2 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... marked the course of the earlier ten years' rebellion as well as the present insurrection from its start. No alternative save physical exhaustion of either combatant, and therewithal the practical ruin of the island, lay in sight, but how far distant no one could venture to conjecture. ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • William McKinley
... my narrow room, tortured and agonized by my doubts, now stopping to reason over the possibilities of success, now looking from the window to try if, in the gesture and bearing of those without, I could conjecture anything that passed. Too well I knew the vaunting character of the French soldier, in defeat as in victory, to put much confidence in their bearing. While, however, I watched them with an eager eye, I heard the tramp ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... the hope that the readers of "N. & Q." may supply farther particulars; such as the time of its commencement or completion, and also whether it is still in France. With respect to the arms of England, which yet present a puzzle to all antiquaries, I beg to submit a conjecture. I think it was intended as a present to our Henry VIII., when he was in such high favour at Rome, for his Defence of the Seven Sacraments, that Leo X. conferred on him the title of "Fidei Defensor," and which all our sovereigns have subsequently retained. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 237, May 13, 1854 • Various
... want of skill, and partly to the steepness of the road, which here passed over downs of some extent, and was rarely or never mended. It was an anxious morning for them all, and the beauties of the early summer day fell upon unheeding eyes. They were too anxious even for conjecture, and each sat thinking her own thoughts, occasionally glancing westward, or stopping the horse to listen to sounds from more frequented roads along which other parties were retreating. Once, while they listened and gazed thus, they saw a glittering in the distance, ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... 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, while offering every apology ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... evidence as to the course of his life, we are left to conjecture how he spent the forty years, more or less, between the time of his studies at Clement's Inn and the day when Shakespeare introduces him to us. We have no doubt that he spent all, or nearly all, this time in London. His habits were ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... considered as a mere variety of Bos Taurus. This may possibly be the fact; but we have no proof whatever that it is so: no information on this point has been presented beyond mere conjecture. This being the case, and in the absence of direct anatomical evidence, we may be pardoned in considering it, at least, as doubtful; especially as there are so many points of external dissimilarity. The principal differences are: ...
— Delineations of the Ox Tribe • George Vasey
... sable. I saw gentlemen too, and I confess that a creeping uncomfortable feeling came over me when I looked at the hats which they had on their heads, the fine black gloss was so exceedingly like that of the coat which I wore. I have since learnt that my conjecture was but too close to the fact— that numberless hapless rats are slaughtered in France on account of their fatal beauty; and that man not only manufactures their fur into hats, but uses their soft and delicate skins to make the thumbs of his best gloves. ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.
... hardly accept the numbers said to have been gathered on Glasgow Moor six days later. Probably, if we increase the former total and diminish the latter, we shall get nearer the mark; but it is impossible to do more than conjecture. Sharpe, in the fragment printed by Napier, rates Hamilton's force at six hundred. Claverhouse's own estimate was "four battalions of foot, and all well armed with fusils and pitchforks, and three squadrons of horse." His experience was more likely ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... electrical fluid in nature, considered as an universal agent, was completely ignored. .. I have made it known in such a way as to leave no further doubt about it."[3111] As to the heat-engendering fluid, "that substance unknown until my discovery, I have freed the theory from every hypothesis and conjecture, from every alembic argument; I have purged it of error, I have rendered it intuitive; I have written this out in a small volume which consigns to oblivion all that scientific bodies have hitherto published on that subject."[3112] Anterior to his treatise on "Man," the relationships ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... definite, and have been formed in too great haste. So rapid is this operation of thought that it often becomes a mere intuition. Yet the remarkable accuracy of a woman's intuitions is evidence that there underlies them some intellectual process resting on a more solid basis than conjecture ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... confession and abandonment of fallacies, have characterized every benefactor of the sciences;—and the science of education must be advanced by an adherence to the same principles. The Educationist must be willing to abandon error, as well as to receive truth; and must resolutely shake off all conjecture and opinions not founded on fair and appropriate experiment. This course may appear tedious;—but it is the shortest and the best. By this mode of induction, all the facts which he is able to glean will assuredly be found ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... Clairvaux on April 27, and Lausanne on May 20 (Jaffe, p. 634). At this rate he might have been expected to reach Rome by the end of July. About that time, therefore, we may conjecture that Malachy was on the coast of Kent. Actually, the Pope was not near Rome till he reached Viterbo on November 30 (ibid. 636). St. Bernard, therefore, when he wrote this passage, was ignorant of his movements for a considerable ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... was near the temple of Jerusalem. The Assembly of Divines, in their valuable annotations, suggest that it was so called 'because great store of trees, as in Lebanon, were planted about it; and gardens, orchards, and all manner of delightful things were added thereto': to aid this conjecture, they quote Ecclesiastes 2:4, 6. Poole says that it was 'a house so called, either, first, because it was built in the mountain and forest of Lebanon, for recreation in summer time; but generally held to have been near Jerusalem; ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... 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 Hamps urged ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... Debate to be now ended, and that no one Member would venture any new Conjecture upon the Romance, after so many clear and decisive Interpretations had been given. But, hold,—Close to the Fire, and opposite to where the Apothecary sat, there sat also a Gentleman of the Law, who, from the Beginning to the End of the Hearing of this Case, seem'd no way satisfied in his ...
— A Political Romance • Laurence Sterne
... beauty of its church and the interest of its traditions. The church is so named after Buriena, a beautiful Irish girl who came to Cornwall to become a saint, but it is very difficult to decide definitely as to her personality. We may conjecture that she came to Cornwall about the same time as St. Piran, perhaps in his company, and that she set up her cell in a field formerly called the Sanctuary, and later the Sentry. The present church is always understood to have been founded by Athelstan, when he sighted the Scilly Isles from this ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... awaited. It came at last; a faint, grey light in the east, a climbing flush of rose-colour, a host of crimson wavelets on a golden sea. And, as soon as the darkness disappeared, Percival found that his conjecture was a correct one. He was not alone. There were others beside himself who had won their way to even safer positions than his own. Portions of the reef on which the ship had struck were now to be plainly ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... when the lesson was over, he would fix his eyes upon me, fall back on his chair, and make me recount all I could remember of my former life, which was really nothing but a record of perceptions and feelings. He could attend to me, and as I related some early and singular impression, some conjecture of what I saw, yet could not comprehend, on the shore which I had never touched, he would rub his hands with enthusiasm, and exclaim, "I have found a new book—an album, whereon I may write the deeds of heroes ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... explorations, a probable conjecture was changed into complete certainty. The very vaults for which inductive reasoning had shown the necessity were found, if not in place, at least in a fragmentary condition, and in the very rooms to which they had afforded a cover—and here we must quote the words ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... Should we make the conjecture that certain honest women act in dividing up the celibates, as the lion in the fable did? What! Surely, in that case, half at least of our altars would become ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... may have rowed out and been caught in the storm," cried Paula, bursting into fresh weeping; and Magdalen saw the conjecture confirmed by Mr. ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the maid was alone in the house, for the maid is nervous. But she left last night before nine—there is evidence of that—and the murder did not take place until afterwards. That is also a fact, not a conjecture. We can leave the charwoman, who for the rest has the best of characters, out of our calculations. There remain then, the maid, Helene Vauquier, ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... and every one went on in their daily course, as though no Heinrich had ever been heard of. My father would sometimes, when overpressed by business, refer to the able assistant he had lost, and now and then I heard a conjecture hazarded by some one or other of his most confidential friends, as to what young Reichardt was doing with himself. My conjectures, and my references to him, were far from being so occasional; there was scarce an hour ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... standing upon the slope of the mound on which the Fort was built, and gazed about us. There was little movement to arrest the eye. The dull, dreary level of shore and prairie was deserted; what the more distant mounds of sand or the overhanging river banks might hide of savage watchers, we could only conjecture. Seemingly the mass of Indian life, which only the day before had overflowed that vacant space, had vanished as if by some sorcerer's magic. To me, this unexpected silence and dreary barrenness were astounding; I gazed about me fairly bewildered, almost dreaming for ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... have actually been found, but because analogy leads the observer to suppose either that they do now somewhere exist, or may formerly have existed; and here a wide door for the entry of doubt and conjecture ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... a submerged rock or derelict in such manner that both her keel plates and her double bottom were torn away for more than half her length; but such a catastrophe was so remotely possible that it did not even enter the field of conjecture. ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... matters of taste, nor even rival hypotheses upon an equal footing. The Newtonian system of mechanics, the consummation of a development initiated by Galileo, differed from the vortex theory of Descartes as exact science differs from speculation and unverified conjecture. And this difference of method carried with it eventually certain profound differences of content, distinguishing the Newtonian theory even from that of Democritus, with which it had so much in common. Although Democritus had sought to avoid the element of purposiveness in the older hylozoism ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... the precocious boy ruminated upon the phenomenon must be left to conjecture. Enough that the story has a solid foundation upon which we can build. This more than justifies us in classing it with "Newton and the Apple," "Bruce and the Spider," "Tell and the Apple," "Galvani and the Frog," "Volta and the Damp Cloth," "Washington and His Little Hatchet," a string of ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... pondering, we have at last discovered the secret of his wearing his garments "with a difference," or, more properly, with an indifference, unattainable by others of the human species. You will conjecture, haply, that it is because he and his father before him have been from childhood accustomed to pay attention to dress, and that habit has given them that air which the occasional dresser can never hope to attain: or that, having the best artistes, seconded by that beautiful division of labour ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... ant-hills, which are built in rows, had, during this stage, a direction from north by west to south by east, and, as I have before mentioned a conjecture that the little builders would expose the narrowest side of their habitation to the weather side, the prevailing winds would be from ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... 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 secret parts are wrinkled and raised up, it is a sign that all is well, ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... on the little Royalty's weeping in 1812 (now republished) have occasioned.... The 'Morning Post,' 'Sun,' 'Herald,' 'Courier,' have all been in hysterics.... I am an atheist, a rebel, and at last the devil (boiteux, I presume). My demonism seems to be a female's conjecture.... The abuse against me in all ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... engrossed in watching 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 and resumed his roundelay as if ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... I 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
... waste of sea, and the gulls circling overhead, that she had awakened to the knowledge of her love for Crispin. And so to him strayed now her thoughts, and to the fate her father had sent him to; and thus back again to her father and the evil he had wrought. It is matter for conjecture whether her loathing for Gregory would have been as intense as it was, had another than ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... reflect on the origin of society. As one feature in the festival sacred to Mars (March 1) was the dancing of the priests who carried curious shields, it was narrated, to account for this, that the shield of Mars fell down from heaven;[1466] and the goddess Maia, according to one conjecture, was invented to explain the name of the month of May.[1467] A Greek explanation of the fact that children at a later period were not called by the mother's name was that in the contest between Poseidon and Athene for the control of the city of Athens the latter deity prevailed by ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... anything so vile as the scandalous revelations about his mother in Mr. Keller's article. But, gentlemen, why are you getting angry again? Are we never to come to an understanding? Well, the event has proved me right! I have just seen with my own eyes the proof that my conjecture was correct!" he added, ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... is supposed to exist, the determining factor on one side or the other, is the accidental absence of a sufficiently appealing opportunity. The evidence of the divorce courts offers a valuable source of information on this phase of the subject. Purely as a matter of averages, the conjecture may be hazarded that your assumption in this regard, as in the other, may be founded ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... German White Paper is examined it discloses on its very face the suppression of documents of vital importance. The fact that communications passed between Berlin and Vienna, the text of which has never been disclosed, is not a matter of conjecture. Germany asserts as part of its defense that it faithfully exercised its mediatory influence on Austria, but not only is such influence not disclosed by any practical results, such as we would expect in view of her dominating relations with Austria, ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... guilt, he appeared perfectly confounded, but exhibited no signs of fear. In Ned's behavior there was nothing remarkable; but his countenance was stern and immovable, even whilst he was receiving the sentence of death: from his looks it was impossible to discover or conjecture what were his feelings. Not so with Peter; for in his countenance were strongly marked disappointed ambition, revenge, indignation, and an anxiety to know how far the discoveries had extended; and the same emotions ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... certainly the 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 ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... in objects plain, If thou attendest not, 'tis just the same As if 'twere all the time removed and far. What marvel, then, that mind doth lose the rest, Save those to which 'thas given up itself? So 'tis that we conjecture from small signs Things wide and weighty, and involve ourselves In ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... her appearance for the first time. He had not been mistaken in his conjecture. She was tall, with pale brown coloring, black eyebrows, eyes like drops of ink, and a light down on her lip and on her temples. Her youthful figure was full and firm, announcing a greater expansion for the future, as in all the women of her race. She seemed of a sweet and gentle disposition, ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... cast of "The Merchant of Venice" was the subject of a good deal of excited conjecture during the few days that remained of the winter term. Betty explained it briefly to Barbara, who in turn confided Jean's story to the rest of her committee. All of them but Clara Ellis thought better of Jean than they ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... Hambleton, had suddenly developed a brand of vicious courage that nerved him to commit arson and burglary? Simon reviewed an imposing procession of possible suspects until his brain wearied, and his wits, seeking vainly for light, were hopelessly at fault in a fog of conjecture. ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... conditions under which General Gordon consented to take up the Soudan question, it is desirable to explain clearly what were the objects he had in his own mind, and what was the practical task he set himself to accomplish. Fortunately, this description need not be based on surmise or individual conjecture. General Gordon set forth his task in the plainest language, and he held the clearest, and, as the result showed, the most correct views as to what had to be done, and the difficulties that stood in the way of its accomplishment. ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... we rode through the forest, knew nothing. We might guess, conjecture, hope, or fear; but our certain knowledge stopped with Rischenheim's start for the capital and Rupert's presence there at three o'clock. The pair might have met or might have missed. We had to act as though they had missed and Rupert ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... the chest on his shoulder, carried it up to the turret-room, the door of which also he unlocked. Even at the time he was amazed at his own strength, and wondered whence it had come. His mind, lost in conjecture, was too far off to realise more immediate things. He knew that the chest was enormously heavy. He seemed, in a sort of vision which lit up the absolute blackness around, to see the two sturdy servant men staggering under its great weight. He locked ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... enough to hazard the conjecture (I trust he will forgive me) that Mr. Harrison's life may be quoted against Mr. Harrison's theory. I entirely decline to believe, without further evidence, that the writings whose vigor of style and of thought have been the delight of us all are the product of his own system. I hope I do him ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... then turned to inspect its contents. He wondered from whom it would come, aware of no Scot in Stirling who would dare to write to him while that town was possessed by the enemy. But not losing a moment in conjecture, he broke ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... appeared to be the most important person on the island, it was right that she should know of the mysterious band of bandits upon the beach—if, indeed, she did not already know; perhaps it was by power of these she reigned. He found himself able to conjecture almost anything. ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... supposing that I intentionally "deceived" you, I trust that you will find this explanation sufficient to show that you have been labouring under a mistake.' (No doubt I was.) 'If, on the other hand, I am wrong in this conjecture, I trust that you will do me the justice to point out the so-called deception, of which I am supposed to be guilty, in order that I may clear myself from ...
— Wrecked but not Ruined • R.M. Ballantyne
... vein of improbable conjecture) you were to meet a mild, hard-working little priest, named Father Brown, and were to ask him what he thought was the most singular luck of his life, he would probably reply that upon the whole his best stroke was at the Vernon Hotel, where he had averted a crime and, perhaps, saved ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... frame of which was as black as ebony, and the canvas itself so dark with age, damp and smoke that not a touch of the painter's art could be discerned. Time had thrown an impenetrable veil over it and left to tradition and fable and conjecture to say what had once been there portrayed. During the rule of many successive governors it had hung, by prescriptive and undisputed right, over the mantel piece of the same chamber, and it still kept its place when Lieutenant-governor Hutchinson assumed the administration of the province on ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... king—it made her want to rise up and be all that such a man could ever demand of her. Twelve miles of walking after a week's toil in the mill was a very small offering to put before so worshipful a divinity. She sought vaguely to conjecture just what his words would be when next they spoke together. Her lips formed themselves into tender, reminiscent half-smiles as she went over the few and brief moments of her three ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... you in this situation," he began, again breaking the silence with an effort. "If I had been aware of your illness I should have come earlier. But you know what business is. I have, too, a very important legal affair in the Senate, not to mention other preoccupations which you may well conjecture. I am expecting your mamma ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... human nature would be able to conjecture the unavoidable result, even if it were not betrayed by the amount of mixed population. Think for a moment, what a degrading effect must be produced on the morals of both blacks and whites by customs ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... thought his slave's conjecture probable enough. He entered the house, and saw that the robbers had taken all the furniture out of the apartment where he received Schemselnihar and her lover, that they had also carried off the gold and silver plate, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... I made an obvious conjecture. 'I suppose there are forts and coast defences? Perhaps he thought you would see too much. By the way, he saw your naval books, ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... name was usually pronounced "Mugumry" and thence degenerated into "Mug." Mug's inflamed and scowling face and bulging eyes usually conveyed the general impression that he was about to burst into profanity—a conjecture which frequently proved correct. In this case he merely remarked in ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... soon revealed: every one had a conjecture and a commentary: gentlemen in wigs, and ladies powdered, patched, and sacked. Vavasour pondered somewhat dolefully on the anti-poetic spirit of the age; Coningsby hailed him ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... that would destroy the foundation of this hypothetical theology. The ancient error of the two principles, which the Orientals distinguished by the names Oromasdes and Arimanius, caused me to explain a conjecture on the primitive history of peoples. It appears indeed probable that these were the names of two great contemporary princes, the one monarch of a part of upper Asia, where there have since been others of this name, the other king of ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... self-esteem I have wondered, whether I might not claim to be something more, after all, than a mere echo or compilation—might not claim in fact to possess a distinct personality of my own. Might it not be worth while, I now asked myself, to follow up this pleasing conjecture, to retire like Descartes from the world, and spend the rest of life, as he spent it, trying ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... was concerning itself with Florence—with Florence, who heard those words from behind the tree. That of course is only conjecture, but I think the conjecture is pretty well justified. You have the fact that those two went out, that she followed them almost immediately afterwards through the darkness and, a little later, she came running back to the hotel ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... I can at present conclude nothing, and can conjecture but little. The idea which has oftenest occurred, and which I have before mentioned, is the infinite pleasure of seeing an active mind in the full possession of its powers; and of being instrumental in restoring that which mistake may have injured, or in part destroyed. It seems ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... silent, for this opened a new field of conjecture and for a long time she mused upon it, and at ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... ran out and joined him. He was pointing to the back of the tent. The pegs which had fastened it to the earth were uprooted. The canvas swung free. But what filled her with momentary conjecture was that which lay at her feet. A sack of flour evidently had been dragged out from under the wall of the tent and ripped open, for the sand was whitened with the doughy mixture resulting ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... more anxious grew, The voice still seem'd to vibrate on his ear. Nor durst he hope the hermit's tale untrue; For man he seem'd to love, and Heaven to fear; And none speaks false, where there is none to hear. "Yet, can man's gentle heart become so fell? No more in vain conjecture let me wear My hours away, but seek the hermit's cell; 'Tis he my doubt can clear, perhaps my ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... the American continent to Cabot by four years, and decide that Cape Breton, and not Labrador nor the Orinoco River, was first seen by European eyes. Very little is definitely known of John Cabot, and even the time and place of his birth and death are matters of conjecture.] ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... countenances, I mark, Congeal to dazed surprise at my straight motion— Why, passes sane conjecture. It may be That, with a haughty and unwavering faith In their own battering-rams of argument, They deemed our buoyance whelmed, and sapped, and sunk To our hope's sheer bottom, whence a miracle Was all could friend and float us; or, maybe, They are ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... "that now you have taken up the affair, you will not stop until you find out everything, so, as I want the matter to rest as at present, I will anticipate you, and reveal all. You were right in your conjecture that I knew something likely to lead to the detection of Whyte's murderer; but when I tell you my reasons for keeping such a thing secret, I am sure you will not blame me. Mind you, I do not say that I know who committed the murder; but I have suspicions—very strong suspicions—and ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... we may obviously conjecture that this article has been inserted on the part of the United States from an overcaution to guard, nommement, by name, against a particular aggrievance, which they thought they could never be too well secured against; and that has happened which generally happens—doubts have ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... showed me where the boat was, pointed out seaward as if to indicate the position of the schooner, and then down along the edge of the rock with the words "Espirito Santo," strangely pronounced, but clear enough for recognition. I had thus been right in my conjecture; the pretended historical inquiry had been but a cloak for treasure-hunting; the man who had played on Dr. Robertson was the same as the foreigner who visited Grisapol in spring, and now, with many others, lay dead under the Roost of Aros: there had their greed brought them, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to Abp. Hildebert is an "Epitaphum Magistri Theobaldi," who, I conjecture, is the same Theobald as the supposed author of the "Physiologus." It is rather long; but there is nothing to identify Theobaldus except the word "Dervensis." What place this ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 43, Saturday, August 24, 1850 • Various
... address and handed her the leaf torn from the pad. She folded it up, moved away, turning back to smile. As she turned she happened to look downward; then she stooped and picked the card from her dress. A conjecture of horror smote Paul. He made a step forward and stretched out his hand; but not before she had instinctively glanced first at the writing and then at his barren waistcoat. She repressed a slight gasp, regarding him with ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... was engaged in one of those rapid mental excursions which were forever sweeping her from the straight path of the actual into uncharted regions of conjecture. Her survey of life had always been marked by the tendency to seek out ultimate relations, to extend her researches to the limit of her imaginative experience. But hitherto she had been like some young captive brought up in a windowless ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... bodies move in the direction of least resistance, and that we can positively understand; but what force per se is, we do not know. It is always better for us to explain phenomena by positive known laws and motions, than by any that rest merely upon conjecture. ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... they knew of anatomy from inaccurate dissections of the lower animals, and the slender knowledge thus acquired, however inadequate to unfold the complicated functions of the human frame, was abundantly sufficient as a basis for conjecture, of which they took full advantage. With them everything became easy to explain, precisely because nothing was understood; and the nature and treatment of disease, the great object of medicine, and its subsidiary sciences, was hardily abandoned to the conduct of the imagination, and sought for ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... suffered punishment in a funereal chamber draped with black; while another authority declares that the poet, the victim of his own satires, was hung on a fork-shaped gibbet, not on account of his abuse of Pius IV., but through the hatred of Pius V., which some personal quarrel had excited. This conjecture is, however, probably false. ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... rearing children of other parents sent to them. As modern life does not comprise either the custom or a reason for it, we may assume that fosterage was a consequence of the clan system, and that its practice strengthened the ties of kinship and sympathy. This conjecture is corroborated by the numerous instances in history and in story of fosterage affection proving, when tested, stronger than the natural affection of relatives by birth. What is more, long after the dissolution ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... American lawyer, Mr. Choate, assures us that at the Illinois bar in those days Lincoln had to measure himself against very considerable men in suits of a class that required some intellect and training. And in his own way he held his own among these men. A layman may humbly conjecture that the combination in one person of the advocate and the solicitor must give opportunities of far truer intellectual training than the mere advocate can easily enjoy. The Illinois advocate was not all the time pleading the cause which he was employed ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... the same; but, after the calamity is over, if they can recover and keep their new stock sound for seven years together, the former loss will easily be recompensed with double commodity. Cardan writeth that our waters are hurtful to our sheep; howbeit this is but his conjecture, for we know that our sheep are infected by going to the water, and take the same as a sure and certain token that a rot hath gotten hold of them, their livers and lights being already distempered through excessive heat, which enforceth ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... in which they held her. 'The fact is, she's a mystery altogether,' said Nicholas. This was not more satisfactory than his previous course of reflection, and only drove him out upon a new sea of speculation and conjecture, where he tossed and tumbled, in great discomfort of mind, until the clock struck ten, and the hour of ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... 8. A conjecture in what number of years England and Ireland may be fully peopled, as also all America, and ...
— Essays on Mankind and Political Arithmetic • Sir William Petty
... if I am serious in my conjecture that "the meteor beard" of Hudibras might have given birth to the "Bard" of Gray? I reply, that the burlesque and the sublime are extremes, and extremes meet. How often does it merely depend on our own state of mind, and on our own taste, to consider the sublime as burlesque! A very vulgar, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... hopeful, although upon what meager food he sustained his optimism I could not conjecture. From cursing he had turned to singing—I felt that the strain had at last affected his mind. For several hours we had not spoken except as he asked me for the readings of the instruments from time to time, and I announced them. My thoughts were filled ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... 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 grows late—so good-night, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... hours, the way the priest patted her on the shoulder before others, the obvious dislike the priest's ugly old housekeeper bore her, the astonishing freedom of their talk with each other—these dark memories loomed forth out of a mass of sinister conjecture. ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... 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, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... as I could judge the crew were now taking cargo on board, as I could hear the bales descending into the hold. They consisted, I afterwards found, of skins and peltries. How much longer the ship would remain in harbour I could not tell, nor could I conjecture when I was to be set free. They would scarcely keep me a prisoner during the remainder of the voyage, as, shut up, I could do nothing, but if I were at liberty I could make myself useful. Drearily the time passed away. Fear still prevented me from shouting ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... since, at first despairing, but of late more resigned to my lot. Yet still if I have one desire in life it is to get some trace of these dear ones whom I still love as tenderly as ever. You, my dear boy, with your ability may conjecture some way. Besides, you will perhaps be traveling more or less, and may be able to hear of their fate. This is the condition that I make. I implore you by your pity for a heart-broken father to do as I say and help me. Half! why, ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... work having been destroyed, we are left to gather its contents and the opinions of its authors from a few criticisms in Eusebius and Jerome. The entire work consisted of fifteen books; and concerning only five of these is information afforded by them. Their remarks lead us to conjecture that it was an assault on Christianity in many relations. The books however of which we know the purpose, seem to have been critical rather than philosophical, directed against the grounds of the religion rather than its character; being in fact an assault on the Bible. The existence of such ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... camp of the insurgents. Morelos and his Marshal, through the open entrance of the marquee, saw the rocket and conjectured it to be some signal for the garrison on the isle to the besieged within the fortress. Almost on the instant, this conjecture was confirmed by another rocket seen rising from the citadel upon the summit of the cliffs, and in turn tracing its blue line across the heavens. It was evidently ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... repeated as a matter of some doubt; 'he was a monk of the order of St Benedict, and afterwards, as some say, a Franciscan. Bulleyn knows, and mentions, with certainty, what others only speak of as the merest conjecture. In short, everything tends to shew a degree of familiar acquaintance with the man, his habits, and his productions, which entitles the testimony of Bulleyn to the highest credit.'" (Lives of the Scottish Poets, Vol. I., ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... him, it is a fact that he wrote Mr. Burns, not often, to be sure, but quite regularly. After two or three years he went abroad, still keeping up his correspondence. Mr. Burns, for some reason we will not conjecture, was not in the habit of speaking to his daughter about Egerton. Possibly he did not wish her to remember him as a grown-up man while she was still a little girl. Possibly, he desired, should they ever meet, that their acquaintance might commence afresh. At any rate, Sarah was ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... water out of them, they thought the leaky state of our vessel was no uncommon occurrence. But however cheerfully they worked during the day, nothing could induce them to "turn out" at night; they always stowed themselves away, but in what part of the vessel I never could conjecture. They have a dread of some unknown evil spirit, which they imagine has power over them at night; and this supposition makes them terrible cowards ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... and no host presents himself to lead Lady FitzAlmont into dinner, a great fear falls upon all the guests save one, and confusion and dismay, and anxious conjecture reign supreme. ...
— The Haunted Chamber - A Novel • "The Duchess"
... mentioned the purpose of his ride to town, and Shorty was lost in a maze of futile conjecture. Shorty knew, however, that a man in Lawler's condition would not ride to town to gratify a whim; and the longer he watched Lawler the deeper became his conviction that another tragedy was imminent. For there was something in Lawler's manner, in the steady, unflagging ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... 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, some ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... thinning out, Dawson. At its best it is second-hand; at its worst, the mere conjecture of a rather careless draughtsman. I have two things to do: first to find out the real seducer, who is probably also the despatcher of the parcels to the late lieutenant of Northumberland Fusiliers, and second, to save if ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... like its predecessor. In the morning of the following day his perceptions, sharpened by apprehension, made him conjecture that something extraordinary had occurred. The automobiles were arriving and departing with greater rapidity, and there was greater disorder and confusion among the executive force. The telephone was ringing with mad precipitation; and the wounded arrivals seemed more depressed. The day ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... straight on. The change of scene had no effect on her; the trail still lay before her, and she seemed satisfied with it. Tresler looked for the river. He knew it was somewhere near by. He gazed away to the right, and his conjecture was proved at once. There it lay, the Mosquito River, narrowed and foaming, a torrent with high, clean-cut banks. He followed its course ahead and saw that the banks lost themselves in the shadow between towering, ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... windlass was put in position, and the work began in earnest. At the depth of twenty feet they came upon gravel, a result which greatly raised their spirits, as its character was precisely similar to that in the bed of the stream, and showed that Frank's conjecture was a correct one, and that the river had at one time flowed along the foot of the ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... often single figures with no names attached to them are thus represented above or by the side of graves. They were probably intended as figures of those who lay within them, figures of those who had been constant in prayer; and this conjecture is almost established as a certainty by the existence of a few of these figures with names inscribed above them,—as, for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... accordingly sung. I am thankful to say it was such a one as I never heard before, or expect to hear again; and unless it was composed by the Reverend Saunders Peden in an hour of paroxysm on the moors, I cannot conjecture the author. After this original symphony, tea was discussed, and after tea, to my amazement, more hot brandy-and-water than I ever remember to have seen circulated at the most convivial party. ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... has been supposed ever since our countryman, Dr. Woodhouse, made an experiment with potash that this alkali had an inflammable base. I am disposed to believe that the Doctor was the first one who hazarded this conjecture as to the inflammable nature of potash when treated in certain ways. The Doctor found that a mixture of pearl ash with soot, calcined by a very intense heat in a covered crucible, when cold caught fire on the ...
— James Cutbush - An American Chemist, 1788-1823 • Edgar F. Smith
... of the village toward the north—about a foot or a foot and a half—but there may have been a depression of 2 or 3 feet here at one time and this depression may have been subsequently filled up by sediment. This conjecture could be easily tested by excavating a trench across the area between the wall and the houses, but in the absence of such an excavation the suggestion is a ...
— Aboriginal Remains in Verde Valley, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff
... aware how generally he had become the subject of curiosity and conjecture, and, with a morbid repugnance to such notice, or to any notice whatsoever, estranged himself from all companionship. Not merely the eye of man was a horror to him; not merely the light of a friend's countenance; but even the blessed sunshine, likewise, which in its ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a view of giving some countenance to those who were praising him upon the above mentioned topic, or from what other motive it is now not easy to conjecture, James seems to have wished to be upon apparent good terms, at least, with the Prince of Orange; and after some correspondence with that prince concerning the protection afforded by him and the states-general to Monmouth, and other obnoxious ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... great Russian Empire. What the ancestors of the Russians did at the Tower of Babel to have been afflicted with such a complicated, contorted, mixed up, utterly incomprehensible language, I can hardly conjecture. I have thought sometimes that they must have built their side of the Tower higher than any of the other tribes, and have been punished for their sinful industry with this jargon of unintelligible sounds, ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... an old saying, "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 from want ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol II. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson
... a very probably conjecture, my dear; but you must not attribute the cause merely to good-fortune: Emily is attentive to the excellent maxim: "A place for every thing, and every thing in its place," and if you would endeavour, in this respect, to follow her ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... has received the doubtful credit of having laid this pretty snare for the Huguenot chiefs, but with what reason it is beyond my ability to conjecture. The same brain could scarcely have indited the bitter reply to the petition of the triumvirs, and devised the cunning project of entangling their opponents. Evidently the Bishop of Valence has received some honors to which he is ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... it that he left the paternal roof while yet a child (he was probably not more than nine years old), and was apprenticed, as above stated, in Perugia—though to what artist Vasari does not tell us. Here, therefore, conjecture is rife, and Buonfigli,—that delightful decorator of the Perugian Palazzo Pubblico,—Fiorenzo di Lorenzo, and even Niccolo da Foligno himself have been assigned by various critics as his teacher. Personally, I incline to Fiorenzo di Lorenzo, whose easel ...
— Perugino • Selwyn Brinton
... But, for the tolerably delicate enterprise that he had in hand, there were the preliminary steps which could only be hastened slowly and anything slower than the Metropolitan on a Sunday night, it was beyond him to conjecture. ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... "Probably conjecture is all that can now be expected respecting the rise and progress of these changes. It is, indeed, beyond all doubt, that by the constitution, even as subsisting under the early Normans, the great council shared the legislative ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction No. 485 - Vol. 17, No. 485, Saturday, April 16, 1831 • Various
... shouted, prayed, cursed, fled across the Park, but he was absolutely powerless; the apparition stopped within a few steps, and leered on him with a ghastly mimicry of the defiant stare with which pugilists strive to cow one another before combat. For a time, which he could not so much as conjecture, he was held in the fascination of that unearthly gaze, and at last the thing, whatever it was, on a sudden swaggered close up to him with extended palms. With an impulse of horror, Larkin put out his hand to keep the figure off, and their palms ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... were the suppositions as to the present scheme, and the reserved intent. How, at the very threshold, so unlooked for a catastrophe overturned all, or rather, what was the conjecture here, is now to be ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... he addressed her as "My dear," very genially, without any trace of resentment at her detention of the child. The quickness of the transition made me vaguely ask myself whether he were henpecked,—a shocking conjecture, which I instantly dismissed. Mrs. Ambient was quite such a wife as I should have expected him to have; slim and fair, with a long neck and pretty eyes and an air of great refinement. She was a little cold, and a little shy; but she was very sweet, and she had a certain ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... MacKay are very liberal toward charitable purposes. They were especially complimented by Pope Leo XIII for their charitable deeds. As Mr. MacKay is but about fifty years of age, it is hard to conjecture his possible future. While many features in his career seem to justify the belief in "luck," still, to the close observer, it is manifest that had he not possessed great endurance, and known no such thing as fail, the world would never have known of John ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... path. More than once a snow-owl fluttered over their heads; but they took no notice. Twice the man in advance stumbled and fell; but though Ben paused he spoke no word. Like a soldier of the ranks on secret forced march, ignorant of his destination, given only conjecture as to what the morrow would bring forth, ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... Any more probable conjecture as to the origin or meaning of this custom, or any account of its occurring elsewhere, will ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 74, March 29, 1851 • Various
... this she was trying to do in her own way. That there was something suspicious about Anderson, she knew; but whether the cause lay in his manner of action or in the possession of documentary evidence, she could not so much as conjecture. What more apt method could be employed than to associate with him in the hope that at some time or other important information might be imparted to her? She did not intend to play the part of the spy; still if that was the role in which she hoped to find ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... of the Bible Advocate and yourself are aiming at the one object, viz. the abolition of God's holy Sabbath, and the treading down God's truth seeking children; he is approbating and upholding you in your disguise; we are therefore left to conjecture. From some marks which I have seen under your two coverings, I am very strongly inclined to believe that your real name is Jacob Weston of New Ipswich, N. H. If I am wrong, then what I am about to state will not apply to Barnabas. If I am right in the real character, then I shall discharge ...
— A Vindication of the Seventh-Day Sabbath • Joseph Bates
... his 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 the Book of Job, and ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... it. Yet this made no difference to Ashby. He did not desire to make any new acquaintances or talk small-talk with strangers. He preferred to be left to his own thoughts, dismal as they were. He was in no mood for conversation, for his mind was full of material for meditation, conjecture, wonder, ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... found to throw upon it the faintest shade of improbability. At first sight it might perhaps appear strange that the exact time of the birth as well of Henry of Monmouth, as of his father, two successive kings of England, should even yet remain the subject of conjecture, tradition, and inference; whilst the day and place of the birth of Henry VI. is matter of historical record. A single reflection, however, on the circumstances of their respective births, renders the absence of all precise testimony ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... mercenary army of Rome pointed to the mode in which any future commander could avoid the friction and unpopularity which often attended the enforcement of liability to service. The innovation of Marius was sufficiently startling to attract comment and invite conjecture. Some held that the army had been democratised to suit the consulship, and that the masses who had seen in Marius's elevation the realisation of the vague and detached ambitions of the poor, would continue to furnish a sure support to the power which they had created.[1093] It is not ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... Hazleton had been induced to leave the seclusion of the Parsonage, and become the guest of Mrs. Gleason. It must have been a strong motive that tempted her from the hallowed shades, which she had never quitted since her husband's death. Reader, can you conjecture what that motive was? ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... where this army was assembled, though said to be very nigh to Hereford, was only so with reference to the great distance from which some part of the forces came; as they were gathered from all England. They met, I conjecture, on the memorable spot called "Harold's Cross", near Cheltenham, and thence proceeded, as here ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... continued to conjecture and imagine till Phyllis finally exclaimed: "Why, there are Father and Ted back already! Fishing must have been poor this morning. Thank goodness we got out of that place when we did! But that reminds me, I ought to go to the village and order some supplies. The grocer doesn't come here again ...
— The Dragon's Secret • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... cock. The incident was insignificant in itself, but it recalled the word of his Master; it made Peter conscious of his disgrace but it called him to himself, and then as he turned toward the palace, for a moment he caught sight of his Lord. We may be unable to conjecture what was expressed in the face of Jesus as at that moment he "looked upon Peter." There may have been something of rebuke, but probably there was more of unutterable sorrow and of tender sympathy. We read that as "Peter remembered ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... Matteo saw similar instruments at Peking, or rather the same instruments, so exactly alike were they, insomuch that they had unquestionably been made by the same artist. And indeed it is known that they were cast at the period when the Tartars were dominant in China; and we may without rashness conjecture that they were the work of some foreigner acquainted with our studies. But it is time to have done with these ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... mean that, on the date named (which, it may be observed, is not Mr. Peacock's date), Fielding, "aged twenty, was entered as litterarum studiosus at Leyden." In this case it would follow that his residence in Holland should have come after February 16th, 1728; and Mr. Swaen went on to conjecture that, "as his [Fielding's] first play, Love in Several Masques, was staged at Drury Lane in February, 1728, and his next play, The Temple Beau, was produced in January, 1730, it is not improbable that his residence in Holland filled up the interval or part of it. Did the profits ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... troubling you with these lines is an apprehension that my late communication has not been understood by you; for there is something in the tone of your reply which has made me rather unhappy, though I can easily conjecture that at the time you wrote it you were labouring under a considerable pressure of business. Had you paid a little more attention to my letter, you would have perceived that it was written unwillingly on my part, but ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... 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. ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... at that place; whether, if so, it were carried off at night by those who had buried it; or whether it still remains there under the guardianship of gnomes and spirits until it shall be properly sought for, is all matter of conjecture. For my part, I incline to the latter opinion, and make no doubt that great sums lie buried, both there and in other parts of this island and its neighborhood, ever since the times of the buccaneers and the Dutch colonists; ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... get this introduction over. I was very anxious, too, about my dear Miss Marion; for I knew that some weighty reason alone prevented her from answering my letter, though what that reason could be, it was impossible for me to conjecture. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... beginning of 1788, and, if he did pass through Torres Strait, and come round to this coast, as was his intention, it would probably be about the middle or latter end of that year, or between thirteen and fourteen years before the Investigator. My opinion is not favourable to this conjecture; but I have furnished all the data to enable the reader to form his own opinion upon the cause which might have prostrated the woods ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... him was a haunting fear of the sights which Perkins would show him on the morrow's night. He had seen enough for himself to conjecture of what nature they would be. He did not want to see more, and yet how could he avoid it? He might plead illness, but that would be a lie; and then there would be other nights to follow, so it would only be a postponement of what must ultimately take place or be boldly rejected. Once he decided ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... treasures, the vegetable forms, and the varied aspects of nature, man in the different phases of civilization, filled the mind with entirely new sets of ideas, that changed the habitual current of thought and stimulated it to indefinite conjecture. The eagerness to explore the wonderful secrets of the new hemisphere became so active, that the principal cities of Spain were, in a manner, depopulated, as emigrants thronged one after another to take their chance upon the deep.2 It was a world of romance that was thrown open; ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... Mystery of Threshold," "The Initial Effort," "The Meaning of Pain," and "The Secret of Strength." Instead of speculating upon mysteries that lie at the very end of man's destiny, and which cannot be approached by any manner of conjecture, the work very sensibly takes up that which lies next at hand, that which constitutes the first step to be taken if we are ever to take a second one, and teaches us its significance. At the outset we must cope with sensation and learn its nature ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... The conjecture of Major Heyward was true. When they reached the spot where the Indian stood, pointing into the thicket that fringed the military road; a narrow and blind path, which might, with some little inconvenience, receive one person ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... ended, on the site of a dismantled public-house, in a circular shaft, which may have been that of a well, or that of a cesspool. The passage, so far as it was traceable, was 24ft. long, 7ft. high, and 4-1/2ft. wide. As to its use before it was severed by the sewerage of Lease Lane, the conjecture is that it afforded a secret means of communication between two houses separated above ground by that thoroughfare, but for what purpose must remain one of the perplexing puzzles of the past. That it had no connection with ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... Favraud interrupted further conjecture, for at the sound of those emphatic boots the stranger turned, and for one moment the splendor of his large dark eyes, in their iron framing, met my own, then passed recognizingly on to rest on the face of Major Favraud, and advancing ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... encountered folding doors half way up, locked across the stairs. The Inspector managed to get over them and unlock them from the inside, and on they went, and paused to listen beneath the trap door. They did not hear A-Kan's voice, and did not know whether he was there. They had only the conjecture of the woman across the street to proceed upon, nevertheless they had forced their way into this private abode occupied by women, knowing nothing whatever about the place, whether it was respectable ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... therefore, should not always be mild. Nor should he always be fierce. He should be like the vernal Sun, neither cold nor so hot as to produce perspiration. By the direct evidence of the senses, by conjecture, by comparisons, and by the canons of the scriptures. O monarch, the king should study friends and foes. O thou of great liberality, thou shouldst avoid all those evil practices that are called Vyasanas. It is not necessary that thou shouldst never ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... heart-burnings and vendettas. There was scarcely a man there without friends or foes. Raymond alone had neither. To the others he was a strange, silent, unknown creature whose very address was a matter of conjecture; a man who did not drink, did not smoke, did not talk; who ate four bananas for his lunch and invariably carried a book in the pocket of his shabby coat. It was said of him that once, during a terrible blizzard, he had been the only clerk to reach the office; that he had worked ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... not with the appreciation of the expert, but with the pleasure in agreeable tones and textures that was one of her inmost susceptibilities. Suddenly her expression changed from desultory enjoyment to active conjecture, and she turned to ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... arose about the same time,) possess, along with external and internal diversities, the most striking features of affinity, the attention even of the most thoughtless cannot but be turned to this phenomenon; and the conjecture will naturally occur, that the same, or, at least, a kindred principle must have prevailed in the development of both. This comparison, however, of the English and Spanish theatre, in their common contrast with every dramatic ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... if I am not mistaken, I come to relate the conclusion of Mr. Crutchley's most extraordinary summer career at Streatham, which place, I believe, he has now left without much intention to frequently revisit. However, this is mere conjecture; but he really had a run of ill-luck not very inviting to a man of his cold and splenetic turn ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... hardly forbear to conjecture with what temper Milton surveyed the silent progress of his work, and marked its reputation stealing its way in a kind of subterraneous current, through fear and silence. I cannot but conceive him calm and confident, ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... welcome; and addressed a Discourse to them," devout and yet human, true every word of it, 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, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... done for Birmingham it is impossible to conjecture had he remained longer our local leader. But he was called up higher. Perhaps this was lucky for him. The great enterprises, or at least some of them, were only fairly started when he relinquished his grasp of them, and it remained to be seen whether they were to prove all they ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... signs of a kind of trial, to which I and other prisoners have been subjected this day, tell me that I am the victim of the treacherous calumny of a few aristocrats, patriots so called, of this house. The mere conjecture that this hellish machination will follow me to the tribunal of the revolution gives me no hope to see you again, my friend, no more to embrace you or our children. I speak not of my sorrow: my tender solicitude for you, the heartfelt affection which unites ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... in the whole territory of ancient Egypt; and whether that one was long or short, built of stone or of wood, supported on arches or boldly flung across the stream from bank to bank, we cannot even conjecture. This bridge, close under the very walls of Zaru,[4] crossed the canal which separated the eastern frontier of Egypt from the desert regions of Arabia Petraea. A fortified enclosure protected this canal on the Asiatic side, as shown in the accompanying illustration (fig. 42). ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... from science, that there were two currents, one of which comes round in a curve and effects the exit for the other which the window had driven in; just as in the Straits of Gibraltar there is manifestly an upper current setting one way, which you therefore conjecture to argue a lower current setting the other, and thus redressing the equilibrium. Here the smoke corresponds to bits of chip or any loose suspended body in the Gibraltar current. What answers to the current of water is the ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... room o' the house, with a towel in his hand, crying, Where's La-Foole? Who saw La-Foole? and when Dauphine and I demanded the cause, we can force no answer from him, but—O revenge, how sweet art thou! I will strangle him in this towel—which leads us to conjecture that the main cause of his fury is, for bringing your meat to-day, with a towel about you, ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... her safety, or message from her at all ever arrive). And it was even so: from the day she left the Mersey until this day no word of the City of Glasgow has ever been heard. It was the opinion of those best able to offer a probable conjecture at the time, that she must have come into contact with an iceberg, and instantly gone ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... sensibility. "Corinne," said he, "is indubitably the most celebrated woman of our country, and nevertheless it is only her friends who can properly delineate her; for we must always have recourse, in some degree, to conjecture, in order to discover the genuine qualities of the soul. They may be concealed from our knowledge by celebrity as well as obscurity, if some sort of sympathy does not assist us to penetrate them." He enlarged upon her talent for extemporisation, which did not resemble any thing of that description ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... end of the hawser, I should observe, we found a light rope. This was evidently sent that we might get another stout one on shore. We found on trying it that we were right in our conjecture, and hauling away as before, we got a second strong rope united to the vessel and the land. Mr Sedgwick now wanted us to go back to the house, but we could not think of leaving the shore till our friends were ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... in any kind of fluid, as oil, &c. I use the same apparatus described above, and having poured into the tube as much of the fluid as I conjecture I can make the electric spark pass through, I fill the rest with quicksilver; and placing it inverted in a bason of quicksilver, I ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... swooning in his arms. Even yet her olive face was beautefully pale. The cheerful parlour now rung with confusion, servants bustled about in fright, the youthful family shrieked in fear, the father sought to restore the fond mother, as Montague chafed her right hand in his. Let us leave to the reader's conjecture a scene his fancy may depict better than we can describe, and pass to one more pleasant of results. Some half an hour had transpired, when, as if in strange bewilderment, Clotilda opened her eyes and ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... to baffle pursuers. Apparently the blacks had just wandered off aimlessly in obedience to a whim of the moment. There was nothing but conjecture to support the opinion that the decampment had anything to do with the disappearance of Soosie. Probably the blacks were aware, in advance of ourselves, that she had stolen away. If so, they would inevitably get her, having, possibly, the advantage of hours of start and being ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... in my 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
... facing Germany and building none on the French frontier, in exchanging ideas with English military experts as to how best her neutrality could be defended, Belgium was preparing for the inevitable. This inevitableness is no longer a matter of moral conjecture. It is ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... of happiness for the French nation. "The revolution which has taken place with you," he wrote to Lafayette in October, "is of such magnitude, and of so momentous a nature, that we hardly yet dare to form a conjecture about it. We however trust, and fervently pray, that its consequences may prove happy to a nation in whose fate we have so much cause to be interested, and that its influence may be felt with pleasure by future generations." To the Count ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... his life. He had assiduously diverted the attention of the latter to indifferent topics, but was still, on every theme, as eloquent and judicious as formerly. Why he had assumed the garb of a rustic, Pleyel was unable to conjecture. Perhaps it might be poverty, perhaps he was swayed by motives which it was his interest to conceal, but which were connected with consequences of the ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... immense field of conjecture opened by this reflection, the elder Mr. Weller laid his pipe on the table, and stirred the fire ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... Thus far shalt thou go and no farther, seems to be imprinted on every great fact of creation. There is a point attained in each and all of our acquisitions, where a mystery that no human mind can scan takes the place of demonstration and conjecture. This point may lie more remote with some intellects than with others; but it exists for all, arrests the ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... in some great and destructive battle first, because they belonged to persons who had attained their full size, whereas in the mound adjoining were found the skeletons of persons of all ages, and, secondly, they were here in the utmost confusion, as if buried in a hurry. May we not conjecture that they belonged to the people who resided in the town, and who were victorious in the engagement? Otherwise they would not have been thus honorably buried ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... I must have got this practice from some external source or other; but I can make no sort of conjecture whence; and certainly no one had ever spoken to me on the subject of the Catholic religion, which I only knew by name. The French master was an emigre Priest, but he was simply made a butt, as French masters too commonly were in that day, and spoke English very ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... of the note and Mr. Allen's strange action gaining brief eminence by their repeated statements of what they had witnessed and their varied surmises. The role of commentator, if mysterious human action be the text, is always popular, and as this explanatory class are proverbially gifted in conjecture, there were many theories of explanation. Some of the guests had already the good taste to prepare for departure, and when Dr. Mark appeared from the sick room, ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... said the lad, interrupting his brother and guessing that the answer he was going to give would confirm his own conjecture. "It ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... caught sight of the latter, he saw a Miami Indian seated in it, apparently waiting and watching for some one. As quick as lightning the meaning of the singular action of the other canoe flashed upon his mind. By some means which he could only conjecture, the Miamis had gained a knowledge of his movements. Perhaps the discovery of his boat was what first awakened their suspicions. At any rate, they had learned enough to satisfy themselves that a rich prize was within their grasp. Leaving one of their number in the strange canoe, they had passed ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis
... granted that he killed her—we must not mince matters—about twelve o'clock; for after that hour, the servants told Lina, there was quiet in the drawing-room. Next, I conjecture, he went upstairs to change his clothes: he could not go forth on the world in an evening suit; and the housemaid says his black coat and trousers were lying as usual on a chair in his dressing-room—which shows at least that he was not unduly flurried. After that, he put on another suit, no doubt—WHAT ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... blazon it all over the country; but if their masters murder them, a trifling fine is paid, and nobody thinks of mentioning the matter. I believe there are twenty negroes killed by white men, where there is one white man killed by a black. If you believe this to be mere conjecture, I pray you examine the Judicial Reports of the Southern States. The voice of humanity, concerning this subject, is weak and stifled; and when a master kills his own slave we are not likely to hear the tidings—but the voice ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... prepared for her future communion with Locke and with Leibnitz. When she was very small, in spite of frequent conferences with learned members of the Church of England, she became persuaded of the truth of Catholicism and joined the Roman communion. We may conjecture that this coincided with the conversion of her kinsman, Lord Chancellor Perth, but as events turned out it cannot but have added to the sorrows of that much-tried woman, her mother. (It should be stated that Catharine resumed the ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... Mina. It seemed like a sort of watchfulness—not a slyness (that would have fitted so badly with the rest of him), but perhaps one might say a wariness—whether directed against her or himself it was too soon for her even to conjecture. ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... This is by no means the case, and we may therefore conjecture that Cape St Andrew in Madagascar is here meant, which is of that description, and is in some ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... left," said another,—"and those so pitiful and unable to serve again as I leave to speak further of them, to avoid grief to your heart. A monstrous fault there hath been somewhere." Of what nature the "monstrous fault" was we may conjecture from the language of the Commander-in-Chief. "There can be no doubt of our driving the enemy out of the country through famine and excessive charges, if every one of us will put our minds to forward, without ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... written about the chronology of Alexandrian literature and the famous Library, founded by Ptolemy Soter, but the dates of the chief writers are still matters of conjecture. The birth of Apollonius Rhodius is placed by scholars at various times between 296 and 260 B.C., while the year of his death is equally uncertain. In fact, we have very little information on the subject. There are two "lives" ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... of textual criticism—a kind of cleaning and mending—are purely negative. By the aid of conjecture, or by the aid of conjecture and comparison combined, we are enabled to construct, not necessarily a good text, but the best text possible, of documents whose original is lost. What we thus effect is the elimination of corrupt and adventitious ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... particularity what rumour always huddles in general exclamation, or perplexes by indigested[909] narratives; to shew whence happiness or calamity is derived, and whence it may be expected; and honestly to lay before the people what inquiry can gather of the past, and conjecture can ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... these competitors were descended from more remote branches of the royal family; others were even sprung from illegitimate children; and as none of them had the least pretence of right, it is natural to conjecture that Edward had secretly encouraged them to appear in the list of claimants, that he might sow the more division among the Scottish nobility, make the cause appear the more intricate, and be able to choose, among a great number, the most ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... Apostles themselves; some saying that Simon Zelotes, others that Paul was some time in this part of the world; but as this opinion is not supported by proper vouchers, it merits only the regard due to conjecture, not the attention which an undoubted narrative ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... to-day. There was something in his gray eyes which spelled trouble, Tony thought. What was it? Was he worried about a case? Was Granny worse? Was Ted in some scrape? Something there certainly was on his mind. Tony was sure of that, though she could not conjecture what. ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... point. Are the fangs actuated by a special ganglion? Are they actuated by fibres issuing from centres exercising further functions? I leave to anatomists equipped with more delicate instruments than I the task of elucidating this obscure question. The second conjecture appears to me the more probable, because of the palpi, whose nerves, it seems to me, must have the same origin as those of the fangs. Basing our argument on this latter hypothesis, we see that the Calicurgus has only one means of suppressing the movement of the poisoned pincers ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... doubt are now flying away; No longer I roam in conjecture forlorn: So breaks on the traveller, faint, and astray, The bright and the balmy effulgence of morn. See Truth, Love, and Mercy in triumph descending, And nature all glowing in Eden's first bloom! On the cold cheek of Death smiles and roses are blending, And Beauty ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... the appearance of Arthur and the gossip of Mr. Perkins, to conjecture that one of the rich relations he had attributed to Catherine was arrived. Alas! for her it ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... spirits, three thousand men went over the top, deploying in open order to make their drag-net stretch to its farthest capacity and sweep up the redoubts, whose locations, after all, were largely a matter of conjecture. ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... increased. Most of these temples were covered in. Hypaethral temples, in which the cella was open to the sky, are mentioned by Vitruvius, and it is probable that some of the larger ones at any rate were partly open to the sky. But how the openings were arranged is almost entirely a matter of conjecture. The roof used was of a very flat pitch, one of height to four of base, later it was even flatter, and this dictated the slope of the pediments. This roof covered the whole of the building, that is, both the cella and the colonnades on ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... go" (Vol. ii., p. 45.)—Your correspondent T. S. D. is certainly right in his notion that the ballad of "A frog he would a-wooing go" is very old, however fanciful may be his conjecture about its personal or political application to Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn. That it could not refer to "the Cavaliers and the Roundheads," another of T. S. D.'s notions, is clear from the fact, that it was entered at Stationers' Hall in November, 1581; as appears ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 35, June 29, 1850 • Various
... sister. The hours when he was sure not to come happened to be those which she spent with Miss Young—the hours in which gentlemen are devoted to their business. Margaret thus witnessed all that passed; and if her conjecture about Hester was right, she could have wished to see Mr Hope's manner rather different from what it was. He was evidently strongly attracted to the house; and there was some reason to think that Mrs Grey believed that Hester was the attraction. But Margaret ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... therefore, under the necessity of completing his definition of mind by adding that it is a series of feelings which "is aware of itself as a series;" and, still further, of supplementing this definition by the conjecture that "something which has ceased to exist, or is not yet in existence, can still, in a manner, be present."[242] Now he who can understand how a series of feelings can flow on in time, and from moment ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... left to conjecture on the subject; in a document of extreme interest, which seems somehow to have escaped the notice of his commentators, the preface to the second (1876) edition of Catilina, he has described what the influences were which roused him out of the wretchedness of Grimstad; ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... then was suffered to proceed. Rapidly she flew to her father's room—it was unoccupied, and a glance at his bed showed her that it had not been disturbed. Mary was at no loss to conjecture where she should find her father—but as she approached that room her steps grew slower, lighter—she was treading on holy ground. With difficulty she nerved herself to turn the latch of the door, and in an awed whisper ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... easy ken, and these dense, hardly discernible clusters—hirundine nebulae, as it were—were all these but parts of one innumerable host, the main body of which was passing far above me altogether unseen? The conjecture was one to gratify the imagination. It pleased me even to think that it might be true. But it was only a conjecture, and meantime ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... with bated breath again and again, establishing Partab Singh's character in the minds of his people as a man of the nicest honour. A few years before, the Rajah had slain with his own hand every woman and girl in his zenana, as the result of some discovery, the nature of which no one durst even conjecture, and had since brought home to his blood-stained halls a young bride of purest Rajput descent from beyond Nanakpur, who had borne him a son, commonly reported to be the apple of his eye. There had ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... 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
... he wasn't a Post Office clerk," said Mrs. Duffer, who had seen Lord Hampstead ride up the street; "but who he is, or why, or wherefore, it is beyond me to conjecture. But I never will give up my opinion again, talking to your aunt. I suppose she holds out still that ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... repeatedly if the cottage was ready, and when he was going to take her to see it, in his unhappiness he avoided a direct reply, which, with the ominous silence of the good friends by whom they were entertained, led her to conjecture how matters stood; and one day she lifted the weight in a measure from his heart ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... made of sticks and grass and mud to the height of two or three feet, with a hollow in the middle to hold the eggs. The male is said to assist in the construction of the nest, but this is probably mere conjecture, for I think no one living at the present time has been able to get near enough to these birds to watch their habits, and their nests can be reached only with ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... evidently right as to be resisted by none would naturally advance. Had it been read three times in one day, we should have shown only a becoming readiness to recognize, by protection, the undoubted dutiful behavior of those whom we had but too long punished for offences of presumption or conjecture. But for what end was that bill to linger beyond the usual period of an unopposed measure? Was it to be delayed until a rabble in Edinburgh should dictate to the Church of England what measure of persecution was fitting for her safety? Was it to be adjourned ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... But, in this conjecture, Ham was wrong; for, when something like half an hour later, Mrs. Dickson came out the tent, leaning on her husband's arm and looking very white, but otherwise little the worse for her experience, all the information she could give ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... finished, interested him more than all the rest. Several tubes of colour lay on a chair, and a prepared pallet-board, with some brushes beside it, seeming to have been just now in use, gave reason to conjecture that the occupant of the room ...
— Watch—Work—Wait - Or, The Orphan's Victory • Sarah A. Myers
... tide in, and no sign of Charley's clothes. The other men whom she had besought to come had disappeared, it must have been in some other direction, for she had not met them going away. They, finding nothing, had probably thought her alarm a mere conjecture, and given ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... Nasamonians all returned safe to their own country, and that the men whom they came to were all necromancers." Etearchus also conjectured that this river, which flows by their city, is the Nile; and reason so evinces: for the Nile flows from Libya, and intersects it in the middle; and (as I conjecture, inferring things unknown from things known) it sets out from a point corresponding with the Ister. For the Ister, beginning from the Celts, and the city of Pyrene, divides Europe in its course; but the Celts are beyond the pillars of Hercules, and border ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... That is Moon, Athena (Minerva), and Enyo (Bellona). It is difficult to conjecture what Cappadocian goddess Plutarch means, if it be not the Great Mother. ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... of the rotation and revolution of the planets and satellites? If these bodies had penetrated very deeply into this atmosphere, its resistance would have caused them to fall into the sun. We can therefore conjecture that the planets were formed at their successive limits by the condensation of a zone of vapors which the sun, on cooling, left behind, in the plane of ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... the difference was owing no doubt to the greater abundance of the refuse from the cookrooms of the naval squadron most frequented by the birds. Persons acquainted with the economy of the navies of the states in question, will be able to conjecture which fleet was most favored with these delicate attentions. The American gull follows the steamers up the Mississippi, and has been shot 1,500 miles from the sea.] There is a familiar story of an English bird which built ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... of loop-holes removed to a great extent the fear of treacherous shots from the outside, yet in another respect it was an annoyance. The boys could see nothing of their assailants. The sense of hearing and conjecture it lelf were all that were left to inform them of what was going ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... branch, chirped vigorously, no doubt in celebration of the victory. What the emotions of the parent birds were, on seeing their destroyer's head so thoroughly bruised, and a part of their little ones at least spared to them, I can only conjecture; but I imagined the news spread immediately, and that my praises as the deliverer were sung in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... tigress. There is a ruined stupa at Sui Vihar in the Bahawalpur State. The Chinese pilgrims described the largest of Indian stupas built by Kanishka near Peshawar to enshrine precious relics of Gautama Buddha and a great monastery beside it. Recent excavations have proved the truth of the conjecture that the two mounds at Shahji ki dheri covered the remains of these buildings, and the six-sided crystal reliquary containing three small fragments of bone has after long centuries been disinterred and is now ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... shadow!—will say on this occasion, as we have heard him say on some others, "Machallah! Truly, the sense of the ghiaour doth arrive after the mischief!" But we hold no opinions in common with Hadgi Ismael Bey, who drinketh water, despiseth the Greek, and hateth the Frank. Our own conjecture is, that King Otho has been studying the history of Theopompus, one of his Spartan predecessors who, like himself, occupied barely half a throne. Colleagues and ephori were in times past as unpleasant associates in the duties of government as protecting powers now are. Now ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... feign feigning: I had to feign, that is, that I was feigning to keep their confidence, but that in reality that I was betraying it; while to Mr. Chiffinch I had to disclose these precious secrets not as true but as false, and conjecture with him what was the truth. (My evidence, later, was never called upon, nor did my name appear in any way, for that the jury would never have understood it.) I had, therefore, a double danger to guard against; first that which ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... mixture of pleasures, or of pleasure and pain, are a further source of perplexity. Our ignorance of the opinions which Plato is attacking is also an element of obscurity. Many things in a controversy might seem relevant, if we knew to what they were intended to refer. But no conjecture will enable us to supply what Plato has not told us; or to explain, from our fragmentary knowledge of them, the relation in which his doctrine stood to the Eleatic Being or the Megarian good, or to the theories of Aristippus or Antisthenes respecting pleasure. Nor ...
— Philebus • Plato
... yon braving Spaniards wish A counterview of pages and of shields, But what they mean or be, I know not yet. Haply you may by their impresses view, Or I by parley some conjecture give, So please it you your pages and your shields With me to send: their herald comes ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... be. You only conjecture that. It may be her father whom she guards against, or her guardian. Obed Chute is no doubt the man—either her father or guardian, and Lord Chetwynde has to guard against suspicion. But what then? If you die, can he not find some ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... he has lived in Georgia with his only child, Ella, getting such occupation as he could—office work of various kinds, but I suppose his reserved, gloomy ways rendered him unpopular; and even our own people, when it comes to business, prefer an active man who has a ready word for every one. I conjecture much of this, for he is not inclined to talk about himself. Poor as I am, I'm glad they accepted my invitation, and I mean to do all in my power to get him employment here. I have a little influence ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... 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 ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... restrain the violence of passion and ardent desires. The innate feeling that our existence is not dependent on our mortal frame, disposes men to search for some information respecting a future state; the heathen system was at once obscure and absurd; the philosophers avowedly spoke from conjecture; but by the Gospel, "life and immortality were brought to light." 7. The influence of a purer faith was discernible in the lives and actions of the first Christians; they lived in an age of unparalleled iniquity and debauchery, yet they kept themselves "unspotted from the world;" those ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... Dorothy was beginning to think that Mr. Burgess was not coming. "I've given him up now," said Miss Stanbury. "I think I'll send and put them all off." Just at that moment there came a knock at the door. But there was no cab. Dorothy's conjecture had been right. The London gentleman had walked, and his portmanteau had been carried behind him by a boy. "How did he get here?" exclaimed Miss Stanbury, as she heard the strange voice speaking to Martha down-stairs. But Dorothy knew better than ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... St. Jean d'Angely took that side. Duke Henry of Rohan and the Duke of Soubise, his brother, supported them in their resistance. Rohan went to Montauban, and, mounting into the pulpit, said to the assembly, "I will not conceal from you that the most certain conjecture which can be formed from the current news is, that in a short time the royal army will camp around your walls, since St. Jean d'Angely is surrendered, and all that remains up to here is weakened, broken down, and ready to receive the yoke, through the factions of certain evil spirits. I have no ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the old fellow, "knew the person who knocked. Her haste to open the door gives rise to this conjecture; what follows proves it. The assassin then gained admission without difficulty. He is a young man, a little above the middle height, elegantly dressed. He wore on that evening a high hat. He carried an umbrella, and smoked a trabucos cigar in ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... it was unintelligible. I sought through all my recollections of ancient and modern impersonations—of mythology, history, Scripture, and poetry—but could find nothing to furnish a solution. The structure and the figure surpassed even conjecture. Velleda, and Lot's wife, according to an old picture in the catechism, were the only resemblances I could recall, but the surroundings evidently ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the outer edge of Keeling atoll were to perish, it is improbable that those of the lower zone would grow to the surface, and thus become exposed to conditions for which they do not appear to be adapted. The conjecture, that the corals on the submerged knolls within the Chagos atolls have analogous habits with those of the lower zone outside Keeling atoll, receives some support from a remark by Captain Moresby, namely, that they have a different appearance from those on the ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin
... air-ship itself had increased its speed during those few moments of dense obscurity, or whether the madly whirling winds had taken a retrograde movement at that precise time, could only be a matter of conjecture; but the ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... was now already going on I had never seen at any Iroquois feast or rite, and what Amochol had made of this festival I dared not conjecture as I gazed at the Dreamers now advancing into the circle with an abandon and an ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... sent to the country to nurse, I rushed to the conclusion that the royal infant had died, and that his foster-mother, fearful of the consequences, had substituted a child of her own in his place. The literature of the nursery is full of instances that seemed to suggest the probability of my conjecture ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... for the armes of this Society, thus goes on: 'After I had travelled through the East parts of the unknown world, to understand of deedes of armes, and so arriving in the fair river of Thames, I landed within half a league from the City of London, which was (as I conjecture) in December last; and drawing neer the City, suddenly heard the shot of double canons, in so great a number, and so terrible, that it darkened the whole ayr; wherewith, although I was in my native country, yet stood I amazed, not knowing what it meant. Thus, as I abode in despair, either to ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... by local differences previous to organization, and the 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 ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... say. Botha and Merriman will, of course, constitute its leading factors. But whether they will attempt a coalition by taking in with them such men as Sir Percy Fitzpatrick and Dr. Jameson, or will prefer a more united and less universal support is still a matter of conjecture. From the outsider's point of view, a coalition of British and Dutch leaders, working together for the future welfare of a common country, would seem an auspicious opening for the new era. But it must be remembered that General Botha is under no necessity whatever ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... No one could conjecture what the next move would be, but the army felt a certainty that Lee would not yield to a drawn battle without, at least, another attempt to break Meade's front. Either the enemy would attempt to take an advantage of our yesterday's repulse ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... first letter—it had a black border, and bore the London postmark. It was not in his wife's handwriting, or in that of any person he knew; but conjecture soon ceased as he read the page, wherein he was briefly informed that Mrs. Barnet had died suddenly on the previous day, at the furnished villa ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... from a trend of profitless conjecture when shortly after breakfast time my 'phone bell rang. It was the editor of the Planet, to whom I had been indebted for a number of special commissions—including my fascinating quest of the Giant Gnu, which, generally ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... rather too paradoxical to be comprehensively true. In another he remarks: "As for style of writing, if one has anything to say it drops from him simply as a stone falls to the ground." We must conjecture a very large sense indeed for the phrase "if one has anything to say." When truth flows from a man, fittingly clothed in style and without conscious effort, it is because the effort has been made and the work practically completed before he sat down to write. It is only out ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... man hints as much. There has long been a rumour of some change in the plan of operations, and he seems to be right in his conjecture." ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... In the course of producing a spectacle at one of the theatres, he suddenly filled the place with sea-water so that the fishes and sea-monsters [Footnote: [Greek: ktaenae] of the MSS. was changed to [Greek: kaetae] on the conjecture of Sylburgius, who was followed by Bekker, Dindorf, and Boissevain. (Compare also Suetonius, Life of Nero, chapter 12).] swam in it, and had a naval battle between "Persians" and "Athenians." At the close of it he suddenly withdrew the water, dried the ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... that he had to go; why he stayed away so long, so very long, are not really relevant to this story; the facts, stripped of conjecture, were simply these: she was married, and he was not, and there came the time, it always comes in such relationships as theirs, when he had to choose between staying without honour and going quickly. He went. ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... the underwood of the forest came up 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 ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... have been expected. This is enough; and [thanks to] Eternal God our Lord who gives to all those who walk His way, victory over things which seem impossible; and this was signally one such, for although men have talked or written of those lands,[271-1] it was all by conjecture, without confirmation from eyesight, amounting only to this much that the hearers for the most part listened and judged that there was more fable in it than anything actual, however trifling. Since thus our Redeemer has given to our most ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... defile, when, on reaching some high ground, we saw, collected together below us among the rocks, an immense number of lions. There must have been several families, fathers and mothers with their young ones. What could have brought them together to that spot, it was difficult to conjecture. Toko declared that they knew we were about to pass that way, and had assembled for the purpose of attacking us. Of course such an idea was ridiculous; however, there they were, and had we passed close to them, they might have committed ...
— Adventures in Africa - By an African Trader • W.H.G. Kingston
... certainly not taking the world as he finds it when he devotes his hours of leisure to impart the elements of decency to gutter-snipes, and save drunkards from the pit. He is as much an individualist as I, only his individualism expresses itself in a different way; which confirms my original conjecture that we may be equally right in our own mode of life. Nor, by his own confession, does he really sacrifice his inclinations in his mode of life; he gratifies his sense of altruism in Lucraft's Row, and I my love of Nature in the solitude of lonely hills. The objects which ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... conjectures that it was sent to Fulham because of the record annexed to it of the early births, marriages and deaths, such records being in England always in ecclesiastical custody. But this is merely conjecture. ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford
... MS. and the Bresl. Edit. (ii. 253), we find the Barber saying that the Caliph (Al-Mustansir) was at that time (yaumaizin) in Baghdad, and this has been held to imply that the Caliphate had fallen. But such conjecture is evidently based ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... designated F1[2]. This we have mainly adopted, unless there exists an earlier edition in quarto, as is the case in more than one half of the thirty-six plays. When the first Folio is corrupt, we have allowed some authority to the emendations of F2 above subsequent conjecture, and secondarily to F3 and F4; but a reference to our notes will show that the authority even of F2 in correcting is very small. Where we have Quartos of authority, their variations from F1 have been generally accepted, except where they are manifest errors, and where ...
— The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] - Introduction and Publisher's Advertising • William Shakespeare
... the occurrences of the morning, a chaise and four drove rapidly into the yard, the postillions decorated with white ribbons, "denoting," said Dashall, "the successful denouement, perhaps, of a trip to Gretna Green." His conjecture was correct; the happy pair just arrived, had been rivetted in the ties of matrimony by the ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... was daily 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 Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... again, and 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 ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... intrigue with some unknown woman. The identification of the young man of the first seventeen sonnets with other friends who are praised in later sonnets is not certain, though in some cases probable; and much research and conjecture have entirely failed to make clear the relations between the poet, the rival poet, the lady, and the friend. The Sonnets furnish us with no knowledge of Shakespeare's personal affairs, and only a meager basis even for gossip ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... his purpose. He was tried and condemned. They made every effort to induce him to explain the reason which led him to such an act, or, if he was employed by others, to reveal their names; but he would reveal nothing. He was executed for his crime, leaving mankind to conjecture that his motive, or that of the persons who instigated him to the deed, was a desperate determination to save Scotland, at all hazards, from falling under ...
— Mary Queen of Scots, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... by the government agents. The death of this noble Indian was the signal for the commencement of hostilities; the Indians immediately abandoned all their towns, and, concealing their trail, removed their families to a place of safety, which has ever since baffled all conjecture as to its whereabout, and its secrecy been a subject ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... direction, and to work in another. Many men of broad brow and great intellect lived in the days of ancient Greece, but for lack of the accident of a lens, and of knowing the way to use a prism, they could but conjecture imperfectly. I am in exactly the position they were when I look beyond light. Outside my present knowledge I am exactly in their condition. I feel that there are infinities to be known, but they are hidden by a leaf. If any one says to himself that the telescope, and the microscope, the ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... contemplation of it, Jensen, who was the bolder spirit of the two, hazarded the conjecture that the language was either Latin or ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... may 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 is true; I am more than sixteen and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... influence was potential with Mr. Sumner, and it is not an over estimate of that influence to assume that he was responsible in a large degree for the defection of Mr. Sumner. Following that election, Mr. Bird became a member of the Democratic Party, but upon what ground it is not easy to conjecture. His whole life had been a protest against that party, and much of his public career had been directed to its defeat. During the war and the period of reconstruction, he had been its earnest and even bitter antagonist. Mr. Bird was ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... not been, in other words, any discovery of the right Principles upon which the affairs of mankind should be conducted in reference to their mutual relationships; and hence, there is no real knowledge, but only conjecture, of what are the right relations. Might has always been the accepted Right and the only Standard of Right in the regulation of Society. The opinions of the Ruling Power give tone to human thought and action. While Kings and Oligarchies ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... that the gold-horned cow was gone, lost no time in wonderment and conjecture; she started forth to find her. "I will not tell father till I have searched a long time," said she ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... said this morning be correct,' remarked Atlee, 'conjecture is unnecessary. She told Dick and myself that every Irishman is ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... which they support with great vehemence and obstinacy, and perhaps ingenuity, but the ignorant and curious traveller is only perplexed with their noisy and discordant assertions. They will insist upon knowing everything, whereas there are many things here which are so doubtful, that they can only conjecture about them; but when once they have published a theory they will not hear of its being erroneous, and oppose any fresh discovery likely to throw discredit upon it. After his lecture in the Forum we went ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... said, "I smell thee by some passive divination, I am satisfied with insight of the measure of thine house; What had happened I conjecture, in a blank and rhythmic passion, Had the aeons thought of making thee a man, and ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... more patient dupe in Rosenburg, a nobleman of considerable wealth at Trebona in the kingdom of Bohemia. Here Dee appears to have remained till 1589, when he was sent for home by Elizabeth. In what manner he proceeded during this interval, and from whence he drew his supplies, we are only left to conjecture. He lured on his victim with the usual temptation, promising him that he should be king of Poland. In the mean time it is recorded by him, that, on the ninth of December, 1586, he arrived at the point of projection, having cut a piece of metal out of a brass warming-pan; and merely heating ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... 'l'usage des canons bombes, dont les atteintes ont un si prodigieux effet,' will prevent our blockading ships from approaching the shores of France, and that thus their steam-vessels might escape unobserved during night, even with sailing-vessels in tow. This is no vague conjecture, but a consequence which assuredly will follow any hesitation on our part to counteract the system extensively adopted, and now under the consideration of the National Assembly, of arming all batteries with projectiles, whereby to burn or blow ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... added to page Susy obscurely but surely perceived that each one corresponded with a hidden secretion of energy, the gradual forming within him of something that might eventually alter both their lives. In what sense she could not conjecture: she merely felt that the fact of his having chosen a job and stuck to it, if only through a few rosy summer weeks, had already given him a new way of ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... in my resistance by a sense of continuity, inherited, as it were, from the earlier part of the struggle. Somehow I found myself in the shelter of the corridor that led to the apartments of the Prince, his sister and his guest, and, for some reason I could not with my dizzy head conjecture, I was alone. I looked down the corridor, which was in gentle light, but saw nothing; it was as silent as though it had been plunged in the profound peace and slumber of the night. Without, the racket ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... 33. The conjecture that Novius Flautius, the artist who worked at this casket for Dindia Macolnia, in Rome, may have been a Campanian, is refuted by the old Praenestine tomb-stones recently discovered, on which, among other Macolnii and Plautii, there occurs also a Lucius Magulnius, son of Haulms ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... his conjecture, for the new arrival was Paymaster Bullen. His canoe, which he had requisitioned at Oswego, was of the largest size, and in addition to six Indian paddlers was provided with a square sail, for use before ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... carelessness is characteristic despite the proverb, "In repetition is no fruition." I quote Torrens (p. 60) by way of variety. As regards the anemone (here called a tulip) being named "Shakik" fissure, I would conjecture that it derives from the flower often forming long lines of red like stripes of blood in the landscape. Travellers in Syria always ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... better than Tigranes, in spite of all his pomp and grandeur; for I am sure there is not one of the young gentlemen that went home to-day can read as well as Harry Sandford, or has half his understanding." Mr Merton could hardly help smiling at Tommy's conjecture about Sophron's reading; but he felt the greatest pleasure at seeing such a change in his sentiments; and, looking at him with more cordiality than he had done before, he told him that he was very happy to find him so sensible of his faults, and hoped he would be ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... look to her face. He had seen her in danger before, had tested her coolness under fire. This meant something altogether different. What? Could it be that Gaskins had wronged the girl, had insulted her, and that she, in response, had shot him down? In the darkness of conjecture there seemed no other adequate explanation. The two were intimate; the rumor of an engagement was already circulating about the garrison. And the stricken man had endeavored to shift the blame on him. Hamlin could not believe this ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... near the grave of Chaucer, and his funeral was at the charge of the Earl of Essex. Beyond this we know nothing; nothing about the details of his escape, nothing of the fate of his manuscripts, or the condition in which he left his work, nothing about the suffering he went through in England. All conjecture is idle waste of time. We only know that the first of English poets perished miserably and prematurely, one of the many heavy sacrifices which the evil fortune of Ireland has cost to England; one of many illustrious victims to the madness, the evil ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... 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 Sumner, and with orders to return to the herd at night six of us immediately ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... hand across her shoulder, and smiling kindly, said she would not allow her to utter words that she would have to eat. "You saw my chasseur step up to me this evening, my Laura? Well, not to torment you, he wished to sound an alarm cry after Angelo Guidascarpi. I believe my conjecture is correct, that Angelo Guidascarpi was seen by Major Weisspriess below, and allowed to pass free. Have you no ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 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 times." Some of these young heroes were very near to her. Maj. William ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... but, if the playwright was young and inexperienced, we can hardly wonder that his strength failed him at this supreme moment. Surely the wonder should rather be that we find so many noble passages throughout this anonymous play. Who the writer may have been I dare not conjecture. In his fine rhetorical power he resembles Chapman; but he had a far truer dramatic gift than that great but chaotic writer. He is never tiresome as Chapman is, who, when he has said a fine thing, seems often to set himself to undo the effect. His gorgeous imagination and his ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... says, with a grateful exultation, that Mrs. Eddy is enormously rich, but he stops there; as to whether any of the money goes to other charities or not, he is obliged to admit that he does not know. However, the Trust is composed of human beings; and this justifies the conjecture that if it had a charity on its list which it was proud of, we ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... impossible and unprecedented, the writer may mention that in the museum of the city of Mexico, he has seen the desiccated body of a young woman, which was found immured in the walls of a religious building. With it is the body of an infant. Although the exact cause of her execution remains a matter of conjecture, there can be no doubt as to the manner of her death, for in addition to other evidences, the marks of the rope with which her limbs were bound in life are still distinctly visible. Such in those days were the mercies ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... the trail of a drink, his voice held a most unctuous solicitude. He was exceedingly annoying to some people and was a source of constant delight to others. At one time he had formed the habit of being robbed, and later on he was drugged; but no one could conjecture what he would next add to his repertory. His troubles were amusing, his difficulties were humorous, his failures were laughable, and his sorrows were the cause for jest. He had a growing paunch, and when he stood he leaned back slightly ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... we call "Achter Col," there is a great deal of waste reedy land; the rest is full of trees, and in some places there is good soil, where the savages plant their maize, upon which they live, as well as by hunting. The other side of the same small river, according to conjecture, is about 20 to 23 leagues broad to the South River, in the neighborhood of the Sancicans, in so far as I have been able to make it out from the mouths of the savages; but as they live in a state of constant enmity with those tribes, the ...
— Narratives of New Netherland, 1609-1664 • Various
... things, having called a council, and summoned to it the centurions of all the companies, he severely reprimanded them, "particularly for supposing that it belonged to them to inquire or conjecture, either in what direction they were marching, or with what object. That Ariovistus, during his [Caesar's] consulship, had most anxiously sought after the friendship of the Roman people; why should any one judge that ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... varieties is partly due 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 ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... a-wooing go" (Vol. ii., p. 45.)—Your correspondent T. S. D. is certainly right in his notion that the ballad of "A frog he would a-wooing go" is very old, however fanciful may be his conjecture about its personal or political application to Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn. That it could not refer to "the Cavaliers and the Roundheads," another of T. S. D.'s notions, is clear from the fact, that it was entered at Stationers' Hall in November, 1581; as appears by the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 35, June 29, 1850 • Various
... of the Caesars on the Palatine are a grandiose ruin that stirs the artist and makes the philosopher think; but if one sets himself to measure them, to conjecture from the remains the proportions of the entire edifices, he does not conjure up buildings that rival large modern constructions. The palace of Tiberius, for example, rose above a street only two metres wide—less than seven feet,—an alley like those where to-day in Italian cities live only ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... 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 Ophir-land ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... legislation with regard to the regulation of business is now virtually complete. It has been put forth, as we intended, as a whole, and leaves no conjecture as to what is to follow. The road at last lies clear and firm before business. It is a road which it can travel without fear or embarrassment. It is the road to ungrudged, unclouded success. In it every honest man, every man who believes that the public interest is part of his ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Woodrow Wilson • Woodrow Wilson
... of peace and restraint has brought us to a position in which we can only assert our place among the Great Powers and secure the conditions of life for the future by the greatest expenditure of treasure and, so far as human conjecture can go, of blood. We shall be compelled, therefore, to adopt, without a moment's delay, special measures which will enable us to be more or less a match for our enemies—I mean accelerated ship-building and rapid increase of the army. We must ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... brief eminence by their repeated statements of what they had witnessed and their varied surmises. The role of commentator, if mysterious human action be the text, is always popular, and as this explanatory class are proverbially gifted in conjecture, there were many theories of explanation. Some of the guests had already the good taste to prepare for departure, and when Dr. Mark appeared from the ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... Benedictine's own conjecture and his mother's affection probably divined facts, which did not present themselves as thoughts in the ordinary way, but took ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... through tall wheat, past walls of Roman brickwork and scattering blocks of the older city, to the tomb of Leonidas. This is said to be a temple, tho there are traces of vaults and passages beneath the pavement which do not quite harmonize with such a conjecture. It is composed of huge blocks of breccia, some of them thirteen ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... force our marriage, it's likely to come to that, I think," I muttered. "I am totally at a loss. I know nothing. I can conjecture nothing. I have not seen her nor heard from her this past year; and now she will say nothing. I pressed her as much, I think, as a fellow decently could. If she had spoken clearly and definitely it would have been different. Whatever statement ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... pedlars?" she asked sharply. And that was all the conversation forthcoming. We began to think we might be pedlars after all. I never knew a population with so narrow a range of conjecture as the innkeepers of Pont-sur-Sambre. But manners and bearing have not a wider currency than bank-notes. You have only to get far enough out of your beat, and all your accomplished airs will go for nothing. These Hainaulters could see no difference between us and the average pedlar. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the money market become excited, under the idea that a change of importance is under discussion; and persons congregate about the doors of the Bank parlour to obtain the earliest intimation of the decision.' And he proceeds to conjecture that the knowledge of the impatience without must cause haste, if not impatience, within. That the decisions of such a court should be of incalculable importance is plainly ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... shifting from conjecture to everyday conditions, "have you thought over what I said to you about this ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... 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 ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... loud baying of a dog sounded like music in his ear, it was during those brief moments, and as he sat there, longing to know what it meant, and whether his conjecture was right that the dog had scented him out, he faintly heard the gruff tones of a voice, and, hastily descending, he went down the slope and made ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... points of the compass; but of what practical avail was his knowledge? Whether he had wandered from the shanty to the north, south, east, or west, was only conjecture. How could that creek have led him astray? He must have crossed the rising ground separating two watersheds—that sloping towards his own lake and towards some other. There flowed the little stream noiselessly, sucked into the swampy cypress grove: of course it got out somewhere at ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... transferred from a show at a fair to Miss Philips warehouse, or whether she had picked them up accidentally, first one and then the other, guided by a fine sense of congruity, as she might match a wineglass or a tea-cup, must be left to conjecture. Certain they answered her purpose, as well as if they had been the size of Gog and Magog; were attentive to the customers, faithful to their employer, and crept about amongst the china as softly as ...
— Miss Philly Firkin, The China-Woman • Mary Russell Mitford
... their rooms did the girls a world of good, and when the lunch gong sounded they gathered about the table in something like their normal spirits. It is true that none ate very much, but tongues flew fast in comment and conjecture. ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... him. More than once that day he went up to the crag and stood and stared futilely at the footprint. Conjecture had license and limitations, too. As the hours wore on he became harassed by the sense of espionage. He was a bold man before the foes he knew, but this idea of inimical lurking, of furtive scrutiny for unknown purposes, preyed ...
— 'way Down In Lonesome Cove - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... malevolence different in kind from the invisible existences that swarmed about him, and superior to them in power. He knew that it had uttered that hideous laugh. And now it seemed to be approaching him; from what direction he did not know—dared not conjecture. All his former fears were forgotten or merged in the gigantic terror that now held him in thrall. Apart from that, he had but one thought: to complete his written appeal to the benign powers who, traversing the haunted ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... respect to the several branches of the royal family have already been observed. To the people at large also, his instability on so momentous a point was harassing and alarming, and they became as much at a loss to conjecture what successor, as what religion, he would ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... had stumbled upon a spot that would have provided pleasure to a geological student. To him it was merely a source of wonder and awe. Some mighty upheaval of nature had created this, and he continued to gaze at it, his mind full of conjecture. ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... as Herbert rode up to her side, "for mercy sake tell me, before I go crazy with conjecture, how it happened that you dropped down from the sky at the very moment and on the very spot where you were needed? and where did you light ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... is generally supposed to be somewhat the later in date of the two most ancient Greek poems which are concerned with the events and consequences of the Trojan war. As to the actual history of that war, it may be said that nothing is known. We may conjecture that some contest between peoples of more or less kindred stocks, who occupied the isles and the eastern and western shores of the Aegean, left a strong impression on the popular fancy. Round the memories of this ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... a small crowd 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 ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... immolated on the same altar. It has been suggested that some were taken by the spectators who thronged to witness the exhibitions, as manuscripts known to have belonged to this library were found—so the catalogue states—as remote as in a grocer's shop in Nova Scotia. It would be difficult to conjecture which would have caused the greater grief to Mr. Prince,—the desecration of the church, whose construction had been a daily delight, and where he had earnestly labored for so many years, or the sacrifice ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various
... "Your conjecture is entirely correct," said Adelaide. "She gave vent to her feelings on the subject in her mother's presence, supposing, I presume, as I did, that not being able to speak or move, she was also unable to hear or understand, but it was evident from the piteous expression her countenance ...
— Grandmother Elsie • Martha Finley
... age when Sacheverel, with his rampant nonsense, had been a popular apostle, and Swift, with his pungent abominations, had been a church adviser of the cabinet, and when Hoadley was regarded alternately as a pillar and as a subverter of the faith, we may easily conjecture the national estimate ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... now—an episode of one of my humdrum holidays in the green country, recalled quite naturally after all the years by our meeting a man who has been a blue-water sailor—this evening confabulation is a dark, inscrutable spot. And we may conjecture what we like. I have no difficulty in imagining that the woman—of forty, and the chief of the enterprise—must have raged at large. And perhaps the other did not rage enough. Youth feels deeply it is true, but it has not the same ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... communication. Bridges were rare. Up to the present time, we know of but one in the whole territory of ancient Egypt; and whether that one was long or short, built of stone or of wood, supported on arches or boldly flung across the stream from bank to bank, we cannot even conjecture. This bridge, close under the very walls of Zaru,[4] crossed the canal which separated the eastern frontier of Egypt from the desert regions of Arabia Petraea. A fortified enclosure protected this canal on the Asiatic side, as ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... along at a terrible speed to certain death before the eyes of their terrorized and frantic parents. It was said at the depot that it was impossible to estimate the number whose lives were lost in the flood. It will simply be a matter of conjecture for several days as to who was lost and ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... that all our knowledge is conjecture does not simply mean that absolute and exact truth remains concealed from us; but is intended at the same time to encourage us to draw as near as possible to the eternal verity by ever truer conjectures. There ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... not be thought uncharitable, if I advance, by way of conjecture, that Mrs. Grizzle, on this grand occasion, summoned her whole exertion to play off the artillery of her charms on the single gentlemen who were invited to the entertainment; sure I am, she displayed ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... when he stood heedlessly on a ridge looking for a dozen head of lost horses in the draws below. It was all very well to explain missing horses by the conjecture that the Injuns must have got them, but Buddy happened to miss old Rattler with the others. Rattler had come north with the trail herd, and he was wise beyond the wisdom of most horses. He would drive cattle out of the brush without a rider to guide him, if only ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... watch practice enjoyed a sensation, for when the first team came trotting over from the gymnasium, a half-hour later because of a rigorous signal quiz, amongst them, dressed to play, was Don Gilbert! A buzz of surprise and conjecture travelled through the ranks of the shivering onlookers, that speedily gave place to satisfaction, and as Don, tossing aside his blanket, followed the first-string players into the field a small and enthusiastic First Form youth clapped ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... some thirty yards away. Idly he followed and soon recognized the figure as that of a woman hurrying fast. Why a woman should be crossing Nunsmere Common at four o'clock in the morning passed his power of conjecture. She was going neither to nor from the doctor, whose house lay behind the vicarage on the right. All at once her objective became clear to him. He thought of the splash of the stone. She was making straight for the pond. He hastened his pace, came up within a few yards of her and then ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... themselves, and having for the most part, although not all, yet the majority, avoided the (not) falling into ditches and the like incurably at least, came presently to the wooden fence, which I conjecture to be the wall meant by the Delphic oracle. It being then necessary either remaining on the hither side to be driven away from all hope of the prize or leaping to run risks concerning their lives, and the rest having leapt in such ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... moneyed man of oil, in the West African trade, might consider an undesirable acquaintance. But as time wore on, and Bertram's new clothes came home from the tailor's, it began to strike the Civil Servant's mind that the mysterious Alien, though he excited much comment and conjecture in Brackenhurst, was accepted on the whole by local society as rather an acquisition to its ranks than otherwise. He was well off: he was well dressed: he had no trade or profession: and Brackenhurst, undermanned, hailed him as a godsend ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... of Commons and in the country after the reassembling of Parliament, before the Government decide on entering upon the struggle which the carrying through of the measure might entail. It is quite impossible now to conjecture with certainty what that state of feeling and the general political circumstances at home and abroad may be at that time. Possibly the country may be more eager then for the measure—or the War may ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... loss of Cora! Not a girl to play pranks, in spite of some whispers about the hotel, those most concerned knew that Cora Kimball was at least being held a prisoner against her will somewhere; by whom, or with whom, no one could conjecture. ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose
... 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, ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... beautiful pavement was discovered within a few yards of the front door of his parsonage, and appeared (from the site in full view of several hills upon which there had formerly been Roman encampments) as if it might have been the villa of the commander of the forces; at least such was Mrs. W.'s conjecture. ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... are right in giving "now present" instead of "then present" as the rendering for [Greek: ton enestekota] (ver. 9). The Epistle alludes, so I should conjecture, to the period of its writing as a time when the sacrifices were still going on, albeit on the eve of cessation.—It seems best to read [Greek: kath' hen], not [Greek: kath' hon], in ver. 9; "in accordance ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule
... 3: After Christ's birth, to believe in Him, was to believe in Christ's birth at some time or other. The fixing of the time, wherein some were deceived was not due to their faith, but to a human conjecture. For it is possible for a believer to have a false opinion through a human conjecture, but it is quite impossible for a false opinion to ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... and convenient place to both parties for this purpose appeared to be at the Trogilian port, near the tower called Galeagra. As they went there several times, one of the Romans, having a near view of the wall, and having determined its height, as nearly as it could be done by conjecture, from counting the stones, and by forming an estimate, in his own mind, what was the height of each stone in the face of the work; and having come to the conclusion that it was considerably lower than ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... among the groups lounging at the bar or in the neighbourhood of the station excitement and discussion ran high. The envelope addressed to Anderson, Anderson's own demeanour since his arrival on the scene—with the meaning of both conjecture ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... bonefish, I actually hesitate to give my impressions. No one will ever believe how powerful a bonefish is until he has tried to stop the rush and heard the line snap. As for his cunning, it is utterly baffling. As for his biting, it is almost imperceptible. As for his tactics, they are beyond conjecture. ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... But I look at 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
... his informants were. [23] Where there was no reason for the suppression or misrepresentation of truth, Caesar's statements may be implicitly relied on. No man knew human nature better, or how to decide between conflicting assertions. He rarely indulges in conjecture, but in investigating the motives of his adversaries he is penetrating and unmerciful. At the commencement of the treatise on the civil war he gives his opinion as to the considerations that weighed with Lentulus, Cato, Scipio, and Pompey; and it is characteristic of the man that of all ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... assumption, assumed position, postulation, condition, presupposition, hypothesis, blue sky hypothesis, postulate, postulatum[Lat], theory; thesis, theorem; data; proposition, position; proposal &c. (plan) 626; presumption &c. (belief) 484; divination. conjecture; guess, guesswork, speculation; rough guess, shot, shot in the dark [coll.]; conjecturality[obs3]; surmise, suspicion, sneaking suspicion; estimate, approximation (nearness) 197. inkling, suggestion, hint, intimation, notion, impression; bare supposition, vague supposition, loose supposition, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... Russian imperial throne vacated! Who is there to mount it? whom has the empress named as her successor? No one dared to speak of it; the question was read in all eyes, but no lips ventured to open for the utterance of an answer, as every conjecture, every expression, if unfounded and unfulfilled, would be construed into the crime of high-treason as soon as another than the one thus indicated should be called ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... pursuit, if not of something sensual for himself, then of something evil in another. He would sit at his club, silent and watching, day after day, night after night, waiting for the chance that should cast light on some idea of detection, on some doubt, bewilderment, or conjecture. He would ask the farthest-off questions: who could tell what might send him into the track of discovery? He would give to the talk the strangest turns, laying trap after trap to ensnare the most miserable of facts, elevated into a desirable secret ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... evident that its spies were here even before the war began, and it is, unhappily, not a matter of conjecture, but a fact proved in our courts of justice, that the intrigues which have more than once come perilously near to disturbing the peace and dislocating the industries of the country have been carried on at the instigation, with the support, and ...
— In Our First Year of the War - Messages and Addresses to the Congress and the People, - March 5, 1917 to January 6, 1918 • Woodrow Wilson
... whole problem solved. I have fancied that perhaps there was during long ages a small isolated continent in the S. Hemisphere which served as the birthplace of the higher plants—but this is a wretchedly poor conjecture. It is odd that Ball does not allude to the obvious fact that there must have been alpine plants before the Glacial period, many of which would have returned to the mountains after the Glacial period, when the climate again became warm. I always ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... landscape of the masses of ruins, surmounted by a single tall shaft, is often picturesque in the extreme. The proximity of the tower to the church is so common as to lead writers on Irish antiquities to conjecture that the former was constructed by the monks who built the church; those advocating the Christian origin of the round tower taking the ground that it was built, either as a place of safe-keeping for valuable ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... Therefore let the nativities of children be diligently observed for the future, that is to say, the day, hour, and minute of birth as near as can be, which will be of use to the astrological physician, for the most principal conjecture of the malignity of the disease, whether it be curable, or shall end with death, depends upon the knowledge of the nativity; and very rarely any disease invades a person, but some unfortunate direction of the luminaries or ascendant to the body, or beams of malignant ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... all in one, which was indeed the beginning of the invention in Syrinx, who was made into a pan-pipe, which as a piano became the great musical curse (according to Heine) of modern times, and by which, as I conjecture, the fair Miss Reed or Syrinx revenges herself on male humanity. By the way, the best singer of "Che faro senza Euridice" whom I ever heard was a Miss Reed, a sister of Mrs. ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... and sometimes you could catch the chanting of a little sweet song last sung in Rangoon or Swatow. One of these songs was once translated for me. I should take great delight in printing it here, but, alas! this, too, comes from a land where purity crusades are unknown. I dare not conjecture what Bayswater would do to me if I ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... been frequently asserted that all Caxton's books were printed in a part of Westminster Abbey; this must be mere conjecture, because we find no statement of it from himself: he first mentions the place of his printing in 1477, so that he must have printed some time without ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 37. Saturday, July 13, 1850 • Various
... of much research and conjecture, the origin of the Chinese people remains undetermined. We do not know who they were nor whence they came. Such evidence as there is points to their immigration from elsewhere; the Chinese themselves have a tradition of a Western origin. ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... dispositions, from a forgotten poem prefixed to the first edition of BURTON'S ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY, entitled, 'The Author's Abstract of Melancholy; or, A Dialogue between Pleasure and Pain.' Here pain is melancholy. It was written, as I conjecture, about the year 1600. I will make no apology for abstracting and citing as much of this poem as will be sufficient to prove, to a discerning reader, how far it had taken possession of Milton's mind. The measure will appear to be the same; and that our author was at least an attentive reader ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... decanter and siphon of soda water on it, as though Sir Horace had served himself with refreshments on his return to the house. The tops of the other sideboards were bare, and the presses, use in such a room Rolfe was at a loss to conjecture, were locked up. The antique sombre uniformity of the furniture as a whole was broken at odd intervals by several articles of bizarre modernity, including a few daring French prints, which struck an odd note of incongruity in such ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... a hard shell, every human being is enclosed in a cover of body, dress, and life. Who is man? We may only conjecture. What constitutes his joy or his sorrow? We may guess only by his acts, which are oft-times enigmatic; by his laughter and by his tears, which are often entirely incomprehensible to us. And if we, Russians, who live so closely together in constant misery, understand ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev
... regarded it as by any means indispensable to those who were perfectly healthy, except during infancy and childhood. The following extract will give us—more than any other, perhaps—his real sentiments, though modestly expressed in the form of a conjecture, ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... records a poet's defection from the cause of progress and liberty. Who this poet might be was for some time a matter of conjecture. Wordsworth, Southey, and Charles Kingsley, all of whom had gone from radicalism in their youth to conservatism in their old age, were severally proposed as the original of Browning's portrait. The poem was published in 1845, two years after Wordsworth was made ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... little of his human relationships is one of the blessed facts about him. That we conjecture much is the penalty a nation pays for failing to know her genius when ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... entered thus fully into what I conjecture to be the stages of this early discovery of the law of gravitation, as applicable to the heavenly bodies, because it is frequently and commonly misunderstood. It is sometimes thought that he discovered ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... no doubt that we are quite justified in assuming that evolution has followed the same general laws through the whole duration of life on earth. Only a moment of their lifetime is disclosed to us, but it [710] is quite sufficient to enable us to discern the laws and to conjecture the outlines of the ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... dedicated to Saint George was demolished by Edward the Fourth, its position and form cannot be clearly determined, But a conjecture has been hazarded that it occupied the same ground as the choir of the present chapel, and ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... remembered that these Ortega papers are in abstract only—apparently summarized for the use of the royal council by some clerk, who may have been more familiar with affairs in Nueva Espana than in the Philippines. La Havana is probably his error or conjecture ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume IX, 1593-1597 • E. H. Blair
... which he gives such well-deserved glory to Newton,[74] of not only accounting for phenomena, but also of measuring the quantity of forces. His conception, therefore, of future progress, however near conjecture may possibly have brought him to the truth, is yet no more than conjecture. The root of it is found in nothing more precise, definite, or quantified than a general notion gathered from history, that some portions of the race had made perceptible advances in freedom and enlightenment, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... proof that Inigo Jones's tomb now occupies its original site. The statement that Chapman was studied on the south side of the church is, I believe, mere conjecture. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 53. Saturday, November 2, 1850 • Various
... to identify the designers of even a selection of the best Printers' Marks would be but to embark on a wild sea of conjecture. The initials of the engravers, which occur much more frequently than those of the artists, are of very little assistance to the identification of the latter. Many of them possess a vigour and an originality which would at once stamp their designers as men of more than ordinary ability. For ...
— Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography • William Roberts
... commerce or politics to every other part, that it is impossible to meditate on any great and new country without seeking to interpret its tendencies by the experience of other countries, and to conjecture the role it will be called on to play in the world-drama of the centuries to come. I have sought, therefore, not only to make South Africa real to those who do not know it, and to give them the materials for understanding what passes there and following its fortunes with intelligence, ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... appearing upon every occasion, can look with such an impartial eye upon himself, as to believe that the imputation thrown upon him is not altogether groundless and unfair? Who, if he were told by men of a discerning spirit and a strong conjecture, of all the evil and absurd things which that false heart of his would at one time or other betray him into, would not believe as little, and wonder as much, as Hazael did before him? Thus, for instance; tell an angry person ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... Cunyngham who fell on Flodden Field. It is true that at the present time he and she mingled in the same society; for he was the pet and plaything of the hour in the fashionable world; but he was not entirely blinded by that favor; he did not wholly mistake his position. And even supposing—a wild conjecture!—that she entertained an exceptional regard for him—that she could be induced to think of marrying him—would she be content that her husband remained on the stage and painted his face every evening and postured before ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... high, but well within easy ken, and these dense, hardly discernible clusters—hirundine nebulae, as it were—were all these but parts of one innumerable host, the main body of which was passing far above me altogether unseen? The conjecture was one to gratify the imagination. It pleased me even to think that it might be true. But it was only a conjecture, and meantime another ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... which must have been very numerous, are represented only by the noble structure at Trier (Treves), which is now a single vast hall 180 ft. long, 90 ft. wide and 100 ft. high, commanded at one end by a spacious apse. There is reason to conjecture that this is the basilica erected by Constantine, and some authorities believe that originally it had internal colonnades. In England basilicas remain in part at Silchester (fig. 7), Uriconium (Wroxeter), [v.03 p.0472] Chester (?) and Lincoln, while three others ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... immediately roused herself, and turned to Flora Mac-Ivor. But after a short conflict between his eager desire to believe she was in his neighbourhood, guarding, like an angel of mercy, the couch of his sickness, Waverley was compelled to conclude that his conjecture was altogether improbable; since, to suppose she had left the comparatively safe situation at Glennaquoich to descend into the Low Country, now the seat of civil war, and to inhabit such a lurking-place as this, was a thing hardly to be imagined. Yet his heart bounded as he ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... claimed as heir to his daughter Margaret.[*] Some of these competitors were descended from more remote branches of the royal family; others were even sprung from illegitimate children; and as none of them had the least pretence of right, it is natural to conjecture that Edward had secretly encouraged them to appear in the list of claimants, that he might sow the more division among the Scottish nobility, make the cause appear the more intricate, and be able to choose, among a great number, the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... so, and believe so. Besides a thousand things concur to lead To this conjecture. In the first place, she Profess'd herself with child by Pamphilus: That proves a falsehood. Now that she perceives A nuptial preparation at our house, A maid's dispatch'd immediately to bring A midwife to her, and withal a child; You too they will ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... the future there may be a commercial industry in the north. For the 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 conditions ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... [236] Hence we may conjecture that the similar ornaments worn by Mabuiag girls in similar circumstances are also amulets. See above, p. 36. Among the aborigines of the Upper Yarra river in Victoria, a girl at puberty used to have cords tied very tightly round several parts ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... is a thousand to one but that the feeling of four red London walls closing around us for seven, eleven, or twenty-five years, would be a harsh and hard one, and make us cry wistfully to 'get out.' I am sure you will look up to your mountains, and down to your lakes, and enter into this conjecture. ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... likely; On the whole, we are meant to look after ourselves; it is certain Each has to eat for himself, digest for himself, and in general Care for his own dear life, and see to his own preservation; Nature's intentions, in most things uncertain, in this are decisive; Which, on the whole, I conjecture the Romans will follow, and I shall. So we cling to our rocks like limpets; Ocean may bluster, Over and under and round us; we open our shells to imbibe our Nourishment, close them again, and are safe, fulfilling the purpose Nature intended,—a wise one, ...
— Amours de Voyage • Arthur Hugh Clough
... reproached with the intention of removing the empire to Ilium or Alexandria. See Sueton. in Caesar. c. 79. According to the ingenious conjecture of Le Fevre and Dacier, the ode of the third book of Horace was intended to divert from the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... during which time some rain falling, brought down, with the drops, sulphur and dirt; which rendered white paper black, and when burned fizzed like wet gunpowder:[I] and whence such matter could originally be brought, appeared to be past all conjecture, unless it came so far off as from the ...
— Remarks Concerning Stones Said to Have Fallen from the Clouds, Both in These Days, and in Antient Times • Edward King
... The imprudence of leaving the door so that it could not be closed! He turned, and descended to meet them, his teeth set, his hand on his sword, one conjecture after another whirling in his brain. Was he beset? Was it a trap? Was it a rival? Was it chance? Two steps he descended; and then the voice he had heard before ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... should be eighty-two [3]. It is maintained by others that Tsze-sze's life was protracted beyond 100 years [4]. This variety of opinions simply shows that the point cannot be positively determined. To me it seems that the conjecture in the Sacrificial Canon must be pretty near the truth [5]. During the years of his boyhood, then, Tsze-sze must have been with his grandfather, and received his instructions. It is related, that one day, when he was alone with the sage, and heard him sighing, ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... beyond doubt that a fair percentage of people, sane and healthy, can see vivid landscapes, and figures of persons in motion, in glass balls and other vehicles. This faculty Dr. Parish attributes to 'dissociation,' practically to drowsiness. But he speaks by conjecture, and without having witnessed experiments, as will be shown later. I now offer a series of experiments with a glass ball, coming under my own observation, in which knowledge was apparently acquired in no ordinary way. Of the absence of fraud I am personally convinced, not only ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... part of the town. How much it might have been modified if he had known that the man whose face Miss Farnham had seen at the window was silently tracking him through the tree-shadowed streets is a matter for conjecture. Also, it is to be presumed that much, if not all, of the complacency would have vanished if he could have been an unseen listener in the Farnham sitting-room, dating from the time when little Miss Gilman pattered off to bed, leaving the father and daughter ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... could be determined and compared. Their recognised function, in fact, was that of milestones on the great celestial highway traversed by the planets, as well as on the byways of space occasionally pursued by comets. Not that curiosity as to their nature, and even conjecture as to their origin, were at any period absent. Both were from time to time powerfully stimulated by the appearance of startling novelties in a region described by philosophers as "incorruptible," or exempt from change. The catalogue of Hipparchus probably, and certainly that of Tycho Brahe, ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... and published by him, there is a deep and wide opening, completely free from ice. In fact, on this occasion, as well as others of more consequence, to which we shall presently advert, Captain Ross, unfortunately for the accomplishment of the object on which he was sent, contented himself with conjecture where proof was accessible; for all he remarks respecting this sound is, that it seemed to be eighteen or twenty leagues in depth, and the land on the east side appeared to be habitable. When it is ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... not Waller, nor the gardener, for certain; but who it could be, in his excitement, he could not hazard a conjecture. He himself was fugitive and spy, and the only interpretation natural was that this man was hunting for him, ...
— The New Forest Spy • George Manville Fenn
... divine the cause of so unexpected a change were as vain as the questions I had first asked. Brigitte was ill, and remained obstinately silent. After an entire day passed in supplication and conjecture, I went out without knowing where I was going. Passing the Opera, I entered it from mere force ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... boats drew near Port Jackson, wore so unfavourable an appearance, that Captain Phillip's utmost expectation reached no farther than to find what Captain Cook, as he passed by, thought might be found, shelter for a boat. In this conjecture, however, he was most agreeably disappointed, by finding not only shelter for a boat, but a harbour capable of affording security to a much larger fleet than would probably ever seek for shelter or security in ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... over this ice, to which it was entirely confined, occasionally covering the top of the island with a dense cloud. The impression made upon our minds at the time was, that it was a frozen lake on which we were now looking; but this conjecture, as it afterward appeared, proved erroneous. The ravine at which we had arrived discharges its waters into a snug cove two or three miles deep, at the head of which we now proposed resting, if a place could be found at which our descent into the ravine could be effected. ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... located himself with a young wife and child. And, as he very rarely made any allusions to his own personal affairs, every thing relating to his origin, life, and employments, previous to his appearance in this region, was a matter of mere conjecture, and many a dark surmise, also, we should add, respecting his true character. For the last few years, however, he was known to have followed, at the appropriate seasons of the year, the business of trapping, or trading for furs with the Indians, around the northern lakes. ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... which his devotions have been equally divided between the sacred Emperor, his illustrious parents, and his venerable ancestors, the fault cannot lie with him. Of the excellence of his parents he has full knowledge; regarding the Emperor, it might not be safe to conjecture. It is therefore probable that some of his ancestors were persons of abandoned manner and inelegant habits, to worship whom results in evil rather than good. Otherwise, how could it be that one whose chief delight lies in the passive contemplation ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... we wrong in our conjecture, for the first things we came upon were four large dishes of metal, resembling gold; but as they had been rolled up like a scroll by some great force, we did not stop to unroll them to enquire of what metal they really were. ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... I am serious in my conjecture that "the meteor beard" of Hudibras might have given birth to the "Bard" of Gray? I reply, that the burlesque and the sublime are extremes, and extremes meet. How often does it merely depend on our own state of mind, and on our own taste, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... decided adversely, and it looks as if his decision was a wise one. It is interesting to conjecture what would have been his future position had he left college and accepted the school then offered him. He might still have been a teacher, well known and of high repute, but of fame merely local, and without a thought of the brilliant ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... of Miss W—- yet since I wrote to her, intimating that I would accept her offer. I cannot conjecture the reason of this long silence, unless some unforeseen impediment has occurred in concluding the bargain. Meantime, a plan has been suggested and approved by Mr. and Mrs. —- " (the father and mother of her pupils) "and others, which I wish now to impart to you. My friends ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... us now was whether this rock reef communicated sufficiently with the island for us to get to it. Abandoning conjecture; tying very firmly our canoe up to the rocks, a thing that seemed, considering she was jammed hard and immovable, a little unnecessary—but you can never be sufficiently careful in this matter with any kind of boat—off we started among the rock ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... from his private detective, and then got into his chaise, and turned Caustic's head in the direction of the Dudley mansion. He had been suspicious of Dick from the first. He did not like his mixed blood, not his looks, nor his ways. He had formed a conjecture about his projects early. He had made a shrewd guess as to the probable jealousy Dick would feel of the schoolmaster, had found out something of his movements, and had cautioned Mr. Bernard,—as we have seen. He felt an interest in the young man,—a student of his own ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... countenance, was evidently revolving some scheme of benevolence in his mind. The dandies regarded him with blank amazement. They also had seen the gold in the poor widow's hand, and seemed to think that there was more under that shabby surtout than their 'puppy brains' were able to conjecture. That in this they were right ...
— Catharine's Peril, or The Little Russian Girl Lost in a Forest - And Other Stories • M. E. Bewsher
... published the Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom. In the dedication of this novel he left a blank after the word Doctor, which may probably be supplied with the name of Armstrong. From certain phrases that occur in the more serious parts, I should conjecture them to be hastily translated from another language. Some of these shall be laid before the reader, that he may judge for himself. "A solemn profession, on which she reposed herself with the most ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... nothing could have touched it. The bell was then placed upon the other side, still upon the carpet, and it came over to me, and placed itself in my hand. It did the same to Lord Brougham. These were the principal experiments: we could give no explanation of them, and could not conjecture how they could be produced by any kind of mechanism.... We do not believe that it ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... insist on the charm of Herrick at his best—a charm so incomparable and so inimitable that even English poetry can boast of nothing quite like it or worthy to be named after it—the most appreciative reader will be the slowest to affirm or imagine that he can conjecture. This, however, he will hardly fail to remark: that Herrick, like most if not all other lyric poets, is not best known by his best work. If we may judge by frequency of quotation or of reference, the ballad of the ride from Ghent to Aix is a far more popular, more generally admired ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... a guess, I conjecture that Jasper had one of his "filmy" seizures, was "in a frightful sort of dream," and bungled the murder: made an incomplete job of it. Half-strangled men and women have often recovered. In Jasper's opium vision and reminiscence ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang
... making towards a burn which ran through the grounds before joining a small tributary of Tweed. At best speed mother and daughter followed the boy, who had halted excitedly by the burn side. But what the cause of his agitation might be they could not for the moment conjecture; certainly the burn had no apparent connection with hunting, nor indeed was there sign of horse or hound. What they found was something very different. A mile or so up the rivulet there was a farm-steading, ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... as Christmas or Christmas dinners. Whether the turkey which Scrooge gave to Bob Cratchit had experienced a lovelier or more melancholy career than that of less attractive turkeys is a subject upon which I cannot even conjecture. But that Scrooge was better for giving the turkey and Cratchit happier for getting it I know as two facts, as I know that I have two feet. What life and death may be to a turkey is not my business; but the soul of Scrooge and the ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... I conjecture: de morte cognati adolescentis subito tacens tanti criminis descriptione destitit, ne tamen omnino desistere ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... de terciopelo morado con passamanos de oro que yo he visto." Ms. de Caravantes.] Pizarro was, probably, not far from sixty-five years of age at the time of his death; though this, it must be added, is but loose conjecture, since there exists no authentic record of the date of his birth. *20 He was never married; but by an Indian princess of the Inca blood, daughter of Atahuallpa and granddaughter of the great Huayna Capac, he had two children, a son and a daughter. Both survived him; but the son ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... pages, as scribbling paper. Six leaves, apparently blank, were torn out. Several pages are covered with mere vacant scrawling by my boyish hand; whether I threw it away in utter contempt, or concealed it back of the old chimney, in curious conjecture whether some unborn generations, would not at some distant day discover it, and puzzle over it, I cannot tell. I have no recollection of it whatever; except that I had a general impression that we used to have ...
— Log-book of Timothy Boardman • Samuel W Boardman
... rather for the sifting of details than for the acquiring of fresh evidence. The tragedy has been so uncommon, so complete and of such personal importance to so many people, that we are suffering from a plethora of surmise, conjecture, and hypothesis. The difficulty is to detach the framework of fact—of absolute undeniable fact—from the embellishments of theorists and reporters. Then, having established ourselves upon this sound basis, it is our duty ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... horse, and I found it necessary to instantly remove my glove to avoid blistering my hand. The frenzied floundering of my horse had in the first instance suggested to General Washburn the idea that the under stratum was hot enough to scald him. General Washburn was right in his conjecture. It is a fortunate circumstance that I to-day rode my light-weight pack horse; for, if I had ridden my heavy saddle horse, I think that the additional weight of his body would have broken the turf which held up the lighter animal, and that he would have ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... inside of the cottage, as I entered, confirmed me in the conjecture which the appearance of the outside had already given rise to, that it was not used for human residence, and that this man was only here for a rendezvous. Prolonged moisture had peeled the plaster in ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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
... the boat kept on her course until within half a length of the ship, then she ran quietly up on a flat rock some seven or eight inches under water. They could see now that the captain's conjecture was correct. The ship had broken her back, having, as she was carried in on the crest of a great wave, dropped on a sharp ledge of rocks about amidships. The sea had rushed in through the hole in her side, ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... is truly a matter of conjecture. The more you look at him the more uncertain you become. His droopy carriage and shriveled feature betray you at first sight. The first impression will lead one to believe that he is about one hundred years of age, and later it will appear that he ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... and I now perceived that about two hundred yards before me stood an iron gate and piers, without any hedge or wall on either side; before I could conjecture the meaning of so strange a thing in the midst of a large lawn, I saw the foremost horse, now two or three lengths before the other, still in advance of me, take two or three short strides, and fly about eight feet over a sunk fence—the second followed in the same style, the riders sitting as ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... while the other mourners, panic-struck at the extraordinary circumstances in which they found themselves, turned about and walked in mournful silence back, ruminating on the past with amazement, and full of conjecture for the future. ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... starving tigress. There is a ruined stupa at Sui Vihar in the Bahawalpur State. The Chinese pilgrims described the largest of Indian stupas built by Kanishka near Peshawar to enshrine precious relics of Gautama Buddha and a great monastery beside it. Recent excavations have proved the truth of the conjecture that the two mounds at Shahji ki dheri covered the remains of these buildings, and the six-sided crystal reliquary containing three small fragments of bone has after long centuries been disinterred and is now in the great pagoda at Rangoon. In the Lahore museum there is a rich collection ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... as a hypothesis that Haeckel formulates his conjecture as to manner of the origin ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... COLLIER have both of them adopted Jackson's conjecture of unawares, and have admitted it to the honour of a place in the text, but MR. DYCE has pronounced it to be "villainous;" and it must be confessed that it has nothing but a slight similarity to the old word ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various
... said in such an ambiguous manner that it was impossible to conjecture whether he intended or not to act upon Dwyer's exhortation. The conclusion which appeared most natural, was by ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... who the dead stranger was, or could even form a conjecture. The pieces of wreck said ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... Bangs responded only when he felt like it, and did not scruple to leave an observation, or even a question, permanently suspended in an embarrassing silence. Quin soon found it much more interesting to commune with himself. It was exciting to conjecture what was about to happen, and what effect it would have on his love affair. If he got a raise, would he be justified in putting his fate to the test? All spring he had fought the temptation of going to New York in the hope that by waiting ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... passionate loyalty of the British South African. It would be idle to discuss what might have happened had Mr. Kruger seized his opportunity and let in a considerable section of the then unenfranchised to strengthen the ranks of the Republican party; that can only be a matter of individual conjecture. What is certain, however, is that he did not do so and never intended to do so; wherein his lack of statesmanship ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... crowd 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 ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... with a listlessness that silenced Larcher, who fell into conjecture of its cause. Was it the effect of many failures? Or had it some particular source? What part in its origin had been played by the woman to whose fickleness the man had briefly alluded? And, finally, had the story ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... what was the use of hazarding conjecture when they would soon know for certain? So they held their tongues and watched the approach of the boat with gloomy, louring glances. They were disappointed, and in a savage, dangerous mood, ready to plunge at a ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... I heard some conversation from people of all opinions, in the way of conjecture or inquiry as to whether the blacks would resort to force, but nothing in the way of advising ...
— Report of the Proceedings at the Examination of Charles G. Davis, Esq., on the Charge of Aiding and Abetting in the Rescue of a Fugitive Slave • Various
... in the darkness. Mr. Damon fumbled at the lock of the door. The key grated as he turned it. The portal swung back, and Tom and his friend found themselves inside the shed which, of late, had been such an object of worry and conjecture to the young inventor. What would he ...
— Tom Swift and his Sky Racer - or, The Quickest Flight on Record • Victor Appleton
... 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 ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... church shoots up as brilliant, as aerial, as triumphant, as this is low and grave. Really, if one were to give way to conjecture, he might suppose that in these three sanctuaries the architect meant to represent the three worlds; below, the gloom of death and the horrors of the infernal tomb; in the middle, the impassioned anxiety of the beseeching Christian who strives and hopes in this world ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... the cause of so unexpected a change were as vain as the questions I had first asked. Brigitte was ill and obstinately remained silent. After an entire day passed in supplication and conjecture, I went out without knowing where I was going. Passing the Opera, I entered ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... striving for effect in decoration or construction, it looked like a work of Nature, accomplished without effort, and beautiful without design; and the mind brought under its influence, and left free of conjecture, was gently compelled to revel in the peace which harmonious surroundings insensibly produce. Disturbing thoughts vanished as being too common and mean, too human, for such a place, and the spirit was soothed with a sense of repose—of sensuous restfulness, really, for the pleasure, ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... fellow lodger, though there is room in his cabin for three birds at least. Where the female is I can only conjecture; maybe she is occupying a discarded last year's lodge, as I notice there are a good many new holes drilled in the trees every fall, though many of the old ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... hollowed something like a grocer's scoop; a three-pronged caltrop-looking bone, that seems to have formed part of a pelvic arch; another angular bone, much massier than the first, regarding the probable position of which I could not form a conjecture, but which some of my geological friends deem cerebral; an extremely dense bone, imperfect at each end, which presents the appearance of a cylinder slightly flattened; and various curious fragments, which, with what our Scotch museums ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... of indignant protest will avail to conceal the fact that we stand to-day at the porch, that much more probably we have already penetrated far into the vestibule, of a new age. What its character will be, or what its principal products, it is absolutely impossible for us as yet to conjecture. Meanwhile the Victorian Age recedes, and it loses size and lustre as we get further and further away from it. When what was called "Symbolism" began to act in urgent and direct reaction to the aims of those still in authority, the ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... the audacious Effrontery of that request! But you—you grew suddenly gracious, And hid your sweet face on my breast. Why you did it I cannot conjecture; I surprised you, poor child, I dare say, Or perhaps—does the moonlight affect your ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... itself as years passed. Among his acquaintances his "Saturday to Monday visits" to continental cities remote or unremote were discussed with humour. Possibly, upon these discussions, were finally founded the rumours of which Dowson had heard but which she had impartially declined to "credit". Lively conjecture inevitably figured largely in their arguments and, when persons of unrestrained wit devote their attention to airy persiflage, much may be included in their points ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of the war in 705 interfered with Pompeius' general plan for the campaign, and particularly what part, in that plan was assigned after the loss of Italy to the important military corps in the west, can only be determined by conjecture. That Pompeius had the intention of coming by way of Africa and Mauretania to the aid of his army fighting in Spain, was simply a romantic, and beyond doubt altogether groundless, rumour circulating in the camp of Ilerda. It is much more likely that he still ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... /cast yourself in:/ throw yourself into a state of. In previous editions of Hudson's Shakespeare Jervis's conjecture 'case' for 'cast' was adopted. The change is unnecessary. Cf. Cymbeline, III, ii, 38: "Though forfeiters you cast ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... answered: "Sir, if your treasure inside the house is stolen by the crows, how do you expect those out of doors to be kept safe?" This was said with a certain intonation that made Somacuel conjecture that there was a ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,
... 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 the Book of Job, and who would have counted Warlock's ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... that the comet did not originate in our solar system has been verified, for we find that the globe of which it was once a part revolved around an immense sun which had a retinue of twenty- seven planets of various sizes. Whether this great sun is one of the stars of our firmament we can only conjecture; perhaps in some future state of ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... that dark and doleful day of Spain. Whether he went down amidst the storm of battle, and atoned for his sins and errors by a patriot grave, or whether he survived to repent of them in hermit exile, must remain matter of conjecture and dispute. The learned Archbishop Rodrigo, who has recorded the events of this disastrous field, affirms that Roderick fell beneath the vengeful blade of the traitor Julian, and thus expiated with his blood his crime against the hapless ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... their being overflowed. So numerous, indeed, are these embankments, and so far beyond the necessities or ability of such a population as the present, to erect, that they are by many of the inhabitants supposed to be natural mounds. This conjecture, however, Mr. Dobell was convinced was incorrect, ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... admitted his guilt before the magistrate. If they had any reasonable doubt—and such a doubt might of course be raised by evidence of previous good character—they would of course give it to the defendant and acquit him, but such a doubt must be no mere whim, guess or conjecture that the defendant might not after all be guilty even if the evidence seemed so to demonstrate; it must be a substantial doubt based on the evidence and such a one as would influence them in the important matters of their own daily, domestic and business lives. That was all there was to it! ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... and all other rights due to the estate of a prince; with which dinner the ceremony ended, and every man returned home again. The pedigree of this usage is derived from so many descents of ages that the cause and author outreach the remembrance. Howbeit, these circumstances afford a conjecture that it should betoken royalties appertaining to the ...
— From London to Land's End - and Two Letters from the "Journey through England by a Gentleman" • Daniel Defoe
... 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.
... in Don Bernardino's time is matter of conjecture. Perhaps it was not greatly different from some remote Spanish-American frontier towns some five-and-twenty years ago, save for the groups of Spanish soldiery, with their steel morions, trunk hose and ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... Maxwell 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
... as man had the idea of "making" things, he might conjecture as to a Maker of things which he himself had not made, and could not make. He would regard this unknown Maker as a "magnified non-natural man." These speculations appear to me to need less reflection than the long and complicated processes of thought by which Mr. Tylor believes, and probably ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... popular apostle, and Swift, with his pungent abominations, had been a church adviser of the cabinet, and when Hoadley was regarded alternately as a pillar and as a subverter of the faith, we may easily conjecture the national estimate ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... surrounded it were broken and gone; and the underwood of the forest came up 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 a field-path which my host ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... error: for it was my belief that those two notices were designed for two distinct scholars. Accordingly, I revised both passages, and found that I was right in my conjecture. The facts are these:—In the former of the references, "The Rev. John Taylor, D.D.," is pointed out. The other individual, of the same name, was John Taylor, LL.D., a native of Shrewsbury, and a pupil of Shrewsbury School: HIS latinity it is which Dr. Samuel Parr [ut ...
— Notes & Queries No. 29, Saturday, May 18, 1850 • Various
... good or bad, so in the life of Baree the beaver pond was largely an arbiter of destiny. Where he might have gone if he had not discovered it, and what might have happened to him, are matters of conjecture. But it held him. It began to take the place of the old windfall, and in the beavers themselves he found a companionship which made up, in a way, for his loss of the protection and friendship of ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... taken up their position, when, with the sound of hurrying footsteps, came a long-drawn, hissing sound through the air. Before they had time to even conjecture its cause, they saw a knife strike Abdu in the breast, and he fell to the ground with a moan, the weapon still quivering in his body with the ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... wild and desolate ocean and a voice from Forty-second Street! What manner of conjecture was this? I clasped my head in my hands and tried to think. Suddenly a memory came to me: ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... came long after, have long since perished, these ever remain, and in spite of the endeavours of many powerful kings who have a hundred times tried to destroy them, as their historians testify, and as it is easy to conjecture from the natural order of things during so long a space of years, they have nevertheless been preserved (and this preservation has been foretold); and extending from the earliest times to the latest, their history comprehends in its duration all our histories ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... line of foam that stretched out before us, which he fancied to be a channel between the rocks. A few desperate strokes brought us to the spot, when, to our unspeakable joy, we found it to answer the man's conjecture; but, so narrow was the passage, that the oars on both sides of the boat struck the rocks; a minute afterwards we found ourselves becalmed and in safety. The boat being moored, and the men ordered to watch by turns, we lay down to sleep, as ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... viceroy of Peru. *19 [Footnote 19: "Sus huesos encerrados en una caxa guarnecida de terciopelo morado con passamanos de oro que yo he visto." Ms. de Caravantes.] Pizarro was, probably, not far from sixty-five years of age at the time of his death; though this, it must be added, is but loose conjecture, since there exists no authentic record of the date of his birth. *20 He was never married; but by an Indian princess of the Inca blood, daughter of Atahuallpa and granddaughter of the great Huayna ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... reject, subject, project, objection, injection, dejected, conjecture, jet, jetty; (2) abject, traject, adjective, projectile, interjection, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... sudden gloom and confusion, had just looked up, unable to conjecture what was the matter. Brigson's crust caught him a sharp rap on the forehead ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... admonition and perhaps more punishment for his evil deeds. Charles was turned out of college the 7th of March, and I wrote on the week after to have him come directly home, but we have heard nothing from him since. Where he is we can form no conjecture. But probably he is five hundred miles distant without money and without friends. I leave you to conjecture the rest. Roswell is left alone at the age of fifteen to get along, if he is permitted to stay ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... of Salisbury, at Saltoun, Scott is not incorrect. He makes Morton, in danger of death, pray in the words of the Prayer Book, "a circumstance which so enraged his murderers that they determined to precipitate his fate." Dr. McCrie objects to this incident, which is merely borrowed, one may conjecture, from the death of Archbishop Sharpe. The assassins told the Archbishop that they would slay him. "Hereupon he began to think of death. But (here are just the words of the person who related the story) behold! God did not give him the grace to pray to Him without the ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Another conjecture was that once the notorious Menyhart Orzo, who was supreme under King Rudolph in the castle, played a game of checkers with his neighbor, Boldizsar Zomolnoky. They commenced to play on a Monday and continued the game ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... revolutions of the globe have deposited in the polar regions. If the cedrela, instead of having been cast on the strand of Teneriffe, had been carried farther south, It would probably have made the whole tour of the Atlantic, and returned to its native soil with the general current of the tropics. This conjecture is supported by a fact of more ancient date, recorded in the history of the Canaries by the abbe Viera. In 1770, a small vessel laden with corn, and bound from the island of Lancerota, to Santa Cruz, in Teneriffe, was driven out to sea, while none of the crew were on board. The motion of the waters ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... intervention, and would demand his leadership in peace or war; but under no circumstances is his authority valid qua joint proprietorship. The consent of the numerous joint-owners is even under most favorable conditions a matter of conjecture. ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... planetary masses revolving at various distances round it, each again rotating on its own axis; and, finally, associated with some of these planets we have dark bodies of minor note—the moons. Whether the other fixed stars have similar planetary companions or not is to us a matter of pure conjecture, which may or may not enter into our conception of the universe. But probably every thoughtful person believes, with regard to those distant suns, that there is, in space, something besides our system on which ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... treatment of the character of the cup-bearer. Does he make it his chief care to enhance the character of the Queen? Note the new characters introduced,—Paulina, Antigonus, Autolycus, the clown (in place of the wife in Greene). Conjecture any reason for his different names. The introduction of Autolycus makes the play more amusing on the stage, but is his part as well planned as Capnio's for leading up to the denouement? Greene lets his mariners off alive after they set Fawnia afloat. Shakespeare wrecks his, and ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... merchants traded with the inhabitants of the Peninsula and that a very remote intercourse existed between these and Hindostan, and although there is no substantial proof, no analogies of language, customs or creed upon which to base such a conjecture, neither, as yet, has anything been proved to the contrary whilst many primeval superstitions prevalent amongst the Sakais are still to be found in other tribes living in proximity with believers ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... unknown distance yet to run, an unknown river to explore. What falls there are, we know not; what rocks beset the channel, we know not; what walls rise over the river, we know not. Ah, well! we may conjecture many things. The men talk as cheerfully as ever; jests are bandied about freely this morning; but to me the cheer is somber ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... so far be only a matter of conjecture," her brother answered, with a shrug. "Of course they might have provided themselves with some sort of ladder, but there are no signs of it. And the height of the window in that top room is decidedly against ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... at the dresses of the two splendid ladies again—a point on which, having risked one conjecture, I think I may risk another. While she was looking at the ladies she was seeing Valentin de Bellegarde. He, at all events, was seeing her. He put down the roughly-besmeared canvas and addressed a little click with his tongue, accompanied ...
— The American • Henry James
... recalled his conjecture that Liputin knew not only more than we did about our affair, but something else which ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... indicates its Phoenician origin; Baal being the name under which they adored that luminary. It is also remarkable that Grian, which signifies the sun in Irish, resembles an epithet of Apollo given by Virgil,[145] who sometimes styles him Grynaeus. St. Patrick also confirms this conjecture, by condemning Sun-worship in his Confession, when he says: "All those who adore it shall descend into misery and punishment." If the well-known passage of Diodorus Siculus may be referred to Ireland, it affords another confirmation. ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... that, owing 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, ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... moaned through the redwoods, the memory of his visit a whiff, sharp and strong, from the wild outer world. A week later, sea-hammered and bar-bound for that time, had arrived the revenue cutter Bear, and there had been a column of conjecture in the local paper, hints of a heavy landing of opium and of a vain quest for the mysterious schooner Halcyon. Only Fred and his mother, and the several house Indians, knew of the stiffened horse in the barn and of the devious way it was afterward ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... lagoon. His work continued to progress, and as page was added to page Susy obscurely but surely perceived that each one corresponded with a hidden secretion of energy, the gradual forming within him of something that might eventually alter both their lives. In what sense she could not conjecture: she merely felt that the fact of his having chosen a job and stuck to it, if only through a few rosy summer weeks, had already given him a new way of ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... a view of rejoining him anew, where his person should not be known. Jacopo forced his boat from among the crowd at the quay, and having entered the open space between the tiers, he lay on his oar, well knowing that he was watched, and that he would soon be followed. His conjecture was right, for in a few moments a gondola pulled swiftly to the side of his own, and two men in masks passed from the strange boat into that ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... exhibits a local of a very imposing, as well as extensive, appearance. From its extreme length,—which cannot be less than two hundred and thirty feet, as I should conjecture—it looks rather low. Yet the ceiling being arched, and tolerably well ornamented, the whole has a very harmonious appearance. In the centre is a cupola: of which the elder Restout, about ninety years ago, painted ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... John the Baptist divides itself into three distinct periods. Of the first we are told almost nothing, but we may conjecture much. We are told that he was in the deserts till his showing unto Israel. It was a period probably, in which, saddened by the hollowness of all life in Israel, and perplexed with the controversies ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... different; and when she asked repeatedly if the cottage was ready, and when he was going to take her to see it, in his unhappiness he avoided a direct reply, which, with the ominous silence of the good friends by whom they were entertained, led her to conjecture how matters stood; and one day she lifted the weight in a measure from his heart ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... not even conjecture who they were that occupied the little raft. They saw four human beings upon it; but the mist was still thick enough to hinder them from having a clear view of either their forms, faces, or features. Through the filmy atmosphere to recognise ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... as much. There has long been a rumour of some change in the plan of operations, and he seems to be right in his conjecture." ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... gray eyes which spelled trouble, Tony thought. What was it? Was he worried about a case? Was Granny worse? Was Ted in some scrape? Something there certainly was on his mind. Tony was sure of that, though she could not conjecture what. ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... appearance of Harold Beecham, would make quite a miniature sensation, and form food for no end of conjecture and chatter. In any company he was a distinguished-looking man, and particularly so among these hard-worked farmer-selectors, on whose careworn features the cruel effects of the drought were leaving additional lines of worry. I felt proud of my quondam sweetheart. There was ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... nothing revealed to us on the subject, all is left to conjecture. Whatever the cause was, we know it was a wise and a necessary one; and this appears to me to be the most plausible reason I can assign. Perhaps we may also trace a further purpose in their creation, in compelling by the terror they inspire the inferior animals to submit themselves to man, who is ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... (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 ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... rescued knight then raised the visor of his helmet, and a long white beard fell down upon his breast. The majesty and venerable air of this knight made Tristram suspect that it was none other than Arthur himself, and the prince confirmed his conjecture. Tristram would have knelt before him, but Arthur received him in his arms, and inquired his name and country; but Tristram declined to disclose them, on the plea that he was now on a quest requiring secrecy. At this ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... His eyes followed the more deliberate movements of the man, who slowly descended the broad steps, pausing when once on the gravelled walk to glance curiously back at the house. West thought his interest centred on the open window of the room he had occupied, but this was merely a conjecture, for the delay was but for a moment; shortly after Coolidge strolled on directly toward the summer-house, the blue smoke of the cigarette marking his progress. West stepped carelessly forth from the ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... other at another; but each being unwilling to express his wonder in the presence of his neighbours, they received the objects before them with quite an accustomed air; the lime-burner inwardly trying to conjecture what all this meant, and the dairyman musing that if Jim's business allowed him to accumulate at this rate, the sooner Margery became his wife the better. Margery retreated to the work-table, work-box, and tea-service, which she examined with ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... principal threads of that complicated intrigue which had just culminated in that robbery of twelve millions. But would he be able to make use of them? What were his designs, and his means of action? That is what Maxence could not in any way conjecture. ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... eloquent, but it was 'a priori reasoning, and conjecture versus evidence: yet the applause it met with showed one how happy is the orator 'qui hurle avec les loups.' Taking the scientific preacher's whole theory in theology and science, woman was high enough in creation to be the ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... figure moving through the darkness of the forest. At first, not disposed to fall in with a companion, he remained silent, lest the person, whoever he might be, should choose to enter into conversation with him; then not quite certain whether he was right in his conjecture—for upon casting a second glance upon the object which attracted him, he more than once discovered it to be some stunted trunk or fantastic tree—he became anxious to ascertain whether he was in reality, alone, or if some other midnight wanderer trod ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 268, August 11, 1827 • Various
... that all the Ujiji Arabs who have any opinion on the subject, believe that all the water in the north, and all the water in the south, too, flows into Tanganyika, but where it then goes they have no conjecture. They assert, as a matter of fact, that Tanganyika, Usige water, and Loanda, are one and the ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... 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, at least of his discretion; seeds of suspicion as ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... explanation of his knowledge of it by suggesting that he had 'come in upon them'; that is, upon the Council in their deliberations. But probably the rendering preferred in the text is preferable, and we are left to conjecture his source of information, as almost everything else about him. But it is more profitable to note how God works out His purposes and delivers His servants by 'natural' means, which yet are as truly divine working as was the sending ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... the earliest glance of the sun, to take his latitude and ascertain how far the elements have driven him from his true course. Let us imitate this prudence; and, before we float farther on the waves of this debate, refer to the point from which we departed, that we may, at least, be able to conjecture where we now are. I ask for the reading of ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... suffered least. He felt about quickly for the searchlight as he lay on the floor. Before he could recover it the boys heard the outer door slam and knew that someone had passed out of the building after the sudden attack. Who it might have been they could only conjecture. ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... cause of his trembling, God had changed, or disarranged, or mutilated some particular organ in his body, but left the body whole as it was first created, merely adding a visible outward mark, such as the trembling. This conjecture of the fathers contains much probability, but it cannot be proved by any testimony of the Scriptures. The mark might have been of another kind. For instance, we observe in nearly all murderers an immediate ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... the old raja. In the above article, the latter seeks to identify Rajamora or Soliman with the Raxobago of San Agustin, and declares that Rajamatanda and Lacandola are identical. The confusion existing in later writers regarding these names is lacking in Morga, and Rizal's conjecture appears correct. ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... own power to farther or to impede; while, from the demeanour, and indeed the language, of Alice, he had but too much reason to apprehend that her father's favour could only be conciliated by something, on his own part, approaching to dereliction of principle. But by no conjecture which he could form, could he make the least guess concerning the nature of that compliance, of which Bridgenorth seemed desirous. He could not imagine, notwithstanding Alice had spoken of treachery, that ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... last have the same situation in Ptolemy, which is now given to the kingdom of Nubia, where there are certain Christians under the dominion of the great emperor of Ethiopia, called Prester John. From these towards the west was a great nation called Aphricerones, inhabiting, as far as we can conjecture, what is now called the Regnum Orguene, bordering on the eastern or interior parts of Guinea. From hence westwards and towards the north, are the kingdoms of Gambra and Budamel, not far from the river Senegal; ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... he says "that after this confession is made, also the little children of about eight years or less should be admitted to the table of Him who says: 'Suffer the little children to come unto Me,'" (433.) The conjecture, therefore, that the tables of Confession and the Sacraments were not intended for children, but specifically for adults, is without foundation. In all its parts the Small Catechism was ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... on his breast are rent, and the action of the figures might suggest the idea of the scene between the Deity and Elijah at Horeb: but there is no suggestion of the past magnificent scenery,—of the wind, the earthquake, or the fire; so that the conjecture is good for very little. The painting is of small interest; the faces are vulgar, and the draperies have too much vapid historical dignity to ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... infinitely better than titled vagabonds of Norman blood. [Applause.] It is almost three centuries since a tiny vessel, not larger than a modern fishing-smack, turned her head to the sunset across an unknown sea, for the land of conjecture. The ship's company, composed of passengers from England, that wonderful nest of human wanderers, that splendid source of the best civilization of the world, cast anchor by chance in a noble bay for which they ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... to read them but to put them aside for him when he should return, because this man was likely to write confidentially about his own affairs. That's all Mr. Brand ever said to me about him—the only time he's ever mentioned the man's name. But I thought maybe—it was just my own conjecture, you know—that maybe this Gordon is some dissipated relative, some black sheep of his family, whom Mr. Brand is ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... 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, ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... pieces of wood and a little grass; they consist of a wall three feet high, in the form of a horseshoe, about three feet in diameter inside; the entrances of some had been closed with stones and afterwards partially opened, and I can only conjecture that, as the practice of carrying the bones of their deceased relatives prevails in this part of Australia, it is probable that these erections are used as temporary sepulchres. After crossing this stony ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory
... Lord Montague journeying northward to escort the Scottish delegates who were coming to York to make terms with Edward of York. Sir Ralph Percy was slain, exclaiming as he fell "I have saved the bird in my bosom"—that enigmatic sentence which has given rise to so much conjecture, but which is generally held to mean that he had saved his honour, by dying at last, after so many changes of front, in the service of that King and Queen to whom he originally owed allegiance. "Percy's Cross," marking the site of his death, may be seen by the side of the railway near Hedgeley ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... time. How his subsequent career might justify the hushed awe with which a proud senate received him if he had devoted himself to the broad and comprehensive questions of imperial jurisprudence, for which he seemed so eminently fitted, it would be idle now to conjecture. Certain it is that no act of his after life, varied and wonderful as it was, realised the promise of that glad and ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... of rodomontade, was an idle truism. The "greatest happiness principle" of the 1st of October is, in the phrase of the American newspapers, "important if true." But unhappily it is not true. It is not our business to conjecture what new maxim is to make the bones of sages and patriots stir on the 1st of December. We can only say that, unless it be something infinitely more ingenious than its two predecessors, we shall leave it unmolested. The Westminster Reviewer may, if he pleases, indulge ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... may be boyish and mischievous, but I acknowledge I have sometimes felt a pleasure in irritating, by the cast of a pebble, those who stretch forward to the full extent of the chain their open and frothy mouths against me. I shall seize upon this conjecture of yours, and say everything that comes into my head on the subject. Beside which, if any collateral thoughts should spring up, I may throw them in also; as you perceive I have frequently done in my Imaginary Conversations, and as we always do ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... seriously propose that a claim for pension should rest upon a conjecture as to what would have caused death if it had not occurred ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... the lawgiver; the happiness of man is the primary object of Nature: hence for youth, Pleasure; for old age, Repentance and Piety, the life hereafter being a respectable conjecture." ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... fellow, "knew the person who knocked. Her haste to open the door gives rise to this conjecture; what follows proves it. The assassin then gained admission without difficulty. He is a young man, a little above the middle height, elegantly dressed. He wore on that evening a high hat. He carried an umbrella, and smoked a trabucos ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... action occupied scarce a second of time. In the darkness, no one appeared to perceive it, except they were its perpetrators. No one seemed to hear that choking, gurgling cry that accompanied it; or if they did, it was only to shape a half conjecture, that some one of their companions was indulging in ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... Mosaic narrative five points which correspond in order and character to five points in the Geological record; and with reference to two, at least, of these points, we cannot imagine any cause for the coincidence in the shape of a fortunate conjecture, because, so far as we can tell, there was nothing apparent on the face of the earth to suggest to the mind of the writer the long past existence of such a state of things as has been revealed to us by the ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... approaches of the white horse and his rider were dreaded by the trained troops of Britain, and every wound inflicted by Hezekiah needed no repeating. But on reaching Cambridge, the regulars, greatly to their comfort, missed the old man and his horse. They comforted themselves by the conjecture that he had, at length, paid the forfeit of his temerity, and that his steed had gone home with a bloody bridle and an empty saddle. Not so.—Hezekiah had only lingered for a moment to aid in a plot which had been laid by Amni Cutter, for taking ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson
... they heard all the study-boys running down stairs to the library, and, lost in conjecture, retired to ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... them on their erudition. In fact, they all remained silent. Sully held his peace with the rest; but he looked so knowing, that the king turned towards him, and said:—"Great master! by your face I conjecture that you know more of this matter than you would have us believe. I pray you, and indeed I command, that you tell us what you think and what you know." The coy minister refused, as he says, out of mere politeness to his ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... ago our friend, Mr. Rose, favoured us with an entertaining but fragmentary sketch of the romance in the life of the former professor of this habitation. The few facts that we have learned seem to me to open up a fascinating field for conjecture, for the study of human hearts, for the exercise of the imagination—in short, for story-telling. Let us make use of the opportunity. Let each one of us relate his own version of the story of Redruth, the hermit, and his lady-love, beginning ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... had got another mistress. 2. The second observation is upon the name she assumes, Richard Carr. Commentators are much divided upon this head; why she chose that name in preference to any other. I must confess they talk rather silly on this topic; I conjecture the name was given here because it was a good rhyme to tar; this is no mean or inconsiderable reason, as the poets will all testify. But let the reader decide this at his ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... Conjecture may indeed waste its liveliest ardors in seeking to determine what place this nineteenth century of ours will hold among the centuries which have preceded and are destined to follow it. But there is good reason to believe, after all, that in one way it will ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... ourselves, we hold the belief that the Man in the Iron Mask stood on the steps of the throne. Although the mystery cannot be said to be definitely cleared up, one thing stands out firmly established among the mass of conjecture we have collected together, and that is, that wherever the prisoner appeared he was ordered to wear a mask on pain of death. His features, therefore, might during half a century have brought about his recognition from one end of France to the other; ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... "You have no conjecture, then? I wish to find him, much, very much, but cannot put myself upon his trail. He is so what you call peculiar that he writes no letters, leaves no address, and roves here and there ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... another minute, and as he stood with hands clenched on the wheel a little puff of bitter spray splashed upon his oilskins. They had been over it all often before, weighing conjecture after conjecture, and had found nothing in any that might serve to guide them. Now, when winter was close at hand, they had leagues of surf-swept beach to search for three men who might have ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... again face to face with that evil—the lessening or the complete loss of womanly grace and purity. Take away that reverential regard which men now feel for them, leave them to win their way by sheer strength of body or mind, and the result is not difficult to conjecture. Let the condition of women in savage life tell. Towards something like this, although in civilised society not so coarsely and roughly exposed to view, matters would tend if these agitators for women's rights were successful. ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... now," he said, "and he sticks to his story. I fear, too, that I was wrong in my conjecture with regard to his madness. He must have had a temporary madness when he drew up and signed the false report. I suppose we ought ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... of most exciting conjecture what a small boy will do when he sees his father getting licked. If there is an axe handy he is liable to use it. The most cataclysmic catastrophe that cam come into his is to have a father whom some other ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... remarkable magnification, projected through space by some unknown and powerful agent, thousands of times more powerful than electricity as we know it upon Earth. That the shadow on the film had been that of a Martian, I dared not hope. Though my mind continually reverted to this wild conjecture, I impatiently put it aside, as the apparent impossibility of it all would force ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood
... years old, with a close-cropped beard and spectacles on his nose, and he carried himself heavily and ploddingly. Robin argued to himself that it must be a kindly man who would come out at this hour—perhaps the one hour he had to himself—to visit a poor dependant. Yet all this was sheer conjecture; and, as the old man came near, he saw there was something besides kindliness in the ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... was there found. And now I scrutinized, with a minute scrutiny, the forms, and the methods, and the leading traits of his impertinent supervision. But even here there was very little upon which to base a conjecture. It was noticeable, indeed, that, in no one of the multiplied instances in which he had of late crossed my path, had he so crossed it except to frustrate those schemes, or to disturb those actions, which, if fully ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... great, when, on opening the book, we discovered it to be an old nautical publication of the last century. The title-page was missing, but its contents were chiefly tables of logarithms. It was a thick royal quarto, which led us to conjecture that it was a journal; between the leaves we found a few loose papers of very little consequence indeed; one of them contained two or three observations on the height of the water in the Gambia; one was a tailor's bill on a Mr. Anderson; and another was addressed to Mr. Mungo Park, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 542, Saturday, April 14, 1832 • Various
... puffing violently on his inevitable cigar and toying with the letters and clippings. "We have already held up payment of the half-million dollars of insurance to the widow as long as we can consistently do so. But we must pay soon, scandal or not, unless we can get something more than mere conjecture." ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... away to the smiling dreamer, as the empire of Chaldaea passed to Darius the Median. Why visions so belying the gloomy and anxious thoughts that preceded them should visit the pillow of Randal Leslie, surpasses my philosophy to conjecture. He yielded, however, passively to their spell, and was startled to hear the clock strike eleven as he descended the stairs to breakfast. He was vexed at the lateness of the hour, for he had meant ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... know me," said Lacour, favoring the mistake; "though you have the advantage of me. I cannot possibly conjecture whom I ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... next? The documents do not say. They confine themselves to reporting that that very evening Francis had a vision which decided him to return to Assisi.[8] Perhaps it would not be far from the truth to conjecture that once fairly on the way the young nobles took their revenge on the son of Bernardone for his airs as of a future prince. At twenty years one hardly pardons things like these. If, as we are often assured, ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... languages are now known to improve in proportion to the improvement of society in civilization and intelligence, and as we cannot reasonably suppose the first inhabitants of the earth to have been savages, it seems, I think, a plausible conjecture, that the primeval tongue was at least sufficient for all the ordinary intercourse of civilized men, living in the simple manner ascribed to our early ancestors in Scripture; and that, in many instances, human speech subsequently declined far ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
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