"Conundrum" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... are two kinds of men in this world, Charley, and which of them makes it go?" said he. "The ones who have too much to eat and too little to do, or the others who have to keep on doing something because they're hungry? Well, I needn't ask you, because the conundrum was answered long ago, and that kind of talking's no great use to anybody. That was a very fine mill, and I picked up a good deal down there. Still, we will scarcely want such a ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... In "conundrum," Mrs. Osman was a beautiful nun; she is a charming creature, most winning countenance and manner, very desirous to improve herself, and with an understanding the extent and excellence of which I ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... when I came back, was to take a night-walk to Norwood, and, like the subject of a venerable riddle of my childhood, to go 'round and round the house, without ever touching the house', thinking about Dora. I believe the theme of this incomprehensible conundrum was the moon. No matter what it was, I, the moon-struck slave of Dora, perambulated round and round the house and garden for two hours, looking through crevices in the palings, getting my chin by dint of violent ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... looking at the clock, "we've got time for just one thing more before we start to get dinner. Each one of us must write a patriotic conundrum, and then we'll put them around at each other's plates, and we'll have to guess them before we can eat ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... down the lane, and found there awaiting them the evident model of the Autocrat's "One-Hoss Shay," in its last five years of senility;—to this was attached a quadruped who immediately reminded Mysie of a long-forgotten conundrum. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... why she had gone to him and what might result from her visit; and up to a certain point, and in certain cases accurate guessing is easier than might be expected for either side to a political conundrum, in India, ample provision having been made ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... It would have a very bad appearance to go along the highwayside asking after a man of whom I could give so scanty an account; and I should look like a fool, indeed, if I were to present myself at his door and find the police in occupation! The interest of the conundrum, however, tempted me, and I turned aside from my direct road to pass by Wakefield; kept my ears pricked, as I went, for any mention of his name, and relied for the rest on my good fortune. If Luck (who must certainly be feminine) favoured me ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... bud ever anticipated blooming out into a society blossom was a conundrum. Perhaps he had some secret method buried in the same box with his hoarded coin. His long evenings were passed reading the Family Herald and Weekly Star and the Ashcroft Journal by candle-light; for those were the only papers he would subscribe ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... there is not. The race is to a point 100 feet away and home again—that is, a distance of 200 feet. One correspondent asks whether they take exactly the same time in turning, to which I reply that they do. Another seems to suspect that it is really a conundrum, and that the answer is that 'the result of the race was a (matrimonial) tie.' But I had no such intention. The puzzle is an arithmetical one, as ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... there was any remarkable merit in the movements of the Spanish Admiral is as absurd as to attribute particular cleverness to a child who, with his hands behind his back, asks the old conundrum, "Right or left?" "It is all a matter of guess," said Nelson, "and the world attributes wisdom to him who guesses right;" but all the same, by unremitting watchfulness, sagacious inference, and diligent pursuit, he ran the French ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... through her stepmother, yet called kin for courtesy's sake, had given up trying to understand her complexities, as she had likewise given up trying to explain herself. If they were pleased forever to consider her in the light of a conundrum, she thought, why—let them! ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... at his companions and shook his head as if the conundrum was beyond his guessing. Captain ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... editor has issued a conundrum in a volume with the title Does Protection Protect? and undertakes to prove by statistics that answer is No. These Western people are in the habit, we know, of bragging a good deal of their exploits, and so the writer referred ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 39., Saturday, December 24, 1870. • Various
... her uncovered face is a conundrum and an object of intense curiosity, even in Teheran at the present day; and in provincial cities, the wife of the lone consul or telegraph employee finds it highly convenient to adopt the native costume, face-covering included, when venturing abroad. Here, in the capital, the wives and daughters ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... could complete his statement of the case he was politely asked if he would care to inter his talents in the Canadian Senate, and he suavely answered that such a thing might be a good way to solve the conundrum, even though it would make a thoroughly stupid last act ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... weak and ill, upon our hands, were responsible for everything. For how much more, how many other changes, she would be responsible the future only could answer. And the future would answer in its own good, or bad, time. My conundrum "What are we going to do with her?" was as much of a puzzle as ever. For my part I gave it up. Sufficient unto the day was the evil ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... conundrum, Miss Carter, and you're the one person who can tell me the true answer. Am I permitted ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 23, 1919 • Various
... natural objects—they are not beautiful really and in themselves, because they are mere conceits; the analogies in them are fortuitous, depending not on the nature of the things themselves, but on the private fancy of the writer, having no more real and logical coherence than a conundrum or a pun; in plain English, untrue, only allowable to Juliets or Othellos; while their self-possession, almost their reason, is in temporary abeyance under the influence of joy or sorrow. Every one must feel the ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... it, a conundrum? Something about 'Take care of the dollars and the cents will take ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... the company was listening to the conundrum, "an Angel can't be less than a human being. And if it was only the soul of a man minus the man, then it would be ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... life was always to be a losing game for me, let me play my cards how I will. I begin to think there is a curse upon me, and that no act of mine will ever prosper. Who was that man, in your Greek play, who guessed some inane conundrum, and was always getting into trouble afterwards? I begin to think there really is ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... the lack of free trade in our country. The brick manufacturers must be protected, so a heavy tariff was placed on the foreign article. Our brick men, finding that they had a soft thing, tried to solve that conundrum which the Israelites gave up: "How do you make bricks without straw?" They made a patent brick, built the Howard Museum in Washington, (was it a museum or a college?) the thing tumbled down, and a Congressional committee sat among its ruins. Poor Gen. HOWARD is in a muddle, and ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... stout-hearted Slade lacked?—this bloody, desperate, kindly-mannered, urbane gentleman, who never hesitated to warn his most ruffianly enemies that he would kill them whenever or wherever he came across them next! I think it is a conundrum worth investigating. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... modification when we learn that once he jumped off a two-story stable; another time he gave an elephant a plug of tobacco, and retired without waiting for an answer; and still another time he pretended to be talking in his sleep, and got off a portion of every original conundrum in hearing of his father. He begs the curious not to pry into the result—as it was of no consequence to any ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... deep in consultation, Edwards entered to announce Mrs. Corcoran Dunn and Mr. Malcolm. The butler's giving the lady precedence in his announcing showed that he, too, realized who was ranking officer in that family, even though the captain's "conundrum" had puzzled him. Mrs. Dunn and her ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... of womankind is woman! Indeed, from being a good deal overlooked in various ways, she has come to be almost the topic of the age, and strangely enough is she considered. According to the standpoint of the observer, woman is a riddle to be solved, a conundrum to be guessed, a puzzle to be interpreted, a mystery to be explained, a problem to be studied, a paradox to be reconciled. She is a toy or a drudge, a mistress or a servant, a queen or a slave, as circumstances may decide. She is at once an irresponsible being, who must accept the destiny which ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Vincenzo was nothing but a good-natured young fellow, whose palate could be pleased by her culinary skill; she treated him, I dare say, exactly as she would have treated one of her own sex. She seemed to think over my words, as one who considers a conundrum, then she apparently gave it up as hopeless, and shook her head lightly as ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... quite a conundrum, and for a little while the children were extremely puzzled over its solution; ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... and he was out of business himself. And he wanted Donald to keep still too. What motive had he for wishing his proposition to be kept in the dark? His object was not apparent, and Donald was obliged to give up the conundrum, though he had some painful doubts on the subject. As he thought of the matter, he turned to observe the position of the two boats to the southward of him. Directly ahead of Laud's craft was an island which he could not weather, and he was obliged to tack. He ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic
... all. You are quite mistaken. The thing shut up in the Oven was Eyebright herself! And the Oven was quite different from any thing you are thinking of,—cold, not hot; wet, not dry; with a door made of green sea-water instead of black iron. This sounds like a conundrum; and, as that is hardly fair, I will proceed to unriddle it at once and ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... without lifting themselves from their old inferiority. They do the hard work, in their own easy way, and possibly do not find life the burden they make it for the white man, whom here, as in our own country, they load up with the conundrum which their existence involves for him. They are not very gay, and do not rise to a joke with that flashing eagerness which they show for it at home. If you have them against a background of banana-stems, or low palms, or feathery canes, nothing could be more acceptably characteristic ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... tree. How Green the Tree is! Can you See the Lightning? Oh, how red and Vivid the Lightning is! Will the Lightning Strike the Tree? Children, that is a Conundrum; we answer conundrums in our Weekly Edition, ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... her critics: Had she oughter?—from a moral point of view, now. From a moral point, then, let us seek from analogy some light on the question of what, from its actual, practical bearings, may be dignified by the name Conundrum. ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... irrepressible fireworks, and Prince Paul had enough to do in facilitating conversation. There was no end to his politeness, but it was an impossible task for him now and then promptly to carry over a long sentence from German to Russian, and he would give it up like an invincible conundrum, with the patient smile and head-wag and hand-wave of an amiable Dundreary. Yet I began to surmise a mystery even in him. More than once he inadvertently betrayed a knowledge of Romany, though he invariably spoke of his friends around ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... unmistakable father of the glistening infant, came into the room as she spoke and at once propounded a conundrum. ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... said. "Razors have moods, and are known to sulk. But science has solved the conundrum of their antics. It has been discovered that whetting changes the location of the molecules of metal, that there is frequently left what is not a perfect edge after the supposed sharpening, but that, given time, the molecules will readjust themselves, and ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... to put that conundrum to your brother; but doubtless the needs of the Confederate States ...
— Taken by the Enemy • Oliver Optic
... O what questions asked in club-foot rhyme Of Earth the tongueless and the deaf-mute Time! Here babbling 'Insight' shouts in Nature's ears His last conundrum on the orbs and spheres; There Self-inspection sucks its little thumb, With 'Whence am I?' and 'Wherefore did I come?' Deluded infants! will they ever know Some doubts must darken o'er the world below, Though all the Platos of the nursery trail Their ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... in any given specimen will be transformed in about 2000 years. Half of what is left will disappear in the next 2000 years, half of that in the next 2000 and so on. The reader can figure out for himself when it will all be gone. He will then have the answer to the old Eleatic conundrum of when Achilles will overtake the tortoise. But we may say that after 100,000 years there would not be left any radium worth mentioning, or in other words practically all the radium now in existence is younger than the human race. ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... minutes this young man had been sitting bolt upright on a chair with his hands on his knees, so exactly in the manner of an end-man at a minstrel show that one would hardly have been surprised had he burst into song or asked a conundrum. ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... do things, not because the particular things are worth doing, but as an apology for the unwarranted liberty they take in being alive. 'I am: why am I?' said the youth at prayer-meeting, and everybody gave it up. As an effort toward answering his own conundrum, he entered the ministry. Being alive, we have to make a pretense of doing something, which else might better remain undone. That is why books are written, and controversies waged; it explains most of our intellectual and moral activities. So with society: time must be killed, and we ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... And he hired Issy because—well, because "most folks in East Harniss are alike and you can always tell about what they'll say or do. Now Issy's different. The Lord only knows what HE'S likely to do, and that makes him interestin' as a conundrum, to guess at. He kind of keeps my sense of responsibility ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... "liberties" that Mr. Potter had taken with it. Those who had not read the book complained equally bitterly that Mr. Potter had not taken more of those "liberties" and made it better worth his while. To me, the book drama is a conundrum. It always has been, and now that it has nearly died out, I am still unable to solve it. When you read a book, you form mental pictures of its characters, and are generally discontented with those that ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... set me a conundrum—a mighty stiff one. It seems that Miss Betty Vivian has lost a parcel, and she be that fretted about it that she's nigh to death, and the little uns have promised to get it back for her; and, poor children! ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... a conundrum," replied Jabez Holt, pondering. "Jake Farnum owns the yard. Jake is a young man, only a few years out of college. He inherited the business from his father, who's dead. Jake is considered a pretty good business man, though he don't know much 'bout ...
— The Submarine Boys on Duty - Life of a Diving Torpedo Boat • Victor G. Durham
... the flying-man, still fierce to pursue the answer to the gigantic conundrum, "what is this God thinking of to let everybody believe like that that He's with them? Why does He let us all—all of us—shout out side by side, like idiots and brutes, 'God is with us!'—'No, not at all, you're ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... them—under your head, they collapse and make a headrest less than half an inch thick. Just why it never occurs to people that a stuffing of moss, leaves, or hemlock browse, would fill out the boot-leg and make a passable pillow, is another conundrum I cannot answer. But there is another and better way of making a pillow for camp use, which ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... motley and multitudinous mass of sibilant saints at a sewing society which is discussing the last wedding and the next divorce. He "who admits only what he understands" would have to look on himself as a conundrum and then give the conundrum up. He would have the longest doubts and the shortest creed on record. Agnosticism is part of the smashed crockery of the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... second deals with British folk-lore, and is racy of the soil. Both works are full of capital illustrations. He has, moreover, read He Went for a Soldier, the WYNTER Annual of JOHN STRANGE of that ilk. But what had the soldier done, that "he" should "go for him"? The answer to this conundrum will be ascertained on reading the book. Nutshell Novels, by J. ASHBY STERRY, is also a volume that repays perusal. The Lazy Poet has turned his leisure to good account—the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., November 8, 1890 • Various
... from the society of harlequin and the tumblers, and met the world as an independent institution. Singers organized themselves into quartet bands; added a fiddle and tambourine to their instruments—perhaps we should say implements—of music; introduced the hoe-down and the conundrum to fill up the intervals of performance; rented halls, and, peregrinating from city to city and from town to town, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... like to ax a conundrum," said Mickey, "provided that none of the gintlemin prisent object to ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... insulting to our readers to mention that it is "a cherry," but this is by no means the case with all Chinese riddles, many being exceedingly difficult of solution. So much so that it is customary all over the Empire to copy out any particularly puzzling conundrum on a paper lantern, and hang it in the evening at the street door, with the promise of a reward to any comer who may succeed in unravelling it. These are called "lamp riddles," and usually turn upon the name of some tree, fruit, animal, or book, the direction in which the ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... I cannot profitably add To what I said in 1892. Speaking at Manchester I used these words:— "If in the inconstant ferment of their minds The KING'S advisers can indeed discover No surer ground of principle than this; If we have here their final contribution To the most clamant and profound conundrum Ever proposed for statesmanship to solve, Then are we watching at the bankruptcy Of all that wealth of intellect and power Which has made England great. If that be true We may put FINIS to our history. But I for one will never lend my suffrage To that conclusion." [An Ovation. MR. DAVID ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 14th, 1920 • Various
... the standing conundrum with all the women. They will not accept Ethel Newcome even. Perhaps we shall have to admit that Thackeray was a writer ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... intellectual development to which we may hereafter attain will bring us a step nearer their solution. But with the problems proper to magic, the case is different. Magic is distinctively not Divine, but human: a finite conundrum, not an Infinite enigma. If there has ever been a magician since the world began, then all mankind may become magicians, if they will give the necessary time and trouble. And yet, magic is not simply an advanced ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... use them for social purposes during the Christmas party season. I do not know how it may be with others, but I have often found, when introduced to a lady, that I have said "Good evening," and then had absolutely nothing else to say. With the help of the conundrum book I would fill in any awkward pause by asking her who was the most amiable king in history. That would break the ice. Besides, if we kept the book reasonably clean, it might afterward make a very serviceable and acceptable present to Eliza's mother. I generally know pretty well what I am doing, ...
— Eliza • Barry Pain
... met at the Berlin station by her mother and Cousin von Briest. While drinking tea in the mother's room Cousin von Briest was asked to tell a joke, and propounded a Bible conundrum, which Effi took as an omen that no more sorrow was to befall her. The following day began the search for an apartment, and one was found on Keith street, which exactly suited, except that the house was not finished ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... he began the study of philosophy, and that added to his woes. He had nerves to feel the Big Conundrum, but not the brains to solve it; small blame to him for that, since philosophers have cursed each other black in the face over it for the last five thousand years. But it worried him. The strange and sinister detail of the world, that had always been a horror to his mind, became more ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... very difficult to get three pints of liquid into a quart measure, and it was a conundrum of this sort that Christy was studying upon when he tried to make a parlor, bedroom, and dining-saloon of the very limited space in the forward part of the Florence. Though he could hardly get the three ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... not altogether satisfactory, and Smith apparently was unable to grapple with the problem. It puzzled him; but then Handy himself was at all times more or less of a conundrum to him. ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... out of it, avoiding the nurses on the stairs, refraining from so much as a glance at the boiled milk preparations of the butler. "And you know," said Mrs. Barberry, recountant, "how these people have to be watched." To Mrs. Barberry she was really a conundrum, only to be solved on the theory of a perfectly preposterous delicacy. There was so little that was preposterous in Miss Livingstone's conduct as a rule that it is not quite fair to explain her attitude either by this exaggeration or by an equally hectic scruple about her right ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... conundrum which nobody seems to have solved yet, Susan. And I can make only a guess at ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... with a smile: "Woman is the eternal conundrum to which the wise man always leaves her herself to supply the answer. Doubtless one of these days you'll do it. ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... a man of great natural ability. If you ask me, How pious is he? I treat it as a conundrum, and give it up. Personally he treated me with marked kindness throughout my sojourn ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... you a kind of conundrum I have dashed off this morning to amuse some sentimental goose ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... It must be the way you brought her up on quotations from Horace. Miss Campbell hardly appreciates her, I'm afraid. But of course you can't expect a mathematician to rise much above 'Little Folks' in the way of literature. I suppose the Archdeacon was greatly pleased with that conundrum about ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... humble and unpretentious Irish family. I tell you, genius has a way of its own, and there is no accounting for it. It was a good while ago that a conservative old Pharisee thought that he had forever silenced the followers of the greatest Genius the world ever saw by putting at them the conundrum, "Can any good come out of Nazareth?" But good did come out of that barren country in spite of the conundrum! And so it keeps on doing, constantly. It comes from other places, too, and that is all right. The point is that we want to ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... the second repetition of this inscrutable conundrum, a lank and tall girl of some fifteen summers, arose and said, not without something of the sublime air becoming a solitary intelligence: "It's the great and ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... Semipelagians with Scriptural proofs. But this polemical motive can hardly have induced him to becloud an obvious text and invent interpretations which never occurred to any other ecclesiastical writer before or after his time. The conundrum can only be solved by the assumption that Augustine believed in a plurality of literal senses in the Bible and held that over and above (or notwithstanding) the sensus obvius every exegete is free to read as much truth into any given passage as possible, and that such interpretation ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... out his mind upon circumstances, that his work reminds us of Allston's picture of Elijah in the Wilderness, where a good deal of research at last enables us to guess at the prophet absconded like a conundrum in the landscape where the very ravens could scarce have found him out, except by divine commission. The figure of Milton becomes but a speck on the enormous canvas crowded with the scenery through which he may by any possibility be conjectured to have passed. I ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... a-methinkin' to myself several times. It duz seem to me that there hain't a question a-comin' up before that Conference that is harder to tackle than this plasterin' and the conundrum that is up before us Jonesville wimmen how to raise 300 dollars out of nuthin', and to make peace in a meetin' house where anarky is now ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... tall, slim figure Detective Inspector Wessex stared with a sort of wonder. Mr. Nicol Brinn of Cincinnati was a conundrum which he found himself unable to catalogue, although in his gallery of queer characters were many eccentric and peculiar. If Nicol Brinn should prove to be crooked, then automatically he became insane. This Wessex ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... dead open-and-shut cinch that the answer to the conundrum lies in that silly old black bunch of feathers," declared the other, conviction in his voice. "I looked up all about ravens in our big 'cyclopaedia as soon as I got downstairs this morning; and the more I read, the stronger ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... not, for one," says Bobby, doggedly, "I never made out a conundrum in my life, except, 'What is most like ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... the carefree heartiness of a boy. "I am going to make a riddle," he said. "Prepare yourself; this is the first conundrum of the new world. Why is it better ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... getting near the boil.' Elise rose with a strange little laugh and looked at a yellow silk stocking which dangled over the side of a wicker table. As if trying to solve a conundrum, she glanced from it to the shapely form of the young woman at her toilet. 'When the war's over,' she said ruminatingly, 'and our men find what kind of girls they married when they ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... pretty head on one side, considering, as she looked down into the little girl's upturned face. "Is this a conundrum, Tillie? How your father be in Lancaster now and yet be home until half-past three? It's uncanny. Unless," she added, a ray of light coming to her,—"unless 'till' means BY. Your father will be home BY half-past ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... Burgoyne's force, advancing from Canada, had captured Ticonderoga, and of how Sir William had put the flower of his army on board of transports and gone to sea, his destination thus becoming a sort of national conundrum affording infinite opportunity for ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... exceedingly witty woman. One day, while walking on the streets in Washington, she was joined by a distinguished prelate of the Roman Catholic Church, and inquired whether he could lay aside his cloth long enough to listen to a conundrum? Upon receiving a favorable response, she asked: "Why is His Holiness, the Pope, like a goose?" The reply was: "Because he ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... problem what to do for the best in this case. Mebby Solomon knew enough to grapple with the question, but Josiah don't, nor Arvilly, though she thinks she duz. Robert Strong is gittin' one answer to the hard conundrum of life, and Ernest White is figurin' it out successful. And lots of other good and earnest souls all over the world are workin' away at the sum with their own slates and pencils. But oh, the time is long! One needs the patience of the Sphinx ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... the third largest city of India, the heat began to oppress us. Up to this time India had been unexpectedly and refreshingly cool, at night even cold. But now it was unpleasantly warm. The heat reminded us of the conundrum: "Why is India, although so hot, the coldest country on the globe?" Answer: "Because the hottest thing in it is chilly" ("chili" is the peppery sauce which the natives mix with other spices to form "curry"). We have learned ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... this is not a conundrum. So you need not be chirping out, "On their feet, of course;" or some foolish answer of that kind. The real answer is, "Japan,"—at least, so I'm told, and there are such numbers of other queer things there, that I don't wonder ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... Equivocalness — N. equivocalness &c adj.; double meaning &c 516; ambiguity, double entente, double entendre [Fr.], pun, paragram^, calembour^, quibble, equivoque [Fr.], anagram; conundrum &c (riddle) 533; play on words, word play &c (wit) 842; homonym, homonymy [Gramm.]; amphiboly^, amphibology^; ambilogy^, ambiloquy^. Sphinx, Delphic oracle. equivocation &c (duplicity) 544; white ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... and I acted some of Racine's "Andromaque" for them; my old school part of Hermione which I have not forgotten, and then two scenes from Scribe's pretty piece of "les premieres Amours." He acts French capitally, and, moreover, bestowed upon me the two following ridiculous conundrum puns, for which I shall be forever grateful ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... after that he could never again give as an answer to the conundrum, "Why is a cow like an elephant?" "Because she can't climb a tree;" for he thought this particular cow could climb a tree, and would, if a bag of sweet-potatoes were placed in the top of it where she ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... by caprice? If we cannot calculate to a certainty that the forces of religion will do their work, then is religion vain. And if we cannot express the law of these forces in simple words, then is Christianity not the world's religion, but the world's conundrum. ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond
... and are more than surprised to see him with a party of strangers, heading upstream. Now, I wonder if they were sent out to look for a fellow of his description? Gee, but this is a conundrum, all right," whispered Cuthbert to his fellow paddler, at which ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... to the windows of Chartres, but these three churches open another conundrum as one learns, bit by bit, a few of the questions to be asked of the forgotten Middle Ages. The church towers at Mantes are very interesting, inside and out; they are evidently studied with love and labour by their ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... ever kiss again?" 'twas said; But Love made light of that absurd conundrum; And lo! your breast is pillow to my head, And we've a pair of hearts that beat as one drum; Our bonds, if anything, are even more ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 21, 1920 • Various
... "hards." I studied the superscription at my leisure a whole day, but couldn't make it out. I then showed it to the best experts in handwriting attached to the office, and called on outsiders to test their skill; but what the writing meant, if it was writing, was a conundrum that we all gave up. Finally, in desperation, it was suggested, as a last resort, to send it to Chappaqua, which happened to be its place of destination.' Such is the literal history of the reason of an earnestly written denunciation of ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... there are also the large general express companies or carriers, which send articles all over the United States. One of the most characteristic of these is the Adams Express Company, the widely known name of which has originated a popular conundrum with the query, "Why was Eve created?" This company began in 1840 with two men, a boy, and a wheelbarrow; now it employs 8,000 men and 2,000 wagons, and carries parcels over 25,000 miles of railway. The Wells, Fargo & Company ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... I could see my conundrum playing peek-a-boo all about his stolid features. After that the Dane treated me with an air of superiority—the superiority of thirty dollars per month over ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... I exclaimed. "And I shall never forget your 'Conundrum of the Anvil' which appeared in it. How often have I laughed at that most wonderful conceit, and how often have I put it ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... He came here long ago; But, before that, he'd been born somewhere: The conundrum started first, right there. Little shaver—afore he knew his name Or the place from whereabouts he came— On a wagon-train the Apaches caught him. Killed the old folks! But this cus'—they brought him Safe away from fire an' knife ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... This social conundrum was too much for the millionaire, and he lapsed into heavy silence, to be presently broken ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... forgot the look, and it never ceased reacting. To a young Bostonian, fresh from Germany, Rome seemed a pure emotion, quite free from economic or actual values, and he could not in reason or common sense foresee that it was mechanically piling up conundrum after conundrum in his educational path, which seemed unconnected but that he had got to connect; that seemed insoluble but had got to be somehow solved. Rome was not a beetle to be dissected and dropped; not a bad French novel to be read in a railway train ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... were engaged in your grand Jenny Lind speculation, the following conundrum went the rounds of the ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... suppose you're going to propound another conundrum of a kind I've heard before—why you should have so many things you don't particularly need, while Miss Hartley must go on sewing when she's hardly able for it in her most unpleasant shack? I don't know whether the fact that you found ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... disgust, and rising from her seat Madge walked up and down the room, and wished some good fairy would hint to Brian that he was wanted. If man is a gregarious animal, how much more, then, is a woman? This is not a conundrum, but a simple truth. "A female Robinson Crusoe," says a writer who prided himself upon being a keen observer of human nature—"a female Robinson Crusoe would have gone mad for want of something to talk to." This remark, though severe, nevertheless contains several grains ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... have just solved the Butte & Boston conundrum. The enormous blocks of stock purchased during the past few days have come in for transfer, and the management now know who owns the bag into which all the stock they have for months been planning to acquire dropped. We have unmistakable evidence ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... at the review, and finished a good lot of it. Mr. Stewart left us, amply provided with the history of Abbotsford and its contents. It is a kind of Conundrum Castle to be sure, and I have great pleasure in it, for while it pleases a fantastic person in the style and manner of its architecture and decoration, it has all the ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... will read an original conundrum which is propounded by one of our members, and which ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... was no explanation of this. Time drifted along and still there was no explanation. I was lecturing all over the country; and about thirty times a day, on an average, I was trying to answer this conundrum: ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... drift of conversation between Vaura and her neighbour, but no, Mrs. Marchmont, though inwardly afraid of this squire of dames; and of his intellect, determined to appear at ease, and so talked on the one engrossing idea of her life; the last conundrum in fancy work, the last fashionable incongruity in the blending of colours. And poor, victimized Lionel longed to breathe in Vaura's refreshing breadth of thought; on his tormentor pausing to recover breath, it was not as balm to a wound to ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... it Republicans? I forget. I had given 'em a good, hot, mixed Princeton paper,—dog, international law, society, industrial progress, footlight favorites, and the whole business; had Sermons from Many Lands, and a Conundrum Department, as well as a Household Corner—How to get Beautiful for the ladies, How to get Rich for the men, How to get Strong for the advertisers—why, if I do say it, I don't believe any one fellow was ever much more cosmopolitan in all his life, inside the space of one ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... to speculate rapidly on his father's enigmatic remark. All the way up in the elevator he pondered over the conundrum; and all the evening he turned it over in his mind. At last, tired with the day's activities, he went to bed, hoping that dreams might furnish him with a solution of the riddle. But although he slept hard no dreams came and morning found him no nearer the answer ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... I exclaimed. "And I shall never forget your 'Conundrum of the Anvil' which appeared in it. How often have I laughed at that most wonderful conceit, and how often have I put ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... conundrum I intend to guess on the present occasion, and for which I have called this meeting without consulting Mr. Belgrave," replied Captain Scott, giving the wheel to Morris, with the course, and unfolding the blue roll. "The Guardian-Mother will go to Saigon before she comes ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... theory of a picture, then? I don't care what you call it. My only anxiety, when you got a plain, simple, every-day conundrum like Miss Maybough to paint, was that you would try to paint the answer instead of the conundrum, and I dare say that's the trouble. You've been trying to give something more of her character than you found in her face; is that it? Well, you deserved to fail, then. ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... To-day this sort of riddle survives in such a form as, "Why does a chicken cross the road?" to which most people give the answer, "To get to the other side;" though the correct reply is, "To worry the chauffeur." It has degenerated into the conundrum, which is usually based on a mere pun. For example, we have been asked from our infancy, "When is a door not a door?" and here again the answer usually furnished ("When it is a-jar") is not the correct one. It should be, "When it is ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... the conundrum for some time, and then replied that he must have lost control over it. The command went forth that he should visit a barber and learn how to control his hair. He obeyed, and returned with his shock parted ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... It was no ordinary conundrum which vexed my mind when the house surgeon at last announced, "These Moreau patients are well enough to leave hospital," though I had realized that for good or evil the ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... and cut it into squares of equal size, fringing two sides of each. Have ready, burnt almonds, chocolate nuts, and bonbons or sugar-plums of various sorts; and put one in each paper with a folded slip containing two lines of verse; or what will be much more amusing, a conundrum with the answer. Twist the coloured paper so as entirely to conceal their contents, leaving the fringe at each end. This is the most easy, but there are various ways of cutting ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... or like a man with a dancing bear. He must excite the creature, make him talk or dance for the edification of the company. He sidles obsequiously towards his hero and, with utter irrelevancy, propounds a question of theology, a social theory, a fashion of dress or marriage, a philosophical conundrum: "Do you think, sir, that natural affections are born with us?" or, "Sir, if you were shut up in a castle and a newborn babe with you, what would you do?" Then follow more Johnsonian laws, judgments, oracles; ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... Emerson was before long talking in the midst of a babbling Simonetta of echoes.' Inferior writers have copied the tones of the oracle without first making sure of the inspiration. They forget that a platitude is not turned into a profundity by being dressed up as a conundrum. Pithiness in him dwindles into tenuity in them; honest discontinuity in the master is made an excuse for finical incoherencies in the disciples; the quaint, ingenious, and unexpected collocations of the original ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... Some one started a conundrum: "Why is Daniel Webster like Sisera? Because he was killed by a woman," and this had almost as great a run ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... was about to lay down her paper she was asked to read the conundrum again, which she did, while pencils were busy ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon |
