"Guesswork" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... time to work around the islands and draw in close to Anoroc. In the leisure afforded we took turns working on our map, and by means of the compass and a little guesswork we set down the shoreline we had left and the three islands with ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Celtic writers, with their passion for genealogies, should tamper with the ancestors of St. Patrick. Nicholson, a distinguished Irish scholar, was, of opinion that the addition "a deacon" was mere guesswork on the part of the copyist, and wrote "incertus liber hic"—"the book is here unreliable" ("St. Patrick, Apostle of Ireland," ...
— Bolougne-Sur-Mer - St. Patrick's Native Town • Reverend William Canon Fleming
... statement of an early writer was presumptuous or absurd. Fortunately, however, we have the clearest possible proof that Hrof never existed, and that he was a pure creation of Baeda's own simple etymological guesswork. King Alfred clearly knew better, for he omitted this wild derivation from his English translation. The valuable fragment of a map of Roman Britain preserved for us in the mediaeval transcript known as the Peutinger Tables, sets ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... stars, beyond those yet others; on and on went the stars, wise men said. Beyond them all, what then? And where was the place of the soul? What would it do? What heaven or hell would it find or make for itself? Guesswork all! ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... 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 ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the sense shows us must have been potentes. The scribe of R1 could not read it, and left a blank, which he afterwards tentatively filled in with the meaningless word fatentes—a word which his copyist, the scribe of R2, emended by guesswork into fac(i)entes. ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous
... proconsul. Dr. Lightfoot, as we have seen, has proved that Statius Quadratus was consul in A.D. 142; and then, by the aid of the dreamer Aristides, he has tried to show that he probably became proconsul of Asia about A.D. 154 or A.D. 155. His calculations are obviously mere guesswork. Even admitting their correctness, it would by no means follow that Polycarp was then consigned to martyrdom. The postscript of the Smyrnaean letter is, as we have seen, justly suspected as no part of the original document. Dr. Lightfoot himself tells us, that ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen
... reasonable to explain the others of the same group on the same principle. As we have seen, Roman scholars themselves explained Nerio Martis as equivalent to Virtus Martis; Herie Iunonis probably means something of the same kind; the others are not so easily explained, and guesswork about them is unprofitable. But I hope I have said enough to show that there is absolutely no good ground for supposing that these combinations of names in nominative and genitive indicate a relationship of any kind except a qualitative one. Abstract qualities, ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... orderly. Even the waste-paper baskets were empty. The books were locked away and the desks were clear. But the small green safe stood in the corner. Mrs. Vansittart went towards it, key in hand. The key was the right one. It had only been selected by guesswork among a number on Roden's bunch. It slipped into the lock and turned smoothly, but the door would not move. She tugged and wrenched at the handle, then turned it accidentally, and the heavy door swung open. There were ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... group of 1529 was painted. It may well have been that some serious misunderstanding between them was at the bottom of that otherwise inexplicable departure in 1517, and the two years' absence in Lucerne and still more southern cities. Of course this is mere guesswork; so is every hypothesis until it is proved. But all the simple commonplaces of first love, estrangement, separation, and a renewed betrothal after Elsbeth's early widowhood with one child, could easily have run a natural course between ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... answered their signals. That they were all harmless traders I will not affirm; but none of them offered to chase us. Yet could I have been sure of a ship, I should have been glad to speak. My longitude was little more than guesswork; my latitude not very certain; and my compass was out. However, I supported my own and the spirits of my little company by telling them of the early navigators; how Columbus, Candish, Drake, Schouten and other heroic marine worthies of distant times had navigated the globe, ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... Science seems abstract, but the process is simple and the results are sure if the Science is understood. The tree must be good, which 459:27 produces good fruit. Guided by divine Truth and not guesswork, the theologus (that is, the student - the Christian and scientific expounder - of the divine 459:30 law) treats disease with more certain results than any other healer on the globe. The Christian Scientist should understand and adhere strictly to the rules of divine meta- ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... there is a shock, a spark—as though flint and steel met—and the magazine explodes—first the forward magazine, then the after magazine, then the main magazine—one, two, three! This is all mere guesswork, you understand, sir," Crochard added, in another tone, "but so I see it. And, after all, ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... I were a mental," he said, "I could read your mind and know that you were forming the notion of calling on Scarmann and asking him what-for. But since I'm only a mind-blank esper, all I can do is to fall back on experience and guesswork. ...
— Stop Look and Dig • George O. Smith
... that they could venture to leave the wood, and it was by guesswork, for the stars were clouded over, that the Doctor made for what he believed to be the south, but not to go far in the darkness, on account of the twinkling fires which shone out here and there as if all around them. That night they slept in another pine wood, to keep on starting ...
— A Young Hero • G Manville Fenn
... of having written that letter signed 'Aurelius.' I knew nothing, and it seemed beneath me to have made that guesswork public. That he was my enemy should have made me careful, but I was under strong feeling, and I wrote. He has neither forgotten nor forgiven. Denounce him now as a conspirator against his party and his country? That is impossible. Impossible from lack of proof, and impossible to me were proofs ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... aunt and her husband and Dr. Ravenshaw came to the door?" said Charles, filling in the pause. "But how was it that you told them that you feared something had happened to your master? Was that pure guesswork on your part? You hadn't been in the ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... put the case of Otion, etc., to W. Thompson, who is fierce for the law of priority, and he gave it up in such well-known names. I am in a perfect maze of doubt on nomenclature. In not one large genus of Cirripedia has ANY ONE species been correctly defined; it is pure guesswork (being guided by range and commonness and habits) to recognise any species: thus I can make out, from plates or descriptions, hardly any of the British sessile cirripedes. I cannot bear to give new names to all the species, and yet I shall perhaps do wrong to attach old names by little ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... in sight. True, it was within hearing; but so it had been three weeks before, on Magersfontein day. We were weary of this interminable thunder, which showed us no results. Colonel Kekewich was as reticent as ever. Of guesswork there was plenty. Had Methuen not had time sufficiently to augment his forces to cut his way through. The troops were in the country; we were placated with the information that they were "falling over one another in Cape Town." This comforting gem glittered less in our minds as ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... defended Ethel. "First, it was all guesswork with her because you never had told her that you cared. And then she was angry at your having talked about her when you hadn't talked to her. Her feelings were hurt badly. And now she doesn't know what she ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith
... of it?" retorted the old woman. "But I am not. For our clearest knowledge is but guesswork when it is not based on numbers. Nothing is proved or provable but by numbers, but they are surer than the rocks in the sea; that is why I believe in our coming doom, for, on those tablets, we have calculated ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... for having let himself grow weaker in the interval. Nevertheless, I have often noticed this—that the East can train athletes by methods absolutely opposite to those imposed by trainers in the West, and it may be that their asceticism is based on something more than guesswork. I ate enormously, and he sat and watched me with an air of quiet amusement. He seemed to grow more and more friendly all the time, and to forget that he had made several attempts on my life, although his yellow eyes and lionlike way of carrying his head still gave you an uncomfortable ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... one: but Er the Pamphylian comes back to report no more than the one thing Man already grasps for a certainty amid his welter of guesswork about the Universe—that its stability rests on ordered motion—that the "firmament" stands firm on a balance of active and tremendous forces somehow harmoniously composed. Theology asks "By whom?": Philosophy inclines rather to guess "How?" Natural Science, allowing that these ...
— Poetry • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... for the future, however, must be based on clear understanding of the problems involved. And that can be gained only by straight thinking—not guesswork, not ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... varied but slightly, had been exchanged between them every Saturday night for years. Dorcas replied now without thinking. Her mind had spread its wings and flown out into the sweet stillness of the garden and the world beyond; it even hastened on into the unknown ways of guesswork, seeking for one who should be coming. She strained her ears to hear the beating of hoofs and the rattle of wheels across the little, bridge. The dusk sifted in about the house, faster and faster; a whippoorwill cried from the woods. So she sat until the twilight ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... course he is in love with Mademoiselle de Lira, and has gone to Paris to find her, and cannot. That is why you ask me." I was so much astonished at the quickness of his guesswork that ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... acquaintances, and it seemed unlikely that the latter would have confided in him. Yet Brett certainly spoke as though his cognisance of how matters stood betwixt herself and Tony were based on something more substantial than mere guesswork. ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... innovators, regards a younger rival theory, the exodist innovation of Dr. Heinrich Brugsch-Bey. The latter is the first who has rescued the "March of the Children of Israel" from the condition of mere guesswork described by the Rev. ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... certainly knew his business. Now, as a matter of fact, Mr. Frog was a very careless person. He had thrown away Brownie's measurements before he made his clothes, instead of afterwards. And he had made the new suit entirely by guesswork. It was only natural that he would make some mistake; and so he had cut the ...
— The Tale of Brownie Beaver • Arthur Scott Bailey
... principles he had adopted in foreign parts. The next day, for the first time, nothing was done towards the decoration of the door. I suspect some imprudence of Mr. Franklin's on the Continent—with a woman or a debt at the bottom of it—had followed him to England. But that is all guesswork. In this case, not only Mr. Franklin, but my lady too, for a wonder, ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... a deaf old man, whose conversation was carried on principally by guesswork, and it was easy for him to gather that when her ladyship's handsome young sister had given him greeting she had not forgotten to inquire respecting the "rheumatics," which formed ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... there for awhile, while he was working it out. Almost had me convinced, but I told him, "Get it to working first, Carter, and then show me what you can do with it better than I can do without it. I'm doing pretty well as is ... pictures selling good, even if I do make 'em all by guesswork, as you call it." That's ...
— Vanishing Point • C.C. Beck
... natural laws, as we know and are able to observe them. Even as a child I never had any use for fairy-tales, or wonder-stories. I always wanted facts, tangible, concrete, irrefutable facts, not hypotheses. The Protestant churches hand out a mess of incoherent guesswork, based on as many interpretations of the Bible as there are human minds sufficiently interested to interpret it, and then wax hot and angry when hard-headed business men like myself refuse to subscribe to it. It's preposterous, Lafelle! If they had anything tangible ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... to learn whether we're still on the right track, or have strayed away from it. We've been going by guesswork long enough; but, if I don't greatly mistake we'll there see something to tell us whether our guesses have been good or bad. If the redskins have come up the river at all, it's pretty sure they also have ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... delicate, the texture of the skin, which is clearly visible, much too fine—in short, wouldn't it pass anywhere for a woman's hand? Say a woman who bit her nails. If it were really such there would be a pair of feminine feet also to be concealed, and boards would do it very nicely—but this is all guesswork, and must not be allowed to affect any subsequent conclusions. If you will excuse me a few minutes I will use the microscope a little on the sill of the east window before we are interrupted by our friends the officers, who will be sure ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... a speculative movement to anticipate these changes and arbitrarily to mark some prices up and some prices down. But as this is guesswork, and will be subject to frequent revision, one of the striking phenomena will doubtless be an increase in the variability of prices. The general level of prices will tend to rise. The rise will probably be greatest in little countries like Belgium, which are in the war zone and largely dependent ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... it is to be guesswork, let us all guess for ourselves. To be guided by second-hand conjecture is pitiful. The premises are before you. My brother is a lively and perhaps sometimes a thoughtless young man; he has had about a week's acquaintance with your friend, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... more august tribunals where the desire to be true and just is uppermost, false evidence is so rife that there has to be a good deal of guesswork, and calculations of probabilities, when trying to come to a right decision. It has lately been advocated that magistrates should, when practicable, hold their preliminary trial of offences in the village where the ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... Tailleurs, the Moroccans—all marching in one direction, eastward to the trenches. There were rumours of something immense about to happen—no one knew quite what. Were we going to put on a new offensive or were we going to resist one? Many answers were given: they were all guesswork. Meanwhile, our progress was slow; we were continually halting to let brigades of artillery and regiments of infantry pour into the main artery of traffic from lanes and side-roads. When we had backed our car into hedges to give them room to pass, we watched the sea of faces. ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... Amongst other great changes that happen, as they say, at the turn of ages, the art of divination, also, at one time rises in esteem, and is more successful in its predictions, clearer and surer tokens being sent from God, and then again, in another generation declines as low, becoming mere guesswork for the most part, and discerning future events by dim and uncertain intimations. This was the mythology of the wisest of the Tuscan sages, who were thought to possess a knowledge beyond other men. Whilst the Senate sat in consultation with the soothsayers, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... has grown rich he will give him his soul, which is what the enemy of mankind wants; this I am led to believe by observing that the ape only answers about things past or present, and the devil's knowledge extends no further; for the future he knows only by guesswork, and that not always; for it is reserved for God alone to know the times and the seasons, and for him there is neither past nor future; all is present. This being as it is, it is clear that this ape speaks by the spirit of the devil; ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... opportunities otherwise we are children of circumstance. What becomes of us is a matter of guesswork. We have no hand in compelling our own future. Diffidence is a species of cowardice. It causes a man's courage to ooze out at his toes faster than it comes into his heart. Such men often have big ideas, but having ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... to the accuracy of the commonly quoted statements concerning the prevalence of social disease, and therefore of immorality, it must be said in all fairness that there has been much guesswork and some deliberate exaggeration. We learn from various books and lectures that fifty, sixty-five, seventy-five and even ninety per cent of the men in the United States over eighteen years of age are at some time infected with at least one of the social ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... indecision. You have the claim on him; you are the right wife for him, and the Governor was (as I thought likely from what I had myself observed) the man to make him see it. I am not in anybody's secrets; it was pure guesswork on my part, and it has succeeded. There is no more doubt now about Miss Eunice's sentiments. ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... evidence of design; that this very difficulty had been deliberately caused by Mr. Coburn with the object of keeping himself and Merriman under observation and rendering them harmless. This, he recognized, was guesswork, but still ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... the case in the same light as Edmund. He allowed the possibility of the scrap of paper and the ring having been sent to Rose by mistake, but he was not inclined to indulge in what seemed to him to be guesswork as to what conceivably had been intended to be sent to her in place ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... the rooms were empty, some further glimmering knowledge had stirred her benumbed consciousness. She may have flung herself on the bed in a paroxysm of weeping, heedless of the overturned night light and the havoc it caused. That, of course, is sheer guesswork, though the glass dish which held the light was found later on the charred floor, which was protected, to some extent, by ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... self-interest of the investor makes capital flow into those channels where economic conditions need it most. But how can the investor know where it should go when the true financial condition of great industrial companies is a matter of guesswork? Again, we rely upon our bankers to check excessive industrial fluctuations. How can they do this if they do not know the facts of production? The public should know what great combines are doing, but they do not know; and how can we expect the ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... the middle period, or the pantheon in the days of Hammurabi, (3) the Assyrian pantheon, and (4) the latest or neo-Babylonian period. The most difficult phase has naturally been the old Babylonian pantheon. Much is uncertain here. Not to speak of the chronology which is still to a large extent guesswork, the identification of many of the gods occurring in the oldest inscriptions, with their later equivalents, must be postponed till future discoveries shall have cleared away the many obstacles which beset the path of the scholar. The ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... could. I estimated that, with the breeze then blowing, we ought to cover the distance between the object and ourselves in about six or seven minutes after clearing the reef, but I had no means of judging the time, except by guesswork, out there in the darkness, and I was on tenterhooks lest we should miss the thing and stand too far out, when the chances would be all against our picking her up on the return journey. Therefore at last, feeling that we must be pretty close to the object of our ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... it. I've been lost before with half a dozen, sir, and every one thought different. One wanted to go one way; one wanted to go another. Fact is, gentlemen, we neither of us know the way. It's all guesswork. Once lost, there's nothing to guide you. I can't recollect this tree or that tree, because they're all so much alike, and it's as puzzling as being in the dark. There's only one way out of it, and that is to do as I say; you stand fast, and I'll cast about ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... restlessly. "I cannot say. Perhaps I might hazard a guess, but it's no use talking of guesswork. To-day I ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... "It's all guesswork," answered Mrs. Peachey. "He isn't paying attention to any girl that I know of—but, I suppose, if it's anybody, it must be Virginia Pendleton. All the young men are crazy ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... main they afforded him little but amusement; the stories were mostly a hash of misinformation strongly flavoured with haphazard guesswork. The salient facts of the almost simultaneous disappearance of the necklace and Mr. Iff stood up out of the welter of surmise like mountain peaks above cloud-rack. There were no other facts. And both these remained inexplicable. No trace had ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... Honoria Fraser was something like this: partly guesswork, I admit. Although I know her well I can only put her past together by deductions based on a few admitted facts, one or two letters and occasional unfinished sentences, interrupted by people coming in. Is it not always thus with our friends and acquaintances? I long to know ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... times are to be chiefly distinguished from the less-crude theories of to-day as being largely the products of random guesswork. Hypothesis, or guesswork, indeed, lies at the foundation of all scientific knowledge. The riddle of the universe, like less important riddles, is unravelled only by approximative trials, and the most brilliant ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... having taken some chocolate and stored a few biscuits in my pocket, I returned towards the palace, apparently without any anxiety or hurry, always followed by the same individual. I judged that the bargello, having failed in his project, was now reduced to guesswork, and I was strengthened in that view of the case when the gate-keeper of the palace told me, without my asking any question, as I came in, that an arrest had been attempted during the night, and had not succeeded. While he was speaking, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... of the preservation of an equilibrium between indefinable forces; and to make the ultimate end of government the maintenance as long as possible of a balance resting on no ulterior principle, but undoubtedly pleasant for the comfortable classes. Nothing is left but the rough guesswork, which, if a fine name be wanted, may be called Baconian induction. The 'matchless constitution,' as Bentham calls it, represents a convenient compromise, and the tendency is to attach exaggerated importance to its ostensible terms. When Macaulay asserted against Mill[118] ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... Gwinner, Gutmann, Thyssen, Rathenau, and other captains of industry and finance? Some of them have expressed opinions in interviews, but what do they really think? I am not going to indulge in any guesswork on this matter. I am simply going to disclose some important statements made at a secret meeting attended by many of the business directors of the German Empire. The meeting was for the purpose of discussing actual conditions in a straightforward manner, therefore ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... was merely guesswork. For Gourlay had hitherto gone away from Barbie for his moneys and accommodations, so that the bodies could only surmise; they had nothing definite to go on. And through it all the gurly old fellow kept a brave front to the world. He was thinking of retiring, he said, and gradually drawing in ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... passage in the Third Continuator of Florence mentions Hyring as the first king of Bernicia, followed by Woden and five other mythical personages, before Ida. Clearly, this is mere unhistorical guesswork on the part of the monk of Bury; but it may enclose a genuine tradition so ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... than to know the differences of things. Indeed, if we are not interested in the former, our pleasure in the latter is a mere scrap-book pleasure. If we are not interested in the latter, on the other hand, our sense of the former is apt to degenerate into guesswork and assertion and empty phrases. Shakespeare is greater than all the other poets because he, more than anybody else, knew how very like human beings are to each other and because he, more than anybody else, knew how very unlike human beings are ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... again, holding lower and more firmly, out of mere guesswork, and landed appreciably closer although still within the zone of ridicule. And somebody else shot, and somebody else, and another, until we all were whooping and laughing and jesting, and the jets flew as if from the ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... she asked, and reflected. She had one of her moments of clever guesswork over him. Rookie was a simple proposition. She could always, she had once boasted to him, find him out. And reaching about for the clue, suddenly she had it and ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... decide correctly without the facts. To decide in the absence of information is guesswork—and guesswork is a poor method of deciding what to do—in the case of the stammerer as in every ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... of an hour after this conversation she was a little uneasy. He was a clever boy, Henry; he did watch people. But then he was very young, It was all guesswork with him. ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... the rain had done its work, and to follow the tracks became a matter of guesswork. Night was coming on also, and Dave realized that at this rate darkness would find him far from his goal. Therefore he risked his own interpretation of the rider's intent and pushed on without pausing ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... cartridges served out to them from the magazine were not blank ones. They had all protested their certainty that this march was for business; and when they had heard that their colonel was going with them they had been doubly sure; yet in their hearts they had anxiously admitted that it was guesswork. Now these blessed cartridges packed full of the right stuff put an ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... and unable to maintain its control over any Aryan race, it has exhibited a powerful propagandist element, and so has converted to its creed the majority of the Mongol nations. It embraces nearly or quite (for statistics here are only guesswork)[98] three hundred millions of human beings. It is the popular religion of China; the state religion of Thibet, and of the Birman Empire; it is the religion of Japan, Siam, Anam, Assam, Nepaul, Ceylon, in short, of nearly the whole of ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... thing is a mystery and cannot be solved by any evidence that we have. Almost every one who has written of it seems to have indulged in mere guesswork. One popular theory is that Miss Allen was in love with some one else; that her parents forced her into a brilliant marriage with Houston, which, however, she could not afterward endure; and that Houston, learning the facts, left her because he ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... is all swank: a parcel of suppositions and guesswork based upon nothing at all. I'm not ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... Beaton must have taken the same train, and the two men got friendly; probably they never knew each other in New York, but, being from the same place, it was easy enough to strike up an acquaintance. What occurred on board is all guesswork, but a sudden blow at night, on an observation platform, at some desert station, is not impossible; or it might be sickness, and the two men left behind to seek a physician. Here was where Lacy must have come in. He goes East ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... all, some inner strain kept trying to tell him he was not dead. This was his own world, all right, and essentially unchanged. What had happened to it was beyond the pale of mere guesswork. But this one thing began to be clear: This was a world in which change or motion of any ...
— The Day Time Stopped Moving • Bradner Buckner
... animals is one of complete neutrality. For all we know, the mental capacities of animals may be of a higher order than our own, as their sensuous capacities certainly are in many cases. All this, however, is guesswork; one thing only is certain. If we are right that man realizes his conceptual thought by means of words, derived from roots, and that no animal possesses words derived from roots, it follows, not indeed, that animals have no conceptual thought (insaying this, Iwent too far), but that ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... approximation is not guesswork, not looseness, and not error. The process of approximation is as exact and correct at every point as that by which an absolute result is secured; the result only fails of exactness because of some inherent difficulty ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... belong to this neighborhood; an' the truth is, that nobody here that ever I heard of knows anything at all, barrin' guesswork, about the unfortunate poor creature. If ever he was a gintleman," exclaimed the kind-hearted waiter, "he's surely to be pitied, when one sees ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... for guesswork. The desultory thunder of the rebel ordnance ceased, and the whole mass that hemmed him in began to revolve within itself, and present a new front to the ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... has been some criticism based on guesswork and even on malicious falsification of fact. Such criticism creates doubts and creates fears, and weakens our ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... happened. The earth at one period changed its shape—when, is merely guesswork, and is of no consequence here—and the crust of the earth—not the core, mind you—split into two great gaps from Pole to Pole, with a number of other minor fissures. In other words, the earth opened just like the skin of an over-heated baked apple. The African ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... was still inhabited in the Bronze age, covers an area of twelve hundred feet long by a mean width of one hundred and fifty. It is, however, useless to enumerate the various calculations that have been made, as they are founded on nothing but more or less probable guesswork. ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... as the bullet drilled the skull cleanly. Then one man shouted and they all lay prone, beginning to crawl toward us with their shields held before, not as protection against bullets (for as that they were utterly worthless) but as cover that made their exact position merest guesswork. ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... that exist, it is difficult to determine precisely in what measure the members of the expedition are responsible for the charting; some of it is certainly the guesswork of geographers, based, it must be acknowledged, on the best information then available, for we must bear in mind that the accounts of Mendana's expedition were only known from a few extracts, the actual narratives being lost at the time ...
— The First Discovery of Australia and New Guinea • George Collingridge
... simply as a story to be read for pastime, neither morality nor symbolism is hereinafter educed, and no "parallels" and "authorities" are quoted. Even the gaps are left unbridged by guesswork: whereas the historic and mythological problems perhaps involved are relinquished to those really thoroughgoing scholars whom erudition qualifies to deal with such topics, and ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... at the outbreak of the war the various Powers possessed a total of 4980 aircraft of all sorts. This sounds like a colossal fleet, but by 1917 it was probably multiplied more than tenfold. Of the increase of aircraft we can judge only by guesswork. The belligerents keep their output an inviolable secret. It was known that many factories with a capacity of from thirty to fifty 'planes a week were working in the chief belligerent lands, that the United States was shipping aircraft in parts to avoid violation of neutrality laws ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... same time he recognised a world of phenomena, or, as he expressed it, a world of guesswork or opinion ((Greek) doxa). As to the origin of things within this sphere he was ready enough to borrow [90] from the speculations of his predecessors. Earth and water are the sources from which we spring; and he imagined a ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... Snap might have done if you had married him is guesswork. He might have left drink alone a while longer. But he was bad clean through. I heard Dave Naab tell him that. Snap would have gone over to Holderness sooner or later. And now he's a rustler, ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... because, to say that they were the remains of people who had been eaten, if the natives devoured as many as was supposed, the houses could not contain the bones, and there is no reason why, after eating them, they should preserve the relics. All this is but guesswork." Washington Irving agrees with the reverend historian, and describes the general belief in the cannibalism of the Caribs to the Spaniards' fear of them. Two eminent authorities positively deny it. Humboldt, in his before-cited work, in the chapter on Carib missions, ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... chart, but even then the eccentricity of the tidal currents and, let it be said, the erratic and most unladylike behaviour of the Rapier's standard compass, made navigation a matter of some conjecture and a good deal of guesswork. ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... the same name to hold together even in migration as may be proved by the strong predominance of certain surnames in nearly every community. So that the ratio or same-name to different-name second cousin marriage may not greatly exceed 1:4. Beyond this degree any estimate would be pure guesswork. However the coefficient of attraction between persons of the same surname would undoubtedly be well marked in every degree of kinship, and conversely there are few same-name marriages in which some kinship, however ...
— Consanguineous Marriages in the American Population • George B. Louis Arner
... Years ago it was laid down finally by the most competent of possible authorities (the late Sir John Rhys) that "the love of Lancelot and Guinevere is unknown to Welsh literature." Originals for the "greatest knight" have been sought by guesswork, by idle play on words and names, if not also by positive forgery, in that Breton literature which does not exist. There do exist versions of the story in which Lancelot plays no very prominent part, and there is even one singular version—certainly late and probably devised by a proper ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... like that," said Captain Godfrey, when I spoke to him about it. "It's a science. It's all a matter of the higher mathematics. Everything is worked out to half a dozen places of decimals. We've eliminated chance and guesswork just as far as possible ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... surrounding the passenger business in the steam-schooner trade, however, lies in the uncertainty of a vessel's arrival and departure. It is all guesswork. Thus Matt Peasley, with his cargo half discharged at San Pedro, would estimate that he would sail from that port, northbound via San Francisco to some Oregon or Washington port for another cargo, at noon on the following day. ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... guesswork and such landmarks as were afforded by the lights on shore. He peered anxiously ahead, hoping to see the dim shapes of the three grabs; but this was at present impossible, since they lay between him and the seaward extremity of ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... picture all in the darker shades, let us look at the best type of Italian tenement life. We are not left to guesswork in the matter. Settlement workers and students of social questions are actually living in the tenement and slum sections, so as to know by experience and not hearsay. One of these investigators, Mrs. Lillian W. Betts, ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... and hairy, yet not a bad-looking lot as sailors go, but with here and there a face to be distrusted. I sent Watkins to the cabin for a roll of charts, and spreading these out, endeavored as well as I could, to make clear our probable position and the nearest point of land. This was largely guesswork, but I approximated distances and made the situation fairly clear. When I had completed the explanation, and stood before them awaiting decision, it was Haines who acted as ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... spent in America opened my eyes to the price your country is paying for the word 'guess.' The more I studied the situation, the oftener I noticed folks saying 'I guess' where they should have said 'I know.' In nearly all of America's accidents, guesswork is the real cause. ...
— Sure Pop and the Safety Scouts • Roy Rutherford Bailey
... Mahal, is the spot where Campbell met Outram and Havelock—a spot which, methinks, might well be marked by a monument; and after this I lose my reckoning by reason of the extent of the demolition, and am forced to resort to guesswork as to the ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... common in Bering Sea. But we were interested in this one, both because of its strange appearance, and because it was unmarked on the chart. That last was not so unusual, though. The charts of that section of Bering are mostly guesswork. ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... unconnected with the wandering tribes known in other countries by the names of Bohemians, Gypsies, etc. This, like all unfounded opinions, of course originated in ignorance, which is always ready to have recourse to conjecture and guesswork, in preference to travelling through the long, mountainous, and stony road of patient investigation; it is, however, an error far more absurd and more destitute of tenable grounds than the ancient belief that the Gitanos were Egyptians, which they themselves have always professed to be, ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... Bible plainly shows what the spirits which communicate are not, it just as clearly reveals also what they are; so that in no particular is one left to conjecture or guesswork. There is an order of beings brought to view in the Scriptures, above man but lower than God or Christ, called "angels." No Bible believer questions the existence of such beings. It is sometimes asserted that angels are ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... go any way towards an explanation of it are but guesswork, and I give them more because I would not conceal anything, than because I think they are ...
— Lady Into Fox • David Garnett
... Luigia Polzelli as a Neapolitan who was nineteen when she was engaged to sing at the theatre of the Prince Esterhazy. She was the wife of Anton Polzelli, an insignificant and sickly violinist, with whom she was apparently not in love. Luigia is pictured—doubtless by guesswork—as not beautiful, but of a pleasing appearance, showing the indications of her Italian birth in "her small slim face, her dark complexion, her black eyes, her chestnut-coloured hair; her body of medium height and ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... much fretting guesswork on her cousin's surmise. She relied too much on Owen's sense of propriety to entertain the idea that he could be forwarding a pursuit so obviously insolent, but a still wilder conjecture had been set afloat in her mind. Could the nameless one ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "That is all guesswork," declared the Wizard, unwinding the blankets from his body, "for none of us stayed long enough on the mountains to discover what they are made ...
— The Lost Princess of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... is scientific. From the first sentence of his great work to the last, the method pursued is that of a painstaking scientist. It would be just as reasonable to complain of the use of the word "scientific" in connection with the work of Darwin and his followers, to distinguish it from the guesswork of Anaximander, as to cavil at the distinction made between the Socialism of Marx and Engels and their followers, and that of visionaries like Owen ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... difference, but the records leave no doubt. I may at once add here another argument. The good results stop entirely when Beulah is blindfolded. Even when both her mother and sister were sitting quite near her, her mind-reading became pure guesswork when her eyes were covered with a scarf. Again, she liked to make the experiment under this condition and was not aware that her knowledge failed her when she did not see her mother or sister. Her delight in being blindfolded spoke very ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... never written by Daniel or Isaiah or Jeremiah,' 'It is certain this chapter is an addition of such and such a date,' etc. It is not universally acknowledged. It is not certain. The whole thing is pure guesswork. There is only one way to prove the authorship of a book, and that is by testimony. There is nothing under the sun more absurd, philologically, than that a common and very poor stock-actor should have written 'Hamlet.' We know he ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... address, from which I gather that, owing to a superstitious dislike which the Gipsies entertain towards the Census, and the successfully cunning attempts on their part to baffle the enumerators, it is only by conjecture and guesswork that we can form any idea of the number of Bohemians in this country. The result of Mr. Smith's diligent inquiries has led him to the assumption that there are not less than 4,000 Gipsy men and women, and from 15,000 to 20,000 Gipsy and 'arab'—that is to say, tramp—children roaming ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... enthusiasts, knowing nothing of the world save by guesswork, and full of an inborn belief in the existence of perfection, Gilbert dreamed of realizing the harmony of two opposites—the religious life and the life of the world. Such dreams seemed not so wild in those days, when ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... these latter, as they are about to be stated, will be found most to resemble those of Sir Frederic Madden in England and M. Paulin Paris in France—the two critics who, coming after the age of wild guesswork and imperfect reading, and before that of a scholarship which, sometimes at least, endeavours to vindicate itself by innovation for the sake of innovation, certainly equalled, and perhaps exceeded, any others ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... trees on the crest to the right, and kick up a great red-black mass of smoke and dust. We see it, and then we hear the whine of its arrival and at last the bang. The Germans are blind now, they have lost the air, they are firing by guesswork and their knowledge of ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... capture. Now he was arrested on another charge, and, as Lowell had said, Talpers's most profitable line of business was certain to suffer. As Bill walked back to his store he wondered how much Lowell actually knew, and how much had been shrewd guesswork. The young agent had a certain inscrutable air about him, for all his ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... changing it in time to a mere legend, a tale told out of the hazy distance. But in America it obtrudes; it stares eternally on in all its stark unforgetfulness, absorbing its background, constantly rescuing itself from legend by turning guesswork and theory into facts, till it appears bare, irremediable, and complete,—witnessed at high noon, and in New Jersey of all places, flat, unillusive, ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... stiff-lipped about it; she couldn't help a little, though. And I noticed some of those women acted as if they had lost something. Maybe it was a chance to gossip about Laddie, for he hadn't left them a thing to guess at, and mother says the reason gossip is so dreadful is because it is always GUESSWORK. Well, that was all fair and plain. He had told those people, our very best friends, what he thought about everything, the way they acted included. He was carrying something to each member of the Pryor family, and he'd left a way to return joking and unashamed, if they wouldn't let him ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... having a more direct effect on the lungs than any they had yet given us. It had started to rain and the darkness was black, but we reached the guns within scheduled time, and under great difficulty we exploded our shells; but most of our work in that discharge was guesswork. ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... descend. From the bank where I stood I had the whole ridge in view above the dense foliage, and could select the most promising point to make for; but this would sink out of sight as I approached the first belt of trees, and beyond them I must find my way by guesswork. ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... "Physiology", and for these were required to commit to memory the name of every bone and artery in the body, yet all that related to a woman's special organs and chief natural function was studiously ignored. The subject being thus chastely shrouded in mystery, they were thrown back on guesswork and speculation—with the quaintest results. The fancies woven by quite big girls, for instance, round the physical feat of bringing a child into the world, would have supplied material for a volume of fairytales. On many a summer evening at this time, in a nook ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... That guesswork has figured to some extent in these figures is evident; but as a whole they represent tolerably well the growth of the islands. The figures for 1903 are to be relied on. See Bulletin No. 1, ut supra, and U.S. Gazetteer of the Philippine ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... immigrant Irish," he pointed out, "lose their Celtic aspect and become Americanised.... To say that 'spontaneous variation,' increased by natural selection, can have produced this effect, is going too far." Unfortunately for Mr. Spencer, he was basing his conclusions on guesswork. It is only within the last few months that the first trustworthy evidence on the point has appeared, in the careful measurements of Hrdlicka who has demonstrated that Spencer was quite wrong in his statement. As a fact, the original ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... must be remembered that, in the absence of records, any solution of this difficult problem at present rests on mere speculation and guesswork, and the opinions expressed here must be accepted as mere conjectures unsupported by direct contemporary evidence, and based only upon ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray
... he had a foundation of fact upon which to operate. His theory was that the simplest way is always the best way and so he never befogged the main issue with any elaborate system of deductive reasoning based on guesswork. Burton never guessed. He assumed that it was his business to KNOW, nor was he on any case long before he did know. He was employed now to find Abigail Prim. Each of the several crimes committed the previous night might or might not prove a clew to ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... clear that if a manufacturer names a price and takes advance orders without pre-determining his sugar cost, his profit is a matter of guesswork. He is not going to know the cost of his manufactured product until he ...
— About sugar buying for Jobbers - How you can lessen business risks by trading in refined sugar futures • B. W. Dyer
... any more players for the varsity, Ken could not tell who they were. Of course Graves would make the team, and Weir and Raymond were pretty sure of places. There were sixteen players for the other five positions, and picking them was only guesswork. It seemed to Ken that some of the players showed streaks of fast playing at times, and then as soon as they were opposed to one another in the practice game they became erratic. His own progress was slow. One thing he could do that brought warm praise from the coach—he could line ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... sport, keeping in a body, their mouths full of laughter, waving their hats as they came on, and crying (as the fancy struck them) "Tally-ho!" "Stop, thief!" "A highwayman! A highwayman!" It was other guesswork with Bellamy. That gentleman no sooner observed our change of direction than he turned his horse with so much violence that the poor animal was almost cast upon its side, and launched her in immediate and desperate pursuit. As he approached ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cannot be manipulated by the performer, in which case it is purely guesswork; even in such cases, however, I stand one chance in six of succeeding; and if I make a second trial on failing (not uncommon with mediums), I stand one chance ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... the leather-faced sailor, but tried to keep the boat's head before a heavier roll of the sea, and the wake as much like a straight line as possible. There was no compass in the craft, and it would take some nice guesswork to find ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... took the watch from his pocket that had not been wound for many days, wound it mechanically, set it by guesswork—it was not far from eight o'clock—and replaced it in his pocket. Carefully then, one at a time, he examined his fingers, long, slim, sensitive, tapering fingers, magical masters of safes and locks and vaults of the most intricate and modern ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... their names from the country, city, port, or province from whence they originated; from the names of the makers; and methods of weaving, dyeing, ornamentation, etc. The fixing of localities, methods, etc., is oftentimes guesswork. The textiles of to-day bearing the same name as those of the middle ages have nothing in common. Buckram was originally made in and called from Bokkara. In the middle ages it was costly, fine, and beautiful, used for church vestments, veils for ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... to put in for gas before long." Phil stared thoughtfully at the chart. "I'll allow," he went on, "that she may have gone any other direction but north. For that matter, she may be anchored just around the corner somewhere. It's all more or less guesswork. But, looking at the probabilities, and they're all we've got to work on, I think north is the likeliest trail for us ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... as he visits you. Make on a slip of paper a note of his directions. Make a brief record of exactly what to do, the precise time of giving medicines, etc. This should always be done in serious cases, and by night watchers. Then there is no guesswork. You have the record before you for easy reference. All such things are valuable ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... when they reported in from the north country. They were voluble in their own behalf, but their talk was slippery, so the chief felt. They were also voluble in regard to Lida Kennard, but Mern found himself more than ever enmeshed in his guesswork about ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... which was receptive and keen to learn, but a knowledge which was quick to offer valuable suggestions. I remember Pennell condemning anything but scientific learning in dealing with the problems round us; 'no guesswork' was his argument. But he emphatically made an exception of Scott, who had an uncanny knack of hitting upon a solution. Over and over again in his diary we can read of the interest he took in pure and applied science, and it is doubtful whether ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... way of measurement made the frigate 43 tons smaller than the American way did; actually the difference was nearer 290 tons. James' statements as to the size of our various ships would seem to have been largely mere guesswork, as he sometimes makes them smaller and sometimes larger than they were according to the official navy lists. Thus, the Constitution, President, and United States, each of 1,576, he puts down as of 1,533; the Wasp, of 450, as of 434; the Hornet, of 480, ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... calculating on killing to a certainty with the first shot, and it is just as well to be on the safe side. In daylight it would be a different matter altogether. I can rely upon my weapon when I can see, but on a dark night it is pretty well guesswork." ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... stamped the whole affair as a clever piece of mind-reading, guesswork and acting, and, somewhat annoyed that he should have been hoaxed even for a ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... were written by Mr. Henry himself. They bear the stamp of his mind, strong, without precision. That they were written by Johnston, who seconded them, was only the rumor of the day, and very possibly unfounded." Works, vi. 484. In the face of all this tissue of rumor, guesswork, and self-contradiction, the deliberate statement of Patrick Henry himself that he wrote the five resolutions referred to by him, and that he wrote them "alone, unadvised, and unassisted," ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... all guesswork. But I reckon I know what I 'd do if I was in thet sort o' fix an' bein' chased fer murder an' robbery. I 'd take the easy way; make fer the nearest Injun village, an' leave ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... taken place; and if he were writing in 1220, the revelation to the hermit would thus naturally be relegated to the year 720, the year under which the entry actually appears. This, of course, is pure guesswork, but the fact remains that the "Chronicle" was written in or about 1220, and the "Book of the Graal" not ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... couple of centuries in great state, apparently letting or lending the smaller houses to tenants or retainers—it would seem not unlikely to lawyers or students of the law, possibly their own men of business. This is no mere theory or guesswork. There has been too much conjecture about the early history of Gray's Inn, and the sober-minded topographer is warned off at the outset by a number of inconsistent assertions as to the early existence here of a school of law. Dugdale tells us ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... cover a wide range of guesswork, many mere rumors and a large number of definite facts. These are all put through the test of comparison with the official records of the Patent Office, and this sifting process has evolved such facts as form the basis of the showing ...
— The Colored Inventor - A Record of Fifty Years • Henry E. Baker
... describing personal investigations in Germany made by Dr. F. Bierhoff, of New York, "Police Methods for the Sanitary Control of Prostitution," New York Medical Journal, August, 1907.) The estimation of the amount of clandestine prostitution can indeed never be much more than guesswork; exactly the same figure of sixty thousand is commonly brought forward as the probable number of prostitutes not only in Berlin, but also in London and in New York. It is absolutely impossible to say whether it is under or over the real number, for secret prostitution is quite intangible. Even ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the believers, as the widder calls 'em, for they are satisfied what is beyond and have it all pict'rd out in thar minds, even to what the streets are paved with, an' the kind o' music they're goin' ter have. It's all guesswork in my way o' thinkin', but they are sure on't, an' that feelin' is lots o' comfort to 'em when they are drawin' near the end. I've been a sort er scoffer all my life," he added reflectively, "an' can't help bein' a doubter, but there are times when I envy Aunt Leach ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... as early as possible through the thorn scrub on a compass bearing that we hoped would bring us to a reported swamp at the head of the Swanee River. The Swanee River was one of the sources of the Tsavo. Of course this was guesswork. We did not know certainly the location of the swamp, its distance from us, nor what lay between us and it. However, we loaded all our transportable vessels with water, ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... was the matter with him? He had, of course, a fire-control computer to help him swing and aim his guns, but he didn't seem to be able to depend on his guesswork. He had more than once fired at a spot where the computer said the ship would be instead of firing at the spot where it actually arrived a fraction of ...
— But, I Don't Think • Gordon Randall Garrett
... You're hoping you can cache the booze and make your getaway while I've gone bye-low. Or possibly, if you got the booze put away safe from my prying eyes, you might come back to bed and I'd find you here in the morning just as if nothing had happened. How Is that for guesswork?" ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... could barely creep through it, with only faith and a doubtful memory as guides. Every road, we well knew, would be patrolled by Federal pickets; only the broken country between could yield us the faintest prospect of success. But at best it must largely be guesswork,—Providence, luck, what you will,—and the slightest swing of the pendulum could easily frustrate our ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... the red juice by guesswork, with the inevitable result that her ears, chin, and nose were stained as deeply as ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... treatment of facts, about which good surgeons are generally right. A great deal of noise is made over surgeons' occasional mistakes, which are advertised by their detractors, but we hear little of their steady and almost constant success. Medicine, on the other hand, must very often proceed by guesswork; but for that very reason it covers up its defects more anxiously, and is more inclined to talk loudly of its victories. Every great physician admits that a good deal of his science is psychological; and psychology ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... her, and the Lord wrought victory by the hand of David. So it is David's history that stands out fullest and clearest in the whole record, from Abraham onward. How much is true history and how much is imaginative addition must be largely guesswork. But we see in David the ideal hero and type of that period of Jewish history as we see in Achilles and Odysseus the ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... says he. "But there! I may be right or wrong, that's guesswork at the best, and let me get to my facts again. It comes to my ears that James and the witnesses—the witnesses, Mr. Balfour!—lay in close dungeons, and shackled forbye, in the military prison at Fort William; none allowed in to them, nor they to write. The witnesses, Mr. Balfour; heard ye ever ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to that young man's whereabouts," Tallente continued thoughtfully, "must necessarily be a matter of pure guesswork, but supposing, Robert, he should have wandered in that mist the wrong way—turned to the left, for instance, outside this window, instead of to the right—he might very easily have ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... prepared to believe it was Lyn Rowan. Sometimes five years will work a wonderful change in a woman; or is it that time and distance work some subtle transition in one's recollection? She didn't give me much time to indulge in guesswork, though. While I wondered, for an instant, if there could by any possibility be another woman on God's footstool with quite the same tilt to her head, the same heavy coils of tawny hair and unfathomable eyes that ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... pale. She had not known that her secret had passed beyond her own possession. How came Peter Sanghurst to speak of her as having a lover? Was it all guesswork? True, he had been jealous of Raymond in old days. Was this all part of a preconcerted and diabolical plot ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... attracted the other. We took that little something as a foundation and built on it. But what has happened has knocked away our poor little foundation. That's all. We don't really know anything at all about each other for certain. It's just guesswork.' ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... half an hour in this sort of conjecturing. I began to perceive that it could serve no purpose. It would be only guesswork, at best, and it was evident I could not tell what quality of metal the mine contained, until I had ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... see it rising little by little. You're getting your results every day; you see your mistakes and your successes. You're making something, creating something; there's something going on all the while that isn't guesswork. I think that's what I want to say. You won't order me to ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... miles in the south-west wind, which, as he was steering south-east, was partly in his favour. One of the disabilities which he, in common with all airmen, suffered, was the impossibility of ascertaining the velocity of the wind when he was fairly afloat. He had to make allowance for it by sheer guesswork, unless he was prepared to slow down or even to alight. He had reckoned that, even with the slight assistance of the wind, he could hardly hope to reach the head of the Persian Gulf before six ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... the road to Stanhope's that afternoon, much less of any shock that could conceivably have come to him. But he set himself to find out. By the next morning, partly through inquiry, partly through patching two and two together, he had worked out a theory. Guesswork, of course, was rather dangerous in a delicate matter such as this; but the doctor's report after breakfast had been the very worst yet. Peter never faltered. He picked up his hat from the study table, in front of which he had been figuring these things ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... everything is kept in a charming condition of perfect uncertainty, from the want of any public newspaper or journal, or other accurate means of information. So everybody asks everybody, and everybody tells everybody, until nobody knows anything, and everything is guesswork. But, nevertheless, despite impatient words, and muttered curses, and all kinds of awkward mistakes, the battle goes bravely on. There is terrible fighting at the door of the Sistine Chapel, to hear the Miserere, which is sure to be Baini's when it is said to be Allegri's, as well ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... easy. Of course you'll understand there is a certain amount of guesswork in what I tell you, but you can depend upon the correctness of my general conclusions. I believe that I have made it perfectly clear that we intended no harm, and that we are not dangerous characters. At least Ala understands it perfectly. As for Ingra, perhaps he doesn't want to ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss |
