"Speculator" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... people are sleeping on cots and billiard-tables; that there are no front-row seats for the Follies, no berths in any cabin of any steamer, remind yourself that there is always a pony in Corea for Dinwiddie. The rule is that the hotel clerk discovers a vacant room, a ticket speculator disgorges a front-row seat, and the ship's doctor sells you a berth in the sick bay. But in Salonika the rule failed. As already explained, Salonika always is overcrowded. Suddenly, added to her 120,000 peoples, came 110,000 ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... Goethe, Herder, and Wolf were acquainted with the Scienza nuova, the importance of this wonderful book did not at first dawn upon the world. Wolf, in his prolegomena to Homer, thought that he was dealing merely with an ingenious speculator on Homeric themes. He did not realize that the intellectual stature of Vico far surpassed that of the ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... refuse to 'pauperise' the toiler by erecting decent buildings in which he may live—not rent-free like the prince, but only paying a rent which shall cover the cost of erection and maintenance, instead of one which gives a yearly profit to a speculator. And so, year after year, the misery grows, and every great city has on its womb a cancer; sapping its vitality, poisoning its life-blood. Every great city is breeding in its slums a race which is reverting ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... word, and ask a favour. I am a speculator in rarities, and I have dealings with persons interested in numismatics all over the world. I can make a profit on this purchase, just as it stands; but there is a way, if I can get your approval, whereby I can make every one of these leaden twenty-dollar ...
— The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg • Mark Twain
... and Laura had visited Helen's grave together. Since Arthur had come down into the country, he had been there once or twice: but the sight of the sacred stone had brought no consolation to him. A guilty man doing a guilty deed: a mere speculator, content to lay down his faith and honor for a fortune and a worldly career; and owning that his life was but a contemptible surrender—what right had he in the holy place? what booted it to him in the world he lived in, that others were no better ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... aristocratic and military tendency with the industrial and plutocratic tendency, the tendency of the police spirit, the regularizing spirit of the Kulturstaat with the individual initiative of the capitalist entrepreneur, methodical habits of administration with the love of risk characteristic of the speculator, all this constitutes imperialism, German imperialism, distinct from every other, because to a definite object, economic conquest, it adds another, less precise, in which the moral satisfaction dear to aristocracy, the pleasure of dominating, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... popular largely through their promulgation of dogmas founded on the Western Paradise, we must not forget that both of them preached a new Buddha—not the real figure in history, but an unhistoric and unreal phantom, the creation and dream of the speculator and visionary. Amida, the personification of boundless light, is one of the luxuriant growths of a sickly scholasticism—a hollow abstraction without life or reality. Amidaism is utterly repudiated by many Japanese Buddhists, who give no place to his idol ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... blackness has no connection with the sublime blackness of the inkstand. Never have the fingers of night which contract beneath this stifling ceiling, turned the leaves of a book nor unfolded a newspaper. Babeuf is a speculator to Cartouche; Marat is an aristocrat to Schinderhannes. This cavern has for its object ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... return until fortune should have bestowed upon him wealth at least equal to the inheritance from which he had been ousted. In Spanish America he had striven to accumulate that wealth in vain. As vequero, traveller, speculator, sailor, he had toiled for fourteen years, and had failed. Worn out and penitent, he had returned home to find a corner of English earth in which to lay his weary bones. The tale was plausible enough, and in the telling of it he was armed at all points. There was little fear that the navigator ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... I don't want any of your fluctuating incomes for my girl. I don't care if you earned ten thousand pounds this year. So long as you can't guarantee that to last, you're no better than a speculator—a hand-to-mouth, don't-know-where-you-are-to-morrow sort of person. Now, that sort of thing won't do, Mr. Vernon. Before you next think of marrying a girl in my daughter's position, let me give you this bit of advice: learn to paint your pictures ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... stronger and more resolute men who devote life with unwavering energy to the pursuit of what I may call private and personal ends. Thus the man of business lives for the acquisition of riches; the scholar and the scientist, of knowledge; the statesman, of power; the speculator, of excitement; the libertine, of pleasure; and so forth. Few are they who ever dream of devoting life as a whole to the pursuit of an end which is potentially attainable by all men, and which is therefore worthy of Man as Man. The ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... that Colonel Boone was a member of any of these conventions. He had no taste for the struggles in political assemblies. He dreaded indeed the speculator, the land jobber, and the intricate decisions of courts, more than the tomahawk of the Indian. And he knew full well that should the hour of action come, he would be one of the first to be summoned to the field. While therefore others of the early pioneers were engaged in these important deliberations, ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... won't say why, I daren't.... But we all saw to-day when he came in that that man is not of our sort. Not because he had his hair curled at the barber's, not because he was in such a hurry to show his wit, but because he is a spy, a speculator, because he is a skin-flint and a buffoon. That's evident. Do you think him clever? No, he is a fool, a fool. And is he a match for you? Good heavens! Do you see, ladies?" he stopped suddenly on the way upstairs to their rooms, ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... with justifying warrant, do less than lay his hand on his body, and turn his gaze aloft, and exclaim, "Though death shatters this shell, the soul may survive, and I confidently hope to live forever." Meanwhile, the believer and the speculator, combining to form a Christian philosophy wherein doubt and faith, thought and freedom, reason and sentiment, nature and revelation, all embrace, even as the truth of things and the experience of life demand, may both adopt for their own the expression ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... Ten thousand workingmen and women have been thrown out of employment by the mills of this city, owing to the unprecedented rise in the price of cotton, caused by the recent manipulations of that famous Wall Street speculator, Dan Bull, who by forcing up the prices in the speculative market has added millions to his own bank account during the past few weeks. The mills have been shut down indefinitely and starvation is now facing thousands of men, women ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... tolls levied there so much lighter, that the attendance at Ramani's fell off grievously. It is well known that when a new market is started, proprietors already in the field endeavour to break it up with the aid of paid lathials (clubmen). If, as often happens, the daring speculator be a man of substance, he employs similar means in his defence. Free fights occur on market-days, ending in many a broken head—sometimes in slaughter. The battle is directed by Gomasthas (bailiffs) on either side, with the full knowledge of their masters, ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... speculator with his hand-cuffs to bind his victims after the sale; and while they were doing their writings, the Christian portion of the slaves asked permission to kneel in prayer on the ground before they separated, which was granted. And while bathing each other with tears of sorrow ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb
... should really increase our interest in his writings. Metaphysicians, whilst admiring his acuteness, have been disgusted by his adherence to an outworn theology; and theologians have cared little for a man who was primarily a philosophical speculator, and has used his philosophy to bring into painful relief the most terrible dogmas of the ancient creeds. Edwards, however, is interesting just because he is a connecting link between two widely different phases of thought. He connects the expiring Calvinism of ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... materials bought in Rhodesian shops; but when well cut, they were battered and worn. Take, for instance, Mrs. Lisle's gown of pale-green satin and sequins. She had been an actress before she married Barton Lisle and came out to the ups and downs of a mining speculator's life, and all her clothes were rechauffees of the toilettes in which she had once dazzled provincial audiences. Gay Liscannon's frock of pale rose-leaf silk, with a skirt that was a flurry of delicious little frills and a bodice of lace, sewn with little paste dew drops that folded ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... selling. Some person formerly rich sells clothes or furniture or jewellery in return for food; the buyer sells again at an enhanced price, and so on through perhaps twenty hands, until a final purchaser is found in some well-to-do peasant or nouveau riche speculator. Again, most people have relations in the country, whom they visit from time to time, bringing back with them great bags of flour. It is illegal for private persons to bring food into Moscow, and the trains are searched; but, by corruption or cunning, experienced people can elude ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... Castanier went forthwith in search of the said Claparon, a merchant who had a reputation for taking heavy risks that meant wealth or utter ruin. The money lender walked away as Castanier came up. A gesture betrayed the speculator's despair. ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... Stockton street, between Sacramento and Clay streets, stood the old Pioche residence, wherein were given many lavish entertainments, for its owner was an epicure and hospitable to a degree. He was a heavy speculator and at one time possessed of much property. His death was a mystery and has never been solved. During the '90's his home was ...
— California 1849-1913 - or the Rambling Sketches and Experiences of Sixty-four - Years' Residence in that State. • L. H. Woolley
... statistician told the tale of Horatius at the bridge. In "Under Western Eyes" the obfuscation is achieved by "a teacher of languages," endlessly lamenting his lack of the "high gifts of imagination and expression." In "Youth" and "Heart of Darkness" the chronicler and speculator is the shadowy Marlow, a "cloak to goe inbisabell" for Conrad himself. In "Chance" there are two separate stories, imperfectly welded together. Elsewhere there are hesitations, goings back, interpolations, interludes in ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... not room for it in our barn and storehouse. We could not use a quarter of the potatoes, even if we all remained at the farm through winter. We offered them for sale to the steamers and traders, and sold three hundred bushels to a speculator, who doubled his money on them at a settlement, where the people had come too late to make a crop ...
— Field and Forest - The Fortunes of a Farmer • Oliver Optic
... the West than to see to it that the public lands pass directly into the hands of the actual settler instead of into the hands of the man who, if he can, will force the settler to pay him the unearned profit of the land speculator, or will hold him in economic and political dependence as a tenant. If we are to have homes on the public lands, they must be conserved for the men ...
— The Fight For Conservation • Gifford Pinchot
... that followed the close of the Revolutionary War, Judge Cooper was a speculator in lands on a large scale, and was steadily engaged in the settlement of the tracts which he owned and those in which he had a joint interest with others. His judgment concerning land values was keen and far-sighted. That he was not infallible is shown by his payment of ten dollars an acre for land ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... The speculator, whose name was well known in financial circles, took it, examined the seal and signatures curiously, ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... soul enter heaven at the very same moment? Is heaven in the atmosphere? He who asserts it is a very bold speculator. Is it out in the ether? If so, where? And how is it our telescopes cannot detect it? If heaven is a place, as it must be if it exists at all, it cannot very well be within the astronomical universe. Now the farthest stars are inconceivably remote. Our sun is more than 90,000,000 ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... a "little game," and had, with perfect equanimity, won the entire fortune—amounting to some forty dollars—of that guileless youth. After the game was finished, Mr. Oakhurst drew the youthful speculator behind the door and thus addressed him: "Tommy, you're a good little man, but you can't gamble worth a cent. Don't try it over again." He then handed him his money back, pushed him gently from the room, and so made a devoted slave ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... Jackson: "Governments, like corporations, are considered without souls, and according to the code of some people's morality, should be swindled and cheated on every occasion." Linton gave this picture of "a notorious speculator who has an ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... all—it was only practicable for a nation. The things I recollect of the life in the village of Melrose, of 700 inhabitants, have been talked over with my mother, and many embodied in a little MS. volume of reminiscences of her life. I hold more from her than from my father; but, as he was an unlucky speculator, I inherit from him Hope, which is invaluable to a social or political reformer. School holidays were only a rarity in harvest time for the parish school. At Miss Phin's we had, besides, a week at Christmas. The boys had only New Year's Day. Saturday was only a half-holiday. We ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... da Vinci as we now read it there are some variations from the first edition. There, the painter who has fixed the outward type of Christ for succeeding centuries was a bold speculator, holding lightly by other men's beliefs, setting philosophy above Christianity. Words of his, trenchant enough to justify this impression, are not recorded, and would have been out of keeping with a genius of which one characteristic is the tendency to lose itself ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... handsome fountain, seats shaded by groups of fine trees at their full growth, completed the pastoral charm of the place. A winding path led across the garden from the back of the house. It had been continued by the speculator who purchased the property, until it reached a road at the extremity of the grounds which communicated with the Crystal Palace. Visitors to the hotel had such pleasant associations with the garden that many of them returned at future opportunities instead ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... America has the same set routine of experience. It springs up on land selected and laid out by a real estate speculator. The flimsiest and most combustible of buildings are rushed up. When the town has about five thousand inhabitants and these fire-trap buildings are close enough to burn one another, a fire breaks out and sweeps the whole thing away, destroying human lives, valuable stock, and priceless ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... such seclusion sheltered Peers, Their wealth and influence might save it; No speculator ever fears Artists or writers such as ...
— Punch Volume 102, May 28, 1892 - or the London Charivari • Various
... lady insists on having the best suites of rooms wherever we go—and the palace comes cheaper for a two months' term. My lord tried to get it for longer; he says the quiet of Venice is good for his nerves. But a foreign speculator has secured the palace, and is going to turn it into an hotel. The Baron is still with us, and there have been more disagreements about money matters. I don't like the Baron—and I don't find the attractions of my lady grow on ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... fresh fuel to the rumor blaze. Finally Boston became so excited over the situation that I came out with a public statement in which I frankly showed what I was trying to do. In all such affairs, however, the explanations of any man known in his business as a stock speculator or manipulator are never accepted as true. It is assumed that such announcements are merely blinds to disguise his real purpose; that they are feints or manoeuvres in his campaign. So when I declared that I was working out plans for the consolidation ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... it has been, is not so striking as that of another town. There is a well-known story of a traveller, in a newly-settled part of North America, inquiring his way at a lonely hut to a 'city' which made a conspicuous figure in some land-speculator's map, and receiving the startling information, that he was then standing in the principal square. An adventure of much the same nature befell a traveller in South Africa, who, in February 1850, attempted, while on his way from Bloem Fontein to Natal, to discover the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various
... feed on their toil and their heart's blood? Am I a speculator or a capitalist? Did I steal my fortune from a starving people? No! They know this very well. And they envy me nothing. The miserable mass of the people is generous to its leaders. What I have acquired has come ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... agent declared at the custom-house that they belonged to the King, and so escaped the payment of duties. Theywere then, as occasion rose, sold to the King at a huge profit, always under fictitious names. Often they were sold to some favored merchant or speculator, who sold them in turn to Bigot's confederate, the King's storekeeper; and sometimes they passed through several successive hands, till the price rose to double or triple the first cost, the Intendant and ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... usually gratify the curiosity of his visitors, but added that if I thought it would be any stimulus to the industry of other women, he should be glad to tell me the story. About forty years ago he had been an unsuccessful speculator in Merino sheep, and his wife strained every nerve to help her family. On going one day to the country store for a supply of knitting, she expressed so much disappointment on being told that there was none for her, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... here docking, and during our stay Captain Gillespie rejoiced all hands by rewarding them for their pluck in fighting and floating the ship again with the present of a month's wages for a spree ashore. "Old Jock" could well afford to be liberal, too; for a native speculator gave him a better price for the balance of his marmalade than he would have realised if he had fed the men on it ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... to fish from 'em, too. Humph! I guess I'm out of soundin's. When I thought fifteen dollars was a high price for paintin' a view of a house I was slightly mistaken. Next time I'll offer the paintin' feller the house and ask him what he considers a fair boot, besides. Sam Cahoon's a better speculator than I thought he was. Hello, Commodore! ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... singer, like many another brilliant cantatrice, in the very dawn of her great career fell into the nets of a shrewd and unprincipled operatic speculator. Signor Lanari, an impressario of Florence, recognized the future success of the inexperienced young girl, and decoyed her into an engagement for six years on terms shamefully low, for Giulia's modesty did not appreciate her own ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... the times—surely there must have been many; and this proves to us, that he was a low fellow without political connections, and that he never had been behind the curtain. Now, what business had such a man to set himself up for a writer of history and a speculator on politics? Besides, his history is imperfect; and, suppose it were not, what is its subject? Why simply one single war; a war which lasted twenty-seven years; but which, after all, through its whole course was enlivened by only two events worthy to enter into general ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... assumes to criticise Mr. Darwin with the superciliousness of a young schoolmaster looking over a boy's theme, it is difficult not to take him more seriously than he deserves or perhaps desires. One would think that Mr. Butler was the travelled and laborious observer of Nature, and Mr. Darwin the pert speculator who takes all his facts ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... twenty-five dollars a month and my living from a great American actor. When I got back to America—with him—I had two hundred and fifty dollars in cash, and good clothes. I started a peanut-stand, and sold papers and books, and became a speculator. I heard two men talking one day at my stall about a railway that was going to run through a certain village, and how they intended to buy up the whole place. I had four hundred and fifty dollars then. I went down to that village, and bought some lots myself. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... AGAINST THE SPECULATOR.—The Chicago city council has offered to reduce the theater licenses in amounts from one thousand to five thousand dollars if the theater managers will refuse to take back from agencies unsold tickets. Nine managers are said to have agreed to ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... sheep have no business to meddle. Such grand struggles are between the shepherds. Thus, as the defaulters are guilty of having wanted to win too much, very little sympathy is felt as a rule for the misfortunes brought about by the coalition of the Nucingens. If a speculator blows his brains out, if a stockbroker bolts, if a lawyer makes off with the fortune of a hundred families—which is far worse than killing a man—if a banker is insolvent, all these catastrophes are forgotten in Paris in few months, and buried ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... live in Walden Woods;—Cato, not Uticensis, but Concordiensis. Some say that he was a Guinea Negro. There are a few who remember his little patch among the walnuts, which he let grow up till he should be old and need them; but a younger and whiter speculator got them at last. He too, however, occupies an equally narrow house at present. Cato's half-obliterated cellar-hole still remains, though known to few, being concealed from the traveller by a fringe of pines. It is now filled with the smooth sumach (Rhus ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... to the fate of a poor patient had suddenly given place to a most tender solicitude when he saw that the speculator was serious, and that there was a ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... Hamilton was in, and before it should be known he was going out, would excite a newspaper conflagration, as the ultimate arrangement would not be known. He said McLurg had occurred to him as a man of first-rate abilities, but it is said that he is a speculator. He asked me what sort of a man Wolcot was. I told him I knew nothing of him myself; I had heard him characterized as a cunning man. I asked him whether some person could not take my office per interim, till he should make an appointment; as Mr. Randolph, for instance. 'Yes,' says he; 'but there ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... ago, land on Beacon Hill was as cheap as public documents. Ministers are enjoined not to be worldly minded, and not to be given to filthy lucre. But the Reverend James Allen would furnish an excellent pattern for a modern real-estate speculator. In addition to his pasture on the south side of Cambridge Street, he had also a twenty-acre pasture on the north side of that street, between Chambers Street and Charles River, extending to Poplar Street, for which he paid one hundred and forty pounds, New-England ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... "I'll bet there's a speculator charging 'em admission at the gate," grumbled Dick Blaine, coming to stand beside her in pajamas. "Sure you're right, Tess; those are swans, and that's ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... of the West, with a cowboy, land speculator, and lover for its hero, Mr. Whitson's new novel, without being in the least a copy, has many of the attractions of ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... the same time dangerous and leading to occasions of sin, as is the pursuit of honour too; and in consequence, if studied by itself, and apart from the control of Revealed Truth, sure to conduct a speculator to unchristian conclusions. Holy Scripture tells us distinctly, that "covetousness," or more literally the love of money, "is the root of all evils;" and that "they that would become rich fall into temptation;" ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... gentlemen of her Court, and found that many of their forbears were sullied by the taint of Trade. The founders of both Prince Tapfer von Schneiderleinberg's and Count Daumerlingenstamm's houses were tailors; Baron von Bohnenranken derived his title from a speculator who, after a remarkably unsuccessful venture in cattle, had made a colossal coup in beans. As for Prince Hansmeinigel, his pretensions to high descent were even more questionable—at least, if ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... lasted more than two and a half years. In September, 1891, there was a corner in the local market which forced the September price up to seventeen and one-quarter cents. George Kaltenbach, a wealthy speculator living in Paris, combining with three operators in Havre, Hamburg, and Antwerp, succeeded in breaking the corner, forcing the price down to ten and eight-tenths cents. They then changed to the bull side, buying heavily in all markets of the world. This was continued until early ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... convoy, whose conversation prepares them gradually for that exceeding and eternal weight of glory which is to be theirs as they enter in at the gate. Bunyan has thus, in this blissful passage from the river to the gate, done what no other devout writer, or dreamer, or speculator, that we are aware of, has ever done; he has filled what perhaps in most minds is a mere blank, a vacancy, or at most a bewilderment and mist of glory, with definite and beatific images, with natural thoughts, and with the sympathizing communion ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... was more familiarly than favorably known in financial circles of Boston, as the man who had put afloat more wild-cat stocks than any other speculator on the street. It might be supposed that his connection with any scheme would be enough to wreck its prospects, yet whatever he took hold of floated for a time. There was always a feeling among his victims that at length he had come ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... come on business. He gave her a nod, however, and an affectionate smile, and indicated with his blue pencil a chair on the other side of the table. He had once made three hundred rupees in tea shares, and that gave him the air of a capitalist and speculator gamely shrewd. Tapping the table with his blue pencil he asked Miss Howe how the world was ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... eternal rainbow flung its shimmering arch across the mighty caldron at the base of the fall; and straight before us in one unbroken leap came down Pi-wi-ack from a granite shelf nearly four hundred feet in height and sixty feet in perfectly horizontal width. Some enterprising speculator, who has since ceased to take the original seventy-five cents' toll, a few years ago built a substantial set of rude ladders against the perpendicular wall over which Pi-wi-ack rushes. We found it still standing, and climbed the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... had, however, something more influential to overcome than a "Marcy patch." Very early in the campaign it dawned upon the bankers of the State that, if the United States Bank went out of business, government deposits would come to them; and from that moment every jobber, speculator and money borrower, as well as every bank officer and director, rejoiced in the veto. The prejudices of the people, always easily excited against moneyed corporations, had already turned against the "monster monopoly," ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... trivial things, invented and pursued for bread, become very serious matters of fact: and, apart from this consideration, I am not at all prepared to say, myself, that if Caleb had been a Lord Chamberlain, or a Member of Parliament, or a lawyer, or even a great speculator, he would have dealt in toys one whit less whimsical, while I have a very great doubt whether they would ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... remarkable in Stevenson is that a man who was so much the dreamer of dreams—the mystic moralist, the constant questioner and speculator on human destiny and human perversity, and the riddles that arise on the search for the threads of motive and incentives to human action—moreover, a man, who constantly suffered from one of the most trying and weakening forms of ill-health—should ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... two children, and about to be presented with a third, Proudhon was obliged to devise some immediate means of gaining a living; he resumed his labors, and published, at first anonymously, the "Manual of a Speculator in the Stock-Exchange." Later, in 1857, after having completed the work, he did not hesitate to sign it, acknowledging in the preface his indebtedness ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... bisness," said the highly gratified Bill, turning with a threatening gesture upon a speculator opposite. "Wot do you say ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... panorama, unrolling itself at a hand-gallop. At Miranda, which was crowded with soldiers, there was a diligence that plied to San Sebastian by tacit arrangement with the knights of the road—that is, the adherents of Don Carlos. As the fares were very expensive, I suspect the speculator who ran the coach was heavily taxed for the privilege, and recouped himself by shifting the imposition to the shoulders of passengers. The day was fine, the roads were good, the vehicle was well-horsed, and we got away from the boundary of republican civilization ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... satisfactorily proved, be called for. In such a state of things, it is unquestionably the duty of government to use its controlling power. The payment of ten per cent deposit is no guarantee at all. Whilst new stocks are at premium, a hundred pounds, in the hands of an enterprising speculator, may figure as the representative of many thousands in twenty different railway schemes. The limit of disposable capital in the country must—if all the new projects are permitted to go on—be reached, and that erelong; then comes a period of gambling whilst ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... time we shall see an illustration of the naive shamelessness of the turn-coat. The spiritual process of conversion is worth noticing; Paul was converted to be a converter. But the scurrying of the intellectual speculator from the position which has failed into the position which has won, with the full intention of scurrying back again if necessary, and always with the claim to instruct other people, is an expression of the alarming fact that life has become not an ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... Parliament for the City of Westminster, bound by the most sacred of all duties, not to involve himself in any situation by which his honest judgment could be warped, and his parliamentary conduct influenced—they found Lord Cochrane to have been a deep speculator in omnium; that he had been so for one week only; that on that Monday morning he had a large balance on hand, and that on that Monday morning he had sold out the whole of that balance, and ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... proved so successful, that like a true speculator it made me want to plunge deeper—into the pumpkin field! I find myself this morning dissatisfied with what I have done—and beg to send a cake to go along with the pies—to be apportioned of course as your judgment shall suggest. I begged the cake from Sophy, who ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... which Froude fully shared, breaks out with amusing vigour. "If," wrote the younger historian, "the tendency of trade to assume a form of mere self-interest be irresistible," etc. "And is it?" comments the elder. "Let us all get prussic acid, then." A recent speculator preferred cyanide of potassium. But if "mere self-interest" comprises fraudulent balance-sheets, it cannot claim any support from political economy. When Carlyle drew up a petition to the House of Commons for amending the law of copyright, he was guided by self- interest, but it was not ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... recognized and arrested in the island of Vlieland. Slatius and others were also intercepted in their attempts at escape.—Stoutenbourg, the most culpable of all, was the most fortunate; probably from the energy of character which marks the difference between a bold adventurer and a timid speculator. He is believed to have passed from The Hague in the same manner as Grotius quitted his prison; and, by the aid of a faithful servant, he accomplished his escape through various perils, and finally reached Brussels, where the archduchess ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... errors, felt compelled to provide a way of escape from an incredible and unjust fate, and therefore further postulated an incredible and unjust forgiveness. Schemes that are elaborated by human speculation, without regard to the facts of life, are apt to land the speculator in thought-morasses, whence he can only extricate himself by blundering through the mire in an opposite direction. A superfluous eternal hell was balanced by a superfluous forgiveness, and thus the uneven scales of justice were again rendered level. ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... housing of families do we not all have to depend upon the architect, the builder, the real estate broker, the speculator in land, the laws concerning boundaries, taxes and title deeds, rent and landlords' powers, and press all one upon another for a chance for a home when we elect to live where many other people want also to live? Is, then, the shelter of the family no longer ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... Idealist: that is, an Idealist who postulates an external universe as the unknown cause of certain modifications we are conscious of within ourselves, and which, according to his view, we never really get beyond. This species of speculator is the commonest, but he is the least trustworthy of any; and his fallacies are all the more dangerous by reason of the air of plausibility with which they are invested. From first to last, he represents us as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... know the history of it, but can only guess that once on a time some enterprising speculator, fired by the sudden Third-Empire blaze of Biarritz, conceived the project of starting a rival watering place, here to the South, and that they were to make its beginning with a colossal Hotel. At any rate, here, rounding a desolate point of the foreshore, ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... deprivations. The tradesmen who charges too high a rate of profit, loses his customers, and so is checked in his greediness. Diminishing practice teaches the inattentive doctor to bestow more trouble on his patients. The too credulous creditor and the over-sanguine speculator, alike learn by the difficulties which rashness entails on them, the necessity of being more cautious in their engagements. And so throughout the life of every citizen. In the quotation so often made ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... how small or uninteresting the locality, if it is to be fashionable, il n'y aura point de difficulte. If there are no natural attractions, the ingenious and enterprising speculator will provide them; if there are no trees, he will bring them,—no rocks, he will manufacture them,—no river, he will cut a winding canal,—no town, he will build one,—no casino, he will erect a ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... the reconcilers argued on the basis of their own ideas and of the philosophies of their time. The early physicist thought that myth concealed a physical philosophy; the early etymologist saw in it a confusion of language; the early political speculator supposed that myth was an invention of legislators; the literary Euhemerus found the secret of myths in the course of an imaginary voyage to a fabled island. Then came the moment of the Christian attacks, and Pagan philosophers, ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... Israel Biedermann?' asked Fielding. The name belonged to a speculator who had lately been raised into prominence by ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... sorry to be left to himself in his utter bewilderment! Flo, separated from her detrimental uncle, and placed in a convent school! Tarbox, the obscure pioneer, a shrewd speculator emerging into success, and taking the uncle's place! And all this within that month which he had wasted with absurd repinings. How feeble seemed his own adventure and advancement; how even ludicrous his pretensions to any patronage and superiority. ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... looking around in all directions to make sure that nobody was observing him, he produced from under his blanket a piece of gold-bearing quartz. Without saying a word, he held the bit of rock before the eyes of the speculator. ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... studies what mines are in best repute on any stock exchange. All engineers must wish to have the industry under them in high repute. The writer knows of several mines paying 20% on their stocks which yet stand lower in price on account of short ore-reserves than mines paying less annual returns. The speculator, who is an element not to be wholly disregarded, wishes a rise in his mining stock, and if development proceeds at a pace in advance of production, he will gain a legitimate rise through the increase ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover
... sublime to the ridiculous. Those who understand Tolstoy's "Power of Darkness," wherein but those of the lowest strata appear, will be overwhelmed by the terrible tragedy in their lives, in comparison with which the worries of some crowned head or the money troubles of some powerful speculator will appear insignificant indeed. That which this master unfolds before us is no longer a plunge from heaven to hell; the entire life of these people is an Inferno. The terrible darkness and ignorance of these people, forced on them by the ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... immediately parallel with the Seine, there is a noble terrace, now converted into garden ground—which commands an immediate and extensive view of the embouchure of the river. It is the property of a speculator, residing at Havre. ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... react. They said that Lars Hogstad had caused this great epidemic, for it was he who had brought the spirit of speculation into the parish. This penny malady had originated in the parish board; for this body itself had acted as leading speculator. Down to the youth of twenty years, all were endeavoring by sharp bargains to make the one dollar, ten; extreme parsimony, in order to lay up in the beginning, was followed by an exceeding lavishness in the end: and as the thoughts of all were directed to money only, a disposition to selfishness, ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various
... his virtue of beneficence becomes a vice of theft. So it is with gambling. It is giving the natural tendency to chance, to risk an illegitimate play. The person who is afraid to risk anything accomplishes but little in any way, is seldom a speculator, and never a gambler. Usually the gambler is the man who is naturally full of hazard, who loves to run risks, to take chances. Nor will one find a more practical and useful tendency in one's make-up than this. See the discoverer of America and his brave ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... re-examination of the question, Professor Dana, the greatest living authority on coral reefs, had rejected them. As Professor Judd said, "If this be a 'conspiracy of silence,' where, alas! can the geological speculator seek for fame?" Any warning not to publish in haste was but advice to a still unknown man not to attack a seemingly well-established theory without making sure of his ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... 'Speculator,' said Mrs Fuller. 'A strange man, successful, silent, unmarried and, I think, in love. Has beautiful rooms they say on Gramercy Park. Lives alone with an old servant. We got to know him through the accident. Mr Fuller and he have done business ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... public calamity, moreover, everybody feels that he ought to participate in it in some way, if not as a sufferer, then as a sympathizer, and, in either capacity, as a speculator upon its causes and probable effects. The learned historian, Monsieur Alcofribas, who preserves for our instruction "the heroic deeds and prowesses" of the great king of the Dipsodes, tells us how that once, when Philip of Macedon threatened Corinth, the virtuous inhabitants of that city ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... scientific critic does he afford, by whom we are informed that phrenology is a great science, and psychology a chimaera; that Gall was one of the great men of his age, and that Cuvier was "brilliant but superficial"![16] How unlucky must one consider the bold speculator who, just before the dawn of modern histology—which is simply the application of the microscope to anatomy—reproves what he calls "the abuse of microscopic investigations," and "the exaggerated credit" attached to them; who, when the morphological uniformity of the tissues of the great ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... intimation that with age he was, to employ a sporting phrase, "losing his punch." The second weakness that lay exposed to Redell was Cappy's passion for wringing a profit, by ingenious means, from apparently barren soil where no profit had ever hitherto burgeoned. At heart Cappy was a speculator; only the fact that he was a prudent and careful speculator had conduced to enrich ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... significant than that useful thing called money. Thoreau used to say that if a man spent half his time in the woods for the love of the woods he was in danger of being looked upon as a loafer; but if he spent all his time as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making Earth bald before her time, he was regarded as an ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... frowned, and Cynthia vanished, to be replaced by the Wall Street speculator who had "made a pyramid in Milwaukees." Whence, then, had Cynthia telephoned? Of course, his alert mind hit on a missed mail as the genesis of the run to Hereford early on Sunday, but he asked ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... with wines and table stores, you will be offered a share in profits coming from a doubtful source. If a young woman dreams of this she will have an offer of marriage from a speculator or gambler. ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... against wealthy patrons? He was "giving to the poor," not money, for he himself was as poor as any of them; but his time, labor and professional skill; he was "giving to the poor;" he was "lending to the Lord," and he "liked the security." And the most successful speculator that ever made a fortune on 'change never, never invested time, labor or money to a ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... was need of one from the top of Trinity Church steeple to the moon! The greater facility of travel, the greater prosperity! But I am opposed to all railroads, the depot for which is an unprincipled speculator's pocket. ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... Times index, the FTI [Brit.], the over-the-counter index, NASDAQ index. [person or firm trading securities] broker, stockbroker, jobber, stock dealer, odd-lot dealer; specialist. [person who buys or sells stocks] investor, speculator, operator; bull, buyer; bear, short seller; scalper, arbitrager^, arbitrageur^; stockholder, share-holder, stockholder of record; bond holder, coupon- clipper [Sarc.]. investment; speculation. V. speculate, invest, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... true that I have been all my life a speculator and observer in all domestic matters, having them so confidentially under my eye in our own household; and so, if I write on a pure woman's matter, it must be understood that I am only your pen and mouth-piece,—only giving tangible ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... believe in is a delusion, then my God ceases to exist. True, I may if I think it worth while acquire another one, but that will not revive the first. It is what people believe that is the important question, not what some ingenious speculator may succeed in making the belief ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... "You make a good bid, sir," he said, in his slow American way, emphasising all the most unimportant words: "But you overlook one element. I am a man of science, not a speculator. I have trained myself for medical work, at considerable cost, in the best schools of Europe, and I do not propose to fling away the results of much arduous labour by throwing myself out elastically into ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen |
