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More "Speculate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... however, inclined to speculate or gamble even with their chances, also in stocks, business or, in fact, anything in ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro
... childhood, he felt that her attention was no longer his; that a discord had come in between their minds; that she had passed out of his power. This certainty of intuition lasted but for an instant; he had no time to wonder or to speculate as to what had affected her so adversely to his wishes before the door opened and Kinraid came in. Then Hepburn knew that she must have heard his coming footsteps, ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... nothing of the precise causes which conduced to unusual Tartar activity at the dawn of Chinese true history: in the absence of any Tartar knowledge of writing, it seems impossible now that we ever can know it. Still less are we in a position to speculate profitably how far the movements on the Chinese frontier, in 800-600 B.C., may be connected with similar restlessness on the Persian and Greek frontiers, of which, again, we know nothing very illuminating or specific. It is certain ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... upon life relaxed. A week before November 11, 1890, he went to bed and stayed there. People began to speculate as to whether his unique prediction—or I should say, his decree—would be fulfilled to the ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... To speculate as to the race which built the primitive stone monuments of Brittany is almost as futile as it would be to theorize upon the date of their erection.[6] A generation ago it was usual to refer all European megalithic monuments to a 'Celtic' origin, but European ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... have the command of the story, and the artist was to illustrate him. How far these altered relations would have worked quite smoothly if Seymour had lived, and if Dickens' story had not so soon assumed the proportions of a colossal success, it is idle to speculate. Seymour died by his own hand before the second number was published, and so ceased to be in a position to assert himself. It was, however, in deference to the peculiar bent of his art that Mr. Winkle, with his disastrous sporting proclivities, made part of the first conception ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... composition. The systems which professed to unfold the nature of God, of man, and of the universe, entertained the curiosity of the philosophic student; and according to the temper of his mind, he might doubt with the Sceptics, or decide with the Stoics, sublimely speculate with Plato, or severely argue with Aristotle. The pride of the adverse sects had fixed an unattainable term of moral happiness and perfection; but the race was glorious and salutary; the disciples of Zeno, and even those of Epicurus, were taught both to act and to suffer; and the death ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... discover the many faces of nature. See Empedocles, giving away his fortune to poor girls, that he might attack the Anthropomorphism of his day; or Democritus declining the sovereignty of Abdera, that he might have leisure to speculate on the distinction between reflection and sensation; or Diogenes living in a tub; or Plato in his garden; or Aristotle in the shady side of the Lyceum; or Zeno guarding the keys of the citadel. See the good Aurelius, in later and more corrupt ages, forsaking the pleasures of an ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... Esq., of Weald Hall, Essex; and as that gentleman, by this time, must have some of his flock to dispose off, we think their introduction among cottagers, for their wool and also for their milk, a fair subject for some of our female readers to speculate on. This variety of the common goat (or, probably, it may be a distinct species) is a fine-looking animal, and would be very ornamental in a park, on a ruin, on the side of a rock, or in a churchyard. It would also be very pleasant to have a home-made Cashmere shawl. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 561, August 11, 1832 • Various
... well as by southern men, and with the increase of information, there has been a subsidence of prejudice, and a preparation of the mind to receive truth. Our friends are still in a minority. It would be vain to speculate as to the period when their position will be reversed. Whether sooner or later, or never, they are still entitled to our regard and respect. A few years ago those who maintained our constitutional right, and to secure it voted for the Kansas and Nebraska ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis
... must be something like a sense of duty in these poor creatures, that they thus of themselves, and of good-will return to the certainty of being salted and dried. This may sound very ridiculous, Eusebius, but there is matter in it to muse upon; and if we want to know man, we must speculate a little beyond him, and learn him by similities and differences. He has best knowledge of his own home and country who has wandered into a terra incognita, and studied the differences of soil and climate. And besides that every man is a world to himself, and may find ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... flatness of the day! The weariness! The sense of all being finished! She did not even allow herself to speculate as to what Hector was doing with himself. She must never let her thoughts turn that way at all if she could help it. She must devote herself to Josiah and to getting through the time. But something had gone out of her life which could ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... had lessened the sharpness of their feelings, they learned to speculate reasonably about the phenomenon, which Mr. Grant had accepted as something not to be scoffed away, not to be treated as a poor joke, but to be put aside as something ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... Alice who said, "Shut up, Pop"—and rather casually at that—and she and me went on to speculate and then to argue about which buttons we ought to push, if any and ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... says is very sensible," replied Athos; "we must speculate upon the faults of people, and not upon their virtues. Monsieur Abbe, you are ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... informants must not have known or not enforced combing taboos, while the parents of Stewart's informants must have considered them proper and so instructed their children. We can speculate, on this basis, that the taboo on hair combing and scratching was abandoned by the Washo some time in the first half of the century. Whether this can be credited to the influence of the white man or to a continuing pattern of change is a matter ...
— Washo Religion • James F. Downs
... mechanical, electrical, chemical, or what not. It is beside the question to point to the fact that in Nature 'new elements are making their appearance and old elements disappearing,' for though we may speculate as to the manner of formation of uranium and thorium, and though the production of radio-active matters in Nature at the present time and always seems to be a well-established fact, such phenomena have not even an analogy with those ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson
... "Physics are concerned with things which have a principle of motion in themselves; mathematics speculate on permanent, but not transcendental and self-existent things; and there is another science separate from these two, which treats of that which is immutable and transcendental, if indeed there exists such a substance, as we shall endeavor to show that there does. This ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... He then began to speculate as to just what a body would do a thousand or ten thousand miles from the earth. So high as we could go, or as deep as we could dig, this drawing power was always ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... or even in the ruin of great expectations by the collapse of fictitious values, as in the stoppage of immigration. The country has been ever since adjusting itself to a normal growth, and the recovery is just in proportion to the arrival of settlers who come to work and not to speculate. I had heard that the "boom" had left San Diego and vicinity the "deadest" region to be found anywhere. A speculator would probably so regard it. But the people have had a great accession of common-sense. ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... they came to speculate upon the part that the head chieftain was likely to take, affecting Grimcke and Long, they were all at sea. It would ever be a source of wonder that he had been transformed from a relentless enemy into the ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... account. As I passed along Broad Street, I made one or two bold attempts to rally. I stared inquisitively at the different passers by, endeavouring, by a snatch at the expression of their faces, to speculate on the turn of their minds, and the nature of their occupations; I then began to whistle and hum some lively air, at the same time twirling my glove with affected unconcern; but nothing would do; every exertion I made to appear cheerful, not only found no answering sympathy ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII., No. 324, July 26, 1828 • Various
... place there. In fifteen years I never knew a week to pass without a murder there, rarely a Sunday. It was the wickedest, as it was the foulest, spot in all the city. In the slum the two are interchangeable terms for reasons that are clear enough for me. But I shall not speculate about it, only state the facts. The old houses fairly reeked with outrage and violence. When they were torn down, I counted seventeen deeds of blood in that place which I myself remembered, and those I had forgotten probably numbered seven ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... that's just the discomfort for him—he feels, as you said just now, kind of lonely: he feels rather abandoned and even, I think, a little betrayed. So far from being jealous he yearns for me and regrets me. The only thing he really takes seriously is to speculate and understand, to talk about the reasons and the essence of things: the people who do that are the highest. The applications, the consequences, the vulgar little effects, belong to a lower plane, for which one must doubtless be ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... energy as pronounced. I began to doubt if my surmise, that her excitement and exaltation were due to the anticipation of an early return to Bayport, was a correct one. I began to thing there must be some other course and to speculate concerning it. And I, too, grew ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... The sun lit up her bobbed hair that shone like brass and had touched her white skin with a warm finger. Wistful and elfish, sitting like Puck on a toadstool, she might have slipped out of some mossy corner of the woods to taste the breeze and speculate about life. She wore a butter-colored sport shirt wide open at the neck and brown cord riding breeches and puttees. Slight and small boned and rather thin she could easily have passed for a delicate boy or, except for something at the back of her eyes that showed that she had not always ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... available time and strength by the work of attendance in the House of Commons. He agreed that it was extremely adverse to the growth of greatness among our public men; and he said the mass of public business increased so fast that he could not tell what it was to end in, and did not venture to speculate even for a few years upon the mode of administering public affairs. He thought the consequence was already manifest in ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... was but little. He could only speculate whether or not the duke would give up Brussels, and retire for reinforcements. If the two armies could effect a union, they would be near about the strength of the French, but then the Prussians were cut to pieces; so the ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... young man throw himself in an agony of grief into his chair. I had no time, however, to speculate as to what it was which was troubling him, for his eleven colleagues had already fixed ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... artist be able to make an interesting picture of me? I had done it with the broom, and the milk wagon, and the rain spout. It was not what a thing was that made it interesting, but what I was able to draw out of it. It was exciting to speculate as to what Miss Hale was going to draw out ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... "I will not now speculate upon the effect, at home or abroad, of the adoption of your policy, nor inquire what action of the Rebel leaders has rendered something of the kind important. Your whole administration gives the highest assurance that you are moved, not so much from a desire to see all men ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... equally to be condemned on principles of public policy. It would lead to fraud, oppression, and corruption. As a sworn minister of the courts of justice, the attorney ought not to be permitted to avail himself of the knowledge he acquires in his professional character, to speculate in lawsuits. The precedent would tend to corrupt the profession, and produce lasting mischief to the community."[48] "This is not the time nor place," says Chief Justice Gibson, "to discuss the legality of contingent fees; though it be clear that if the British statutes of ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... agriculturist, who appears to be watching them. He is in the careless and ever-admitted picturesque position of leaning over a garden fence; but whether the invariables are aware of the little gentleman, and are consequently conversing in an undertone, we leave every beholder to speculate and settle for himself. Behind the worthy small farmer, and coming from the door of his residence, most cleverly introduced, is his wife (we know it to represent the wife, from the clear fact of the lady's appearance being typical of the gentleman's), who is in the act of observing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 18, 1841 • Various
... remains unscanned long enough it fades into illegibility, never reinforced by the scanning process. Sensory data, coming in from the outside world as it does, is probably permanent. But the thought patterns originating within the mind itself, the processes that correlate and cross-index and speculate on and hypothesize about the sensory data, those are much more fragile. A man might glance once through a Latin primer and have every page imprinted indelibly on his recording mechanism and still be unable to make sense of the Nauta in cubito ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... would at least strike somewhere in the midst of the debris and add more or less to the wreckage. As to whether the Boche commander-in-chief had been caught napping and buried in the ruins, was a matter about which they could only speculate. ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach
... she, seeing through his thin disguise, had it on her tongue to tell him. But, instead, she took a few dancing steps away, and, with no such intention whatever, stood just under the mistletoe as she laughingly said, "That reminds me of what father often says: How nice it would be to speculate, if one only knew every time ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... was dead, and his neighbors, who knew that he must have yielded to the force of a sudden and new temptation, did not care to speculate upon ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... was evident. Indeed she must have been quite out of her mind to have called him Martin in that shameless fashion. The fact that the name had slipped so spontaneously from her lips and that she hastened to correct her mistake caused the man to speculate with delight as to whether she was wont to think of him by this familiar cognomen. This thought, however, was of minor importance, the flash of an instant. What chiefly disturbed Martin was the ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... "We can only speculate," he said; "but, as I have said, I have my theory. Oakley was a just man, and in punishing his old servant for the supposed robbery it is plain that he acted from principle. But he is also a proud man and would hate to confess that he had been ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... had ignominiously washed his hands of it, sealed forever his own social doom. That, it is certain, was most severe and drastic. The money paid him by the British Government was accursed as were the thirty silver pieces of Iscariot; for his passion to speculate ruined him financially some time before the end of his life, and he breathed his last amid comparative poverty and the dread ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... himself merely as a part of a vast blue demonstration. His province was to look out, as far as he could, for his personal comfort. For recreation he could twiddle his thumbs and speculate on the thoughts which must agitate the minds of the generals. Also, he was drilled and drilled and reviewed, and drilled and ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... There was a difficulty in procuring bait; a worm was never heard of in the burning deserts of Nubia, neither had I a net to catch small fish; I was therefore obliged to bait with pieces of hippopotamnus. Fishing in such a pool as that of the Atbara was sufficiently exciting, as it was impossible to speculate upon what creature might accept the invitation; but the Arabs who accompanied me were particular in guarding me against the position I had taken under a willow-bush close to the water, as they explained, that most probably a crocodile would take me instead of the bait; ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... the fault of the manager of the gardens; he has the will, but no funds. My idea of the object of a botanical garden is, that agricultural theories should be reduced to facts, upon which private enterprise may speculate, and by such success the government ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... could speculate on these things as if they were matters affecting none of us there. In that fourpenny doss-house he remained as aloof as a god, and in some vague way the calmness of the man in face of this infringing realism for a time ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... no humour for sport of any kind; he did not care to look out at the ships, and speculate upon what port they were bound for; he picked up no stones to send spinning at the grey gulls; did not see that the gorse was wonderfully full of flower; and did not even smell the wild thyme as he crushed it beneath his feet. There ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... Best. You have told us that all those three persons, Mr. Cochrane Johnstone, Lord Cochrane, and Mr. Butt, were very large speculators; did they always speculate the same way, or on the contrary, when one bought did not ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... should inquire his business (which was a mystery) or hint at his departure. I myself often visited the room he had appropriated, and would sit for an hour watching those fathomless eyes while I tried to make head or tail of his discourse. When we were alone, my wife and I used to speculate at times on his probable profession. Was he a merchant?—an aged mariner?—a tinker, tailor, beggarman, thief? We could never decide, and ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... is he? I don't remember him since we went down to Armstrong's. Yes, I do though!' she paused, 'but I can't think of it. Crying would be worse. What a queer thing fainting is! I used to speculate what it ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... will believe my tales of what I have seen in the future? Let me stay here, be the great knower of all that has been, in that our time, so living to me, so old to you, about which your learned men speculate unceasingly, and ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... tions of men, are not so void of reason, as their practised conclusions. Some have held that snow is black, that the earth moves, that the soul is air, fire, water; but all this is philosophy: and there is no delirium, if we do but speculate the folly and indisputable dotage of avarice. To that subterraneous idol, and god of the earth, I do confess I am an atheist. I cannot persuade myself to honour that the world adores; whatsoever virtue its prepared substance may have within my body, it hath no influence nor ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... confident trust—and expectation of goodness that children have, who may have suffered punishment, but who come later on and smile on the chastiser. It is this quality which gives the tales their extraordinary charm. I know no other literature which has it to the same degree. I do not like to speculate on the absence of this spirit in our later literature, which was written under other influences. It cannot be because there was a less spiritual life in the apostles than in the bards. We cannot compare Cuculain, ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... francs for myself and paid my return journey, would that have ruined her? A pretty girl like her oughtn't to be hard up for money. I know very well that in our calling there are some people who are hardly honest, who speculate and ask for commissions, and then put out nurslings at cheap rates and rob both the parents and the nurse. It's really not right to treat these dear little things as if they were goods—poultry or vegetables. When folks do that I can understand that ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... men found out that there was in Wall Street a broker who didn't speculate himself, who didn't drink to excess, who was absolutely honest, and who never opened his mouth when it was better shut, they began to patronize that man's firm. In short, the moment Jarrocks Bell's qualities were discovered, ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... darling girl, let's be happy again! It shall be right as—well, as rain, you know—now. We'll have you with a child on your knee in no time,—hey?" He seemed to think that marriage alone could work this boon. Again—as before with Vicky—Sanchia had not the heart to gainsay him. She allowed him to speculate as he would; and her mother, returning, found the pair, one on the other's knee, with the future cut ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... matter what age she was, or of what nation? What did anything matter since she was his? And at that thought his heart began to beat again and cause him to speculate as ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... to have foreseen the doubts that would arise in those people's minds," he thought. Then his attention being attracted by a stone of peculiar shape, which he could see clearly lying at the bottom, he began to speculate as to the depth of water in that spot. But very soon, with a start of wonder at this extraordinary instance of ill-timed detachment, he returned to his train of thought. "I ought to have told very circumstantial lies from the first," he said to himself, with a mortal distaste of the mere idea ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... brought to bear on him to make him avail himself of his father's purse. The thought of his father gave him now—as it had given him throughout all this time of trial—an uncontrollable emotion, but he would not let his mind speculate about the grief and attitude of his family, forcibly interposing a veil between himself and them. Tired out at length, he let his reverie merge into mere uncritical perception. He was conscious of afternoon sunshine, of a great stretch of sky, with a continent of white cloud containing big blue ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... vast possibilities. It involves the physical attractiveness of every woman in History and permits one to speculate wildly as to what might have happened if Cleopatra had weighed forty pounds heavier, if Elizabeth had been a gaunt and wiry creature, or if Joan of Arc had been so bulky that she could not have ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... provision must be insisted on for her,' said Miss Headworth. 'It is no use, however, to speculate on the future. We cannot guess how Mr. Mark Egremont's communication will be received, or whether any wish will be expressed for your mother's rejoining your father. In such a case the terms must be distinctly understood, ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the funds which my solicitor had sent me, amounted to two millions of francs. With this sum I went to a well-known and trustworthy stockbroker, and instructed him to speculate with the whole amount in French Government bonds ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... woods I felt I'd got into another world. Wanted to stop forever and began to hate the cities; the feeling wasn't new, but I hadn't got it really strong till then. Sometimes at night, when the loons were calling on the lake and my packers were asleep, I'd lie by the fire and speculate what civilization was worth and if a man might not do better to cut loose and live by his gun and traps. Well, of course, it was a crank notion, and I wasn't all a fool. I stopped longer than I meant, but I pulled out and ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... included the powder-bag; then I must save that beautiful lace collar; and my hair was tumbling down, so in went the tucking-comb and hair-pins with the rest; until, if there had been any one to speculate, they would have wondered a long while at the singular appearance of a girl who is considered as very slight, usually. By this time, Miriam, alarmed for me, returned to find me, though urged by Dr. Castleton ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... It was enough to her to find that he followed her Master. Being in the light she understood the light, and had no need of system, either true or false, to explain it to her. She lived by the word proceeding out of the mouth of God. When life begins to speculate upon itself, I suspect it has begun to die. And seldom has there been a fitter soul, one clearer from evil, from folly, from human device—a purer cistern for such water of life as rose in the heart of Janet Grant to pour itself into, than ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... tendency extended only to misbelievers, schismatics, or at least men of other tongues. Otherwise such vigorous annexers of other men's lands might have found more than one chance at home, in days of confusion, of enlarging the estate of Hauteville. In short we may speculate on many matters; we can only say what we have seen and what we have not. And at the last moment a frightful thought comes upon us. We have with us one book of Gally Knight's, but it is only the Norman book. But he ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... delight which I felt when examining volcanic islands, and I can remember even particular rocks which I struck, and the smell of the hot, black, scoriaceous cliffs; but of those HOT smells you do not seem to have had much. I do quite envy you. How I should like to be with you, and speculate on the deep ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... as the stockfish was highly salted, and the ale reasonably powerful, the jaws of the brethren were too anxiously employed to admit of their making much use of their ears; nor do we read of any of the fraternity, who was tempted to speculate upon the mysterious hints of their Superior, except Father Diggory, who was severely afflicted by the toothache, so that he could only eat on ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... will be the result of the arrangement that we have made. I decline to speculate or prophesy on that point. It would be indecent and improper. I cannot even tell in this country at the next election how large the Liberal majority will be. Still less would I recommend hon. gentlemen here to forecast the results of contests in which they ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... the Urabunna or the Ikula have folktales in common with the Victorian area, or,—which is perhaps more important, though we do not seem to hear of any communication on this line,—how far there is a stock of folktales common to the Darling district and the central area, it is obviously idle to speculate as to how it comes that an Eaglehawk myth is told in both areas. The physical anthropology of the Australian natives is at present a little-worked field, in which, singularly enough, the French have done ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas
... instead of the aesthetic views of antiquity and the purely scientific tendency of the modern era, a distinctively religious spirit. Faith prescribes the objects and the limitations of knowledge; everything is referred to the hereafter, thought becomes prayer. Men speculate concerning the attributes of God, on the number and rank of the angels, on the immortality of man—all purely transcendental subjects. Side by side with these, it is true, the world receives loving attention, but always as the lower story merely,[1] above which, ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... flatter him, and those men are very susceptible to flattery. Also he will be led to speculate favourably upon the stylishness and extent ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various
... their senses, had become perfectly convinced that the universe was under the dominion of Chance; and that the only orthodox belief in such a world was stark Atheism. As there will always be men who will speculate upon chance itself, there were not wanting philosophers who concocted admirable theories of all this disorder, but not one of them dreamed of the true. They all agreed, however, that the state of things admitted of no remedy from any gods, celestial or infernal; for if a divine artificer had existed, ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... if she took that, or any other pecuniary matter, seriously in hand, she would carry it through; and, between jest and earnest, we were wont to speculate whether, in the end, it might not prove cheaper to our firm if Mr. Craven were to farm that place, and pay Miss Blake's niece an annuity of ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... with most South African affairs, the matter was not thoroughly understood, against the supposed intended annexation of Zululand for the benefit of "greedy colonists." It was argued that colonists were anxious for the annexation in order that they might get the land to speculate with, and doubtless this was, in individual instances, true. I fully agree with those who think that it would be unwise to throw open Zululand to the European settler, not on account of the Zulus, who would benefit by the change, but because the result would be a state of affairs ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... of light literature, not void of "detective stories," had at this moment primed Louise with its influence to the extent of inducing her to scent a mystery in the history of Captain Wegg. The plain folks around Millville might speculate listlessly upon the "queer doin's" at the farm, and never get anywhere near the truth. Indeed, the strange occurrences she had just heard were nearly forgotten in the community, and soon would be forgotten altogether—unless the quick ear of a young ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... came as a shock to Ethne. She did not guess the correct answer; she was not, indeed, sufficiently mistress of herself to speculate upon any answer, but she dreaded it, ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... doubted. Americans might well find great satisfaction in this disposition of the mother country to regard her continental colonies so highly and to think their trade of so much moment to her; all of which, nevertheless, doubtless inclined them sometimes to speculate on the delicate question whether, in case they were so important to the mother country, they were not perhaps more important to her ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... that he was much sought after to survey, fix, and mark the boundaries of farms, and to plot and lay off the town of Petersburg. His accuracy must have been attained with some difficulty, for when he began to survey his chain was a grape-vine. He did not speculate in the land he surveyed. Had he done so the rapid advance in the value of real estate would have made it easy for him to make good investments. But he was not in the least like one of his own appointees when President,—a surveyor-general of a Western territory, who ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... this account. But before our time expired, my old master wanted money; so he sold my brother, and then mortgaged my sister, a dear girl about fourteen years of age, and myself, then about sixteen, to one of the banks, to get money to speculate in cotton. This we knew nothing of at the moment; but time rolled on, the money became due, my master was unable to meet his payments; so the bank had us placed upon the auction stand and sold to ...
— Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom • William and Ellen Craft
... Brussels hospital, with a velvet mask over his face, so that none might recognise him. The PRINCE was visited in hospital by a tall man, also heavily masked, but not so heavily as to conceal a pair of soaring moustaches, freshly waxed. None dared speculate as to Who this Visitor might be. The hush was tremendous. The Visitor silently pinned on the patient a specimen of the Iron Cross ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 4, 1914 • Various
... that portion of the building wherein Frobisher was confined, and he told himself that it would require but little more of their attention before the walls became so shattered that the shot would come plunging right into the cell. He began to speculate on what would then happen first—whether he would be blown to pieces or smashed into shapelessness, or whether an opening would be made by which he might be enabled to escape. If only a shot would strike directly upon the iron bars of ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... materials of his imagination, and had done it so vividly as to frighten himself. The fright had in some measure cooled his intention, and had been now replaced by a new element in his thoughts, by the apprehension for the future if the deed were accomplished. He began to speculate upon what would happen afterwards, wondering whether by any means the murder could be discovered, and if in that case it could ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... in those unreflecting times." "There certainly was something very extraordinary about the man, which, amidst the feodal and knightly habits in which young persons of his high rank were then bred, prompted him to speculate, however unhappily, on any metaphysical subject. Now, whether this abominable persuasion were the cause or the effect of his actual guilt,—whether he had reasoned himself into materialism in order to drown the voice of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... passed and I heard nothing more of the matter. During this time I had leisure to think over what I had heard from time to time about Joseph Pulitzer, and to speculate, with the aid of some imaginative friends, upon the probable advantages and disadvantages of the position for which ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... give you some counsel, I would tell you to go back to the chateau now, with no parti pris, and seek her immediately, and get her to tell you the whole truth yourself. Of what good for you and me to speculate, since we neither of us know all the facts?—or even, if our suppositions are correct——" Then, as Lord Fordyce hesitated, he continued: "The time has passed for reticence. There should be ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... Howard,' she told him hotly. 'But here's one thing you don't have to speculate upon. I am not going to leave my father in the hands of that Murray woman to do as she pleases with. She can have whatever I don't want,' and he knew she meant Alan Howard, 'but I am not going to give her the satisfaction of ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... practically unknowable to us—this being so, it will be seen that states very much nearer to us than the End must be utterly beyond the powers not only of our understanding but also of our imagination, even when strained to its utmost. This being so, why should we attempt to speculate about The End? Instead, why not say ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... early ages of this world there was far more laughter than is to be heard now, and that aeons hence laughter will be obsolete, and smiles universal—every one, always, mildly, slightly, smiling. But it is less useful to speculate as to mankind's past and future than to observe men. And you will have observed with me in the club-room that young men at most times look solemn, whereas old men or men of middle age mostly smile; and also that those young men do often laugh loud ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... of an inexperienced young man." And this mobility is a special talent entrusted to his care; a sort of indestructible virginity; a magic armour, with which he can pass unhurt through great dangers and come unbedaubed out of the miriest passages. Let him voyage, speculate, see all that he can, do all that he may; his soul has as many lives as a cat; he will live in all weathers, and never be a halfpenny the worse. Those who go to the devil in youth, with anything like a fair ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... discontent are amongst the very strongest traits of modern society. Very often they are only manifestations of irritated vanity. It is in the nature of things that classes of men and forms of property shall go through endless vicissitudes of advantage and disadvantage. Nobody can foresee these and speculate upon them with success. When it is proposed to "reorganize society" on any socialistic theory, or on no theory, it should be noticed that such an enterprise involves a blind speculation on the vicissitudes of classes and forms of property in the future. "Wealth, whether ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... the eighties was a most speculative time all over Australia and New Zealand. I was glad that leaving the English and Scottish Bank enabled my brother to go into political and official life, but it also allowed him to speculate far beyond what he could have done if he had been manager of a bank. Everybody speculated—in mines, in land, and in leases. I was earning by my pen a very decent income, and I spent it, sometimes wisely ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... episode T. began to speculate about sexual matters and to observe the coupling of dogs with newly acquired interest. At 10 years he often lay awake, listening to a woman of 25 singing to a piano accompaniment. The woman's voice ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... went downstairs whistling with an affected ease, and a gaiety which, he by no means felt, Undy Scott leant back in his chair, and began to speculate whether his new purchase was worth the purchase-money. 'He's a sharp fellow; certainly, in some things, and may do well yet; but he's uncommonly green. That, however, will wear off. I should not be surprised if he told Neverbend the ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... could I ask for more? I was satisfied and filled. But, by and by, my dream of life was disturbed—my sleep broken. Natural questions began to propose themselves for my solution, such, I suppose, as, sooner or later, spring up in every bosom. I began to speculate about myself—about the very self that had been so long, so busy, about everything else beside itself. I wished to know something of myself—of my origin, my nature, my present condition, my ultimate fate. It seemed to me I was too rare and curious a piece of work to go to ruin, ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... and under every circumstance, to understand, and that it is to be understood as literal as it can be and make good sense; and that in every case where the language is figurative, we must let the Bible explain its own figures. We are in no case allowed to speculate on the Scriptures, and suppose things which are not clearly expressed, nor reject things which are plainly taught. I believe all of the prophecies are revealed to try our faith, and to give us hope, without which we could ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... Prejudice—that she considered herself overpaid for the labour she had bestowed upon it, absolutely nothing seems to have been preserved by her descendants respecting her first printed effort. In the absence of particulars some of her critics have fallen to speculate upon the reason which made her select it, and not Pride and Prejudice, for her debut; and they have, perhaps naturally, found in the fact a fresh confirmation of that traditional blindness of authors to their own best work, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... Burgoyne I think must have nettled him. I have long with Pain suspected a perfidious Design. This Resolution must have crossd it. It will cause much Speculation in Europe. No Matter. The Powers there seem more inclind to speculate than to espouse the Rights of Man. Let them speculate. Our Business is to secure America against the Arts & the Arms of a treacherous Enemy. The former we have more to apprehend from ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... this case. A conditional fee that I was to make out of my case was offered me by the plaintiff in the first instance, but of course I could not speculate in justice." ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... to detract from the praise due to Sinclair Lewis for the remarkable accuracy with which he reports details in his "Main Street," it is interesting to speculate on how other books might have read had their authors had Mr. Lewis's flair for minutiae and their publishers enough ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... merely steep fields where the plough was useless and the hoe must be used. She must tell Samson: Samson, whom she held in an artless exaltation of hero-worship; Samson, who was so "smart" that he thought about things beyond her understanding; Samson, who could not only read and write, but speculate on ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... interest. These were, the vessels from St. Michael's, on their way to Baltimore. It was a source of much amusement to view the flowing sails and complicated rigging, as the little crafts dashed by, and to speculate upon Baltimore, as to the kind and quality of the place. With so many sources of interest around me, the reader may be prepared to learn that I began to think very highly of Col. L.'s plantation. It was just a place to my boyish taste. There were fish to be caught in the creek, if one ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... of our wintering on the land whereon we had been thrown was settled for us. But, after all, the situation was not changed for those among the nine (now only remaining of the twenty-three) who should not have drawn the lot of departure. Who could speculate upon the chances of the whole nine? Might not all of them have drawn the lot of "stay"? And, when every chance was fully weighed, was that of those who had left us the best? To this question there could be ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... Sunday morning, and when we reach the town all good Catholics have been to high mass, and are parading the narrow thoroughfare dressed in fashionable attire. Crowds gather around us and speculate as to the particular crime we are guilty of; and, to tell the truth, our appearance is by no means respectable. Have we shot the commandant? Undermined the Morro? Poisoned the garrison? Have we headed a negro conspiracy, or joined a gang of pirates? Friends whom we recognise ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... they saw one of the rams, who had been backing himself for a rush, suddenly disappear over the edge of the cliff! They thought he had tumbled over—as his legs were the last of him they had seen—but they had no time to speculate upon the matter, as both pulled trigger at the moment. Two of the animals were laid prostrate by their fire; while the rest bounded off, ran out to a point of the table, and ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... it would look like when finished. He made a great pretence of deferring to Sweater's opinion, and assured him that he did not care how much trouble he took as long as he—Sweater—was pleased. In fact, it was no trouble at all: it was a pleasure. As the work neared completion, Crass began to speculate upon the probable amount of the donation he would receive as the reward of nine weeks of cringing, fawning, abject servility. He thought it quite possible that he might get a quid: it would not be too much, considering all the trouble ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... was his astonishment, he was left no time to indulge in it, or speculate how his old "crammer" came to be there. For close behind the Dictator's carriage followed another, holding one who had yet more interest for him than ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... while since, of my personating Oscar to her. I personated him, on the occasion I have just mentioned, for the first time. You were present and heard me. Did you care to speculate on the motives which made me impose myself on her ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... 1822, Scrope had completed his masterly work The Geology and Extinct Volcanoes of Central France, and had despatched it to England. It would be idle to speculate now as to what might have been the effect of that work—so full of the results of accurate observation, and so suggestive in its reasoning—had it been published at that time. It is quite possible that much of the credit now justly assigned to Lyell, would have belonged to his friend. ...
— The Coming of Evolution - The Story of a Great Revolution in Science • John W. (John Wesley) Judd
... is a light south-westerly wind. It seems rather as though the great gales of the Westerlies must begin in these latitudes with such mild disturbances as we have just experienced. I think it is the first time I have known rain beyond the Antarctic circle—it is interesting to speculate on its effect in ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... wilds; making themselves a nuisance to business men in the cities. The matter had, however, a more serious aspect. Prescott had spent some time on the useless search and he could not continue it throughout the winter. It would be futile to speculate on the movements of men so erratic as those he had followed. He could not neglect his farm, and he had a heavy crop to haul in and sell: this was a duty that ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... vagary life had become for her, it was so whimsical, and the mystery of her secret which was so solely hers. Alicia knew, of course; but that was much as if she had written it down on a sheet of perfect notepaper and locked it up in a drawer. Alicia did not speculate about it, and the whole soul of it was tangled now in a speculation. There had been a time filled with the knowledge and the joy of this new depth in her, like a buoyant sea, and she had been content to float in it, imagining desirable things. Stanhope's waiting contract made a limit to the ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... marriage-portion, for one million francs, when it was put up to auction, paying five hundred thousand down. He lived on the ground floor, expecting to pay the remainder out of letting the rest; but though it is safe to speculate in house-property in Paris, such investments are capricious or hang fire, ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... denied. Nor can they properly be called unjust. The right of property in their slaves the people of North Carolina regarded as settled by the Constitution of the State and that of the United States. Theorists might speculate whether African slavery was consistent with the American Declaration of Independence as they pleased, but the right of property in slaves was undisputably recognized and secured in the fundamental laws of the land. As to the moral question involved, if any such there was, ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... hundred miles' journey, to have the child baptized. It was generally known amongst all the natives of the region that the enterprise was on foot, and "Minchumina John," hoping to meet us in the Kantishna, and missing us, had followed our trail thus far. It was interesting to speculate how much further he would have penetrated: Walter thought as far as the glacier, but I think he would have followed as far as the dogs could go or until ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... speculate whether the "nephesh" of the animals, or the "living self" of the man, is an entity separate from the body, and capable of existing per se—of its own inherent nature—apart from it. We do not know that animal forms are the ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... and sixty thousand francs a-year is the least a Parisian can live upon. It is not only that all prices have fabulously increased, but that the dearer things become, the better people live. When I first came out, the world speculated upon me; now, in order to keep my standing, I am forced to speculate on the world. Hitherto I have not lost; Duplessis let me into a few good things this year, worth one hundred thousand francs or so. Croesus consulted the Delphic Oracle. Duplessis was not alive in the time of Croesus, or ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... padlocked well was opened, what delight to watch the women drawing water, or even to help tug at the chain that turned the axle. And on the bridge that led from the Old Ghetto to the New, where the canal, though the view was brief, disappeared round two corners, how absorbing to stand and speculate on what might be coming round either corner, and which would yield a vision first! Perhaps there would come along a sandolo rowed by a man standing at the back, his two oars crossed gracefully; perhaps a floating raft with barefooted boys bestriding ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... racking pains I had come to the stage of querulous self-pity. 'Twas monstrous, this burying a man alive, ill, fettered, uncared-for, to live or die in utter solitude as might happen. I could not remotely guess to whom I owed this dismal fate, and was too petulant to speculate upon it. But the meddler, friend or foe, who had bereft me of my chance to die whilst I was fit and ready, came in for a Turkish cursing—the curse that calls down in all the Osmanli variants the same pangs in duplicate ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... even remotely jocose out of them. Then surely it was a concise order—though a very strange one. He was the last man in the world whose deliberate command I should care to disobey. Possibly some chemical experiment was afoot; possibly——Well, it was no business of mine to speculate upon why he wanted it. I must get it. There was nearly an hour before I should catch the train at Victoria. I took a taxi, and having ascertained the address from the telephone book, I made for the Oxygen Tube Supply Company in ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... needed one. It was against reason. It had taken me completely off my balance. I took a chair and joined the others in the contemplation of the blue dot on the ceiling. We could speculate and conjecture; but there was not one of us deep enough even to start a theory. Plainly it was what should not be. We had been taught physics and science; we had been drilled to fundamentals. If this thing could be, then the foundations upon which we ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... yet presumed to speculate concerning the nature of my God, the Lord of heaven and earth; I confess that I have never said that He is consubstantial with us. Up to the present day I have not said that the body of our Lord and God was consubstantial with us; I ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... even the priest ridiculed what he preached to the people—that the notions of the few and the many were never united. But, in this new faith, it seemed to him that philosopher, priest, and people, the expounders of the religion and its followers, were alike accordant: they did not speculate and debate upon immortality, they spoke of as a thing certain and assured; the magnificence of the promise dazzled him—its consolations soothed. For the Christian faith made its early converts among sinners! ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... don't let us plunge from philology into ethnology. I prefer to speculate upon Mr. Thomas Burroughs. Who is he? and what does ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... that Butler be tarred and feathered and receive thirty-nine lashes." A majority said "Aye," though a number of voices said "No." The moderator said, "The affirmative has it; Butler has to be tarred and feathered and whipped." I began to speculate how that sort of thing would work as far north as the latitude of Kansas. There was a good deal of whispering about the house. I saw dark, threatening and ominous looks in the crowd. The moderator again came forward, and, in an altered voice, said: "It ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... returned to the sickroom, to speculate on the probability of soon meeting her guardian. Who can tell how dreary were the days and nights that followed? Mrs. Hoyt took the fever, and mother and children moaned together. On the morning of the fourth day the eldest child, a girl of eight years, died, with Beulah's ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... declaring that "the negro can develop no inventive faculties or genius for the arts." For although the elephant may be taught to plow, or the dog to carry your market-basket by his teeth, you cannot teach them to shave notes, to speculate in gold, or even to vote; whereas, the experience of all political parties shows that men may be taught to vote, even when they do not ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... celibate, it strikes me you take a remarkable interest in matrimony," said Mark. "Or is it merely a base desire to speculate upon the tribulations of your fellow-beings, and congratulate yourself upon your escape ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... ruin to thousands. Fluctuation, however, in the paper value of the measure of all values (gold) is detrimental to the interests of trade. It makes the man of business an involuntary gambler, for in all sales where future payment is to be made both parties speculate as to what will be the value of the currency to be paid and received. I earnestly recommend to you, then, such legislation as will insure a gradual return to specie payments and put an immediate stop to fluctuations in the value ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... metaphysic of some kind, since it attained the power of thought, or rather of reflection; but it has never been able to keep this sphere of thought and cognition pure from all admixture of foreign elements. The idea of a science of this kind is as old as speculation itself; and what mind does not speculate—either in the scholastic or in the popular fashion? At the same time, it must be admitted that even thinkers by profession have been unable clearly to explain the distinction between the two elements of our cognition—the one completely a priori, the other a posteriori; and ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... to have gone down behind the horizon; and the only inspiration that carried them far drew its impetus from the poetry of their plight. They looked for verses to prove that Browning's imagination carried him bravely through lives and lives to come, and found them to speculate whether in such chances they ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... easy to speculate on what the conditions precedent to such a pacific league of neutrals must of necessity be; but it is not therefore less difficult to make a shrewd guess as to the chances of these conditions being met. Of these conditions precedent, the chief and foremost, without which any other favorable circumstances ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... Pausing, to wonder and speculate, the chill of the evening made the girl shiver. The door had shut her out. She felt lonely ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... back, and speculate as to how the common-sense categories may have achieved their wonderful supremacy, no reason appears why it may not have been by a process just like that by which the conceptions due to Democritus, Berkeley, or Darwin, achieved their similar triumphs in more recent times. In ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... Artillery. As the day wore on, the honest gossips of Chapelizod looked out anxiously for news. And everybody who met any one else asked him—'Any news about Nutter, eh?'—and then they would stop to speculate—and then one would wonder that Dr. Walsingham's man, Clinton, had not yet returned—and the other would look at his watch, and say 'twas one o'clock—and then both agreed that Spaight, at all events, must soon come—for he has appointed two o'clock for looking at that ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... been taught to read through the beautiful twilighted woman, as if she were burnt paper held at the fire consuming her. His hopes hung elsewhere. Nevertheless, an intellectual demon-imp very lively in his head urged him to speculate on such a contest between them, and weigh the engaging forces. Difficulties were perceived, the scornful laughter on her side was plainly heard; but his feeling of savage mastery, far from beaten down, swelled ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... night, I entered my room, it was fragrant with violets. A green wreath surrounded an old Bible, and a little bouquet rested upon it. I did not pause to speculate over this sentimentality, but threw myself weary upon the bed; when a light tap at the door startled me. The short woman entered; and humbling herself on the floor, since she would not sit in my presence entreated to ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska
... time expired, my old master wanted money; so he sold my brother, and then mortgaged my sister, a dear girl about fourteen years of age, and myself, then about sixteen, to one of the banks, to get money to speculate in cotton. This we knew nothing of at the moment; but time rolled on, the money became due, my master was unable to meet his payments; so the bank had us placed upon the auction stand and sold to ...
— Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom • William and Ellen Craft
... animal spirits with a deep and abiding sense of the seriousness of religion. In the philanthropist-father the religious seriousness rather preponderated over the fun; in the bishop-son (by a curious inversion of parts) the fun sometimes concealed the religiousness. To those who speculate in matters of race and pedigree it is interesting to watch the two elements contending in the character of Canon Basil Wilberforce, the Bishop's youngest and best-beloved son. When you see his graceful figure and clean-shaven ecclesiastical face in the ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... in every emergency—a quality which the greatest of historians ascribes to him beyond all his contemporaries—we may well believe that the vote of Themistocles was for prompt and decisive action. On the vote of Aristides it may be more difficult to speculate. His predilection for the Spartans may have made him wish to wait till they came up; but, though circumspect, he was neither timid as a soldier nor as a politician, and the bold advice of Miltiades may probably have found ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... drops as they fell from a knot hole in the veranda roof—one small drop—two medium-sized drops—one big drop—as if some unseen djinn were measuring them out in ruthless monotony. He counted the drops until his brain felt soggy and he began to speculate upon what Aunt Caroline would think of fried eggs for luncheon. He wondered why there were no special dishes for special meals in Li Ho's domestic calendar; why all things, to Li Ho, were good (or bad) at all ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... cool, green shadow of the woods, to smell the sweet, sharp smell of the earth, and watch the dapplings of sunlight through the leaves overhead. Even the boys succumbed to the spell, and for the first half-hour asked nothing better than to roll about on the grass, poke in the roots of trees, and speculate concerning rabbit-holes and nests; but the half-hour over, one and all were convinced that watches were wrong and they were right in deciding that it was beyond all manner of doubt full time for lunch; so the cloth was ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... watch the shells coming toward him, and he not allowed even to twirl his thumbs by way of diversion! The men who served the guns had something to occupy their minds, while the drivers, condemned to immobility, had death constantly before their eyes, and plenty of leisure to speculate on probabilities. They were made to face the battlefield because, had they turned their backs to it, the coward that so often lurks at the bottom of man's nature might have got the better of them and swept away man and beast. It is the unseen danger that makes dastards ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... notwithstanding of any extraneous means to work it off. "Slow and sure," is their motto—"Carpe diem," essentially that of their antagonists. And yet in one thing, we believe, most individuals holding these opposite opinions will be found to concur. They all speculate. Heraclitus signs his contract with a shudder, and trembles as he places his realized premium in the bank. Democritus laughingly subscribes his name to thousands, and chuckles as he beholds his favourite stock ascending in the thermometer of the share-market. Heraclitus ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... enough upon it, inexpressibly whimsical in the questions which the mind is for ever putting to itself respecting itself; and to which the said mind returns from its dark caverns only an echo. We are apt, when we speculate about the mind, to forget for the moment, that it is at once the querist and the oracle: and to regard it as something out of itself, like a mineral in the hands of the analytic chemist. We cannot fully enter into the absurdities of its condition, except by remembering that ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... heartily go along with you. The fabric consolidates itself more and more, even while the earthquake rocks it; for, with a thousand drawbacks and deductions, love grows larger, zeal warmer, truth firmer among us. It makes the mind sad to speculate upon the question how much better all might have been; but our mourning should be turned into joy and thankfulness when we think also how ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... to success than a desire to become suddenly rich. A business man now counts his wealth by the thousands, but he sees a grand chance to speculate. This is a little risky, of course, but then the old adage: "Never venture, never have." I admit I may lose, but then all men are subject to loss in any business, but I am reasonably sure of gaining an immense amount. Why! ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... fire in a paroxysm of anger or emotion; the contrast between the nobility and distinction of his face and bearing, and the arrogant scorn of proprieties in which he seemed to delight—in short, some painful mystery written upon his forehead and betrayed in his smile—all gave Gilbert much to speculate upon and troubled him profoundly. The aversion he had at first felt for Stephane had changed to pity since the poor child had shown him the red bracelet, which he called his "thought- teacher,"—but pity without sympathy is a sentiment to which ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... as he is insolent and coarse to those who depend upon him—is the living, frightful incarnation of the worst pardon of the moneyed and commercial aristocracy—one of the rich and cynical speculators, without heart, faith or conscience, who would speculate for a rise or fall on the death of his mother, if the death of his mother could influence the ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... with bits of string. Never had Helene seen her weighed down by such intense misery, or covered with filthier rags, though she was fatter than ever, and wore a stupid look. In the foulest weather, despite hard frosts or drenching rain, the old woman now followed funerals in order to speculate on the pity of the charitable. She well knew that amongst the gravestones the fear of death makes people generous; and so she prowled from tomb to tomb, approaching the kneeling mourners at the moment they burst ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... never been without distrust, though his apprehensions had been occasionally so far quieted as to leave him nearly free of them altogether; while his wife had felt the utmost confidence in the chief, from the very commencement of their acquaintance. It would be useless, perhaps, to attempt to speculate on the causes; but it is certain that there are secret sources of sympathy that draw particular individuals toward each other and antipathies that keep them widely separated. Men shall meet for the first time, and feel themselves ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... After tracing the dying instinct back to its hypothetical origin—namely, a habit acquired by the animal in some past period of seeking refuge from some kind of pain and danger at a certain spot, it is only natural to speculate a little further as to the nature of that danger and of the conditions the ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance. Not that this notion AT ALL satisfies me. I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton. Let each man hope and believe what he can. Certainly I agree with you that my views are not at all necessarily atheistical. The lightning kills a man, whether a good one or bad one, owing to the excessively complex action of natural laws. A child (who may turn ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... hundred and fifty pounds. They will be deposited in a bank. Some day you can look in and see me, and I will take you round there. You are my client who has speculated under my instructions successfully, and you will sign your name and become a customer. After that, you will speculate again. When your thousand pounds has been made, I will show you how to buy an annuity. Keep your mouth shut, and last night will be the luckiest night of your life. Do ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the Upper and Lower Orinoco permit the Indians of their Missions to paint their skins. It is painful to add, that some of them speculate on this barbarous practice of the natives. In their huts, pompously called conventos,* (* In the Missions, the priest's house bears the name of the convent.) I have often seen stores of chica, which they sold as high as four francs the cake. To form a just idea of the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... willingness to submit to Jehovah. Its very smallness made it so more effectually. If he had any disposition to listen to the voice speaking through Moses, he would yield that small point. It is useless to speculate on what would have happened if he had done so. But probably the Israelites would have come ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... because I'm beginning to get used to it," I thought. Then I began to speculate as to what would happen now if the sergeant was right, and we were to be attacked front and rear; and what it would feel like if I were hit, as seemed very likely now that the enemy were getting so near. But I glanced right and left at my companions, ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... the three look at the nine with contempt and then they begin to argue. The deliberations of the jury are always secret, their method of procedure is uncertain, and only the result of their deliberations appears in court. Nevertheless, it is only reasonable to speculate on how they have arrived at their verdict. Their verdict is the climax of the drama, the goal of the race, the award of victory. One side must win and the other be defeated. The psychology of the jury in reaching the verdict is the great mystery and the most intense ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... the last they backed out, fearing to take the initiative in a matter likely to cause popular clamor. "I even thought of America," says Rubinstein, "of the daring transatlantic impresarios, with their lust of enterprise, who might be inclined to speculate on a gigantic scale with my idea. I had indeed almost succeeded, but the lack of artists brought it to pass that the plans, already in a considerable degree of forwardness, had to be abandoned. ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Some one had even gone to the church, and now, from the distance, rang the tocsin note of the old bell. There was a long flare of crimson on the sky, which made remote people speculate as to the ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... Willoughby; 'but I hardly fancy Stephen Drake would consider that. I believe he would feel that he had no right to speculate on what may not happen. He would just see this one clear, definite, immediate thing to do, and simply do it.' She spoke the sentence with a slow emphasis upon each word, and Fielding moved uneasily. It seemed to strike an accusation at him. He ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... a feeling toward the beautiful creature who walked at his side day after day, sharing without complaint hardship and fatigue that sorely taxed his own endurance, that was something more than mere regard, and he had begun to speculate vaguely on a possible future in which she became the ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... ready-made clothing, and bakeries, and now it is proposed in Boston to furnish a complete supply of ready-cooked food. This can be done cheaper than families can supply themselves, if we leave out the American propensity to speculate in ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, November 1887 - Volume 1, Number 10 • Various
... the cabinet itself—receives him;"—and Ichabod grew more than ever pleased and satisfied with the idea, when he reflected that Jared had all along been held to possess a goodly person, and a very fair development of the parts of speech. He even ventured to speculate upon the possibility of Jared passing into the White House—the dawn of that era having already arrived, which left nobody safe from the crowning honors ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... to speculate on the anticipated triumph when he should, unaided, bring the guilty men to justice, as his gaze fell on an advertisement ...
— Messenger No. 48 • James Otis
... she took that, or any other pecuniary matter, seriously in hand, she would carry it through; and, between jest and earnest, we were wont to speculate whether, in the end, it might not prove cheaper to our firm if Mr. Craven were to farm that place, and pay Miss Blake's niece an annuity of say one ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... so little about his life that we can only speculate why he failed to follow up the promise of The Methodist; why, after favorable reviews from the journals[7] and the flattering friendship of famous men, he was not encouraged to continue a career that was as promising as the early career ...
— The Methodist - A Poem • Evan Lloyd
... for her, it was so whimsical, and the mystery of her secret which was so solely hers. Alicia knew, of course; but that was much as if she had written it down on a sheet of perfect notepaper and locked it up in a drawer. Alicia did not speculate about it, and the whole soul of it was tangled now in a speculation. There had been a time filled with the knowledge and the joy of this new depth in her, like a buoyant sea, and she had been content to float in it, imagining desirable things. Stanhope's waiting contract ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... is with character; and no playwright has created a more probable gallery of characters with whom we can become so easily and so completely familiar. They live before us, and with apparently so unconscious a self-revelation that we speculate about them as we would about real people, and sometimes take sides with them against their creator. Nora would, would not, have left her children! We know all their tricks of mind, their little differences from other people, their habits, the things that a novelist spends so much of his time in bringing ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... sometime upon the ground, gazing at the chinks, and listening to the advancing and receding footsteps of his guard, the man stood still upon his post. Barnaby, quite unable to think, or to speculate on what would be done with him, had been lulled into a kind of doze by his regular pace; but his stopping roused him; and then he became aware that two men were in conversation under the colonnade, and very near the ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... going to ask a favour of you," he said. "I want to leave the general run of my investments and interests here in your hands, to keep track of I don't want to speculate at all, in the ordinary meaning of the word. Even after I bury a pot of money in non-productive real estate, I shall have an income of 50,000 pounds at the very least, and perhaps twice as much. There's no fun in gambling when you've got such a bank as that behind you. But if there ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... it was noticed that, in place of the habitual smile that had made Burns the idol he was, there was a grim set about his jaw that caused those nearest to the ring to wonder and to speculate. ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... had come to the stage of querulous self-pity. 'Twas monstrous, this burying a man alive, ill, fettered, uncared-for, to live or die in utter solitude as might happen. I could not remotely guess to whom I owed this dismal fate, and was too petulant to speculate upon it. But the meddler, friend or foe, who had bereft me of my chance to die whilst I was fit and ready, came in for a Turkish cursing—the curse that calls down in all the Osmanli variants the same pangs in duplicate ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... please, Mr. Howard,' she told him hotly. 'But here's one thing you don't have to speculate upon. I am not going to leave my father in the hands of that Murray woman to do as she pleases with. She can have whatever I don't want,' and he knew she meant Alan Howard, 'but I am not going to give her the satisfaction of having all ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... were such that you could hear in the greatest comfort, not to say luxury. I wonder, for my own part, that the poor folk about did not seize upon the Crescent Chapel on the cold Sunday mornings, and make themselves happy in those warm and ruddy pews. It would be a little amusing to speculate what all the well-dressed pew-holders would have done had this unexpected answer to the appeal which Mr. Beecham believed himself to make every Sunday to the world in general, been literally given. It would have been extremely embarrassing to the Managing ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... were modelled in dough, and possessing in consequence none of the vital qualities of the lion. It is interesting to compare them with the little lion Alfred Stevens modelled for the railing of the British Museum, and to speculate on what a thrill we might have received every time we passed Trafalgar Square, had he been entrusted with the work, as ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... intimate with his royal highness than the Chevalier de Lorraine, vainly endeavored to detect, from the expression of the prince's face, what had made him so ill-humored. The Chevalier de Lorraine, who had no occasion to speculate about anything, inasmuch as he knew all, ate his breakfast with that extraordinary appetite which the troubles of one's friends but stimulates, and enjoyed at the same time both Monsieur's ill-humor and the vexation of Manicamp. He seemed delighted, ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... fair-minded son—with the mother's eyes—into the game would be suicidal. The young fellow would turn from him forever. Bansemer never went so far as to wonder whence came the honest blood in the boy's veins, nor to speculate on the origin of the unquestioned integrity. He had but to recall the woman who bore him, the woman whose love was the only good thing he ever knew, the wife he ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... beans placed before her. The pork had browned and hardened at the edges, the gravy had spread, a crust covered the potatoes. When her father resumed his reading of the Banner and her mother went back into the kitchen she began to speculate rather resentfully and yet excitedly why it was that this adventure with a man, with Ditmar, made her look better, feel better,—more alive. She was too honest to disguise from herself that it was an adventure, a high one, fraught with all sorts of possibilities, dangers, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... of Gideon leader. 'It is too early yet in this moment of grief to speculate as to his successor in the constituency. But, difficult as it will be to replace him, we may find some solace in the thought that it will not be impossible. The spirit of the illustrious dead would itself rejoice to acknowledge the special qualifications of one ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... away before the arrival of the human species, and yet while the land, and probably the sea also, were peopled with their present molluscan inhabitants. This confirms the statement of Mr. Lyell, that the longevity of mammalian species is much inferior to that of the testacea. It is interesting to speculate on the probable climate and the character of the vegetation in this high valley when these extinct mammifers lived. The great pachyderm would have no difficulty in thriving at the present day at Quito, on the score of temperature ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... Paul. There was no doubt in Paul's mind as to the quality of his patron. He had at once recognized the Greatest Pitcher. He ceased to speculate as to whether this assured young man owned the high office-building. That was now ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... despair, and pronounced that he would never make a man of business. He made matters worse by replying that this was the best chance of his not being a man of speculation. If he were allowed to think of nothing but money, he should speculate for the sake of ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... were he did not specify. Nor did Geraldine have time to speculate, so occupied was she now with preparations for the wonderful winter which was to come true at last—which was already beginning to come true with exciting visits to that magic country of brilliant show-windows which, like an enchanted city by itself, sparkles from ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... matchlocks, and a few horses in addition to their camels. The Touaricks have the spear, dagger, the straight broad sword, and a few matchlocks and pistols, it is said, and all are mounted on camels, so the contest is somewhat differently balanced with regard to the mode of equipment. People speculate as to the success of the parties, but their sympathies are ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... attendance, and, for the time being, he fully intended to keep his word. But no sooner was his father gone, and he introduced to his new quarters and duties by David Douglas, the Earl's younger brother, than he began to wonder which was the window of Maud Lindesay's chamber and speculate on how soon he ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... autumn to Paris to speculate on the Bourse, and generally made enough to keep him for a year. He was acquainted with all the artists in Rome. Would they like to be introduced to some ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... field. "Nature makes no leaps," and as the physicist nears the confines of his kingdom he finds himself bewildered by touches and gleams from another realm which interpenetrates his own. He finds himself compelled to speculate on invisible presences, if only to find a rational explanation for undoubted physical phenomena, and insensibly he slips over the boundary, and is, although he does not yet realise it, ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant
... Indian never doubted the immortal nature of the spirit or soul of man, but neither did he care to speculate upon its probable state or condition in a future life. The idea of a "happy hunting-ground" is modern and probably borrowed, or invented by the white man. The primitive Indian was content to believe that the spirit ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... of her, had so altered his constant habit of going to the Milburns', that his family talked of it, wondering among themselves; and Stella indulged in hopeful speculations. They did not wonder or speculate at the Milburns'. It was an axiom there that it is well ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... gaze and speculate for hours without gaining any certain knowledge, Deerfoot was about to lower his instrument when he observed three horsemen emerging from the settlement and riding in Indian file toward him. He decided to go forward and meet them, for they could give ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... I lay back in my rhoorkhee chair and read whatever I could find in the ship's library. The wireless broke down a few days after we left Busra, so we got no news whatever of the outer world, and soon ceased to speculate on what ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... Milk-Pail. Perrette, carrying her milk-pail well-poised upon her head, began to speculate on its value. She would sell the milk and buy eggs; she would set the eggs and rear chickens; the chickens she would sell and buy a pig; this she would fatten and change for a cow and calf, and would it not be delightful to see the little ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... himself to speculate as to how the door happened to be open, but, picking up the spade, wandered forth into the garden. The gate gave no trouble. He walked fast, and long before Marianne came back to her sweeping he ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... "pretty widow"—but I will not anticipate the story. He had no longer to write mainly for the ears of a Prince Nicolaus, but for those of a backward musical public accustomed to a very different sort of music, Handel's. One is tempted to speculate as to what might have happened had he been sooner set free. There is nothing whatever to show that Nicolaus was ever in a hurry to urge him on to fresh experiments, and in the absence of any evidence it is merely fair to assume that such a prince in such a court, if he was not, ...
— Haydn • John F. Runciman
... we should not speculate too much," said Georg. "At least, not on that line. They warned you personally, father. We were so ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... about the matter, that Henry Rogers lent, and even gave, Mark Twain large sums, and pointed out opportunities whereby he could make heavily by speculation. No one of these statements is true. Mr. Rogers neither lent nor gave Mark Twain money for investment, and he never allowed him to speculate when he could prevent it. He invested for him wisely, but he never bought for him a share of stock that he did not have the money in hand to pay for in full-money belonging to and earned by Clemens himself. What he did give ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... race, whose ghosts, if they wail over the "find," "speak in a language man knows no more." She charms us with etchings or scratchings of mammoths on mammoth-bone, and invites us to explore mysterious caves, to picnic among megalithic monuments, and speculate on pictured Scottish stones. In short, she engages man to investigate his ancestry, a pursuit which presents charms even to the illiterate, and asks us to find out facts concerning works of art which have ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... present, and till it with the greatest care. The future must be a lottery to those who think that the same combinations can sometimes precede one set of results, and sometimes another. If their belief is sincere they will speculate instead of working: these ought to be the immoral men; the others have the strongest spur to exertion and morality, if their belief is a ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... Liverpool, Vansittart, and the Chancellor. Lord Bathurst is at Cirencester, the Duke of Wellington in Holland, Lord Sidmouth in Yorkshire, Peel and Lord Melville in Scotland with the King. No event ever gave rise to more speculation with the few people there are left to speculate, and the general opinion seems to be that Canning will not go to India,[10] but will be appointed in his room. It certainly opens a door to his ambition as well as to that of Peel, who, unless Canning comes into office, must of necessity lead the House ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... breath of spring. He grew, he broadened. She was his sun, his breath of life; he worshipped her. Then one day she died—suddenly—sank down and died as a butterfly might die, chilled by a blast. With her Henry Floyd buried his youth. For a time people were sympathetic; but they began immediately to speculate about him, then to gossip about him. It made no difference to him or in him. He was like a man that is dead, who felt no more. One thing about a great sorrow is that it destroys all lesser ones. A man with a crushed body does not feel ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... late, and Yaspard began to speculate upon what Aunt Osla and Uncle Brues would say on being roused from their slumbers to receive the adventurers and hear the story which had so nearly ended in ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... induction, logical deduction nor scientific investigation, but solely in the light of God's revelation. I shall gather the teaching of God's word around several important phases of the nature, mission and work of the Spirit. I do not speculate upon what God may do through his Spirit; I put no limit upon the power of the Spirit. He may work in a thousand ways, for aught I know. I am treating solely of that work of the Spirit which God has made ...
— The Spirit and the Word - A Treatise on the Holy Spirit in the Light of a Rational - Interpretation of the Word of Truth • Zachary Taylor Sweeney
... were the couriers, and what had become of them? What fate had attended Blakely in his lonely and perilous ride? What man or pair of men could pierce that cordon of Indians lurking all around them and reach the beleaguered command? What need to speculate on the fate of the earlier couriers anyway? Only Indians could hope to outwit Indians in such a case. It was madness to expect white men to get through. It was madness for Blakely to attempt it. Yet Blakely was gone beyond recall, perhaps beyond redemption. ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... to us through so many ages, and which the Middle Age hallowed into a Via Sacra. What can be more worthy and right than that a modern pilgrim should visit this little Roman village to see the foundations of the Roman buildings, to speculate on what they may have been, and generally to contemplate those origins out of which ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... resented this speech. It had been waiting for love for many a year, but he could not jest or speculate about it. No one but the thoughtless, favored Louis ever dared to do it before Franz, and no one ever spoke lightly of women before him, for the worst of men are sensitive to the presence of a pure and lofty nature, and are generally ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... Let us drink, dear friends, let us drink; Time that flies beckons us to it! Let us profit from life as much as we can. Once we pass under the black shadow, Goodbye to wine, our loves; Let us drink while we can, One cannot drink forever. Let fools speculate On the true happiness of life. Our philosophy Puts it among the wine-pots. Possessions, knowledge and glory Hardly make us forget troubling cares, And it is only with good drink That one can be happy. Come on then, wine for all, pour, boys, pour, Pour, ...
— The Middle Class Gentleman - (Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme) • Moliere
... so; but men are different. If there is a veil before us, we must tear it away,—not sit muffled in its folds, and speculate on what is behind ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... remote, and inaccessible than any the genius of mankind has ever evolved after its own image and out of the needs of its own heart—inscrutable, unthinkable, unspeakable; above all human passions, beyond the reach of any human appeal; One upon whose attributes it was futile to speculate—One whose name ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... do so. Two healthy, intelligent children completed his domestic happiness; the boy was about to enter the military career, which had been that of all his ancestors; the girl was to remain yet a while under her mother's wing. Like all men of old descent, our baron was a good deal given to speculate upon the past and the future of his family. We have said that his means were not large, and though he had always intended to lay by, the time for beginning to do so had never yet come. Either some improvement to house or grounds was wanted, or a trip to the baths—rendered necessary by his wife's ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... you, Friedhelm," said he, in a tone which was in some way different from his usual one. "I never knew such a ridiculous, chivalrous, punctilious fellow as you are. Tell me something—did you never speculate ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... things, the eyes must be opened by means of images, analogies and other reasonings which by the Peripatetics are comprehended under the name of fancies (fantasmi); or, by means of Being, to proceed to speculate about Essence, by means of its effects and the knowledge of the cause; the which means, are so far from ensuring the attainment of such an end, that it is easier to believe that the highest and most profound cognition of Divine ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... at roulette seems to have a different system: some powder the numbers with florins or five-franc pieces, in the hope of one coming up out of them; others speculate merely on the rouge or noir. One Spaniard at Ems, we remember, made a very comfortable living at it by a method of playing he had invented. He placed three louis-d'or on the manque, which contains all the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... yourselves—judge for yourselves, and act for yourselves! By your observation of a statesman's life, you shall know his capabilities. If he has once been a turncoat, he will be a turncoat again. If he has been known to speculate privately in a forthcoming political crisis, which he alone ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... of reaching the fir-wood, and as, long before morning, all traces were obliterated, the facts remained a mystery. Janet thought that David had some wonderful persuasion about it; but he was never heard even to speculate on the subject. Certain it was, that Hugh had saved Margaret's life. He seemed quite well next day, for he was of a very powerful and enduring frame for his years. She recovered more slowly, and perhaps ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... sorrows. He began his long rambling epilogue to the De Libris Propriis, and, almost on the threshold, pours out his sorrow afresh over Gian Battista's unhappy fate. After affirming that Death must necessarily come as a friend to those whose lives are wretched, he begins to speculate whether, after all, he ought not to rejoice rather than mourn over his son's death. "Certes he is rid of this miserable life of danger and difficulty, vain, sorrowful, brief, and inconstant; these ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... which was kept in abeyance under the Republic by the incessant calls of active life, now asserted itself in all earnest characters, and would not be content without satisfaction. Virgil was cut off before his philosophical development was completed, and therefore it is useless to speculate what views he would have finally espoused. But it is clear that his tone of mind was in reality artistic and not philosophical. Systems of thought could never have had real power over him except in ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... would; in fact, it was the only thing to be done, for he was off. So I sat down and watched the scorner of girls disappear eagerly around a bend in the road. At the end of a half hour of waiting I began to speculate. Had Dickie's courage failed him, had he taken to the woods, or was he upbraiding her of the gatepost for the sin of conceit? I would go and see ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... Here are the Australians, roaming in small bands, without more formal rulers than 'headmen' at most; not ancestor worshippers; not polytheists; with no departmental deities to select and aggrandise; not apt to speculate on the Anima Mundi. How, then, did they bridge the gulf between the ghost of a soon-forgotten fighting man, and that conception of a Father above, 'all-seeing,' moral, which, under various names, is found all over a huge continent? I cannot ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... William Gibson's epoch-making novel "Neuromancer" (though its roots go back through Vernor Vinge's "True Names" (see the {Bibliography} in Appendix C) to John Brunner's 1975 novel "The Shockwave Rider"). Gibson's near-total ignorance of computers and the present-day hacker culture enabled him to speculate about the role of computers and hackers in the future in ways hackers have since found both irritatingly na"ive and tremendously stimulating. Gibson's work was widely imitated, in particular by the short-lived but innovative "Max Headroom" TV series. See {cyberspace}, ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... and declare what they want in return—knives, or tobacco, or sago, or handkerchiefs. I then have to endeavour to explain, through any interpreter who may be at hand, that neither tripang nor pearl oyster shells have any charms for me, and that I even decline to speculate in tortoiseshell, but that anything eatable I will buy—fish, or turtle, or vegetables of any sort. Almost the only food, however, that we can obtain with any regularity, are fish and cockles of very good quality, and to supply our daily wants it is absolutely ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... or,—which is perhaps more important, though we do not seem to hear of any communication on this line,—how far there is a stock of folktales common to the Darling district and the central area, it is obviously idle to speculate as to how it comes that an Eaglehawk myth is told in both areas. The physical anthropology of the Australian natives is at present a little-worked field, in which, singularly enough, the French have done more than the English, to our shame be it said. Possibly a somatological survey might disclose ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas
... Fred, what can she mean? I was, however, too agreeably situated to speculate on anything, but as I was now buried within her bottom-hole, I lay quiet for a few minutes as she had requested; and as her complaints subsided, and I felt a slight reciprocating movement, I, too, moved within her, working at the same time ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... enough that one which offers considerable prospect of advantage has just presented itself on the confines of Persia. Think not, however, that motives of lucre would have been sufficiently powerful to tempt me to the East at the present moment. I may speculate, it is true; but I should scarcely have undertaken the journey but for your pungent words inciting me to attack the Persians. Doubt not that I will attack them on the first opportunity. I thank you heartily for putting me in mind of my ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... that I innocently believed you came to propose we should work in company, and speculate, both of us, with the money of Monsieur de Frescas, of which I have entire control—and here you talk to me of something entirely different! Frescas, my good friend, is one of the legal titles of this young man, who has seven in all. Stringent reasons prevent him from revealing the name ...
— Vautrin • Honore de Balzac
... have fewer natural outlets. And the struggle for legal enfranchisement, involving, as it did, a sensationalism that affected even the non-combatants, did much to enhance this tendency, and it is interesting to speculate whether this war will make or finish them. Once more, personally, I believe it will make them, but as I was not able to go to London after my investigations in France were concluded and observe for myself I refuse to indulge in speculations. Time will show, ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... souls that sit Before the fire and worship it With pecks of Wallsend coals, With feet upon the fender's front, Roasting their corns—like Mr. Hunt— To speculate on poles. ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... places, and later even the hatches were battened down. The dust became suffocating, and the men at times had all they could do to keep from choking. What the stuff was we could not at first conjecture, or rather, we didn't have much time to speculate on it, for we had to get our ship in shape to ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... to be kapellmeister—on the contrary, wished most vigorously not to be kapellmeister. What on earth he did wish to be, how he hoped to earn bread—he who had had only one opera produced, and gained L45 by it: it is idle to speculate concerning such questions. Excepting that he laboured incessantly at his operas—scheming and sketching, if not actually composing and writing—he would seem at this stage of his growth to have been a Mr. ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... many more next year," he said, throwing them into her apron. "So before long you'll get all his gewgaws," he added, rubbing his hands, delighted to be able to speculate on ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... light in No. 401; but then it was too late. Had he been delayed ten seconds, or had he gotten off at the fourth floor, he would have—. However, I anticipate; or rather I speculate on what would have happened under hypothetical conditions—which is fatuous in the extreme; hypothetical conditions ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... had wished to speculate upon abstruse problems of identity, there was neither time nor the mental aptitude. A little later he had given his card to the servant at the door and was waiting in a darkened and most depressive library for the coming of the master of the house. ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... without starch to cool our faces? This included the powder-bag; then I must save that beautiful lace collar; and my hair was tumbling down, so in went the tucking-comb and hair-pins with the rest; until, if there had been any one to speculate, they would have wondered a long while at the singular appearance of a girl who is considered as very slight, usually. By this time, Miriam, alarmed for me, returned to find me, though urged by Dr. Castleton not to risk her life ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... prevailing type of the Afghan physiognomy has a character strongly Jewish. This characteristic is certainly a remarkable one; but it is shared, to a considerable extent, by the Kashmiris (a circumstance which led Bernier to speculate on the Kashmiris representing the lost tribes of Israel), and, we believe, by the Tajik ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... unknown to me; I began to conjecture where I could have seen him; and, after an unobserved scrutiny, to speculate both as to his character and vocation. His physiognomy was prepossessing and intelligent, but ever and anon his brows lowered and gathered; a habit, as I then thought, with a degree of affectation in it, probably first assumed for picturesque effect ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... a general remark at the Bell Rock, as before noticed, that fish were never plenty in its neighbourhood excepting in good weather. Indeed, the seamen used to speculate about the state of the weather from their success in fishing. When the fish disappeared at the rock, it was considered a sure indication that a gale was not far off, as the fish seemed to seek shelter in deeper water from the roughness of the sea during these changes ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not an impeachment was to be expected from the House of Representatives was a point on which the Senate had no constitutional right to speculate, and in respect to which, even had it possessed the spirit of prophecy, its anticipations would have furnished no just ground for this procedure. Admitting that there was reason to believe that a violation of the Constitution ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... forecasting what was going to happen downtown. I used to say to myself that if I had capital it would be easy to make money breed money. Well, one day I borrowed from the bank, without the bank's leave, $3,000 in order to speculate. I won on that deal and the next and the next. Then I was able to return what I'd borrowed and to set up in a small way for myself in the furniture business. That was my start, ladies—the nest-egg ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... unscanned for a long enough period, it fades into illegibility, never reinforced by the scanning process. Sensory data, coming in from the outside world as it does, is probably permanent. But the thought patterns originating within the mind itself, the processes that correlate and cross-index and speculate on and hypothesize about the sensory data, these are much more fragile. A man might glance once through a Latin primer and have each and every page imprinted indelibly on his recording mechanism and still be unable to make sense ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... very sensible," replied Athos; "we must speculate upon the faults of people, and not upon their virtues. Monsieur Abbe, you ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... no need to attempt, at this juncture, to speculate concerning his place among the company of the greater dead; it is enough to avow the conviction that he possessed genius of a rare order, that he wrought nobly and valuably for the art of ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... Sous-prefet, even of Monsieur Gravier, and they all increased in their devotion to this sublime victim; for, like all women, she never mentioned her speculative schemes, and—again like all women—finding such speculation vain, she ceased to speculate. ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... consequently, in 1683, sent Lord Dartmouth to bring home the troops, and destroy the works; which he performed so effectually, that it would puzzle all our engineers to restore the harbour. It were idle to speculate on the benefits which might have accrued to England, by its preservation and retention; Tangier fell into the hands of the Moors, its importance having ceased, with the demolition of the mole. Many curious views of Tangier were taken by Hollar, during its occupation by the English; ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... like Scheuer Blumenkrohn, Mawruss, when he comes round here last year and wants to swap it two lots in Ozone Grove, Long Island, for a couple of hundred misses' reefers," Abe replied. "When I speculate, Mawruss, I take a hand ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... horror my probable burial inspired in me, I found some amusement in the admission that I should like the old gentleman whose portrait hung in the dining-room to have read my novels. This being so, it was not improbable that he would like me to read his histories, and I began to speculate on what the author of a history of the French Revolution[1] would think of "Esther Waters." The colour of the chocolate coat he wears in his picture fixed itself in my mind's eye, and I began to compare it with the colour of the brown garment worn by the ghost ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... Cashel had seen Frank over the mat which lay outside his study door, and that there was a six foot servitor to open any other door through which he might have to pass, he returned to his seat, and, drawing his chair close to the fire, began to speculate on Fanny ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... "revolutionary" score one is being simply and baldly literal. To realize the justness of the epithet, one has only to speculate upon what Wagner would have said, or what Richard Strauss may think, of an opera (let us adhere, for convenience, to an accommodating if inaccurate term) written for the voices, from beginning to end, in a kind of recitative which is virtually ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman
... paused to speculate over the implication of the man's words he would inevitably have understood the trick Ruiz Rios's companion had played on him. But he was never given to stopping for reflection when he had started for a definite goal ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... much preoccupied to notice his extreme agitation, or speculate upon its cause if he ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... not yourself with that at present which you have not the power to comprehend, and speculate not on my proceedings, but listen to my words, and follow my advice, if you will that I should serve you ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... was not watching the patient, nor the good-looking young surgeon, who seemed to be the special property of her superior. Even in her few months of training she had learned to keep herself calm and serviceable, and not to let her mind speculate idly. She was gazing out of the window into the dull night. Some locomotives in the railroad yards just outside were puffing lazily, breathing themselves deeply in the damp, spring air. One hoarser note than the others ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... the Gentleman's Magazine, N.S., I(July-Dec., 1856), 9. Neither the magazine nor the pamphlet mentioned Malone's authorship, but his hand in "the new Pamphlet," at least, was soon recognized (see the St. James's Chronicle, No. 3268, 14-16 Feb. 1782). One can only speculate whether Malone and Nichols were fellow plotters from the beginning. They seem to have taken interest in each other's work as early as 1779, when Nichols printed for Malone special copies of some early analogues to Shakespeare's plays. See Albert H. Smith, "John ...
— Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley (1782) • Edmond Malone
... and forms of worship, and the administration of the two ordinances of the Church, and God and his origin, and whether Heaven be here or there, or like unto this or that. For truly our Lord knew us, and that it was our nature to deal in subtleties and speculate of things not intended we should know during this life; the thought of our minds being restless and always running, like the waters of a river on ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... (as she addressed herself to me) upon this fortunate addition to her income and wished her a long continuance of it. I did not speculate upon the source from which it came or wonder whose humanity was so considerate. My guardian stood before me, contemplating the birds, and I had no need ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... seemed to him that the world had gone well with her. She had a kind of settled look, almost a sleekness, as though anxiety never came near to her pillow. She had married, surely, and married well. The jewels she wore were evidence, and Linforth began to speculate which of the party was her husband. They were young people who were gathered at the table. In her liking for young people about her she had not changed. Of the men no one was noticeable, but Violet Oliver, as he remembered, would hardly have chosen a noticeable man. She would have chosen ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... face which made him smile indulgently at her as he might have done at a child. After all, it was probably not her fault about the lamp, and lamps were a minor consideration, and he was finical, but suppose she liked it? Lloyd, sitting there, began to speculate if it were possible for one's spiritual nature to be definitely damaged by hideous lamps. Then he caught sight of a plate decorated with postage-stamps, with a perforated edge through which ribbons were run, and he wondered if she possibly ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... of God, thought while yet he was with us, that the new heavens and the new earth are the same in which we now live, righteously inhabited by the meek, with their deeper-opened eyes. What if the meek of the dead be thus possessing it even now! But I do not care to speculate. It is enough that the man who refuses to assert himself, seeking no recognition by men, leaving the care of his life to the Father, and occupying himself with the will of the Father, shall find himself, by and by, at home in the ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... effect upon a then existing controversy."[188] Cases may become moot because of a change in the law, or the status of the litigants, or because of some act of the parties which dissolves the controversy.[189] Just as courts will not speculate an hypothetical question, so they will not analyze dead issues.[190] The duty of every federal court, said Justice Gray, "is to decide actual controversies by a judgment which can be carried into effect, and not give ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... Jimmie Dale chose a seat by himself. How did she know? How did she know not only this, but the hundred other affairs that she had outlined in those letters of hers? By what means, superhuman, indeed, it seemed, did she—Jimmie Dale jerked himself erect suddenly. What good did it do to speculate on that now, when every minute was priceless? What was HE to do, how was he to act, what plan could he formulate and carry out, and WIN against odds that, at the outset, were desperate enough even to forecast ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... of looking at things. Surely there is much of interest in the crowd. Surely there is an unending fund from which to speculate, in that crowd way down on the street ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... reverence for a Jewish king. But something told them that the new King, though born a Jew, was of universal interest and was more than human; they forefelt his divinity. Therefore they were come to the King, not to gratify their curiosity, not to speculate and debate and frame a new creed, but to worship him. There was no war between the science and the theology of these wise men. Their science did not kill their religion, and their religion did not strangle their science. The ...
— A Wonderful Night; An Interpretation Of Christmas • James H. Snowden
... would speculate too much,' said Mr. Bennett to himself; 'but how could he have got such a blow as this? I saw him the day after his return, and he said everything had gone well ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... it, sealed forever his own social doom. That, it is certain, was most severe and drastic. The money paid him by the British Government was accursed as were the thirty silver pieces of Iscariot; for his passion to speculate ruined him financially some time before the end of his life, and he breathed his last amid comparative poverty and the dread ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... these complex life-stories is however admittedly a difficult task. The acquisition of wings is, as we have seen, a dominating feature in them all, but if we try to go yet a step farther back and speculate on the origin of wings in the most primitive exopterygote insects, the task becomes still more difficult. Many years ago Gegenbaur (1878) was struck by the correspondence of insect wings to the tracheal ...
— The Life-Story of Insects • Geo. H. Carpenter
... that he had visited his home quite an hour after the time when the deed must have been done, and these women were discussing that point, one of them saying: "I don't believe my boy would ha' come 'ome that Sunday night if he'd ha' done it." It was surprising to me to hear a respectable mother speculate as to how her own son would behave in such a case, or contemplate even the possibility of his being guilty of murder; and I thought it all too practical a way of considering the subject. But it revealed how appallingly real such things may be to people who, as I tried to show farther back, have ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... to be?"—Ere I decide, I should be glad to know that which is being. 'T is true we speculate both far and wide, And deem, because we see, we are all-seeing: For my part, I'll enlist on neither side, Until I see both sides for once agreeing. For me, I sometimes think that Life is Death, Rather than Life a mere ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... detect them in all situations about gorges, and such places. From the rivers running under rocks, the paths which must be resorted to, at least at this season, are very difficult. It would be curious to speculate on the different state of preservation of these ruins, and the singular people to whom they ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... and immediately builds two others twice as big. That Monroe P. Jones will encounter ruin is almost a matter of course; but then he is none the worse for being ruined. It hardly makes him unhappy. He is greedy of dollars with a terrible covetousness; but he is greedy in order that he may speculate more widely. He would sooner have built Jones's tenth block, with a prospect of completing a twentieth, than settle himself down at rest for life as the owner of a Chatsworth or a Woburn. As for his children, ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... It is interesting to speculate what might have been the course of events had she been able to carry out her plan before the punitive expedition was called for. Mr. Wilkie goes so far as to say that "had she been settled in the Aro country it is ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... only difficulty was to get people who had been accustomed to speculate in grain, cotton, and petroleum to try a new commodity. I knew the opportunities for money making, but it was necessary to convince the speculator that the chances of gain were better, the possibility of loss less than in the well-known great speculative ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell
... their figures silhouetted against the sky. They have been on the whole pleased and awakened by their adventure; they will discuss and compare their emotions, finger their silver, wonder and speculate, and go their separate ways, convinced anew that the ways of the world and its worldlings are verily strange ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... beast cannot reason, and this minority committee are right in declaring that "the negro can develop no inventive faculties or genius for the arts." For although the elephant may be taught to plow, or the dog to carry your market-basket by his teeth, you cannot teach them to shave notes, to speculate in gold, or even to vote; whereas, the experience of all political parties shows that men may be taught to vote, even when they do not know what ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... originating from a material and a habit of work which were entirely different, and which produced artistic necessities diametrically opposed. It might be curious to speculate upon what would have resulted had their position in history been reversed; what statues we should possess had the marble-carving art born of architectural decoration originated in Greece, and the art of clay and bronze flourished in Christian and mediaeval Italy. Be this as it may, the accident of ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... idle to speculate whether the "nephesh" of the animals, or the "living self" of the man, is an entity separate from the body, and capable of existing per se—of its own inherent nature—apart from it. We do not know that animal forms are the ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... this explanation were correct, the notice would suggest that Papias looked upon the Greek Gospel as not merely a translation, but an enlargement, of the original document. In this case it would be vain to speculate how or when or by whom he supposed it to be made; for either he did not give this information, or (if he did) Eusebius has withheld it. This hypothesis was first started, I believe, by Schleiermacher, and has found favour with not a few critics of opposite schools. Attempts ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... sustain and cheer me. He is capable of the sacred love,—the love passing that of woman. He showed it to his father, to Rome, to me. Now he loves his child in the same way. I think he will be an excellent father, though he could not speculate about it, ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... to take it as a matter of course that he should speculate and gamble at cards, and indeed do anything and everything he fancied, but they beg him at least to keep to respectable clubs. He is constantly away. His daughter tries to tempt him home with the bloom of her hyacinths. 'How they long to see him again!' she says, 'how greatly ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... things on which he did not speculate sufficiently were the life or health of Mr. Ross; the chance that some obnoxious neighborhood growth would affect the territory he had selected as residence territory; the fact that difficult money situations might reduce real estate values—in fact, bring about a flurry of real ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... into close, daily contact with the ruling power, a contact from which there was no escape, in which instinctive likes and antipathies might make or mar a career. At this thought the young man began to speculate with some intensity upon the personality indicated thus far to his mind only by the name of ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... escape would have been impossible, and General Washington and his army of 15,000 men must have been taken prisoners. Whether this misfortune would have proved conclusive of the war it is now too late to speculate; but so splendid an opportunity was never before let slip by an English general, and the negligence was the more inexcusable inasmuch as the fleet of boats could be seen lying alongside of the American position. Their purpose must have been known, and they could at any moment ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... carries us back to the time when the savage was groping his way onward in his attempt to give expression to some number greater than any he had ever used before; and now and then one of these fragments is such as to lead us to the border land of the might-have-been, and to cause us to speculate on the possibility of so great a numerical curiosity as a senary or a septenary scale. The Bretons call 18 triouec'h, 3-6, but otherwise their language contains no hint of counting by sixes; and we are left at perfect liberty to theorize at will ...
— The Number Concept - Its Origin and Development • Levi Leonard Conant
... side and pulled it briskly; whereupon a first-floor window was thrown up and a head protruded. But it afforded us a momentary glimpse only, for, having caught the sergeant's upturned eye, it retired with surprising precipitancy, and before we had time to speculate on the apparition, the street-door was opened and a man emerged. He was about to close the door after him when the ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... us plunge from philology into ethnology. I prefer to speculate upon Mr. Thomas Burroughs. Who is he? and what does he want ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... it is Keats, in a letter—that the poet lives not in one, but in a thousand worlds, and the actor has not one, but a hundred natures. What was the real Henry Irving? I used to speculate! ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... discover and believe nothing. The ultimate or absolute is beyond our reach, as is the infinite and unconditioned. We can have no knowledge of First Causes, or of the Ultimate Cause, or of the Absolute Cause. The infinite cannot even be apprehended, and those who undertake to learn or to speculate regarding the infinite engage in a task beyond their powers. Such knowledge is not practical. The term "God" is merely an expression for a mode of the unknowable, conveying no meaning to those who use it. The view thus expressed ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds
... Agrarian and Urban, a cross section into Labour and Capitalistic. Each of these economic groupings is indefinitely criss-crossed by an indefinite number of antagonisms, spiritual and material. In a situation so complicated it is idle to speculate as to the conditions of the future. A box of bricks so large, and so multi-coloured, may be arranged and re-arranged in an infinity of architectures. The one thing quite certain is that all the arrangements ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... body of enemies, our whole party thus being made prisoners. We were at once hurried unceremoniously along until we reached a large village not far from the bank of the river which we could see flowing tantalisingly by us. We had no time to exchange remarks with each other, or to speculate as to what was to be our fate. At first we fancied that the ugly black was the king of the place, but this we soon discovered was not the case, for, as we were dragged up the main street, we saw issuing from a house of more pretentions ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... misunderstood me, again offer them, and declare what they want in return—knives, or tobacco, or sago, or handkerchiefs. I then have to endeavour to explain, through any interpreter who may be at hand, that neither tripang nor pearl oyster shells have any charms for me, and that I even decline to speculate in tortoiseshell, but that anything eatable I will buy—fish, or turtle, or vegetables of any sort. Almost the only food, however, that we can obtain with any regularity, are fish and cockles of very good ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... serving the purpose of the world. I know this; I do not know anything else; and I am reluctant to put questions to which I have no answer, and to which I do not believe that anyone has an answer. Action, as defined above, is my creed. Speculation weakens action. I do not wish to speculate, I wish to live. And I believe the true life to be the life ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... that there is nothing to prevent it from being so, appears when we reflect on the way in which water permeating the earth produces springs and rivulets, or when we speculate on the means by which the sweat passes through the skin, or the urine through the substance of the kidneys. It is well known that persons who use the Spa waters or those of La Madonna, in the territories of Padua, or others of an ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... outcome will be the moral virtues of temperance and fortitude. It may direct the understanding, and ultimately the members of the body, in order to the production of some practical result in the external world, as a bridge. Lastly, it may direct the understanding to speculate and think, contemplate and consider, for mere contemplation's sake. Happiness must take one or other of ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... have said, wrote the book of "Ero e Leandro" for himself, but eventually gave it to others. I can only speculate as to the cause of Boito's abandonment of his intellectual child. Probably he concluded that it lacked the dramatic elements which the composers of the last few decades, paying tribute, willingly or unwillingly, to Wagner's genius, have ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... nature, blind of passion, impelled madly toward the loved one. He is as blind to her salient imperfections as he is to her petty vices. He does not interrogate her disposition and temperament, or speculate as to how they will cooerdinate with his for two score years and odd. He questions nothing, desires nothing, save to possess her. And this is the paradox: By nature he is driven to contract a temporary tie, which, by social observance and demand, must ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... carried or what was to be his fate Ernest could not conjecture, nor did he speculate much. It was enough for him to know that he was in the power of one of ...
— The Young Bank Messenger • Horatio Alger
... far too practical to speculate when she should act. It was clearly her duty to speak to Thurston on the subject, and, repugnant as the task was, she resolved to perform it. It was some time before ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... be he had for years not allowed himself to speculate. Unbidden at times the memory of certain revealing looks or acts of his father's floated into his mind:—a dread if not terror that on occasion dilated the elder man's eyes, and a steadfast driving of himself ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... whole of dogmatic theology belongs to that region of philosophy, metaphysics, or whatever you please to call it, in which men are doomed to dispute for ever without coming any nearer to a decision. All that the statesman has to do with such matters is to see that if men are fools enough to speculate, they shall not be allowed to cut each other's throats when they reach, as they always must reach, contradictory results. If you raise a difficult point—such, for example, as the education question—Macaulay replies, as so many people have replied before and since, Teach the people 'those ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... correlated. A good observer, also, states that in cattle susceptibility to the attacks of flies is correlated with colour, as is the liability to be poisoned by certain plants; so that colour would be thus subjected to the action of natural selection. But we are far too ignorant to speculate on the relative importance of the several known and unknown laws of variation; and I have here alluded to them only to show that, if we are unable to account for the characteristic differences of our domestic breeds, which nevertheless we generally ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... a letter comes to hand Astin' how I'd like to dicker fer some Illinois land— "The feller that had owned it," it went ahead to state, "Had jest deceased, insolvent, leavin' chance to speculate,"— ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... having completely rested, opened his eyes and looked about him in wonderment at finding himself in strange quarters. The next moment, however, memory returned to him: he recalled the proceedings of the past night, and once more began to speculate upon the purpose which could have been powerful enough to induce Huanacocha and Xaxaguana to resort to so extreme a measure as that of his abduction from the palace. And now, with the more sober reflections following upon a sound night's rest, he began to take a somewhat more ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... it was—had two effects. It dispelled, for a time, the gloom that had come with the news of Will Ford's disappearance, and it gave the girls something to talk about, to speculate ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Florida - Or, Wintering in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope
... signature—considered the vagary life had become for her, it was so whimsical, and the mystery of her secret which was so solely hers. Alicia knew, of course; but that was much as if she had written it down on a sheet of perfect notepaper and locked it up in a drawer. Alicia did not speculate about it, and the whole soul of it was tangled now in a speculation. There had been a time filled with the knowledge and the joy of this new depth in her, like a buoyant sea, and she had been content to float in it, imagining desirable things. Stanhope's waiting contract ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... Antoinette becoming a mother; while, if she should leave no children, the Comte de Provence would be heir to the throne. He scarcely made any secret that he was already contemplating the probability of his succession; and, as there were not wanting courtiers to speculate also on the chance, it soon became known that there was no such sure road to the favor of monsieur[1] as that of disparaging and vilifying the queen. There might have been some safety for her in being put on her guard against her enemy; and the king himself, ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... (omitting "Assumption of Aristocracy," which has hitherto been credited to him, but was really sent in by Gilbert a Beckett), "Singular Letter from the Regent of Spain," with the three amusing cuts of sailors who, having found a bottle at sea, speculate as to its contents as they open it—"Sherry, perhaps," "Rum, I hope!" "Tracts, by Jove!!" Then, to select the chief and longest series, came "The History of the Next French Revolution," in nine parts (Volume VI.), ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... could he have reached up tall enough. He had no love in his heart, nor mirth. My cousin has always loved a horse and even in his childhood this love was strong. And so, during the days that led up to Christmas when children speculate upon their desires and check them on their fingers, he kept asking his uncle for a pony. At first, as you might know, his uncle was stolid against the thought, but finally, with many winks and nods—pleasantries beyond ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... "There is nothing so foolish as the way many of you English seem to regard us Germans as though we were wild beasts of prey. Now it gives me pleasure to talk with a man like yourself, Mr. Norgate. I like to look a little into the future and speculate as to our two countries. Above all things, this thing I do truly know. The German nation stands for peace. Yet in order that peace shall everywhere prevail, a small war, a humanely-conducted war, may sometime within ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... an imposing one. Men of big reputation were there, and Robert felt himself wondering, as he looked at them, how ordinary they looked after all, and he began to speculate as to the qualities they possessed which ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... never good times in England since the poor began to speculate upon their condition. Formerly, they jogged on with as little reflection as horses: the whistling ploughman went cheek by jowl with his brother that neighed. Now the biped carries a box of phosphorus in his leather-breeches; and in the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... continual remembrance of her daughter; and as her youngest child, the blooming Melinda, who was as like the departed Abigail as sisters ever are to each other ripened into womanhood, and the grave Richard spoke oftener to her than to the other maidens of the prairie village, she began to speculate upon what might possibly be, and refused the loan of her brass kettle to the neighbor whose husband did not vote for Richard when he ran for member of Congress. Melinda, too, had her little ambitions, her silent hopes and aspirations, and ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... fingers was a fifty-dollar diamond, which my partner seemed to think was muy buenito. As her igneous eyes softened my heart, and the champagne was producing a similar effect upon my head, I began to speculate on the propriety of transferring the diamond from the smallest of my fingers to the largest of hers, which it would, no doubt, have fitted exactly. All at once I became conscious of being under the surveillance of a large and very fierce-looking ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... drive off toward the bruised sunset. The observation of this pointless and preposterous phenomenon had become a sort of cult among the men of Fish. To observe, that was all; there remained in them none of the vital quality of illusion which would make them wonder or speculate, else a religion might have grown up around these mysterious visitations. But the men of Fish were beyond all religion—the barest and most savage tenets of even Christianity could gain no foothold on that barren rock—so there was no altar, no priest, ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... Epechi. Sextus Empiricus, who lived in the second century, under the Emperor Antoninus Pius, writ ten books against the mathematicians or astrologers, and three of the Phyrrhonian opinion. The word is derived from the Greek SKEPTESZAI, quod est, considerare, speculare. [To consider or speculate] ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... to you, and upon it you can rely. Every thing is uncertain and wavering in life. They have ruined me, lacerated my heart, and there is nothing more in the world which I honor. Only sycophants and hypocrites surround me, who speculate upon my future greatness; or spies, who would make their fortune today, and therefore spy and hang about me, in order to be paid by the reigning king, and who slander me in order to be favorites of his. No one at court loves me, not even my wife. How should ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... character; and no playwright has created a more probable gallery of characters with whom we can become so easily and so completely familiar. They live before us, and with apparently so unconscious a self-revelation that we speculate about them as we would about real people, and sometimes take sides with them against their creator. Nora would, would not, have left her children! We know all their tricks of mind, their little differences from other people, their habits, the things that ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... only speculate, of course, on such an occasion, but perhaps no trial is recorded as having taken place, with the results of which every body, the parties convicted only excepted, was, in all probability, better pleased or satisfied, than at this witch trial at Lancaster in 1612. The mob would ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... my fellow-passengers, many of whom were returning home, and all of whom expected to be met by friends, left me at leisure, as I looked at unattractive, unfamiliar Yokohama and the pale grey land stretched out before me, to speculate somewhat sadly on my destiny on these strange shores, on which I have not even an acquaintance. On mooring we were at once surrounded by crowds of native boats called by foreigners sampans, and Dr. ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... came very late, and found a vacant place between Sir George Robinson and a common-looking man in black. As soon as I had time to look at my neighbour, I began to speculate (as one usually does) as to who he might be, and as he did not for some time open his lips except to eat, I settled that he was some obscure man of letters or of medicine, perhaps a cholera doctor. In a ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... somewhere heard, that a good housewife never has any thing to purchase when it is wanted. This maxim is often in her mouth, and always in her head. She is not one of those philosophical talkers that speculate without practice; and learn sentences of wisdom only to repeat them: she is always making additions to her stores; she never looks into a broker's shop, but she spies something that may be wanted some time; and it is impossible to make her pass the door of a ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... other inward, wavered, then stopped and began to stare at the candidate, not intrusively, but with a kindly curiosity that it considered legitimate. Harley had quietly joined the Graysons, and they gave him a sincere welcome. The people unfamiliar with his face began to speculate audibly ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... alluded to above. It is not to be inferred that, as a consequence of this tendency, he blinded himself, at any period of his life, to the necessity and the duty of practical exertion. He was always eager to act as well as speculate; and, in this respect, his character preserved an unbroken consistency and harmony from the epoch when, on commencing his residence at Cambridge, he voluntarily became a teacher in a parish Sunday-school, for the sake of ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... have in any degree conveyed the atmosphere of this appalling hotel, the reader may feel a natural wonder as to how I came to know anything about it, and may even speculate as to how so ordinary a person as my friend Father Brown came to find himself in that golden galley. As far as that is concerned, my story is simple, or even vulgar. There is in the world a very aged ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... not daring to speculate upon the nature of the bad news. But his face was pale beneath its sunburn, and his hand trembled on the balustrade; for he knew—in his heart he knew. There could be only one piece of news which would make his haste or tardiness ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... bequeathing to them as birthright an environment that their fathers had to make. The material for constructing any theory of mental, or joint mental and physical evolution, is so hazy that one cannot do more than speculate. It may be noted, however, that acquired mental characteristics appear to be more transmissible, and less stable, than acquired physical characteristics; and that mental evolution (in the broad sense again) proceeds faster and collapses more readily than ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... that Elliott and his men had strayed off on account of having no guide, and would ultimately come in all right to Camp Supply or make their way back to Fort Dodge; a very unsatisfactory view of the matter, but as no one knew the direction Elliott had taken, it was useless to speculate on other suppositions, and altogether too late to make any search for him. I was now anxious to follow up Custer's stroke by an immediate move to the south with the entire column, but the Kansas regiment had not yet arrived. At first ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 6 • P. H. Sheridan
... indicated, have been worked. The question naturally arises how were they worked? The answer to this may be given without the least hesitation: with stone tools. For many years the method of working the stones was a matter of great debate, and the uncertainty then prevailing permitted many theorists to speculate on the "Roman" origin of the structure. Now, however, the entire absence of any metal which resulted from Mr. Gowland's excavations in 1901, at once precludes the possibility of the builders being anything but a primitive people, to whom the use of metal was unknown, or only partly known. The ...
— Stonehenge - Today and Yesterday • Frank Stevens
... the sea. At Raynham they look up at the sky and speculate that Richard is approaching fairly speeded. He comes to throw himself on his darling's mercy. Lucy irradiated over forest and sea, tempest and peace—to her the hero comes humbly. Great is that day when we see our folly! Ripton and he were the friends of old. Richard encouraged him to talk ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... is, any hint of unknown possibilities falling from unknown regions, should, even as a stranger, receive the welcome of contemplation and conjecture, so long as in itself it involves no moral contradiction. The man who will not speculate at all, can make no progress. The thinking about the possible is as genuine, as lawful, and perhaps as edifying an exercise of the mind as the severest induction. Better lies still beyond. Experiment itself must follow in the track of sober conjecture; ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... little things were news to us. A change of bakers—we could tell it by our bread. What made Pie-face Jones lay off a week? Was it vacation or sickness? Why was Wilson, on the night shift for only ten days, transferred elsewhere? Where did Smith get that black eye? We would speculate for a week over so trivial a ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... account with. bargain; drive a bargain, make a bargain; negotiate, bid for; haggle, higgle^; dicker [U.S.]; chaffer, huckster, cheapen, beat down; stickle, stickle for; out bid, under bid; ask, charge; strike a bargain &c (contract) 769. speculate, give a sprat to catch a herring; buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market, buy low and sell high; corner the market; rig the market, stag the market. Adj. commercial, mercantile, trading; interchangeable, marketable, staple, in the market, for sale. wholesale, retail. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... crossed the Atlantic with me on my return. He always, morning, noon, and night, had one either in his hand or projecting out of his mouth. It signified not what was his occupation, the little stiletto was always to the fore. We used to speculate on board if he so slept, and the ayes ...
— The Truth About America • Edward Money
... for the first time since she entered this unpeopled house that she had leisure to speculate on the circumstances which had brought about such loneliness and neglect, here where rank and state, and wealth almost without limit should have secured the patient every care and comfort that devoted service could lavish upon a sufferer. How was it that she found ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... in state in the rotunda of the State Capitol, and the building was draped in mourning. Many came and looked upon the quiet face; but far more numerous than those who gathered at his bier to weep were those who assembled in secluded corners to speculate on the wearing of his toga. It ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... day after day we approached a warmer clime with its glowing sunshine and glittering waves and the deep blue sky bending down in unbroken circle around us. The rebel cruisers were then in the midst of their destructive work and it was natural, as we caught sight of a distant vessel, to speculate whether it was a friendly or a hostile craft. When we were in the latitude of Charleston, a steamer appeared in the far distance, then a flash, a puff of smoke and a loud report notified us that it was sending us its compliments. It approached nearer, a boat put out and officers from the ...
— Reminiscences of two years with the colored troops • Joshua M. Addeman
... the two were fairly started upon the singular chase, they had time to speculate as to its probable result. They had not a firearm on the boat nor had they ever had one aboard. They were chasing a party of criminals who were sure to be well armed. Suppose our young friends overtook them, what ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... our hunting to find new and strange things in the woods. We examined the slightest sign of life; and if a bird had scratched the leaves off the ground, or a bear dragged up a root for his morning meal, we stopped to speculate on the time it was done. If we saw a large old tree with some scratches on its bark, we concluded that a bear or some raccoons must be living there. In that case we did not go any nearer than was necessary, but later reported the incident at home. An old deer-track would at once bring on a warm ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... more or less arbitrary addition of the Chinese artist who created the group, and it is this hat which led to the speculations regarding the Portuguese sailor or Marco Polo. Certain it is also that such a type of hat does not occur in China; but it seems idle to speculate as to its origin, as long as we have no positive information on the intentions of the artist. The striped mantle of the Lo-han is by no means singular, for it occurs with seventeen others. The facts simply amount to this, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... introduced into England by C.T. Tower, Esq., of Weald Hall, Essex; and as that gentleman, by this time, must have some of his flock to dispose off, we think their introduction among cottagers, for their wool and also for their milk, a fair subject for some of our female readers to speculate on. This variety of the common goat (or, probably, it may be a distinct species) is a fine-looking animal, and would be very ornamental in a park, on a ruin, on the side of a rock, or in a churchyard. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 561, August 11, 1832 • Various
... object of his attack, he is swept into some current of endeavor that has from the most ancient times been pressing steadily toward the solution of a problem that lies in the centre of {4} the path of life. He straightway commences himself to govern, educate, speculate, or moralize. And the more patiently he labors, the greater his respect for the vested wisdom of his time. Whereas he first sought utterly to demolish, he is now content to make his little difference and hand on the ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... thousands. Fluctuation, however, in the paper value of the measure of all values (gold) is detrimental to the interests of trade. It makes the man of business an involuntary gambler, for in all sales where future payment is to be made both parties speculate as to what will be the value of the currency to be paid and received. I earnestly recommend to you, then, such legislation as will insure a gradual return to specie payments and put an immediate stop to fluctuations in the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant • Ulysses S. Grant
... men who man the raiders certainly do not speculate about you and your state of mind. When back home, some of them may wonder what feelings they have inspired in the people below, but at the time the job's the thing ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... of stiffly starched garments Miss Mehitable took her departure, carefully closing the door and avoiding the appearance of haste. This was an effort, for every fibre of her being ached to get back to the clearing house, where she might speculate upon Evelina's return. It was her desire, also, to hunt up the oldest inhabitant before nightfall and correct her pitiful lapse ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... liberty to interrupt, for the introduction of any remark whatever. If we once got her interested in anything, it seems to me, as Mr. Armstrong has already hinted, that the tide of life would begin to flow again. She would eat better, and sleep better, and speculate less, and think less about herself—not of herself—I don't mean that, colonel; for no one could well think less of herself than she does. And if we could amuse her in that way for a week or two, I think it would give a fair chance to ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... another review, he supposed. A longer and more detailed one. There must be, had to be, something they'd overlooked in the first one. Had he been right in freezing out so many who wanted to speculate in that first one? But in ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... holy a thing is his Regiment. He wants to drink, he wants to enjoy himself—in India he wants to save money—and he does not in the least like getting hurt. He has received just sufficient education to make him understand half the purport of the orders he receives, and to speculate on the nature of clean, incised, and shattering wounds. Thus, if he is told to deploy under fire preparatory to an attack, he knows that he runs a very great risk of being killed while he is deploying, and suspects that he is being thrown away to gain ten minutes' time. He may either deploy with ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... Goldsmith nearly gave him up in despair, and pronounced that he would never make a man of business. He made matters worse by replying that this was the best chance of his not being a man of speculation. If he were allowed to think of nothing but money, he should speculate for the sake of something ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the contest as one "between the men who speculate in stocks, and the productive, toiling men of the country." He believed "the sentiment of the nation approaches unanimity in favor of this legal-tender clause." He had received letters from large commercial houses in Massachusetts, representing millions of capital, and "they declare ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... were still happy in the present, and did not speculate much upon the future. The rolling years brought him completeness, and to the graces of person were added the gifts of wisdom and knowledge. The down that shaded his cheek, like the down upon a ripe peach, had darkened and strengthened to the symbol of manhood, and his words had the clear ring ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... philosophical; it is a dodging of the question, instead of an attempt to solve it. Divine ordination—"[Greek: Doz d' etelevto Bonlae]"—is a maxim which settles all difficulties. But it also precludes all inquiry. Why speculate at all, with this universal ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... Ernshaw lit his pipe and sat down to speculate as to the cause of Dora's somewhat singular request, but fifteen minutes had not passed before the door was thrown open, and she came in white to the lips and shaking from head ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... not watching the patient, nor the good-looking young surgeon, who seemed to be the special property of her superior. Even in her few months of training she had learned to keep herself calm and serviceable, and not to let her mind speculate idly. She was gazing out of the window into the dull night. Some locomotives in the railroad yards just outside were puffing lazily, breathing themselves deeply in the damp, spring air. One hoarser note than the others struck familiarly on the nurse's ear. That was the voice of the engine ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... wet; she felt moved but angry that he had exhausted himself for her. She did not want him to think she knew what her comfort cost and was willing to let him buy it at such a price. She remembered that she had begun to speculate rather often about what ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... start. I was a clerk in a bank and sharp as a needle in forecasting what was going to happen downtown. I used to say to myself that if I had capital it would be easy to make money breed money. Well, one day I borrowed from the bank, without the bank's leave, $3,000 in order to speculate. I won on that deal and the next and the next. Then I was able to return what I'd borrowed and to set up in a small way for myself in the furniture business. That was my start, ladies—the nest-egg of all ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... therefore go to it with resolution, and I wish I could say with unanimity, for that appears to me to be the one thing most wanted. The absence of so many people from town, makes it impossible as yet to do more than speculate on that subject, which is open to very great difficulties. I need not say that you may rely on hearing from me upon it as soon as there is anything to say, and above all, that nothing will be wanting on my part to forward your wishes to the utmost, ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... a friend taking such a step, I cannot but speculate on the matter as though I were myself in her place. If I were Miss Gresham, ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... Mr. Wordsley said. "And if I might be allowed to speculate, Captain, I would say that we are finished unless we can make a planetfall. Only then would I be able to remove the lower port tube, weld the cavity, ...
— The Marooner • Charles A. Stearns
... many in a town far above a master builder in position. You may be an upright man, but even as a master you will only be ranked among common men. I know better what to do than that. I will be an architect, which will place me among those who possess riches and intellect, and who speculate in art. I shall certainly have to rise by my own endeavors from a bricklayer's laborer, or as a carpenter's apprentice—a lad wearing a paper cap, although I now wear a silk hat. I shall have to fetch beer and spirits ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... Latin, or even into the vernacular idiom wherever literary forms had developed. The bold assertion can be made good that not a single prominent work of ancient science was left untranslated. On the other hand it is hard to speculate what would have been the fate of these treasures of antiquity without Jewish intermediation. Doubtless an important factor in the work was the encouragement given Jewish scholars by enlightened rulers, such as Emperor Frederick II., Charles and Robert ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... vastly more plausibility, deny that Paul was the author of his Epistles, because he employed an amanuensis, or, for the same reason, deny that Milton was the author of Paradise Lost. It is useless here to speculate upon the reasons which induced God to ordain and bring sin to pass. We are now concerned with the fact merely, and we hence conclude that he is the author of sin and the only being properly answerable ...
— The Calvinistic Doctrine of Predestination Examined and Refuted • Francis Hodgson
... clear and well imagined. He invited capitalists not to speculate in the lottery, but to guarantee it for a certain sum. In the case of the lottery's losing, each guarantor would have to share in paying according to the sum named, and in like manner they would ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... on her feet in a moment. She appeared glad to have some excuse for action. She was, no doubt, nervous and excited as to the probable result of her lover's mission to the Hall, and wanted to be alone with Anne in order that they might speculate upon those probabilities which Banks's return would ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... traveler goes unawares over one of the most ancient highways in the world. Our trip over it was more memorable than any journey over a Roman road could have been. We paused awhile to speculate who these ancient people were who passed this way centuries before us. What ceremonious processions may have moved over this ancient causeway! From the branch of a maple that sent its roots into the more defined grade came the dreamy notes of a mourning dove, from a walnut tree a cuckoo uttered ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... take him to his quarters." Then he held up his hand. "No, let him stay where he is." He turned to Steve. "Come on, Steve. You too, Kit. Let's see if we can't get a report from the electronics section before we speculate any further." ...
— Treachery in Outer Space • Carey Rockwell and Louis Glanzman
... the same variety brought from a distance. The unfortunate feature about all the hybridizing work with apples is the mongrel character of the plants on which we work. We know nothing of the parentage of any of our varieties, and it seems quite useless to speculate on what the segregation of characters may be in crosses between different varieties. A further discouraging feature in apple breeding is the long period required to get results from any particular cross. Effort is being made to shorten this period by grafting scions of hybrid ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... stirred within the bronzed skull, but it is useless to speculate, since we have no more means of knowing their nature than had Jack Carleton, who wondered and guessed ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... understood in the Carling household that in course of time a set of table doilies of elaborate devices in colored silks would be forthcoming. It has been deplored by some philosopher that custom does not sanction such little occupations for masculine hands. It would be interesting to speculate how many embarrassing or disastrous consequences might have been averted if at a critical point in a negotiation or controversy a needle had had to be threaded or a dropped stitch taken up before a reply was made, to say nothing ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... powerfully reinforced, and further, from the nature of the animal remains arose the conviction that "existing animals have a close relation in form with extinct species," another of the germinal facts which bore fruit in the "Origin of Species." Darwin was led to speculate on the causes which could have extinguished so many great species, and he remarks most suggestively: "One is tempted to believe in such simple relations as variation of climate and food, or introduction of enemies, or the ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... chatting of a variety of past events in as disengaged and pleasant a fashion as an old gentleman of sixty-five, fallen unexpectedly into the company of an old friend, could do. As Bessie cooled down, she listened and began to speculate whether he might possibly be not so altogether wicked as his recent misbehavior had led her to conclude; then she began to think better things of him in a general way, but unfortunately it did not occur to her ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... always guarding against. Anyhow there is no doubt that the scene holds the place of honour, that it is the readiest means of starting an interest and raising a question—we drop into a scene on the first page and begin to speculate about the people concerned in it: and that it recurs for a climax of any sort, the resolution of the question—and so the scene completes what it began. In Madame Bovary the scenes are distributed and rendered with very rare skill; not one but seems to have more and more ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... Margaret, for her part, had no recollection of reaching the fir-wood, and as, long before morning, all traces were obliterated, the facts remained a mystery. Janet thought that David had some wonderful persuasion about it; but he was never heard even to speculate on the subject. Certain it was, that Hugh had saved Margaret's life. He seemed quite well next day, for he was of a very powerful and enduring frame for his years. She recovered more slowly, and perhaps never altogether ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... cheerful as she mounted the stairs than she thought would have been possible had such a position been forecast and had she to speculate upon the attitude of mind with which she would meet such ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... There has been no center like London, where writers can rub elbows half-a-dozen times a year. Boston was such a capital once; only, however, for New England. New York is a clearing-house of literature now; but the writing is, most of it, done elsewhere. It is curious to speculate what might have happened if the capital of the United States had been fixed at New York instead ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... world's history move not by chance; and how, moreover, could Italy have fulfilled her destiny without the divers forms of political existence that made her what she was? Yet, standing before some of the great Lombard churches, we are inclined to speculate, perhaps with better reason, what the result would have been if that style of architecture could have assumed the complete ascendency over the Italians which the Romanesque and Gothic of the North exerted over France and England?[12] The pyramidal facade common in these buildings, ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... yawned and went to the library for a cigar, dismissing Steve and his scruples and the railroad business altogether from his mind, in the manner of a well-trained man of affairs, who has learned that it is a useless waste of energy to speculate on what has been done and to wonder why men should feel and act as ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... might surmise and speculate all day and not come anywhere near the truth. I must await—what the night will bring forth, as they say in really ...
— Mary Marie • Eleanor H. Porter
... the lofty hall, high above the first story. The dust lay thick on a large marble table—but what was that?—a streak across it, brushed sharply through the middle of the dust! It was strange! But he would not wait to speculate on the agent! The room to which the earl had directed him was on the first floor, and he ascended to it at once—by the great oak staircase which went up the sides ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... what deed was noble or great enough to win a kiss from those lips. Several times that afternoon, it had seemed to him that he could not keep himself from leaning over and taking one. He even went so far now as to speculate on exactly what Leonore would do if he did. Fortunately his face was not given to expressing his thoughts. Leonore never dreamed how narrow an escape she had. "If only she wouldn't be so friendly and confiding," groaned Peter, even while absolutely happy ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... that many supposed it to be. It was often asserted that the financier lent, even gave, the humorist large sums, and pointed out opportunities for speculation. No part of this statement is true. Mr. Rogers neither lent nor gave Mark Twain money, and never allowed him to speculate when he could prevent it. He sometimes invested Mark Twain's own funds for him, but he never bought for him a share of stock without money in hand to pay for it in full—money belonging to, and ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... but irrationality in writing otherwise. All the millions who wrote by the fingers were cracked. The writing-master, in short, though possibly a reasonable man on other subjects, was certainly unsound upon this. You may allow yourself to speculate on the chance of being bitten by a mad dog, or of being maimed by a railway accident, till you grow morbid on these points. If you live in the country, you may give in to the idea that your house will be broken into at night by burglars, till, every time you wake in the dark hours, you may ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... "reverent disciple" whom he hints at, but does not name. In short, I think that {402} Fletcher was the pupil of Shakspeare; and this view, it appears to me, demands the serious attention of the biographer who next may study or speculate ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 55, November 16, 1850 • Various
... of this problem—publicity, the education of the public, and a higher ideal among financiers. As long as the public likes to speculate and is greedy and ignorant enough to be taken in by the wiles of the fraudulent promoter, attempts by legislation to check this gentleman's enterprise will be defeated by his ingenuity and the public's eagerness ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... When you speculate on margins you are like the fellow holding on a bear's tail as it runs around a tree—if you lose your hold the bear will ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter
... resumed, and Mr. Fogo left to speculate on these dark sayings. But as the boat drew near the column of blue smoke that, rising from the hazels on the left bank, marked the whereabouts of the Dearloves' cottage, he grew aware of a picture that, perhaps by mere ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... science in which few in America are expert, and no person in a foreign country can be so. Foreigners should therefore be sure that they are well advised, before they meddle with them, or they may suffer. If you will reflect with what degree of success persons actually in America could speculate in the European funds, which rise and fall daily, you may judge how far those in Europe may do it in the American funds, which are more variable from a variety ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... her head that Owen would suspect her secret. Indeed, the whole affair was so dream-like, of so unsubstantial, so gossamer a lightness, that merely to speculate upon her romance would have been to shatter it, as one might put a ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... occupants were undecided whither to direct their stings. He looked hopefully forward as the station came in sight, expecting to see the train standing there panting after its previous run; but no train was in sight He began to speculate on which way he could turn to escape the tempest of wrath he had aroused in case he had missed the train. He doubted if he could induce the boy to take him to the nearest town, and moreover, had no idea of the distance. Also he doubted if he ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... now comfortably speculate on the particular complications from which his foresight had probably saved him. The climax was unexpectedly dramatic. Miss Lombard, on the brink of a step which, whatever its issue, would have burdened her with retrospective compunction, had been set free before her suitor's ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... together to take aim. As they did so, they saw one of the rams, who had been backing himself for a rush, suddenly disappear over the edge of the cliff! They thought he had tumbled over—as his legs were the last of him they had seen—but they had no time to speculate upon the matter, as both pulled trigger at the moment. Two of the animals were laid prostrate by their fire; while the rest bounded off, ran out to a point of ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... a capital is far short of what it ought to be; but I was afraid of attempting too much at first, and must now endeavor to increase it by other means. If any of your acquaintances in the Havana have a mind to speculate in the American funds, I think they cannot place their money on a more secure or profitable establishment. This Bank will, I believe, exist for ages to come; and I am persuaded the annual dividends will not be less than from eight ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. XI • Various
... pretty way I am abusing my host!) And the supple woman with the dark eyes would have been just the creature to enthral him. Perhaps some such story as this may account in part for Mrs. Frere's sad looks. Why do I speculate on such things? I seem to do violence to myself and to insult her by writing such suspicions. If I was a Flagellant now, I would don hairshirt and up flail. "For this sort cometh not out but by ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... as his father had gone to pay the morning visit to the printing shops, he ran out to post the letter himself. He could not be contented until it was in the post. Now, when he saw men of about his own class and age in the street, he would speculate upon their experiences in the romance of women. And it did genuinely seem to him impossible that anybody else in a town like Bursley could have passed through an episode so exquisitely strange and ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... with resin burnt fiercely. Chris did not dare to come too close. Not only was the heat intense but the crowds collecting below looked upward to watch in a puzzled way, while others ran from near the palace gates to gaze and speculate. ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... Duchess sat down; not so much because she wished to assume a sitting position, as because she experienced a sudden, uncontrollable weakness of the knees. For a moment she was unable to speak, or even to speculate; but one vague thought did trail dimly across her brain. "Heavens! what have I done to him? And maybe some day he ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... to Polton's sanctum on the upper floor, leaving me to speculate on the method by which he proposed that a man should be enabled, as Sam Weller would express it, "to see through a flight of stairs and a deal door"; or, what was equally opaque, the wooden ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... were regarded as the outward indications of a sweet and gentle character. Woman was a tendril clinging to the strong oak of masculinity. Modesty was her cardinal virtue. One is, of course, entitled to speculate on the probable contemporary causes for the seeming overemphasis placed on this admirable characteristic. Perhaps feminine honesty was so rare as to be at a premium and modesty was a sort of electric sign ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... well, demanding equal rights, but no favors. By some gentle appeal, hardly put into words, we knew that Uncle Esmond did not want us to talk to her about herself. And Beverly and Mat and I, however much we might speculate among ourselves, never thought ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... concerned with things which have a principle of motion in themselves; mathematics speculate on permanent, but not transcendental and self-existent things; and there is another science separate from these two, which treats of that which is immutable and transcendental, if indeed there exists ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... the pamphlet which her husband had published when Secretary of the Treasury, in which he avowed an intrigue with the wife of one of his clerks, to exculpate himself from a charge that he had permitted this clerk to speculate on the action of the Treasury Department. Mrs. Hamilton for some years paid dealers in second-hand books five dollars a copy for every copy of this pamphlet which they brought her. One year the number presented was unusually large, and she accidentally ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... happening at Hoddon Grey, Reginald Lester was passing a solitary Sunday at Coryston, until the afternoon, at least, when visitors appeared. To be left to himself, the solitary inhabitant, save for the servants, of the great classical pile; to be able to wander about it as he liked, free to speculate on its pictures and engravings; to rummage the immense collection of china in the basement rooms which no one but himself ever looked at; to examine some new corner of the muniment-room, and to ponder the strange and gruesome collection of death-masks, made by ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... enough to her to find that he followed her Master. Being in the light she understood the light, and had no need of system, either true or false, to explain it to her. She lived by the word proceeding out of the mouth of God. When life begins to speculate upon itself, I suspect it has begun to die. And seldom has there been a fitter soul, one clearer from evil, from folly, from human device—a purer cistern for such water of life as rose in the heart of Janet Grant to pour itself into, than the soul of Sir Gibbie. But I must not call ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
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