"Speculate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... to speculate a little upon what the herb Moly can be, how it can be found and used. Hermes, the messenger of the Gods, is always ready to pull it up for anyone who really requires it. And just because "the isle," as Shakespeare ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... 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
... 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.
... 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
... 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
... 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
... 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
... speculate or gamble even with their chances, also in stocks, business or, in fact, anything in ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro
... 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
... 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
... 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
... 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
... 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
... To speculate upon my title and my rank in order to make a wealthy marriage? To quit my nomad's tent for a fixed residence other than that where the Prerolles have succeeded one another from generation to generation? ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa
... 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
... 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 ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... 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 |
