"Speculator" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... precieuse, with sesquipedalian phrase, the revolutionist, half nude of body and wholly nude of mind, each in their turn have given their sign and seal to their especial century, for better or for worse. The nineteenth century has some touch of all, but its own novelty of production is the female speculator. ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... his way through to the front ranks. In many respects those were singular and unusual elements which had gone to the making of his success. His had not been the victory of honied falsehoods, of suave deceit, of gentle but legalised robbery. He had been a hard worker, a daring speculator with nerves of iron, and courage which would have glorified a nobler cause. Nor had his been the methods of good fellowship, the sharing of "good turns," the camaraderie of finance. The men with whom ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... produces, the cause of Portland's growth and prosperity is the trade which it has as the center of collection and distribution of this great wealth of natural resources, and it has attracted, not the boomer and speculator, who find their profits in the wild excitement of the boom, but the merchant, manufacturer, and investor, who seek the surer if slower channels of legitimate business and investment. These have come from the East, most of them within the last few years. They came as seeking a better ...
— Oregon, Washington and Alaska; Sights and Scenes for the Tourist • E. L. Lomax
... trivial things, invented and pursued for bread, become very serious matters of fact: and, apart from this consideration, I am not at all prepared to say, myself, that if Caleb had been a Lord Chamberlain, or a Member of Parliament, or a lawyer, or even a great speculator, he would have dealt in toys one whit less whimsical, while I have a very great doubt whether they would have been ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... of expense and labor, abandon the enterprise with only his labor for his pains. These failures are also a great source of annoyance to the proprietors: for many of these abandoned wells require only capital to render them available; but the finances of the first speculator being exhausted, no new one will risk his money in them, while the old lease would interfere with his right ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... vaguest result. For, the desire of the pious to trace throughout all creeds the principles of the one they themselves profess—the vanity of the learned to display a various and recondite erudition—the passion of the ingenious to harmonize conflicting traditions—and the ambition of every speculator to say something new upon an ancient but inexhaustible subject, so far from enlightening, only perplex our conjectures. Scarcely is the theory of to-day established, than the theory of to-morrow is invented to oppose it. With one the religion of the Greeks is but a type ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... military tendency with the industrial and plutocratic tendency, the tendency of the police spirit, the regularizing spirit of the Kulturstaat with the individual initiative of the capitalist entrepreneur, methodical habits of administration with the love of risk characteristic of the speculator, all this constitutes imperialism, German imperialism, distinct from every other, because to a definite object, economic conquest, it adds another, less precise, in which the moral satisfaction dear to aristocracy, the pleasure of dominating, the love of displaying ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... him to his society in order to make use of him in the world, just as a bold speculator employs a confidential clerk. The friendship, real or feigned, of De Marsay was a social position for Paul de Manerville, who, on his side, thought himself astute in exploiting, after his fashion, his intimate friend. He lived in the reflecting lustre of his friend, walked constantly ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... Hotel in San Francisco was built by a speculator and floater of mining shares, and cost millions that he cashed in, after cleaning out the simple minded laborer and servant girl, whom he deluded, with all the art known to his tribe, into believing that there was still more for their rainy day if they ...
— Confiscation, An Outline • William Greenwood
... the market was a district one centred in the county town, becomes the little factory town when competition is established on a national basis; it may become the pleasure-ground of a retired millionaire speculator if under the pressure of world-competition it has been found that the manufacture which now thrives there can be carried on more economically in Bombay or Nankin, where each unit of labour power can be bought at the cheapest rate, or where some slight saving in the transport of raw ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... most remarkable part of this bitter persecution was the fact that the elder had lent money to almost all the principal members of the congregation. The bold speculator had never been appealed to in vain by any one in difficulty. Some had had a hundred, some fifty, some twenty, some ten—farmers whose corn had been a loss instead of a profit, whose hops had sold for less than the cost of picking them, little tradesmen ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... of commerce, and alone. Again I beheld Mr Clayton immersed in the doings of the place. For a week I continued my observation. Proofs of his worldliness and gross hypocrisy came fast and thick upon each other. I no longer doubted the statement of Thompson and the speculator Smith. I resolved upon seeing my preserver no more. I could not think of him without shuddering, and I endeavoured to forget him. One evening, about ten days after the chapel scene, sitting alone in my apartment, I was attracted by a slight movement on the stairs. A moment ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... asked the girl where the child was; she told her she had brought it home, but did not know where it was; the overseer was immediately informed, search was made, and it was found as above stated, and dead. The little girl was shut up in the barn, and confined there two or three weeks, when a speculator came along and bought ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... reliance upon human promises? That is a peculiar condition of society which enables a whole nation to instantly recognize point and meaning in the familiar newspaper anecdote, which puts into the mouth of a distinguished speculator in lands and mines this remark:—"I wasn't worth a cent two years ago, and now I owe two millions ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... least, have the advantage of knowing, intimately and exactly, the manners of life and being of their grandsires, and calling up, when they so choose it, our ghosts from the grave, to live, love, quarrel, swindle, suffer, and struggle on blindly as of yore. And when the amused speculator shall have laughed sufficiently at the immensity of our follies, and the paltriness of our aims, smiled at our exploded superstitions, wondered how this man should be considered great, who is now clean forgotten (as copious Guthrie before mentioned); ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... why, I daren't.... But we all saw to-day when he came in that that man is not of our sort. Not because he had his hair curled at the barber's, not because he was in such a hurry to show his wit, but because he is a spy, a speculator, because he is a skin-flint and a buffoon. That's evident. Do you think him clever? No, he is a fool, a fool. And is he a match for you? Good heavens! Do you see, ladies?" he stopped suddenly on the way upstairs ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... were full. The old standards were scope enough for his ambition. He ranged in them absolute—and "fair in Otway, full in Shakspeare shone." He succeeded to the old lawful thrones, and did not care to adventure bottomry with a Sir Edward Mortimer, or any casual speculator that offered. I remember, too acutely for my peace, the deadly extinguisher which he put upon my friend G.'s "Antonio." G., satiate with visions of political justice (possibly not to be realized in our time), ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... selling. Some person formerly rich sells clothes or furniture or jewellery in return for food; the buyer sells again at an enhanced price, and so on through perhaps twenty hands, until a final purchaser is found in some well-to-do peasant or nouveau riche speculator. Again, most people have relations in the country, whom they visit from time to time, bringing back with them great bags of flour. It is illegal for private persons to bring food into Moscow, and the ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... Bohemia Manor. Arnoldus van Hardenberg, another merchant, had been a victim of judicial oppression by both Kieft and Stuyvesant. Jacob van Couwenhoven had come out in 1633 and resided at first at Rensselaerswyck; he was afterward of note as speculator and brewer in New Amsterdam. Oloff Stevensz van Cortlant had been store-keeper for the Company and deacon of the church; later he was burgomaster of New Amsterdam. Michiel Jansz and Thomas Hall were farmers, the latter, the first English settler in New York State, having come ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... unnecessary vehemence—but this detracts little from their substantive correctness or utility. This strange notion of images emanating from the external object, entering the mind, and being there perceived, was, after all, in its origin, rather a physical than a metaphysical hypothesis. The ancient speculator upon the causes of things felt, as we feel at this moment, the necessity for some medium of communication between the eye and the distant object, and not having detected this medium in the light which traverses ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... an activity for specialists who study conditions, becoming relatively expert in determining how and when to act. These specialists are drawn principally from two classes: First, the professional speculator, who knows his markets and makes a business of buying and selling future risks; such men perform a great service in handling our seasonal crops and in other directions, and are entitled to a reasonable profit. Second, the man of wealth who may ...
— Creating Capital - Money-making as an aim in business • Frederick L. Lipman
... noting mine through a clearer lens, and are probably taking my measure far better than I take theirs. One instinctively shrinks from making a sketch or memorandum while they are by; and if caught in the act, one fondly hopes to pass for some harmless speculator in real estate, whose pencillings may be only a matter of habit, like those casual sums in compound interest which are usually to be found scrawled on the margins of the daily papers ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... illustrations and are not exhaustive of the things that can be done in the field of possible and practical reform. It is plain enough that in many other directions the same principles may be applied. The rectification of the ownership of land so as to eliminate the haphazard gains of the speculator and the unearned increment of wealth created by the efforts of others, is an obvious case in point. The "single taxer" sees in this a cure-all for the ills of society. But his vision is distorted. The private ownership of land is one of the greatest incentives ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... "I should not advise you to mention Barr's name as the manufacturer of the Buzzards. He has a business deal on in which it is important he should not be known as an aeroplane speculator. If he learns that you are giving his secrets away, he will make it hot for you, I can tell you. You were sent to Bellevue ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... Neither Covent Garden at home, nor the Marche aux Fleurs at Paris, could boast of such a posey. I learn, however, with something approaching to horror, that the Nosegay in question has been counterfeited. A spurious edition (got up by some unprincipled speculator, and, I must add, bungling hand—for the typographical discrepancy is obvious) is abroad. Roxburghers, look well to your book-armouries! The foe may have crept into them, and exchanged your steel for ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... this perfectly natural—do you? Well, I don't know. I don't know why I have; but it is a fact. This fact makes everything possible, because without it I would never have thought of disregarding my father's wishes. I would never have disposed of the Concession as a speculator disposes of a valuable right to a company—for cash and shares, to grow rich eventually if possible, but at any rate to put some money at once in his pocket. No. Even if it had been feasible—which I doubt—I ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... de Nucingen takes an interest in me, I will teach her how to manage her husband. That husband of hers is a great speculator; he might put me in the way of making a fortune by a ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... saw Silva living at the rate of twenty thousand a year, and were unable to trace the source of his income. That he had estates in Portugal was known; but they had been acquired, apparently, on the profits of the music-hall. He was not a speculator, though he was a shareholder in a number of companies which were controlled by the colonel; and he was certainly not a gambler, in the generally accepted ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... buy our property," Gifford said with a tinge of bitterness. "Well, it might have been worse. Wynford has not passed into the hands of some Jew millionaire or City speculator, but has gone to a gentleman, a good fellow and ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... possible, so that it might appear that Carpazzi's arraignment had not been heard. All that Carpazzi said was perfectly true. There was little therefore that Minotti could have answered. He was a man of plebeian origin. His father, a rich speculator, had bought a piece of property and assumed the title that went with it. To a Roman the name Carpazzi was a great deal higher than that of any number of dukes ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... much more than a mere roulette wheel for the speculator. Its real purpose is to provide a centre for the legitimate trader. It is a great information bureau of world happenings where every item of news concerning the wheat in any way is gathered and classified—drouth, rain, frost, rust, locusts, hail, Hessian fly, monsoon or chinch bug. In every ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... from 'em, too. Humph! I guess I'm out of soundin's. When I thought fifteen dollars was a high price for paintin' a view of a house I was slightly mistaken. Next time I'll offer the paintin' feller the house and ask him what he considers a fair boot, besides. Sam Cahoon's a better speculator than I thought he was. Hello, Commodore! ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the tenderers are without any pretence of ability for the performance of the contract, but are nevertheless accepted, performing only a sub rosa role. One such instance occurred some years ago when a burgher who did not possess L100—a simple farmer and a kind of "slim" speculator—received by Volksraad vote the contract for building a certain railway.[3] The price included a very large margin to be distributed in places of interest—as douceurs of L1,000 to L5,000 each, and L10,000 for the pro forma contractor and his Volksraad ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... according to an English cousin, "in an openness to ideas, an aptness for intuitions, and sometimes a seemingly positive preference for the bird in the bush," which latter may account for that skilful Yankee versatility so perfectly exemplified in the chaplain, poet, editor, merchant, speculator, ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various
... pondering, though not to be pushed too violently. He who would cast the horoscope of humanity, or of any human activity, must neither neglect history nor trust her overmuch. Certainly the neglect of history is the last mistake into which a modern speculator is likely to fall. To compare Victorian England with Imperial Rome has been the pastime of the half-educated these fifty years. "Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento," is about as much Latin as it is becoming in a public schoolman to remember. The historically ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... this great rush of immigration it is very natural that the prevailing idea should be that lands would greatly increase in value in the near future, and everybody became a speculator. Towns and cities sprang into existence like mushrooms in a night. Scarcely anyone was to be seen without a town-site map in his hands, the advantages and beauties of which fictitious metropolis he was ready to present in the most eloquent terms. Everything useful was neglected, and ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... east side of Stockton street, between Sacramento and Clay streets, stood the old Pioche residence, wherein were given many lavish entertainments, for its owner was an epicure and hospitable to a degree. He was a heavy speculator and at one time possessed of much property. His death was a mystery and has never been solved. During the '90's his home was used as ...
— California 1849-1913 - or the Rambling Sketches and Experiences of Sixty-four - Years' Residence in that State. • L. H. Woolley
... economy, in which Froude fully shared, breaks out with amusing vigour. "If," wrote the younger historian, "the tendency of trade to assume a form of mere self-interest be irresistible," etc. "And is it?" comments the elder. "Let us all get prussic acid, then." A recent speculator preferred cyanide of potassium. But if "mere self-interest" comprises fraudulent balance-sheets, it cannot claim any support from political economy. When Carlyle drew up a petition to the House of Commons for amending the law of copyright, he ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... identical with that of betting that such a card will be turned, or that such a horse will win in a race, or such a candidate be elected President. On 'Change we are charitable enough to suppose each speculator possessed of data such as to make his venture seem reasonable to himself. This is the system, and, though very like gambling, it has the advantage of presenting to men of small means the chance of large profits, provided they are willing to run the risk; since, while with a capital ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... never be able to regard Mr. Harrison with as much respect as you do. It may be ignorance, but I never could see much difference between a speculator in stocks ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... affairs are. I forgot to ask whether he is at Warsaw; most likely he is, as he goes there every winter. As to his business, it may be very magnificent, but I doubt whether it be on a solid basis. I am not a speculator, and could not for the life of me transact a stock-exchange affair; but I am shrewd enough to know it. Besides I am a close observer, and quick to draw conclusions. Therefore I do not believe in noblemen with a genius for speculation. I am afraid Kromitzki's is neither an inherited ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... joined Mr. and Mrs. Muir at a seaside inn. "A Miss Wildmere is staying here also," her sister wrote, "and, somewhat to Mr. Muir's disapproval, Graydon seems not only well acquainted with her, but unusually friendly. Mr. Muir says that if she is like her father she is a 'speculator'; and from the attention she receives and the way she receives it one would think he was right. Graydon, however, seems to be her favorite, and if he could remain long enough it is not hard to see what might happen. But she is a great belle and a coquette too, I should ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... manners. But Pigasov's character had become so soured and irritable that family life was unendurable to him. After living with him a few years, his wife went off secretly to Moscow and sold her estate to an enterprising speculator; Pigasov had only just finished building a house on it. Utterly crushed by this last blow, Pigasov began a lawsuit with his wife, but gained nothing by it. After this he lived in solitude, and went to see his neighbours, whom he abused behind their backs and ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... in Sylla's camp. He made himself useful to the Dictator by his genius for finance, and in return he was enabled to amass an enormous fortune for himself out of the proscriptions. His eye for business reached over the whole Roman Empire. He was banker, speculator, contractor, merchant. He lent money to the spendthrift young lords, but with sound securities and at usurious interest. He had an army of slaves, but these slaves were not ignorant field-hands; they were skilled workmen in all arts and ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... having been crushed by a similar process. Be that as it may, in several parts of the States, as well as in Canada, enormous pits exist full of this curious oil. It is obtained by boring in the ground in those spots where the oil is likely to be found. Often, however, the speculator, after spending time and capital in the experiment, finds that no oil appears ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... emotions of the Faubourg St.-Antoine from the outset of the Revolution, got himself thereby made a general, and in that capacity conducted Louis XVI. to the scaffold, where, as all the world knows, he ordered the drums to drown the last words of the King. He was an incorrigible and indefatigable speculator, and while he drove a roaring trade at Paris in beer, he was always on the look out for demolished churches and convents in the provinces. Napoleon took his measure promptly, subsidised and used him to good purpose. Hearing once that there was a ferment brewing in St.-Antoine, ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... sale of that coffee; in hemp transactions (there being practically no season for hemp) the purchase-money need only be paid on delivery of the produce by the labourer at rates proportionate to Manila prices, unless the dealer be simply a speculator, in which case, having contracted in Manila to deliver at a price, he must advance to secure deliveries to fulfil his contract. Therefore, in coffee, a provincial collector might lose something on the total year's transactions or he might make ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... rivers from the north discharged their turgid waters. Along these bays and rivers were scattered the inhabitants, numbering less than one hundred thousand, of whom a considerable portion had come from the States. There, as always on the frontier, land had been a lodestone attracting both the speculator and the homeseeker. In the parishes of West Feliciana and Baton Rouge, in the alluvial bottoms of the Mississippi, and in the settlements around Mobile Bay, American settlers predominated, submitting with ill grace to the exactions of Spanish officials who were believed to be ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... feared that Brandon would interfere with his prospects. This sort of thing was kept up with such great delicacy of management on Cigole's part that Brandon himself would have been completely deceived, and would have come to consider him as nothing more than a speculator in wool, had it not been for a certain deep instinct within him, which made him regard this man as one who was actuated by something far deeper than mere regards for a ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... much said about fast trotters and race horses. On some of the farms around here, the people have gone mad on breeding fast horses. An old farmer out in the country had a common cart-horse that he suddenly found out had great powers of speed and endurance. He sold him to a speculator for a big price, and it has set everybody wild. If the people who give all their time to it can't raise fast horses, I don't see how the farmers can. A fast horse on a farm is ruination to the boys, for it ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... she cried coming out of the menagerie of M. Martin. She had just been looking at that daring speculator "working with his hyena,"—to speak in the style ...
— A Passion in the Desert • Honore de Balzac
... and Beautiful is rather a proof that his mind was not formed for pure philosophy; and if we may believe Boswell that it was once the intention of Mr. Burke to have written against Berkeley, we may be assured that he would not have been successful in answering that great speculator; or, to speak more correctly, that he could not have discovered the true nature of the questions in dispute, and thus have afforded the only answer consistent with the limits ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... or steel-workers or cattlemen defied him and invoked disorder, he could be more lawless and ruthless than they. But this was done in the pursuit of legitimate business ends. Tens of thousands of the poor might curse his name, but the financier and the speculator execrated him no more. He stretched a hand to protect or to manipulate the power of wealth in every corner of the country. Forcible, cold and unerring, in all he did he ministered to the national lust for magnitude; and a grateful country ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... investor and not the speculator who is only familiar with a particular company and not the stock market in general, the Rapid Dominance force must have complete knowledge and understanding of many likely adversaries and regions. This requirement ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade
... about fifteen when he first went to sea—he was just seven-and-twenty when he came home with the peep-show. During the intermediate twelve years he had been all over the world: not merely as a sailor, but as an adventurer, traveller, speculator, merchant, and wandering Jack-of-all trades. As quickly as he made money, so he lost it, spent it, or gave it away; and when he had no other resource, he worked as a common sailor, or labourer, until some lucky chance opened a passage for some fresh ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... he replied from his wicker chair over his bandaged foot, "and remember that the successful speculator is the man who always runs in the other direction from the crowd. When you see people sitting still, you'd better get up, and when you see them begin to get up, you'd better sit still. Fortune's a woman, you know; don't try to flirt with ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... figures used in the language of the tape," said a well-known Boston stock speculator, "are very few, but they spell ruin in ninety-nine million ways." It is not to be inferred, however, that the modern stock ticker has anything to do with the making or losing of fortunes. There were ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... billiard-tables; that there are no front-row seats for the Follies, no berths in any cabin of any steamer, remind yourself that there is always a pony in Corea for Dinwiddie. The rule is that the hotel clerk discovers a vacant room, a ticket speculator disgorges a front-row seat, and the ship's doctor sells you a berth in the sick bay. But in Salonika the rule failed. As already explained, Salonika always is overcrowded. Suddenly, added to her 120,000 peoples, came 110,000 Greek soldiers, their officers, and with many of them their families, ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... African Republic was to develope within a few years from a condition of great poverty into a rich and prosperous State, a country calculated in every respect to awaken and inflame the greed of the Capitalistic speculator. Within a few years the South African Republic was ranked among the first gold-producing countries of the world. The bare veldt of hitherto was overspread with large townships inhabited by a speculative and bustling ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... was an engraver and painter in enamel. He joined to these two professions that of a trade in diamonds and jewels. He was a man always aspiring higher than his abilities allowed, and a restless speculator, who incessantly destroyed his modest fortune in his efforts to extend it in proportion to his ambitious yearnings. He adored his daughter, and could not, for her sake, content himself with the perspective ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... with anecdotes of a similar nature; for, in these countries, in which men of illustrious deeds abound, one is never disturbed in society by the fussy pretension and swagger that is apt to mark the presence of a lucky speculator in the stocks. Battles, unlike bargains, are rarely discussed in society. I have already told you how little sensation is produced in Paris by the presence of a celebrity, though in no part of the world is more delicate respect ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Edinburgh. Of all the works I have seen on the question, this is the most confident, and the sorest. {5} A writer on astronomy said of Mr. Jellinger Symons,[18] "Of course he convinced no one who knew anything of the subject." This "ungenerous slur" on the speculator's memory appears to have been keenly felt; but its truth is admitted. Those who knew anything of the subject are "the so-called men of science," whose three P's were assailed; prestige, pride, and ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... her head at him. "No," she said; "you certainly wouldn't while I had any say in the matter. You're rather a good farmer, but I haven't met one yet who made a successful speculator. Some of our friends have tried it—and you know where it landed them. I expect those broker and mortgage men must lick their lips when a nice fat woolly farmer comes along. It must be ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... of ice being heaped and crushed together in great quantities, was formed a thick and high bridge of ice, completely across the river, safe for passengers for some time; and in the middle of it a Yankee speculator had erected a shanty for refreshments. Lately, at a dinner party, I heard a staff-officer of talent, but who was fond of exciting wonder by his narratives, propose to the company a singular wager,—a bet of ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... disjointed bits of text: "They have not learned how to think. .. Their science is good for nothing; they have no means or methods even for learning.... The Testament of Christ is what they are most ignorant of.... A priest who devotes himself to study is regarded either as a pure speculator unfit for the government, or with an ambition which nothing can satisfy, or again an odd, ill-humored, ill-balanced person; we live under the empire of this stupid prejudice,... We have archeologists, assyriologists, geologists, philologists and other one-sided savants. The philosophers, theologians, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... eyeing it like a Nabob's prime minister, as he considers whether he will sign a pardon. Gobseck would take anything, from the present of game sent him by some poor devil or the pound's weight of wax candles from devout folk, to the rich man's plate and the speculator's gold snuff-box. Nobody knew what became of the presents sent to the old money-lender. Everything went in, ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... the Indian, which eventually profited him much, it is true, but, from this time henceforth, was lifelong. He stood in somewhat of a contrast to Blunt, whom General Steele thought unprincipled[933] and who in Southern parlance was "an old land speculator,"[934] and to Curtis, who was soon to show himself, as far as the Indians were concerned, in his true colors. While Phillips was absent from Fort Gibson, Curtis arrived there. He was making a reconnoissance of his command and, as he passed over one reservation after ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... another brilliant cantatrice, in the very dawn of her great career fell into the nets of a shrewd and unprincipled operatic speculator. Signor Lanari, an impressario of Florence, recognized the future success of the inexperienced young girl, and decoyed her into an engagement for six years on terms shamefully low, for Giulia's modesty did not appreciate ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... the beginning of the end. One of the trustees, Olaf Jansen, a good-natured peasant who could not keep his accounts but who had a peasant's sagacity for a bargain, wormed his way into financial control. He wanted to make the colony rich, but he led it to the verge of bankruptcy. He became a speculator and promoter. Stories of his shortcomings were whispered about and in 1860 the peasant colony revolted and deposed Olaf from office. He then had himself appointed receiver to wind up the corporation's affairs, and in the following ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... cases, continued to be one of the three careers open to the younger sons of good family; the civil service and the Church were the other two. In Genoa, nobles had engaged in commerce with equal honor and profit; nearly every argosy that sailed to or from the port of Venice belonged to some lordly speculator; but in Milan a noble who descended to trade lost his nobility, by a law not abrogated till the time of Charles IV. The nobles had therefore nothing to do. They could not go into business; if they entered ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... a speculator? she is ever busy, always alive and speculating with some unfortunate beings, name or ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... government and cultivating it: such was the custom of the back-woodsmen, and, for want of this law, it often happened that after they had cultivated a farm, the land would be applied for and purchased by some speculator, who would forcibly eject the occupant, and take possession of the improved property. A back-woodsman was not to be trifled with, and the consequences very commonly were that the new proprietor was found some fine morning with a rifle-bullet through his head. To prevent this unjust ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... will know me," she said, decidedly. "If I didn't know that, I'd stay right here, I think. And as to him, my fond parent," and she made a grimace—"I guess you can call him a prospector and speculator—either of those would be correct. I think they called him Jim, ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... each of the useful arts have its own proper origin, referrible to some particular place, time, and community, there must have been an era when it was wanting to mankind. Hence, an ante-metallic age is as much the conception of the speculator, as the discovery of ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... began his assault on the press. He's on his way to Algiers too, and will be more successful in liberalizing the Arabs than the French. That old chap over yonder with the snuffy nose, the snuffy wig, and snuffy coat, is a grand speculator in horses, on his way to the richest cavalry corps of the army; and, as for our maitre d'hotel at the head of this segment, pauvre diable, you see what he is without a revelation. The pestilence has nearly used him up. He sits half the day in his bureau on ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... sometimes attended the land sales the squatters had little respect; so they "Resolved that for the purpose of garding our rights against the speculator we hereby pledge ourselves to stand by each other and to remain on the ground until all sales are over if it becomes necessary in order that each and every setler may be secured in the claim or claims to which he is justly entitled by the Laws of ...
— History of the Constitutions of Iowa • Benjamin F. Shambaugh
... rivals the volumes of our old friends Weld, Ashe, Fearon, &c. It is entitled "A Visit to North America and the English Settlements in Illinois, with a winter residence in Philadelphia; solely to ascertain the actual prosperity of the Emigrating Agriculturist, Mechanic, and Commercial Speculator"—by Adlard Welby, Esquire, of South Rauceby, Lincolnshire. This esquire has said enough, should he be believed, to settle ultimately the point of the truth or falsehood of Godwin's notable doctrine, that we owe the ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... stamp duties, a high rate of postage, and the heavy deposits of caution-money required by the government as security for good behavior, is within the reach of all who care to pay for it, and has turned the fourth page of every journal into a harvest field alike for the speculator and the Inland Revenue Department. The press restrictions were invented in the time of M. de Villele, who had a chance, if he had but known it, of destroying the power of journalism by allowing newspapers to multiply till no one took any notice ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... sick of the shallow judgment that ranks the worth of a man by his poverty or by his wealth at death. Many a selfish speculator dies poor. Many an unselfish patriot dies prosperous. It is not the possession of the dollar that cankers the soul, it is the worship of it. The true test of a man is this: Has he labored for his own interest, or for the general welfare? Has he earned his money fairly or unfairly? ...
— The Americanism of Washington • Henry Van Dyke
... is an excellent image of the prejudices and bigotry provoked by the idealism of a speculator. This story happily detects the trick which our imagination plays in the description of single combats: only change the preconception of the magnificence of the combatants, and ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... some wanted the news from France; some came for mail to be delivered to the various points along the river. Prominent among them was Governor Lauson, a grey-haired, kindly civilian, who, though a shrewd speculator, was by no means the man to be at the head of the government in Canada. He was pulled this way and that, first by the Company, then by the priests, then by the seigneurs. Depredations by the Indians ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... philosopher does think, that the British public ought to read much more and better books than they do, and that founding public libraries was the way to induce them to do so, what sort of public libraries would he found? That, I submit, is a suitable topic for a disinterested speculator. ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... the majority of instances he or his agent met with speculators who were ready to engage him for so many lectures, and secure to the lecturer a certain fixed sum. But in his later transactions Artemus would have nothing to do with them, much preferring to undertake all the risk himself. The last speculator to whom he sold himself for a tour was, I believe, Mr. Wilder, of New York City, who realised a large profit by investing in lecturing stock, and who was always ready to engage a circus, a wild-beast show, ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... tariff thus enforced was not likely to be a mild one; and although the States considered that they had got a "good penny-worth" by the job, it was no easy thing to get the better, in a bargain, of the vigilant Martin, who was as thrifty a speculator as he was a desperate fighter. A more accomplished highwayman, artistically and enthusiastically devoted to his pursuit, never lived. Nobody did his work more thoroughly—nobody got himself better paid for his work—and Thomas ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of man at this period, was the discovery of the New World, and the reading of voyages and travels. Green islands and golden sands seemed to arise, as by enchantment, out of the bosom of the watery waste, and invite the cupidity, or wing the imagination of the dreaming speculator. Fairy land was realized in new and unknown worlds. "Fortunate fields and groves and flowery vales, thrice happy isles," were found floating "like those Hesperian gardens famed of old," beyond Atlantic seas, as dropt from the zenith. The people, the soil, the clime, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... about a better state of affairs, and, in any event, it may arouse public interest in this country. It certainly should be of interest to Americans that some of the most prominent of their countrymen have gone into close partnership with a speculator as unscrupulous and as notorious as is Leopold, and that they are to exploit a country which as yet has been developed only by the help of slavery, with all its attendant ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... particularly—abounds in an astringent principle, which is successfully applied to the purposes of tanning. As the tree is so abundant within the tropics, it might be worth the while of some practical speculator to make an extract on the spot, and introduce it into the English market, for the use of tanners and dyers. For tanning, the mangrove is said to be infinitely superior to oak bark, completing in six weeks an operation ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... have been palmy days, when the money so lightly made was correspondingly lightly spent; when champagne replaced the usual whisky-split at the Rand Club, and on all sides was to be heard the old and well-known formula, "Here's luck," as the successful speculator toasted an ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... nothing better to do, we went to the theatre; the piece was 'La Perouse,' which they have been playing here for the last two months to crowded houses, to exhibit some North American Indians whom some theatrical speculator brought over 'expres', in all the horrors of fur, wampum, and yellow ochre. Finding the 'spectacle' rather uninteresting I leaned back in my box, and fell into a doze. Meanwhile, my inquiring friend, Mr. Burke, who felt naturally ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... was run by the most unprincipled scoundrel I have ever met. He was a civilian speculator who saw the chance to fatten on the British prisoners. He fleeced us in two ways. Not only were his prices extortionate, but he gave a ridiculous exchange for British currency, especially gold. After considerable persuasion and deliberation he would change a half sovereign for 7-1/2 marks—7s. ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... the Numantine war, and in whose house he was a frequent visitor, may be connected with the fact, that Scipio stood in varied relations to the Latins and was their patron in the political feuds of the time.(23) He was thus precluded from a public life, and he disdained the career of a speculator—he had no desire, as he once said, to "cease to be Lucilius in order to become an Asiatic revenue-farmer." So he lived in the sultry age of the Gracchan reforms and the agitations preceding the Social war, frequenting the palaces and villas of the Roman grandees ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... "He was the speculator," she said, "who bought and sold negroes, and kept dogs to chase runaways; old Mr. Fetters—you must remember old Josh Fetters? When I was a child, my coloured mammy used him for a bogeyman for me, ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... known instances when it exceeded five hundred. The cases arrive in England—and not a living thing therein! A steamship company may reduce its charge under such circumstances, but again and again it will happen that the speculator stands out of a thousand pounds clean when his boxes are opened. He may hope to recover it on the next cargo, but that is still a question of luck. No wonder that men whose business is not confined to orchids withdrew from ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... miles west of Starkville, Mississippi on a pretty tolerable large farm. My folks was bought from a speculator drove come by. They come from Sanders in South Ca'lina. Master Charlie Cannon bought a whole drove of us, both my grandparents on both sides. He had five farms, big size farms. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... what I am doing, stand or fall, will never be my undoing—I am no speculator. How do your silver mines go on, Sir Ulick? I hear all the silver mines in Ireland turn out to ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... stockbroker, and occupied an office in some dusky court within a few hundred yards of the Stock Exchange. He had, according to his own account, trebled Georgy's thousands since they had been in his hands. How the unsuccessful surgeon-dentist had blossomed all at once into a fortunate speculator was a problem too profound for Georgy's consideration. She knew that her husband had allied himself to a certain established firm of stockbrokers, and that the alliance had cost him some thousands of Tom Halliday's ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... of party politics. It vitally concerns every business and calling and enters every household in the land. There is one important aspect of the subject which especially should never be overlooked. At times like the present, when the evils of unsound finance threaten us, the speculator may anticipate a harvest gathered from the misfortune of others, the capitalist may protect himself by hoarding or may even find profit in the fluctuations of values; but the wage earner—the first to be injured by a depreciated currency ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... up at home from materials bought in Rhodesian shops; but when well cut, they were battered and worn. Take, for instance, Mrs. Lisle's gown of pale-green satin and sequins. She had been an actress before she married Barton Lisle and came out to the ups and downs of a mining speculator's life, and all her clothes were rechauffees of the toilettes in which she had once dazzled provincial audiences. Gay Liscannon's frock of pale rose-leaf silk, with a skirt that was a flurry of delicious little frills and a bodice ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... from the date now touched upon, Lady Julia and himself had arrived in London from Vienna; and a new mortification awaited the unfortunate owner of Lisle Court. A railroad company had been established, of which Sir Gregory Gubbins was a principal shareholder; and the speculator, Mr. Augustus Gubbins, one of the "most useful men in the House," had undertaken to carry the bill through parliament. Colonel Maltravers received a letter of portentous size, inclosing the map of the places which this blessed railway ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... patriotic than the hardy and brave men of the frontier, or more ready to obey the call of their country and to defend her rights and her honor whenever and by whatever enemy assailed. They should be protected from the grasping speculator and secured, at the minimum price of the public lands, in the humble homes which they have improved by their labor. With this end in view, all vexatious or unnecessary restrictions imposed upon them by the existing preemption laws should be repealed or modified. It is the true policy ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... that's how I came to get twenty-five dollars a month and my living from a great American actor. When I got back to America—with him—I had two hundred and fifty dollars in cash, and good clothes. I started a peanut-stand, and sold papers and books, and became a speculator. I heard two men talking one day at my stall about a railway that was going to run through a certain village, and how they intended to buy up the whole place. I had four hundred and fifty dollars then. I went down to that ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... had formerly lived in New York. His father was a speculator, and was looked upon by some as a wealthy man; but it was hinted by those who knew him best that if his debts were all paid he would have but little ready money left. Be that as it may, Mr. Morgan and his family, at any rate, lived in style, and seemed desirous of outshining ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon
... the year 1852, July 27. I wus born in Granville County, sold to a slave speculator at ten years old and carried to Southwest, Georgia. I belonged to Samuel Howard. His daughter took me to Kinston, North Carolina and I stayed there until I wus sold. She married a man named Bill Brown, and her ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... de hollow. Oh hollow! Johnny come down de hollow. Oh hollow! De nigger-trader got me. Oh hollow! De speculator bought me. Oh hollow! I'm sold for silver dollars. Oh hollow! Boys, go catch de pony. Oh hollow! Bring him round de corner. Oh hollow! I'm goin' away to Georgia. Oh hollow! ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... greatest difficulties, to correct their own mistakes, trying to solve in practice the most difficult problems of organizing a new social state, fighting, against profiteers to secure the possession of the land, for the workers instead of for the speculator, to carry on agricultural production under a system of communist farming ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... mother and father belonged to different master's, but the plantations that they lived on were near each other and so my father was allowed to visit us often. My mother had two other girls who were my half-sisters. You see—my mother was sold to the speculator in Virginia and brought to Georgia where she was sold to Mr. Hale, who was our master until freedom was declared. When she was sold to the speculator the two girls who were my half-sisters had to be sold with her because they were too young to be separated ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... hysterical desire to buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market, invariably follow. Before the end of the month Harold Phipps and Eleanor Bartlett were gambling in the love market with a recklessness that would have staggered the most hardened old speculator. ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... twenty-four hours Mr. Enville, from being an unscrupulous speculator who had used his official position to make illicit profits out of the sale of land to the town for town improvements, had become the very mirror of honesty and high fidelity to the noblest traditions of local government. Without understanding the situation, and ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... the profusion which our modern arts enable us to enjoy the whole year round, and in the hard beginnings the orchard and the garden were forgotten for the fields. Their harvests must pay for the acres bought of the government, or from some speculator who had never seen the land; and the settler must be prompt in paying, or else see his home pass from him after all his toil into the hands of strangers. He worked hard and he fared hard, and if he was safer when peace came, it is doubtful ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... popular work, a new despotic of combustion in that mighty mine on which stood in thin and fatal security the throne of France. Rousseau, the most impassioned of all romancers, the great corrupter of the female mind. Buffon, a lofty and splendid speculator, who dazzled the whole multitude of the minor philosophers, and fixed the creed of Materialism. Moutesquieu, eminent for knowledge and sagacity in his "Spirit of Laws" striking all the establishments of his country ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... lot of middle men and drummers, the buyers at the producer's end, the wholesalers or middle men at the consumer's end, with speculator and landowner at both ends. All of these have to be supported by the system, and the dear ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... to the farmer, the merchant, the professional man, and to all classes except the speculator or the debtor who wishes to lessen the burden of his obligations; but it ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... pen. Its blackness has no connection with the sublime blackness of the inkstand. Never have the fingers of night which contract beneath this stifling ceiling, turned the leaves of a book nor unfolded a newspaper. Babeuf is a speculator to Cartouche; Marat is an aristocrat to Schinderhannes. This cavern has for its ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... are so closely connected with the stirring records of its eventful history, that some acquaintance with them is a matter of necessity with the legislator, the lawyer, the historical student, the speculator in politics, and the curious in topographical and antiquarian lore; and even the very spirit of ordinary curiosity will prompt to a desire to trace the origin and progress of those families whose ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... who have made fortunes in the practice of the profession which they understood, only to lose them by investments in mines or other ventures, about which they knew absolutely nothing but what was told them by the scheming speculator and ...
— Business Hints for Men and Women • Alfred Rochefort Calhoun
... innkeeper, but this business, honest enough in itself, only veiled the man's real trade, in which he defied alike the laws of honesty and of his country. The other was by turns a gentleman of property, a merchant, a cattle owner, or a speculator, in all of which characters he acted excellently, and succeeded in making the acquaintance of men whom he ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... it really seems to me that the future is full of great promise. The South, after all, is growing more prosperous. It is producing more and more every year, until in time it will become wealthy. The West is growing almost beyond the imagination of a speculator, and the Eastern and Middle States are much more than holding their own. We have now fifty millions of people and in a few years will have a hundred. That we are a Nation I think is now settled. Our growth will be unparalleled. I myself expect to live to ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... knots, all the while adorning it with a superb mantle of leaves and blossoms. This is a difficulty which the most experienced cascarilleros are not able to overcome. As an instance, the history is cited of a practico or speculator who led an exploration for these trees in the valley of Apolobamba. After having caused to be felled, barked, measured, dried and trimmed all the cinchonas of one of those natural thickets called manchas—an operation which ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... over an old Spanish military road, crossing rich rolling prairies, here and there watered by clear streams, the banks of which are sheltered by magnificent oaks. Fifteen miles from Austin there is a remarkable spot, upon which a visionary speculator had a short time before attempted to found a city. He purchased an immense tract of ground, had beautiful plans drawn and painted, and very soon there appeared, upon paper, one of the largest and handsomest cities in the world. There ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... and actresses who were best suited to my repertory. The excellent Isolina Piamonti was my leading lady; and my brother Alessandro, an experienced, conscientious, and versatile artist, supported me. An Italian theatrical speculator proposed to me a tour in North America, to include the chief cities of the United States, and although I hesitated not a little on account of the ignorance of the Italian language prevailing in that country, I accepted, influenced somewhat by my desire to visit a region which was wholly unknown ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... A man kept me to breed chil'en for market, and sold 'em as fast as they got big enough; last of all, he sold me to a speculator, and my Mas'r got ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... charts. We had several passengers—two missionaries and their wives, newly married. I thought them inferior to John; but they were good men, humble too, with their hearts in the work. We had also another gentleman, a merchant or speculator of some sort. What he was going to do I could never make out. His heart was in his business, and he seemed to consider it of greater importance than anything else. This made him look down with undisguised contempt on the missionaries and their work, nor could he comprehend ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... are out of the question: they cannot be transported five thousand miles to undersell the Chinese butcher, who gives fifteen pounds of good beef for a dollar—about 3-1/2d. per pound. This price, the Sydney speculator cannot compete with, particularly as his beasts would certainly land in poor condition after so long a voyage, and either put him to the expense of fattening them, or compel him to sell at the low price ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... perceive and appropriate them. Beyond this it would be difficult to advance our speculation with any degree of certainty; but if speculation may be at all indulged in such a question, it might, perhaps, be allowed to a sanguine speculator to surmise that, possibly, the mind in that state may be put en rapport with not only the ideas and emotions of another particular mind, but with the whole of the external world, and with all its minds. Another ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... am well assured of the good faith of my customer. I offered you ordinary business terms when I asked for security, or for the signature of three responsible merchants to your bond. It is because I am a merchant, and not a speculator, that I haggle, ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... be assumed by an enthusiastic speculator is not wonderful. The payment of the national debt has been one of the staple dreams of enthusiasts. It would be difficult to believe the wild nonsense that has been written on it; and Hogarth, in his dreadful picture of a madhouse, appropriately ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various
... charity that which should be used in payment of debt, his virtue of beneficence becomes a vice of theft. So it is with gambling. It is giving the natural tendency to chance, to risk an illegitimate play. The person who is afraid to risk anything accomplishes but little in any way, is seldom a speculator, and never a gambler. Usually the gambler is the man who is naturally full of hazard, who loves to run risks, to take chances. Nor will one find a more practical and useful tendency in one's make-up than ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... of fact, which only goes to show what seems to the small speculator the infernal ingenuity of the stock market, the stock reacted almost immediately after I sold, and had I held on for another two or three weeks, not only would I have saved my money, but would have made in addition a ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell
... mean cash," the woman said. "It is a good thing for the wife of a speculator to be in possession of a lot of fine diamonds. It would have been a precious good thing for us, too, if Reggie had not ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... obviously be impossible. You find the instinct of forestalling the market in the very match-seller. How to forestall the market—that is the one idea of the so-called honest tradesman of the Rue Saint-Denis, as of the most brazen-fronted speculator. If stocks are heavy, sell you must. If sales are slow, you must tickle your customer; hence the signs of the Middle Ages, hence the modern prospectus. I do not see a hair's-breadth of difference between attracting custom and forcing your goods upon the consumer. It may happen, ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... direction of excess, but of defect. All things were colossal there; and the probable, as estimated upon our modern scale, is not unfrequently the impossible, as regarded Roman habits. Lipsius certainly erred extravagantly at times, and was a rash speculator on many subjects; witness his books on the Roman amphitheatres; but not on the magnitude of Rome, or the amount of its population. I will add, upon this subject, that the whole political economy of the ancients, if we except Boeckh's accurate ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... give it, noway. Lydy Treffinger never has nothink to do with dealers." MacMaster quietly repented his rash confidences, fearing that he might indirectly cause Lady Ellen annoyance from this merciless speculator, and he recalled with chagrin that Lichtenstein had extorted from him, little by little, pretty much the entire plan of his book, and especially the place in it which the Marriage of Phaedra was ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... avenue than there was need of one from the top of Trinity Church steeple to the moon! The greater facility of travel, the greater prosperity! But I am opposed to all railroads, the depot for which is an unprincipled speculator's pocket. ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... was begun none too soon. The eye of the speculator is being turned to our mineral and timber resources, and with unscrupulous money-makers for a centre and a demoralized people to gather round them, and no Christ in their midst, what strongholds of Satan would be formed. When we commenced ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 1, January, 1889 • Various
... that of a cotton speculator, and I was thus able to make many inquiries relative to the town and its inhabitants, without exciting suspicion. Of course, I should have considerable business at the bank, and thus, I could have frequent conferences with the bank officials, without betraying my real object ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... the great gusts of enthusiasm no longer swept by, since men no longer fought, since they remained there resting, pillaging, and devouring amidst the heaped-up spoils. And the pity of it was that the old hero, the paralytic, motionless father beheld it all—beheld the degeneration of his son, the speculator and company promoter ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... are many other sorts of peril in human life to which I may briefly advert, as we all have had some experiences of the same. Who does not know of his special financial temptation, some sanguine and unscrupulous speculator urging him from rock to rock across the rapids of ruin, till he is engulfed as by Niagara? Or of the manifestly disinterested and generous capitalist, who gives to some young legatee a junior partner's free arm-chair, only that he may utilise ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... the human spring is not broken at Venice, it is seen insensibly losing its elasticity. The government, changed into a suspicious despotism, elects a Mocenigo doge, a shameless speculator profiting on the public distress, instead of that Charles Zeno who had saved the country; it holds Zeno prisoner two years and entrusts the armies on the mainland to condottieri; it is tied up in the hands of three inquisitors, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... philosophy the most abstruse—a balance which even itself requires weighing previously, or he will have done nothing that can be received for an estimate of the composite Coleridge. This astonishing man, be it again remembered, besides being an exquisite poet, a profound political speculator, a philosophic student of literature through all its chambers and recesses, was also a circumnavigator on the most pathless waters of scholasticism and metaphysics. He had sounded, without guiding charts, the secret deeps of Proclus and Plotinus; he had laid down ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... of the scene, Red Jacket turned to me familiarly and asked; 'What are you? You say you are not a government agent, are you a gambler? [Footnote: The name given by Red Jacket to a land speculator.] or a black coat? or what are you?' I answered: 'I am yet too young a man to engage in any profession: but I hope some of these days to be a black coat.' He lifted up his hands accompanied by his eyes, ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... that Monsen was the richest man in the town, and that he had become so by provisioning ships with spoiled foodstuffs, and refitting old crank vessels, which he heavily insured. And he knew who was a thief and who a bankrupt speculator, and that Merchant Lau only did business with the little shopkeepers, because his daughter had gone to the bad. Pelle knew the secret pride of the town, the "Top-galeass," as she was called, who in her sole self represented the allurements of the capital, ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... Mr Montefiore says, "when the death of an unfortunate speculator caused a general gloom to prevail in the financial world, I was asked by a gentleman if I had the courage to join him in a speculation, my reply was I would see to-morrow." "I fear," Mr Montefiore observes, "this day's awful lesson is ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... carefully, placed the ostensible change in the pocket of confiding juvenility. Setting the youngster's face homeward, and patting him benevolently on the back—for Chicken's heart was as soft as those of his feathered namesakes—the speculator quit the market with a profit of 1,700 per cent. ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... put on the block and auctioned off for $4,000. He said that the last time he was sold he only brought $1,500. He was born in Alabama. When he was bought he was carried from Alabama to Virginia. It was Col. Elmore who took him. He wanted to go to Alabama again, so Col. Elmore let a speculator take him back and sell him. He stayed there for several years and got homesick for South Carolina. He couldn't get his marster to sell him back here, so he just refugeed back to Col. Elmore's plantation. Col. Elmore took him back and wouldn't ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... to produce various letters which had been written to him from different parts of the Union, by different individuals. That this could be done will be seen by what follows. The colonel had been an extensive speculator in merchandise of almost every kind. He was extensively known. His correspondence was wide-spread. In his villanous communications, however, letters were never addressed to him in his proper name, unless some one should labour under the impression that he was an honest man. He used two ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... I'd have a writin' t' make sure, the owner o' this here ship bein' on'y a fish speculator; an' I got it in ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... rejoiced all hands by rewarding them for their pluck in fighting and floating the ship again with the present of a month's wages for a spree ashore. "Old Jock" could well afford to be liberal, too; for a native speculator gave him a better price for the balance of his marmalade than he would have realised if he had fed the men on ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the young French buck, whom we will willingly suppose harmless, you see specimens of the French raff, who goes aux eaux: gambler, speculator, sentimentalist, duellist, travelling with madame his wife, at whom other raffs nod and wink familiarly. This rogue is much more picturesque and civilized than the similar person in our own country: whose manners betray the stable; who never reads anything ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... not go, though Captain Patterdale gave him sufficient excuse for doing so, or even for cutting his acquaintance. The rich man continued to talk with Don John, to the intense disgust of the speculator, who stood looking at a tin box, painted green, which lay on a chair. Perhaps he looked upon this box as the grave of his hopes; for it contained the money he had just paid to the captain—the wasted money, because the rich man would ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic
... times—surely there must have been many; and this proves to us, that he was a low fellow without political connections, and that he never had been behind the curtain. Now, what business had such a man to set himself up for a writer of history and a speculator on politics? Besides, his history is imperfect; and, suppose it were not, what is its subject? Why simply one single war; a war which lasted twenty-seven years; but which, after all, through its whole course was enlivened by only two events worthy to enter into general history—viz. the plague ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... plunder of the Indians, have come at length to look upon them as no better than the wild beasts of the forest, and whose many atrocities make it a moral duty, on the part of the whites, to exterminate by fire and the sword. Again there is the regular squatter and land speculator, whose interest is always promoted by a war, because it usually results in driving the Indians further back from the frontier. Intermixed with these classes, are many quiet and worthy citizens, who with their families, have been carried to the frontiers, in the ordinary ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... striking as that of another town. There is a well-known story of a traveller, in a newly-settled part of North America, inquiring his way at a lonely hut to a 'city' which made a conspicuous figure in some land-speculator's map, and receiving the startling information, that he was then standing in the principal square. An adventure of much the same nature befell a traveller in South Africa, who, in February 1850, attempted, while on his way from ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various
... week much had happened, and much more was scheduled to happen. For one twenty-four-hour day the ex-speculator in Mr. Colbrith held out against the sharp attacks of the reawakened lust of conquest. Then, from Jack's Canyon on the Transcontinental, from men-clustered construction trains on the extension, over the passes from Summit Lakes, and across the brown plains from Green ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... followed them upstairs with many excuses to ask if they could exchange it for another for only two days. Lord Ormersfield's negative had all the exceeding politeness of offended dignity; and Louis was much amused at the surmises, with which he consoled himself, that this was nothing but some trumpery speculator, most likely a successful quack doctor—no one else went about in ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and took up a position in an open space opposite the American minister's house. A speculator bridged a couple of barrels with a board and we hired standing places on it. Presently there was a sound of distant music; in another minute a pillar of dust came moving slowly toward us; a moment more and then, with colors flying and a grand crash of military music, a gallant array of cavalrymen ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of the J[o]-d[o] and Shin sects, which became popular largely through their promulgation of dogmas founded on the Western Paradise, we must not forget that both of them preached a new Buddha—not the real figure in history, but an unhistoric and unreal phantom, the creation and dream of the speculator and visionary. Amida, the personification of boundless light, is one of the luxuriant growths of a sickly scholasticism—a hollow abstraction without life or reality. Amidaism is utterly repudiated by many Japanese Buddhists, who give no place to his idol on their altars, ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... noble, whilst his dress betokens the gallant sea captain. There is the fine portly figure of Lord Grantham, bowing to George Ward, Esq.; who, in quakerlike coat and homely gaiters, with an umbrella beneath his arm, presents a fine picture of a speculator "on 'Change." To the left is Richard Stephens, Esq., Secretary to the Royal Yacht Club, and Master of the Ceremonies. He is engaged in the enviable task of introducing a party of ladies to view the richly-adorned cups; and the smile of gallantry which plays upon ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 374 • Various |
