"Conjecture" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... if it narrowed, the field of conjecture; and Darrow's gropings threw him back on the conclusion that he was probably reading too much significance into the moods of a lad he hardly knew, and who had been described to him as subject to sudden changes of humour. As ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... retreat. It was from Villa Torella that I had attempted to carry off Juliet; I had spent many an hour reconnoitring the spot, and knew each inch of ground in its vicinity. It was beautifully situated, embosomed in trees, on the margin of a stream. As I drew near, it became evident that my conjecture was right; nay, moreover, that the hours were being then devoted to feasting and merriment. For the house was lighted up; strains of soft and gay music were wafted towards me by the breeze. My heart sank within me. Such was ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... Grouchy, upon whom Napoleon threw the blame of the defeat at Waterloo, because he strictly fulfilled his orders, by pressing the Prussians at Wavre, unheeding the cannonade on his left, which might have led him to conjecture that the more important contest between the Emperor and Wellington ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... impossible to forecast in what direction philosophy will move. The summary history we have been able to trace sufficiently shows, as it seems to us, that it has no regular advance such that by seeing how it has progressed one can conjecture what path it will pursue. It seems in no sense to depend, or at all events, to depend remarkably little, at any period, on the general state of civilization around it, and even for those who believe ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... there was a bustle and a leave-taking, and I had to post off before I could hear more. Not, however, that there was much more to hear, for everything seemed to be in the greatest confusion, and every species of conjecture was afloat as to the real criminal, and the motive for the crime. I had not much time to think of anything during the first day on board; yet, busy as I was in arranging and rearranging my things, poor old Sir John never seemed ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... burned up the temple, scorched the rock, making a powerful impression on the Indians and causing the poor Devil to flee, "roaring in a fury." "The cruel Devil never more returned to the rock nor to this district." Whether the roaring which they heard was that of the Devil or of the flames we can only conjecture. Whether the conflagration temporarily dried up the swamp or interfered with the arrangements of the water supply so that the pool disappeared for the time being and gave the Devil no chance to appear in the water, where he had formerly ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... dingy scrap, but the changes of her expressive face did not bear out Jerry's optimistic conjecture that the "inside" was all right. Judging from Peggy's crestfallen air, it was all wrong. The note was not written in Lucy's usual regular hand. The letters straggled, the lines zig-zagged across the page, and the name signed was ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... populace, but the nobles themselves, even the Holy Fathers and Associated Brethren were seen, forming in various groups, conversing eagerly and mysteriously. The interest in the prisoner had in some measure given way to a new excitement. Question followed question, conjecture followed conjecture, but nothing could solve the mystery of Donna Marie's terrible avowal, or decrease the bewilderment and perplexity which, from various causes, it created in every mind. One alone, ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... simile, and if well worked out by a rhetorician, say of Dr. Liddon's type, it might have powerfully clinched some great argument for the necessary place of dogma in Christian theology. But the sermon has vanished, and we can only conjecture from the date of the entry—October 5, 1869—that the good Dean's ire had been excited by Matthew Arnold's first appearance in the field of theological controversy. Six years before, indeed, Arnold had touched that field, when in The Bishop and the Philosopher ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... imagined that they could form a separate kingdom of Dublin, or dreamt of making an alliance with the tribes outside the Pale, it is useless now to conjecture; but we can see that though they had no chance of benefiting themselves they might have caused serious injury to England. Nor was it long before a difficulty arose. The inhabitants of the Pale remained attached to the House of York even after ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... have been willing to work with the Whites. He sent for Vieri de' Cerchi, the leader of that party, and tried to induce him to live peaceably with the other side. Vieri, for reasons which we can only conjecture, replied curtly that he had no quarrel with any one; and Boniface resorted to the old expedient of sending a Cardinal—Matthew ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... not comprehend what he meant; but on explaining himself, he said, 'Her mother behaved to her with an attention and a marked respect that it is impossible to account for in any other way; and I am sure of it.' His conjecture shortly afterwards proved to be the truth. This was carrying the prophetic spirit of common sense as far as it ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... poverty and want on a barren wild; forsaking all things enduring all things for the love of Knowledge, which he could still nobly follow through trials and extremities, without encouragement of fame or profit, without vantage ground of station or wealth, for its own dear sake. Beyond this, nothing but conjecture is left. The cell, the bed-place, the lines traced on the rocks, the inscription of the year in which he hewed his habitation out of them, are all the memorials that remain ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... asked Lydia. It was an inestimable comfort to her to have brought into the light the problem that had so long lain in the back of her head, a confused mass of dark conjecture. ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... an end, however, to conjecture founded upon circumstances and appearances, we directed Tupia to ask what bones they were; and the Indians, without the least hesitation, answered, the bones of a man. They were then asked what ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... something surpassing. From the day almost of his marriage the miseries of life lost half their bitterness, nor had it returned at her death. Instinctively he felt that outsiders, those even who respected him as an honest man, believed that, somehow or other, they could only conjecture how, he must be to blame for the circumstances he was in—either this, or providence did not take care of the just man. Such was virtually the unuttered conclusion of many, who nevertheless imagined they understood the Book of Job, and who would have counted Warlock's ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... she could not very well say. They were a mother with two daughters, not quite old maids, but on the way to it, and there was very intermittently the apparently bachelor brother of the girls; at the office Mrs. Forsyth verified her conjecture that he was some sort of minister. One could see they were all gentlefolks, though the girls were not of the last cry of fashion. They were very nice to their mother, and you could tell that they must have been coming with ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... cracked voice of the chorister was uplifted, intoning the text, as if it were the first verse of another hymn. So calmly was it done, so imperturbable were all the black countenances, that I half began to conjecture that the chaplain himself intended it for a hymn, though I could imagine no prospective rhyme for trouble, unless it were approximated by debbil,—which is, indeed, a favorite reference, both with the men and with his Reverence. But the chaplain, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... my parents alike of hope! I am not fifteen, I have not reached my twentieth year, and—wretched I—I see no more the light! My name is Hypatus; but I pray my brother and my parents to weep for wretched ones no more." Conjecture has coupled this wail of a strange fate with the human sacrifices offered at the shrine of Mithras, and has seen in Hypatus a slave and favourite of Tiberius devoted by his master to the Eastern deity; but there is no ground whatever for ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... lessening or the complete loss of womanly grace and purity. Take away that reverential regard which men now feel for them, leave them to win their way by sheer strength of body or mind, and the result is not difficult to conjecture. Let the condition of women in savage life tell. Towards something like this, although in civilised society not so coarsely and roughly exposed to view, matters would tend if these agitators for women's rights were successful. Husbands, brothers, sons, have too keen a sense of what they owe ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... encountered on our route, had its own purpose. We reached very soon the end of the gallery, and then the procession turned and passed suddenly into another chamber, apparently narrow, but so faintly lighted by the lamp in our leader's hands that its dimensions were matter of mere conjecture. That we were descending a somewhat steep incline I was soon aware; and when we came again on to level ground I felt sure that we were passing through a gallery cut in natural rock. The light was far too dim to enable me to distinguish any openings in the walls; but the procession constantly ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... they may have rowed out and been caught in the storm," cried Paula, bursting into fresh weeping; and Magdalen saw the conjecture confirmed by Mr. ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... cedrela, instead of having been cast on the strand of Teneriffe, had been carried farther south, It would probably have made the whole tour of the Atlantic, and returned to its native soil with the general current of the tropics. This conjecture is supported by a fact of more ancient date, recorded in the history of the Canaries by the abbe Viera. In 1770, a small vessel laden with corn, and bound from the island of Lancerota, to Santa Cruz, in Teneriffe, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... into pricking flames. Loud voices about, but invisible to him, were swearing and gibing. He was lying on his back, his head on a line with his body. A regular movement, broken by joltings that sent torturing darts through his whole frame, told him without much conjecture that he was in an ambulance. The accent of the voices outside told him that it was a rebel ambulance and not a Northern one he was in. He tried to raise his head to see his companions, but he might as well have been ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... not unknown to me; I began to conjecture where I could have seen him; and, after an unobserved scrutiny, to speculate both as to his character and vocation. His physiognomy was prepossessing and intelligent, but ever and anon his brows lowered and gathered; a habit, as I then ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... "that now you have taken up the affair, you will not stop until you find out everything, so, as I want the matter to rest as at present, I will anticipate you, and reveal all. You were right in your conjecture that I knew something likely to lead to the detection of Whyte's murderer; but when I tell you my reasons for keeping such a thing secret, I am sure you will not blame me. Mind you, I do not say that I know who committed the murder; but I have suspicions—very strong suspicions—and ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... months and explored the adjacent country, became so discouraged and exhausted by fatigue and famine, that they abandoned the country. Sir Richard Grenville returning shortly afterwards to America, and not being able to find them, and at a loss to conjecture their fate, left in the island another small party of settlers and again set ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... and so was Madame de Thoux. Though neither of them could conjecture what was the cause of Cassy's fainting, still they made all the tumult which is proper in such cases;—George upsetting a wash-pitcher, and breaking two tumblers, in the warmth of his humanity; and various ladies in the cabin, hearing that somebody had fainted, crowded the state-room door, ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... in her conjecture that Mignon would not allow matters to rest as they were. From the moment that Constance had been announced as the Princess she had made a vow that by either fair or unfair means she would supplant "that white-faced cat of a Stevens girl," who had been ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... Twelfth Night, have been cited as involving some reference to the Poet's own case, or as having been suggested by what himself had experienced of the evils resulting from the wedlock of persons "misgraffed in respect of years." There was never any thing but sheer conjecture for this notion. Rowe mentions nothing of the kind; and we may be sure that his candour would not have spared the Poet, had tradition offered him any such matter. As for the passages in question, I know ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... beautiful and very wilful young lady, her cousin, would never have made such an appeal to me. I did not care to conjecture the way in which she, long before this stage of the conversation, would have been expressing her indignation and withering me with ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... and the gulls circling overhead, that she had awakened to the knowledge of her love for Crispin. And so to him strayed now her thoughts, and to the fate her father had sent him to; and thus back again to her father and the evil he had wrought. It is matter for conjecture whether her loathing for Gregory would have been as intense as it was, had another than Crispin Galliard ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... cripple that mighty bulk. And yet I aimed better than I knew, for, with a loud report, one of the great blisters upon the creature's back exploded with the puncture of the buck-shot. It was very clear that my conjecture was right, and that these vast clear bladders were distended with some lifting gas, for in an instant the huge cloud- like body turned sideways, writhing desperately to find its balance, while the white beak snapped and gaped in horrible fury. But already ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... pollen-mother-cells develop (type 2) while in others they do not (type 1). For this we have no explanation; nor can we explain why the tree is male sterile. I am afraid these phenomena will remain a matter of conjecture for some time to come. Since sterilities of this and other sorts in most other plants are largely genetic, that is, controlled by one or more genes that are inherited in Mendelian fashion, it is likely that such is ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke
... now for conjecture, time now only for action. She sprang for the door, had it open in a trice, and before the cabby was really enthroned upon his lofty box, the girl was on the step, fair troubled face upturned to ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... with himself that he should have allowed this interpretation to be placed on his presence here; then he still more resented the conjecture. ...
— The Crucial Moment - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... historical sketch of the previous discoveries, I shall not dwell upon such as depend upon conjecture and probability, but come speedily to those, for which there are authentic documents. In this latter, and solely important, class, the articles extracted from voyages, which are in the hands of the public, will be abridged to their leading heads; and the ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... leaders and legislation of the revolutionary era than has hitherto been written. Certainly there could be no more instructive commentary on either history than the study of the other, for each supplements the other and emphasizes its defects. If Mommsen at times pushes conjecture to the verge of invention, as in his account of the junction of the Helvetii and Cimbri, Mr. Long, in his dogged determination never to swerve from facts to inference, falls into the opposite extreme, resorting ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... a complicated tragedy, thought Andrew McLean as he stood there, his eyes narrowing, his lips compressed, his mind invaded with a dark swarm of conjecture, surmise, suspicion, his vision possessed by a flitting ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... ambitious princess, who had renounced the most sacred duties of a mother. The nature, the duration, the probable consequences of such a union between two distant and dissonant empires, it is impossible to conjecture; but the unanimous silence of the Latins may teach us to suspect, that the report was invented by the enemies of Irene, to charge her with the guilt of betraying the church and state to the strangers of the West. [121] The French ambassadors were the spectators, and had nearly ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... Maillet's dream and the Lamarckian hypothesis of a Creation undertaken once and for all, in place of a continuous creative intenention. This book, opposing natural law to miracle, carried complete conviction to the young and eager. Audacious spirits even hazarded the conjecture that primitive life itself might have originated in a natural way: had not, but recently, an investigator who brought a powerful voltaic battery to bear on a saturated solution of silicate of potash, been startled to find, ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... the earth, nor the points of the compass, could any longer be seen. Stupefied by the dust, all the troops became blind. Neither the foe, O king, nor we, could distinguish each other. For this reason, the kings began to fight, guided by conjecture and the names they uttered. Deprived of their cars, car-warriors, O king, encountering one another, lost all order and became a tangled mass. Their steeds killed and drivers slain, many of them, becoming inactive, preserved their lives and looked exceedingly affrighted. Slain steeds ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Asiatics. We would be unwise to contemplate the situation of to-day as one that can or should perpetuate itself. Suppose we accept, the governing responsibility in the Philippines. It is not beyond the range of reasonable conjecture that American labor can educate the laborers of the Philippines out of their state of servitude as cheap laborers, and lead them to co-operate rather than compete with us, and not to go into the silver question further ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... above his knees. I noticed also the upward curve of a huge gray moustache against the stern profile of his face, while a long straight sword dangled at his side. Evidently the stranger was a soldier, and one not to be despised in feats at arms, although in what service I might merely conjecture, as his dress was not distinctive. Yet it was small likelihood any other nation than Spain had armed men ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... of the membranous folds, which he names valves, in the interior of veins. Several of these folds had been observed by Fernel, Sylvius and Vesalius; and in 1547 G. B. Canani observed those of the vena azygos; but no one appears to have offered any rational conjecture on their use, or to have traced them through the venous system at large, until Fabricius in 1574, upon this hypothesis, demonstrated the presence of these valvular folds in all the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... kind of monkeys; and to this day the features of the Marawars, who are supposed to be the aborigines of the southern part of the Carnatic, are not only different from those of their neighbours, but are of a character calculated to confirm the conjecture. Again, it is probable that the army of aborigines may have been accompanied by outlying bands of monkeys impelled by that magpie-like curiosity and love of plunder which are the peculiar characteristics of the monkey race; and this incident may have given rise ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... year of the Fire of London, after Bunyan had lain six years in Bedford gaol, "by the intercession of some interest or power that took pity on his sufferings," he enjoyed a short interval of liberty. Who these friends and sympathisers were is not mentioned, and it would be vain to conjecture. This period of freedom, however, was very short. He at once resumed his old work of preaching, against which the laws had become even more stringent during his imprisonment, and was apprehended at a meeting just as he was about to preach a sermon. He had given out his text, "Dost thou believe ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... belief in spirits, a mythology, and some form of church and state exist universally. At one time students of mankind, when they found a myth in Hawaii corresponding to the Greek story of Orpheus and Eurydice, or an Aztec poem of tender longing in absence, or a story of the deluge, were wont to conjecture how these could have been carried over from Greek or Elizabethan or Hebraic sources, or whether they did not afford evidence of a time when all branches of the human race dwelt together with a common fund of sentiment and tradition. But this standpoint ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... verified Charley's conjecture that the Mary Rebecca, as soon as launched, would run up the San Joaquin River nearly to Stockton for a load of wheat. Then Charley made his proposition, and Ole Ericsen shook ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London
... was Walter troubled. He lived in love's eternal present, and did not look forward. Even jealousy had not yet begun to show itself in any shape. He was not in Lady Lufa's set, and therefore not much drawn to conjecture what might be going on. In the glamour of literary ambition, he took for granted that Lady Lufa allotted his world a higher orbit than that of her social life, and prized most the pleasures they had in common, which so few were ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... occurred just now. One of the Devon Yeomanry who went up to the tent which is our post-office, on the off-chance of getting a letter, to his great astonishment got one. He came back eyeing the address suspiciously, and remarking, "It's tracts, I'm thinkin." His conjecture turned out correct. It appears that a certain thoughtful and religious society at home looks down the lists of the wounded and, now and again, sends some of the worst cases tracts. The title of one of the ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... saddles are such as are usually ridden by men, it may be supposed only men are to be mounted, and that the ladies' horses have not yet been brought out of the stable. This would naturally be the conjecture of a stranger to Spanish California. But one an fait to its fashions would draw deductions differently. Looking at the spurred heels upon the house-top, and the saddled horses below, he would conclude that two of the ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... accustomed to performances of this order, for his conjecture was exactly verified. From the spot where we stood, to get, as he called it, a last peep at "the free-traders bamboozling the dragoons," we could see cavalry rushing up to the blaze, evidently sure ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... place her on a level with the beautiful and heroic Queen Nitokris, spoken of by Julius Africanus, Eusebius and others, and whose name, (signifying the victorious Neith) has been found on the monuments, applied to a queen of the sixth dynasty. This is a bold conjecture; it adds however to the importance of our heroine; and without doubt many traditions referring to the one have been transferred to the other, and vice versa. Herodotus lived so short a time after Rhodopis, and tells so many exact particulars of her private life that it is impossible ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... return of the emigrants, and in the superb receptions at the Tuilleries—that Bonaparte already contemplated the last days of the republic. To what new shape of power his ambition looks is yet only in conjecture. But he is ambitious, daring, and unscrupulous—the idol of the army, and the wonder of the people. He may shrink, like Caesar, from the diadem, or he may assume, like Cromwell, the power of a king, without the name; but the field ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... which is of most excellent use to all persons. Therefore let the nativities of children be diligently observed for the future, that is to say, the day, hour, and minute of birth as near as can be, which will be of use to the astrological physician, for the most principal conjecture of the malignity of the disease, whether it be curable, or shall end with death, depends upon the knowledge of the nativity; and very rarely any disease invades a person, but some unfortunate direction of the luminaries or ascendant to the body, or beams of malignant ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... he prefers Lee to Gainsborough;[F] not the most ordinary facts of nature, for we find him puzzled by the epithet "silver," as applied to the orange blossom,—evidently never having seen anything silvery about an orange in his life, except a spoon. Nay, he leaves us not to conjecture his calibre from internal evidence; he candidly tells us (Oct. 1842) that he has been studying trees only for the last week, and bases his critical remarks chiefly on his practical experience of birch. ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... opinions expressed no one save the writer is responsible, and, where records are scanty, much has necessarily been left to conjecture. ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray
... answered the doctor, calmly pressing the blotting-paper over the address he had just written. "Valentine is one of those people who defy all conjecture. No one can say what he will do, or what he won't. A man who cannot resist an application for shelter and supper from any stray cur who wags his tail at him in the street; a man who blindly believes in the troubles of begging-letter impostors; ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... in their conjecture. As he approached with his staff, the officer who had charge of them ordered his men to halt ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... infer that in the territory of Southern California the designated metals should be found in considerable quantities. The official notices which we possess in respect to Lower California fortify this conjecture. Those exhibited by persons who lack competent instruction upon this point contribute in part to foretell what will be the grade of prosperity which will come in time with the developing of the mineral industry in ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... approach to a rudder is a chimney or an unfinished pillar; the closest resemblance to a pilot is a hod-carrying workman clambering up a gangway. Dismissing the nautical hypothesis, your next effort to relieve your perplexity results in the conjecture that the prodigious masts and booms may be nothing more than curious gibbets, the cross-pieces to which, conforming rigidly to the Washington rule of contrariety, are fastened to the bottom instead of the top of the upright. Your theory is, that the destinies of the nation are to be hanged on ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... 1869.—It is remarkable that all the Ujiji Arabs who have any opinion on the subject, believe that all the water in the north, and all the water in the south, too, flows into Tanganyika, but where it then goes they have no conjecture. They assert, as a matter of fact, that Tanganyika, Usige water, and Loanda, are one and the ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... powerless to efface. And if Art study hard and labor long and vehemently aspire to publish the truth of this, she does well. Her task is worthy, but is not easy: I think a greater, of the kind, has never been attempted. The height of this berg was determined by instruments—but with a conjecture only of the distance—to be one hundred and eighteen feet. Captain Brown, however, who went aloft, and thence formed a judgment, pronounced it not less than one hundred and fifty feet. One naturally inclines to the more moderate computation. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... Further conjecture was suspended by the presence of the individual in regard to whom they were in doubt. He was a stranger, and Mr. Markland presented him as Mr. Lyon, son of an old and valued business correspondent, residing in Liverpool. A cordial ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... the Popple story overnight, and that made you think you saw a hedgehog when you were only half awake," said Mrs. Norbury, hazarding a conjecture that probably ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... and after this bitter experience, four companies of the Seventh were sent to their destruction on an errand equally hopeless. Had the brigade been sent together, instead of its three regiments in detail, the rebel line would have been carried and the road to Richmond opened to us. This is no conjecture. The testimony of a rebel staff-officer on duty at Fort Gilmer, and that of our own officers who were captured, fully ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... electron, whenever we send an electric charge through a gas at very low pressure, no matter what the kind of gas. Whether or not these positive units will yet prove susceptible of being split up into smaller particles comparable to the electrons, is merely a subject for conjecture. We have no proof that they will. At the present time what we call matter seems to be composed of these positive units and of the electrons which are about 1/1760 as great; and in the present state of our knowledge these ...
— Q. E. D., or New Light on the Doctrine of Creation • George McCready Price
... felicitate them on their erudition. In fact, they all remained silent. Sully held his peace with the rest; but he looked so knowing, that the king turned towards him, and said:—"Great master! by your face I conjecture that you know more of this matter than you would have us believe. I pray you, and indeed I command, that you tell us what you think and what you know." The coy minister refused, as he says, out of mere politeness to his more ignorant colleagues; but, being again pressed by the king, he entered ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... Thucydides, the historian, from whose work the materials for the present narrative are taken. Thucydides was descended on his mother's side from the royal family of Thrace, [Footnote: Such, at least, is the highly probable conjecture of Classen.] and through this connexion he was the owner of valuable working rights in the gold-mines of Mount Pangaeus, and a man of great power and, influence in these districts. When the message arrived from Amphipolis, he was engaged in some business at Thasos, ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... had written, purely to amuse myself, before I was admitted to my charmer. But now I have to tell thee, that I was quite right in my conjecture, that she would set up for herself, and dismiss me: for she has declared in so many words that such was her resolution: And why? Because, to be plain with me, the more she saw of me, and of my ways, the less she liked ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... unfaithfulness." When the king returned from the chase, the chamberlain related to him what he had seen, and the king was angry and said: "This woman has deceived me with words and deeds, and has brought hither her desire by craft and cunning. This conjecture must be true, else why did she play such a trick, and why did she hatch such a plot, and why did she send the merchant?" The king, enraged, went into the harem. The queen saw from his countenance that the ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... Consistory Court, according to Wren, was held. To the arcading of nave and transepts, Wren says that in later years four new and stronger piers were added in the common centre under the tower for the purpose of strengthening it. As these are not shown in Dugdale's plates, we can only conjecture their date to have been after the fire of 1445. By the plan they were far more massive than the others, and we can well understand Wren's complaint that they ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock
... involves all cabinet-councils, and more especially those of female politicians, prevents the cautious historian from presuming to decide. But arguing from general causes, and from the established characters and ruling passions of the parties concerned, we may safely conjecture that the baronet did not at this time make any decisive proposal to the lady, but that he kept himself at liberty to advance or recede, as circumstances should render it expedient. His ruling passion was avarice; and though he had been allured by the hints which his sister ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... dreams as divine portent. He refers to the skilled interpretations of dreams as a true divination; but adds that, like all other arts in which men have to proceed on conjecture and on artificial rules, ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... bred in Solomon's bones that it never occurred to him that he could reverse the order observed by the Grundys for generations back and be married on Thursday, for instance. And yet there is room for conjecture as to how much difference it might have made in his life if he had elected to contract an alliance on that day instead of a fatal illness. System is a fine servant but a poor master. Simply because custom has decreed that Monday shall be wash day, Tuesday ironing ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... marine monster of serpent-like shape whose existence is still a matter of question, although several seemingly authentic accounts have been circulated in attestation. The subject has given rise to much disputation and conjecture on the part of naturalists, but opinion mostly favours the supposition that these gigantic serpent-like appearances are caused by enormous cuttlefish swimming on the surface of the water, with their 20 ft. long tentacles ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... fattened her, and for my own information had her slaughtered at home. It was three months after, and the post-mortem examination showed one of the lungs, to the extent of about the size of a crown-piece, adhering to the ribs—a sufficient proof that my conjecture was correct. Many take the disease that are never suspected. I had a bullock showing some symptoms of the disease in a byre amongst ten. The others were, to all appearance, in perfect health. I sent them immediately to London. My salesman was ...
— Cattle and Cattle-breeders • William M'Combie
... should have notions on the subject of liberty. Quickly this look became inquisitive and significant, so that I began to fancy he had doubts as to the use I might make of my stipulated freedom, and was puzzled to conjecture why a woman should wish to be free at all. Some such thought must have passed through his mind, for he said abruptly, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... huts surrounding a central stockade, which enclosed a small group of buildings of considerably more pretentious character than the ordinary huts, and which Dick and Grosvenor at once conjectured must be the royal palace and its dependencies. This conjecture was confirmed upon their arrival at the village, for at the gateway of the stockade the cavalcade halted, and 'Mpandula, dismounting, requested his charges to do the same, intimating that he was about to conduct them forthwith into the ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... sat looking across the waste with eyes of misery, asking himself whither and for what? Whither had they taken her, and why? The Bristol road once left, his theory was at fault; he had no clue, and felt, where time was life and more than life, the slough of horrible conjecture rise to his ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... for reserves on the teeming populations of Russia and Siberia would never know defeat. And this is not idle conjecture, mere dreaming in the realm of possibilities, because the Russian revolution has shown us how weak and tottering in reality was the ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard
... the land of Don Quixote's exploits, we reverentially visited any known spot which these had rendered famous. Amongst such was the VENTA of Quesada, from which, or from Quixada, as some conjecture, the knight derived his surname. It was here, attracted by its castellated style, and by two 'ladies of pleasure' at its door - whose virginity he at once offered to defend, that he spent the night of his first sally. It was here that, in his shirt, he kept guard till morning over ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... herself at this moment whether she was glad or sorry that the impressive manager was awaiting her presence. She was slightly flurried and tingling in the cheeks, but it was more nervousness than either fear or favour. She did not try to conjecture what the drift of the conversation would be. She only felt that she must be careful, and that Hurstwood had an indefinable fascination for her. Then she gave her tie its last touch with her fingers ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... must now be dealt with. Drawn as they have been from contemporary records which were compiled in and handed down through the ages we have to deal with, the facts here collected are based upon no assumption or conjecture. The writer may have failed fully to comprehend the facts, and so may have partially misstated them. But the original records are open for investigation to the duly qualified, and those who are disposed to undertake the necessary training ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... Though a single rodlike individual taken as a starting-point may be less than one five-thousandth of an inch in length, under natural circumstances it multiplies at a rate which within five days would cause its descendants to fill all the oceans to the depth of one mile. This is a fact, not a conjecture; the size of one organism is known, and the rate of its natural increase is known, so that it is merely a matter of simple arithmetic to find out what the result would be in a ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... conjecture, and still thinking of a royalist conspiracy, took his landlady's remark as an opening, and he began to study her as he seated himself beside her. He was struck by the singular dexterity with which she worked. Although everything about her bespoke the great lady, she showed ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... answer, and if the colour came into her cheeks at the memory of what the man had said to her, Lady Bolsover was too amused at her own conjecture ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... his own avenger. And when the report of this was passed around and came to all the Libyans, they were expecting that some vengeance would come upon the Vandals at some time because of this sacred festival, but were unable to conjecture how in the world the vision would be realized for them. Now, therefore, when the emperor's expedition had come to Libya, since the time had already come round and would bring the celebration of the festival on the succeeding ...
— History of the Wars, Books III and IV (of 8) - The Vandalic War • Procopius
... seems not unreasonable to conjecture that the uniformly high physical standard of the Punans and their seemingly exceptional immunity from disease are due to their exposed mode of life, and to the consequently severe selection exercised ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... thy outward graces had been placed About thy thoughts, and counsels of thy heart! But, fare thee well, most foul, most fair! farewell, Thou pure impiety, and impious purity! For thee I'll lock up all the gates of love, And on my eyelids shall conjecture hang, To turn all beauty into thoughts of harm, And never shall it ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]
... the fete was to have been held had been erected on a headland between Castle Raa and a precipitous declivity to the sea, and the only reasonable conjecture is that the unhappy lady, going out on Thursday night to superintend the final preparations, lost her way in the darkness and fell ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... search had followed, which ended in its being picked up by one of the students and brought back as far as the great step leading up to the front door, when it had again disappeared, and in a way to rouse conjecture of the strangest and most ...
— The House in the Mist • Anna Katharine Green
... without a friend to whom she could apply. I presume that one of the few parishioners who visited at the rectory had written to acquaint Mrs Oldcastle with the condition in which her daughter was left, for, influenced by motives of which I dare not take upon me to conjecture an analysis, she wrote, offering her daughter all that she required in her old home. Whether she fore-intended her following conduct, or old habit returned with the return of her daughter, I cannot tell; but she had not been more than a few days in the house before ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... be watching? The dreaded arrival of the king bent on tearing her from her Abbey at Poitiers to replace her on the throne? For lack of any information every conjecture must ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... hunters came in sight, Jan and Truey ran down the rounds, and out to meet them. There was that in their glances that bespoke ill tidings, and their words soon confirmed this conjecture. ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... knows; We can't even guess, suppose, Hazard, speculate, surmise, Hint, conjecture, theorize, ...
— A line-o'-verse or two • Bert Leston Taylor
... Wallingford sat so still that she gave the impression of a doll made without speaking apparatus. It did not seem as if she could even wink. Then Alice Mendon, who disliked Margaret Edes and had a shrewd conjecture as to the state of affairs, but who was broad in her views, pitied Margaret. She arose with considerable motion and spoke to Daisy Shaw at her right, and broke the ghastly silence, and immediately everything was in motion and refreshments were being passed, but Martha Wallingford, who had written ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... for a full half-minute, gazing down at the flaming, flashing gems coiled in their silken bed. He was aroused from his wonder and wild conjecture by ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... of the book as the first and second, is scarcely less strange to me. For, in the first place, the identification of the personages in the framework of the Heptameron depends upon the merest and, as it seems to me, the idlest conjecture; and, in the second, the interest of the actual tittle-tattle, whether it could be fathered on A or B or not, is the least part of the interest of the book. Indeed, the stories altogether are, as I think, far less ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... of November is not solely a time of memory of the dead; customs of other sorts linger, or until lately used to linger, about it, especially in Scotland, northern England, Ireland, Cornwall, Wales, and the West Midlands. One may conjecture that these are survivals from the Celtic New Year's Day, for most of them are of the nature of omens or charms. Apples and nuts are prominent on Hallowe'en, the Eve of All |196| Saints;[89] they may be regarded either as a ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... he observed towards me respecting the letter just alluded to. I am indeed inclined to regard that letter as the result of one of his private conferences with Lucien; but I know nothing positive on the subject, and merely mention this as a conjecture. However, I had an opportunity of ascertaining the curious circumstances which took place at Mittau, when Bonaparte's letter was ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... almost sinless hand had hold of a blessed link of that chain of ineffable love, which terminates in the breast of that awful Being, who sits at the right-hand of the throne of the Eternal. I give, myself, no opinion. I only state facts. But I cannot help hazarding a conjecture of what I might have been, had I then possessed a friend in any one of my instructors, who could have pointed out to me what were the precincts of true piety, what those of incipient insanity. At that time I had the courage to achieve anything. Let the ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... weak and guilty. He felt as if he had just been accused of nameless crimes and had been unable to deny the charge. Such was the magic of Miss Trimble's eye—the left one, which looked directly at its object. Conjecture pauses baffled at the thought of the effect which her gaze might have created in the breasts of the sex she despised, had it been double instead of single-barrelled. But half of it had wasted itself on a spot some few feet to ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... confusion, servants bustled about in fright, the youthful family shrieked in fear, the father sought to restore the fond mother, as Montague chafed her right hand in his. Let us leave to the reader's conjecture a scene his fancy may depict better than we can describe, and pass to one more pleasant of results. Some half an hour had transpired, when, as if in strange bewilderment, Clotilda opened her eyes and seemed conscious of her position. A deep crimson shaded ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... I said anything about a quarrel? Please remember that the whole thing is conjecture from beginning to end, and don't go all over the place spreading stories and making mischief. I have told you this in ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... intends to espouse a Mr. Adam Rouffignac, a foreigner and a wine merchant; I suppose (since he is reputed rich) to arm herself with money to pay her lawyers. What his object can be, poor man, I am unable to conjecture. It is a strange world. While her ugly mother mates at the age of fifty, Diana—who started with all the advantages of looks—withers upon the ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... geologists have devised an easier method of count, measured not by units of time, but by what each phase of progress has accomplished. This measure is set forth in the accompanying table, together with a conjecture concerning the lapse of time in terms ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... hypothetic grounds, but this was the sort of action that had the keenest interest for his diplomatic mind. From a combination of general knowledge concerning Savonarola's purposes with diligently observed details he had framed a conjecture which he was about to verify by this visit to San Marco. If he proved to be right, his game would be won, and he might soon turn his back on Florence. He looked eagerly towards that consummation, for many circumstances besides his own ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... is not progressive. But on what grounds this assertion is based, it is not possible to conjecture. Poetry is as much progressive as anything else in these days of progress. Free-thought itself shews scarcely more strikingly those three great stages which mark advance and movement. For poetry, like Free-thought, was first a work of inspiration, ...
— Every Man His Own Poet - Or, The Inspired Singer's Recipe Book • Newdigate Prizeman
... machine-made articles of cheap manufacture. His belongings were like hers now. She was bringing him a little closer to her in such ways,—food and lodging and raiment. But not in thought and being. Behind those deep-set eyes passed a world of thought, of conjecture and theory and belief, that ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... will see the reason of each sentence in it without the aid of my comments. I will only remark, that I was at first induced to insert, and afterwards to refuse striking out the sum, lest from leaving it uncertain, the public might have had room to conjecture, or individuals to insinuate, that I had imprudently run into such rash and expensive engagements, as to render it improper for Spain or France to afford me ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... American preachers, let him go into the Southern and Western sections of this country—I do not speak from hearsay—what I have written, is what I have seen and heard myself. No man may think that my book is made up of conjecture—I have travelled and observed nearly the whole of those things myself, and what little I did not get by my own observation, I received from those among the whites and blacks, in whom the ...
— Walker's Appeal, with a Brief Sketch of His Life - And Also Garnet's Address to the Slaves of the United States of America • David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet
... fair swordsman, sir," Philip said; "though my arm may lack somewhat of the strength it will have, a few years later. But had it been otherwise, I should have still taken the course I have. I do not say your conjecture is a correct one, but at any rate I would prefer the most unequal fight to being seized and questioned. One can but be killed once, and it were better that it should be by a thrust in the ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... a further source of perplexity. Our ignorance of the opinions which Plato is attacking is also an element of obscurity. Many things in a controversy might seem relevant, if we knew to what they were intended to refer. But no conjecture will enable us to supply what Plato has not told us; or to explain, from our fragmentary knowledge of them, the relation in which his doctrine stood to the Eleatic Being or the Megarian good, or ...
— Philebus • Plato
... them; but the conclusion of a sentence so importantly begun, and which leads to such expectations, is, "that to these conjectures it would be of little use to reply." This is all he says to public conjecture. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... happened arbitrarily, capriciously, mysteriously, without some gross and positive violation of social law, some wilful and therefore wicked departure from the known principles of science? Every random conjecture as to the causes of the prevailing distress implies an answer to the question, and it need not be repeated. It is more important to inquire what those violations and departures have been, than to reiterate the general ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... mystery,' replied the priest; 'who shall decide wherein her power consists? At the best we can but conjecture at her connexion with the world of man—her weaving and working. No one can deny that a solemn curse, spoken with a determined and haughty purpose, has often, on the very instant, accomplished its fulfilment. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... the introduction of the system of loan-giving on a large scale, it would follow that the rate of interest would be based largely on the return yielded by the earth to the seed. Support is afforded to this conjecture by the fact that in the case of grain loans in the Central Provinces the interest on loans of grain of the crops which yield a comparatively small return, such as wheat, is twenty-five to fifty per cent, while in the case of those which yield a large return, such as juari and kodon, ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... in Servian and Bulgarian, as well as in Rumanian (especially the Macedonian dialect), is peculiar to these languages in the Slavonic and Latin groups. These and other points of similarity, possibly only accidental, have led to the conjecture that the primitive Illyrian language may have exerted some kind of influence on the other idioms of the peninsula. In the absence of literary culture the Albanian dialects, as might be expected, are widely ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... conjecture. Let us now deal with the Wahuma since they crossed the Nile and founded the kingdom of Kittara, a large tract of land bounded by the Victoria N'yanza and Kitangule Kagera or River on the south, the Nile on the east, the Little Luta-Nzige Lake [15] on the north, and the kingdoms of ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... the Tiovulfingacester of Venerable Bede; but Smith, the learned editor of the Cambridge edition of Bede, inclines to the opinion that Southwell is the town indicated by the pious and industrious monastic. The passage in Bede leaves every thing to conjecture: he simply relates that a truth-speaking presbyter and abbot of Pearteneu, (most likely, Partney, near Horncastle, in Lincolnshire,) named Deda, said that an old man had told him, that he, with a great multitude, was baptized by Paulinus, in the presence of King Edwin, ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... distinguished in the service, and all those misfortunes were wholly unaccountable. At length a stronger picket than usual was ordered for the night—not a man of them was to be found in the morning. As no firing had been heard, the natural conjecture was, that they must all have deserted. As this was a still more disgraceful result than actual defeat, the colonel called his officers together, to give what information they could. The camp, as usual, swarmed with Bohemians, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... sufficiently charged with any offence known to our laws which do not acknowledge a state of slavery; for the imputation of conspiring with the rioters and contriving the rescue is supported by no evidence and seems to rest on conjecture—The prisoner Blackburn it appears from the Documents before us was not committed for felony nor for any crime nor imprisoned for any cause which by our laws could be recognized as a justification of imprisonment. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... the most essential astronomical theories are too much a matter of conjecture, to give much strength to a theory built up entirely of such conjectural materials. The argument from probabilities can easily be turned against the author, for when a chain of reasoning depends upon a long series of problematic premises, the doubt of these premises ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... of MUSIC in SPEECH, we may conjecture that of TEMPERS. We know the Doric mood sounds gravity and sobriety; the Lydian, buxomness and freedom; the AEolic, sweet stillness and quiet composure; the Phrygian, jollity and youthful levity; the Ionic is a stiller of storms and disturbances arising from passion; and why ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... condemned Father Fabiano to end his days amid the swamps of St. Apollinare, as well as the precise nature of the connection which had existed between him and Paolina's parents, can be only matter of conjecture. ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... the suicidal tendency is dependent on heat; but June is not the hottest month, nor is December the coldest. Durkheim has tested this conjecture by comparing temperatures with suicides in France, Italy, and Prussia. He finds that, in all three of these countries, suicides reach their maximum in June and their minimum in December, while the temperature does not rise to its maximum until ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... Schwartzenberg's victory over Sacken. Napoleon appeared pleased in proclaiming it aloud, with the addition, that "Schwartzenberg had immediately returned upon the heels of Tchitchakof, and that he was coming to our assistance." A conjecture, to which the disappearance of ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... was a veteran of one of the Jesuit missions on Lake Huron. Radisson himself, although the hero of many exploits, was not yet twenty-six years of age. Did that Sea of the North of which they had heard find western outlet by the long-sought passage? So ran rumour and conjecture concerning the two explorers in Three Rivers and Quebec; but Radisson himself writes: 'We considered whether to reveal what we had learned, for we had not yet been to the Bay of the North, knowing only what the Crees told us. We wished ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut
... narrow and harsh development. The national prose literature, of which he may fairly be called the founder, was kept up till the decay of Rome by a large and powerful minority of Latin writers. What results it might have produced, if allowed unchecked scope, can only be matter for conjecture; in the main current of Latin literature the Greek influence was, on the whole, triumphant; Cato's was the losing side (if one may so adapt the famous line of Lucan), and the men of genius ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... forthwith. She had mentally discarded him; yet she felt a shock which was scarcely painful, and a dread which was almost exhilarating. Her flying visit to Farnfield she thought little of at this moment. From the fact that the mind prefers imaginings to recapitulation, conjecture to history, Ethelberta had dwelt more upon Neigh's possible plans and anticipations than upon the incidents of her evening journey; and the former assumed a more distinct shape in her mind's eye than anything on the visible ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... still on the night of his temporary fright and imaginary rencontre with the giants, and the conversation he partly overheard all recurred to him, and he saw at once that Oonah was the person alluded to, whose name he could not catch, a circumstance that cost him many a conjecture in the interim. This gave him a clue to the persons into whose power he was about to fall, after having so far defeated their scheme, and he saw he should have to deal with very desperate and lawless parties. Remembering, ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... she resumed, pressing her hand on her heart to still its struggles for relief in sobs,—"can you think that I could have watched and thought and taxed my poor mind so constantly, to conjecture what might best soothe or please you, and not seen, long since, that you have secrets known to your daughter, your servant, not to me? Fear not,—the secrets cannot be evil, or you would not tell ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and use; and the forts which they build to defend themselves against their enemies. I have ventured to write this relation because I have been informed that many things concerning events in this land have been written, and sent to Nueva Espana, which are the merest fable and conjecture. For instance, they say that there are in this country Moors like those of Barberia [Barbary], and that their strength in arms is quite equal to that of those people; and that they fight and defend themselves like the Turks. Those who have so written are in error. Much to the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 - Volume III, 1569-1576 • E.H. Blair
... state of mind had become is matter for exorbitant conjecture. Jane, arriving at his locked door upon an errand, was bidden by a thick, ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... the stronghold of facts, and advance into the of conjecture. I ascribe the prologue ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various
... glowed strangely. "I didn't exactly know at the time, Nanette. I'm not sure that I know even now. But I've got a theory and Karl has helped me to build a second machine to flash a restoring ray on the square spot. What will take place I cannot even conjecture." ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... the father of the child was a man of some standing, the bolder spirits even accusing Lord Engleton himself. But this was conjecture run wild, and nobody seriously ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... the purpose of his ride to town, and Shorty was lost in a maze of futile conjecture. Shorty knew, however, that a man in Lawler's condition would not ride to town to gratify a whim; and the longer he watched Lawler the deeper became his conviction that another tragedy was imminent. For there was something in Lawler's manner, ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... observe, however, that the first dancers in Aix-la-Chapelle appeared in July with St. John's name in their mouths, the conjecture is probable that the wild revels of St. John's Day, A.D. 1374, gave rise to this mental plague, which thenceforth has visited so many thousands with incurable aberration of mind and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... the expression of the fourth stanza of this Ode in the Latin. Tentare cannot stand without an object, and to connect it, as the commentators do, with deos is awkward. I was going to remark that possibly some future Bentley would conjecture certare, or litare, when I found that certare had been anticipated by Peerlkamp, who, if not a Bentley, was a Bentleian. But it would not be easy to account for the corruption, as the fact that the previous line begins with cervice would rather have led to ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... objective counterpart? Then what becomes of the positive character of this narrative, as a lesson, as a warning to us? The whole degenerates into an acted parable. It fades into the idle pageantry of a dream. Thus we lose ourselves in shadowy conjecture. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... early part of a night in the oven. I hardly expected, when I left him to go to windward, to find him alive upon my return. He was certainly as low as he could well be when I left him, and what would be the effect of the medicines that I gave him I hardly then dared to conjecture. Yet I knew that he must die without them. I was not a little rejoiced, therefore, and relieved, upon our return, to see him decidedly better. The medicines were strong, and took hold and gave a check to the disorder which ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... but not more so than I. Something was evidently on foot, but what I could not conjecture. The vakeel wavered, and to my astonishment I heard the accusation made against him that during the night the whole of the escort had mutinously conspired to desert me, with my arms and ammunition ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... that after they have tried their utmost efforts to bring you into their measures, and find them ineffectual, they will recede. But I cannot say I am of her mind. She does not own, she has any authority for this, but her own conjecture. I should otherwise have hoped, that your uncle Antony and she had been in on one secret, and that favourable to you. Woe be to one of them at least [to you uncle to be sure I mean] if they should ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... and giving color to the picture. A shabby garb cannot be made to fit into this picture. When it appears, there is discord in the general harmony. All this motion must have motives behind it somewhere; but we can only conjecture the motives. We have only surface indications to guide us in our quest for these. But we are reasonably certain that these people are animated by the instinct of acquisition. They seem to want to get things, and so come where things are ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... of Plotinus ascribes to prudence six parts, namely, "reasoning," "understanding," "circumspection," "foresight," "docility" and "caution." Aristotle says (Ethic. vi, 9, 10, 11) that "good counsel," "synesis" and "gnome" belong to prudence. Again under the head of prudence he mentions "conjecture," "shrewdness," "sense" and "understanding." And another Greek philosopher [*Andronicus; Cf. Q. 80, Obj. 4] says that ten things are connected with prudence, namely, "good counsel," "shrewdness," "foresight," "regnative ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... actually rang when nothing could have touched it. The bell was then placed upon the other side, still upon the carpet, and it came over to me, and placed itself in my hand. It did the same to Lord Brougham. These were the principal experiments: we could give no explanation of them, and could not conjecture how they could be produced by any kind of mechanism.... We do not believe that it ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... originated long before the beginning of the Victorian era, but it lacked the support of carefully examined facts, and most sensible men regarded it as nothing more than a plausible conjecture. The thinker who did more than any other to supply the facts, and to put the theory, so far as it relates to natural history, on a solid and lasting foundation, was the distinguished ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... impossible to conjecture just what her emotions may have been as she discerned the lights of a flier speeding rapidly out of the distance from that very direction, as though impelled toward her garden by the very intensity of ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... name Baleares is a mere matter of conjecture; it is obvious, however, that the modern Majorca and Minorca are obtained from the Latin Major and Minor, through the Byzantine forms [Greek: Maiorika] and [Greek: Minorika]; while Iviza is plainly the older Ebusus, a name probably of Carthaginian origin. The ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... believe I am not at all surprised at what you tell me, since it is but a confirmation of my own conjecture that I sent you last week, and made you my reproaches upon it at a venture. It looks exceeding strange, yet, I believe it to be a great truth, that, in order to carry a point in your house, the two following circumstances are of great advantage; first, to have ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... order'd, cross the bed, And at his feet at length reclined her head; A kiss on them she ventured to impress, But not too roughly, lest she should transgress: We may conjecture if he were at ease; What victory! to see her stoop to please; A beauty so renowned for charms and pride, 'Twould take a week, to note each trait described; No other fault than paleness he could trace, Which gave her (causes known) ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... also a case reported in which there were two cords in a twin pregnancy, each of them measuring five feet in length. The Lancet gives the account of a most peculiar pregnancy consisting of a placenta alone, the fetus wanting. What this "placenta" was will always be a matter of conjecture. ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... while the reasonings are fine-drawn and flimsy. Extraordinary ingenuity is shown in piling up a lofty fabric, but the foundation is of sand, and the edifice has hardly a solid wall or beam in it. A clever conjecture is treated as a fact; an inference possible but represented as probable is drawn from this conjecture; a second inference is based upon the first; we are made to forget that the probability of ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... to expatiate, to insist on the charm of Herrick at his best—a charm so incomparable and so inimitable that even English poetry can boast of nothing quite like it or worthy to be named after it—the most appreciative reader will be the slowest to affirm or imagine that he can conjecture. This, however, he will hardly fail to remark: that Herrick, like most if not all other lyric poets, is not best known by his best work. If we may judge by frequency of quotation or of reference, the ballad of the ride from Ghent to Aix is a far more popular, more generally admired and ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... fretting guesswork on her cousin's surmise. She relied too much on Owen's sense of propriety to entertain the idea that he could be forwarding a pursuit so obviously insolent, but a still wilder conjecture had been set afloat in her mind. Could the nameless one be Robert Fulmort? Though aware of the anonymous nature of brother's friends, the secrecy struck her as unusually guarded; and to one so ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... see the cakes is a-burnin' already,"— but Melindy did not complete the sentence for the toot of a horn near the barnyard proved that her better half had some grounds for his conjecture. ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour |
