"Conundrum" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... charge made for these vehicles, the driver expecting, as in similar cases in Paris, Berlin, or elsewhere, a trifle as a pourboire at the end of the service for which he is engaged. Where these ruinous structures which pass for public carriages originally came from is a conundrum; but there can be no possible doubt as to their antiquity. Mexican fleas, like those of Naples and continental Spain, are both omnivorous and carnivorous, and these vehicles are apt to be itinerant asylums for this pest of the low latitudes. There are ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... of vice-king. The compromise was not, I am told, without precedent; but it lacked all appearance of success. To the constitution of Samoa, which was already all wheels and no horses, the consuls had added a fifth wheel. In addition to the old conundrum, "Who is the king?" they had supplied a new one, "What ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... little dog, in speaking to the tree, "Would you say that the heart of you is like the tail of me?" The tree gave the conundrum up. The pup, with wisdom dark, Explained the matter saying, "It is ...
— The New Pun Book • Thomas A. Brown and Thomas Joseph Carey
... issued a conundrum in a volume with the title Does Protection Protect? and undertakes to prove by statistics that answer is No. These Western people are in the habit, we know, of bragging a good deal of their exploits, and so the writer referred to says he used to think the answer to his conundrum was ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 39., Saturday, December 24, 1870. • Various
... if to touch it, but refrained, not from sudden shame but from sheer despair. By and by Therese drifted in. It was then late and, I imagine, she was on her way to bed. She looked the picture of cheerful, rustic innocence and started propounding to me a conundrum which began with ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... of the identity of Paulus was like all court secrets and most secrets of intriguing governments, no mystery at all to hundreds, but to thousands an insoluble conundrum. The official propagandists of the court news, absolutely in control of all the channels through which facts could reach the public, easily offset the constant leakage from the lips of slaves and gladiators by disseminating artfully concocted news. Those actually in the secret, flattered by the ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... half of the radium in any given specimen will be transformed in about 2000 years. Half of what is left will disappear in the next 2000 years, half of that in the next 2000 and so on. The reader can figure out for himself when it will all be gone. He will then have the answer to the old Eleatic conundrum of when Achilles will overtake the tortoise. But we may say that after 100,000 years there would not be left any radium worth mentioning, or in other words practically all the radium now in existence ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... woman is after all a mystery. It has been well said, that woman is the great conundrum of the nineteenth century; but if we cannot guess her, we will never give her ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... cut it into squares of equal size, fringing two sides of each. Have ready, burnt almonds, chocolate nuts, and bonbons or sugar-plums of various sorts; and put one in each paper with a folded slip containing two lines of verse; or what will be much more amusing, a conundrum with the answer. Twist the coloured paper so as entirely to conceal their contents, leaving the fringe at each end. This is the most easy, but there are various ways of cutting and ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... second repetition of this inscrutable conundrum, a lank and tall girl of some fifteen summers, arose and said, not without something of the sublime air becoming a solitary intelligence: "It's the great ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... confidence. It would have a very bad appearance to go along the highwayside asking after a man of whom I could give so scanty an account; and I should look like a fool, indeed, if I were to present myself at his door and find the police in occupation! The interest of the conundrum, however, tempted me, and I turned aside from my direct road to pass by Wakefield; kept my ears pricked, as I went, for any mention of his name, and relied for the rest on my good fortune. If Luck (who must certainly be feminine) favoured ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... you say? They have been to the station? You ask if I have seen three suspicious people—a man, perhaps an old man, in a dark-blue, well-cut suit, wearing a Homberg hat and goggles, a girl, and a man of whose appearance you have no knowledge? Come now, that's a conundrum! I have seen many ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... Doctor Johnson. "Very different—in fact, different enough to make a conundrum of the question—what is the difference between a shoemaker and a poet? One makes the shoes and the other shakes the muse—all the difference in the world. Still, I don't see how we can exclude the poets. It is the very democracy of this club that gives it life. ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... tall, slim figure Detective Inspector Wessex stared with a sort of wonder. Mr. Nicol Brinn of Cincinnati was a conundrum which he found himself unable to catalogue, although in his gallery of queer characters were many eccentric and peculiar. If Nicol Brinn should prove to be crooked, then automatically he became insane. This Wessex had ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... "Andromaque" for them; my old school part of Hermione which I have not forgotten, and then two scenes from Scribe's pretty piece of "les premieres Amours." He acts French capitally, and, moreover, bestowed upon me the two following ridiculous conundrum puns, for which I shall ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... reception of them. But she plainly preferred to be out of it, avoiding the nurses on the stairs, refraining from so much as a glance at the boiled milk preparations of the butler. "And you know," said Mrs. Barberry, recountant, "how these people have to be watched." To Mrs. Barberry she was really a conundrum, only to be solved on the theory of a perfectly preposterous delicacy. There was so little that was preposterous in Miss Livingstone's conduct as a rule that it is not quite fair to explain her attitude either by this exaggeration or ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... Pelagians and Semipelagians with Scriptural proofs. But this polemical motive can hardly have induced him to becloud an obvious text and invent interpretations which never occurred to any other ecclesiastical writer before or after his time. The conundrum can only be solved by the assumption that Augustine believed in a plurality of literal senses in the Bible and held that over and above (or notwithstanding) the sensus obvius every exegete is free ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... In "conundrum," Mrs. Osman was a beautiful nun; she is a charming creature, most winning countenance and manner, very desirous to improve herself, and with an understanding the extent and excellence of which I did ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... this the soldier obviously set his mind at rest, in the full conviction that his spiritual guides had found a law which authorized his ancestors, and the tzars and their descendants, and millions of men, to serve as he was doing himself, and that the question I had put him was a kind of hoax or conundrum ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... affairs?—he cannot have both, etc. So that the ethical philosopher's demand for the right scale of subordination in ideals is the fruit of an altogether practical need. Some part of the ideal must be butchered, and he needs to know which part. It is a tragic situation, and no mere speculative conundrum, with which he has ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... the time he assumed the editorial charge, emanated from his pen." Mr. Browne himself wrote to a friend: "Comic copy is what they wanted for "Vanity Fair." I wrote some and it killed it. The poor paper got to be a conundrum, and so ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... first impressions of Indian life. "Erroneous, hazy, distorted first impressions," Mr Aberich Mackay calls them in his "Twenty-one days in India," that most amusing Indian classic. "What is it these travelling people put on paper?" he adds. "Let me put it in the form of a conundrum. Q. What is it that the travelling M.P. treasures up and what the Anglo-Indian hastens to throw away? A. Erroneous, hazy, distorted first impressions. Before the eyes of the griffin, India steams in poetical mists, ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... be told in the first person as in Stevenson's Pavilion on the Links, or in the third person as in Kipling's The Bridge Builders. Yet again it may be a conundrum as Stockton's famous The Lady or ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... conundrum, Like enough you'll be wanting to try Whether one little girl contra mundum Can't lift the old thing ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... that it is "a cherry," but this is by no means the case with all Chinese riddles, many being exceedingly difficult of solution. So much so that it is customary all over the Empire to copy out any particularly puzzling conundrum on a paper lantern, and hang it in the evening at the street door, with the promise of a reward to any comer who may succeed in unravelling it. These are called "lamp riddles," and usually turn upon the name of some tree, fruit, animal, or book, the direction in which the answer ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... humour—never had. I am entirely destitute of it myself. Even in Scotland, even here, this family failing has been remarked—been the subject, I may say, of unfavourable comment. The Perilous of the period lost his head because he did not see the point of a conundrum of Macbeth's. We felt, some time in the fifteenth century, that this peculiarity needed to be honourably accounted for, and the family developed that story of the Secret Chamber, and the Horror in the house. There is nothing in the ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... "And I shall never forget your 'Conundrum of the Anvil' which appeared in it. How often have I laughed at that most wonderful conceit, and how often have I put ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... respectable men, from seeing him almost daily in some quarter of London. During the twelve months that I kept my eye upon him, the condition of his apparel was unchanged. His coat never got old, nor did he ever have a new one. That man is at this moment an unpleasant puzzle to me—a conundrum without a solution. The income of this class of beggars, I was told, is considerable—much better than a clerk's in Lombard or ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Oolong or Young Hyson. Seat yourself at the tea-table wide enough apart to have room to take out your pocket-handkerchief if you want to cry at any pitiful story of the day, or to spread yourself in laughter if some one propound an irresistible conundrum. ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... a smile: "Woman is the eternal conundrum to which the wise man always leaves her herself to supply the answer. Doubtless one of these days you'll do it. Meanwhile, ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... season. I do not know how it may be with others, but I have often found, when introduced to a lady, that I have said "Good evening," and then had absolutely nothing else to say. With the help of the conundrum book I would fill in any awkward pause by asking her who was the most amiable king in history. That would break the ice. Besides, if we kept the book reasonably clean, it might afterward make a very serviceable and acceptable present to Eliza's mother. ...
— Eliza • Barry Pain
... able to guess a conundrum; b badgers; c in that field; d mortally offended; e my; h noticed by me; k properly trained in a Board-School; l rushing about wildly ...
— Symbolic Logic • Lewis Carroll
... looked impressed, but he did not try to frame a reply. I think he could not find a frame. There is no frame to that reply. It is a conundrum as boundless as truth and God's justice, and as solemnly deep in its sure consequences of evil as eternity, and as sure to come as ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... grimly. "There are two kinds of men in this world, Charley, and which of them makes it go?" said he. "The ones who have too much to eat and too little to do, or the others who have to keep on doing something because they're hungry? Well, I needn't ask you, because the conundrum was answered long ago, and that kind of talking's no great use to anybody. That was a very fine mill, and I picked up a good deal down there. Still, we will scarcely want such a ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... on deck. They were surrounded by a group of audacious male creatures, who surrounded most on the side where the Pretty Girl sat. She did not look feeble. She was like the red, red rose. It was a conundrum to me why so much greater anxiety should be bestowed upon her health than upon her sister's. It needed some moral reflection to make it out; but I concluded that pretty girls were, by some law of nature, more subject to sea-sickness than plain ones; therefore, all these careful cares were ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... table; another time I gave an elephant a "plug" of tobacco and retired without waiting for an answer; and still another time I pretended to be talking in my sleep, and got off a portion of a very wretched original conundrum in the hearing of my father. Let us not pry into the result; it was of no consequence ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the drift of conversation between Vaura and her neighbour, but no, Mrs. Marchmont, though inwardly afraid of this squire of dames; and of his intellect, determined to appear at ease, and so talked on the one engrossing idea of her life; the last conundrum in fancy work, the last fashionable incongruity in the blending of colours. And poor, victimized Lionel longed to breathe in Vaura's refreshing breadth of thought; on his tormentor pausing to recover breath, it was not as balm to a wound to ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... conundrum, Hope," answered her big brother. "I'll write to-night, and father will get the letter inside of forty-eight hours, ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic
... thereby find better progression.' Commentators have been tempted to discern some shadow before of the fatality four years later, when the patronage by Essex and his partisans of the play of Henry IV at the Globe Theatre became an article of indictment. The passage forms a conundrum to which the clue has not yet been found. If the reference be to Shakespeare's drama which Essex, Cecil, and Ralegh may have seen acted in this July, it constitutes the only ascertained association of the hand which could ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... suppose you're going to propound another conundrum of a kind I've heard before—why you should have so many things you don't particularly need, while Miss Hartley must go on sewing when she's hardly able for it in her most unpleasant shack? I don't know whether the fact that you found a mine answers the question; but ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... can't prevent the cats from making a most intolerable row on the roofs of the houses, or the dogs from being shot in the hot weather if they run about the streets unmuzzled. Life's a riddle; a most infernally hard riddle to guess, Mr Pecksniff. My own opinions, that like that celebrated conundrum, "Why's a man in jail like a man out of jail?" there's no answer to it. Upon my soul and body, it's the queerest sort of thing altogether—but there's no use in talking about it. ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... greatest study of womankind is woman! Indeed, from being a good deal overlooked in various ways, she has come to be almost the topic of the age, and strangely enough is she considered. According to the standpoint of the observer, woman is a riddle to be solved, a conundrum to be guessed, a puzzle to be interpreted, a mystery to be explained, a problem to be studied, a paradox to be reconciled. She is a toy or a drudge, a mistress or a servant, a queen or a slave, as circumstances may decide. She is at once an irresponsible being, who must accept ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... conundrum: "Why is Daniel Webster like Sisera? Because he was killed by a woman," and this had almost as great a ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... for one," says Bobby, doggedly, "I never made out a conundrum in my life, except, 'What is most ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... night-walk to Norwood, and, like the subject of a venerable riddle of my childhood, to go 'round and round the house, without ever touching the house', thinking about Dora. I believe the theme of this incomprehensible conundrum was the moon. No matter what it was, I, the moon-struck slave of Dora, perambulated round and round the house and garden for two hours, looking through crevices in the palings, getting my chin by dint of violent exertion above the rusty nails on the top, blowing kisses at the lights in the windows, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... here and there with errors of taste. He might have spared many of the details of the bath scene, which, for the rest, tallies exactly with Mr. Thackeray's account of the same process. This little man with all his long letters remains as much a conundrum to me as ever. Your account of the domestic joys at Hunsworth amused me much. The good folks seem very happy—long may they continue so! It somewhat cheers me to know that such happiness does exist ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... have set me a conundrum—a mighty stiff one. It seems that Miss Betty Vivian has lost a parcel, and she be that fretted about it that she's nigh to death, and the little uns have promised to get it back for her; and, poor children! ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... thought thus, as Connie came back, her face bathed and beaming again, her theatre dress replaced by a soft red dressing gown, belted loosely at the waist and trimmed with an abundance of coffee coloured lace. Her first words were a conundrum to Ned: ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... standing conundrum with all the women. They will not accept Ethel Newcome even. Perhaps we shall have to admit that Thackeray was a ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... his companions and shook his head as if the conundrum was beyond his guessing. Captain ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... where he lived without looking at the door-plate. When it came time to be meek, there was no boy this side of the planet Mars who could be meeker, on shorter notice. So he said, "Yes, sir," with that subdued and well pleased alacrity of a boy who has just been asked to guess the answer to the conundrum, "Will you have another ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... water getting near the boil.' Elise rose with a strange little laugh and looked at a yellow silk stocking which dangled over the side of a wicker table. As if trying to solve a conundrum, she glanced from it to the shapely form of the young woman at her toilet. 'When the war's over,' she said ruminatingly, 'and our men find what kind of girls they married when they were ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... put it in "The North American Review,"—"The real issue is this: Is the object of government the good of the governed, or is it not?" Taken in a general sense, there is probably no disposition to discuss this conundrum, for the simple reason that nobody dissents from it. But the important point is: What does "the good of the governed" mean? Does it merely mean better street cleaning, or something ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... your feet the most obedient of your slaves, ma'am!' he cried. 'To hear was to obey, to obey was to fly! If it's Pitt's diamond you need, or Lady Mary's soap-box, or a new conundrum, or—hang it all! I cannot think of anything else, but command me! I'll forth and get it, ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... Had she oughter?—from a moral point of view, now. From a moral point, then, let us seek from analogy some light on the question of what, from its actual, practical bearings, may be dignified by the name Conundrum. ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... with the carefree heartiness of a boy. "I am going to make a riddle," he said. "Prepare yourself; this is the first conundrum of the new world. Why is it better ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... thing. . . He wouldn't have believed it. Would I? Squatted on the verandah chewing betel-nut, sighing and spitting all over the place for more than an hour, and as glum as an undertaker before he came out with that dashed conundrum. That's the kind of thing that isn't so funny as it looks. What was a fellow to say?—Good wife?—Yes. Good wife—old though. Started a confounded long story about some brass pots. Been living together ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to pry." He took another sip as he hunted for suitable words. A beautiful girl, a golden wine ... and vice versa ... why couldn't he simply relax and enjoy himself? Did he have to go fretting about what was probably a perfectly harmless conundrum?... Yes. However, recreation might ...
— Industrial Revolution • Poul William Anderson
... of criminals I am aware of in past times as having specially tormented myself—the class who have left secrets, riddles, behind them. What business has any man to bequeath a conundrum to all posterity, unless he leaves in some separate channel the solution? This must have been done in malice, and for the purpose of annoying us, lest we should have too much proper enjoyment of life when he should have gone. For nobody knows whether the scoundrel ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... a-methinkin' to myself several times. It duz seem to me that there hain't a question a-comin' up before that Conference that is harder to tackle than this plasterin' and the conundrum that is up before us Jonesville wimmen how to raise 300 dollars out of nuthin', and to make peace in a meetin' house where anarky ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... are mere conceits; the analogies in them are fortuitous, depending not on the nature of the things themselves, but on the private fancy of the writer, having no more real and logical coherence than a conundrum or a pun; in plain English, untrue, only allowable to Juliets or Othellos; while their self-possession, almost their reason, is in temporary abeyance under the influence of joy or sorrow. Every one must feel the exquisite fitness of Juliet's "Gallop apace, ye fiery-footed ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... growled the flying-man, still fierce to pursue the answer to the gigantic conundrum, "what is this God thinking of to let everybody believe like that that He's with them? Why does He let us all—all of us—shout out side by side, like idiots and brutes, 'God is with us!'—'No, not at all, you're wrong; God is ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... a busy man myself, and thought little more of Hewitt's conundrum for some time; indeed, when I did think, I saw no way to the answer. A week after the inquest I took a holiday (I had written my nightly leaders regularly every day for the past five years), and saw no more of ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... the "liberties" that Mr. Potter had taken with it. Those who had not read the book complained equally bitterly that Mr. Potter had not taken more of those "liberties" and made it better worth his while. To me, the book drama is a conundrum. It always has been, and now that it has nearly died out, I am still unable to solve it. When you read a book, you form mental pictures of its characters, and are generally discontented with those that confront you on the stage. And when you don't read a book, the play made therefrom lacks lucidity, ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... wanton eye Transfixed his soul and kindled amorous flames, Chloe, or Phillis, he each circling glass Wisheth her health, and joy, and equal love. Meanwhile, he smokes, and laughs at merry tale, Or pun ambiguous, or conundrum quaint. But I, whom griping Penury surrounds, And Hunger, sure attendant upon Want, With scanty offals, and small acid tiff, (Wretched repast!) my meagre corpse sustain: Then solitary walk, or doze at home In garret vile, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... Another feathered conundrum was the Nashville warbler, whose back and head are colored like those of the Tennessee, but whose under parts are bright yellow, instead of white or white only slightly washed with yellow; and, besides, sharp peering through your glass will reveal ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... Hilton Cubitt, of Riding Thorpe Manor, Norfolk, is very anxious to know. This little conundrum came by the first post, and he was to follow by the next train. There's a ring at the bell, Watson. I should not be very much ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... that I understand what you are driving at. Perhaps we are talking about different things." This is not entirely without forbearance—may show a trace of uncalled-for patience, as towards an undeserved conundrum-monger. ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... of his"—bobbing his head at Frick—"and a conundrum," and he looked over and smiled at Curtis, "then one of mine after that. Won't that ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... lack of free trade in our country. The brick manufacturers must be protected, so a heavy tariff was placed on the foreign article. Our brick men, finding that they had a soft thing, tried to solve that conundrum which the Israelites gave up: "How do you make bricks without straw?" They made a patent brick, built the Howard Museum in Washington, (was it a museum or a college?) the thing tumbled down, and a Congressional ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... The subjoined Conundrum is not allowed:—Why is Hasty Pudding like the Prince? Because it comes attended by its sweet;—nor this variation to it, to wit: Because the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... out his mind upon circumstances, that his work reminds us of Allston's picture of Elijah in the Wilderness, where a good deal of research at last enables us to guess at the prophet absconded like a conundrum in the landscape where the very ravens could scarce have found him out, except by divine commission. The figure of Milton becomes but a speck on the enormous canvas crowded with the scenery through which he may by any possibility be conjectured ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... he can do so before the king sets his brick and stone up again; but if the King can touch the player after having set his brick up, he is obliged to answer a "Why," or be King instead of him. The "Why" must be proposed by the King, and it may either be a conundrum, or it may contain the reason of any thing, as, "Why does a stone fall to the ground?" "What makes the smoke go up the chimney?" If the player cannot answer the "Why," he is obliged to mind the shy and let the others bowl. Sometimes it will happen, that ...
— The Book of Sports: - Containing Out-door Sports, Amusements and Recreations, - Including Gymnastics, Gardening & Carpentering • William Martin
... whistled Larry, astonished in spite of his initiation into the mysteries of Italian bargaining. "Well, if you were to ask me the Shakespearian conundrum, Hath not a Jew eyes? I shouldn't give it up; I should say he ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... rather unanswerable kind of conundrum. We discussed the problem as we roamed the wood, and Dan and Peter almost quarrelled over it, Dan maintaining that the thing was impossible, and Peter being of the opinion that the mush was somehow "made thicker" in the process of being eaten, and so took up less room. During ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... declamation, that the party of Order expended from the speakers' tribune in the National Assembly against the minority, its speech remained monosyllabic, like that of the Christian, whose speech was to be "Aye, aye; nay, nay." It was monosyllabic, whether from the tribune or the press; dull as a conundrum, whose solution is known beforehand. Whether the question was the right of petition or the duty on wine, the liberty of the press or free trade, clubs or municipal laws, protection of individual freedom or the regulation of national economy, the slogan returns ever again, ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... stood for a long time gazing at herself in the mirror. Vainly she tried to glean from it the answer to a most interesting conundrum: Did Mr. Queed still think her ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... willows; and, a fortunate rise in the water having occurred, he was able to extricate his vessels and begin his retreat down the bayou. He was somewhat perplexed by the silence of the Confederates, from whom he had heard nothing since his mortars silenced their masked batteries. The conundrum was solved by the sound of wood-chopping in the forests ahead, and the discovery shortly after of two heavy logs lying athwart the bayou, and stopping the progress of the vessels. An hour's hard work with axe and saw removed this obstruction; ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... attenuated numerals of such visible returns as reach him, he is more puzzled in his mind than surfeited in his purse. But the relation of foreign publishers to "home talent" is an ancient and honorable conundrum, which it is not for this paper ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... promised, with a thrill as he thought how the lesson would be learned. And went on: "There's another conundrum. Of course—that man—he's not on ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray
... foolish commentator. Secretly therefore, silently, stealthily—so as to draw as little attention as possible—Pope introduced into a note his wicked little brazen solution of his own wicked and brazen conundrum. France, such was the proposition, had worked a miracle upon English ground; as if with some magician's rod, she had called up spawn innumerable of authors, lyric, epic, dramatic, pastoral, each after his kind. But by whom had France moved in ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... sort of riddle survives in such a form as, "Why does a chicken cross the road?" to which most people give the answer, "To get to the other side;" though the correct reply is, "To worry the chauffeur." It has degenerated into the conundrum, which is usually based on a mere pun. For example, we have been asked from our infancy, "When is a door not a door?" and here again the answer usually furnished ("When it is a-jar") is not the correct one. It should be, "When it is a negress ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... will read an original conundrum which is propounded by one of our members, and which you are requested ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... unless that particular digestive function is lost. It is claimed by some who know more about ditch-digging than about physiology, that alcoholic beverages ruin the lining of the stomach, creating ulcers, and other disorders. This kind of teaching reminds me of a conundrum. 'Why is a scientific temperance man like a dead man in his coffin?' Who ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... House of Commons, after congratulating him on his present enviable position, finished the confab with the following unrivalled conundrum:—"By the bye, which of your vegetables does your Tamworth speech resemble!"—"Spinach," replied Peel, who, no doubt, associated it with gammon.—"Pshaw," said the gallant Colonel, "your rope inions (your ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 28, 1841 • Various
... April day, This deep conundrum I will bring: Tell me the two good reasons, pray, I have, to ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... uncovered face is a conundrum and an object of intense curiosity, even in Teheran at the present day; and in provincial cities, the wife of the lone consul or telegraph employee finds it highly convenient to adopt the native costume, face-covering included, when venturing ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... cinch that the answer to the conundrum lies in that silly old black bunch of feathers," declared the other, conviction in his voice. "I looked up all about ravens in our big 'cyclopaedia as soon as I got downstairs this morning; and the more I read, ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... a feast. They exploited their humorous abilities, and all made merry, save one glum guest. At last, they insisted that this melancholy person should contribute to the entertainment. He consented, in response to much urging, to offer a conundrum: ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... playing on dulcimers. How fresh, easy, good-natured, is all this! How delightful is that notion of the pleasant Eastern people about knowledge, where the height of science is made to consist in the answering of riddles! and all the mathematicians and magicians bring their great beards to bear on a conundrum! ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... now, laughing to herself and gesticulating. Sometimes she will lean back in her chair and absolutely shake with laughter, and she smiles at vacancy continually. She seems all right enough with the ex-ception of these vagaries. But she is a perfect conundrum to me." ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... which "arises" in a "narrowed form" upon "secular testimony"? After much guessing, I am fain to give up the conundrum. The "question" may be the ownership of the pigs; or the ethnological character of the Gadarenes; or the propriety of meddling with other people's property without legal warrant. And each of these questions ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... very pleasant people here, and I have made a number of friends. I am something of a conundrum, and curiosity is rife as to why I came. Mrs. Waring dresses me up and shows me off like a new doll, and the women consult me about making ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... asked a conundrum, Miss Carter, and you're the one person who can tell me the true answer. Am I permitted ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 23, 1919 • Various
... not seen half that, not-some of the most common things; not so much as a miracle. Well, but you don't expect it, do you? Except pictures. and statues, we are not very fond of sights; don't go a-staring after crooked towers and conundrum staircases. Don't you hate, too, a jingling epitaph (178) of one Procul and one Proculus that is here? Now and then we drop in at a procession, or a high-mass, hear the music, enjoy a strange attire, and hate the foul monkhood. Last week, was the feast ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... loafin' half." And he hired Issy because—well, because "most folks in East Harniss are alike and you can always tell about what they'll say or do. Now Issy's different. The Lord only knows what HE'S likely to do, and that makes him interestin' as a conundrum, to guess at. He kind of keeps my sense of responsibility from ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... uncertain flicker of the gas-lamps, pronounces itself to be ready made, and the typical shopwalker's silk hat worn slightly on one side. Whether this night bird goes through life on tiptoe, as many people do, or whether he only adopts that fashion on this particular occasion, is a conundrum, not without interest to students of character to whom a man's walk ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... your theory of a picture, then? I don't care what you call it. My only anxiety, when you got a plain, simple, every-day conundrum like Miss Maybough to paint, was that you would try to paint the answer instead of the conundrum, and I dare say that's the trouble. You've been trying to give something more of her character than you found in her face; is that it? Well, you deserved to fail, then. You've ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... Helen's mind was maturer than might have been supposed. And the problem which confronted her she saw very clearly, although she was unable to solve it. The problem was not new, indeed, it has been Despair's conundrum since the world began: Whose fault that my life has been as it is? In her despair, ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... soil. Both works are full of capital illustrations. He has, moreover, read He Went for a Soldier, the WYNTER Annual of JOHN STRANGE of that ilk. But what had the soldier done, that "he" should "go for him"? The answer to this conundrum will be ascertained on reading the book. Nutshell Novels, by J. ASHBY STERRY, is also a volume that repays perusal. The Lazy Poet has turned his leisure to good account—the stories he tells ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., November 8, 1890 • Various
... amount to more than asking question as to whether audiences at unlicensed places of entertainment (in neighbourhood of Tottenham Court Road or elsewhere) open for Radical or Liberal entertainments, are duly protected from fire? Members went off to dinner, pondering on this conundrum. Came back to find Mr. G. on his legs again, denouncing proposition to vote L20,000 for survey of railway from Mombasa to Nyanza. A splendid piece of invective; almost literally shrivelled up poor JOKIM, at ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 12, 1892 • Various
... nothing, and never can know anything of the object of its worship, that it can offer nothing in the shape of counsel or advice, but that its function is to sit in owl-like solemnity, contemplating nothing, meanwhile offering man an eternal conundrum that he must everlastingly give up, then, and not till then, there will be peace between science and religion. And this is called a reconciliation. Mr. Spencer finds two combatants engaged in deadly conflict, he murders one and offers the ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... consultation, Edwards entered to announce Mrs. Corcoran Dunn and Mr. Malcolm. The butler's giving the lady precedence in his announcing showed that he, too, realized who was ranking officer in that family, even though the captain's "conundrum" had puzzled him. Mrs. Dunn and her son entered ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... my intention to make some disparaging remarks about the human race; and so I kept this letter open for that purpose, and for the purpose of telling my dream, wherein the Trinity were trying to guess a conundrum, but I can do better—for I can snip out of the "Times" various samples and side-lights which bring the race down to date, and expose it as of yesterday. If you will notice, there is seldom a telegram in a paper which fails to show up one or more members and beneficiaries of our Civilization ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... in hopes you could tell. I don't know, I am sure. It is as much as I can do to make up a conundrum, without ...
— Dotty Dimple's Flyaway • Sophie May
... truth. He came here long ago; But, before that, he'd been born somewhere: The conundrum started first, right there. Little shaver—afore he knew his name Or the place from whereabouts he came— On a wagon-train the Apaches caught him. Killed the old folks! But this cus'—they brought him ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... It couldn't be expected, perhaps; but I am still of the impression that this conundrum is gradually working towards a solution in the brain of the Commander-in-Chief. I hope it don't lay heavily there; I wouldn't do anything to distress him. If GOLDWIN SMITH were expounding political economy to ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... thinks so too. But it is a great problem what to do for the best in this case. Mebby Solomon knew enough to grapple with the question, but Josiah don't, nor Arvilly, though she thinks she duz. Robert Strong is gittin' one answer to the hard conundrum of life, and Ernest White is figurin' it out successful. And lots of other good and earnest souls all over the world are workin' away at the sum with their own slates and pencils. But oh, the time is long! One needs ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... reign of King James the First. That learned monarch was himself a tolerable punster, and made very few bishops or Privy Councillors that had not some time or other signalised themselves by a clinch, or a conundrum. It was, therefore, in this age that the pun appeared with pomp and dignity. It had been before admitted into merry speeches and ludicrous compositions, but was now delivered with great gravity from the pulpit, or pronounced in the most solemn manner at the council-table. ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... never did see so many Democrats in my life. Or was it Republicans? I forget. I had given 'em a good, hot, mixed Princeton paper,—dog, international law, society, industrial progress, footlight favorites, and the whole business; had Sermons from Many Lands, and a Conundrum Department, as well as a Household Corner—How to get Beautiful for the ladies, How to get Rich for the men, How to get Strong for the advertisers—why, if I do say it, I don't believe any one fellow was ever much more cosmopolitan in all his life, inside the space ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... doubtful whether good comes from the use of the Bible as a riddle-book, nor do the "Bible games" tend to develop a natural appreciation of the book. There is no new light but rather a confusing shadow thrown on the character of Joseph by the foolish conundrum concerning Pharaoh making a ruler out of him. Sending a child to the Bible to discover the shortest verse, the longest, the middle one, etc., trains him to regard it as an odd kind of book, to think of it as a dictionary, and to use ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... ill, upon our hands, were responsible for everything. For how much more, how many other changes, she would be responsible the future only could answer. And the future would answer in its own good, or bad, time. My conundrum "What are we going to do with her?" was as much of a puzzle as ever. For my part I gave it up. Sufficient unto the day was the ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... thereinto, calculates the possibility that the unfamiliar habitation may be so narrow as to prevent the act of turning round? Does this sea-snake match its wonderful nimbleness of body with an equally wonderful nimbleness of brain? I do not presume to theorise on such a conundrum of Nature, but mention an undoubted fact ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... Speaking at Manchester I used these words:— "If in the inconstant ferment of their minds The KING'S advisers can indeed discover No surer ground of principle than this; If we have here their final contribution To the most clamant and profound conundrum Ever proposed for statesmanship to solve, Then are we watching at the bankruptcy Of all that wealth of intellect and power Which has made England great. If that be true We may put FINIS to our history. But I for one will never lend my suffrage ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 14th, 1920 • Various
... Tom. I 'll give you a conundrum to lighten your labor: Why are bad boys like cake?" asked Polly, anxious to cheer ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... ligure Argonauta, Galileo il novello Endimione. In these instances, what might have been expanded into a simile, is substituted for the proper word in order to surprise the reader. When he alludes to Dante, he poses a conundrum on that poet's surname: Ben sull'ali liggier tre mondi canta. The younger Palma is complimented on wresting the palm from Titian and Veronese. Guido Reni is apostrophized as: Reni onde il maggior Reno all'altro cede[197] We are never safe in reading ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... disappearance,—gone! Astounding development! Mysterious and hapless arrival, tremendous and mysterious passage, mysterious and alarming departure. No escaping it; no volition to enter it or to avoid it; no prospect of defeating it or solving it. Odd affair! Mysterious and baffling conundrum to ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... Nutter that afternoon, and for a moment feared he might have been hurt; and then came enquiries about Nutter, and there appeared to have been no one hurt, and yet the parties on the ground—and no fighting—and yet no reconciliation—and, in fact, the general was so puzzled with this conundrum, and so curious, that he was very near calling after Puddock, when they parted at the bridge, and making him entertain him, at some cost of consistency, with ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Berlin station by her mother and Cousin von Briest. While drinking tea in the mother's room Cousin von Briest was asked to tell a joke, and propounded a Bible conundrum, which Effi took as an omen that no more sorrow was to befall her. The following day began the search for an apartment, and one was found on Keith street, which exactly suited, except that the house was not finished and the walls not yet dried out. Effi kept it in ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... OF PUTTING IT.—Mrs. R. thinks she has an excellent memory for riddles. She was delighted with that somewhat old conundrum about "What is more wonderful than JONAH in the whale?" to which the answer is, "Two men in a fly," and determined to puzzle her nephew with it the very next time she met him. "Such a capital riddle I've got ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 28, 1893 • Various
... Is it a joke or a conundrum?" asked the smiling minister, as the two chums came up under the porch roof just as the first big drops came ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... Oliver Wendell Holmes Ballade of a Friar Andrew Lang The Chameleon James Merrick The Blind Men and the Elephant John Godfrey Saxe The Philosopher's Scales Jane Taylor The Maiden and the Lily John Fraser The Owl-Critic James Thomas Fields The Ballad of Imitation Austin Dobson The Conundrum of the Workshops Rudyard Kipling The V-a-s-e James Jeffrey Roche Hem and Haw Bliss Carmen Miniver Cheevy Edwin Arlington Robinson Then Ag'in Sam Walter Foss A Conservative Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman Similar Cases Charlotte ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... not altogether satisfactory, and Smith apparently was unable to grapple with the problem. It puzzled him; but then Handy himself was at all times more or less of a conundrum ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... 'Earthly Paradise.' It must be the way you brought her up on quotations from Horace. Miss Campbell hardly appreciates her, I'm afraid. But of course you can't expect a mathematician to rise much above 'Little Folks' in the way of literature. I suppose the Archdeacon was greatly pleased with that conundrum about the Litany." ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... question for you, my dear Lord, is—Will you disappoint them?" Lord Beaconsfield put his glass in his eye, fixed his gaze on Lord Odo, and then said, "There is much force in what you say. I will consider the point." And next day he opened the proceedings in English. Now the psychological conundrum is this—Did he swallow the flattery, and honestly believe that the object of Lord Odo's appeal was to secure the pleasure of hearing him speak English? Or did he see through the manoeuvre, and recognize a polite intimation that a French speech from ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... chance? Is corn to grow by method, and character by caprice? If we cannot calculate to a certainty that the forces of religion will do their work, then is religion vain. And if we cannot express the law of these forces in simple words, then is Christianity not the world's religion, but the world's conundrum. ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond
... necessary to the general welfare." Divisions, his lordship admitted, "must weaken the whole; for we are yet one empire, whatever may be the opinions of the Massachusetts Assembly." But how to escape divisions was the conundrum. Could his lordship withhold from Parliament the irritating documents, though in fact they were already notorious, and "hazard the being called to account in some future session of Parliament for keeping back the communication of dispatches of such importance?" He appealed ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... his mental and oral accents. Emerson was before long talking in the midst of a babbling Simonetta of echoes.' Inferior writers have copied the tones of the oracle without first making sure of the inspiration. They forget that a platitude is not turned into a profundity by being dressed up as a conundrum. Pithiness in him dwindles into tenuity in them; honest discontinuity in the master is made an excuse for finical incoherencies in the disciples; the quaint, ingenious, and unexpected collocations of the original degenerate ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... or (to bracket works of very different value) THE SCARLET LETTER; and by what discrimination are you to open your doors TO THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS and close them on THE FAERY QUEEN? To bring things closer home, I will here propound to Mr. Besant a conundrum. A narrative called PARADISE LOST was written in English verse by one John Milton; what was it then? It was next translated by Chateaubriand into French prose; and what was it then? Lastly, the French translation was, by some inspired compatriot of George Gilfillan (and of mine) turned ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... here is a conundrum for you: Of which of the venerable men of the past does your ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... by his own account, went about the country confronting all comers with the questions, "What are you going to make of your future?" . . . "What is the American Utopia, how much Will is there shaping to attain it?" This, he says, was the conundrum to find an answer to which he crossed the Atlantic, and he is much depressed because he failed in his search. "When one talks to an American of his national purpose he seems a little at a loss"; and when he comes to sum up his conclusions: "What seems to me the most significant ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... conundrum which vexed my mind when the house surgeon at last announced, "These Moreau patients are well enough to leave hospital," though I had realized that for good or evil the day ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... collar, tempered by regret in the soft ruche.... She would have been a problem and a poem; while I, in my cheerful reds, my dazzling white, my decisive short skirts, my piquant shoes, my audacious apron, am a conundrum, a pleasantry, an epigram." This would be very pretty on the stage, but a waiting-maid who calls herself an "epigram" passes our imagination under any other circumstances. In fact, Miss Howard seems to us to be altogether on a false tack in this novel,—to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... hands across the net and Clint, hobbling up, tossed Amy the towel. "Got a conundrum for you, Amy," he said. "Want ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... anticipated blooming out into a society blossom was a conundrum. Perhaps he had some secret method buried in the same box with his hoarded coin. His long evenings were passed reading the Family Herald and Weekly Star and the Ashcroft Journal by candle-light; for those were the only papers he would subscribe for. His bed ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... which was shut up in the Oven. Not at all. You are quite mistaken. The thing shut up in the Oven was Eyebright herself! And the Oven was quite different from any thing you are thinking of,—cold, not hot; wet, not dry; with a door made of green sea-water instead of black iron. This sounds like a conundrum; and, as that is hardly fair, I will proceed to unriddle it at once and ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... me two weeks to find out what women carry in dress suit cases. And then I began to ask why a mattress is made in two pieces. This serious query was at first received with suspicion because it sounded like a conundrum. I was at last assured that its double form of construction was designed to make lighter the burden of woman, who makes up beds. I was so foolish as to persist, begging to know why, then, they were not made in two equal pieces; whereupon I ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... retired to his room it occurred to him that he might have answered Jill's conundrum as to the profit of building fire-proof houses by reminding her that pecuniary loss is not the sole objection to being burned out of house and home whenever the fire fiend happens to crave a flaming sacrifice, in the daytime or in the night, in summer or in midwinter, in sickness or in health; ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... a soul present who could answer that conundrum, and after a fitting pause the chief was forced to answer ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... and finished a good lot of it. Mr. Stewart left us, amply provided with the history of Abbotsford and its contents. It is a kind of Conundrum Castle to be sure, and I have great pleasure in it, for while it pleases a fantastic person in the style and manner of its architecture and decoration, it has all the comforts of a ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... asked me a conundrum. I fancy I see Mrs. Armour's face when she gets the news,—at the breakfast-table, of course, and gives a little shriek, and says: 'General! oh, General!' But it is all very shocking, you know," she added, in a lower ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... hour later there arrived his supreme trial of this particular morning. Arithmetic then being the order of business before the house, he was sent alone to the blackboard, supposedly to make lucid the proper reply to a fatal conundrum in decimals, and under the glare and focus of the whole room he breathed heavily and itched everywhere; his brain at once became sheer hash. He consumed as much time as possible in getting the terms of the problem stated in chalk; then, affecting to be critical of his own handiwork, ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... him all right, and are more than surprised to see him with a party of strangers, heading upstream. Now, I wonder if they were sent out to look for a fellow of his description? Gee, but this is a conundrum, all right," whispered Cuthbert to his fellow paddler, at which ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... flocks I remembered a conundrum containing the inquiry, "Why do white sheep eat more hay than black ones?" The answer was, "Because there are more of them." In Siberia the question and its reply would be incorrect, as the white sheep are in the minority. In this the sheep of ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... Darrell, and if it had been the Man in the Moon you could hardly look more thunderstruck. And now, if I may venture to propound so delicate a conundrum, how long is it since you lost your senses? Or had you ever any to lose, that you sit here in the present beastly state of the weather, to get comfortably drenched to ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... rich man, and he was out of business himself. And he wanted Donald to keep still too. What motive had he for wishing his proposition to be kept in the dark? His object was not apparent, and Donald was obliged to give up the conundrum, though he had some painful doubts on the subject. As he thought of the matter, he turned to observe the position of the two boats to the southward of him. Directly ahead of Laud's craft was an island which he could not weather, and he was obliged to tack. ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic
... these travelling people put on paper? Let me put it in the form of a conundrum. Q. What is it that the travelling M.P. treasures up and the Anglo-Indian hastens to throw away? A. Erroneous, hazy, distorted first impressions. Before the eyes of the griffin, India steams ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... stories belong to a large group of tales to which we may give the name of the "Rival Brothers." This cycle assumes various forms; but the two things that identify the relationship of the members are the rivalry of the brothers and the conundrum or "problem" ending of the stories. Within this cycle we can distinguish at least three simple, distinct types, and a compound fourth made up of parts of two of the others. These four types may be very generally outlined as follows: (I) A number of artisans (usually ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... of the boy. Accordingly on their next encounter Peter saw at a glance that he had now, in the interval, divined and that, to sound his note, he was only waiting till they should find themselves alone. This he had soon arranged and he then broke straight out. 'Do you know your conundrum has been keeping me awake? But in the watches of the night the answer came over me—so that, upon my honour, I quite laughed out. Had you been supposing I had to go to Paris to learn that? Even now, to see him still so sublimely ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.
... have a tree. How Green the Tree is! Can you See the Lightning? Oh, how red and Vivid the Lightning is! Will the Lightning Strike the Tree? Children, that is a Conundrum; we answer conundrums in our Weekly Edition, but not in ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson |
