"Wager" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of Harrowby would have lost his wager had there been anyone there to take him up, for when Christmas Eve came again he was in his grave, never having recovered from the cold contracted that awful night. Harrowby Hall was closed, and the heir to the estate ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... is," exclaimed Nora, wiping the tears from her eyes. "She'll die before she gets off that bed to-night, I'll wager anything." ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower
... regular to do here, and must toil and struggle and produce day by day, leaves the future world to itself, and is active and useful in this. Thoughts about immortality are also good for those who have not been very successful here; and I would wager that, if the good Tiedge had enjoyed a better lot, he would ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... 'way! You ain't never had a leanin' in any gen'l'man's direction, I'd be willin' to wager. An' yet, I may as well tell you, you been gettin' kinder white an' scrawny yourself lately, beggin' your pardon for bein' so bold as notice it. Mind, I ain't the faintest notion of holdin' it against you! I know better than think you been settin' your affections on ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann
... ennoble manners—that its final result should not be to raise man above vulgar interests. That would be an evident absurdity. I say that if the poet has pursued a moral end, he has diminished his poetic force, and it would not be imprudent to wager that his work would be bad. Poetry cannot, under penalty of death or forfeiture, assimilate itself to science or morality. It has not Truth for object, it has only itself. Truth's modes of demonstration are different and elsewhere. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... attention—everything being new to me—and became firmly impressed upon my memory. My father, being unaccustomed to the ways of such rough people, acted very cautiously; and as they were all very anxious to bet on their own horse, he could not be induced to wager a very large sum on Little Gray, as he was afraid of ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... "I'll wager I can explain the riddle for you," he said airily. "I lost my way the other evening coming home late. You see there had been some mistake and my car didn't come to the club for me. I started on foot, leaving word for it to overtake me—" He lied as he ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... a reflex action sometimes stops or interrupts its performance, though the proper sensory nerves may be stimulated. For instance, many years ago I laid a small wager with a dozen young men that they would not sneeze if they took snuff, although they all declared that they invariably did so; accordingly they all took a pinch, but from wishing much to succeed, not one sneezed, ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... Dumpty; The cat ran up the plum tree. I'll wager a crown I'll fetch you down; Sing, ...
— Young Canada's Nursery Rhymes • Various
... box. The occurrence stung him to the quick, though he strove to hide his chagrin;—no wonder. Taken at disadvantage, and in a moment of weakness, the old pleader was obliged to perceive that the wager of mental duel between himself and the witness had been decided against him; and to feel that, in an unsought encounter and fair affray, he had been publicly worsted. To add to his mortification, the witness walked from the box with the air of a conqueror, and cast an insolent look of ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... and enjoyed his raptures, even as the fox enjoys the graceful flappings of the wings, the gentle movements of the dove, when he knows that she cannot escape him, and grants her a few moments of happiness before he springs upon and strangles her. "I wager that you know that letter by heart," said he, as he slowly lighted a match in order to kindle his cigar; "am I not right? do you not ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... your watch," challenged Lucile. "I'll wager a pound of my home-made fudge against a pound of Huyler's that we'll be back before the ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... always to clothe herself in good style and fine materials, and she has an eye for the fitness of things as well as for the funny side. 'Girls,' she said yesterday, after returning from the Capitol, 'those statesmen eyed us very closely, but I will wager that it was impossible after we got mixed together to tell an anti from a suffragist by her clothes. There might have been a difference, though, in the expression of the faces and the shape of the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... had a wager about that bell with the bandmaster of the North Wessex Militia. He said the note was G; I said it wasn't. When we found it G sharp we didn't know how ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... taken in a sufficient quantity, prove immediately fatal. The newspapers frequently furnish us with examples of almost instant death, occasioned by wantonly swallowing a pint or other large quantity of spirits, for the sake of wager, or ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 575 - 10 Nov 1832 • Various
... formidable batteries, other officers apologized afterwards for firing at this diminutive vessel, which was not much bigger than a man of war's launch, observing, that they imagined her passing to be the result of a frolicsome wager. They little thought that she was a New England trader, or rather huxter, ladened with notions, such as apples, dried and green, apple-sauce, onions, cheese, molasses, New England rum, and gingerbread, and a number of little ditto's, suitable, ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... fury of the gale, and all went down. The surgeon who heard the wild screams of the women knows that the wife perished, and says he cannot indulge the faintest hope that the father and child escaped. Cuthbert was a remarkably skilful swimmer; he had once contended for a wager off Brighton, with a party of naval officers, and Laurance won it; but none could live in the sea that boiled and bellowed around that sinking ship, and encumbered as he was with the helpless child, it was impossible ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... fell to moving no piece, save after calculation, and ceased not to play, till she said, "Thy King is dead!—Checkmate." When he saw this he was confounded at her quickness and understanding; but she laughed and said, "O professor, I will make a wager with thee on this third game. I will give thee the queen and the right-hand castle and the left-hand knight; if thou beat me, take my clothes, and if I beat thee, I will take thy clothes." Replied he, "I ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... her wastefulness, and said that it was not possible to fare in a more costly manner, she told him that the dinner of the next day should cost ten thousand ses-tertia, or three hundred thousand dollars. This he would not believe, and laid her a wager that she would fail in her promise. When the day came the dinner was as grand and dainty as those of the former days; but when Antony called upon her to count up the cost of the meats and wines, she said that she did not reckon them, but that she should herself soon eat and drink ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... conception, e.g., as seen in the utterances of its many and urgent spokesmen, peace appears to be of the general nature of a truce between nations, whose God-given destiny it is, in time, to adjust a claim to precedence by wager of battle. They will sometimes speak of it, euphemistically, with a view to conciliation, as "assurance of the national future," in which the national future is taken to mean an opportunity for the extension of ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... was a particularly bad one, and he didn't mind admitting that the patient was particularly intractable and doubting. Optimism had much to do with a recovery in most cases of illness, and optimism was here lacking. But he would wager a box of cigars that the patient was on his feet again within two weeks. The wager was taken with great promptness, and then the patient was loaded into a cab and sent ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... he went on. "It's not so very terrible, after all! We've all of us done things we were sorry for—eh, Mrs. Chester? I'll wager that even you have—and I know very well that there are lots of things I can think of that I did just because I didn't think there ...
— A Campfire Girl's First Council Fire - The Camp Fire Girls In the Woods • Jane L. Stewart
... does not Madame make your dresses, my dear? I wager a guinea the woman's a milliner. Did not she engage to make ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... never a doubt But when you are in, If you love a whole skin, I'll wager (and win) You'll ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... in a letter with which he has honoured me: "Of his extraordinary memory I remember Lord Jeffrey telling me an instance. They had had a difference about a quotation from Paradise Lost, and made a wager about it; the wager being a copy of the hook, which, on reference to the passage, it was found Jeffrey had won. The bet was made just before, and paid immediately after, the Easter vacation. On putting the volume into Jeffrey's hand, your uncle said, ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... you,—indeed, I may say, on that subject, You your existence might put to the hazard and turn of a wager. I have seen danger? Oh, no! not me, sir, indeed, I assure you: 'Twas only the man with the dog that is sitting alone ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... answered. "But I'd wager it's for some better reason than people give him credit for. Or it may be merely a preference for his own society. Anyway, it is no business of ours." Then, swiftly softening the suggestion of reproof contained in his last sentence, he added: "Don't encourage me to gossip, Sara. ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... overhauled, by a French vessel of war. Her commander used every endeavor to escape, but seeing from the superior sailing of the Frenchman, that his capture was inevitable, he quietly retired below: he was followed into the cabin by his cabin boy, a youth of activity and enterprise, named Charles Wager: he asked his commander if nothing more could be done to save the ship—his commander replied that it was impossible, that every thing had been done that was practicable, there was no escape for them, and they ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... it been hoarded in a monarch's treasures? Was it a gift of peace, or prize of war? Did the great Khalif in his "House of Pleasures" Wager and lose it ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... X, the popular statesman, Mr. Y, the popular scientist, or Mr. Z, the popular—what shall we say?—anything from a teacher of high morality to a bagman—who have won their little race. But I would like (though not accustomed to betting) to wager a large sum that not one of the few first-rate skippers of racing yachts has ever been a humbug. It would have been too difficult. The difficulty arises from the fact that one does not deal with ships in a mob, but with a ship as ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... her the round trip to Hong-Kong, to break off some love-affair at home, I believe. But if she's as canny as she's bonny, I'll wager she'll outwit him before ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... the incendiary on New Year's morning at the same place. And I'll wager a good deal that your son Pete's boots will fit the footprints over there at ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... Elphin wager the king, that he had a horse both better and swifter than the king's horses. And this Elphin did, and the day, and the time, and the place were fixed, and the place was that which at this day is called Morva Rhiannedd; and thither the king went with all his people, and four and twenty ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 3 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... in photographic and scientific publications, all dealing with the fascinating thought of preserving and representing actual scenes and events. The first serious attempt to secure an illusion of motion by photography was made in 1878 by Edward Muybridge as a result of a wager with the late Senator Leland Stanford, the California pioneer and horse-lover, who had asserted, contrary to the usual belief, that a trotting-horse at one point in its gait left the ground entirely. At this time wet plates of very great rapidity were known, and by arranging ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... defend your profligacy, well and good. But as a matter of fact, you have lavished, on one harlot, more money than the total value, as declared by you to the Census Commissioners, of all the plenishing of your Sabine farm; if you deny my assertion I ask who dare wager 1,000 sesterces on its untruth? You have squandered more than a third of the property you inherited from your father and dissipated it in debauchery" (Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae, vii, 11). It was about this time that the Oppian law came up for ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... wager and Gudbrand remained there till the evening, when it began to get dark, and then they ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... the red diamond. Black won. Unperturbed, he made a second oral bet, this time on black, and lost; increased his wager to ten dollars on black—and lost; made it twenty, shifted to red, and lost; dropped back to five-dollar bets for three turns of the wheel, and lost them all. Fifty dollars in debt to the house, he rose, nodded casually to the ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... discovered that the horses were well known, and each had its numerous group of partisans. Their qualities were discussed by the women and girls as well as the men and with intelligence. Robert, filled with the spirit of it, laid a small wager on Blenheim, and then, in order to show no partiality, laid another in another quarter, but of exactly the same amount ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... canoes hereabouts?" said the man, after a moment's silence; "for, if not, there's someone about to pay us a visit. I would wager my best gun that I hear the stroke ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... go, if it takes all night!" declared Tom energetically. Once more he tried to start the motor. It coughed and sighed, as if in protest, but would not explode. Then Tom cried: "The spark plug! That's where the trouble is, I'll wager. Why didn't ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-boat - or, The Rivals of Lake Carlopa • Victor Appleton
... counted nothing of caution in their make-up took the other end of every exciting event. Flushed faces and loud voices added to the rapidly shifting excitement as one event followed another, and the betting fever keenly roused called, after every possible wager had been laid, for fresh material ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... went there seeking a sheep which had gone astray. He never came back. And the sheep skin was found some days later at the foot of the precipice. And scarcely a month ago, a venturesome young man from Bartfa climbed the road to the castle in the dead of night on a wager. What he saw no one will ever know, for he came running down the road to his companion stricken with terror, and has never spoken of the matter from that day to this. It was a ghost he ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... "I can wager one thing," said the other. "There has been a fine shaking up in somebody's office down town! There's a man who comes here every night, who's probably heard of it. That's ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... a brace of siagosh are often pitted against each other by the natives who keep them, a heavy wager pending as to which of the two will disable the greater number out of a flock of tame pigeons feeding, before the mass of them can rise out of reach, and ten or a dozen birds are commonly ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... it should all prove a jest, a piece of mummery got up by Vankarp, or some such worthy! I wish you had run all risks, and cudgelled the old burgomaster, stadholder, or whatever else he may be, soundly. I would wager a dozen of Rhenish, his worship would have pleaded old acquaintance before the ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... was chosen as second lieutenant of the Centurion of sixty guns, his own ship; besides which the squadron consisted of the Gloucester, fifty guns, Captain Norris; the Severn, fifty guns, Captain Legge; of the Pearl, forty guns, Capt. Mitchell; of the Wager, twenty-eight, Captain Kidd; and the Tryal of eight guns, Captain E. Murray; besides the Centaur store-ship and two victuallers, the ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... first time you've heard it, I wager!" said Mr. Gilman. "And it won't be the last! Any man who knows women can see at once that you are one of the women who understand. Otherwise, do you imagine I should have ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... The Duke was a penurious man. He is said to have scolded his servant for lighting four candles in his tent, when Prince Eugene called upon him to hold a conference before the battle of Blenheim. Swift said of the Duke, "I dare hold a wager that in all his compaigns he was never known to lose his baggage." But this merely showed his consummate generalship. When ill and feeble at Bath, he is said to have walked home from the rooms to his ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... see a book," says MERCIER, "sanctioned by the government, I would lay a wager, without opening it, that this book contains political falsehoods. The chief magistrate may well say: 'This piece of paper shall be worth a thousand francs;' but he cannot say: 'Let this error become truth,' or, 'let this ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... afraid the first week that he might, by sheer Irish luck, have escaped the storm and be turning up here—but it's too late now. I'll wager you're a widow." ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... tramp funny? Now instead of coming round to the back door and asking for a hand-out like any self-respecting tramp had ought to, they march up to the front door, and they're somebody with two or three names that's walking round the world on a wager they made with one of the Vanderbilt boys or John D. Rockefeller. They've walked thirty-eight hundred miles already and got the papers to prove it—a letter from the mayor of Scranton, Pennsylvania, and the mayor of Davenport, ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... the choice of answering Yes, or of answering no, or of refusing to answer at all. He seems to have done the last; but we suppose him to have accepted the wager of battle, and ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... wise inhabitants, I believe there would be a stampede out of London, Liverpool, Paris, and a variety of large towns, where the clocks lose their heads, and shake the hours out each one faster than the other, as though they were all in a wager. And all these foolish pilgrims would each bring his own misery along with him, ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... she insisted, smiling and placing her hands on his shoulders. "You are a real man. I'll wager Dale thinks so; and Peggy Nyland, and Ben. Now, wait!" she added as he tried to speak. "I want to tell you something. Do you know what would have happened if you ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... reassuring. However, I shall soon determine." He arose. "I'll call for you at seven, and I'll wager right now that your fears are groundless. Prepare to see me return with a ring through the ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... meet," writes Lamb to Miss Wordsworth, then visiting some friends in Cambridge, "who is the biggest woman in Cambridge, and I'll hold a wager they'll say Mrs. ——. She broke down two benches in Trinity Gardens,—one on the confines of St. John's, which occasioned a litigation between the societies as to repairing it. In warm weather she retires into an ice-cellar, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... "comes, dear abbe, from the identity of our feelings. We have suffered in the same way and thought the same things, and we know each other well enough, she and I, to know what sort of ideas external circumstances recall to each. I wager that I can guess, not the subject, but at least the nature, of her reverie." And turning toward Beppa, "Carissima," I said gently, "of which of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... making the wager shook hands, and the agreement was perfected. Then, with an air of confidence, assumed to confound the witnesses of this strange scene, Ivan wrapped himself in the fur coat which, like a cautious man, he had spread on the stove, and ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... believes that Cavendish will surrender his ships; rather will he let them sink with colours flying. I will not believe that the flag of England, the mistress of the seas, is this day destined to dip to the blood and gold flag of Spain. And the end of the fight, I will wager, is not only farther off than this good de Soto suspects, but it will also have a different ending from what he looks forward to, or my ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... stay as long as you like, but I'll wager that inside of an hour you'll be begging me to ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... sorry to go, too, I'll wager! Captain Hardy reported that it was your quickness and intelligence that saved him, and enabled him to get help up in time to save the convoy. Something about the hands of a clock you saw ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Trail • George Durston
... croker; just you shut up!" said the skipper. "Keep her steady, east-nor'-east, helmsman! Now, my dear colonel, at last we really are after those infernal rascals in earnest; and, sir, between you and me and the binnacle, we'll be up to them before long before nightfall, I'll wager!" ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... Songs came to an end, their last echo dying out with The Echo which I wrote at Darjeeling. This apparently proved such an abstruse affair that two friends laid a wager as to its real meaning. My only consolation was that, as I was equally unable to explain the enigma to them when they came to me for a solution, neither of them had to lose any money over it. Alas! The days when I wrote excessively plain poems about The Lotus ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... reward that was offered by the Stock Exchange, he says, "I heard of it the day it was printed, two or three days after this transaction happened. I remember a club at Dartford, called the hat club; I was there;" and then there is some foolish story about his laying a wager there; but as there is no evidence brought to impeach his testimony upon the grounds to which the cross-examination went, it is unnecessary to pursue that part of the examination further; he says "Lambeth Marsh is not far from the Asylum. I went there ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... my patient will have to pay for it, and he can't afford to pay a tin dollar. At the same time—By George! There's Leaver! I heard the other day that Leaver was at a sanitorium not a hundred miles away,—there for a rest. I'll wager he's there with a patient for a few days—at a good big price a day. Leaver never rests. He's made of steel wires. I believe I'll have him up on the long-distance and see if I can't get him to ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... know, Anisim, I made a wager, you know, like an Englishman, that I would go on foot ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... "And you would wager on a certainty! Have I not imparted to it all that is purest of myself? And does my heart ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... blow on his helm, on which I see it has made a shrewd dent. As for his blows, they fell upon air, for the lad was ever out of reach before the ripostes came. In his own style of fighting, I would wager on him against any man-at-arms in ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... whole bunch in the hollow of their hands. We couldn't face a strike at this time of the year; we'd never get another crew now till next spring—and you couldn't stand that. . . . Don't imagine you've cowed them through their delegation. I'm willing to wager the camp never hears of the fight; it might disillusion them of a fancied power. Koppy knows better than to let them know ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... "Here he is. I will wager that this is he." Down the lane towards us a little old man with a white beard and a large hat was descending, leaning on a cane. He dragged his feet along, and ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... is evidently 'keeping company' with Uncle Bill's niece: and Uncle Bill's hints—such as 'Don't forget me at the dinner, you know,' 'I shall look out for the cake, Sally,' 'I'll be godfather to your first—wager it's a boy,' and so forth, are equally embarrassing to the young people, and delightful to the elder ones. As to the old grandmother, she is in perfect ecstasies, and does nothing but laugh herself into fits of coughing, until they have finished the 'gin-and-water warm ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... but a fortnight since I was thirty-nine years old. I want at least as much more of life. If in the meantime I should trouble my thoughts with a matter so far from me as death, it were but folly. Of those renowned in life I will lay a wager I will find more that have died before they came ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... coarse and malicious Osmin. I know full well that the style of the verse is none of the best, but it has so adjusted itself to the musical thoughts (which were promenading in my brain in advance) that the lines had to please me, and I will wager there will be no disappointment at the performance. So far as the songs are concerned they are not to be despised. Belmont's aria 'O, wie angstlich' could scarcely have ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... to think so too: yet, viewing the matter so philosophically, it was rather inconsistent to spring from my seat as if an adder had stung me, and begin striding up and down the room as though I were walking for a wager. In the course of my rapid promenade, my coat-tail brushed against and nearly knocked down an inkstand, to which incident I was indebted for the recollection of my unfinished letter to Oaklands, and, my own thoughts being at that moment no over-pleasant companions, I was glad of any excuse ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... shoulders, as he ran up the steps of his house. Those were the stakes that he himself had laid on the table to wager upon the game, he had no quarrel there; but if only, before the end came, or even with the ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... suggest what I knew to be true, that the Sultan would have been more than delighted to take him at his word, for I remembered the incident of the lampmaker's wager. A considerable knowledge of Moghrebbin Arabic, in combination with hypnotic skill of a high order, would have been required to draw from Boubikir his real opinions of the outlook. Not for nothing was he appointed British ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... I apologize. That young man of yours sets my teeth on edge. I can't abide a predestined parson. I'll wager anything he has been preaching at you." He smiled ironically as he saw the girl flush. "So he did preach,—and against ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... the xxxth chapter of the Koran, entitled the Greeks. Our honest and learned translator, Sale, (p. 330, 331,) fairly states this conjecture, guess, wager, of Mahomet; but Boulainvilliers, (p. 329—344,) with wicked intentions, labors to establish this evident prophecy of a future event, which must, in his opinion, embarrass ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... do you think of Hermann?" said one of the guests, pointing to a young Engineer: "he has never had a card in his hand in his life, he has never in, his life laid a wager, and yet he sits here till five o'clock in the ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... face down. It was too inviting to a shot in the back. I wanted to roll over and be prepared when they came upon me, to sit up into some sort of firing position. But my white face (and I'll wager it was unwontedly white!) might show up in the dark. So I clawed my fingers into the ground in the hope that I could apply some camouflage in the form of mud. But mud is perverse; it lies yards deep when you ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... immediately driven to the bank. Meanwhile Danglars, repressing all emotion, advanced to meet the receiver-general. We need not say that a smile of condescension was stamped upon his lips. "Good-morning, creditor," said he; "for I wager anything it is the creditor who ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... into you. Every visitor is noticed in those lonely regions, and the little country towns only serve to disseminate the arrival of a stranger to the rural districts. Suppose you walk five miles out of Ennis the day after you arrive there, I would wager a pound the first woman that sees you pass her cottage will say, 'That's the Englishman that Maureen O'Hagan said was staying at the Queen's Hotel.' The servants are regular spies, every one of them. I couldn't speak politics in my house because I've ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... muss; shouting and crying and having what they call a good time. That's what some of them do; but I'll wager if I were to ask him about going to church, this fellow here would not know ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... word more about the Entertainment; not a word more about moving from our present quarters. Very good. My right hand lays my left hand a wager. Ten to one, on her opening communications with the son as she opened them with the father. Ten to one, on her writing to Noel Vanstone before ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... the same ancient newspaper of a Truro porter, who, for a bet of five shillings, ate two pairs of worsted stockings fried in train oil, and half a pound of yellow soap into the bargain. The losers of this wager might have been more cautious had they known that the same atrocious glutton once undertook to eat as much tripe as would make himself a jacket with sleeves, and was accordingly measured by a tailor, who regularly cut out the materials, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... not a man will look at their gowns for looking at their faces, though the suits are well enough when all's said. I vow, Madam, you have so long lived beside the two that you forget what beauties they are. I wager my next benefit to a China orange that you'll have no more care once they are seen, but all the women mad with jealousy and the men with love. Indeed, your young madams are what one reads of in romances, but don't see. Give them this chance, ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... at the distance I shall fire from. Ah, that was better aimed," he said, as the brass lelah on board the prau was fired, to strike the sand in front of the natural stockade, and then fly right over the sailors' heads. "I'll lay a wager, Gregory, that our friends don't make such another shot as ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... concern the Engagers little or nothing; 'tis thought, that it would concern all Merchants, Mariners, and all Lovers of the common good, rather to lay wagers against one another about Things of this nature, where the Gainer doth gain as well, as if he had laid his wager about something else, and the Looser hath so far the benefit as well as the Gaine, That he seeth thereby promoted the thing, ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... said St. Clair. "Happy's chief joy in life is talking. You know how he chatters away, Harry. He hates to sleep, because then he loses good time that he might use in talk. I'll wager you anything against anything, Harry, that when the Angel Gabriel blows his horn Happy will rise out of his grave, shaking his shroud and furious with anger. He'll hold up the whole resurrection while he argues with Gabriel ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... a young lass as yo'll see In a day's march, aw'll wager mi hat; But yo know unless fowk's dispositions agree, Tho' ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... go, of course," he said. "It's regular Injun talk, after they've stolen your hosses. Humph! We can't find Charley's man, can we? At least, we haven't found him. Why? Because there isn't any such man. I'll wager my rifle against a cocoanut that the hair and beard were false. If they'd been stripped off, the third rascal in the gang would have shown up. As soon as Jacobs blustered about our 'proving' that the third fellow was on ship and not on shore, I made up my mind. He and Charley's ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... April, 1782.—I am returned to Streatham, pretty well in health and very sound in heart, notwithstanding the watchers and the wager-layers, who think more of the charms of their sex by half than I who know them better. Love and friendship are distinct things, and I would go through fire to serve many a man whom nothing less than ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... expecting it, Conrad. He certainly did drag me in, but he was obliged to sit down afterwards, and I watched him out of one eye as he was making his preparations, and he could only just totter about. I would wager you anything he cannot have gone two hundred yards from the house. That is where we must search for him. I warrant we shall find him hidden in ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... "I'll wager he'll help. Onyway it's your best chance, and better a wee bush than nae beild. Now, sit ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... told it, and because of your peculiar sense of the traits and resources of Murray Davenport. But can you impart that sense to any one else? And can you tell the story as I told it? I'll wager you can't tell it so as ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... out for a butterfly, Mis' West, even if I'd got started in time. I'm not afraid but what I can find plenty to do. As far as the sewing goes, I feel like a man I read of who laid a wager he'd eat a quail a day for thirty days. Well, he got along fine. Didn't seem to mind it a bit. When it came the twenty-fifth day and everybody was congratulating him on making his money so easy, he up and quit. 'No use, boys,' he said, when they began to tell ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... jest—to decide a wager. You must disguise yourself as your mistress, when you will be admitted into the ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Love in '76 - An Incident of the Revolution • Oliver Bell Bunce
... be the death of me!" cried the old witch, convulsed with laughter. "That was well said. If an honest man and a gentleman may! Thou playest thy part to perfection. Get along with thee for a smart fellow; and I will wager on thy head, as a man of pith and substance, with a brain, and what they call a heart, and all else that a man should have, against any other thing on two legs. I hold myself a better witch than yesterday, for thy sake. Did not I make thee? And I defy any witch in New England to make such another! ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... unflattering, whatever it means." "Gloves!" repeated Father Fitzpatrick, unheeding her. "Well, now, what d'you think of that! Millions of dollars' worth, I'll wager, in ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... the wind," muttered Hazelton. "It must be something about the hotel fire. What can it be? At any rate, I'll wager it's something ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... "I wager anything you like of it." But it was of no use; unconditional assent failed to pacify her. So she went on for hours; and it cost me untold pains to earn the brunette's permission to offer her an ice, or to win one ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle |
