|
|
|
More "Guesswork" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... capacities of animals is one of complete neutrality. For all we know, the mental capacities of animals may be of a higher order than our own, as their sensuous capacities certainly are in many cases. All this, however, is guesswork; one thing only is certain. If we are right that man realizes his conceptual thought by means of words, derived from roots, and that no animal possesses words derived from roots, it follows, not indeed, ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... Honoria Fraser was something like this: partly guesswork, I admit. Although I know her well I can only put her past together by deductions based on a few admitted facts, one or two letters and occasional unfinished sentences, interrupted by people coming in. Is it not always thus with our friends and acquaintances? ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... few old maps that exist, it is difficult to determine precisely in what measure the members of the expedition are responsible for the charting; some of it is certainly the guesswork of geographers, based, it must be acknowledged, on the best information then available, for we must bear in mind that the accounts of Mendana's expedition were only known from a few extracts, the actual narratives being lost at the ...
— The First Discovery of Australia and New Guinea • George Collingridge
... favour. One of the disabilities which he, in common with all airmen, suffered, was the impossibility of ascertaining the velocity of the wind when he was fairly afloat. He had to make allowance for it by sheer guesswork, unless he was prepared to slow down or even to alight. He had reckoned that, even with the slight assistance of the wind, he could hardly hope to reach the head of the Persian Gulf before six o'clock, which would be past nine by the sun; but ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... even in impossibilities, as has happened to me in the present instance, who have accomplished what human strength has hitherto never attained. For, if any one has written or told anything about these islands, all have done so either obscurely or by guesswork, so that it has almost ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... which go any way towards an explanation of it are but guesswork, and I give them more because I would not conceal anything, than because I think they are of ...
— Lady Into Fox • David Garnett
... Guesswork is no longer necessary in the sizing up of strangers. You can know them better than their mothers know them if you will get these nutshells of facts clearly in your mind and ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... produce no more effect on him mentally than the preceding anesthetic. He raged and screeched on. Gefty watched him uneasily, knowing now that he was looking at insanity. There was nothing more he could do at the moment—the autosurgeon's decisions were safer than any nonprofessional's guesswork. And the surgeon continued ...
— The Winds of Time • James H. Schmitz
... occurring all over the charred field where men were working with pick and axe and lifting out the poor, shattered remains of human beings, nearly always past recognition or identification, except by guesswork, or the locality where they were found. Articles of domestic use scattered through the rubbish helped to tell who some of the bodies were. Part of a set of dinner plates told one man where in the ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... where Hilda would, therefore, have been likely to post her note if she were going to the far west; while some of the Southampton trains stop at Basingstoke, which is, indeed, the most convenient point on that route for sending off a letter. This was mere blind guesswork, to be sure, compared with Hilda's immediate and unerring intuition; but it had some probability in its favour, at any rate. Try both: of the two, she was likelier ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... assumption, assumed position, postulation, condition, presupposition, hypothesis, blue sky hypothesis, postulate, postulatum [Lat.], theory; thesis, theorem; data; proposition, position; proposal &c (plan) 626; presumption &c (belief) 484; divination. conjecture; guess, guesswork, speculation; rough guess, shot, shot in the dark [Coll.]; conjecturality^; surmise, suspicion, sneaking suspicion; estimate, approximation (nearness) 197. inkling, suggestion, hint, intimation, notion, impression; bare supposition, vague supposition, loose supposition, loose suggestion. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... ported his helm to a green light on the starboard bow, but he insisted it was a red light which he had first seen. I tried him repeatedly after this, and although he sometimes gave a correct description of the color of the light, he was as often incorrect, and it was evidently all guesswork. On my return, I applied to have him removed from the ship, as he was, in my opinion, quite unfit to have charge of the deck at night, and this application was granted. After this occurrence I always, when taking a strange officer to sea, remained ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... cleanly. Then one man shouted and they all lay prone, beginning to crawl toward us with their shields held before, not as protection against bullets (for as that they were utterly worthless) but as cover that made their exact position merest guesswork. ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... young man's whereabouts," Tallente continued thoughtfully, "must necessarily be a matter of pure guesswork, but supposing, Robert, he should have wandered in that mist the wrong way—turned to the left, for instance, outside this window, instead of to the right—he might very easily have fallen ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... departure, So, we divine, it played before we came . . . What do you know of me, or I of you? . . . Little enough. . . . We set these doors ajar Only for chosen movements of the music: This passage, (so I think—yet this is guesswork) Will please him,—it is in a strain he fancies,— More brilliant, though, than his; and while he likes it He will be piqued . . . He looks at me bewildered And thinks (to judge from self—this too ...
— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken
... creatures splendidly rendered. I imagine these central lions to be more recent (having perhaps replaced others) than their neighbours, which are obliterated to the extent of being lions or lionesses only by guesswork. These nameless feline creatures hold what appear to be portions of sheep, one of them having at its flank a curious excrescence like the stinging scorpion of the Mithra groups. The griffins, on the other hand, although every detail is rubbed out, are splendid ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... this crowd. They were ready to act, and they acted. Beaton must have taken the same train, and the two men got friendly; probably they never knew each other in New York, but, being from the same place, it was easy enough to strike up an acquaintance. What occurred on board is all guesswork, but a sudden blow at night, on an observation platform, at some desert station, is not impossible; or it might be sickness, and the two men left behind to seek a physician. Here was where Lacy must have come in. He ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... make your minds easy. Of course you'll understand there is a certain amount of guesswork in what I tell you, but you can depend upon the correctness of my general conclusions. I believe that I have made it perfectly clear that we intended no harm, and that we are not dangerous characters. At least Ala understands it perfectly. As for Ingra, perhaps he doesn't want to understand ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... computation. This is frankly confessed by the Treasury officials. They base their published figures on certain arbitrary methods of calculation which have never been submitted to any public inquiry, and which, as they admit, contain an element of guesswork. The matter is an exceedingly important one to Ireland, because ever since 1870 an increasingly heavy deduction has been made by the Treasury from her "collected" revenue, and her "true" revenue has proportionately diminished. Part of this deduction is no doubt due to the fact that her exports ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... of the commonly quoted statements concerning the prevalence of social disease, and therefore of immorality, it must be said in all fairness that there has been much guesswork and some deliberate exaggeration. We learn from various books and lectures that fifty, sixty-five, seventy-five and even ninety per cent of the men in the United States over eighteen years of age are at some ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... draw the picture all in the darker shades, let us look at the best type of Italian tenement life. We are not left to guesswork in the matter. Settlement workers and students of social questions are actually living in the tenement and slum sections, so as to know by experience and not hearsay. One of these investigators, Mrs. Lillian W. Betts, author of two enlightening books,[72] has lived for a year ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... had spent nearly half an hour in this sort of conjecturing. I began to perceive that it could serve no purpose. It would be only guesswork, at best, and it was evident I could not tell what quality of metal the mine contained, until I had ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... decide correctly without the facts. To decide in the absence of information is guesswork—and guesswork is a poor method of deciding what to do—in the case of the stammerer ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... latest or neo-Babylonian period. The most difficult phase has naturally been the old Babylonian pantheon. Much is uncertain here. Not to speak of the chronology which is still to a large extent guesswork, the identification of many of the gods occurring in the oldest inscriptions, with their later equivalents, must be postponed till future discoveries shall have cleared away the many obstacles which beset the path of the scholar. The discoveries ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... that it is to some extent. But what its results are—whether it mainly favours immunity from certain diseases, or the capacity for a sedentary life in a town atmosphere, or intelligence and capacity for social service—is largely matter of guesswork. How, then, can we say what is the type to breed from, even if we confine our attention to one country? If, on the other hand, we look farther afield, and study the results of race-mixture or "miscegenation," we but encounter fresh puzzles. That the half-breed is an unsatisfactory ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... include music, which, as I was saying just now, is full of guesswork and imitation, ...
— Philebus • Plato
... 53,315. His estimate was not guesswork. He had organized his campaign by school districts. His canvass system was perfect, his canvassers were as penetrating and careful as census takers. He had before him reports from every voting precinct in the State. They ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... is similar to the Denison, Texas, comparison with an orange. The object would actually be huge to be seen at any great height. But unless the true height were known, any estimate of size would be guesswork. ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... "this is all swank: a parcel of suppositions and guesswork based upon nothing at all. I'm not to be caught ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... high mass was over in Saint Mark's. The crowd had streamed out of the central door, spreading like a bright fan over the square, the men in gay costumes, red, green, blue, yellow, purple, brown, and white, their legs particoloured in halves and quarters, so that when looking at a group it was mere guesswork to match the pair that belonged to one man; women in dresses of one tone, mostly rich and dark, and often heavily embroidered, for no sumptuary laws could effectually limit outward display, and the insolent vanity of an age still almost mediaeval made it natural that the rich should attire ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... to the bottom of this business," observed Racey, sagely, "that guesswork is gonna lead us to ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... a good deal of guesswork done even under the supposed influence of "trance" is quite evident to me. I am not prepared to say that such trances were in no case genuine, but the remarks made during them were frequently of a tentative ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... laborious days for knowledge and art which had been overthrown by war's brutality. All classes and types of life in Paris were mixed up in this retreat, and among them were men I knew, so that I needed no guesswork for their stories. For weeks some of them had been working under nervous pressure, keeping "a stiff upper lip" as it is called to all rumours of impending tragedy. But the contagion of fear had caught them in a secret way, and suddenly their nerves had snapped, and they ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... him. Maybe it was only fascination—I don't know. Sometimes it seems to me that she really did love Dave Walsh. Perhaps it was because he had frightened her with that even-unto-death, rise-from- the-grave stunt of his that she in the end inclined to the dago music- player. But it is all guesswork, and the facts are, sufficient. He wasn't a dago; he was a Russian count—this was straight; and he wasn't a professional piano-player or anything of the sort. He played the violin and the piano, and he sang—sang ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... the magazine were not blank ones. They had all protested their certainty that this march was for business; and when they had heard that their colonel was going with them they had been doubly sure; yet in their hearts they had anxiously admitted that it was guesswork. Now these blessed cartridges packed full of the right stuff put an ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... this confusion of guesswork, a grim feeling that Simonds did indeed know, and that, for the first time in his life, perhaps, he was doing an unbought, ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... was something in each of us which attracted the other. We took that little something as a foundation and built on it. But what has happened has knocked away our poor little foundation. That's all. We don't really know anything at all about each other for certain. It's just guesswork.' ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... same answer, varied but slightly, had been exchanged between them every Saturday night for years. Dorcas replied now without thinking. Her mind had spread its wings and flown out into the sweet stillness of the garden and the world beyond; it even hastened on into the unknown ways of guesswork, seeking for one who should be coming. She strained her ears to hear the beating of hoofs and the rattle of wheels across the little, bridge. The dusk sifted in about the house, faster and faster; a whippoorwill cried from the woods. ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... changing it in time to a mere legend, a tale told out of the hazy distance. But in America it obtrudes; it stares eternally on in all its stark unforgetfulness, absorbing its background, constantly rescuing itself from legend by turning guesswork and theory into facts, till it appears bare, irremediable, and complete,—witnessed at high noon, and in New Jersey of all places, ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... guesswork. But I fancy that Cayley was thoroughly upset about the key business. He suddenly realized that he had been careless, and he hadn't got time to think it all over. So he didn't want to commit himself definitely ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne
... this problem with exactitude and we will have a dependable table giving the maximum carrying capacity of various surface areas at various stated speeds, based on the dimensions of the advancing edges. At present it is largely a matter of guesswork so far as making accurate computation goes. Much depends upon the shape of the machine, and the amount of surface offering resistance to ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell
... about us that we could barely creep through it, with only faith and a doubtful memory as guides. Every road, we well knew, would be patrolled by Federal pickets; only the broken country between could yield us the faintest prospect of success. But at best it must largely be guesswork,—Providence, luck, what you will,—and the slightest swing of the pendulum could easily frustrate our ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... I was when I heard your voice. Of course we were proceeding only by guesswork, and could only hope that we should find you at the top of the hill. If they had carried you any farther away we could not have followed. I was turning this over in my mind as we advanced, when we heard the rushing of a large number of men down ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... that Mr. Frog was a good tailor. He certainly knew his business. Now, as a matter of fact, Mr. Frog was a very careless person. He had thrown away Brownie's measurements before he made his clothes, instead of afterwards. And he had made the new suit entirely by guesswork. It was only natural that he would make some mistake; and so he had cut the trousers entirely ...
— The Tale of Brownie Beaver • Arthur Scott Bailey
... have the claim on him; you are the right wife for him, and the Governor was (as I thought likely from what I had myself observed) the man to make him see it. I am not in anybody's secrets; it was pure guesswork on my part, and it has succeeded. There is no more doubt now about Miss Eunice's sentiments. ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... "It's guesswork, that, but the fact stands—I was dosed. You asked me to watch, and I did watch. Up to midnight that lantern on top of the trunk wasn't out of my sight fifteen minutes ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman
... our shirts. From the waist upwards we were visible to each other as a vague glimmer of white, and thus we fought, foot to foot, among the myrtle-trees. We could not see so much as our swords unless they clashed more than usually hard, and a spark struck from them. We fought by guesswork and feel, and in the end luck served me. I drove my sword through his chest until the hilt rang ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... the writing, as far as the signature, to have been in Latin, and this is my guesswork rendering: the reader ...
— The Penance of Magdalena & Other Tales of the California Missions • J. Smeaton Chase
... further and still more thorough inquiry into the facts, upon the ground that the accumulated data were "far from possessing the precision essential to a definite project." This took the project of canal construction out of the domain of preconceived ideas based upon guesswork into the substantial field of a scientific undertaking for commercial purposes. The receiver at once commenced to reorganize the affairs of the company, and accordingly, on October 21, 1894, the new Panama ...
— The American Type of Isthmian Canal - Speech by Hon. John Fairfield Dryden in the Senate of the - United States, June 14, 1906 • John Fairfield Dryden
... passed, without any visit being paid to them. No food was brought in, and they were left, as if forgotten, by their jailors. Thus they were unable to tell the hour and, as it was perfectly dark, it was by guesswork that they at last lay down to ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... Crawshay said, "that this is more or less guesswork, but I suspect every one with ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Westgate very soon after. As it opened near the church, it is surely more likely that Erkenwald rebuilt it than the northern gate; but the history of this bishop is so overlaid with monkish legend that we do not require any guesswork. ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... And I noticed some of those women acted as if they had lost something. Maybe it was a chance to gossip about Laddie, for he hadn't left them a thing to guess at, and mother says the reason gossip is so dreadful is because it is always GUESSWORK. Well, that was all fair and plain. He had told those people, our very best friends, what he thought about everything, the way they acted included. He was carrying something to each member of the Pryor ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... earnestly, "is whar I allus envy the believers, as the widder calls 'em, for they are satisfied what is beyond and have it all pict'rd out in thar minds, even to what the streets are paved with, an' the kind o' music they're goin' ter have. It's all guesswork in my way o' thinkin', but they are sure on't, an' that feelin' is lots o' comfort to 'em when they are drawin' near the end. I've been a sort er scoffer all my life," he added reflectively, "an' can't help bein' a doubter, but ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... a few reviewers went to the length of reading the whole of The Man who was Thursday (1908), it is obvious by their subsequent guesswork that they did not notice the second part of the title, which is, very simply, A Nightmare. The story takes its name from the Supreme Council of Anarchists, which has seven members, named after the days of the week. Sunday is the Chairman. The others, one after ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... of guesswork which is called "woman's intuition" told her that Ste. Marie would come to her on this afternoon, and that something in the nature of a crisis would have to be faced. It can be proved even by poor masculine mathematics ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... Possibly in the end Bishop of Crotona, or a Defensor of the Roman Church, since we find a Jordanes in each of these positions; but this is mere guesswork, and to ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... Rutter had declared she would be at Walsh, I wasn't prepared to believe it was Lyn Rowan. Sometimes five years will work a wonderful change in a woman; or is it that time and distance work some subtle transition in one's recollection? She didn't give me much time to indulge in guesswork, though. While I wondered, for an instant, if there could by any possibility be another woman on God's footstool with quite the same tilt to her head, the same heavy coils of tawny hair and unfathomable eyes that always met your own so frankly, ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... in more august tribunals where the desire to be true and just is uppermost, false evidence is so rife that there has to be a good deal of guesswork, and calculations of probabilities, when trying to come to a right decision. It has lately been advocated that magistrates should, when practicable, hold their preliminary trial of offences in the village where the misdemeanour is alleged to have taken place. The witnesses ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... scientific discovery is made mainly, if not solely, by the employment of hypothesis, and for that no code of rules can be laid down such as Bacon had devised. Yet the framing of hypothesis is no mere random guesswork; it is left not to the imagination alone, but to the scientific imagination. There is required in the process not merely a preliminary critical induction, but a subsequent experimental comparison, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... "It is only guesswork on my part, of course. I am an old bachelor, you see, and have had very little experience as to the signs and tokens of the tender passion. But I will sound my little girl by and by. She will be more ready to confess ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... a mystery and cannot be solved by any evidence that we have. Almost every one who has written of it seems to have indulged in mere guesswork. One popular theory is that Miss Allen was in love with some one else; that her parents forced her into a brilliant marriage with Houston, which, however, she could not afterward endure; and that Houston, learning ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... merely guesswork. For Gourlay had hitherto gone away from Barbie for his moneys and accommodations, so that the bodies could only surmise; they had nothing definite to go on. And through it all the gurly old fellow kept a brave front to the world. He was thinking of retiring, ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... "Don't you see why? You know everything now, everything. It isn't guesswork, it isn't deduction, it's absolute certainty. You have seen my confession, you know that I killed Martinez, that I robbed this girl of her fortune, that I am going to let an innocent man suffer in my place. You know that ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... and in such an event you'll probably learn what this cutter can really perform; for, as yet, I fancy it is pretty much matter of guesswork." ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... What Snap might have done if you had married him is guesswork. He might have left drink alone a while longer. But he was bad clean through. I heard Dave Naab tell him that. Snap would have gone over to Holderness sooner or later. And now he's ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... that at the outbreak of the war the various Powers possessed a total of 4980 aircraft of all sorts. This sounds like a colossal fleet, but by 1917 it was probably multiplied more than tenfold. Of the increase of aircraft we can judge only by guesswork. The belligerents keep their output an inviolable secret. It was known that many factories with a capacity of from thirty to fifty 'planes a week were working in the chief belligerent lands, that the United States was shipping ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... imperfect the verb To express to the senses her movement superb! To say that she "sailed in" more clearly might tell Her grace in its buoyant and billowy swell. Her robe was a vague circumambient space, With shadowy boundaries made of point-lace; The rest was but guesswork, and well might defy The power of critical feminine eye To define or describe: 'twere as futile to try The gossamer web of the cirrus to trace, Floating far in the blue of ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... then, were ahead of us, and were showing us the way. Of German preparations less was known, and estimates of the German air force, even when made by experts, were largely guesswork. The Zeppelin airships enjoyed a world-wide fame, and there is good reason to think that the German Government practised a certain measure of frankness with regard to their airship establishment in order the more effectively to shroud the very resolute effort they were making to ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... picked any more players for the varsity, Ken could not tell who they were. Of course Graves would make the team, and Weir and Raymond were pretty sure of places. There were sixteen players for the other five positions, and picking them was only guesswork. It seemed to Ken that some of the players showed streaks of fast playing at times, and then as soon as they were opposed to one another in the practice game they became erratic. His own progress was slow. One thing he could do that brought warm ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... while they showed on the chart, he could not exactly determine the position of the ship when she struck, as no observation had been taken since the previous noon, and the rate of sailing under the force of the gale was mere guesswork. ...
— Bob the Castaway • Frank V. Webster
... if it is to be guesswork, let us all guess for ourselves. To be guided by second-hand conjecture is pitiful. The premises are before you. My brother is a lively and perhaps sometimes a thoughtless young man; he has had about a week's acquaintance with your friend, and he has known her ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... Caldew reluctantly admitted to himself that Merrington's deductions were more swift and vigorous than his own, but he was secretly annoyed to think that the other had gained partly by guesswork the solution of a clue which had caused him so ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... good healing is to-day the acme of "well done;" a healing that is not guesswork,—chronic recovery ebbing and flowing,—but instantaneous cure. This absolute demonstration of Science must be revived. To consummate this desideratum, mortal mind must pass [10] through ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... celebrated work, "Experiments in Aerodynamics." Yet a critical examination of the data upon which he based his conclusions as to the pressures at small angles shows results so various as to make many of his conclusions little better than guesswork. ...
— The Early History of the Airplane • Orville Wright
... investigations in Germany made by Dr. F. Bierhoff, of New York, "Police Methods for the Sanitary Control of Prostitution," New York Medical Journal, August, 1907.) The estimation of the amount of clandestine prostitution can indeed never be much more than guesswork; exactly the same figure of sixty thousand is commonly brought forward as the probable number of prostitutes not only in Berlin, but also in London and in New York. It is absolutely impossible to say whether it is under or over the real number, for secret prostitution is quite intangible. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... on them in a fine spray, and take their heads in their mouths and hold them there a moment—to warm back the perishing life perhaps; I do not know. Then, being set down again, the dying creatures would totter gropingly about, with dragging wings, find each other, strike a guesswork blow or two, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... such a way that, say twenty years hence, it will be able to protect the country against any enemy, we shall then instinctively adopt a policy. The fact of having ahead of us a definite, difficult thing to do, will at once take us out of the region of guesswork, and force us into logical methods. We shall realize the problem in its entirety; we shall see the relation of one part to another, and of all the parts to the whole; we shall realize that the deepest study of the wisest men must be devoted to it, as it is in all maritime ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... course he is in love with Mademoiselle de Lira, and has gone to Paris to find her, and cannot. That is why you ask me." I was so much astonished at the quickness of his guesswork ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... would be guessing, since he could not be sure when the 3-pint vessel was two thirds full (or whether he had marked off his 5-pint vessel accurately). Tell him he must measure out the water without any guesswork. Explain also, that it is a ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... by virtue of having seen the defendant near by, observed his hand reaching for the purse, and then perceived him take to his heels. She has never been taught to reason and has really never found it necessary, having wandered through life by inference or, more frankly, by guesswork, until she is no longer able to point out the simplest stages of ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... daughters of Europeans. A little beyond, on the plain in front of the Motee Mahal, is the spot where Campbell met Outram and Havelock—a spot which, methinks, might well be marked by a monument; and after this I lose my reckoning by reason of the extent of the demolition, and am forced to resort to guesswork ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... in Bering Sea. But we were interested in this one, both because of its strange appearance, and because it was unmarked on the chart. That last was not so unusual, though. The charts of that section of Bering are mostly guesswork. ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... killed, and then robbed, in your sight"—I came toward her, and lowered my voice to a stern, judicial whisper, while the poor girl shrank back as though I were law itself uttering judgment upon her. If she had known what stagy guesswork it all was! "When you were discovered, the murderer would have shot you ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... inconsistent with facts and natural laws, as we know and are able to observe them. Even as a child I never had any use for fairy-tales, or wonder-stories. I always wanted facts, tangible, concrete, irrefutable facts, not hypotheses. The Protestant churches hand out a mess of incoherent guesswork, based on as many interpretations of the Bible as there are human minds sufficiently interested to interpret it, and then wax hot and angry when hard-headed business men like myself refuse to subscribe to it. It's preposterous, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... any I had yet experienced, it having a more direct effect on the lungs than any they had yet given us. It had started to rain and the darkness was black, but we reached the guns within scheduled time, and under great difficulty we exploded our shells; but most of our work in that discharge was guesswork. ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... rooms were empty, some further glimmering knowledge had stirred her benumbed consciousness. She may have flung herself on the bed in a paroxysm of weeping, heedless of the overturned night light and the havoc it caused. That, of course, is sheer guesswork, though the glass dish which held the light was found later on the charred floor, which was protected, to some ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... much fretting guesswork on her cousin's surmise. She relied too much on Owen's sense of propriety to entertain the idea that he could be forwarding a pursuit so obviously insolent, but a still wilder conjecture had been set afloat in her mind. Could ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Irish," he pointed out, "lose their Celtic aspect and become Americanised.... To say that 'spontaneous variation,' increased by natural selection, can have produced this effect, is going too far." Unfortunately for Mr. Spencer, he was basing his conclusions on guesswork. It is only within the last few months that the first trustworthy evidence on the point has appeared, in the careful measurements of Hrdlicka who has demonstrated that Spencer was quite wrong in his statement. As ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... selected Oakes for the case in hand principally because it was one where inexperience could do no harm, and where the brilliant guesswork which Oakes preferred to call his inductive reasoning might achieve ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... Wilder and Cully. For they know that the deflection of a single point upon the prairies—above all, upon the Staked Plain—will leave the traveller, like a ship at sea without chart or compass, to steer by guesswork, or go ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... shot again, holding lower and more firmly, out of mere guesswork, and landed appreciably closer although still within the zone of ridicule. And somebody else shot, and somebody else, and another, until we all were whooping and laughing and jesting, and the jets flew as if from the balls of a mitrailleuse, and the can rocked and gyrated, spurring us to haste ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... the things we really know in life are mere guesswork," replied Lady Arabella sagely. "But ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... away from them now, Bob; and though, I daresay, they can hear the sound of the oars, it must be mere guesswork as to our position." ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... never one word; for I knew she was so proud and particular, that, if she mistrusted any thing of that kind to have been done, she would flounce in a minute. No, I never hinted it to her, or anybody else, and it was guesswork, after all," replied the abashed wife, in a deprecating tone,—she having been tempted, by the unusual mood which her stern husband had manifested for discussing his private affairs with her, to venture to speak much more ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... began to assail him as to the wisdom of the course he was pursuing. After all, there was yet time to retreat. He had only to say the word and his companions would willingly follow. His plans in remaining were built largely on guesswork and theory. If they worked out as he had reasoned, the Indians would be warned. With their aid the convicts could be surrounded, captured, and sent back to a coast town under guard. Some blood would likely be shed but not as much as if they were left free to run at large. But if ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... painstakingly until he had a foundation of fact upon which to operate. His theory was that the simplest way is always the best way and so he never befogged the main issue with any elaborate system of deductive reasoning based on guesswork. Burton never guessed. He assumed that it was his business to KNOW, nor was he on any case long before he did know. He was employed now to find Abigail Prim. Each of the several crimes committed the previous night might or might not prove ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... predominance of certain surnames in nearly every community. So that the ratio or same-name to different-name second cousin marriage may not greatly exceed 1:4. Beyond this degree any estimate would be pure guesswork. However the coefficient of attraction between persons of the same surname would undoubtedly be well marked in every degree of kinship, and conversely there are few same-name marriages in which some kinship, however remote, ...
— Consanguineous Marriages in the American Population • George B. Louis Arner
... pocket, I returned towards the palace, apparently without any anxiety or hurry, always followed by the same individual. I judged that the bargello, having failed in his project, was now reduced to guesswork, and I was strengthened in that view of the case when the gate-keeper of the palace told me, without my asking any question, as I came in, that an arrest had been attempted during the night, and had not succeeded. While he was speaking, one of the auditors of the Vicar-General called to enquire when ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... money with a mouse gnawing an ear of corn. The people of Cumae employed a mouse dormant. Paoli fancied that certain mice on Roman medals might be connected with the family of Mus, but this is rather guesswork. {111b} ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... they became engaged. General Williams says they were engaged before seven o'clock. [Footnote: Id., p. 476.] General Meade says they relieved his men not earlier than ten or eleven. [Footnote: Id., p. 270.] It seems to be guesswork in both cases, and we are forced to judge from circumstantial evidence. Ricketts thinks he had been fighting four hours when he retired for lack of ammunition, and the Twelfth Corps men had not yet reached him. [Footnote: Id., p. 259.] Patrick, ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... a tight band round it, my heart beat so that it almost suffocated me, and, almost beside myself, I thought of swimming away from the place. But then, again, the very idea made me tremble with fear. I saw myself, lost, going by guesswork in this heavy fog, struggling about amid the grasses and reeds which I could not escape, my breath rattling with fear, neither seeing the bank, nor finding my boat; and it seemed as if I would feel myself dragged down by the feet to the bottom of ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... many overlooked extragenital infections, especially among those who are the victims of crowding, poor living conditions, and ignorance. Estimates on the amount of syphilis which is contracted in marriage are apt to be largely guesswork in the absence of reliable vital statistics on the disease. Fournier believed that 20 per cent of syphilis in women was contracted in marriage. So much syphilis in married women is unsuspected, and so little of what is recognized is traceable to outside sources, ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... more august tribunals where the desire to be true and just is uppermost, false evidence is so rife that there has to be a good deal of guesswork, and calculations of probabilities, when trying to come to a right decision. It has lately been advocated that magistrates should, when practicable, hold their preliminary trial of offences in the village where the misdemeanour is alleged to have taken place. The witnesses under these ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... of the same group on the same principle. As we have seen, Roman scholars themselves explained Nerio Martis as equivalent to Virtus Martis; Herie Iunonis probably means something of the same kind; the others are not so easily explained, and guesswork about them is unprofitable. But I hope I have said enough to show that there is absolutely no good ground for supposing that these combinations of names in nominative and genitive indicate a relationship ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... take their names from the country, city, port, or province from whence they originated; from the names of the makers; and methods of weaving, dyeing, ornamentation, etc. The fixing of localities, methods, etc., is oftentimes guesswork. The textiles of to-day bearing the same name as those of the middle ages have nothing in common. Buckram was originally made in and called from Bokkara. In the middle ages it was costly, fine, and beautiful, used for church vestments, veils for covering ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... of the immigrant Irish," he pointed out, "lose their Celtic aspect and become Americanised.... To say that 'spontaneous variation,' increased by natural selection, can have produced this effect, is going too far." Unfortunately for Mr. Spencer, he was basing his conclusions on guesswork. It is only within the last few months that the first trustworthy evidence on the point has appeared, in the careful measurements of Hrdlicka who has demonstrated that Spencer was quite wrong in his statement. As a fact, the original traits persist with almost ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... esteem, because, to say that they were the remains of people who had been eaten, if the natives devoured as many as was supposed, the houses could not contain the bones, and there is no reason why, after eating them, they should preserve the relics. All this is but guesswork." Washington Irving agrees with the reverend historian, and describes the general belief in the cannibalism of the Caribs to the Spaniards' fear of them. Two eminent authorities positively deny it. Humboldt, in his before-cited work, ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... no telling," was the answer of the young inventor. "These things are more or less guesswork, even when you make two exactly alike. As far as I can tell, we have now a better craft than the Red Cloud was, but it remains to be seen ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton
... deaf old man, whose conversation was carried on principally by guesswork, and it was easy for him to gather that when her ladyship's handsome young sister had given him greeting she had not forgotten to inquire respecting the "rheumatics," which formed the greater ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... do was to attempt to follow the route that Fred had taken when he set out to place himself on the other side of the game. It was guesswork to trace his footsteps, but the elder youth made the effort. When he had progressed half the distance, however, he paused, convinced that his labor was utterly useless. He called to Fred, repeated their familiar signals and fired several charges in air, with no more response ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... reluctantly admitted to himself that Merrington's deductions were more swift and vigorous than his own, but he was secretly annoyed to think that the other had gained partly by guesswork the solution of a clue which had caused him so ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... happen, as they say, at the turn of ages, the art of divination, also, at one time rises in esteem, and is more successful in its predictions, clearer and surer tokens being sent from God, and then again, in another generation declines as low, becoming mere guesswork for the most part, and discerning future events by dim and uncertain intimations. This was the mythology of the wisest of the Tuscan sages, who were thought to possess a knowledge beyond other men. Whilst the Senate sat in consultation with the soothsayers, concerning ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... authority estimates that at the outbreak of the war the various Powers possessed a total of 4980 aircraft of all sorts. This sounds like a colossal fleet, but by 1917 it was probably multiplied more than tenfold. Of the increase of aircraft we can judge only by guesswork. The belligerents keep their output an inviolable secret. It was known that many factories with a capacity of from thirty to fifty 'planes a week were working in the chief belligerent lands, that the United States was shipping aircraft in parts to avoid violation of neutrality laws ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... to imagine, therefore, that ancient Celtic writers, with their passion for genealogies, should tamper with the ancestors of St. Patrick. Nicholson, a distinguished Irish scholar, was, of opinion that the addition "a deacon" was mere guesswork on the part of the copyist, and wrote "incertus liber hic"—"the book is here unreliable" ("St. Patrick, Apostle ...
— Bolougne-Sur-Mer - St. Patrick's Native Town • Reverend William Canon Fleming
... been lost before with half a dozen, sir, and every one thought different. One wanted to go one way; one wanted to go another. Fact is, gentlemen, we neither of us know the way. It's all guesswork. Once lost, there's nothing to guide you. I can't recollect this tree or that tree, because they're all so much alike, and it's as puzzling as being in the dark. There's only one way out of it, and that is to do as I say; you stand fast, and I'll cast ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... avoid any stray rocks, we should see daylight before we reach the coast. That is our sole hope. The ship is in a powerful tidal current, and it is high-water at 5.30 A.M. At a rough estimate, Hanover Island is twenty knots distant. Now you know all. The outcome is mere guesswork." ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... the wandering tribes known in other countries by the names of Bohemians, Gypsies, etc. This, like all unfounded opinions, of course originated in ignorance, which is always ready to have recourse to conjecture and guesswork, in preference to travelling through the long, mountainous, and stony road of patient investigation; it is, however, an error far more absurd and more destitute of tenable grounds than the ancient ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... mystery and cannot be solved by any evidence that we have. Almost every one who has written of it seems to have indulged in mere guesswork. One popular theory is that Miss Allen was in love with some one else; that her parents forced her into a brilliant marriage with Houston, which, however, she could not afterward endure; and that Houston, learning the facts, left her because he ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... Phyllis cheerfully. "You take special training in guesswork at library school. They call them 'teasers'. They say they're good ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... preachy about it, either. Just talks to you in words you can understand. But all the time you know he's got a lot back of it and could tell you ten times as much about it if you asked him. Makes you feel safe when you listen to him. Not a bit of guesswork or ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman
... ridge in view above the dense foliage, and could select the most promising point to make for; but this would sink out of sight as I approached the first belt of trees, and beyond them I must find my way by guesswork. ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... prone, beginning to crawl toward us with their shields held before, not as protection against bullets (for as that they were utterly worthless) but as cover that made their exact position merest guesswork. ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... if she were going to the far west; while some of the Southampton trains stop at Basingstoke, which is, indeed, the most convenient point on that route for sending off a letter. This was mere blind guesswork, to be sure, compared with Hilda's immediate and unerring intuition; but it had some probability in its favour, at any rate. Try both: of the two, she was likelier to be going ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... only fascination—I don't know. Sometimes it seems to me that she really did love Dave Walsh. Perhaps it was because he had frightened her with that even-unto-death, rise-from- the-grave stunt of his that she in the end inclined to the dago music- player. But it is all guesswork, and the facts are, sufficient. He wasn't a dago; he was a Russian count—this was straight; and he wasn't a professional piano-player or anything of the sort. He played the violin and the piano, and he sang—sang well—but it was for his own pleasure and for the pleasure of those ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... himself on the eighty-eighth. That's the sort of captain we want, Maise. A man who can use his head and who can bring the ship through eighty-odd runs safely. And that is going to take something besides guesswork. Don't forget—if you like to believe in mathematical probability statistics—our chances should be getting slender after all our combat experience. Yours, too, ...
— Shock Absorber • E.G. von Wald
... the accuracy of the commonly quoted statements concerning the prevalence of social disease, and therefore of immorality, it must be said in all fairness that there has been much guesswork and some deliberate exaggeration. We learn from various books and lectures that fifty, sixty-five, seventy-five and even ninety per cent of the men in the United States over eighteen years of age are at some time infected with ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... the result is something astounding, for the expense of a needless number of trains and of what would otherwise be an excessively large permanent force of employes must be added. Of course, nothing much better than guesswork is possible, but I believe that the total loss would be sufficient to provide a greater portion of the people of the United ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... fourteen years before the Basel group of 1529 was painted. It may well have been that some serious misunderstanding between them was at the bottom of that otherwise inexplicable departure in 1517, and the two years' absence in Lucerne and still more southern cities. Of course this is mere guesswork; so is every hypothesis until it is proved. But all the simple commonplaces of first love, estrangement, separation, and a renewed betrothal after Elsbeth's early widowhood with one child, could ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... about it!" is the muttered remark exchanged between Wilder and Cully. For they know that the deflection of a single point upon the prairies—above all, upon the Staked Plain—will leave the traveller, like a ship at sea without chart or compass, to steer by guesswork, or go ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... is presented simply as a story to be read for pastime, neither morality nor symbolism is hereinafter educed, and no "parallels" and "authorities" are quoted. Even the gaps are left unbridged by guesswork: whereas the historic and mythological problems perhaps involved are relinquished to those really thoroughgoing scholars whom erudition qualifies to deal with such topics, and ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... off as early as possible through the thorn scrub on a compass bearing that we hoped would bring us to a reported swamp at the head of the Swanee River. The Swanee River was one of the sources of the Tsavo. Of course this was guesswork. We did not know certainly the location of the swamp, its distance from us, nor what lay between us and it. However, we loaded all our transportable vessels ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... for it is through the imagination that one anticipates future changes and so prepares for them before they come. Accordingly, as a general proposition, the selection of a man for a vacancy within the organization is more or less a matter of guesswork. Now and then an ambitious, wide-awake young man works into the organization and in a very short time is spotted by various department managers for future promotion, but the number of such individuals is discouragingly small. ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... That they were all harmless traders I will not affirm; but none of them offered to chase us. Yet could I have been sure of a ship, I should have been glad to speak. My longitude was little more than guesswork; my latitude not very certain; and my compass was out. However, I supported my own and the spirits of my little company by telling them of the early navigators; how Columbus, Candish, Drake, Schouten and other heroic marine worthies of distant times had navigated the globe, discovered new ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... the time they became engaged. General Williams says they were engaged before seven o'clock. [Footnote: Id., p. 476.] General Meade says they relieved his men not earlier than ten or eleven. [Footnote: Id., p. 270.] It seems to be guesswork in both cases, and we are forced to judge from circumstantial evidence. Ricketts thinks he had been fighting four hours when he retired for lack of ammunition, and the Twelfth Corps men had not yet reached him. [Footnote: Id., p. 259.] Patrick, on the extreme ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... work is like that," said Captain Godfrey, when I spoke to him about it. "It's a science. It's all a matter of the higher mathematics. Everything is worked out to half a dozen places of decimals. We've eliminated chance and guesswork just as far as possible from ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... believe it was Lyn Rowan. Sometimes five years will work a wonderful change in a woman; or is it that time and distance work some subtle transition in one's recollection? She didn't give me much time to indulge in guesswork, though. While I wondered, for an instant, if there could by any possibility be another woman on God's footstool with quite the same tilt to her head, the same heavy coils of tawny hair and unfathomable eyes that always met your own so frankly, she recognized the pair of ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... of their direction and dip, will be very useful. In the case of deep wells, it is really essential. By making inquiries as to similar well operations in the neighborhood, one may gain some useful information, and thus, to some extent, avoid guesswork. When one must drill or bore through rock for a very deep well, which necessarily is expensive, much money, often uselessly spent, may be saved by consulting the reports of the State geologist, or the publications of the United States ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various
... go any way towards an explanation of it are but guesswork, and I give them more because I would not conceal anything, than because I think they are of ...
— Lady Into Fox • David Garnett
... sound, I should say they fought their way up-hill in skirmish order, and when they got to the top the enemy— whoever they were—took to flight. But that is guesswork. There were two casualties on our side. One man shot through the arm, which did not matter much; he was well able to lie about what had happened and to boast of how many men he had slain before the bullet hit him. The other was wounded pretty ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... cannot say. Perhaps I might hazard a guess, but it's no use talking of guesswork. To-day I hope for ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... their wits end when they try to press the Bible into their service. Every movement shows that they are hard-pushed. Their odd conceits and ever varying shifts, their forced constructions, lacking even plausibility, their bold assumptions, and blind guesswork, not only proclaim their cause desperate, but themselves. Some of the Bible defences thrown around slavery by ministers of the Gospel, do so torture common sense, Scripture, and historical fact, that it were hard to tell whether absurdity, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... government and the municipal moneys. In fact, San Francisco's boss-ridden condition was due in greater degree to Daylight's widespreading battle than even San Francisco ever dreamed. For the part he had played, the details of which were practically all rumor and guesswork, quickly leaked out, and in consequence he became a much-execrated and well-hated man. Nor had Daylight himself dreamed that his raid on the steamship companies would have ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... suggest itself as an appropriate time at which the occurrence might be supposed to have taken place; and if he were writing in 1220, the revelation to the hermit would thus naturally be relegated to the year 720, the year under which the entry actually appears. This, of course, is pure guesswork, but the fact remains that the "Chronicle" was written in or about 1220, and the "Book of the Graal" ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... own opportunities otherwise we are children of circumstance. What becomes of us is a matter of guesswork. We have no hand in compelling our own future. Diffidence is a species of cowardice. It causes a man's courage to ooze out at his toes faster than it comes into his heart. Such men often have big ideas, but having ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... must be remembered that, in the absence of records, any solution of this difficult problem at present rests on mere speculation and guesswork, and the opinions expressed here must be accepted as mere conjectures unsupported by direct contemporary evidence, and based ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray
... of responsibility grow heavy indeed and doubts began to assail him as to the wisdom of the course he was pursuing. After all, there was yet time to retreat. He had only to say the word and his companions would willingly follow. His plans in remaining were built largely on guesswork and theory. If they worked out as he had reasoned, the Indians would be warned. With their aid the convicts could be surrounded, captured, and sent back to a coast town under guard. Some blood would likely be ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... biscuits in my pocket, I returned towards the palace, apparently without any anxiety or hurry, always followed by the same individual. I judged that the bargello, having failed in his project, was now reduced to guesswork, and I was strengthened in that view of the case when the gate-keeper of the palace told me, without my asking any question, as I came in, that an arrest had been attempted during the night, and had not succeeded. While he was speaking, one of the auditors of ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... intuitions oftener they would not go wrong so often, perhaps, since their best reasoning is only guesswork, after all. It was not going to be destiny that brought Davidge and Marie Louise together again so much as the man's hatred of leaving anything unfinished—even a dream or a vague desire. There was no shaking ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... some time before he recovers sufficient coolness to reflect—then only with vague comprehensiveness; nothing clear save the fact that he has completely lost himself, and his way. To go on were mere guesswork. True, the moon tells him the west, the direction of Coyote creek. But westward he will not go, dreading to again encounter that ghostly thing; for he thinks it was there ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... position by a comparison of the depths obtained with those shown on the chart, but even then the eccentricity of the tidal currents and, let it be said, the erratic and most unladylike behaviour of the Rapier's standard compass, made navigation a matter of some conjecture and a good deal of guesswork. ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... know, but you tempt me to guesswork. Sir Grenville was a keen yachtsman, and probably he is on board his yacht still resting in his coffin, waiting for his wife to bring the antidote to the drug. His son and Mr. Thompson took the body that night in the car. There must have been two of them to deal with the ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... fortress, and church now rising amid the rank tropical luxuriance of the wild forest. The mouths of the main affluents of these highway rivers were as a rule well known. But in many cases nothing but the mouth was known. The river itself was not known, and it was placed on the map by guesswork. Colonel Rondon found, for example, that the course of the Gy-Parana was put down on the map two degrees out of its proper place. He, with his party, was the first to find out its sources, the first to traverse its upper course, ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... me alone. You will notice the books, mostly occult: partly mine, partly the detective's. We have gone at it systematically from the beginning. We have learned almost everything but what would help us. Mostly sophistry—and guesswork. Beats all how much ink has been wasted to say nothing. We ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... from the north country. They were voluble in their own behalf, but their talk was slippery, so the chief felt. They were also voluble in regard to Lida Kennard, but Mern found himself more than ever enmeshed in his guesswork ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... perceptible. As far back as the year 1906 the late Count Witte and myself made a guess at the time-distance which the nation still had to traverse, assuming the rate of progress to be constant, before reaching the abyss. This, however, was mere guesswork, which one of the many possibilities—and in especial change in the speed-rate—might belie. In effect, events moved somewhat more quickly than we anticipated, and it was the World War and its appalling concomitants that precipitated ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... quailed and fell before her, and the Lord wrought victory by the hand of David. So it is David's history that stands out fullest and clearest in the whole record, from Abraham onward. How much is true history and how much is imaginative addition must be largely guesswork. But we see in David the ideal hero and type of that period of Jewish history as we see in Achilles and Odysseus the ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... where,—for everything is kept in a charming condition of perfect uncertainty, from the want of any public newspaper or journal, or other accurate means of information. So everybody asks everybody, and everybody tells everybody, until nobody knows anything, and everything is guesswork. But, nevertheless, despite impatient words, and muttered curses, and all kinds of awkward mistakes, the battle goes bravely on. There is terrible fighting at the door of the Sistine Chapel, to hear the Miserere, which is sure to be Baini's when it is said to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... they took two of myself and my guns while firing. Of course, the anxious officers of batteries had to lay the guns personally at this early stage, and every shot was a difficult matter, as at the extreme range we were firing, with the lengthening pieces on, the sighting was rather guesswork, and we had to judge mainly by the explosion at a distance of five and a half miles. We were all done up after our exertions under a broiling sun, and hence were not used any more that day (12th). Behind us we saw miles of troops and transport on the march ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne
... that we must prepare our navy in such a way that, say twenty years hence, it will be able to protect the country against any enemy, we shall then instinctively adopt a policy. The fact of having ahead of us a definite, difficult thing to do, will at once take us out of the region of guesswork, and force us into logical methods. We shall realize the problem in its entirety; we shall see the relation of one part to another, and of all the parts to the whole; we shall realize that the deepest study of the wisest men must ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... For, guesswork though it was, West felt that Mafeking must lie right ahead, and as they dashed on he began to feel a kind of certainty that if left to themselves their sagacious steeds would take them right ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... a hurried bang; dark forms, like rats running for their holes, scuttled to safety; women screamed and shrieked; children whimpered. On Jimmie Dale ran. For the second time he crashed into a form, and won by. They were firing at him from above now—but by guesswork—firing down the stair well. The pound of feet racing down the stairs came from behind him—two flights behind him—he calculated he had that much start. He gained the entrance hallway where all was dark, leaped for the front door, opened it, pulled it shut with ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... difficulties in this method of interpreting Scripture from its own history, I conceive to be so great that I do not hesitate to say that the true meaning of Scripture is in many places inexplicable, or at best mere subject for guesswork; but I must again point out, on the other hand, that such difficulties only arise when we endeavour to follow the meaning of a prophet in matters which cannot be perceived, but only imagined, not in things, whereof the understanding can give a clear idea, and which are conceivable through ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part II] • Benedict de Spinoza
... faith and a doubtful memory as guides. Every road, we well knew, would be patrolled by Federal pickets; only the broken country between could yield us the faintest prospect of success. But at best it must largely be guesswork,—Providence, luck, what you will,—and the slightest swing of the pendulum could easily frustrate our ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... slightly, had been exchanged between them every Saturday night for years. Dorcas replied now without thinking. Her mind had spread its wings and flown out into the sweet stillness of the garden and the world beyond; it even hastened on into the unknown ways of guesswork, seeking for one who should be coming. She strained her ears to hear the beating of hoofs and the rattle of wheels across the little, bridge. The dusk sifted in about the house, faster and faster; a whippoorwill cried from the woods. So she sat until the ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... risen the craft sufficiently to determine that she was a fore-and-aft schooner. Then our difficulties began, for there were no stars, and within ten minutes of the time of sunset it fell pitch-dark, from which moment our course was largely a matter of guesswork. The two girls and Julius declared that they were so tired and their hands were so raw that they could do no more; whereupon Mrs Vansittart and Anthea took one oar, while I laboured on at the other. But by this time I, too, was weak and trembling with ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... approval of the plan. Ripon chose an eleven of the likeliest boys, selecting the biggest and most active; for as there had been no room for cricket in the yard their aptitude for the game was a matter of guesswork, though most of them had played during the holidays. Mr. Porson chose the next ten and after tossing for innings, which Ripon won, they set to work. Mr. Porson played for a time as long stop, putting on two of the strongest of his team as bowlers, and changing ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... fretting guesswork on her cousin's surmise. She relied too much on Owen's sense of propriety to entertain the idea that he could be forwarding a pursuit so obviously insolent, but a still wilder conjecture had been set afloat in her mind. Could the nameless one be Robert Fulmort? Though aware of the anonymous ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... some mathematical genius will figure out this problem with exactitude and we will have a dependable table giving the maximum carrying capacity of various surface areas at various stated speeds, based on the dimensions of the advancing edges. At present it is largely a matter of guesswork so far as making accurate computation goes. Much depends upon the shape of the machine, and the amount of surface offering ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell
... given it their attention, but as yet no one has been able to conclusively decide whether a race of intelligent beings exists in any sphere other than our own. All efforts to determine the matter result in mere surmise, conjecture and guesswork. The best of scientists can ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... for. Conscious of the error into which her own impatience had led her, she was at a loss how to retrace the false step that she had taken. But two alternatives presented themselves: either to abandon the hope of making any discovery—or to attempt to penetrate Alban 's motives by means of pure guesswork, ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... to learn whether we're still on the right track, or have strayed away from it. We've been going by guesswork long enough; but, if I don't greatly mistake we'll there see something to tell us whether our guesses have been good or bad. If the redskins have come up the river at all, it's pretty sure they also have crossed the riacho at this very ford, and we should there ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... to Hilliard that here, perhaps, was evidence of design; that this very difficulty had been deliberately caused by Mr. Coburn with the object of keeping himself and Merriman under observation and rendering them harmless. This, he recognized, was guesswork, but still it might be ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... credibility, changing it in time to a mere legend, a tale told out of the hazy distance. But in America it obtrudes; it stares eternally on in all its stark unforgetfulness, absorbing its background, constantly rescuing itself from legend by turning guesswork and theory into facts, till it appears bare, irremediable, and complete,—witnessed at high noon, and in New Jersey of all places, ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... islands are common in Bering Sea. But we were interested in this one, both because of its strange appearance, and because it was unmarked on the chart. That last was not so unusual, though. The charts of that section of Bering are mostly guesswork. ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... of an hour after this conversation she was a little uneasy. He was a clever boy, Henry; he did watch people. But then he was very young, It was all guesswork with him. ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... investment, with relief not yet in sight. True, it was within hearing; but so it had been three weeks before, on Magersfontein day. We were weary of this interminable thunder, which showed us no results. Colonel Kekewich was as reticent as ever. Of guesswork there was plenty. Had Methuen not had time sufficiently to augment his forces to cut his way through. The troops were in the country; we were placated with the information that they were "falling over one another in Cape Town." This comforting gem glittered less in our minds as the days sped ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... Now, as a matter of fact, Mr. Frog was a very careless person. He had thrown away Brownie's measurements before he made his clothes, instead of afterwards. And he had made the new suit entirely by guesswork. It was only natural that he would make some mistake; and so he had cut the trousers entirely ...
— The Tale of Brownie Beaver • Arthur Scott Bailey
... They bear the stamp of his mind, strong, without precision. That they were written by Johnston, who seconded them, was only the rumor of the day, and very possibly unfounded." Works, vi. 484. In the face of all this tissue of rumor, guesswork, and self-contradiction, the deliberate statement of Patrick Henry himself that he wrote the five resolutions referred to by him, and that he wrote them "alone, unadvised, and unassisted," ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... acted. Beaton must have taken the same train, and the two men got friendly; probably they never knew each other in New York, but, being from the same place, it was easy enough to strike up an acquaintance. What occurred on board is all guesswork, but a sudden blow at night, on an observation platform, at some desert station, is not impossible; or it might be sickness, and the two men left behind to seek a physician. Here was where Lacy must have come in. He goes East occasionally, ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... life were imagined with a good deal of elision and an amount of guesswork that would have amused a janitor. But Rudd and Martha were chiefly interested in the boy's vacations at home, and their own trips to New Haven, and the letters of approval ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... repeated Sarka the First, dropping his own voice to a husky, frightened whisper. "Why, the oceans would be hurled out of their beds, and a wall of water a mile high or more—it is all guesswork!—would rush eastward around the world, bearing everything before it! It would uproot and destroy buildings, sweep the rocky covering of the earth free of soil; and humanity, caught on the earth below the highest level of the world's greatest ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... has been some criticism based on guesswork and even on malicious falsification of fact. Such criticism creates doubts and creates fears, and weakens our ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... visible, much too fine—in short, wouldn't it pass anywhere for a woman's hand? Say a woman who bit her nails. If it were really such there would be a pair of feminine feet also to be concealed, and boards would do it very nicely—but this is all guesswork, and must not be allowed to affect any subsequent conclusions. If you will excuse me a few minutes I will use the microscope a little on the sill of the east window before we are interrupted by our friends the officers, who will be sure to ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... movement superb! To say that she "sailed in" more clearly might tell Her grace in its buoyant and billowy swell. Her robe was a vague circumambient space, With shadowy boundaries made of point-lace; The rest was but guesswork, and well might defy The power of critical feminine eye To define or describe: 'twere as futile to try The gossamer web of the cirrus to trace, Floating far in the blue of a warm ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... the rooms were empty, some further glimmering knowledge had stirred her benumbed consciousness. She may have flung herself on the bed in a paroxysm of weeping, heedless of the overturned night light and the havoc it caused. That, of course, is sheer guesswork, though the glass dish which held the light was found later on the charred floor, which was protected, to some extent, by ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... book was never written by Daniel or Isaiah or Jeremiah,' 'It is certain this chapter is an addition of such and such a date,' etc. It is not universally acknowledged. It is not certain. The whole thing is pure guesswork. There is only one way to prove the authorship of a book, and that is by testimony. There is nothing under the sun more absurd, philologically, than that a common and very poor stock-actor should have written 'Hamlet.' We know he did write it, however, not by 'internal ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... proved that Statius Quadratus was consul in A.D. 142; and then, by the aid of the dreamer Aristides, he has tried to show that he probably became proconsul of Asia about A.D. 154 or A.D. 155. His calculations are obviously mere guesswork. Even admitting their correctness, it would by no means follow that Polycarp was then consigned to martyrdom. The postscript of the Smyrnaean letter is, as we have seen, justly suspected as no part of the original document. Dr. Lightfoot himself tells us, that it is "generally treated as ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen
... was something like this: partly guesswork, I admit. Although I know her well I can only put her past together by deductions based on a few admitted facts, one or two letters and occasional unfinished sentences, interrupted by people coming in. Is it not always thus with our friends and acquaintances? I ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... no guesswork involved in determining which of the doors along the passage hid the machine in what, if Graylock's story was correct, had been Hovig's personal stateroom. As Dasinger approached that point, it was like climbing into silent ...
— The Star Hyacinths • James H. Schmitz
... for the future, however, must be based on clear understanding of the problems involved. And that can be gained only by straight thinking—not guesswork, not political manipulation. ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Copyright © 2025 Diccionario ingles.com
|
|
|
