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More "Speculate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... get home very tired and excited, and find it difficult to get to sleep. I would lie and speculate about what it was we WERE going to do. One hadn't anticipated quite such a tremendous accession to power for one's party. Liberalism was swirling in like ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... now there was no weak yielding—no despairing cry among the southern people. They looked at the coming end steadily and unflinchingly; and now, for the first time, they began to speculate upon the possible loss of their beloved Capital. It was rumored in Richmond that General Lee had told the President that the lines were longer than he could hold; that the sole hope was to evacuate the town and collect the armies at some interior point for a final struggle ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... believe, moderately as usual," replied George, with a worried look on his face; "but I tell you frankly, Ben, whether it's a good thing or not, if that's Miss Mitty's legacy, you oughtn't to speculate with it. Sally ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... and streaming and darkening in the fierce gusts of the wind. A vague army of evil things seemed to start up and come crowding between him and Alice. He turned homeward, with a sense of loss and a great sadness at his heart, unable even to speculate as to the cause of Alice's behaviour. All he knew was, that his mother had something to do with it. For the first time since childhood, he ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... extent of the danger, but he had known that it existed, especially since Scotland. It would be interesting—as the historians say—to speculate on what he would have done, if he could have foretold what would happen. But he had certainly not foretold the crisis of yesterday evening. He had received a telegram from her at lunch-time, suggesting the fulfilment of a jesting promise, made in Scotland, that she should ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... still fixed upon the line, I had completely given up my thoughts to the story of the poor German boy, who had been snatched from poverty by the interference of the parish clerk's daughter; and I contrived to speculate on what I should have done under such circumstances, imagining all sorts of extravagances in which I should have indulged, to testify my gratitude to so ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the world. At Billingsgate, where they are termed "bummarees," it is stated that they fulfil a useful office in that they act as distributors to the small costermongers, who could hardly get along without them. The "bummarees" watch the market and speculate accordingly, and it must be urged for them that they run great risks from the unexpected arrival of a large amount of fish with a consequent glut in the market. But the "bummarees" pure and simple are comparatively few. Their ranks, however, are swelled in the following way: A salesman, having ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... anticipate the story. He had no longer to write mainly for the ears of a Prince Nicolaus, but for those of a backward musical public accustomed to a very different sort of music, Handel's. One is tempted to speculate as to what might have happened had he been sooner set free. There is nothing whatever to show that Nicolaus was ever in a hurry to urge him on to fresh experiments, and in the absence of any evidence it is ...
— Haydn • John F. Runciman
... while, finally, the island with a fringing reef would have the appearance of an ordinary hill, or mountain, girded by a vast parapet, within which would lie a shallow moat. And the dry bed of the Pacific might afford grounds for an inhabitant of the moon to speculate upon the extraordinary subterranean activity to which these vast and ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... dear. Only in acknowledging so much, let us remember that there are prices at which these good things may be too costly. Therefore, being desirous, too, of telling the truth in this matter, I must confess that Lucy did speculate with some regret on what it would have been to be Lady Lufton. To have been the wife of such a man, the owner of such a heart, the mistress of such a destiny—what more or what better could the world have done for her? And now she had thrown all that aside because she would not endure that ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... man; but the clothes themselves, and the accidental facts, appear, at all events, to be matters of fate. And if you can obtain knowledge of a man through actual contact with his personality, you do not trouble to draw conclusions from his method of donning his clothes. You may speculate in this fashion with regard to strangers, or mere acquaintances. You have a surer, and infinitely more interesting, ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... chances of American history have brought constant temptation to speculation, and plenty of our people prefer to gamble upon what they love to call a "proposition," rather than to go to the bottom of the facts. They would rather speculate than know. ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... that I innocently believed you came to propose we should work in company, and speculate, both of us, with the money of Monsieur de Frescas, of which I have entire control—and here you talk to me of something entirely different! Frescas, my good friend, is one of the legal titles of this young man, who has seven in all. ...
— Vautrin • Honore de Balzac
... running. Some one had even gone to the church, and now, from the distance, rang the tocsin note of the old bell. There was a long flare of crimson on the sky, which made remote people speculate as to ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... been the outcome of the discussions, the dish-washings, the walks, the leanings over the bridge at the trysting-place, we may only speculate now. For a time the outlook for this "romance of real life" seemed promising, then came disillusion. Gibbs, alas, had a bent which at first we did not suspect, but which in time became only too manifest. It had its root in a laudable ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... This gift he had almost as markedly as the gift of speech; he at once perceived that his guest was no ordinary man, and by a sort of instinct he had discovered on what subjects he was best calculated to speak, and wherein they could gain most from him. Charles Osmond's thoughts she could only speculate about; but that he was ready to take them all as friends, and did not regard them as a different order ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... drawing himself up, "have been chiefly governed by the maxim of Lord Bacon; I speculate in those philosophies which come home to my business and bosom—pray, do you know ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... to this time, it is impossible not to speculate upon how things might have turned out had the Radical party taken Andrew to them in his day ...
— Better Dead • J. M. Barrie
... drug himself, displaying an extreme inconstancy, and flitting from Kennedy's Red Discovery to Kennedy's White, and from Hood's Sarsaparilla to Mother Seigel's Syrup. And there were, besides, some mildewed and half-empty bottles, the labels obliterated, over which Nares would sometimes sniff and speculate. "Seems to smell like diarrhoea stuff," he would remark. "I wish't I knew, and I would try it." But the slop-chest was indeed represented by the plugs of niggerhead and nothing else. Thus paternal laws are made, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... coming, and to the last man of them pushed to the door to see who it might be. Their first thought, of course, would be that the old mountain-lion, Steve's grandfather, had come roaring down from his place in the north. Terry tossed up her head so that they might see and know and marvel and speculate and do and say anything which pleased them. Having crossed her Rubicon, she didn't care the snap of her ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... But, though to speculate upon the future conduct of others under impending circumstances be but too often to expose the fallacy of our wisest anticipations, to contemplate the nature of that conduct after it has been displayed is a useful subject of curiosity, and may ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... rebellion so soon after he had ignominiously washed his hands of it, sealed forever his own social doom. That, it is certain, was most severe and drastic. The money paid him by the British Government was accursed as were the thirty silver pieces of Iscariot; for his passion to speculate ruined him financially some time before the end of his life, and he breathed his last amid comparative poverty and the dread of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... accumulation had been increasing for five or six years, therefore it is impossible to ascertain or even to speculate upon the distance to which it might extend. The slave-traders had been obliged to seek another rout, which they had found via the Bahr Giraffe, which river had proved to be merely a branch of the White Nile, as I had suggested in my former work, ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... to speculate long, however, for almost at that moment their feet touched the water, and they sank down, down, down through ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... possible, others rather than themselves. And even as to those of the very highest class—could any peaceful honours compensate, to such spirits as Ney and Soult, for a revolution, that for ever shrouded in darkness the glittering prizes on which Napoleon had encouraged them to speculate? Were the comrades of Murat and Bernadotte to sit down in contentment as peers of France, among the Montmorencies and the Rohans, who considered them at the best as low-born intruders, and scorned, in private society, to acknowledge them as members ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... find I have had too gloomy apprehensions. A man, neither connected with ministers nor opponents, may speculate too subtly. If all this is but a scramble for power, let it fall to whose lot it will! It is the attack on the constitution that strikes me. I have nothing to say for the corruption of senators; but if the senate itself is declared vile by authority, that is by a dissolution, will ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... no recollection of reaching the fir-wood, and as, long before morning, all traces were obliterated, the facts remained a mystery. Janet thought that David had some wonderful persuasion about it; but he was never heard even to speculate on the subject. Certain it was, that Hugh had saved Margaret's life. He seemed quite well next day, for he was of a very powerful and enduring frame for his years. She recovered more slowly, and perhaps ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... darkness shutting down, I was forced to await the rising of the moon, and given an opportunity to speculate on the question of the wisdom of my chase. Possibly I had conjured up impossible dangers, like some nervous old housewife, and when I should catch up with Powell would get a good laugh for my pains. However, I am not prone to sensitiveness, and the ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Bakahenzie's benefit the oration of the previous night. Bakahenzie listened solemnly, grunted acquiescence, and again made his request. Birnier refused abruptly. Again Bakahenzie grunted acceptance which caused Birnier to speculate upon what move the wily doctor had in mind. However, after the usual starting of false trails, he announced that the consecration of the idol would take place that day and began to instruct the new god in his divine duties. That ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... story-root may be as prolific of heterogeneous offspring as a word-root. Just as we find the root spak, "to look," begetting words so various as sceptic, bishop, speculate, conspicsuous, species, and spice, we must expect to find a simple representation of the diurnal course of the sun, like those lyrically given in the Veda, branching off into stories as diversified as those of ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... of his river-front claim, and that many who were demanding scrip had already received land in Manitoba. It contended further that the agitation of the half-breeds was fanned by white settlers in Prince Albert, eager to speculate in scrip, and hinted darkly at mysterious forces and personages in the background, in Canada and elsewhere. No attempt was made, however, to prove the truth of these latter charges or to bring the guilty to ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... not speculate long over what to do next. He felt that the farther he got from the counterfeiters the better off he would be. Setting the lantern on the floor above, he took a firm hold on a plank that looked ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... another—in short, beings in all respects like themselves, or only shewing such differences as they knew to be producible by difference of climate and habits of life. Precisely in this manner we can speculate on the inhabitants of remote spheres. We see that matter has originally been diffused in one mass, of which the spheres are portions. Consequently, inorganic matter must be presumed to be everywhere the same, although probably with differences in the proportions of ingredients in different ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... so; but men are different. If there is a veil before us, we must tear it away,—not sit muffled in its folds, and speculate on what is behind ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... Julius had taken her there in the winter, and the news of her father's illness did not reach her for some weeks. But, as it happened, when Charlotte's letter detailing the sad event arrived, Julius was particularly in need of something to wonder over and to speculate about; and of all subjects, Seat-Sandal interested him most. To be master of the fine old place was his supreme ambition. He felt that he possessed all the qualities necessary to make him a leader among the Dales gentlemen. He foresaw, through them, social influence ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... religious and soul-stirring movement had particular dogmas for its primary impulse, as was the case in all the conflicts which have disturbed the bosom of Christianity. The Jew of this epoch was as little theological as possible. He did not speculate upon the essence of the Divinity; the beliefs about angels, about the destinies of man, about the Divine personality, of which the first germs might already be perceived, were quite optional—they were meditations, ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... fellow-passengers, many of whom were returning home, and all of whom expected to be met by friends, left me at leisure, as I looked at unattractive, unfamiliar Yokohama and the pale grey land stretched out before me, to speculate somewhat sadly on my destiny on these strange shores, on which I have not even an acquaintance. On mooring we were at once surrounded by crowds of native boats called by foreigners sampans, and Dr. Gulick, a near relation of my Hilo friends, came on board to meet his daughter, welcomed ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... she seemed not anxious to see him alone, for many occasions presented themselves when a word from her would have given him another delicious half-hour of adoration. But he fell gradually in love and began to speculate wildly on marriage. Though this design flowed through his brain even to his lips, still he knew afterward that the desire had not been deeply rooted. Once he dreamt that it had come true and woke up in a cold panic, for in ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... familiar knowledge of the tariff of an attractive confectioner, she was asked whether she and her sisters had been frequenting those little tables on their way from school. "I sometimes go in there, mother," she confessed; "but I generally speculate outside." ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... hearing a human sound beyond the echoes of one's own footsteps sent back from the depth of a copse. For miles it went, turning now this way, now that, until a stranger would wonder whither it was leading him, and speculate whether, at the end, he might not find himself on the same high road which he had left long ago. At one part, for a mile or more, the lane skirted a forest, where, down short vistas, could be seen deeper ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... From the mill we could see other objects of deep interest. These were, the vessels from St. Michael's, on their way to Baltimore. It was a source of much amusement to view the flowing sails and complicated rigging, as the little crafts dashed by, and to speculate upon Baltimore, as to the kind and quality of the place. With so many sources of interest around me, the reader may be prepared to learn that I began to think very highly of Col. L.'s plantation. It was just a place to my ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... suffered both ungladly after the manner of all wild jungle creatures? Did they, in those days, cast aside their bark loin clothes, and revel once more in pristine nakedness, and in the green things of the forest, on all occasions of rejoicing? We can only speculate, and none can tell us whether we guess aright. But year after year, in a hundred camps throughout the broad Sakai country, the same ceremony is performed, and the same ancient chant goes up through ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... with an affected ease, and a gaiety which, he by no means felt, Undy Scott leant back in his chair, and began to speculate whether his new purchase was worth the purchase-money. 'He's a sharp fellow; certainly, in some things, and may do well yet; but he's uncommonly green. That, however, will wear off. I should not be surprised if he told Neverbend the whole transaction before this time to-morrow.' And then Mr. ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... to the utmost; and Wilfred, determined to rise to the occasion, threw off his sadness, ceased to speculate as to the chances of the insurrection {xvi}; that night, at least, he would give to joy—he would encourage his people who loved him so faithfully by rejoicing ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... then three cards are given to each, by one at a time, and another turned up for trump. The cards are not to be looked at, except in this manner: The eldest hand shows the uppermost card, which, if a trump, the company may speculate on, or bid for—the highest bidder buying and paying for it, provided the price offered be approved of by the seller. After this is settled, if the first card does not prove a trump, then the next ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... Hope. Those tertiary epochs, which we are apt to consider as abounding to an astonishing degree with large animals, because we find the remains of many ages accumulated at certain spots, could hardly boast of more large quadrupeds than Southern Africa does at present. If we speculate on the condition of the vegetation during these epochs we are at least bound so far to consider existing analogies, as not to urge as absolutely necessary a luxuriant vegetation, when we see a state of things so totally different at ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... a rare experience for me, who had written "The Mysteries of the Great Submarine Grounds," thus to see, at first hand, the life which I had only been able to speculate on before. We captured many rare specimens, and shot a fine sea-otter, the only known quadruped that inhabits the rocky depths of the Pacific. It was five feet long, and its skin was ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... he has brought no happiness to himself, and, unless I am mistaken, he is going to wreck his whole scheme in one tremendous crash that we cannot now foresee. A lawyer, like myself, sees many hard, miserable, sordid things, but a Beeman has leisure to speculate as to whither they tend. And they all tend to the ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... freely to his new passion. With his comfortable fortune and good connections, the future seemed bright and possible enough as to circumstances. He knew that Argemone felt for him; how much it seemed presumptuous even to speculate, and as yet no golden-visaged meteor had arisen portentous in his amatory zodiac. No rich man had stepped in to snatch, in spite of all his own flocks and herds, at the poor man's own ewe- lamb, and set him barking at all the world, as many a poor lover has to ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... jovial countenance, and doubtless genial ways, had the right to stand at her dressing-table, if he chose, and speculate upon the various uses of all the daintiness that was spread before him. He had the right and cared nothing for it, while the man who did care, stood there shamefaced, all at once feeling himself an ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... obviously have been among the earliest scientific observations. It must not be inferred, however, that this observation implied a necessary conception of the complete revolution of these bodies about the earth. It is unnecessary to speculate here as to how the primitive intelligence conceived the transfer of the sun from the western to the eastern horizon, to be effected each night, for we shall have occasion to examine some historical speculations regarding ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... yet too early to speculate with much confidence on the remote consequences of the war. One of its more immediate results has already been to disabuse the Southern mind of some of its most fatal misconceptions as to Northern character. They thought us a trading people, incapable of lofty sentiment, ready to sacrifice everything ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... of married life the young wife, if she is a wise little lady, will take stock. She will begin to think, and she will naturally speculate about the future. She will try to determine the facts in her particular life that are the important ones so far as the attainment of success is concerned. Her material success of course is dependent upon the efficiency of her husband. ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... subtle arts from his wanderings, luring him to his death; or, at other times, as the mutinous daughter of revolt. But when he felt, in memory, the warm touch of her hand, the old wildness of his nature responded, he ceased to speculate or care, and he longed only to crush and subdue her by the brute power of the man in him. For good or bad, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... explain it, for he had no time just then to speculate upon it; the explanation would ...
— The Story of Red Feather - A Tale of the American Frontier • Edward S. (Edward Sylvester) Ellis
... is not dependent on the theories of philosophers: we know what our duties are for the most part before we speculate about them. And the use of speculation is not to teach us what we already know, but to inspire in our minds an interest about morals in general, to strengthen our conception of the virtues by showing that they confirm one another, to prove to us, as Socrates would have said, that they are ...
— Philebus • Plato
... shoulder, and in her lap the head of a sleeping youngster. The man's eyes were wide open. He was staring out over the water and thinking, which is not a good thing for a shelterless man with a family to do. It would not be a pleasant thing to speculate upon his thoughts; but this I know, and all London knows, that the cases of out-of-works killing their wives and babies is not an ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... are," he said, aloud, with all his old lazy urbanity. "I suppose it's no use trying to throttle you in order to find out; it would be displeasing to pass the night with a corpse. Besides I might be the corpse. I've got no matches and I've smashed my torch, so I can only speculate. Who could you be, now? Let ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... Wednesday morning. It certainly could be done, he said to himself, telling himself at the same time that all that had been passing in his own mind was no more than a vague speculation. A man is apt to speculate on things which have no reality to him, till they ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... proportion of cases in which the spectre should come at the moment of the death of one or another of all the cluster who are closely connected with the original of the spectre. But this, we know, is almost without example. It remains then, for all, who speculate at all, to look upon the asserted phenomenon, think what they may of it, the thing which is to be explained, as a connection in time of the death, and the {48} simultaneous appearance of the dead. Any person the least used to ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... and through is a disturber, it bumps into every kind of fixed notion and takes off a chip here and there, it probes into all sorts of mysteries and opens them to find that they are hollow wind-bag affairs, tho' always held as holy of holies heretofore. To think, to speculate, to wonder, to query—these imply imagination, and the Devil has just one function in this Universe —to destroy, to kill, or suppress or to divert or prevent the imagination. Imagination is the Divine Spark, and old Beelzebub has had his hands full ever since that spark was born. "As you were," ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... and told the truth, and the truth was mighty and would prevail. After that he had nothing to do during the rest of his trip but sit alongside one of his companions and talk of cattle-herding and speculate concerning the future of Black Dan. All he could learn regarding the latter was that he was going to the bad ...
— Elam Storm, The Wolfer - The Lost Nugget • Harry Castlemon
... capacity for suffering is less in animals than in man. Any further explanation that may be given of their fate will be in the nature of hypothesis, if not actually mythical in its character; and I may leave the reader to speculate upon ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... in the cook she could not find kept her for nearly forty-eight hours from speculation as to what, if not office business, took Maurice to Medfield. When she did begin to speculate she said to herself, "He doesn't tell me things about his business!" Then she was stabbed again by his annoyance because she had opened the letter from Mr. Houghton; then by his secretiveness in regard to that adventure on the river with Mrs. ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... practically unknowable to us—this being so, it will be seen that states very much nearer to us than the End must be utterly beyond the powers not only of our understanding but also of our imagination, even when strained to its utmost. This being so, why should we attempt to speculate about The End? Instead, why ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... men were of all sorts, from cowboys in their chaps, who had left the range for the chance of sudden wealth, to storekeepers from Hereford and other towns. Excitement reigned, no one was normal. Bottles passed freely. Among the crowd moved shifty-eyed men who had come to speculate. There were gamblers, plain bullies, swaggerers, with here and there a bearded miner, gray of hair and faded blue of eye, either moving steadily through the throng or held up by a little crowd to whom he declaimed with ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... had been more than a lieutenant. Here was an answer to the question which had perplexed him. But it only led to another question: "Had Scrope been degraded, and why?" He did not, however, speculate on the question, for his attention was seized the next moment. Scrope made no sort of answer to Knightley's appeal, but began to drum very softly with his fingers on the table. And the drumming, at first vague and of no significance, gradually took on, of itself as it seemed, ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... the actionless present. Or, time is like a running river and the present is a rock on which it breaks but which it cannot remove with itself. Therefore we are not concerned to investigate the past antecedent to life, nor to speculate on the future subsequent to death. We should simply seek to know the present, that being the sole form in which the will manifests itself. Therefore, if we are satisfied with life as it is, we may confidently ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... transferred to a full professorship in a small college was to come into close, daily contact with the ruling power, a contact from which there was no escape, in which instinctive likes and antipathies might make or mar a career. At this thought the young man began to speculate with some intensity upon the personality indicated thus far to his mind only by ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... has been alluded to above. It is not to be inferred that, as a consequence of this tendency, he blinded himself, at any period of his life, to the necessity and the duty of practical exertion. He was always eager to act as well as speculate; and, in this respect, his character preserved an unbroken consistency and harmony from the epoch when, on commencing his residence at Cambridge, he voluntarily became a teacher in a parish Sunday-school, for the sake of applying his theories of religious education, to the time when, on the point ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... affairs of state; in democratic republics, where public life is incessantly commingled with domestic affairs, where the sovereign authority is accessible on every side, and where its attention can almost always be attracted by vociferation, more persons are to be met with who speculate upon its foibles, and live at the cost of its passions, than in absolute monarchies. Not because men are naturally worse in these states than elsewhere, but the temptation is stronger, and of easier access at the same time. ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... lunch, and I was smoking a cigarette in my study, when I heard the step of my servant Murray in the passage. I was languidly conscious that a second step was audible behind, and had hardly troubled myself to speculate who it might be, when suddenly a slight noise brought me out of my chair with my skin creeping with apprehension. I had never particularly observed before what sort of sound the tapping of a crutch was, but my quivering nerves ...
— The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and muffle your head in the clothes, shivering all the while, but less from bodily chill than the bare idea of a polar atmosphere. It is too cold even for the thoughts to venture abroad. You speculate on the luxury of wearing out a whole existence in bed, like an oyster in its shell, content with the sluggish ecstasy of inaction, and drowsily conscious of nothing but delicious warmth, such as you now feel again. Ah! that idea has brought a hideous one in its train. You think how the dead are ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... reversed. Curiously enough, this particular pistol was purchased from a gunsmith by W. Fall Gardner, of New York City, while at Wiesbaden, Germany, in 1920, and while with the American Army of Occupation. It is interesting to speculate how the weapon found its way back to the country of its ...
— A Catalogue of Early Pennsylvania and Other Firearms and Edged Weapons at "Restless Oaks" • Henry W. Shoemaker
... sables of the hat and tippet of his beautiful neighbour, and a glimpse of her delicate profile now and then, as she turned to find the places for her little sister, who invariably disdained assistance as long as possible. He began to speculate idly on her probable character. Was she proud?—there was a shade of disdain about her smile when he first saw her. Self-willed?—the turn of her graceful head was slightly imperious. She could be tender with it all—he inferred ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... my mind, can be more miserable than the situation of a poor girl who fails in her matrimonial expectations (as many do merely from not beginning to speculate in time)," she wrote from Bath. "She finds herself at five or six-and-thirty a burden to her friends, destitute of the means of rendering herself independent—for the girls I speak of never think of learning to play cards—de trop in society, yet obliged to hang upon all her acquaintances, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... a slow and thoughtful movement of the jaws, and, as they were dropped or averted, a general discharge of tobacco-juice seemed to express the general adoption of the new-comers, whoever they were, as a necessary element of the scene, which it was useless to oppose, and about which it was idle to speculate. Before the Squire had found his party seats on one of the benches next the bar, the spectators had again given their languid attention to the administration of justice, which is everywhere informal with us, and is only a little ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... October 4, 1624, mentions his "part or share ... in the said playhouses called the Blackfriars, the Globe on the Bankside, and the Curtain."[136] It may be significant that both Pope and Underwood were sharers also in the Globe. Since, however, further information is wanting, it is useless to speculate. We can only say that at some time after the period of Lanman's sole proprietorship, the Curtain passed into the hands of a group of sharers; and that after a discussion in 1600 of demolishing the building ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... again. But at all such times, he never had a thought except to sustain and cheer me. He is capable of the sacred love,—the love passing that of woman. He showed it to his father, to Rome, to me. Now he loves his child in the same way. I think he will be an excellent father, though he could not speculate about it, ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... process. Sensory data, coming in from the outside world as it does, is probably permanent. But the thought patterns originating within the mind itself, the processes that correlate and cross-index and speculate on and hypothesize about the sensory data, these are much more fragile. A man might glance once through a Latin primer and have each and every page imprinted indelibly on his recording mechanism and ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... useless to speculate at what period of development each organic unit casts off its gemmules; for the whole subject of the development of the various elemental tissues is as yet involved in much doubt. Some physiologists, for instance, maintain that muscle or nerve-fibres are developed from cells, which are afterwards ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... of historical composition. The systems which professed to unfold the nature of God, of man, and of the universe, entertained the curiosity of the philosophic student; and according to the temper of his mind, he might doubt with the Sceptics, or decide with the Stoics, sublimely speculate with Plato, or severely argue with Aristotle. The pride of the adverse sects had fixed an unattainable term of moral happiness and perfection; but the race was glorious and salutary; the disciples of Zeno, and even those of Epicurus, were taught both to act and to suffer; ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... ten-pound fish, but I did not know enough about bonefish then to appreciate what I saw. However, I did appreciate their keen sight and wariness and wonderful speed and incredible power. Some of the big surges made me speculate what a heavy bonefish might do to light tackle. Sam and I were disappointed at our luck, somewhat uncertain whether it was caused by destructive work of crabs or the wrong kind of bait or both. It scarcely occurred to us ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... a farewell yacht cruise from which I returned to find the first two hotels of my seeking packed from cellar to roof. But the third had a free room, and I took it without the ghost of a presentiment. What would or would not have happened if I had not taken it is a thing I like to speculate on. ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... in the larger size, more complicated relations, and more important functions, of the female reproductive apparatus. This delicate and complex mechanism is liable to be aborted or deranged by the withdrawal of force that is needed for its construction and maintenance. It is, perhaps, idle to speculate upon the prospective evil that would accrue to the human race, should such an organic modification, introduced by abnormal education, be pushed to its ultimate limit. But inasmuch as the subject is not only ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... gate. It was a mighty thing. From its construction Carthoris could but dimly speculate ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... hopeful one, yet Hollis could not have admitted to feeling any alarm. He realized that had the man intended any immediate harm he would have shot him down long before this—while he had sat motionless in the saddle inspecting the place. Concerning the man's intentions he could only speculate, but assuredly ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... endeavor that has from the most ancient times been pressing steadily toward the solution of a problem that lies in the centre of {4} the path of life. He straightway commences himself to govern, educate, speculate, or moralize. And the more patiently he labors, the greater his respect for the vested wisdom of his time. Whereas he first sought utterly to demolish, he is now content to make his little difference and hand on the ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... the only sound basis from whence we could derive all our data upon which to speculate and reason, lay in our experience of all natural phenomena. Whatever else we might do, or not do, it was absolutely necessary, if we wished to be perfectly philosophical in our conclusions, that we should not traverse the direct results of ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... arts, originating from a material and a habit of work which were entirely different, and which produced artistic necessities diametrically opposed. It might be curious to speculate upon what would have resulted had their position in history been reversed; what statues we should possess had the marble-carving art born of architectural decoration originated in Greece, and the art of clay and bronze flourished in Christian ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... are greatly lessened where the marriage of consanguinity is repeated in the next generation. The manner in which the evil is effected may be conjectured with some approach to correctness, but to speculate upon it here would lead us astray from our present purpose. The amount of the evil may be thought to be comparatively small, but they who have a professional acquaintance with the subject would hardly undertake to measure the dimensions of all the physical and mental ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... introspection. But anything that serves to make a human being exercise the function for which his brain was originally intended should be regarded with thankfulness. It is a thousand times better for the development of the mind to speculate about the motives of acquaintances, or to philosophize on the shortcomings of the maid-of-all-work, than to babble off the dates of the Sovereigns from William the Conqueror, or to construe Horace's Odes without taking in a ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... be vaguely amused and declining to speculate as to the 'quandary' which according to the good woman had resulted in a species of lunacy, Walden followed as he was told, and slowly ascended the broad staircase, one of the finest specimens of Tudor work ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... to buy. I got out with a net profit of seventy-four hundred and fifty dollars on the two schooners. Not so bad, eh, Mr. Ricks? Over nine thousand dollars in less than three months? Of course, I realize I could not have made that much if I hadn't had the funds with which to speculate." ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... was soon known that Helen Ward was at the rectory, but to the Misses Woodhouse, at least, her presence was not of enough importance to speculate or gossip about. Gifford had merely said Helen had changed her mind about going, and would be in Ashurst a few days longer, and the little ladies had such an absorbing interest of their own they did not ask many questions. Miss Ruth only remarked that she wondered how ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... is only an ordinary business concern," he insisted. "We have a right to make money if we are clever enough to do it. We speculate in lots of other things besides wheat, and we have our losses to face as well as our profits. I believe that fellow Wingate is at the bottom of all this agitation. Just like those confounded Americans. Why can't they mind their ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... began to speculate rapidly on his father's enigmatic remark. All the way up in the elevator he pondered over the conundrum; and all the evening he turned it over in his mind. At last, tired with the day's activities, he went to bed, ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... but little. He could only speculate whether or not the duke would give up Brussels, and retire for reinforcements. If the two armies could effect a union, they would be near about the strength of the French, but then the Prussians were cut to pieces; so the curate ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... sight, descry, sight, make out, discover, distinguish, recognize, spy, espy, ken; get a sight of, have a sight of, catch a sight of, get a glimpse of, have a glimpse of, catch a glimpse of; command a view of; witness, contemplate, speculate; cast the eyes on, set the eyes on; be a spectator &c. 444 of; look on &c. (be present) 186; see sights &c. (curiosity) 455; see at a glance &c. (intelligence) 498. look, view, eye; lift up the eyes, open one's ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... pastures, to feed and throw out bright tributaries, and to end in a village gutter? Lives that have noble commencements have often no better endings; it is not without a kind of awe and reverence that an observer should speculate upon such careers as he traces the course of them. I have seen too much of success in life to take off my hat and huzza to it as it passes in its gilt coach: and would do my little part with my neighbours on foot, that they should not gape with too much wonder, nor applaud too ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... whole you're right,' said I, drawing back my hand slowly, watching his eyes. 'If they saw you feeling my pulse the ladies around us would at once solve the doubt they have discussed in the drawing-room. All table-d'hote ladies speculate concerning their fellow-guests in the hotel. . . . . Thirty pairs of eyes were on the point of detecting you for a fashionable physician, and by this time to-morrow thirty ladies travelling in search of health would ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... resumed, and Mr. Fogo left to speculate on these dark sayings. But as the boat drew near the column of blue smoke that, rising from the hazels on the left bank, marked the whereabouts of the Dearloves' cottage, he grew aware of a picture that, perhaps by mere charm of composition, set his ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... terrible thing to speculate on how man has been defeated by his ability to say words. The brown bear in the forest has no such power and the lack of it has enabled him to retain a kind of nobility of bearing sadly lacking in us. On and on through life we go, socialists, dreamers, makers of laws, sellers of goods and believers ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... my eyes.... She says nothing, but any man of spirit who looks into such clear, unflinching eyes under conditions such as these, will understand instinctively what is written in their suggestive depths!... They literally SHAME me for the little I can do.... Some lounge lizards may speculate on the nature of the sentiments this grateful princess will reveal if I display sufficient ingenuity to save us all from this slowly approaching DEATH!... How dramatic!... ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... them, and especially Edith, had altered somewhat with the passage of years) without being reminded of the former love affair in which Lambert's double had been the hero. Did this also occur to Edith? It could hardly have been otherwise, and it would be interesting to speculate on her feelings in the matter; but I have only the story to tell. At all events, they never did marry, though they became very tender friends. At the end of seven years Colonel Saltine died of jaundice; he had been failing in his mind for some time ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... now I verily believe you mean to twit me with my former experiment in railway knowledge, and have no intention to purchase shares in the La Mancha Company (and I doubt if there be any such) to countenance your Quixotic pleasantry. I did speculate once, it is true, in one—London and Falmouth Scheme—with very large promises. I was then living at W——, when one day, just before I was going to sit down to dinner, a chaise stops at my door, out steps a very "smart man," and is ushered into my library. When I went into the ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... speculate about the reasons for this taboo: a protection against public humiliation, since we all want others to feel that we can manage competently such a basic undertaking as marriage; a safeguard against exploitation, since a discontented marriage partner offers fair game to a predatory third person; ...
— Marriage Enrichment Retreats - Story of a Quaker Project • David Mace
... a while they thought no more of Mary—as was natural enough. They had so much to talk about, the whole of a new and very wonderful life to speculate about and to plan, the whole of their past acquaintance to review; old doubts had to be confessed and laughed at; the inevitability of the whole thing from the first beginnings had to be recognized, proved, and exhibited. In this sweet discourse ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... Fred could speculate for hours on the question without satisfying himself. He was sorry that he and Terry had not brought their guns with them, and was half inclined to go back. It was not yet noon, and they had plenty of time in ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... the Instrument upon whose Effects we may the most Commodiously speculate the Nature of Emphatical Colours, (and perhaps that of Others too;) we thought it might be usefull to observe the several Reflections and Refractions which the Incident Beams of Light suffer in Rebounding from it, and Passing through it. And this we thought might be Best done, ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... be insisted on for her,' said Miss Headworth. 'It is no use, however, to speculate on the future. We cannot guess how Mr. Mark Egremont's communication will be received, or whether any wish will be expressed for your mother's rejoining your father. In such a case the terms must be ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the sea. At Raynham they look up at the sky and speculate that Richard is approaching fairly speeded. He comes to throw himself on his darling's mercy. Lucy irradiated over forest and sea, tempest and peace—to her the hero comes humbly. Great is that day when we see our folly! Ripton ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... at that. The street crowds held and interested him. He liked to speculate about them; what life meant to them, in work and love and play; to what they were going on such hurrying feet. A country boy, the haste of the city ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the reciprocal actions and reactions of certain bodies and their material environment, how should it not reveal to us something of the very essence of which these bodies are made? Action cannot move in the unreal. A mind born to speculate or to dream, I admit, might remain outside reality, might deform or transform the real, perhaps even create it—as we create the figures of men and animals that our imagination cuts out of the passing cloud. But an intellect bent upon the act to be performed and ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... beast!"—that the door was suddenly shut again with a bang—and that he was left once more in total darkness. He did not care for the light, or the voice, or the banging of the door: he did not think of them afterwards; he did not mourn over the past, or speculate on the future. He just sank back on his pillow with a gasp, drew the clothes over him with a groan, and fell asleep, blissfully reckless of the retribution that was to come with the ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... good dogs of Caneville were little disposed to speculate that day, or I was very awkward in my occupation, but no one seemed willing to make a trial of my "fire-flies." In vain I used the most enticing words to set off my goods, even going so far as to say that cigars lighted with these matches would have a very much finer flavour, and could ...
— The Adventures of a Dog, and a Good Dog Too • Alfred Elwes
... country so much inclined to speculate, to philosophize, and to reason on everything, it is not surprising that a fundamental law, as vaguely expressed as the charter, should leave ample room for discussion. We find that our own long experience in these written instruments does not protect ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... forward on his chair when he knelt, glanced sharply round at Bruce. He had seen him take something from the Bible, and crumple it up in his hand but would not have felt any inclination to speculate about it, had it not been for the peculiarly keen expression of eager surprise and happy greed which came over his face in the act. Having seen that, and being always more or less suspicious of Bruce, he wanted ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... logic: they are suitable for Italy, but they are not suitable for England. But, over and above England, my own case was special; from a boy I had been led to consider that my Maker and I, His creature, were the two beings, luminously such, in rerum natura. I will not here speculate, however, about my own feelings. Only this I know full well now, and did not know then, that the Catholic Church allows no image of any sort, material or immaterial, no dogmatic symbol, no rite, no sacrament, ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... others, he has brought no happiness to himself, and, unless I am mistaken, he is going to wreck his whole scheme in one tremendous crash that we cannot now foresee. A lawyer, like myself, sees many hard, miserable, sordid things, but a Beeman has leisure to speculate as to whither they tend. And they all tend ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... that those who do not either push the themselves into noise, or give some one else a substantial interest in pushing them, never do get made a noise about. How can they? I was too lazy to go about from publisher to publisher and to decline to publish a book myself if I could not find some one to speculate in it. I could take any amount of trouble about writing a book but, so long as I could lay my hand on the money to bring it out with, I found publishers' antechambers so little to my taste that I soon tired and fell back ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... Present Inhabitants. The undertaking met with almost prompt and cordial support; the proudest names and the brightest lights of the age were enlisted in it. The celebrated Madame de Maintenon became the patroness, forbidding, however, the Society to speculate upon her affairs; the illustrious Duke de Rohan became the president; the Czar Peter an honorary member; and the Society was otherwise royally and nobly officered and befriended. So numerous were the ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... in no mood to speculate on the idiosyncrasies of woman. Even the woman. So he topped his mount and rejoined Tom Loudon and Mr. Saltoun. They ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... into the yard. Mrs. Somerby flew out with a lump of sugar for a jaded-looking horse, bought by Joe to speculate upon, and who ate everything he could get, including his ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various
... was not on the deck, just then, and young Vanderlyn was politic enough to say nothing of her, merely talking of the old man's impressive bearing, asking his mother to help him speculate about his history. ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... never imagined. Once again he remained where he was, as still as death. Unless the new-comer was there because his suspicions were aroused, there was a chance that Mr. Morgan might yet escape notice. Who the new-comer might be, he had no time to speculate, for, without being unlocked, the door was pushed open. Mr. Morgan marked the phenomenon, and his hair rose. Then a man ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... as a shock to Ethne. She did not guess the correct answer; she was not, indeed, sufficiently mistress of herself to speculate upon any answer, but she dreaded it, whatever ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... and speculate as they might the lads were unable to arrive at a solution of the mysterious presence and disappearance of the package bearing the curious mark. Weary with the exertion of attempting to solve the problem the boys at ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... war between aristocrats and plebeians, as in ancient Rome; and, as at Rome, every succeeding battle ended in the increase of power among the democracy. At the close of the administration of President Adams the Federal party was destroyed forever. It is useless to speculate as to which party was in the right. Probably both parties were right in some things, and wrong in others. The worth of a strong government in critical times has been proved by the wholesome action of such an autocrat as Jackson in the Nullification ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... The woman seeking for an anomaly wants a master The backstairs of history (Memoirs) To be her master, however, one must not begin by writhing as her slave Wait till the day's ended before you curse your luck With this money, said the demon, you might speculate Work is medicine ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger
... departments, coextensive with that which would be necessary for a government of the whole. The entire separation of the States into thirteen unconnected sovereignties is a project too extravagant and too replete with danger to have many advocates. The ideas of men who speculate upon the dismemberment of the empire seem generally turned toward three confederacies—one consisting of the four Northern, another of the four Middle, and a third of the five Southern States. There is little probability that there would be a greater number. According to this ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... house. (There is no mustard in the plaster, really—only a few pepper-corns and a little sand scraped from the geological hammer.) But we say aloud that we hope Mac can bear it for twenty minutes, and we speculate on whether it will bring all the skin with it ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... been afforded more time than I in which to speculate upon the substitution of the false for the genuine stone, and Burke had not gone inconsiderately to the Page place on Friday night, but, quite the reverse, to prosecute a definite plan of search. How near he came to the goal I did n't appreciate ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... daughters, and of all the young men who came near them, seemed to leave everything to take its chance. There was not the smallest appearance of solicitude or remark about them in the Mansion-house; but it was different at the Cottage: the young couple there were more disposed to speculate and wonder; and Captain Wentworth had not been above four or five times in the Miss Musgroves' company, and Charles Hayter had but just reappeared, when Anne had to listen to the opinions of her brother and sister, as to which was the one liked best. Charles gave it for Louisa, Mary ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... merely passing his days there, and spending his nights on board the yacht in the harbour, where, no doubt, that same illness had been contracted. But she resisted the inclination to attempt further discovery. She even resisted the inclination to speculate regarding all this. What Richard might elect to tell her, that, and that only, would she know, lest, seeking further, bitter and vindictive thoughts should arise in her and mar the calm, pathetic sweetness of ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... to discover the exquisite pencil that paints the flower of the field? and have I ever detected the secret that gives their brilliant dye to the ruby and the emerald, or the art that enamels the delicate shell?—I observe the sagacity of animals—I call it instinct, and speculate upon its various degrees of approximation to the reason of man; but, after all, I know as little of the cogitations of the brute as he does of mine. When I see a flight of birds overhead, performing their evolutions, or steering their course to ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... Church. The career of Warburton, who rose from a similar position to a bishopric might have been rivalled by Johnson, and his connexions with Lichfield might, one would suppose, have helped him to a start. It would be easy to speculate upon causes which might have hindered such a career. In later life, he more than once refused to take orders upon the promise of a living. Johnson, as we know him, was a man of the world; though a religious man of the world. He represents ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... both Gulian and Yorke were destined to discover. What special imp prompted Betty to sally forth for a walk after dinner, thereby missing a call from Yorke (who came thus early to prevent Gulian's intended interview), it would be vain to speculate; but when the maid returned, feeling more like her old happy self than she had done in weeks, the irony of fate prompted an encounter with her brother-in-law at ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... because I'm beginning to get used to it," I thought. Then I began to speculate as to what would happen now if the sergeant was right, and we were to be attacked front and rear; and what it would feel like if I were hit, as seemed very likely now that the enemy were getting so near. But I glanced right and left at my companions, just in time, to see the ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... friends, as in foreign countries against himself? It's a league of lies against him and his. 'Intriguing lacqueys.' That's a sweeping phrase for all persons of distinction in France, except members of the Opposition. That men like De Morny and Walewski may speculate unduly I don't doubt, but even the 'Times' says now that these things have been probably exaggerated. I have heard great good of both these men. As to Prince Napoleon, he has spoken like a man and a prince. We are at his feet here in Italy. Tell our dear friend Milsand that I read the seventeen ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... might have followed the lane for hours without meeting a soul, without hearing a human sound beyond the echoes of one's own footsteps sent back from the depth of a copse. For miles it went, turning now this way, now that, until a stranger would wonder whither it was leading him, and speculate whether, at the end, he might not find himself on the same high road which he had left long ago. At one part, for a mile or more, the lane skirted a forest, where, down short vistas, could be seen deeper depths beyond, solemn gloom which might serve ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... dreadful. Margaret, for her part, had no recollection of reaching the fir-wood, and as, long before morning, all traces were obliterated, the facts remained a mystery. Janet thought that David had some wonderful persuasion about it; but he was never heard even to speculate on the subject. Certain it was, that Hugh had saved Margaret's life. He seemed quite well next day, for he was of a very powerful and enduring frame for his years. She recovered more slowly, and perhaps never altogether overcame the effects of ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... you are," he said, aloud, with all his old lazy urbanity. "I suppose it's no use trying to throttle you in order to find out; it would be displeasing to pass the night with a corpse. Besides I might be the corpse. I've got no matches and I've smashed my torch, so I can only speculate. Who could you be, now? ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... wavered, then stopped and began to stare at the candidate, not intrusively, but with a kindly curiosity that it considered legitimate. Harley had quietly joined the Graysons, and they gave him a sincere welcome. The people unfamiliar with his face began to speculate audibly ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... for, in spite of all their scout courage, the girls were not especially anxious to run headlong into the arms of two foreigners, who would undoubtedly be angry. The prospect of meeting a benevolent old grandfather was much more comfortable to speculate upon. ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... of begging-letter impostors; a man whom I myself caught, last time he was down here, playing at marbles with three of my charity-boys in the street, and promising to treat them to hardbake and gingerbeer afterwards, is—in short, is not a man whose actions it is possible to speculate on." ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... notwithstanding of any extraneous means to work it off. "Slow and sure," is their motto—"Carpe diem," essentially that of their antagonists. And yet in one thing, we believe, most individuals holding these opposite opinions will be found to concur. They all speculate. Heraclitus signs his contract with a shudder, and trembles as he places his realized premium in the bank. Democritus laughingly subscribes his name to thousands, and chuckles as he beholds his favourite stock ascending in the thermometer of the share-market. Heraclitus ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... sake," he said, "don't play such dangerous games with your facility. If you have got facility, revere it, respect it, adore it, treasure it—don't speculate on it." And he wondered what his companion, up to his knees in debt, would have done if there had been no good-natured Rowland Mallet to lend a helping hand. But he did not formulate his curiosity audibly, and the contingency seemed not to have presented itself to Roderick's imagination. ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... Alley Bears to speculate, As usual, for a fall; And green and scarlet runners, such As never ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 393, October 10, 1829 • Various
... Christ! What!—do you think because I am a cardinal I am not to make a profit in corn? I tell you those people have no business to be miserable—they have no business to go and pawn their things; if I am allowed to speculate with the funds, why not? Allons donc!—It is a devilish ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... keenness, his poise of brain, if one might call it so, and the habilete with which, without permitting it to be part of his character, he sometimes allowed himself to charm even people of whom he disapproved. These things were indeterminately present to her, and led her often to speculate as to how it was that Mr. Cardiff's work expressed him so little. It seemed to her that the one purpose of a personality like his was its expression—otherwise one might as well be of the ruck. "You write with your intellectual faculties," she said to him once; "your soul is curiously ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... prelates, who were the ecclesiastical advisers of the Imperial Government, were preferable to the nominees of the Roman chiefs, who had no object or consideration but their own ambition, and were inclined to speculate on the worthlessness of their candidates. During the first half of the eleventh century they recovered their predominance, and the deliverance of the Church came once more from Germany. A succession of German Popes, named by the emperor, opened ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... was his astonishment, he was left no time to indulge in it, or speculate how his old "crammer" came to be there. For close behind the Dictator's carriage followed another, holding one who had yet more interest for him than Don Ignacio—Don ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... same is true in even greater degree. All the bravado and illusion of war are gone, also all the nervous revulsion; and in their places a grimly reliable resource of energy held in instant, almost mechanical, readiness to do what is necessary. The hazards which it is useless to speculate about, the miseries, delays, tediums, casualties, have lost their exclamatory value and have fallen into the sullen routine of the day's work. Here it is that morale begins to show in its more vital dimensions. Here ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... off the River Plate we speculate, if we are disabled, of running in to Buenos Ayres, the "Paris of America," and I have visions of bright congregating places of men, of the jollity of raised glasses, and of song and cheer and the hum of genial voices. When we have picked ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... Hostility to me seemed really to have been a sort of monomania with him from the first. How else was this canton procedure to be accounted for? how, even with this belief, could it be excused? His conduct was certainly one of those mysteries of idiosyncracy upon which the moral philosopher may speculate to doomsday without being a jot ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... the jovial countenance, and doubtless genial ways, had the right to stand at her dressing-table, if he chose, and speculate upon the various uses of all the daintiness that was spread before him. He had the right and cared nothing for it, while the man who did care, stood there shamefaced, all at once feeling himself an ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... a full-blown pawnbroker of Silverton town, whom the legislature, with that keen knowledge of human nature which marks the British senate, permitted, and still permits, to speculate in Insanity, stipulating, however, that the upper servant of all in his asylum should be a doctor; but omitting to provide against the instant dismissal of the said doctor should he go and rob his employer of a lodger—by curing ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... pretty, mocking courtesy, and he could not help looking with some interest at the woman who might have been his wife. The best of men, and the best of husbands, are liable to speculate a little under such circumstances, and in fancy to put themselves into a position they have probably no wish in reality to fill. She noticed his air of consideration; and, with a toss of her handsome head, she spread out all her finery. ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... friends!—do not let a hired Press think for you! Think for yourselves—judge for yourselves, and act for yourselves! By your observation of a statesman's life, you shall know his capabilities. If he has once been a turncoat, he will be a turncoat again. If he has been known to speculate privately in a forthcoming political crisis, which he alone knows of ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... since boyhood, and crossed the Atlantic with me on my return. He always, morning, noon, and night, had one either in his hand or projecting out of his mouth. It signified not what was his occupation, the little stiletto was always to the fore. We used to speculate on board if he so slept, and the ...
— The Truth About America • Edward Money
... minor experiments made in 1782 and 1783, that a heat of 180 degrees rarefied the air and made it occupy a space of TWICE the extent it occupied before being heated—or, in other words, that this degree of heat diminished the weight of air by one half—began to speculate on what might be the shape and the material of a structure which being filled with air thus heated, would be able to raise itself from the earth in spite of the ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... disturber, it bumps into every kind of fixed notion and takes off a chip here and there, it probes into all sorts of mysteries and opens them to find that they are hollow wind-bag affairs, tho' always held as holy of holies heretofore. To think, to speculate, to wonder, to query—these imply imagination, and the Devil has just one function in this Universe —to destroy, to kill, or suppress or to divert or prevent the imagination. Imagination is the Divine Spark, and old Beelzebub ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... nature or fixed order in all things known to us, it is conformable to the nature of our minds to believe that this universal Nature has a cause which operates continually, and that we are totally unable to speculate on the reason of any of those disorders or evils which we perceive. This I believe is the answer which may be collected from ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
... professed to unfold the nature of God, of man, and of the universe, entertained the curiosity of the philosophic student; and according to the temper of his mind, he might doubt with the Sceptics, or decide with the Stoics, sublimely speculate with Plato, or severely argue with Aristotle. The pride of the adverse sects had fixed an unattainable term of moral happiness and perfection; but the race was glorious and salutary; the disciples of Zeno, and even those of Epicurus, were ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... negative. And Fenwick looked up quickly, and uttered a little sharp "Ah!" as though something had struck him. The slow head-shake said as plain as words could have said it, "I wish I could say yes." So expressive was it that Fenwick did not even speculate on the third alternative—a separation without a divorce. He saw at once he could make it easier for her if he spoke out plain, treating the bygone as a thing that could be spoken ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... strong—the strength of level brows, straight nose and square chin, with a pair of paradoxical lips, which were curved and womanish in their sensitiveness; the refinement was an intangible expression which belonged to no particular feature but pervaded the whole face. As to his eyes, she was left to speculate upon their color, since she had not seen them, but she reflected that many a girl would give a good deal ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... amongst the trees of the forest, or in the streets of crowded cities, or precincts of temples. Such a study would not fail to awaken strange ideas; and although the European would not be prepared to regard monkeys as sacred animals he might be led to speculate as to their origin by the light of data, which are at present unknown to the naturalist whose observations have been ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... the limits of the allied nations' capacity to bear it is a fit subject for meditation when we feel uplifted in self-complacency. Doubtless it is encouraging to watch the symptoms of slow exhaustion displaying themselves in the central empires and to speculate on the consequences of the further fall of the German mark. But these consequences we are too apt to exaggerate. For we misjudge the character, the staying powers, the ideals, the psychology of the German people. We fancy that ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... right up at that and thanked him for putting it so clear and removing the doubts that had been worrying him. Said that he could speculate with a clear conscience after listening to the Deacon's able exposition of the subject. Was only sorry he hadn't seen him to talk it over before breakfast, as the two hundred had been lying so heavy ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... northern as well as by southern men, and with the increase of information, there has been a subsidence of prejudice, and a preparation of the mind to receive truth. Our friends are still in a minority. It would be vain to speculate as to the period when their position will be reversed. Whether sooner or later, or never, they are still entitled to our regard and respect. A few years ago those who maintained our constitutional right, and to secure it voted for the Kansas and ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis
... strong mind of his son to seek occupation of more certain profit; and those who feel interest in the whereabouts of celebrated men, may think upon the days when William Hogarth wrought in silver, as the apprentice of Ellis Gamble, in Cranbourne Street, and speculate upon the change of circumstances, wrought by his own exertions, when, as a great painter, in after time, he occupied the house, now known as the Sabloniere ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... her kindly drapery of foliage and flowers, so that the crumbling masses of tawny brick that we come across in our rambles are all swathed in garlands of clematis, myrtle, honey-suckle and coronella. It is a delight to speculate upon the original use and appearance of these shapeless blocks of creeper-clad masonry, which attract the eye on all sides amidst the vineyards and orange groves, where the peasants delving in the rich soil frequently alight upon treasures ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... Shepard of North Carolina to make emphatic objections all along the line. He opened his speech by intimating that the bill had been introduced to the end that "a fresh rich field might be opened to those who speculate in public lands, and a batch of new offices created for such as seek Executive favor." He had no sympathy with the squatters. "Who are these that . . . . pray for the establishment of a new Territory? Individuals who have left their own homes and seized on the public land ...
— History of the Constitutions of Iowa • Benjamin F. Shambaugh
... not. And there is no free trade in England. Both negro-trading and smuggling are illegal. Yet, as you manage to drive a pretty profitable business in the latter, you might speculate a little in ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... brown steel in a soldier's hands, kept us back. The chance wasn't worth fighting for, after all. I didn't believe the steamer would sink, any way. I was aboard the 'San Francisco' when she drifted for nine days. However, there wasn't much time left for us to speculate on that,—for a rush of firemen and crew and the like into the boats was the next thing, and then the fasts were cast off or cut, and the wind and sea did the rest. They shot away into the darkness. A couple ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... taking up their trail, do not pause to speculate upon it, nor make any delay. On the contrary, as hounds that have several times lost the scent, hitherto faint, but once more recovered, and now fresher and stronger than ever, they press on with ardour ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... me with congenial food for reflection. I used to lie in the long grass, and speculate on the advantages and disadvantages ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... use; the train had gone and the men with it, and the best we could do was to speculate on the intention of the runaways, while we waited the result of the telegrams sent to both ends of the line for another engine. At last it came puffing up, and we whirled at its full ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... was too full of the busy trembling fancies natural to her position to speculate overmuch on the hearts of other people. Very soon Major Harper quitted the house, and the Thornycrofts also. She was left alone with her lover and with Anne—Anne, who ever since her arrival had seemed to keep a steady watch over Nathanael's bride. They ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... "Probably speculate on the Stock Exchange, or take up Mexican mines!" declared Gwen, trying to turn things ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... ages of this world there was far more laughter than is to be heard now, and that aeons hence laughter will be obsolete, and smiles universal—every one, always, mildly, slightly, smiling. But it is less useful to speculate as to mankind's past and future than to observe men. And you will have observed with me in the club-room that young men at most times look solemn, whereas old men or men of middle age mostly smile; and also that those young men do often laugh loud and long among themselves, while we others—the ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... sure that he will never come forward, that I have never taken the trouble to speculate as to whether, if he did, my greediness would make him ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... relying on her own strength to bear the consequences of her act. To call such a woman a wanton and a kept mistress is to confess one's self devoid of sense and sensibility. Nor does it show much insight to assert that "infidelity betrayed and wrecked her life," and to speculate how glorious it might have been if she had "found Jesus." It will be time enough to listen to this strain when Mr. Watkinson can show us a more "glorious" female writer ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... clerk in a bank and sharp as a needle in forecasting what was going to happen downtown. I used to say to myself that if I had capital it would be easy to make money breed money. Well, one day I borrowed from the bank, without the bank's leave, $3,000 in order to speculate. I won on that deal and the next and the next. Then I was able to return what I'd borrowed and to set up in a small way for myself in the furniture business. That was my start, ladies—the ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... fifty per cent. He invested in the traffic of usury what had sufficed to save a hundred such as I am from perdition, and he lost it all. It was nearly his whole fortune; but he lives and has his luxuries still: be cannot speculate, but he can save: he cared not if I starved, for he finds an hourly ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... these remains have only been found in an imperfect state of preservation. It is evident, however, that these extinct species, or at least certain of them, lived down to the time when man had come upon the earth, and was beginning to speculate on his surroundings for such company and help as he might win therefrom. It may interest the reader to know that a species of American dog existed in the Southern Appalachians down to a very recent time—recent, at least, in a geological sense. The remains of one of ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... "reverent disciple" whom he hints at, but does not name. In short, I think that {402} Fletcher was the pupil of Shakspeare; and this view, it appears to me, demands the serious attention of the biographer who next may study or speculate upon the great ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 55, November 16, 1850 • Various
... the Gila River, out upon the Pima reservation. Now there is further extension eastward, and the great plain that stretches as far as Florence is being settled by population very generally tributary to Mesa. It would be idle to speculate upon the future of the city, but its tributary farming country is fully as great as ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... framed no great theories of government. Even their literature was, in part, an imitation of the Greek, though possessing many elements of native strength and beauty. They were a people who knew how to accomplish results rather than to speculate about means and ends. Usefulness and effectiveness were with them the criteria of the worth of any idea or project. They subdued and annexed an empire, they gave law and order to a primitive world, they civilized and Romanized ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... anxious to develop its operation in his child. No doubt the best beginning, especially if the child be young, is an acquaintance with nature, in which let him he encouraged to observe vital phenomena, to put things together, to speculate from what he sees to what he does not see. But let earnest care be taken that upon no matter shall he go on talking foolishly. Let him be as fanciful as he may, but let him not, even in his fancy, sin against fancy's sense; for fancy has its laws as certainly as the most ordinary business ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... a hill, and on the top of it George could see a number of lights twinkling and bobbing about through the fringe of bush that covered it. His captors gave him but little time to speculate as to the place they were nearing, for not for one instant did they slacken their speed as they ascended the steep slopes. Helmar knew by the pace of the journey that he could not be far from Kafr Dowar, but he had ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... of the last eight years, during which the system has been in force, may be taken as a reliable guide, the experiment shows many signs of success. It has certainly checked the tendency to speculate in lands with a view to a rise in price, which threatened to become a great, as it certainly was a growing, evil. It has been found that it will not pay to do this in the face of taxation, and particularly of the graduated tax; and owners of large areas of land have developed a strong ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... fathers in their wisdom deemed it necessary that the Church should have such a service? Can it, in short, be traced to any human origin? If so, then we can deal with it as with any other human institution. We are then at liberty to reason and speculate about it. We can apply to it the rules of human science and learning. We can test it, measure it, sound it by philosophy, logic, and the laws of the mind. Each one then has a right to his own opinion about it. Each one can apply to ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding
... that something might perhaps be made out on this question by patiently accumulating and reflecting upon all sorts of facts which could possibly have any bearing on it. After five years' work I allowed myself to speculate upon the subject, and drew up some short notes; these I enlarged in 1844 {169a} into a sketch of the conclusions which then seemed to me probable. From that period to the present day I have steadily pursued the same object. I hope I may be excused these personal details, as I give them ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... ruin to thousands. Fluctuation, however, in the paper value of the measure of all values (gold) is detrimental to the interests of trade. It makes the man of business an involuntary gambler, for in all sales where future payment is to be made both parties speculate as to what will be the value of the currency to be paid and received. I earnestly recommend to you, then, such legislation as will insure a gradual return to specie payments and put an immediate stop to fluctuations in ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... she made a touching and gallant picture. Her face had gone very pale and he saw, or fancied he saw, her lips tremble. But her solemn eyes shone with a steady light, and, whatever the excitement affecting her, she held it bravely in check. Noting all which he could not but speculate as to whether she had any knowledge of a certain romantic attachment—culminating on the one hand in an act of virtuous treachery, on the other in an act of renunciation—which had overshadowed and wrenched from its natural sequence so large a portion of her father's life. ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... other, and, top of all, one of those old-fashioned massive, carved sounding-boards, which gave so queer a Jack-in-the-box aspect to the pulpit, and prompted dreamers in dreary sermons, heedless of George Herbert's counsel that if nothing else, the sermon 'preacheth patience,' to speculate on severing the iron rod that supported the board, letting it fall, and so, by one process shutting up, so to speak, ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... de Voisenon, ever hanging, as it were, between pates and his grave, becomes now a rather interesting subject of study. We begin to speculate upon what it is that will finally carry him off: his asthma, or the confectionary he ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... and sewing of each household be done by its women? We have laundries, ready-made clothing, and bakeries, and now it is proposed in Boston to furnish a complete supply of ready-cooked food. This can be done cheaper than families can supply themselves, if we leave out the American propensity to speculate in ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, November 1887 - Volume 1, Number 10 • Various
... a chance, but a certainty. You shall have the place. And what a delight it will be to the General to visit his daughter there. Now, don't speculate—let it be settled. Well, I'll see you to-morrow and tell you how it's all to turn out, but have no fears ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... vagabondage which it suggests. And so it is that Slang words have a life as closely packed with adventure as is the life of those who use them with the quickest understanding. To ask what becomes of last year's Slang is as rash as to speculate on the fate of last year's literature. Many specimens die in the gutter, where they were born, after living a precarious life in the mouths of men. Others are gathered into dictionaries, and survive to become the sport of philologists. ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... Hindu sages never attempt to speculate on the original creation of the universe. Their speculations, however, are concerned with what is called Avantara srishti or that creation which springs forth with the awakening of Brahman. Creation and Destruction have occurred ceaselessly and will occur ceaselessly. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Is it extravagant to speculate on the possibility of the Episcopalian, Catholic, and Presbyterian clergy joining in an Antiquarian Society to preserve our ecclesiastical remains—our churches, our abbeys, our crosses, and our fathers' tombs, from fellows ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... wind blows through a court-yard, and the lamp goes out, so he went —in the night. Who can say? Wherefore speculate? He is gone. It is enough. Were it not for thee, Egypt should see ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... mysterious charges against Leigh Hunt in his domestic relations. The world could not understand the nature of his poetical love of incest; and instead of at once forgetting both the poem and the poet, many people set themselves to speculate, and talk, and ask questions, and pry into secrets with which they had nothing to do, till at last there was something like an identification of Leigh Hunt himself with Paolo, the incestuous hero of Leigh Hunt's chief Cockney poem. This was wrong, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... the universe and its Maker? He had his definite material Elysium and Tartarus, as the only ultimate relation between man and the universe; his dogma of an absolute fiat, creating arbitrary and once for all, as the only relation between the universe and its Maker: and further it was not lawful to speculate. The idea which I believe unites both physic and metaphysic with man's highest inspirations and widest speculations—the Alexandria idea of the Logos, of the Deity working in time and space by successive thoughts—he ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... think must have nettled him. I have long with Pain suspected a perfidious Design. This Resolution must have crossd it. It will cause much Speculation in Europe. No Matter. The Powers there seem more inclind to speculate than to espouse the Rights of Man. Let them speculate. Our Business is to secure America against the Arts & the Arms of a treacherous Enemy. The former we have more to ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... possible (and here lies the interest of the enigma) that the Veiled Being may one day justify himself even morally. Perhaps he is all the time doing so behind the veil. But on that it is absolutely useless to speculate. Light may one day come to us, but it will come through patient investigation, not through idle pondering and guessing. In the meantime, poised between the macrocosm and the microcosm, ourselves including both extremes, and ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... (as she addressed herself to me) upon this fortunate addition to her income and wished her a long continuance of it. I did not speculate upon the source from which it came or wonder whose humanity was so considerate. My guardian stood before me, contemplating the birds, and I had no ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... time enough to stare and speculate, for it was two hours before he was summoned. He went into the office building, where a company timekeeper interviewed him. The superintendent was busy, he said, but he (the timekeeper) would try to find Jurgis a job. He had never worked in a steel mill ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... that he feared it would be so, although he could not yet speak with any degree of certainty; and getting away as soon as he could, went home to con Newman's letter once more, and speculate ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... bring a light into her lovely eyes that seemed to spread up and around her white forehead and beautiful hair like a supernatural lustre. There was a fire that animated her which nobody who saw its glow or felt its warmth could question. Without that altar of music—But why speculate on what she might have been if she had not been what she was? That would be to consider ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... brought from a distance. The unfortunate feature about all the hybridizing work with apples is the mongrel character of the plants on which we work. We know nothing of the parentage of any of our varieties, and it seems quite useless to speculate on what the segregation of characters may be in crosses between different varieties. A further discouraging feature in apple breeding is the long period required to get results from any particular cross. Effort is being made to shorten this period by grafting ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... was through Captain Cannonby. If this gentleman really was with Frederick Massingbird when he died, and saw him buried, it was evident that it could not be Frederick come back to life. In that case, who or what it might be, Lionel did not stay to speculate; his business lay in ascertaining by the most direct means in his power, whether it was, or was not, Frederick Massingbird. How was it possible to do this? how could it be possible to ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... picture of their house. I began to feel sorry for my companion: the thought of our riding gaily off, and leaving him at work, made him seem pathetic. My appeals, however, made no impression upon his inflexible sense of duty, and I soon ceased trying to persuade him to join us, and began to speculate, instead, as to whether all four sisters would accompany me, or whether only two or three of them would ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... apt to consider as abounding to an astonishing degree with large animals, because we find the remains of many ages accumulated at certain spots, could hardly boast of more large quadrupeds than Southern Africa does at present. If we speculate on the condition of the vegetation during those epochs, we are at least bound so far to consider existing analogies, as not to urge as absolutely necessary a luxuriant vegetation, when we see a state of things so totally different at the ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... vicinity of Pittsburg may one day wake the lyre of the Pennsylvanian bard to strains as martial and as sweet as Scott; ... believe me, I should tread with as much reverence over the mausoleum of a Shawanee chief, as among the catacombs of Egypt, and would speculate with as much delight upon the site of an Indian village as in the gardens of Tivoli, or the ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... theories of courteous love, every one is more or less familiar if only from the ridicule of Cervantes and the follies of Quixote, who, though four hundred years younger, was Lancelot's child; but we never can know how far she took herself and her laws of love seriously, and to speculate on so deep a subject as her seriousness is worse than useless, since she would herself have been as uncertain as her lovers were. Visionary as the courtesy was, the Holy Grail was as practical as any bric-a-brac that has survived of the time. The mystery of Perceval is like that of the Gothic ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... shaded space of the chamber she stopped to speculate on the varied and colorful pictures of the wall paper reaching from the white paneling above her waist to the deep white carving at the ceiling. The scene which absorbed her most showed, elevated above a smooth stream, a marble pavilion with sweeping steps and ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... of an eating-place in a good-sized seaport city, and had not yet noticed that some people ate pie without a knife. By it I fancied I could gauge the man's social inheritance. And there were other customs of the place in keeping with the pie and knife. I used to speculate on what primitive sort of an upbringing he had that he was so slow to adopt the most ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... Merchants here would speculate deeply in the American trade, could they be insured at any premium within bounds. I wish to know if offices are already open, and I would suggest that if the Congress would take the insurance under their own direction, it would give it such a proportionably ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... realised how great a factor in his own life this slim young girl might be. As lady of the Court and his own patron, she would have it in her power to ensure his comfort or the reverse. Ah, well, well, it was too early to speculate! The child had a sweet, good face; no doubt all would ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... within the bronzed skull, but it is useless to speculate, since we have no more means of knowing their nature than had Jack Carleton, who wondered and guessed without ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... incompleteness may be remedied, as a season, not of changing the spiritual bent and character of the soul departed, whatever that be, for probation ends with mortal life, but of developing it in a more determinate form, whether of good or evil. Again, when the mind once allows itself to speculate, it will discern in such a provision a means whereby those who, not without true faith at bottom, yet have committed great crimes, or those who have been carried off in youth while still undecided, or who die after a barren, though not immoral or scandalous ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... procedure of modern financial speculation, was in fact better versed in the jargon and gossip of the Stock Exchange than Melrose himself; and had made use now and then of the large amount of information and the considerable number of useful acquaintances he possessed to speculate cautiously on his own account—without much result, but without disaster. Also it was very soon clear that, independently of his special reasons for knowing something about engraved gems and their value, ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the 'Origin of Species' does not purport to be philosophical. In this aspect it is very different from the cognate works of Mr. Spencer. Darwin does not speculate on the origin of the universe, on the nature of matter or of force. He is simply a naturalist, a careful and laborious observer, skillful in his descriptions, and singularly candid in dealing with the difficulties in the way of his peculiar doctrine. He ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... paused in her breathless career ready to cry at this malicious fate fighting against her, and for the first time allowing herself time to speculate on what was up. All around her she became aware of weeping and wailing and shrieking ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... should expect any thing of Elaborate or Methodical in what you will meet with here, I must confess to you before-hand, that the seasons I was wont to chuse to devise and try Experiments about Colours, were those daies, wherein having taken Physick, and finding my self as unfit to speculate, as unwilling to be altogether idle, I chose this diversion, as a kind of Mean betwixt the one and the other. And I have the less scrupled to set down the following Experiments, as some of them came to my mind, and as the Notes wherein I had set down the rest, occurr'd to my hands, that ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... remember to have seen a single historical picture of Sir Joshua's that has not suffered; happily there are yet many of his portraits fresh, vigorous, and beautiful in colouring. It should seem, that he thought it worth while to speculate upon those of least value to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... House of Commons. He agreed that it was extremely adverse to the growth of greatness among our public men; and he said the mass of public business increased so fast that he could not tell what it was to end in, and did not venture to speculate even for a few years upon the mode of administering public affairs. He thought the consequence was already manifest in ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... 'Review' would be of use in the debate which will then be going on, and will probably be noticed; whereas, after the division on leave to bring in the Bill, it would be less opportune. The article on Ireland is complete, and it would be premature to speculate on the details of ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... narrative I had so lately heard; that is to say, though my eyes were still fixed upon the line, I had completely given up my thoughts to the story of the poor German boy, who had been snatched from poverty by the interference of the parish clerk's daughter; and I contrived to speculate on what I should have done under such circumstances, imagining all sorts of extravagances in which I should have indulged, to testify my gratitude to so ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... for other reasons, better or worse as it may be; to all which I am accustomed to answer (and I do not see how I can be in error), that, if Christ had not meant His Church to answer a purpose, He would not have set it up, and that our business is not to speculate about possible Dispensations of Religion, but to resign and devote ourselves to that in ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... d'elire goes forth, it will rend the veil of ages. It implies the conferment on the people of power hitherto unknown in their history. What a commotion will the ballot-box excite! How suddenly will it arouse the dormant [Page 199] intellect of a brainy race! But it is premature to speculate. ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... sight Buddhism is much more like Christianity than those of us who stay at home and speculate upon it commonly appreciate. As a system of philosophy it sounds exceedingly foreign, but it looks unexpectedly familiar as a faith. Indeed, the one religion might well pass for the counterfeit presentment of the other. The resemblance ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... ours is the last generation for many generations that will go freely about the world, that will have abundance of leisure, and science and free speech and abundant art and much beauty and many varied occupations. We stand about in our old haunts and try to keep on with our old ways of living and speculate when the war will be "over," and when we shall be able to go back to everything just as it was before the war. This war and its consequences will never be "over," and we have not even begun to realize what it has ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... of the sun gave 79 deg. 45'. We have therefore drifted only 8' southward during the four days since March 4th. This slow drift is remarkable in spite of the high winds. If there should be land to the north? I begin more and more to speculate on this possibility. Land to the north would explain at once our not progressing northward, and the slowness of our southward drift. But it may also possibly arise from the fact of the ice being so closely packed together, and frozen ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... part of my present purpose to discuss the point historically, or to speculate on the formation of either Canon. Rather, such inquiries are altogether alien from the great object of my pursuits and studies, which is to convince myself and others that the Bible and Christianity are their own sufficient evidence. But it concerns both my character and ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... happy in the present, and did not speculate much upon the future. The rolling years brought him completeness, and to the graces of person were added the gifts of wisdom and knowledge. The down that shaded his cheek, like the down upon a ripe peach, had darkened and strengthened ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... rid of unless formally investigated and dismissed by an ecclesiastical council. Laws against blasphemy, which were virtually laws against heresy, were in force in these three states. In Massachusetts, Catholic priests were liable to imprisonment for life. Any one who should dare to speculate too freely about the nature of Christ, or the philosophy of the plan of salvation, or to express a doubt as to the plenary inspiration of every word between the two covers of the Bible, was subject to fine and imprisonment. ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... frightened, and to have, in consequence, removed his property. What a strange notion Mr. Sudlow must have of Steele and Addison, if he has read the The Spectator and The Tatler after this literal fashion. But I will not speculate on his speculations, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 20, March 16, 1850 • Various
... approach; and when they come alongside you may have a talk with them if you know the language or have an interpreter; or you may amuse yourself with a little pantomime, if articulate speech is impossible. Now you encounter a long train of camels marching along with solemn, stately step, and speculate as to the contents of the big packages with which they are laden. Now you encounter the carcass of a horse that has fallen by the wayside, and watch the dogs and the steppe eagles fighting over their prey; and if you ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... and those men are very susceptible to flattery. Also he will be led to speculate favourably upon the stylishness and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various
... unusual with this well-bred woman; and a bit of speech that does not flow, causes us to speculate. The lady resumed: 'I value the favour. We're in a horsey-doggy-foxy circle down there. We want enlivening. If we had your ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... difficult to analyze the effect of tho punishment Kirsty had given him, but its influence was upon him through the whole of the terrible time—none the less beneficent that his response to her stinging blows was indignant rage. I dare hardly speculate what, had she not defended herself so that he could not reach her, he might not have done in the first instinctive motions of natural fury. It is possible that only Kirsty's skill and courage saved him from what he would never have surmounted the shame of—taking ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... the ruin is not only different from the other portions, but different also from anything else in the canyon, and the difference is not one of degree only. Doubtless systematic excavation in the various parts of the ruin would afford an explanation. In the absence of such work we can only speculate on ...
— The Cliff Ruins of Canyon de Chelly, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff
... detective began to speculate upon the chance that had brought the Chicago ward bully into a village labor fight, and since it was his business to put two and two together, he was not long in finding the answer to his own query. ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... with things which have a principle of motion in themselves; mathematics speculate on permanent, but not transcendental and self-existent things; and there is another science separate from these two, which treats of that which is immutable and transcendental, if indeed there exists ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... longer. If I had been caged in there a few hours more than I was, in my nervous tension I probably would have vented my sense of outraged justice by assaulting one of the officers myself. I wouldn't have had a long time then to speculate upon the immortality of the soul. I would have possessed first-hand information. One can understand why, for their own protection, the Germans imposed their iron laws upon the Belgians with their terrible penalties. What is ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... known to be there. "It's Theodore," said his wife, jumping up and going out to meet him. "I'm so glad that you have been here a little before him, because now I feel that I know you. When he's here, I shan't get in a word." Then she went down to her husband, and Harry was left to speculate how so very charming a woman could ever have been brought to love a man who cleaned his boots ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... ways, or from a deliberate artistic purpose to account adequately for Ferdinand's jealousy? Had he taken a lesson from the maidenly reserve of Lotte von Wolzogen and the prudential scruples of her mother? These are questions upon which one can only speculate. As matters stand, the whole catastrophe is made to hinge upon Ferdinand's suspicion. A little patience, a little faith in his sweetheart, would turn the course of fate. But her conduct makes faith difficult; so we understand his jealousy, but not so well ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... credited(1) with many other discoveries. In the work already referred to he allows his imagination freely to speculate as to the wonders that might be accomplished by a scientific utilisation of Nature's forces—marvellous things with lenses, in bringing distant objects near and so forth, carriages propelled by mechanical means, flying machines...—but in ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... was but little. He could only speculate whether or not the duke would give up Brussels, and retire for reinforcements. If the two armies could effect a union, they would be near about the strength of the French, but then the Prussians were cut to pieces; so the curate broke down, and ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... I have purposely excluded from this list all tricks and accomplishments which are not universally taught to working elephants. We have seen, however, that performing elephants are capable of executing nearly double the number of acts commonly taught to the workers; and, while it is useless to speculate upon the subject, it must be admitted that, were a trainer to test an elephant's memory by ascertaining the exact number of commands it could remember and execute in rotation, the result would far exceed anything yet obtained. For my own part, I believe it would exceed ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... fifty thousand, plus what I have got already—put that at only two hundred and fifty thousand net. Two millions in all, which of course may or may not be added to, probably not, unless the ordinaries boom, for I don't mean to speculate any more. That's the end of twenty years' work, Robert Aylward. And to think of it, eighteen months ago, although I seemed so rich, I was on the verge of bankruptcy—the very verge, not worth five thousand pounds. Now what did the trick? I ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... my dear sister. To speculate upon my title and my rank in order to make a wealthy marriage? To quit my nomad's tent for a fixed residence other than that where the Prerolles have succeeded one another from generation to generation? Never! Of all our ancient prejudices, that is the only one I cherish. ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa
... was Alice who said, "Shut up, Pop"—and rather casually at that—and she and me went on to speculate and then to argue about which buttons we ought to push, if any and ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... himself and told the truth, and the truth was mighty and would prevail. After that he had nothing to do during the rest of his trip but sit alongside one of his companions and talk of cattle-herding and speculate concerning the future of Black Dan. All he could learn regarding the latter was that he was going to the bad as ...
— Elam Storm, The Wolfer - The Lost Nugget • Harry Castlemon
... the end next the horses, two small circular reflections, as it seemed to me of a reddish light. They were about two inches apart, and about the size of those small brass buttons that yachting men used to put upon their jackets. I began to speculate, as listless men will, upon this trifle, as it seemed. From what centre did that faint but deep red light come, and from what—glass beads, buttons, toy decorations—was it reflected? We were lumbering along gently, having nearly a mile still to go. I had not solved ...
— Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... Yelvertoft, and finally to Paulerspury, farther south—as well as over the whole Danegelt from Lincolnshire to Devonshire. If thus there was Norse blood in William Carey it came out in his persistent missionary daring, and it is pleasant even to speculate on the possibility of such an origin in one who was all his Indian life indebted to Denmark for the protection which alone ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... rejoicing which greeted Leo's accession to the Papacy. He was the first Florentine citizen who had received the tiara, and the popular vanity was flattered by this honour to the republic. Political theorists, meanwhile, began to speculate what greatness Florence, in combination with Rome, might rise to. The Pope was young; he ruled a large territory, reduced to order by his warlike predecessors. It seemed as though the republic, swayed ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... better, a letter comes to hand Astin' how I'd like to dicker fer some Illinois land— "The feller that had owned it," it went ahead to state, "Had jest deceased, insolvent, leavin' chance to speculate,"— ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... It is interesting to speculate as to the particular form in which this new art will manifest itself. The question is perhaps already answered in the "color organ," the earliest of which was Bambridge Bishop's, exhibited at the old Barnum's Museum—before the days of electric light—and the latest ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... much disposed to speculate in doubtful securities," he said. "I can't afford it, for one thing, and, of course, I am not in position to watch the market, as you say. What I would like is to put a few thousands into some good, safe, ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... correct. It is plain that a party of the villagers have captured the man, and the excitement we heard was caused by that fact." And John began to speculate on the probability of the island containing more ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... she knocked and had kept a roof above her head. She had been just sixty years of age when Willie Spence's sister had died and left him alone in the wee cottage on the Harbor Road, and all Wilton had begun to speculate as to what was to become of him. Willie was as dependent as an infant; the village gossips who knew everything knew that. From childhood he had been looked after,—first by his mother, then by his ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... is very sensible," replied Athos; "we must speculate upon the faults of people, and not upon their virtues. Monsieur Abbe, you are ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... needless to speculate on what would have been the fortunes of the English in Bengal if that vote had settled the question. Luckily, Clive was a man of genius, and was not either afraid to admit that he had made a mistake, or to change his mind. A short period of solitary reflection ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... formal shaded space of the chamber she stopped to speculate on the varied and colorful pictures of the wall paper reaching from the white paneling above her waist to the deep white carving at the ceiling. The scene which absorbed her most showed, elevated above a smooth stream, a marble pavilion ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... notice even this, certainly none in which to speculate concerning its cause. Miss Snowden, who held a paper in her hand, stepped forward and began to speak, gesticulating with the paper as she did so. She paid absolutely no attention to the masculine visitor. She was trembling with excitement and it is doubtful ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... had lessened the sharpness of their feelings, they learned to speculate reasonably about the phenomenon, which Mr. Grant had accepted as something not to be scoffed away, not to be treated as a poor joke, but to be put aside as something inexplicable ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... he would cordially approve, I used to speculate. Difficult to say. He was much taken up with scientific interests; keen, intent, and somewhat oppugnant in what concerned his favourite pursuits, but unsuspicious and trustful in the ordinary affairs of ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... I remember, with three dozen undershirts, a gallon of pennyroyal for insect bites, a box of assorted fish hooks, thirty pounds of tea, and a case of carpet tacks. When I hadn't anything else to worry over, I used to lie awake at night and speculate on the purpose of those carpet tacks. He had something in mind: if there was anything on which he prided himself, it was his practical bent. But the list never got any further: it ceased short of one page in the ledger, as you may have noticed. I outfitted ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... begin to speculate about the future of this country there is no end. And the past of the nation has rather little to do with estimating its future. We have been a wide-open immigration country. In twenty years we have transformed ourselves by a foreign policy with which Britain had nothing ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... astronomers of a future age. Afterward I was comforted by the reflection that in airless space, although I might die and my body become desiccated, yet there could be no real decay; even my garments would probably last forever. The savants, after all, should never speculate on ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... roulette seems to have a different system: some powder the numbers with florins or five-franc pieces, in the hope of one coming up out of them; others speculate merely on the rouge or noir. One Spaniard at Ems, we remember, made a very comfortable living at it by a method of playing he had invented. He placed three louis-d'or on the manque, which contains all the numbers to eighteen, and two ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... ridiculed what he preached to the people—that the notions of the few and the many were never united. But, in this new faith, it seemed to him that philosopher, priest, and people, the expounders of the religion and its followers, were alike accordant: they did not speculate and debate upon immortality, they spoke of as a thing certain and assured; the magnificence of the promise dazzled him—its consolations soothed. For the Christian faith made its early converts among sinners! ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... to be kapellmeister—on the contrary, wished most vigorously not to be kapellmeister. What on earth he did wish to be, how he hoped to earn bread—he who had had only one opera produced, and gained L45 by it: it is idle to speculate concerning such questions. Excepting that he laboured incessantly at his operas—scheming and sketching, if not actually composing and writing—he would seem at this stage of his growth to have been ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... out into the Lobby to chatter about the new phase of the crisis and to speculate as to what were the points outstanding, and whether the MINISTER OF MUNITIONS was or was not the prickliest of them. To the noise and flurry created by their exit Mr. MCKENNA owes it that his Finance Bill ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CL, April 26, 1916 • Various
... the first time it was noticed that, in place of the habitual smile that had made Burns the idol he was, there was a grim set about his jaw that caused those nearest to the ring to wonder and to speculate. ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... first place, this was enough to make him recall all that had happened. This led him to speculate on all that might be about to happen—how much he could not at that moment even imagine. Neither line of thought ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... never been able to keep this sphere of thought and cognition pure from all admixture of foreign elements. The idea of a science of this kind is as old as speculation itself; and what mind does not speculate—either in the scholastic or in the popular fashion? At the same time, it must be admitted that even thinkers by profession have been unable clearly to explain the distinction between the two elements of our cognition—the one completely ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... Hoddon Grey, Reginald Lester was passing a solitary Sunday at Coryston, until the afternoon, at least, when visitors appeared. To be left to himself, the solitary inhabitant, save for the servants, of the great classical pile; to be able to wander about it as he liked, free to speculate on its pictures and engravings; to rummage the immense collection of china in the basement rooms which no one but himself ever looked at; to examine some new corner of the muniment-room, and to ponder the strange and gruesome collection of death-masks, made ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... now for the first time since she entered this unpeopled house that she had leisure to speculate on the circumstances which had brought about such loneliness and neglect, here where rank and state, and wealth almost without limit should have secured the patient every care and comfort that devoted service could lavish upon a sufferer. How was it that she found her sister's husband abandoned ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... that if we will not fight him now in his own country we shall perhaps be obliged to do so in ours—if, I say, we are assured of this, then we shall have made up our minds aright, and shall be quit of idle words. For you have not to speculate what the future may be: you have only to be assured that the future must be evil, unless you give heed and are ready to do ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... as you said just now, kind of lonely: he feels rather abandoned and even, I think, a little betrayed. So far from being jealous he yearns for me and regrets me. The only thing he really takes seriously is to speculate and understand, to talk about the reasons and the essence of things: the people who do that are the highest. The applications, the consequences, the vulgar little effects, belong to a lower plane, ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... sorry that headache and neuralgia should have been added to illness and dislike of writing, as your reason for not inquiring how we were going on. We sit here in the receipt of news without any means of reciprocity, but we can speculate on France, Italy, and Ireland. Of those, the country which most interests and most concerns me, is Ireland.... I have heard much of Lady and Lord Byron, and from good sources. I can only conclude that he was half mad ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... Alice, "that property is mine and I bought it for a home, not to sell. If you and Colonel Doller want to speculate, you need n't think you 're going to rope me into ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... American rebellion so soon after he had ignominiously washed his hands of it, sealed forever his own social doom. That, it is certain, was most severe and drastic. The money paid him by the British Government was accursed as were the thirty silver pieces of Iscariot; for his passion to speculate ruined him financially some time before the end of his life, and he breathed his last amid comparative poverty and the dread of still ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... to enter the chamber of Father Beret's soul and look upon his sacred and secret trouble; nor must we even speculate as to its particulars. The good old man writhed and wrestled before the cross for a long time, until at last he seemed to receive the calmness and strength he prayed for so fervently; then he rose, tore the letter into pieces so small that not a word remained whole, and squeezed them ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... who were assembled in the old parlour, rose to greet Mr. Pickwick and his friends upon their entrance; and during the performance of the ceremony of introduction, with all due formalities, Mr. Pickwick had leisure to observe the appearance, and speculate upon the characters and pursuits, of the persons by whom he was surrounded—a habit in which he in common with many other great men ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... who do not know her, and have not this ground, it is probably profitable and necessary that they painfully collect isolated facts and then speculate upon them, and base whatever views they should form upon these collections. It might even be profitable that they should form no definite opinions at all, but wait till the ages of practical experience have put doubt to rest. For those of us who have a ground of knowledge which ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... fine and generous spirit that the giant was showing, though Tom had no time to speculate on ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton
... them that the new King, though born a Jew, was of universal interest and was more than human; they forefelt his divinity. Therefore they were come to the King, not to gratify their curiosity, not to speculate and debate and frame a new creed, but to worship him. There was no war between the science and the theology of these wise men. Their science did not kill their religion, and their religion did not strangle their science. The stars, according to their simple-minded way of thinking, did not ...
— A Wonderful Night; An Interpretation Of Christmas • James H. Snowden
... only speculate as to causes of the occurrence of valuable minerals in certain igneous rocks and not in others. Many granites are intruded into the outer shell of the earth, but only a few carry "minerals"; also, of a series of intrusions in the same locality, only one may carry valuable minerals. It ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... had come to the stage of querulous self-pity. 'Twas monstrous, this burying a man alive, ill, fettered, uncared-for, to live or die in utter solitude as might happen. I could not remotely guess to whom I owed this dismal fate, and was too petulant to speculate upon it. But the meddler, friend or foe, who had bereft me of my chance to die whilst I was fit and ready, came in for a Turkish cursing—the curse that calls down in all the Osmanli variants the same pangs in duplicate upon the ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... Sometimes I speculate as to whether it can be due to the mansard-roof of their house. I have always had a theory that inanimate things exerted more of an influence over people than they dreamed, and a mansard-roof, to my mind, belongs to a period which was most ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... knees. The sun lit up her bobbed hair that shone like brass and had touched her white skin with a warm finger. Wistful and elfish, sitting like Puck on a toadstool, she might have slipped out of some mossy corner of the woods to taste the breeze and speculate about life. She wore a butter-colored sport shirt wide open at the neck and brown cord riding breeches and puttees. Slight and small boned and rather thin she could easily have passed for a delicate boy or, except for something at the back of her eyes that showed that she had not always ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... had made in order to get at her, was a novel species of flattery. She recognized the ring of a distinctly new note in his voice; but, strangely enough, the note lost its unfamiliarity in an instant. Margaret recognized that fact also, and as she swiftly speculate don the phenomenon her pulse went one or ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... not necessary to speculate on this matter. For the present we may accept the fact, that the proportion of potash, phosphoric acid, and nitrogen in the crop is no indication of the proper proportion in which these ingredients should be applied to the soil for these crops ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris
... The resort to "Omnipotency" in such matters is more convenient than philosophical; it is a dodging of the question, instead of an attempt to solve it. Divine ordination—"[Greek: Doz d' etelevto Bonlae]"—is a maxim which settles all difficulties. But it also precludes all inquiry. Why speculate at all, with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... it had not occurred to the prince to resent the assured attitude of the merchant, or to speculate upon the insinuating suggestions of complicity which the latter had managed to lodge in the consciousness of ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... powerful means of transport not known to-day. Hundreds of thousands of people have travelled to Stonehenge and have gone away but little wiser than when they came. What the stones were for no man knows; he can only speculate and wonder. ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... John did not perhaps speculate on the reason why this double outflow took place from the wounded side, others have occupied ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... spectator, spectacle, suspect, aspect, prospect, expect, respectable, disrespect, inspection, speculate, special, especial, species, specify, specimen, spice, suspicion, conspicuous, despise, despite, spite; (2) specter, spectrum, spectroscope, prospector, prospectus, introspection, retrospect, circumspectly, conspectus, perspective, specie, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... of the Prince's purpose; for he was more demonstrative of affection than was his wont. He seemed to eye me with a pitiful love that puzzled me; and he began to talk (this also was rare with him) of my special position, how I must be apart from other men, and to speculate in seeming idleness on what a place such as mine would be to him and make of him. All this came between our spurts of rowing or among our talk of sport or of flowers as we lay ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... been caged in there a few hours more than I was, in my nervous tension I probably would have vented my sense of outraged justice by assaulting one of the officers myself. I wouldn't have had a long time then to speculate upon the immortality of the soul. I would have possessed first-hand information. One can understand why, for their own protection, the Germans imposed their iron laws upon the Belgians with their terrible penalties. What is hard to ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... upon the issues of the present campaign, and upon them it may be bootless to speculate. No one may foretell the fortunes of war—I mean where victory will ultimately perch in this frightful struggle. We are environed and invaded by not less than 600,000 men in arms, and we have not in the field more than 250,000 ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... government. Even their literature was, in part, an imitation of the Greek, though possessing many elements of native strength and beauty. They were a people who knew how to accomplish results rather than to speculate about means and ends. Usefulness and effectiveness were with them the criteria of the worth of any idea or project. They subdued and annexed an empire, they gave law and order to a primitive world, they civilized and Romanized barbarian tribes, they built roads connecting all ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... into the unbroken whiteness of the thoroughfare, lined by the snow-laden pines and spruces, all inextricably mixed as the sleigh spun by. It was too late to turn back now, she knew; the best that could be done, was to hurry on—and she began to count the hoof-beats and to speculate how long it would be before they would see the lights of the little station, and find ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... measure, to the rapid changes which occurred in the system of navigation shortly after the projection of the undertaking. For these Telford was not responsible. He was called upon to make the canal, and he did so in the best manner. Engineers are not required to speculate as to the commercial value of the works they are required to construct; and there were circumstances connected with the scheme of the Caledonian Canal which removed it from the category of mere commercial adventures. It was a Government ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... meaning in this text than we at first see. Of "these three," two concern ourselves; the third concerns others. When faith and hope fail, as they do sometimes, we must try charity, which is love in action. We must speculate no more on our duty, but simply do it. When we have done it, however blindly, perhaps Heaven will show ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... designed, the directors, to improve the infatuation of the monied men, opened their books for a second subscription of a million, at four hundred per cent. Such was the frantic eagerness of people of every class to speculate in these funds, that in the course of a few hours no less than a million and a half ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... not watching the patient, nor the good-looking young surgeon, who seemed to be the special property of her superior. Even in her few months of training she had learned to keep herself calm and serviceable, and not to let her mind speculate idly. She was gazing out of the window into the dull night. Some locomotives in the railroad yards just outside were puffing lazily, breathing themselves deeply in the damp, spring air. One hoarser note than the others struck familiarly on the nurse's ear. That ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... "it's horrible even to speculate about such things—a mere question of proximity! Well, it can't be mended now; and the result is that I not only drive you back to work, but you have to carry me back as well, like Sindbad and the ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... much leisure to be thinking of late. A man has time to wonder and to speculate concerning life and what he's seen o' it when he's taking a long ocean voyage. And I've been meditating on some curious contrasts. I was in Australia when I heard of the coming of the war. My boy John was with me, then; he'd come ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... and venison hams, and gourds for drinking cups, and bags of seed, and my father's best hunting shirt; also, in a neglected corner, several articles of woman's attire from pegs. These once belonged to my mother. Among them was a gown of silk, of a fine, faded pattern, over which I was wont to speculate. The women at the Cross-Roads, twelve miles away, were dressed in coarse butternut wool and huge sunbonnets. But when I questioned my father on these matters he would ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... deserter walking between them in his shirt-sleeves, his pinioned hands covered from public gaze by the loose folds of his great-coat, explained everything. But from the hurried march of these mud-splashed men, nothing could be gathered, and we were left to speculate upon its meaning. Gradually, however, before the evening fell, the rumour of a murder having been committed spread through the city, and with that I instinctively connected the apparition of the file of muddy soldiers. Next day, murder ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... indicate the relations of my work on monkeys and apes to that of other investigators. Although throughout the report I have used freely the psychological terms idea and ideation, it has been my aim to describe the behavior of my animals rather than to interpret it or speculate concerning its accompaniments. Certain acts I have designated as ideational simply because they seemed to exhibit the essential features of what we call ideational behavior in man. Further study may, and probably ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... February Corrie first noticed that Gerard and Rupert simultaneously disappeared for an hour and a half every morning. No one knew why, or had interested enough to speculate, it seemed. Gerard always sent Corrie off on some duty, at that time each day, and only accidental circumstances awoke the young driver's attention to a ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... Mrs. Willoughby; 'but I hardly fancy Stephen Drake would consider that. I believe he would feel that he had no right to speculate on what may not happen. He would just see this one clear, definite, immediate thing to do, and simply do it.' She spoke the sentence with a slow emphasis upon each word, and Fielding moved uneasily. It seemed to strike an accusation ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... bell-tent which Queen Mab had bought for their special use and amusement. They pitched it on a corner of the lawn, and were always repairing thither to read, and talk, and hold councils of war. It was delightful to speculate as to what doughty warriors might have been sheltered beneath it; and to imagine that sundry small rents and patches must be the result of the enemy's fire, and not due to the wear and tear ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... his return home in November, 1389, with the affairs of Castile, and with claims arising out of his disbursements there. The reasons for Chaucer's attachment to this particular patron are probably not far to seek; on the precise nature of the relation between them it is useless to speculate. Before Wyclif's death in 1384, John of Gaunt had openly dissociated himself from the reformer; and whatever may have been the case in his later years, it was certainly not as a follower of his old patron that at this date Chaucer could ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... 'Matthew compiled the oracles' ([Greek: xunegrapsato ta logia]), requires this interpretation. If this explanation were correct, the notice would suggest that Papias looked upon the Greek Gospel as not merely a translation, but an enlargement, of the original document. In this case it would be vain to speculate how or when or by whom he supposed it to be made; for either he did not give this information, or (if he did) Eusebius has withheld it. This hypothesis was first started, I believe, by Schleiermacher, and has found favour with not a few critics ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... He died, like his father, at eighty-four (or rather, within a few days of eighty-five), but, unlike him, he had never been ill; a French friend exclaimed when all was over, 'Il n'a jamais ete vieux.' His faculties were so unclouded up to the last moment that he could watch himself dying, and speculate on the nature of the change which was befalling him. 'What do you think death is, Robert?' he said to his son; 'is it a fainting, or is it a pang?' A notice of his decease appeared in an American newspaper. It was written by an unknown hand, and bears a stamp of genuineness which renders the greater ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... habit to scrutinize the faces of those who had achieved greatness, Archbishops, Field-Marshals, Cabinet Ministers, and to speculate on the quality of mind that had raised them to their high estate; and often he would shift his position, so as to obtain a glimpse of his own features in the plate-glass window, and compare them with those of the famous. Thus he would determine ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... versed in the jargon and gossip of the Stock Exchange than Melrose himself; and had made use now and then of the large amount of information and the considerable number of useful acquaintances he possessed to speculate cautiously on his own account—without much result, but without disaster. Also it was very soon clear that, independently of his special reasons for knowing something about engraved gems and their value, he had been, through his Oxford uncle, ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... himself to speculate as to how the door happened to be open, but, picking up the spade, wandered forth into the garden. The gate gave no trouble. He walked fast, and long before Marianne came back to her sweeping he had gained the woods, which were near, and enclosed the house on two sides in a shady half-circle. ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... was not attack I was to fear, but some mysterious, underhanded treachery which would rob me of consciousness and make the precipitation of my body into the water both safe and easy. Perhaps it was in the bottle of brandy that the peril lay; perhaps—but why speculate further! I would watch till midnight and then, if nothing happened, signal my companions ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... Nicholas's five sleeps were accomplished, the Boy began to curse the hour he had laid eyes on Father Wills. He began even to speculate desperately on the good priest's chances of tumbling into an air-hole, or being devoured by a timely wolf. But no, life was never so considerate as that. Yet he could neither face being the cause of the first serious row in camp, nor endure the thought of having ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... plunge from philology into ethnology. I prefer to speculate upon Mr. Thomas Burroughs. Who is he? and what does he want of ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... day we approached a warmer clime with its glowing sunshine and glittering waves and the deep blue sky bending down in unbroken circle around us. The rebel cruisers were then in the midst of their destructive work and it was natural, as we caught sight of a distant vessel, to speculate whether it was a friendly or a hostile craft. When we were in the latitude of Charleston, a steamer appeared in the far distance, then a flash, a puff of smoke and a loud report notified us that it was sending us its compliments. It approached nearer, a boat put out and ...
— Reminiscences of two years with the colored troops • Joshua M. Addeman
... remarkable, that persons who speculate the most boldly often conform with the most perfect quietude to the external regulations of society. The thought suffices them, without investing itself in the flesh and blood of action. So it seemed to be with ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... her feet in a moment. She appeared glad to have some excuse for action. She was, no doubt, nervous and excited as to the probable result of her lover's mission to the Hall, and wanted to be alone with Anne in order that they might speculate upon those probabilities which Banks's return would presently transform ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... rearing as good birds as he can, according to his skill, and according to the standard of excellence at each successive period. He does not wish permanently to modify the breed; he does not look to the distant future, or speculate on the final result of the slow accumulation during many generations of successive slight changes: he is content if he possesses a good stock, and more than content if he can beat his rivals. The fancier in the time of Aldrovandi, when in ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... the Upper and Lower Orinoco permit the Indians of their Missions to paint their skins. It is painful to add, that some of them speculate on this barbarous practice of the natives. In their huts, pompously called conventos,* (* In the Missions, the priest's house bears the name of the convent.) I have often seen stores of chica, which they sold as high as four francs the cake. To form a ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... debate which will then be going on, and will probably be noticed; whereas, after the division on leave to bring in the Bill, it would be less opportune. The article on Ireland is complete, and it would be premature to speculate on the ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... complaisant, very gentle, very disposed to pay court to people in office, to conform blindly to everything which flattered their views and projects; above all, to prefer to the sure and modest society of good farmers, simple citizens, and honest artisans, that of distinguished personages who speculate so patriotically in the public funds, in the lands, and in the ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... walls had never tasted whitewash, but Lotte kept them scoured. She went to church barefoot, and put on her shoes at the door. Good things such as coffee and plums, that the poorest hut has now-a-days, we never saw. We didn't save much, for crops sold cheap. But I didn't speculate, nor squeeze money from the sweat of the poor. In time five pretty little chatterboxes arrived, all flaxen-haired girls with blue eyes, or brown. I was satisfied with girls, but the mother hankered after a boy. That's a poor father that prefers ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... vile tricks a foolish old man, and make him marry her, openly and avowedly selling her beauty and her youth. Such things happen, and are excused by the morality of our day. The same wicked, heartless woman might speculate upon becoming speedily a widow, and thus regaining her liberty, together with a large fortune. This also happens, however horrible it may appear. But that she should marry a poor old fool, with the preconceived ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... who speculate and doubt as to the existence of a hell but peer into the hearts of those vile creatures who slew poor Cook, you will draw back in terror; for hell, black hell is there. To give birth to a deed of such infamy, their hearts ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... undertaking met with almost prompt and cordial support; the proudest names and the brightest lights of the age were enlisted in it. The celebrated Madame de Maintenon became the patroness, forbidding, however, the Society to speculate upon her affairs; the illustrious Duke de Rohan became the president; the Czar Peter an honorary member; and the Society was otherwise royally and nobly officered and befriended. So numerous were the applications to be received as members, that it was found necessary to ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... alienation from things about me, while I am yet amidst them; the slow rending of the bonds which make this body a home, so that it turns half alien, while yet some bonds unsevered hold the live thing fluttering in its worm-eaten cage—but God knows me and my house, and I need not speculate or forebode. When it comes, death will prove as natural as birth. Bethink thee, Lord—nay, thou never forgettest. It is because thou thinkest and feelest that I think and feel; it is on thy deeper consciousness that mine ever floats; thou knowest my frame, ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... so perfectly considerate, so ever kind. She did not realize that she was thinking of him as a lover; but she dreamed, there, of the girls down in the bluegrass and wondered how it must seem to them to have lovers such as he. She could but very vaguely speculate as to their emotions or appearance, but her speculations on both points, vague as they might be, made her suffer strangely and cast queer, furtive little side-glances at him. In her heart were stirrings of keen jealousy ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... discard dancing. Though Germans, they have ceased to use tobacco; which loss, it is said, the men feel more heavily than that of the wives. They make considerable wine and beer, which they drink in moderation. They are said to be worth from two millions to three millions of dollars, and speculate in mines, oil-wells, saw-mills, etc., doing very little hard work, and hiring laborers from without to take their places in all drudgery. They are engaged principally in farming and the common trades, and supply nearly everything for themselves. They ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... noticed that some people ate pie without a knife. By it I fancied I could gauge the man's social inheritance. And there were other customs of the place in keeping with the pie and knife. I used to speculate on what primitive sort of an upbringing he had that he was so slow to adopt the ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... characteristic frankness, my young lady shakes out before me things all frills, embroidery, ribbons, diaphaneity, which the ordinary man only examines through shop-front windows when a philosophic mood induces him to speculate on the unfathomable vanity ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... on the roofs of the houses along the route of travel, with injunctions to watch narrowly the windows opposite and fire upon the first manifestation of disorder. One cannot resist the temptation to speculate upon the excitement that would have developed had a mischievous boy set off a large fire-cracker at ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... adventure was, thus far, pure fun, and the excitement delicious. I giggled in my sleeve in the anticipation of hearing the furious hoofs sweep past and lose themselves in the distance on the false scent. I had not had time to speculate as to why my companion was ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... to throw over Mr. Smithson, and speculate upon her chances of next year, what hope had she of doing better in her second season than in her first? The horizon was blank. There was no great parti likely to offer himself for competition. She had seen all that the market could produce. Wealthy ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... into illegibility, never reinforced by the scanning process. Sensory data, coming in from the outside world as it does, is probably permanent. But the thought patterns originating within the mind itself, the processes that correlate and cross-index and speculate on and hypothesize about the sensory data, these are much more fragile. A man might glance once through a Latin primer and have each and every page imprinted indelibly on his recording mechanism and still be unable ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... hysteria and general debility were regarded as the outward indications of a sweet and gentle character. Woman was a tendril clinging to the strong oak of masculinity. Modesty was her cardinal virtue. One is, of course, entitled to speculate on the probable contemporary causes for the seeming overemphasis placed on this admirable characteristic. Perhaps feminine honesty was so rare as to be at a premium and modesty was a sort of electric sign ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... this episode T. began to speculate about sexual matters and to observe the coupling of dogs with newly acquired interest. At 10 years he often lay awake, listening to a woman of 25 singing to a piano accompaniment. The woman's voice seemed very beautiful, and so strongly ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... and everything? What of the reformer who went beyond Erasmus in denouncing the profane excesses perpetrated in the name of religion at the shrine of Becket at Canterbury? Colet died of the "sweating sickness" at the early age of fifty-three, in 1519; and it is idle to speculate on his action had he lived until the breach with Rome. His monument in the south aisle of the choir perished in the Fire; and in the new Renaissance cathedral a second might well be erected to the memory of this great leader of the Renaissance ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock
... it as a matter of course that he should speculate and gamble at cards, and indeed do anything and everything he fancied, but they beg him at least to keep to respectable clubs. He is constantly away. His daughter tries to tempt him home with the ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... reason, cannot have any practical legal effect upon a then existing controversy."[188] Cases may become moot because of a change in the law, or the status of the litigants, or because of some act of the parties which dissolves the controversy.[189] Just as courts will not speculate an hypothetical question, so they will not analyze dead issues.[190] The duty of every federal court, said Justice Gray, "is to decide actual controversies by a judgment which can be carried into effect, and not give opinions upon moot questions or abstract ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... the other. "That is why we're only ready to offer you out-district virgin forest value for the portions colored blue in this plan. In other words, we speculate by advancing you money on ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... upon those who would shrink from it if they recognized it as it really is and as it will ultimately show itself. Moreover, it is natural, and not unprofitable, for persons under our circumstances to speculate on the forms of error with which a University of this age will have to contend, as the medieval Universities had their own special antagonists. And for both reasons I am hazarding some remarks on a set of ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... adviser of the Executive, flees from office before charges of corruption, shall the historian add that the Senate treated the demand of the people for its judgment of condemnation as a farce, and laid down its high functions before the sophistries and jeers of the criminal lawyer? Shall he speculate about the petty political calculations as to the effect on one party or the other which induced his judges to connive at the escape of the great public criminal? Or, on the other had, shall he close the chapter by narrating how these things were detected, reformed and punished by Constitutional ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... mine! If you got any of your own put it up, and then I'll roll 'em. If you got a hundred to pile on top of that, or five hundred, or ten hundred, come on and pile it up. Then I'll roll 'em. But I ain't a goin' to stand here and speculate in my own money ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... his sharp eyes, nose and mouth, all alive with enterprise. "Look here, now, Loker, a beautiful opening. We'll do a business here on our own account;—we does the catchin'; the boy, of course, goes to Mr. Haley,—we takes the gal to Orleans to speculate on. An't it beautiful?" ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... this sojourn he won the hearts of his friends in Bethany, for the first picture the gospels give of this household seems to presuppose a somewhat intimate relation of Jesus to the family (Luke x. 38-42). It would be idle to speculate whether it was at this time or later that he became acquainted with Joseph of Arimathea, or the friends who during the last week of his life showed him hospitality (Mark ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... have endeavored to engage merchants to speculate in a direct commerce to America, to find out the sentiments of the people in general respecting us, to know whether, in case of necessity, the United States would be able to negotiate a loan, whether England would be able to obtain further credit, and by this ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... he began in apologetic explanation, "how mighty queer it was that while we were working like niggers on grub wages, without the ghost of a chance of making a strike, how we used to sit here, night after night, and flapdoodle and speculate about what we'd do if we ever DID make one; and now, Great Scott! that we HAVE made it, and are just wallowing in gold, here we are sitting as glum and silent as if we'd had a washout! Why, Lord! I remember one night—not so long ago, either—that ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... an Englishman who had been in America since boyhood, and crossed the Atlantic with me on my return. He always, morning, noon, and night, had one either in his hand or projecting out of his mouth. It signified not what was his occupation, the little stiletto was always to the fore. We used to speculate on board if he so slept, and the ayes were ...
— The Truth About America • Edward Money
... He tried to speculate on my Christian character. He tried to make it appear that I was so pious and honest that I would not runaway for ill treatment; which was a gross mistake, for I never had religion enough to keep me from running away from ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb
... and the reign of intelligence. And here is a mandate which appears before my eyes—the tenacious law which must pounce without respite on all public robbers, on all those, little and big, cynics and hypocrites, who, when their trade or their functions bring the opportunity, exploit misery and speculate on necessity. There is a new hierarchy to make mistakes, to commit offenses and crimes—the ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... danger will know God, and will speculate of him, let him look first into the manger, that is, let him begin below, and let him first learn to know the Son of the Virgin Mary, born at Bethlehem, that lies and sucks in his mother's bosom; ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Italian race, whose ghosts, if they wail over the "find," "speak in a language man knows no more." She charms us with etchings or scratchings of mammoths on mammoth-bone, and invites us to explore mysterious caves, to picnic among megalithic monuments, and speculate on pictured Scottish stones. In short, she engages man to investigate his ancestry, a pursuit which presents charms even to the illiterate, and asks us to find out facts concerning works of art which have interested ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... religion and locating the stars in heaven. At that time your forbears were gibbering cave savages, sharpening bones and gnawing raw flesh. When you see the negro on the opposite seat, the ill-starred one who has gone down in the human race while we have gone up, think about him, study him, speculate as to his ultimate end—and your own. Don't merely say to yourself, "That's a plain negro," and go on ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... continual coming and going, a little panorama of life that to a student of men like myself is intensely interesting. And at night it is just as amusing to sit there in the shadow and watch the people returning from the theaters or dances and to speculate as to whom and what they are. At that one little corner of London just off the Strand you see more variety of men and women than perhaps at any other spot. All grades pass before you, from the pushful American commercial man interested in a patent medicine, to the proud Indian Rajah with his turbaned ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... seasoned apparatus inherited from hard-drinking Southern ancestors. Altogether, he gave himself little time for thought, and if he felt at times an inclination to dream he thrust it from him with an almost superstitious fear. He would speculate no longer, but neither would he run the risk of invoking the laughter of cynical gods. If unimaginable disaster awaited him, at least he would not weaken his defences by a sojourn in ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... brows; the frankness of the eyes; the soft wave of her hair. There was a marked sadness in her face in repose; to wonder why, was to transgress the code of loyal humility that Will set himself; he had not even considered it due chivalry to speculate, much less ask, as to the reason of so amazing a phenomenon as her presence in California at all, and the incongruity of her school-teaching. Her pose was perfect, and yet nothing could be more unconscious. Was that ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... sun, his breath of life; he worshipped her. Then one day she died—suddenly—sank down and died as a butterfly might die, chilled by a blast. With her Henry Floyd buried his youth. For a time people were sympathetic; but they began immediately to speculate about him, then to gossip about him. It made no difference to him or in him. He was like a man that is dead, who felt no more. One thing about a great sorrow is that it destroys all lesser ones. A man with a crushed ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... of copying, did not interest him so much as the composing and creating, which were all done before he took up the pen. "You know," he writes to his father, "that I am immersed in music, as it were, that I am occupied with it all day long, that I like to study, speculate, reflect." He was often absent-minded and even followed his thoughts while playing billiards or nine pins, or riding. Like Beethoven, he walked up and down the room, absorbed in thought, even while washing his hands; and his hair-dresser used to ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... Minchumina, perhaps one hundred miles' journey, to have the child baptized. It was generally known amongst all the natives of the region that the enterprise was on foot, and "Minchumina John," hoping to meet us in the Kantishna, and missing us, had followed our trail thus far. It was interesting to speculate how much further he would have penetrated: Walter thought as far as the glacier, but I think he would have followed as far as the dogs could go or until food was ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... the basement and were passed in by the grille-keeper, whose manner betrayed a discreet consciousness of something in the air. It was unnecessary to speculate why. In the distance, muffled by the armoured passages, an authoritative voice boomed like a ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... in the eyes of Felix Graham had come to her—at any rate as yet; and as to Peregrine Orme, she had hardly thought of his existence. "By heavens!" said Peregrine to himself, "she is the most beautiful creature that I ever saw;" and then he began to speculate within his own mind how the idea might be ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... evident. Indeed she must have been quite out of her mind to have called him Martin in that shameless fashion. The fact that the name had slipped so spontaneously from her lips and that she hastened to correct her mistake caused the man to speculate with delight as to whether she was wont to think of him by this familiar cognomen. This thought, however, was of minor importance, the flash of an instant. What chiefly disturbed Martin was the ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... opening of new sources of supply, so abundant as the Ural Mountains, California, and Australia, may be the commencement of another period of decline, on the limits of which it would be useless at present to speculate. But, on the whole, no commodities are so little exposed to causes of variation. They fluctuate less than almost any other things in their cost of production. And, from their durability, the total quantity in existence is at all times so great in proportion ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... was probably the inspired outpouring of one voice, and all the people said 'Amen,' and so made it theirs. Whose voice it was which thus put into words the common sentiment we should gladly have known, but need not speculate. The great fact is that the Church answered threats by prayer. It augurs healthy spiritual life when opposition and danger neither make cheeks blanch with fear nor flush with anger. No man there trembled ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... signing, on August 19th, of an agreement for the suspension of arms for four months. Torcy's reception of Bolingbroke was so managed that the bon vivant peer had as pleasant a time as he could well have wished. How much influence that had on Bolingbroke we can only speculate; but it is certain that he would have made a separate peace with France, after his return, had Oxford been willing. See Torcy's "Memoires" (vol. ii., p. 202). "Bolingbroke avoit conseille a la Reine sa maitresse de preferer une paix particuliere a la suspension d'armes, et d'assurer ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... hopeful believer exerted himself to the utmost, and "poor peasants and farmers, cottagers and their masters, threw their stakes into the claimant's lucky-bag, from which they were afterwards to draw 'all prizes and no blanks.'" Men of loftier position, also, were not averse to speculate upon the chances of this newly-discovered heir. Poor John Montgomerie gave him every penny he had saved, and every penny he could borrow, and after mortgaging his little property, was obliged to flee to America from his duns, where, it is said, he died. His son Peter, who succeeded to Ladeside, ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... project may seem, it was sanctioned by the cool deliberate judgment of Washington; and it cannot, therefore, be doubted, that his Royal Highness was, for a time, in a situation of great though unknown danger. We leave it to our readers to speculate on the possible consequences, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 492 - Vol. 17, No. 492. Saturday, June 4, 1831 • Various
... had to listen to them when we were engaged—I'm sure he is telling the same ones still. And now I shan't always have to be asking Carry Fisher here to keep him in a good-humour. She's a perfect vulture, you know; and she hasn't the least moral sense. She is always getting Gus to speculate for her, and I'm sure she ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... guarding against. Anyhow there is no doubt that the scene holds the place of honour, that it is the readiest means of starting an interest and raising a question—we drop into a scene on the first page and begin to speculate about the people concerned in it: and that it recurs for a climax of any sort, the resolution of the question—and so the scene completes what it began. In Madame Bovary the scenes are distributed and rendered with very rare skill; not one ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... be the same romance about the warships of the present day,—what those of the future will be like we do not care to speculate,—and the old "wooden walls" whose prowess on the high seas founded England's maritime glory? Will a Dibdin ever arise to sing a Devastation or a Glatton? Can a Devastation or a Glatton ever inspire poetic thoughts and images? One would say that the singer must be endowed in no ordinary ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... might have answered, or in what perplexity between truth and unwillingness to hurt she might have landed him before long, I need not speculate, seeing all danger was suddenly swept away by a second voice, addressing Cosmo as unexpectedly as ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... life was not too easy either, at this time, though few folks troubled themselves to speculate upon the reason for her added gruffness. So she concealed her anxieties under an extra harshness of tongue and did her best to make life a burden to everyone she came across. For, naturally, now that the Inn was no longer a pleasant place ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... to Littlebath, intent on enjoying her short reprieve. Something might happen; she did not ask herself what. The old gentleman might not last long; but she certainly did not speculate on his death. Or;—she had a sort of an idea that there might be an "or," though she never allowed herself to dwell on it as a reality. But on one point she did make up her mind, that if it should be her destiny to keep house for either of those two gentlemen, she ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... of paper from headquarters had said, and he did not speculate as to what those services would be, but he knew that they would not be exactly holding Sunday-School picnics in the neighborhood of Montdidier. Billy Brownway, machine gunner, had assured Thatchy that undoubtedly he was wanted to represent the messenger service on the War Council at Versailles. ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... the lofty hall, high above the first story. The dust lay thick on a large marble table—but what was that?—a streak across it, brushed sharply through the middle of the dust! It was strange! But he would not wait to speculate on the agent! The room to which the earl had directed him was on the first floor, and he ascended to it at once—by the great oak staircase which went up the ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... went back to Mr. Falconer, feeling that she had wings and could soar to the heavens. And she was happier yet as she walked that half block, her arm in his, feeling its warmth and strength. It is all very well to speculate in stocks and to build houses, but for such hearts as Susan's there is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... slowly the victims emerge from the lower depths of gloom, feebly smile, faintly joke, pick fearfully but wistfully at once-rejected dishes; talk about getting up, but don't do it; read a little, look at their sallow countenances in hand-glasses, and speculate upon the good effects of travel upon the constitution. Then they suddenly become daring, gay, and social; rise, adorn themselves, pervade the cabins, sniff the odours of engine and kitchen without qualms, play games, go to table; and, just ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... virtues of temperance and fortitude. It may direct the understanding, and ultimately the members of the body, in order to the production of some practical result in the external world, as a bridge. Lastly, it may direct the understanding to speculate and think, contemplate and consider, for mere contemplation's sake. Happiness must take one or ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... as many more next year," he said, throwing them into her apron. "So before long you'll get all his gewgaws," he added, rubbing his hands, delighted to be able to speculate on his daughter's feelings. ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... your last remark," he said. "My opinion is your views are sound. It is very rash to speculate on shares you don't know ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... practice. It is in the nature of morality that it should be implicit in practice long before it is explicit in theory. Morality belongs to the group and is rooted in certain impulses that are a product of the essential conditions of group life. It is as reflection awakens that men are led to speculate upon the nature and origin of the moral feelings. Morality, whether in practice or theory, is thus based upon what is. On the other hand, religion, whether it be true or false, is in the nature of a discovery—one ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... It is idle to speculate what would have been the progress of poetry in England if the Renaissance had not come and the Elizabethan courtier had not enriched himself at the expense of the people. What we have to bear in mind ...
— Songs of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... it, appears very plain, being composed of large blue pebble, some of a tun weight; and directs us to a village called Aimanderby. Barton on the Street, and Appleton on the Street, lye a little on the side of the road." Drake then proceeds to speculate as to the likelihood of the road still making a bee-line for York, or whether it diverged towards Malton, then no doubt a Roman station; but as his ideas are unimportant in comparison with his discoveries, we will leave him to return to the camps at Cawthorne. The hill they occupy forms ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... nothing good to report. Years of sick idleness and barrenness have grown wearisome to me. I do nothing. I waver and hover, and painfully speculate even now as to health, and where I shall spend the summer out of London! I am a very poor fellow;—but hope to grow better by and by. Then this alluvies of foul lazy stuff that has long swum over me may perhaps yield the better ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... sago, or handkerchiefs. I then have to endeavour to explain, through any interpreter who may be at hand, that neither tripang nor pearl oyster shells have any charms for me, and that I even decline to speculate in tortoiseshell, but that anything eatable I will buy—fish, or turtle, or vegetables of any sort. Almost the only food, however, that we can obtain with any regularity, are fish and cockles of very good quality, and to supply our daily wants it is absolutely necessary to be always provided with ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... disturbing the ashes. Perhaps, he felt it all the more keenly on account of those expressions which recalled his own youth. He understood how irresistible must have been the strength of such a love and he trembled to speculate as to the result. ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
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