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More "Speculator" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of this great rush of immigration it is very natural that the prevailing idea should be that lands would greatly increase in value in the near future, and everybody became a speculator. Towns and cities sprang into existence like mushrooms in a night. Scarcely anyone was to be seen without a town-site map in his hands, the advantages and beauties of which fictitious metropolis he was ready to present in the most eloquent terms. ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... wrote the younger historian, "the tendency of trade to assume a form of mere self-interest be irresistible," etc. "And is it?" comments the elder. "Let us all get prussic acid, then." A recent speculator preferred cyanide of potassium. But if "mere self-interest" comprises fraudulent balance-sheets, it cannot claim any support from political economy. When Carlyle drew up a petition to the House of Commons ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... half so free as that slave boy who stands behind your chair. Why, he is a merchant; and whether he lives upon a scale of princely expenditure, whether wholesale or retail, banker, or proprietor of a chandler's shop, he is a speculator. Anxious days and sleepless nights await upon speculation. A man with his capital embarked, who may be a beggar on the ensuing day, cannot lie down upon roses: he is the slave of Mammon. Who are greater slaves than sailors? So are soldiers, ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... was to produce various letters which had been written to him from different parts of the Union, by different individuals. That this could be done will be seen by what follows. The colonel had been an extensive speculator in merchandise of almost every kind. He was extensively known. His correspondence was wide-spread. In his villanous communications, however, letters were never addressed to him in his proper name, unless some one should ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... the day should not be daytime; there should be one hour, if no more, which the day did not bring forth. Scholars are wont to sell their birthright for a mess of learning. But is it necessary to know what the speculator prints, or the thoughtless study, or the idle read, the literature of the Russians and the Chinese, or even French philosophy and much of German criticism. Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... that would be as absolute selfishness as though the reward hoped for had been money, a throne, or any other sensual enjoyment. Nirvana cannot be so reached, and the unwise speculator is ...
— The Buddhist Catechism • Henry S. Olcott
... wrapping it carefully, placed the ostensible change in the pocket of confiding juvenility. Setting the youngster's face homeward, and patting him benevolently on the back—for Chicken's heart was as soft as those of his feathered namesakes—the speculator quit the market with a profit of 1,700 per cent. on ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... mines are in best repute on any stock exchange. All engineers must wish to have the industry under them in high repute. The writer knows of several mines paying 20% on their stocks which yet stand lower in price on account of short ore-reserves than mines paying less annual returns. The speculator, who is an element not to be wholly disregarded, wishes a rise in his mining stock, and if development proceeds at a pace in advance of production, he will gain a legitimate rise through the increase ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover
... innkeeper, but this business, honest enough in itself, only veiled the man's real trade, in which he defied alike the laws of honesty and of his country. The other was by turns a gentleman of property, a merchant, a cattle owner, or a speculator, in all of which characters he acted excellently, and succeeded in making the acquaintance of men ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... safeguards against speculation in the public domain, which had so long scourged the Western States and Territories, and was still extending its ravages. Our pioneer settlers were offered homes of one hundred and sixty acres each on condition of occupancy and improvement, but the speculator could throw himself across their track by buying up large bodies of choice land to be held back from settlement and tillage for a rise in price, and thus force them further into the frontier, and on to less ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... life with unwavering energy to the pursuit of what I may call private and personal ends. Thus the man of business lives for the acquisition of riches; the scholar and the scientist, of knowledge; the statesman, of power; the speculator, of excitement; the libertine, of pleasure; and so forth. Few are they who ever dream of devoting life as a whole to the pursuit of an end which is potentially attainable by all men, and which is therefore worthy ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... plutocratic tendency, the tendency of the police spirit, the regularizing spirit of the Kulturstaat with the individual initiative of the capitalist entrepreneur, methodical habits of administration with the love of risk characteristic of the speculator, all this constitutes imperialism, German imperialism, distinct from every other, because to a definite object, economic conquest, it adds another, less precise, in which the moral satisfaction dear to aristocracy, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... the time of Philo, the deepest thought of the heathen world began to flow in a theologic channel. All the great heathen thinkers henceforth are theologians. In the times of Nero, for instance, Epictetus the slave, the regenerator of Stoicism, is no mere speculator concerning entities and quiddities, correct or incorrect. He is a slave searching for the secret of freedom, and finding that it consists in escaping not from a master, but from self: not to wealth and power, but to Jove. ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... speculator in precious stones," said Ashton-Kirk, to Bat. "He buys and sells; and his buying is not always aboveboard. He is also a pawnbroker ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... and a great facility of conversing on military topics, made even the Emperor Joseph conceive a high opinion of this officer; but it has long been proved, and experience confirms it every day, that the difference is immense between the speculator and the operator, and that the generals of Cabinets are often indifferent captains when in the camp or ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... would do so if it did not conflict with a human theory which presumes to point out how God ought to have instructed man.[184] The writer had no authority for what he asserts so solemnly and unhesitatingly, for he was an early speculator who stated as facts what he only conjectured as probabilities. Yet he seized one great truth, in which he anticipated the highest revelation of modern inquiry; namely, the unity of the design of the world, ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... This was the beginning of the end. One of the trustees, Olaf Jansen, a good-natured peasant who could not keep his accounts but who had a peasant's sagacity for a bargain, wormed his way into financial control. He wanted to make the colony rich, but he led it to the verge of bankruptcy. He became a speculator and promoter. Stories of his shortcomings were whispered about and in 1860 the peasant colony revolted and deposed Olaf from office. He then had himself appointed receiver to wind up the corporation's affairs, and in the following year ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... devoted to corn-growing when the market was a district one centred in the county town, becomes the little factory town when competition is established on a national basis; it may become the pleasure-ground of a retired millionaire speculator if under the pressure of world-competition it has been found that the manufacture which now thrives there can be carried on more economically in Bombay or Nankin, where each unit of labour power can be bought at the cheapest rate, or where some slight saving in ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... Harrison exists very decidedly—a Wall-street speculator, and well known as such by business people, a capital man behind a trotter, an excellent judge of wine. Probably he will come here from the city once or twice before we leave, and I shall find an opportunity to introduce you to him, for he is really worth knowing and considerable ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... latitudinarianism of those times more than Dodwell. Yet no man had more reason to rejoice in it. For, in the earlier part of the seventeenth century, a speculator who had dared to affirm that the human soul is by its nature mortal, and does, in the great majority of cases, actually die with the body, would have been burned alive in Smithfield. Even in days which Dodwell could well remember, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... put up the boy Edmund, thirty-two years of age, an excellent cotton-field hand. Who bids for the boy Edmund?" At this moment a gentleman, who, like most of those present, appeared to be a sort of speculator in slaves, stepped forward, and examined with his hands the boy's legs, especially about the ankles, just as I have seen horse-dealers do with those animals at fairs. There were, however, no bidders; and ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... that it might appear that Carpazzi's arraignment had not been heard. All that Carpazzi said was perfectly true. There was little therefore that Minotti could have answered. He was a man of plebeian origin. His father, a rich speculator, had bought a piece of property and assumed the title that went with it. To a Roman the name Carpazzi was a great deal higher than that of any number of ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... Page family. Virginia's father had been a banker and grain speculator. Her mother had died ten years before, her father within the past year. The grandmother, a Southern woman in birth and training, had all the traditions and feelings that accompany the possession of wealth and social standing that have never been disturbed. She was a shrewd, careful business ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... I see myself as a boy, whose education has been interrupted, and who intellectually was left, for some years, altogether to his own devices. At that time I was a voracious and omnivorous reader; a dreamer and speculator of the first water, well endowed with that splendid courage in attacking any and every subject, which is the blessed compensation of youth and inexperience. Among the books and essays, on all sorts of ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... I see Sam Watson catch many of dem dat had run way en buff en gag em. Never have no jails nowhe' in dat day en time. Dey sho sell de colored peoples way plenty times cause I see dat done right here to Marion. Stand em up on a block en sell em to a speculator dere. I hear em bid off a 'oman en her baby dere en den dey bid off my auntie en uncle way down to de country. Dey wouldn' take no whippin off dey Massa en dat how-come dey get rid of em. My gran'pappy been worth $1,000 en it de Lord's truth ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... describing some of the offices of the landscape designer, adds, that 'he will not inquire whether they demand any great powers of mind.' Johnson, however, conveys to us his own feelings, when he immediately expresses them under the character of 'a sullen and surly speculator.' The anxious life of Shenstone would indeed have been remunerated, could he have read the enchanting eulogium of Whateley on the Leasowes; which, said he, 'is a perfect picture of his mind—simple, elegant and amiable; ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... of this chapter may well be prefaced by an extract from Herbert Spencer on the treatment of offspring. He first supposes that some future philosophic speculator, examining the course of education of the present period, should find nothing relating to the training of children, and that his natural inference would be that our schools were all for monastic orders, who have no charge of infancy ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... seraphic, loving convoy, whose conversation prepares them gradually for that exceeding and eternal weight of glory which is to be theirs as they enter in at the gate. Bunyan has thus, in this blissful passage from the river to the gate, done what no other devout writer, or dreamer, or speculator, that we are aware of, has ever done; he has filled what perhaps in most minds is a mere blank, a vacancy, or at most a bewilderment and mist of glory, with definite and beatific images, with natural thoughts, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... billiard-tables; that there are no front-row seats for the Follies, no berths in any cabin of any steamer, remind yourself that there is always a pony in Corea for Dinwiddie. The rule is that the hotel clerk discovers a vacant room, a ticket speculator disgorges a front-row seat, and the ship's doctor sells you a berth in the sick bay. But in Salonika the rule failed. As already explained, Salonika always is overcrowded. Suddenly, added to her 120,000 peoples, came 110,000 Greek soldiers, their officers, and with many of them their families, 60,000 ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... But we all saw to-day when he came in that that man is not of our sort. Not because he had his hair curled at the barber's, not because he was in such a hurry to show his wit, but because he is a spy, a speculator, because he is a skin-flint and a buffoon. That's evident. Do you think him clever? No, he is a fool, a fool. And is he a match for you? Good heavens! Do you see, ladies?" he stopped suddenly on the way upstairs to their ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... but unfortunately he wants it directly. Then Jean Lamou, who has more in his hand than he can manage, has offered me the decoration of a palatial edifice that he is building for a great speculator, M. Gandelu. I am to engage all the workmen, and shall receive some seven or eight ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... The speculator, whose name was well known in financial circles, took it, examined the seal and signatures curiously, and asked ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... most reason on the side of Mr. Hill Burton. It is one thing for the collector to be able to reflect that the money he expends on books is not lost, and that his family may find themselves richer, not poorer, because he indulged his taste. It is quite another thing to buy books as a speculator buys shares, meaning to sell again at a profit as soon as occasion offers. It is necessary also to warn the beginner against indulging extravagant hopes. He must buy experience with his books, and many of his first purchases are likely to disappoint him. He will pay dearly for ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... have hated to hear that any one of our fine fellows had been killed," he said with a nervous laugh, "but my, what a swell little afternoon hanging that would have been! Nathan Hale with the original cast wouldn't have had a speculator in front of his doors. His front-row seats would be selling at box-office prices, while we would have sold out the house at ten thousand times the cost of the production before the first-nighters had even seen a press notice. There would not have been a piece of paper in the house except ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... God ceases to exist. True, I may if I think it worth while acquire another one, but that will not revive the first. It is what people believe that is the important question, not what some ingenious speculator may succeed in ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... they saw that prosperity mixed, even in the blossom, with the germ of corruption. Monopolies of every kind marked your administration almost in the moment of its commencement. The lands obtained by the revolution were lavished upon partisans; the interest of the disbanded soldier was sold to the speculator; injustice was acted under the pretence of faith; and the chief of the army became the patron of the fraud.(2) From such a beginning what else could be expected, than what has happened? A mean and servile submission ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... the manners of life and being of their grandsires, and calling up, when they so choose it, our ghosts from the grave, to live, love, quarrel, swindle, suffer, and struggle on blindly as of yore. And when the amused speculator shall have laughed sufficiently at the immensity of our follies, and the paltriness of our aims, smiled at our exploded superstitions, wondered how this man should be considered great, who is now clean forgotten (as copious Guthrie ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Pool—perhaps a trifle less aggressive, but making up for that by an even increased self-confidence. Duplay had thought of his former successful rival as a broken man. He was not that. He had never thought of him as a speculator in building land. Seemingly that was ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... for overtime, which provokes quarterly discussion. Is it not strange that very generous men often have such serious objections to the long-distance tails to their telephone bills, and insist upon investigating them with vigour, when they pay a speculator an extra dollar for a theatre ticket without a murmur? They must remember that telephones, whatever may be said to the contrary, are one of the modern aids to domesticity and preventives of gadding, while still keeping one not only in touch with a friend but within range of the voice. Surely ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... younger sons of good family; the civil service and the Church were the other two. In Genoa, nobles had engaged in commerce with equal honor and profit; nearly every argosy that sailed to or from the port of Venice belonged to some lordly speculator; but in Milan a noble who descended to trade lost his nobility, by a law not abrogated till the time of Charles IV. The nobles had therefore nothing to do. They could not go into business; if they entered the army it was not to fight; the civil service was of course actually ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... much had happened, and much more was scheduled to happen. For one twenty-four-hour day the ex-speculator in Mr. Colbrith held out against the sharp attacks of the reawakened lust of conquest. Then, from Jack's Canyon on the Transcontinental, from men-clustered construction trains on the extension, over the passes from ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... bank took a first mortgage upon the property, the owner let the house, paid the interest on the mortgage out of the rent and pocketed the difference, as clear gain. In the majority of eases it was the bank itself which sold the lot of land to the speculator. It is clear therefore that the only money which actually changed hands was that advanced in small ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... invaders, and to perish in thousands before they are convinced of their mistake. The inevitable gap between conquest and dominion becomes filled with the figures of the greedy trader, the inopportune missionary, the ambitious soldier, and the lying speculator, who disquiet the minds of the conquered and excite the sordid appetites of the conquerors. And as the eye of thought rests on these sinister features, it hardly seems possible for us to believe that any fair prospect is approached by so foul ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... church-yard-gate: and it was told over the place that Pen and Laura had visited Helen's grave together. Since Arthur had come down into the country, he had been there once or twice: but the sight of the sacred stone had brought no consolation to him. A guilty man doing a guilty deed: a mere speculator, content to lay down his faith and honor for a fortune and a worldly career; and owning that his life was but a contemptible surrender—what right had he in the holy place? what booted it to him in the world he lived in, that others were no better than himself? ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the finer qualities. There are charming rich men, but either they inherited their wealth, or made it in some high pursuit to which gain was only an incident, or they are exceptional cases. But of course Bagley isn't even a fair type of the regular money-grinder—he's a speculator in anything, and a boor compared with ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... blackness has no connection with the sublime blackness of the inkstand. Never have the fingers of night which contract beneath this stifling ceiling, turned the leaves of a book nor unfolded a newspaper. Babeuf is a speculator to Cartouche; Marat is an aristocrat to Schinderhannes. This cavern has for its ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... his affairs are. I forgot to ask whether he is at Warsaw; most likely he is, as he goes there every winter. As to his business, it may be very magnificent, but I doubt whether it be on a solid basis. I am not a speculator, and could not for the life of me transact a stock-exchange affair; but I am shrewd enough to know it. Besides I am a close observer, and quick to draw conclusions. Therefore I do not believe in noblemen with a genius for speculation. I am afraid Kromitzki's is neither an inherited ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... the possession of land, and from its constituting the sole basis of political privileges—a basis which was infringed for the first time only towards the close of this epoch (35)—it was undoubtedly at this period already usual for the fortunate speculator to invest part of his capital in land. It is clear enough also from the political privileges given to freedmen possessing freeholds,(36) that the Roman statesmen sought in this way to diminish the dangerous class of the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... am doing, stand or fall, will never be my undoing—I am no speculator. How do your silver mines go on, Sir Ulick? I hear all the silver mines in Ireland turn out ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... a while. 'The day is coming, but we must wait for it, work on. I have the secret of how to head the people—to put a head to their movement and make it irresistible, as I believe it will be beneficent. I set them moving on the lines of the law of things. I am no empty theorizer, no phantasmal speculator; I am the man of science in politics. When my system is grasped by the people, there is but a step to the realization of it. One step. It will be taken in my time, or acknowledged later. I stand for index to the people ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to his republicanism, or submitting to any serious loss on account of it, they much mistook the man. He entertained their principles sincerely and not the less that they were found impracticable; for the miscarriage of his experiment no more converts the political speculator, than the explosion of a retort undeceives an alchymist. But Bletson was quite prepared to submit to Cromwell, or any one else who might be possessed of the actual authority. He was a ready subject in practice to the powers existing, ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... selling. Some person formerly rich sells clothes or furniture or jewellery in return for food; the buyer sells again at an enhanced price, and so on through perhaps twenty hands, until a final purchaser is found in some well-to-do peasant or nouveau riche speculator. Again, most people have relations in the country, whom they visit from time to time, bringing back with them great bags of flour. It is illegal for private persons to bring food into Moscow, and ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... come on business. He gave her a nod, however, and an affectionate smile, and indicated with his blue pencil a chair on the other side of the table. He had once made three hundred rupees in tea shares, and that gave him the air of a capitalist and speculator gamely shrewd. Tapping the table with his blue pencil he asked Miss Howe how the world was ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... rest, good natured but thick headed. What a surprise it would be for them. But not once did Manson imagine that he was trading peace for anxiety, and the even tenor of his former ways for the hectic restlessness of the speculator. ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... conducted quietly, added fresh fuel to the rumor blaze. Finally Boston became so excited over the situation that I came out with a public statement in which I frankly showed what I was trying to do. In all such affairs, however, the explanations of any man known in his business as a stock speculator or manipulator are never accepted as true. It is assumed that such announcements are merely blinds to disguise his real purpose; that they are feints or manoeuvres in his campaign. So when I declared that I was working out plans for the consolidation of all good Boston "Coppers," ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... be able to regard Mr. Harrison with as much respect as you do. It may be ignorance, but I never could see much difference between a speculator in ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... profusion which our modern arts enable us to enjoy the whole year round, and in the hard beginnings the orchard and the garden were forgotten for the fields. Their harvests must pay for the acres bought of the government, or from some speculator who had never seen the land; and the settler must be prompt in paying, or else see his home pass from him after all his toil into the hands of strangers. He worked hard and he fared hard, and if he was safer when peace came, it is doubtful if he were otherwise more fortunate. As the game grew ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... run the risk of a change of prices such as to give you a profitable return. The operation is identical with that of betting that such a card will be turned, or that such a horse will win in a race, or such a candidate be elected President. On 'Change we are charitable enough to suppose each speculator possessed of data such as to make his venture seem reasonable to himself. This is the system, and, though very like gambling, it has the advantage of presenting to men of small means the chance of large profits, provided they are willing to run the risk; since, while with a capital of ten ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... gave him permission to live in Walden Woods;—Cato, not Uticensis, but Concordiensis. Some say that he was a Guinea Negro. There are a few who remember his little patch among the walnuts, which he let grow up till he should be old and need them; but a younger and whiter speculator got them at last. He too, however, occupies an equally narrow house at present. Cato's half-obliterated cellar-hole still remains, though known to few, being concealed from the traveller by a fringe of pines. It is now filled with the smooth sumach (Rhus glabra), ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... slaves to you. But let me say, whatever you may see in perspective, it's mighty dangerous when you move such principles to practice. Mark me! you'll have to pull down the iron walls of the south, make planters of different minds, drive self out of mankind, and overthrow the northern speculator's cotton-bag love. You've got a great work before you, my dear madam,—a work that'll want an extended lease of your life-time. Remember how hard it is to convince man of the wrong of anything that's profitable. A paid system, even emancipation, would have been a small affair in ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... are not divided; and so the joint lottery-system flourishes, as of old. The lottery is drawn once a fortnight at Rome, and once every alternate fortnight at Florence or Leghorn; and as far as the speculator is concerned, it makes no difference whether his ticket is drawn for in Rome or in Tuscany, though the gains and losses of each branch are, I understand, kept separate. These lotteries are not of the plain, good old English stamp, in which there were, say, ten thousand ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... forthwith in search of the said Claparon, a merchant who had a reputation for taking heavy risks that meant wealth or utter ruin. The money lender walked away as Castanier came up. A gesture betrayed the speculator's despair. ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... intellectual activity of man. In those early days positive knowledge was not to be had, but the craving after it needed, at all hazards, to be satisfied, and according to the country, or the turn of thought, of the speculator, the suggestion that all living things arose from the mud of the Nile, from a primeval egg, or from some more anthropomorphic agency, afforded a sufficient resting-place for his curiosity. The myths of Paganism are ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... close by, and Grace and Colonel Carrington not far away. Cedar sprays and branches of balsam draped the pillars, the red folds of the beaver ensign hung above our heads, and as usual the assembly was democratic in character. Men in broadcloth and in blue jean sat side by side—rail-layer, speculator, and politician crowded on one another, with stalwart axe-men, some of whom were better taught than either, and perhaps a few city absconders, to keep them company; but there was only good-fellowship between them. The enthusiasm increased with each ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... only practicable for a nation. The things I recollect of the life in the village of Melrose, of 700 inhabitants, have been talked over with my mother, and many embodied in a little MS. volume of reminiscences of her life. I hold more from her than from my father; but, as he was an unlucky speculator, I inherit from him Hope, which is invaluable to a social or political reformer. School holidays were only a rarity in harvest time for the parish school. At Miss Phin's we had, besides, a week at Christmas. The boys had only New Year's ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... whom they met was introduced to them as Colonel Billings, ranch owner and speculator ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... shabby house in Fifty-fourth Street was one of a five-storied row built by a speculator to attract fashion many years before. ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... foul-mouthed. It was as though he was shouting: "I don't have to fear or respect anybody now! I have got a lot of money. I can do as I damn please." More than one pure man became dissolute in the riot of easily gotten wealth. A real-estate speculator once hinted to me, in a fit of drunken confidence, that his wife, hitherto a good woman and a simple home body, had gone astray through the new vistas of life that had suddenly been flung open to her. One fellow who was naturally ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... very uncourteous discretion, had thought fit to refuse. The season passes—and Mr. Monck Mason has ruined himself without being able to bring out his opera after all! What a type of speculation. A speculator is one who puts a needle in a hay-stack, and then burns all his hay without finding the needle. It is hard to pay too dear for one's whistle—but still more hard if one never plays a tune on the whistle one ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 578 - Vol. XX, No. 578. Saturday, December 1, 1832 • Various
... Louvier on your behalf? I shall but inquire if he is inclined to take on himself the other mortgages; and if so, on what terms. Our relationship gives me the excuse for my interference; and to say truth, I have had much familiar intercourse with the man. I too am a speculator, and have often profited by Louvier's advice. You may ask what can be his object in serving me; he can gain nothing by it. To this I answer, the key to his good offices is in his character. Audacious though he be as a speculator, he is wonderfully prudent as a politician. ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... now. Because the mines were first opened on a speculation, worked carelessly—dishonestly I fear—till the speculator's money failed, and the vein stopped. Then the miners being thrown out of employ were reduced to great distress, as this man ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... it is to call the odds and see that the game is played correctly. Whoever takes the box and dice places in the centre of the table as much money as he wishes to risk, which is at once covered with an equal amount either by some individual speculator, or by the contributions of several. The player (technically called the "caster") then proceeds to call a "main." There are five mains on the dice, namely, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9; of these he mentally selects that one which either chance ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... off grievously. It is well known that when a new market is started, proprietors already in the field endeavour to break it up with the aid of paid lathials (clubmen). If, as often happens, the daring speculator be a man of substance, he employs similar means in his defence. Free fights occur on market-days, ending in many a broken head—sometimes in slaughter. The battle is directed by Gomasthas (bailiffs) on either side, with the full knowledge ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... portion of our population are more patriotic than the hardy and brave men of the frontier, or more ready to obey the call of their country and to defend her rights and her honor whenever and by whatever enemy assailed. They should be protected from the grasping speculator and secured, at the minimum price of the public lands, in the humble homes which they have improved by their labor. With this end in view, all vexatious or unnecessary restrictions imposed upon them by the existing ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... the corner towers, upon that part which runs immediately parallel with the Seine, there is a noble terrace, now converted into garden ground—which commands an immediate and extensive view of the embouchure of the river. It is the property of a speculator, residing at Havre. ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... doubt would buy it at a low price during the Slump, stock it with more cattle, work it up during a good season or two, and, when cattle stations boomed once more, sell it at an immense profit. That was what he himself would have done had he been a speculator in similar conditions. Even still, he could do it with a small amount of capital to supply a sop for the Bank.... Now that the Drought had broken they would be more likely to let him go on.... He thought of the 3,000 pounds Sir Luke Tallant had ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... clearly they constitute an activity for specialists who study conditions, becoming relatively expert in determining how and when to act. These specialists are drawn principally from two classes: First, the professional speculator, who knows his markets and makes a business of buying and selling future risks; such men perform a great service in handling our seasonal crops and in other directions, and are entitled to a reasonable profit. Second, ...
— Creating Capital - Money-making as an aim in business • Frederick L. Lipman
... I have been all my life a speculator and observer in all domestic matters, having them so confidentially under my eye in our own household; and so, if I write on a pure woman's matter, it must be understood that I am only your pen and mouth-piece,—only ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... appear that Colonel Boone was a member of any of these conventions. He had no taste for the struggles in political assemblies. He dreaded indeed the speculator, the land jobber, and the intricate decisions of courts, more than the tomahawk of the Indian. And he knew full well that should the hour of action come, he would be one of the first to be summoned to the field. While therefore others of the early pioneers were engaged in these important deliberations, ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... been palmy days, when the money so lightly made was correspondingly lightly spent; when champagne replaced the usual whisky-split at the Rand Club, and on all sides was to be heard the old and well-known formula, "Here's luck," as the successful speculator toasted an ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... before the speculator and his victim had their knees under the same table—with a mug of hard cider between them. Mingled suspicion and avarice in Abijah's expression argued well for the success of the scheme. As is often the case, his ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... selling at the right moment. The sinews of war for that kind of financial warfare were mostly supplied by the fathers and grandfathers of the present generation. Sometimes, no doubt, the capital was lost, and in those cases it must be said that the Jewish speculator disappears from the stage without a sigh or a cry. He begins again, and if he should have to do what his grandfather did, walk from house to house with a bag on his back, ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... seamen-traders ashore until their schooner sailed for another swing about the French groups of islands. Llewellyn and David were associates in planting, curing, and shipping vanilla-beans, but were roisterers at heart, and ever ready to desert their office and warehouse for feasting or gaming. Polonsky was a speculator in exchange and an investor in lands, and was reputed to be very rich. He, too, would leave his strong box unlocked in his hurry if cards or wassail called. These same white men were sib to all their fellows in the South Seas except a few sour men whom avarice, satiety, or a broken constitution ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... for $4,000. He said that the last time he was sold he only brought $1,500. He was born in Alabama. When he was bought he was carried from Alabama to Virginia. It was Col. Elmore who took him. He wanted to go to Alabama again, so Col. Elmore let a speculator take him back and sell him. He stayed there for several years and got homesick for South Carolina. He couldn't get his marster to sell him back here, so he just refugeed back to Col. Elmore's plantation. Col. Elmore ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... swallowing myth. Now in some of the stories the night is obviously conceived of as a big beast which swallows all things. The notion that night is an animal is entirely in harmony with savage metaphysics. In the opinion of the savage speculator, all things are men and animals. 'Ils se persuadent que non seulement les hommes et les autres animaux, mais aussi que toutes les autres choses sont animees,' says one of the old Jesuit missionaries in Canada. ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... we turn for the most striking example of the playwright's powers. This first appeared as Le Faiseur (The Speculator), being originally written in 1838-40. Justice compels us to state, however, that another hand is present in the perfected play. In the original it was a comedy in five acts; but this was revamped and ...
— Introduction to the Dramas of Balzac • Epiphanius Wilson and J. Walker McSpadden
... butter. Clubs also are an English invention. The first one in Paris was opened in 1782. The Duke of Chartres had recently cut down the trees of his garden to build the porticoes and shops of the Palais Royal. The people who had been in the habit of lounging under the trees were thus dispossessed. A speculator opened a reading-room for their benefit, and provided them with newspapers, pamphlets, and current literature. The duke himself encouraged the enterprise, and overcame the resistance which the police naturally ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... soul enter heaven at the very same moment? Is heaven in the atmosphere? He who asserts it is a very bold speculator. Is it out in the ether? If so, where? And how is it our telescopes cannot detect it? If heaven is a place, as it must be if it exists at all, it cannot very well be within the astronomical universe. Now the farthest stars are inconceivably ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... know? I can no more tell you the whys and wherefores of myself than I can lift myself up by the waistband and carry myself into the next county, as some one challenged a speculator in perpetual motion to do. I am too much a pessimist to respect my own affections. Do you know what a ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... and who render reasons. He treated Mr. Owen of Lanark, for example, with infinitely more respect than he has shown to Mr. Hallam or to Dr. Lingard; and this for no reason that we can discover, except that Mr. Owen is more unreasonably and hopelessly in the wrong than any speculator ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... he gave him the letter of Pere Etienne, with a eulogy of the priest's regard for Northwick's interest and safety. He told him how Markham's talk had caught his attention, and Northwick tacitly recognized the speculator. But when Pinney explained that it was the postmark on his letter to the Events that gave him the notion of going to Rimouski, he could see that Northwick was curious to know the effect of that letter with the public. At first he thought he would let ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... The theological speculator insists that virtue lies in a constant and fierce struggle between the will and the passions, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 2 of 3) - Essay 1: Vauvenargues • John Morley
... occurred shook my confidence in him, Vincent. The accounts were not at all satisfactory, and it happened quite accidentally that when I was talking one day with Mr. Robertson, who, as you know, is a great speculator in tobacco, I said that I should grow no more tobacco, as it really fetched nothing. He replied that it would be a pity to give it up, for so little was now cultivated that the price was rising, and the Orangery tobacco always fetched top prices. 'I think the price I paid for your ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... meant, the sly little devil, slipping away for her bit of fun. Grown a beauty, too, as anybody but a thundering, juicy, damned fool might have known she would! He swore bitterly, thinking what a gold-mine a face and figure like that might have proved to an honest speculator up ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... had not chosen to reveal could hardly (he supposed) be well pleasing in their sight. Indeed, the man who tortured his brains about such subjects stood a fair chance of losing his wits entirely, just as Anaxagoras, (18) the headiest speculator of them all, in his attempt to explain the divine mechanism, had somewhat lost his head. Anaxagoras took on himself to assert that sun and fire are identical, (19) ignoring the fact that human beings can easily look at fire, but to gaze steadily into the face of ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... name," added the oil speculator. "If he will guarantee the safe return of the casks, that is all I ask. I wonder if Mr. Sherwood don't want some shares in the ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... speculators, when buying land for reselling in plots, do not pay so much attention to the qualities of the land as to its advertising possibilities. If land in a widely known valley is alkali land, so much the better, for the buying price is lower. The speculator in his advertisement makes it appear as fruit land with a great future. It seems also to have been by no means uncommon for the agent's commission to be higher than the price paid by the ...
— A Stake in the Land • Peter Alexander Speek
... years that followed the close of the Revolutionary War, Judge Cooper was a speculator in lands on a large scale, and was steadily engaged in the settlement of the tracts which he owned and those in which he had a joint interest with others. His judgment concerning land values was keen and far-sighted. That he was not infallible is shown by his ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... was an earl's son (in this age of commonplace events) going to Australia with five thousand pounds, as sheep farmer and general speculator. ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... taste. Flower-beds and lawns, a handsome fountain, seats shaded by groups of fine trees at their full growth, completed the pastoral charm of the place. A winding path led across the garden from the back of the house. It had been continued by the speculator who purchased the property, until it reached a road at the extremity of the grounds which communicated with the Crystal Palace. Visitors to the hotel had such pleasant associations with the garden that many of them returned at future opportunities instead of trying the attraction of ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... no money that one spends so willingly as that invested in garden seeds. That is because the normal human being is a visionary, a speculator in futures, a dealer in dreams. For every penny he spends in winter he pictures an overflowing return in beauty or substance, in flower and fruit, the glorious harvest of ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... had, for his sole fortune, one of the handsomest houses in Paris, purchased in 1834 in preparation for his marriage, situated on the boulevard between the Rue de la Paix and the Rue Louis-le-Grand. A speculator had built two houses between the boulevard and the street; and between these, with the gardens and courtyards to the front and back, there remained still standing a splendid wing, the remains of the magnificent mansion of the Verneuils. ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... you ever thought that seven times 1,700,000 francs make nearly twelve millions? No, you have not;—well, you are right, for if you indulged in such reflections, you would never risk your principal, which is to the speculator what the skin is to civilized man. We have our clothes, some more splendid than others,—this is our credit; but when a man dies he has only his skin; in the same way, on retiring from business, you have nothing but your real principal of about ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... secured the ruby—at a fabulous price; but in the operation he made at least one bitter, implacable enemy. Alfred Fluette returned to the United States, smarting with the stings of defeat, and pledged to a commercial warfare on the successful millionaire speculator. It ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... the elegant lucidity of the style are such as we are accustomed to expect from French essay-writers. And what is still more admirable is the way in which the enthusiasm characteristic of a genial and original speculator is tempered by the patience and caution of a cool-headed critic. Patience and caution are nowhere more needed than in writers who deal with mythology and with primitive religious ideas; but these qualities ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... want any of your fluctuating incomes for my girl. I don't care if you earned ten thousand pounds this year. So long as you can't guarantee that to last, you're no better than a speculator—a hand-to-mouth, don't-know-where-you-are-to-morrow sort of person. Now, that sort of thing won't do, Mr. Vernon. Before you next think of marrying a girl in my daughter's position, let me give you this bit of advice: learn to paint your ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... his putting the question, as to what were Alexander's views and intentions in visiting the Cape: for Mr. Fairburn knew from the letter that he was heir to Sir Charles Wilmot, and therefore that he was not likely to be going out as a speculator or emigrant. ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... Baker gained much information about the slave trade of this part of the world. Most of those engaged in this nefarious traffic are Syrians, Copts, Turks, Circassians, and some few Europeans. When a speculator has determined to enter into the trade, he engages a hundred and fifty to two hundred ruffians, and purchases guns and ammunition, and a few pounds of glass beads. With these he sails up to Gondokoro and, disembarking, marches into the interior till ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... so essential to an important harbour, had not the Government always possessed the means of cheaply constructing such a work by convict labour, and been thus able at any time to have entered into such competition as might have been very injurious to a private speculator. At Cockatoo Island, blacksmiths, shoemakers, wheelwrights, were at work in their various avocations; all the shoes, for both the men and horses of the expedition, were made there; also one half of the carts, which proved equally good as the ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... the rich men of the other sides, are as content with themselves for being "self-made," are just as grumpy, and with as many weaknesses. Some of these West Side rich men live on Ashland Avenue. There certainly lived and lives Mr. Jason B. Grampus, a great speculator, whose home ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... burly, honest, rather droll assistant named Ruhl, who had been a student in Munich, then a Revolutionist and exile, and finally a refugee to America. To this shop, too, came Andrekovitch, whom I had last known in Paris as a speculator on the Bourse, wearing a cloak lined with sables. In America he became a chemical manufacturer. When at last an amnesty was proclaimed, his brother asked him to return to Poland, promising a support, which he declined. He too was an honourable, independent man. About this ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... there are few things of more importance to the West than to see to it that the public lands pass directly into the hands of the actual settler instead of into the hands of the man who, if he can, will force the settler to pay him the unearned profit of the land speculator, or will hold him in economic and political dependence as a tenant. If we are to have homes on the public lands, they must be conserved for the men who ...
— The Fight For Conservation • Gifford Pinchot
... a century ago, land on Beacon Hill was as cheap as public documents. Ministers are enjoined not to be worldly minded, and not to be given to filthy lucre. But the Reverend James Allen would furnish an excellent pattern for a modern real-estate speculator. In addition to his pasture on the south side of Cambridge Street, he had also a twenty-acre pasture on the north side of that street, between Chambers Street and Charles River, extending to Poplar Street, for which he paid ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... display of men's furnishings in a window. Far down the street, on the other side, almost lost in the hurrying crowd, Martigny was buying a paper of a newsboy. He shook it out and looked quickly up and down its columns, like a man who is searching for some special item of news. Perhaps he was a speculator; perhaps, after all, I was deceiving myself in imagining that he was following me. I had no proof of it; it was the most natural thing in the world that he should be in this part of the town. I must test the theory before ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... Thomas was the headquarters of the national guard; while that of the Trinity had been appropriated to the reception of works of art, the spoils of the other convents. One had been sold to a private speculator, who let it out in chambers; another was the refuge of military invalids; a third, the convent of St Catalina—which was set fire to while the Duke of Angouleme was attending, in the year 1823, a mass celebrated in honour of his successful campaign—had been demolished, and a building for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... fault, I know, a mere defect of constitution; but you, as a speculator, were, if I may venture to put it so, not worth your salt; no boldness, no dash, all caution. But your promising son is a regular whale on speculation, and I may tell you that we stand in together in some ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... vitally concerns every business and calling and enters every household in the land. There is one important aspect of the subject which especially should never be overlooked. At times like the present, when the evils of unsound finance threaten us, the speculator may anticipate a harvest gathered from the misfortune of others, the capitalist may protect himself by hoarding or may even find profit in the fluctuations of values; but the wage earner—the first to ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... pressing throng on the wharves. Some were there to meet friends or relatives; some wanted the news from France; some came for mail to be delivered to the various points along the river. Prominent among them was Governor Lauson, a grey-haired, kindly civilian, who, though a shrewd speculator, was by no means the man to be at the head of the government in Canada. He was pulled this way and that, first by the Company, then by the priests, then by the seigneurs. Depredations by the Indians remained unpunished; and the fear of the great white ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... "A Miss Wildmere is staying here also," her sister wrote, "and, somewhat to Mr. Muir's disapproval, Graydon seems not only well acquainted with her, but unusually friendly. Mr. Muir says that if she is like her father she is a 'speculator'; and from the attention she receives and the way she receives it one would think he was right. Graydon, however, seems to be her favorite, and if he could remain long enough it is not hard to see ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... soon became familiar—in twenty minutes you would have thought them friends of twenty years:—so,—before the last speculator had invested his last weekly sixpence in a goose-club, and drawn the last adamantine old gander; or the last Christmas-pudding-sweep swept away the chimerical puddings, that ought to have been very ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... land belonging to government and cultivating it: such was the custom of the back-woodsmen, and, for want of this law, it often happened that after they had cultivated a farm, the land would be applied for and purchased by some speculator, who would forcibly eject the occupant, and take possession of the improved property. A back-woodsman was not to be trifled with, and the consequences very commonly were that the new proprietor was found ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... a few millions," said he. "And I suppose he is turning them over very rapidly. People say that he is a daring speculator." ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... I am well assured of the good faith of my customer. I offered you ordinary business terms when I asked for security, or for the signature of three responsible merchants to your bond. It is because I am a merchant, and not a speculator, that I ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... two-thirds of the entire tenement-house population. When the number of families living under one owner exceeded ten, it was found that such owner was engaged in the keeping of a tenement-house as a business, and generally as a speculator. It is among this class of owners that nearly all the evils of the tenement-house system are found. The little colony exhibit in their rooms, and in the little areas around their dwellings, extreme want of care. The street in front of the place was reeking with slops and garbage; ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... of about five hundred acres on the Monongahela. Twelve years later, in 1798, he was neither richer nor poorer than at the time of his investment. The entire amount of claims which he held with Savary he sold in 1794, without warranty of title, to Robert Morris, then the great speculator in western lands, for four thousand dollars, Pennsylvania currency. This sum, his little farm, and five or six hundred pounds cash were then his entire fortune. In 1794, the revolution in Switzerland having driven out numbers of his compatriots, he formed ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... himself, he becomes emulous and discontented—he is apt to think, unless he goes more rapidly than any one else, that he is not moving at all. If he can find no one of his neighbors advancing toward fortune, with longer strides than he, he will imagine some successful "speculator," to whom he will compare himself, and chafe at his inferiority to a figment of his own fancy. If he possessed "a million a minute," he would cast about for some profitable employment, in which he might engage, "to pay expenses." He will abandon ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... through a clearer lens, and are probably taking my measure far better than I take theirs. One instinctively shrinks from making a sketch or memorandum while they are by; and if caught in the act, one fondly hopes to pass for some harmless speculator in real estate, whose pencillings may be only a matter of habit, like those casual sums in compound interest which are usually to be found scrawled on the margins of the daily ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... become exhausted, be it soon or late, he would be a wise or, perhaps, a rash speculator who fixed himself to a year or a generation. Being inevitable, the best philosophy is to make our decline more gradual and less bitter. Sentimental regrets that these hills and valleys will no longer resound with the din of labor, or be blackened by the smoke ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... de Lorris was a refined and graceful exponent of the conventional doctrine of love, a seemly celebrant in the cult of woman, an ingenious decorator of accepted ideas; Jean de Meun was a passionate and positive spirit, an ardent speculator in social, political, and scientific questions, one who cared nothing for amorous subtleties, and held woman in scorn. Guillaume addressed an aristocratic audience, imbued with the sentiments of chivalry; ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... Act has undoubtedly effected an enormous improvement in the prices paid by public bodies for land which they require, although, most unfortunately, the same immunity from the extortion of the land-owner and the land speculator has not been extended to private bodies such as railway companies who need land for the improvement of public services. Moreover, it has not attempted to bring the purchase price of land into any relation with ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... which a copy might be acquired. To assign such significance to the word 'begetter' was entirely in Thorpe's vein. Thorpe described his role in the piratical enterprise of the 'Sonnets' as that of 'the well-wishing adventurer in setting forth,' i.e., the hopeful speculator in the scheme. 'Mr. W. H.' doubtless played the almost equally important part—one as well known then as now in commercial operations—of the 'vender' of the property ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... formerly lived in New York. His father was a speculator, and was looked upon by some as a wealthy man; but it was hinted by those who knew him best that if his debts were all paid he would have but little ready money left. Be that as it may, Mr. Morgan and his family, at any rate, lived in style, and ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon
... that M. Hardy, instead of being what he is, had only been a cold-hearted speculator, looking merely to the profit, and saying to himself: 'To make the most of my factory, what is needed? Good work—great economy in the raw material—full employment of the workman's time; in a word, cheapness of manufacture, in order ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... make a good bid, sir," he said, in his slow American way, emphasising all the most unimportant words: "But you overlook one element. I am a man of science, not a speculator. I have trained myself for medical work, at considerable cost, in the best schools of Europe, and I do not propose to fling away the results of much arduous labour by throwing myself out elastically into a new ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... seclusion sheltered Peers, Their wealth and influence might save it; No speculator ever fears Artists or writers ...
— Punch Volume 102, May 28, 1892 - or the London Charivari • Various
... the most part of his money importing Guinea niggers, and now is in a mortal funk lest some of it, like them, shall run away. Two years ago he was a member of the rebel Congress and a partner of that desperate speculator Morris, with a hand thrust deep in the Continental treasury rag-bag. Now he has trimmed ship better than any of his slavers ever did, gone about on the opposite tack, and is so loyal to British rule that his greatest ambition is to get his other hand ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... of the gifts which lead a speculator to success. He was quick in observing, just in estimating, prompt and fearless in acting. But in finance there is always the element of luck, which, however one may eliminate it, still remains, like the blank at roulette, a constantly present handicap upon the ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a rash speculator, and on that memorable "Black Friday," the idol he had worshiped, the god of gold, proved itself to be nothing but clay, and was as dust in his hands. He could not rally from the shock; pride, ambition, courage, were all annihilated; and Mrs. Mulford, to whom beggary seemed ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... full. The old standards were scope enough for his ambition. He ranged in them absolute—and "fair in Otway, full in Shakspeare shone." He succeeded to the old lawful thrones, and did not care to adventure bottomry with a Sir Edward Mortimer, or any casual speculator that offered. I remember, too acutely for my peace, the deadly extinguisher which he put upon my friend G.'s "Antonio." G., satiate with visions of political justice (possibly not to be realized in our time), ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... revenge against Godolphin's father; he was glad to show that the son preferred where the mother rejected. All these motives combined made Saville take, as it were, to the young Percy; and being rich, and habitually profuse, though prudent, and a shrewd speculator withal, the pecuniary part of his kindness cost him no pain. But Godolphin, who was not ostentatious, did not trust himself largely to the capricious fount of the worldling's generosity. Fortune smiled on her boyish votary; and during ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Rhodesian shops; but when well cut, they were battered and worn. Take, for instance, Mrs. Lisle's gown of pale-green satin and sequins. She had been an actress before she married Barton Lisle and came out to the ups and downs of a mining speculator's life, and all her clothes were rechauffees of the toilettes in which she had once dazzled provincial audiences. Gay Liscannon's frock of pale rose-leaf silk, with a skirt that was a flurry of delicious little frills and a bodice of lace, sewn with ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... lasted more than two and a half years. In September, 1891, there was a corner in the local market which forced the September price up to seventeen and one-quarter cents. George Kaltenbach, a wealthy speculator living in Paris, combining with three operators in Havre, Hamburg, and Antwerp, succeeded in breaking the corner, forcing the price down to ten and eight-tenths cents. They then changed to the bull side, ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... grossly intemperate or given to moderate tippling, be it ever so little, so long as he does not believe in and practice total abstinence; who uses tobacco; who is a jockey, a fop, a loafer, a scheming dreamer, or a speculator; who is known to be unchaste, or who has led a ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... was the beginning of our connection. Off and on, I did many things for him of one sort or another, and made rather a nice addition to my salary out of doing them, till the devil, or he, or both, put it into my head to start as builder and speculator on my own account. ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... of families do we not all have to depend upon the architect, the builder, the real estate broker, the speculator in land, the laws concerning boundaries, taxes and title deeds, rent and landlords' powers, and press all one upon another for a chance for a home when we elect to live where many other people want also to live? Is, then, the ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... up the boy Edmund, thirty-two years of age, an excellent cotton-field hand. Who bids for the boy Edmund?" At this moment a gentleman, who, like most of those present, appeared to be a sort of speculator in slaves, stepped forward, and examined with his hands the boy's legs, especially about the ankles, just as I have seen horse-dealers do with those animals at fairs. There were, however, no bidders; and Edmund was put ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... is the very worst sort of economy. It excludes the honest workman, who knows the real value of the service to be performed, and is unwilling to undertake to do his duty well, at the expense of himself and family; while it lets in the needy and greedy speculator who, having nothing to lose in point of character or money, will readily undertake what he can not perform, and become dependent upon the magnanimity of Congress for remuneration for his losses, real ...
— Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post • Thomas Rainey
... there was not a single banking house in London. Goldsmiths had strong vaults in which masses of bullion could lie secure from fire and robbers, and at their shops in Lombard Street all payments in coin were made. William Paterson, an ingenious speculator, submitted to the government a plan for a national bank, which after long debate passed both ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... in all directions to make sure that nobody was observing him, he produced from under his blanket a piece of gold-bearing quartz. Without saying a word, he held the bit of rock before the eyes of the speculator. ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... curse of the world, how was it with them? But one thought, one desire, filled their hearts; one object, one intention, was their aim. What of the speculator and extortioner of the South, Christian as well as Jew, Turk as well as Infidel! From the hour that the spirit of avarice swept through the hearts of the people, the South became a vast garden of corruption, ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... "clock," and "molecules" for "works," and the application of the argument is obvious. The teleological and the mechanical views of nature are not, necessarily, mutually exclusive. On the contrary, the more purely a mechanist the speculator is, the more firmly does he assume a primordial molecular arrangement, of which all the phenomena of the universe are the consequences; and the more completely is he thereby at the mercy of the teleologist, ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... recognized and arrested in the island of Vlieland. Slatius and others were also intercepted in their attempts at escape.—Stoutenbourg, the most culpable of all, was the most fortunate; probably from the energy of character which marks the difference between a bold adventurer and a timid speculator. He is believed to have passed from The Hague in the same manner as Grotius quitted his prison; and, by the aid of a faithful servant, he accomplished his escape through various perils, and finally reached Brussels, where ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... his farm wisely, others would soon settle near by, and when a cluster of clearings had been made, some enterprising speculator would appear, take up a quarter section, cut it into town lots, and call the place after himself, as Piketown, or Leesburg, or Gentryville. A storekeeper with a case or two of goods would next appear, then a tavern would be erected, and possibly a blacksmith shop and a mill, ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... hears, & served him right. I DATEST Screw,"—and so forth. Then the diary relates to Stock Exchange operations, until we come to the time when, having achieved his successes, Mr. James quitted Berkeley Square and his livery, and began his life as a speculator and a gentleman upon town. It is from the latter part of his diary ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... history. The South African Republic was to develope within a few years from a condition of great poverty into a rich and prosperous State, a country calculated in every respect to awaken and inflame the greed of the Capitalistic speculator. Within a few years the South African Republic was ranked among the first gold-producing countries of the world. The bare veldt of hitherto was overspread with large townships inhabited by a speculative and bustling class brought together from all corners of ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... Mr. Harrison exists very decidedly—a Wall-street speculator, and well known as such by business people, a capital man behind a trotter, an excellent judge of wine. Probably he will come here from the city once or twice before we leave, and I shall find an opportunity to introduce you to him, for he is really worth knowing ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... was overspreading, in his time, all the common human affairs, and infolding in its gaudy, baleful wings all the life of men,—it is that which takes from the first the speculative eye of this new speculator,—this founder of the science of things, and not of words instead of them. Here is a man of science, a born naturalist, who understands that this phenomenon lies in his department, and takes it to be his business, among ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... thus handed over to a speculator for a term of years, it needed no prophet to foretell that he would get all he could out of it, and put as little into it as possible. When Crozat took possession of the colony, the French court had been thirteen ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... Martin, founder and Mayor of St. Raphael and of Valescure, a railway engineer who was known as the American of Provence, and who, in fact, is the most desperate and the most interesting and pleasant speculator of France. Speaking to me of Frejus, my favourite town, and its surroundings, Martin called it "the Roman Campagna on the Bay of Naples," a very pretty phrase, absolutely true of it, for the scenery is that of the plain between Naples and Capua, but the ruins and the solemnity of the foreground ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... loose." (Renewed laughter.) I really can not tell whether it is one of those ethereal creations of intellectual frostwork, more intangible than the rose-tinted clouds of a summer sunset,—one of those airy exhalations of the speculator's brain, which I am told are ever flitting in the form of towns and cities along those lines of railroad, built with Government subsidies, luring the unwary settlers as the mirage of the desert lures ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... rate of postage, and the heavy deposits of caution-money required by the government as security for good behavior, is within the reach of all who care to pay for it, and has turned the fourth page of every journal into a harvest field alike for the speculator and the Inland Revenue Department. The press restrictions were invented in the time of M. de Villele, who had a chance, if he had but known it, of destroying the power of journalism by allowing newspapers to multiply till no one took any notice of them; but he missed his opportunity, ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... luck in my new enterprise, bade me good-by, and set out for Redstone, where he was to measure a tract for a Revolutioner. The speculator having been rescued from Jim Willis's clutches by the sheriff, the crowd good-naturedly helped us load our stones between pack-horses, and some of them followed us all the way home that they might see the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... to considerable talk of financial investment and adventure. He heard, for one thing, of a curious character by the name of Steemberger, a great beef speculator from Virginia, who was attracted to Philadelphia in those days by the hope of large and easy credits. Steemberger, so his father said, was close to Nicholas Biddle, Lardner, and others of the United States Bank, ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... believed in keeping records, and so complete a file of them has now been reassembled at Mt. Vernon that it is possible to follow his career in any phase: officer, business speculator, host, farmer, legislative adviser, and friend. He gave to fishing the painstaking personal attention he gave to all else. As a "fisherman" he directed the manufacture as well as the repair of his nets, and the curing, shipping and marketing of ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton
... and humbugged the pursuers; now he was doing it in his own interest. Being in possession of the treasure-trove, he must find some excuse for appearing as a rich man before the public. He must pretend to be a speculator who had been lucky in his business. In his very first affair he must be reputed to have made large sums. If people imagined he had made his money by corrupt means, that was the lesser evil; and it could not be proved, for it was not true. He had ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... the church-yard-gate: and it was told over the place that Pen and Laura had visited Helen's grave together. Since Arthur had come down into the country, he had been there once or twice: but the sight of the sacred stone had brought no consolation to him. A guilty man doing a guilty deed: a mere speculator, content to lay down his faith and honor for a fortune and a worldly career; and owning that his life was but a contemptible surrender—what right had he in the holy place? what booted it to him in the world he lived in, that others were no better than himself? Arthur and Laura rode by ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Some theoretical knowledge of the art of war, and a great facility of conversing on military topics, made even the Emperor Joseph conceive a high opinion of this officer; but it has long been proved, and experience confirms it every day, that the difference is immense between the speculator and the operator, and that the generals of Cabinets are often indifferent captains when in the camp or ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... of which he perhaps became fully conscious in South Germany, in the city of more easy-going habits of life. In Buddenbrooks itself the difference between North and South plays an important part; Tonie, the youngest daughter of the house of Buddenbrook, is twice married, first to an unscrupulous speculator in Luebeck, the second time to a Munich dealer in hops, Aloysius Permaneder, who rescues her from the disgraceful position of a divorced woman. This deliriously portrayed beer-reeking philistine, whose informality and whose wild oaths horrify the prim ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... exposed to great temptations and occupying a position of trust, such as the bank officer or the trusted employee. Here the stress of overexpensive tastes, of some financial burden or the desire to get rich quick through speculation overcome inhibition, especially as it is too often assumed by the speculator that he will be able ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... of Louisiana, wrote, on August 25, 1835, to President Jackson: "Governments, like corporations, are considered without souls, and according to the code of some people's morality, should be swindled and cheated on every occasion." Linton gave this picture of "a notorious speculator who has ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... this detracts little from their substantive correctness or utility. This strange notion of images emanating from the external object, entering the mind, and being there perceived, was, after all, in its origin, rather a physical than a metaphysical hypothesis. The ancient speculator upon the causes of things felt, as we feel at this moment, the necessity for some medium of communication between the eye and the distant object, and not having detected this medium in the light ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... of the Tuit-well (whereof he had sparingly heard) for that it was by some compared to the so much fam'd Spa in Germany. I was not nice to give way to the summons of his desire: the match was soon made, and the next day, accompanied with a worthy Knight and judicious admirer, and curious speculator of rarities, and three other physitians of allowable knowledge, we set forwards for Knaresbrough, being about fourteen miles from Yorke. We made no stay at the towne, but so soone as we could be provided of a guide, we made towards the Well, which we found almost two miles ...
— Spadacrene Anglica - The English Spa Fountain • Edmund Deane
... had had but a single opportunity, and for the brief space of less than half an hour, of witnessing the phenomena to which he referred. M. Cholet, the speculator who advanced to her parents the money necessary to bring Angelique to Paris, had taken the girl and her parents to the Observatory, where Arago then was, who, at the earnest instance of Cholet, agreed to test the child's powers at once. There were present ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... Humph! I guess I'm out of soundin's. When I thought fifteen dollars was a high price for paintin' a view of a house I was slightly mistaken. Next time I'll offer the paintin' feller the house and ask him what he considers a fair boot, besides. Sam Cahoon's a better speculator than I thought he was. Hello, Commodore! what's worryin' ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... be assumed by an enthusiastic speculator is not wonderful. The payment of the national debt has been one of the staple dreams of enthusiasts. It would be difficult to believe the wild nonsense that has been written on it; and Hogarth, in his dreadful picture of a madhouse, appropriately represents one of his principal figures ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various
... JACOB, birthright speculator, traveler, s. Isaac, and brother of Esau. Was mother's pet. Became proficient as a character impersonator, but never went on the stage. Left home suddenly. Slept on a stone and had hard dreams. Later married, and was responsible for Joseph and ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... land on Beacon Hill was as cheap as public documents. Ministers are enjoined not to be worldly minded, and not to be given to filthy lucre. But the Reverend James Allen would furnish an excellent pattern for a modern real-estate speculator. In addition to his pasture on the south side of Cambridge Street, he had also a twenty-acre pasture on the north side of that street, between Chambers Street and Charles River, extending to Poplar Street, for ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... story will permit) must have an active influence on the ensuing events. I suppose him to have been an American, but to have fled his country and taken refuge in England; he shall have been a man of the Nicholas Biddle stamp, a mighty speculator, the ruin of whose schemes had crushed hundreds of people, and Middleton's father among the rest. Here he had quitted the activity of his mind, as well as he could, becoming a local antiquary, etc., and he has made himself ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... speculation in the public domain, which had so long scourged the Western States and Territories, and was still extending its ravages. Our pioneer settlers were offered homes of one hundred and sixty acres each on condition of occupancy and improvement, but the speculator could throw himself across their track by buying up large bodies of choice land to be held back from settlement and tillage for a rise in price, and thus force them further into the frontier, and ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... not to be wondered at that the young and ardent eagerly embrace a line of life so replete with exciting events and incidents, and which at once enriches the successful speculator, and fills with plenty and prosperity the region which he enters. The first individual who opens a market, which no other Overlander has yet visited, rides into the district an ill clothed way-worn traveller; the residents do not at first deign to cast a glance upon him till presently it is ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... playgoers this indispensable preliminary conception of sanctity seems wanting. They talk of actors as mimes and mummers, and, I fear, think of dramatic authors as liars and pandars, whose main business is the voluptuous soothing of the tired city speculator when what he calls the serious business of the day is over. Passion, the life of drama, means nothing to them but primitive sexual excitement: such phrases as "impassioned poetry" or "passionate ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... Breard or his agent declared at the custom-house that they belonged to the King, and so escaped the payment of duties. Theywere then, as occasion rose, sold to the King at a huge profit, always under fictitious names. Often they were sold to some favored merchant or speculator, who sold them in turn to Bigot's confederate, the King's storekeeper; and sometimes they passed through several successive hands, till the price rose to double or triple the first cost, the Intendant and his partners sharing the gains with friends and allies. They would ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... because I'm in... hm! Well, anyway, I won't say why, I daren't.... But we all saw to-day when he came in that that man is not of our sort. Not because he had his hair curled at the barber's, not because he was in such a hurry to show his wit, but because he is a spy, a speculator, because he is a skin-flint and a buffoon. That's evident. Do you think him clever? No, he is a fool, a fool. And is he a match for you? Good heavens! Do you see, ladies?" he stopped suddenly on the way upstairs to ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... ledger. No. Music without any tune to it may be all right for some people, but comic opera is "good enough" for you. You like that coon song you heard the other night. How you would enjoy playing it on the pianoforte if you only knew how! But you don't, so you have to pay a speculator three dollars for a seat if you ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... head at him. "No," she said; "you certainly wouldn't while I had any say in the matter. You're rather a good farmer, but I haven't met one yet who made a successful speculator. Some of our friends have tried it—and you know where it landed them. I expect those broker and mortgage men must lick their lips when a nice fat woolly farmer comes along. It must be quite delightful to ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... room. Mrs. Barker's scant schoolgirl knowledge was touched by this gentleman, who spoke French fluently, and delicately explained to her the libretto of a risky opera bouffe. And now she had finally yielded to a meeting out of San Francisco—and an ostensible visit—still as a speculator—to one or two mining districts—with HER BROKER. This was the boldest of her steps—an original idea of the fashionable Van Loo—which, no doubt, in time would become a craze, too. But it was a long step—and there was a streak of ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... requires weighing previously, or he will have done nothing that can be received for an estimate of the composite Coleridge. This astonishing man, be it again remembered, besides being an exquisite poet, a profound political speculator, a philosophic student of literature through all its chambers and recesses, was also a circumnavigator on the most pathless waters of scholasticism and metaphysics. He had sounded, without guiding charts, the secret deeps of Proclus and Plotinus; ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... palace. My lady insists on having the best suites of rooms wherever we go—and the palace comes cheaper for a two months' term. My lord tried to get it for longer; he says the quiet of Venice is good for his nerves. But a foreign speculator has secured the palace, and is going to turn it into an hotel. The Baron is still with us, and there have been more disagreements about money matters. I don't like the Baron—and I don't find the attractions of my lady grow on me. She was much nicer before the Baron joined us. ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... with Dr. Smollett, who was about to launch the "British Magazine." Smollett was a complete schemer and speculator in literature, and intent upon enterprises that had money rather than reputation in view. Goldsmith has a good-humored hit at this propensity in one of his papers in the "Bee," in which he represents Johnson, Hume, and others taking seats in the stagecoach ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... same day," Mr Montefiore says, "when the death of an unfortunate speculator caused a general gloom to prevail in the financial world, I was asked by a gentleman if I had the courage to join him in a speculation, my reply was I would see to-morrow." "I fear," Mr Montefiore observes, "this day's awful lesson is quite ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... Finally Boston became so excited over the situation that I came out with a public statement in which I frankly showed what I was trying to do. In all such affairs, however, the explanations of any man known in his business as a stock speculator or manipulator are never accepted as true. It is assumed that such announcements are merely blinds to disguise his real purpose; that they are feints or manoeuvres in his campaign. So when I declared that I was working out plans for the consolidation of all ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... Little Journey in the World." In this Mr. Warner tells us of one of the sweetest and purest of young women, who has the highest ideals, and whose standards of morality are of the noblest, who is married to an unprincipled young speculator on Wall Street, New York; and under the influence of her husband, and the society into which she is drawn by his business relations, in which he gathers millions of money, all her holy and lofty ideals are overthrown, ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... away. Cedar sprays and branches of balsam draped the pillars, the red folds of the beaver ensign hung above our heads, and as usual the assembly was democratic in character. Men in broadcloth and in blue jean sat side by side—rail-layer, speculator, and politician crowded on one another, with stalwart axe-men, some of whom were better taught than either, and perhaps a few city absconders, to keep them company; but there was only good-fellowship between them. The enthusiasm increased with each orator's efforts, until ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... firm sand, soon made themselves apparent, and the Crescent, Hothampton Place and several other terraces in what is now the centre of modern Bognor quickly appeared. A determined attempt to change the name to Hothampton failed, and as soon as the speculator died, his gamble a personal failure, the town reverted to the original ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... Thomas Batchgrew were now explained. His visit, his flattery, his heartiness, his youthfulness, all had a motive. He had safeguarded Louis' interests under the will in order to rob him afterwards as a cinematograph speculator. The thing was as clear as daylight. And yet Louis did not seem to see it. Louis listened to Batchgrew's ingenious arguments with naive interest and was obviously impressed. When Batchgrew called him "a business man ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... their own ideas and of the philosophies of their time. The early physicist thought that myth concealed a physical philosophy; the early etymologist saw in it a confusion of language; the early political speculator supposed that myth was an invention of legislators; the literary Euhemerus found the secret of myths in the course of an imaginary voyage to a fabled island. Then came the moment of the Christian attacks, and Pagan ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... him before. Savine was a man of quick, restless movements and nervous disposition. The gray that tinged his long mustache, lightly sprinkled his hair, gave evidence of his fifty years of intense living. He was known to be not only a daring engineer, but a generally successful speculator in mining and industrial enterprises. Nevertheless, Geoffrey fancied that something in his face gave ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... Peers, Their wealth and influence might save it; No speculator ever fears Artists or writers such ...
— Punch Volume 102, May 28, 1892 - or the London Charivari • Various
... as though he was shouting: "I don't have to fear or respect anybody now! I have got a lot of money. I can do as I damn please." More than one pure man became dissolute in the riot of easily gotten wealth. A real-estate speculator once hinted to me, in a fit of drunken confidence, that his wife, hitherto a good woman and a simple home body, had gone astray through the new vistas of life that had suddenly been flung open to her. One fellow ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... de Nucingen takes an interest in me, I will teach her how to manage her husband. That husband of hers is a great speculator; he might put me in the way of making a fortune by a ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... get together a new company, selecting those actors and actresses who were best suited to my repertory. The excellent Isolina Piamonti was my leading lady; and my brother Alessandro, an experienced, conscientious, and versatile artist, supported me. An Italian theatrical speculator proposed to me a tour in North America, to include the chief cities of the United States, and although I hesitated not a little on account of the ignorance of the Italian language prevailing in that ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... face bespeaking the polished noble, whilst his dress betokens the gallant sea captain. There is the fine portly figure of Lord Grantham, bowing to George Ward, Esq.; who, in quakerlike coat and homely gaiters, with an umbrella beneath his arm, presents a fine picture of a speculator "on 'Change." To the left is Richard Stephens, Esq., Secretary to the Royal Yacht Club, and Master of the Ceremonies. He is engaged in the enviable task of introducing a party of ladies to view the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 374 • Various
... blushed. "Why, who would, dear, if not a woman, or a speculator, and I'm not a speculator; and neither are you, and that's the reason you didn't think of them. So, Mr. Parker, as there is so much pressure, and if you don't mind continuing to act as reporter as well as compositor until after to-morrow, and if it isn't too wet—you must take an umbrella—would ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... great rivers from the north discharged their turgid waters. Along these bays and rivers were scattered the inhabitants, numbering less than one hundred thousand, of whom a considerable portion had come from the States. There, as always on the frontier, land had been a lodestone attracting both the speculator and the homeseeker. In the parishes of West Feliciana and Baton Rouge, in the alluvial bottoms of the Mississippi, and in the settlements around Mobile Bay, American settlers predominated, submitting with ill grace to the exactions of Spanish officials who were believed ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... another brilliant cantatrice, in the very dawn of her great career fell into the nets of a shrewd and unprincipled operatic speculator. Signor Lanari, an impressario of Florence, recognized the future success of the inexperienced young girl, and decoyed her into an engagement for six years on terms shamefully low, for Giulia's modesty did not appreciate her own remarkable powers. Alone and without ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... prove convenient to speculate upon the trend of development of that class about which we have the most grounds for certainty in the coming time. The shareholding class, the rout of the Abyss, the speculator, may develop in countless ways according to the varying development of exterior influences upon them, but of the most typical portion of the central body, the section containing the scientific engineering or scientific medical sort of people, we can postulate certain ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... February is to be found in his genuine friendship for the Indian, which eventually profited him much, it is true, but, from this time henceforth, was lifelong. He stood in somewhat of a contrast to Blunt, whom General Steele thought unprincipled[933] and who in Southern parlance was "an old land speculator,"[934] and to Curtis, who was soon to show himself, as far as the Indians were concerned, in his true colors. While Phillips was absent from Fort Gibson, Curtis arrived there. He was making a reconnoissance of his ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... more familiarly than favorably known in financial circles of Boston, as the man who had put afloat more wild-cat stocks than any other speculator on the street. It might be supposed that his connection with any scheme would be enough to wreck its prospects, yet whatever he took hold of floated for a time. There was always a feeling among his victims that at length he had come to the place where he must connect ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... a Mr. Denyer, but this gentleman was very seldom indeed in the bosom of his family. Letters—and remittances—came from him from the most surprising quarters of the globe. His profession was that of speculator at large, and, with small encouragement of any kind, he toiled unceasingly to support his wife and daughters in their elegant leisure. At one time he was eagerly engaged in a project for making starch from potatoes in the south of Ireland. ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... department show itself in its efforts to circumnavigate the speculator, and so obvious was the fact that the Jubilee stamps were issued, like our own Columbian stamps, for the pecuniary profit the Government would derive from their sale, that it is small wonder that the series ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... because they thought they saw a good chance to sell their stock to those who would pay high for the control, or to participate in these combinations. There have been a good many cases where an enterprising speculator has managed to get hold of a majority of the stock and change the control, and powerful bankers can sometimes get proxies enough to put a stop to bad management; but spontaneous movements of this kind on the part of the mass of the stockholders ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... walk—a chapel had been replaced by a covered market. The large convent of St Thomas was the headquarters of the national guard; while that of the Trinity had been appropriated to the reception of works of art, the spoils of the other convents. One had been sold to a private speculator, who let it out in chambers; another was the refuge of military invalids; a third, the convent of St Catalina—which was set fire to while the Duke of Angouleme was attending, in the year 1823, a mass celebrated ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... He who would cast the horoscope of humanity, or of any human activity, must neither neglect history nor trust her overmuch. Certainly the neglect of history is the last mistake into which a modern speculator is likely to fall. To compare Victorian England with Imperial Rome has been the pastime of the half-educated these fifty years. "Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento," is about as much Latin as it is becoming in a public schoolman to remember. The historically ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... There is too much said about fast trotters and race horses. On some of the farms around here, the people have gone mad on breeding fast horses. An old farmer out in the country had a common cart-horse that he suddenly found out had great powers of speed and endurance. He sold him to a speculator for a big price, and it has set everybody wild. If the people who give all their time to it can't raise fast horses I don't see how the farmers can. A fast horse on a farm is ruination to the boys, for it starts ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... queer collection of people who have settled on a derelict farm that was bought up and sold in small plots by a land-speculator. They'll give plenty of scope for your activity. By the way, I hope you're not too extreme. We have to go very slowly here. I manage an early Eucharist every Sunday and Thursday, and of course on Saints' days; but the attendance is not good. We have vestments during the ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... distinction is made between the produce of the country, and articles imported—between the small retailer, who has purchased perhaps at double the rate he is allowed to sell at, and the wholesale speculator, this very simplification renders the whole absurd and inexecutable.—The result was such as might have been expected; previous to the day on which the decree was to take place, shopkeepers secreted as many of their goods as they could; and, when ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... cellar stored with wines and table stores, you will be offered a share in profits coming from a doubtful source. If a young woman dreams of this she will have an offer of marriage from a speculator or gambler. ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... suspense. There was no more need of a car track along Lafayette avenue than there was need of one from the top of Trinity Church steeple to the moon! The greater facility of travel, the greater prosperity! But I am opposed to all railroads, the depot for which is an unprincipled speculator's pocket. ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... ruinous rate at which he lent money. Castanier went forthwith in search of the said Claparon, a merchant who had a reputation for taking heavy risks that meant wealth or utter ruin. The money lender walked away as Castanier came up. A gesture betrayed the speculator's despair. ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... to you. But let me say, whatever you may see in perspective, it's mighty dangerous when you move such principles to practice. Mark me! you'll have to pull down the iron walls of the south, make planters of different minds, drive self out of mankind, and overthrow the northern speculator's cotton-bag love. You've got a great work before you, my dear madam,—a work that'll want an extended lease of your life-time. Remember how hard it is to convince man of the wrong of anything that's profitable. A paid system, even emancipation, would have been a ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... on Malvoise, "I should not advise you to mention Barr's name as the manufacturer of the Buzzards. He has a business deal on in which it is important he should not be known as an aeroplane speculator. If he learns that you are giving his secrets away, he will make it hot for you, I can tell you. You were sent to Bellevue yesterday, were ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... person, who not only deserts a beautiful, charming, and affectionate wife, but treats his lower-class loves shabbily, and allows himself to be swindled and fooled to the nth by an adventuress of fashion and a plausible speculator. On the other hand, one of this book's rather numerous grisettes, Ninie, is of the more if not most gracious of that questionable but not unappetising sisterhood. Dubois, the funny man, and Jolivet, the parsimonious reveller, who generally ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... but, as a matter of fact, Napoleon had already left his shabby lodgings for better ones in Michodiere street, and was actually negotiating for the purchase of a handsome detached residence near that of Bourrienne, whose fortunes had also been retrieved. The country-seat which the speculator had in view, and for which he intended to bid as high as a million and a half of francs, was knocked down to another purchaser for three millions or, as the price of gold then was, about forty thousand dollars! So great a personage as he now was must, of course, have a secretary, and the faithful ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... over the Lincoln home. Mr. Lincoln was interested, as a speculator, in some mines in Montana, and by a peculiar manipulation of the stocks of these mines he lost every dollar of his hard-earned savings. He was an over-sensitive man, and these losses preyed upon ...
— Young Auctioneers - The Polishing of a Rolling Stone • Edward Stratemeyer
... with the speculator, by whom this operation is better understood, and is made to contribute to his advantage. It is not until the prices of the necessaries of life become so dear that the laboring classes can not supply ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson
... is much more than a mere roulette wheel for the speculator. Its real purpose is to provide a centre for the legitimate trader. It is a great information bureau of world happenings where every item of news concerning the wheat in any way is gathered and classified—drouth, rain, frost, rust, locusts, hail, Hessian fly, monsoon or chinch bug. In every ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... pursued for bread, become very serious matters of fact: and, apart from this consideration, I am not at all prepared to say, myself, that if Caleb had been a Lord Chamberlain, or a Member of Parliament, or a lawyer, or even a great speculator, he would have dealt in toys one whit less whimsical, while I have a very great doubt whether they would have ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... him to his society in order to make use of him in the world, just as a bold speculator employs a confidential clerk. The friendship, real or feigned, of De Marsay was a social position for Paul de Manerville, who, on his side, thought himself astute in exploiting, after his fashion, his intimate friend. He lived in the reflecting ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... Ross, a real estate dealer, whose great, wooden signs might be seen everywhere on the windy stretches of prairie about the city. Lester had seen Ross once or twice at the Union Club, where he had been pointed out as a daring and successful real estate speculator, and he had noticed his rather conspicuous offices at La Salle and Washington streets. Ross was a magnetic-looking person of about fifty years of age, tall, black-bearded, black-eyed, an arched, wide-nostriled nose, and hair that curled naturally, ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... kind marked your administration almost in the moment of its commencement. The lands obtained by the revolution were lavished upon partisans; the interest of the disbanded soldier was sold to the speculator; injustice was acted under the pretence of faith; and the chief of the army became the patron of the fraud.(2) From such a beginning what else could be expected, than what has happened? A mean and servile ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... A speculator became interested in these girls, and plead with all his eloquence for official favor in their behalf. General Grant softened his heart and gave this man a written permit to ship whatever cotton belonged to the orphans. It was understood, and so stated in the application, that the amount ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... but now. Because the mines were first opened on a speculation, worked carelessly—dishonestly I fear—till the speculator's money failed, and the vein stopped. Then the miners being thrown out of employ were reduced to great distress, as this man ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... called the social English the most sheepy of sheep:—and Nesta could not consent to the cruel verdict, she adored her compatriots. Incongruities were pacified for her by the suggestion of her quick wits, that her father, besides being a merchant, was a successful speculator; and perhaps the speculator is not liked by merchants; or they were jealous of him; or they did not ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... three miles west of Starkville, Mississippi on a pretty tolerable large farm. My folks was bought from a speculator drove come by. They come from Sanders in South Ca'lina. Master Charlie Cannon bought a whole drove of us, both my grandparents on both sides. He had five farms, big size farms. Saturday was ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... extraordinary, the unheard-of—it is the victory of pure construction. The natural equilibrium between the three necessary elements of creation—mobility, combination of images, calculation—is destroyed. The rational element gives way, is obliterated, and the speculator is launched into adventure with the possibility of a dazzling success or astounding catastrophe. But let us note well that the primary and sole cause of this change is in the affective and motor element, in an hypertrophy of the ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... an aptness for intuitions, and sometimes a seemingly positive preference for the bird in the bush," which latter may account for that skilful Yankee versatility so perfectly exemplified in the chaplain, poet, editor, merchant, speculator, ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various
... use for you to sit there and conjure up tragedies," Ward replied. "I can't help gambling, it is in my blood; my father is about the biggest speculator in England. If you want a good ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... is growing the horse is starving;" and thus, while the new district is becoming peopled the funds of the small shopkeeper are gradually eaten up, and he puts up his shutters just at the time when a more cautious speculator steps in to profit by the connection already formed, and to take advantage of the new improved condition of the locality. It seems, therefore, desirable for the small capitalists rather to run the risk of a more expensive rent, in a well-peopled district, than to resort to places ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... eight or ten miles we traveled on the American bottom, which, in all probabilities, never was surpassed in fertility. After leaving the bottom the country is rather hilly and barren. Traveled twenty-two miles and lodged at Waterloo, a town without houses. Only two families in the place. Every land speculator produces one or more of these dirt-cabin villages. Indeed, two-thirds of the travelers met with are land speculators. The inhabitants of this part of the country appear to be a wretched set of beings. Their great-coats are made out of a blanket, with a cap or ...
— Narrative of Richard Lee Mason in the Pioneer West, 1819 • Richard Lee Mason
... the highly gratified Bill, turning with a threatening gesture upon a speculator opposite. "Wot do you say ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... probably taking my measure far better than I take theirs. One instinctively shrinks from making a sketch or memorandum while they are by; and if caught in the act, one fondly hopes to pass for some harmless speculator in real estate, whose pencillings may be only a matter of habit, like those casual sums in compound interest which are usually to be found scrawled on the margins of the ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... children, and about to be presented with a third, Proudhon was obliged to devise some immediate means of gaining a living; he resumed his labors, and published, at first anonymously, the "Manual of a Speculator in the Stock-Exchange." Later, in 1857, after having completed the work, he did not hesitate to sign it, acknowledging in the preface his indebtedness to his collaborator, ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... father belonged to different master's, but the plantations that they lived on were near each other and so my father was allowed to visit us often. My mother had two other girls who were my half-sisters. You see—my mother was sold to the speculator in Virginia and brought to Georgia where she was sold to Mr. Hale, who was our master until freedom was declared. When she was sold to the speculator the two girls who were my half-sisters had to be sold with her because they were too young to be separated from their mother. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... produce various letters which had been written to him from different parts of the Union, by different individuals. That this could be done will be seen by what follows. The colonel had been an extensive speculator in merchandise of almost every kind. He was extensively known. His correspondence was wide-spread. In his villanous communications, however, letters were never addressed to him in his proper name, unless some one should labour under the impression that he was ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... exclaimed Caroline. 'What, you want to set the world in a blaze! I thought you were a poetic dreamer, a listless, superfine speculator of an exhausted world. And all the time you are ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... to corn-growing when the market was a district one centred in the county town, becomes the little factory town when competition is established on a national basis; it may become the pleasure-ground of a retired millionaire speculator if under the pressure of world-competition it has been found that the manufacture which now thrives there can be carried on more economically in Bombay or Nankin, where each unit of labour power can be bought at the cheapest rate, or where some slight ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... the block and auctioned off for $4,000. He said that the last time he was sold he only brought $1,500. He was born in Alabama. When he was bought he was carried from Alabama to Virginia. It was Col. Elmore who took him. He wanted to go to Alabama again, so Col. Elmore let a speculator take him back and sell him. He stayed there for several years and got homesick for South Carolina. He couldn't get his marster to sell him back here, so he just refugeed back to Col. Elmore's plantation. Col. Elmore took him back and wouldn't ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... these walruses; on the contrary, it was a strong voice, but stifled, an idea of which can be given only by comparing it with the noise of a saw cutting into soft and moistened wood,—the voice of a worn-out speculator. ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... foreign system of tenantry, there are few things of more importance to the West than to see to it that the public lands pass directly into the hands of the actual settler instead of into the hands of the man who, if he can, will force the settler to pay him the unearned profit of the land speculator, or will hold him in economic and political dependence as a tenant. If we are to have homes on the public lands, they must be conserved for the men ...
— The Fight For Conservation • Gifford Pinchot
... characters of mankind. There was universally, however, an interest in the Bible now it was lost, such as had never attached to it while it was possessed; and he who had been but happy enough to possess fifty copies might have made his fortune. One keen speculator, as soon as the first whispers of the miracle began to spread, hastened to the depositories of the Bible Society and the great book-stocks in Paternoster Row, and offered to buy up at a high premium any copies of the Bible that might be on ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... euenire non posse, quod autem non potest non euenire id ex necessitate contingere, meque ad hoc nomen necessitatis adstringas; fatebor rem quidem solidissimae ueritatis sed cui uix aliquis nisi diuini speculator accesserit. Respondebo namque idem futurum, cum ad diuinam notionem refertur, necessarium, cum uero in sua natura perpenditur, liberum prorsus atque absolutum uideri. Duae sunt etenim necessitates, simplex una, ueluti quod necesse est omnes homines esse mortales, altera condicionis, ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... notes, bewitched accounts, false statements. At the same time, with that part of him which seemed obedient, he asked the landlord if he knew of the gold discoveries on the Chicoutimi River, and tried to account for himself as an American speculator going to look into the matter in his own way ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
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