"Guesswork" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... many overlooked extragenital infections, especially among those who are the victims of crowding, poor living conditions, and ignorance. Estimates on the amount of syphilis which is contracted in marriage are apt to be largely guesswork in the absence of reliable vital statistics on the disease. Fournier believed that 20 per cent of syphilis in women was contracted in marriage. So much syphilis in married women is unsuspected, and so little of what is recognized is traceable to outside sources, ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... more august tribunals where the desire to be true and just is uppermost, false evidence is so rife that there has to be a good deal of guesswork, and calculations of probabilities, when trying to come to a right decision. It has lately been advocated that magistrates should, when practicable, hold their preliminary trial of offences in the village where the misdemeanour is alleged to have taken place. The witnesses under these ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... of the same group on the same principle. As we have seen, Roman scholars themselves explained Nerio Martis as equivalent to Virtus Martis; Herie Iunonis probably means something of the same kind; the others are not so easily explained, and guesswork about them is unprofitable. But I hope I have said enough to show that there is absolutely no good ground for supposing that these combinations of names in nominative and genitive indicate a relationship ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... take their names from the country, city, port, or province from whence they originated; from the names of the makers; and methods of weaving, dyeing, ornamentation, etc. The fixing of localities, methods, etc., is oftentimes guesswork. The textiles of to-day bearing the same name as those of the middle ages have nothing in common. Buckram was originally made in and called from Bokkara. In the middle ages it was costly, fine, and beautiful, used for church vestments, veils for covering ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... of the immigrant Irish," he pointed out, "lose their Celtic aspect and become Americanised.... To say that 'spontaneous variation,' increased by natural selection, can have produced this effect, is going too far." Unfortunately for Mr. Spencer, he was basing his conclusions on guesswork. It is only within the last few months that the first trustworthy evidence on the point has appeared, in the careful measurements of Hrdlicka who has demonstrated that Spencer was quite wrong in his statement. As a fact, the original traits persist with almost ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... esteem, because, to say that they were the remains of people who had been eaten, if the natives devoured as many as was supposed, the houses could not contain the bones, and there is no reason why, after eating them, they should preserve the relics. All this is but guesswork." Washington Irving agrees with the reverend historian, and describes the general belief in the cannibalism of the Caribs to the Spaniards' fear of them. Two eminent authorities positively deny it. Humboldt, in his before-cited work, ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... no telling," was the answer of the young inventor. "These things are more or less guesswork, even when you make two exactly alike. As far as I can tell, we have now a better craft than the Red Cloud was, but it remains to be seen ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton
... deaf old man, whose conversation was carried on principally by guesswork, and it was easy for him to gather that when her ladyship's handsome young sister had given him greeting she had not forgotten to inquire respecting the "rheumatics," which formed the greater ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... do was to attempt to follow the route that Fred had taken when he set out to place himself on the other side of the game. It was guesswork to trace his footsteps, but the elder youth made the effort. When he had progressed half the distance, however, he paused, convinced that his labor was utterly useless. He called to Fred, repeated their familiar signals and fired several charges in air, with no more response ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... the things we really know in life are mere guesswork," replied Lady Arabella sagely. "But in ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... reluctantly admitted to himself that Merrington's deductions were more swift and vigorous than his own, but he was secretly annoyed to think that the other had gained partly by guesswork the solution of a clue which had caused him so ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... happen, as they say, at the turn of ages, the art of divination, also, at one time rises in esteem, and is more successful in its predictions, clearer and surer tokens being sent from God, and then again, in another generation declines as low, becoming mere guesswork for the most part, and discerning future events by dim and uncertain intimations. This was the mythology of the wisest of the Tuscan sages, who were thought to possess a knowledge beyond other men. Whilst the Senate sat in consultation with the soothsayers, concerning ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... authority estimates that at the outbreak of the war the various Powers possessed a total of 4980 aircraft of all sorts. This sounds like a colossal fleet, but by 1917 it was probably multiplied more than tenfold. Of the increase of aircraft we can judge only by guesswork. The belligerents keep their output an inviolable secret. It was known that many factories with a capacity of from thirty to fifty 'planes a week were working in the chief belligerent lands, that the United States was shipping aircraft in parts to avoid violation of neutrality laws ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... to imagine, therefore, that ancient Celtic writers, with their passion for genealogies, should tamper with the ancestors of St. Patrick. Nicholson, a distinguished Irish scholar, was, of opinion that the addition "a deacon" was mere guesswork on the part of the copyist, and wrote "incertus liber hic"—"the book is here unreliable" ("St. Patrick, Apostle ...
— Bolougne-Sur-Mer - St. Patrick's Native Town • Reverend William Canon Fleming
... been lost before with half a dozen, sir, and every one thought different. One wanted to go one way; one wanted to go another. Fact is, gentlemen, we neither of us know the way. It's all guesswork. Once lost, there's nothing to guide you. I can't recollect this tree or that tree, because they're all so much alike, and it's as puzzling as being in the dark. There's only one way out of it, and that is to do as I say; you stand fast, and I'll cast ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... avoid any stray rocks, we should see daylight before we reach the coast. That is our sole hope. The ship is in a powerful tidal current, and it is high-water at 5.30 A.M. At a rough estimate, Hanover Island is twenty knots distant. Now you know all. The outcome is mere guesswork." ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... the wandering tribes known in other countries by the names of Bohemians, Gypsies, etc. This, like all unfounded opinions, of course originated in ignorance, which is always ready to have recourse to conjecture and guesswork, in preference to travelling through the long, mountainous, and stony road of patient investigation; it is, however, an error far more absurd and more destitute of tenable grounds than the ancient ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... mystery and cannot be solved by any evidence that we have. Almost every one who has written of it seems to have indulged in mere guesswork. One popular theory is that Miss Allen was in love with some one else; that her parents forced her into a brilliant marriage with Houston, which, however, she could not afterward endure; and that Houston, learning the facts, left her because he ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... Phyllis cheerfully. "You take special training in guesswork at library school. They call them 'teasers'. They say they're good ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... Crawshay said, "that this is more or less guesswork, but I suspect every one with whom ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... predominance of certain surnames in nearly every community. So that the ratio or same-name to different-name second cousin marriage may not greatly exceed 1:4. Beyond this degree any estimate would be pure guesswork. However the coefficient of attraction between persons of the same surname would undoubtedly be well marked in every degree of kinship, and conversely there are few same-name marriages in which some kinship, however ...
— Consanguineous Marriages in the American Population • George B. Louis Arner
... preachy about it, either. Just talks to you in words you can understand. But all the time you know he's got a lot back of it and could tell you ten times as much about it if you asked him. Makes you feel safe when you listen to him. Not a bit of guesswork or ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman
... ridge in view above the dense foliage, and could select the most promising point to make for; but this would sink out of sight as I approached the first belt of trees, and beyond them I must find my way by guesswork. ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... prone, beginning to crawl toward us with their shields held before, not as protection against bullets (for as that they were utterly worthless) but as cover that made their exact position merest guesswork. ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... guesswork. On the contrary, it was a matter of calculation, made on the same principle which any experienced workman would adopt, in reference to some undertaking that was within the range of his calling. A few years later, an officer, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... if she were going to the far west; while some of the Southampton trains stop at Basingstoke, which is, indeed, the most convenient point on that route for sending off a letter. This was mere blind guesswork, to be sure, compared with Hilda's immediate and unerring intuition; but it had some probability in its favour, at any rate. Try both: of the two, she was likelier to be going ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... only fascination—I don't know. Sometimes it seems to me that she really did love Dave Walsh. Perhaps it was because he had frightened her with that even-unto-death, rise-from- the-grave stunt of his that she in the end inclined to the dago music- player. But it is all guesswork, and the facts are, sufficient. He wasn't a dago; he was a Russian count—this was straight; and he wasn't a professional piano-player or anything of the sort. He played the violin and the piano, and he sang—sang well—but it was for his own pleasure and for the pleasure of those ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... himself on the eighty-eighth. That's the sort of captain we want, Maise. A man who can use his head and who can bring the ship through eighty-odd runs safely. And that is going to take something besides guesswork. Don't forget—if you like to believe in mathematical probability statistics—our chances should be getting slender after all our combat experience. Yours, too, ...
— Shock Absorber • E.G. von Wald
... the accuracy of the commonly quoted statements concerning the prevalence of social disease, and therefore of immorality, it must be said in all fairness that there has been much guesswork and some deliberate exaggeration. We learn from various books and lectures that fifty, sixty-five, seventy-five and even ninety per cent of the men in the United States over eighteen years of age are at some time infected with ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... the result is something astounding, for the expense of a needless number of trains and of what would otherwise be an excessively large permanent force of employes must be added. Of course, nothing much better than guesswork is possible, but I believe that the total loss would be sufficient to provide a greater portion of the people of the United ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... fourteen years before the Basel group of 1529 was painted. It may well have been that some serious misunderstanding between them was at the bottom of that otherwise inexplicable departure in 1517, and the two years' absence in Lucerne and still more southern cities. Of course this is mere guesswork; so is every hypothesis until it is proved. But all the simple commonplaces of first love, estrangement, separation, and a renewed betrothal after Elsbeth's early widowhood with one child, could ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... about it!" is the muttered remark exchanged between Wilder and Cully. For they know that the deflection of a single point upon the prairies—above all, upon the Staked Plain—will leave the traveller, like a ship at sea without chart or compass, to steer by guesswork, or go ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... is presented simply as a story to be read for pastime, neither morality nor symbolism is hereinafter educed, and no "parallels" and "authorities" are quoted. Even the gaps are left unbridged by guesswork: whereas the historic and mythological problems perhaps involved are relinquished to those really thoroughgoing scholars whom erudition qualifies to deal with such topics, and ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... off as early as possible through the thorn scrub on a compass bearing that we hoped would bring us to a reported swamp at the head of the Swanee River. The Swanee River was one of the sources of the Tsavo. Of course this was guesswork. We did not know certainly the location of the swamp, its distance from us, nor what lay between us and it. However, we loaded all our transportable vessels ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... occurring all over the charred field where men were working with pick and axe and lifting out the poor, shattered remains of human beings, nearly always past recognition or identification, except by guesswork, or the locality where they were found. Articles of domestic use scattered through the rubbish helped to tell who some of the bodies were. Part of a set of dinner plates told one man where in the intangible mass his house ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... for it is through the imagination that one anticipates future changes and so prepares for them before they come. Accordingly, as a general proposition, the selection of a man for a vacancy within the organization is more or less a matter of guesswork. Now and then an ambitious, wide-awake young man works into the organization and in a very short time is spotted by various department managers for future promotion, but the number of such individuals is discouragingly small. ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... That they were all harmless traders I will not affirm; but none of them offered to chase us. Yet could I have been sure of a ship, I should have been glad to speak. My longitude was little more than guesswork; my latitude not very certain; and my compass was out. However, I supported my own and the spirits of my little company by telling them of the early navigators; how Columbus, Candish, Drake, Schouten and other heroic marine worthies of distant times had navigated the globe, discovered new ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... guesswork. But I reckon I know what I 'd do if I was in thet sort o' fix an' bein' chased fer murder an' robbery. I 'd take the easy way; make fer the nearest Injun village, ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... the time they became engaged. General Williams says they were engaged before seven o'clock. [Footnote: Id., p. 476.] General Meade says they relieved his men not earlier than ten or eleven. [Footnote: Id., p. 270.] It seems to be guesswork in both cases, and we are forced to judge from circumstantial evidence. Ricketts thinks he had been fighting four hours when he retired for lack of ammunition, and the Twelfth Corps men had not yet reached him. [Footnote: Id., p. 259.] Patrick, on the extreme ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... work is like that," said Captain Godfrey, when I spoke to him about it. "It's a science. It's all a matter of the higher mathematics. Everything is worked out to half a dozen places of decimals. We've eliminated chance and guesswork just as far as possible from ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... believe it was Lyn Rowan. Sometimes five years will work a wonderful change in a woman; or is it that time and distance work some subtle transition in one's recollection? She didn't give me much time to indulge in guesswork, though. While I wondered, for an instant, if there could by any possibility be another woman on God's footstool with quite the same tilt to her head, the same heavy coils of tawny hair and unfathomable eyes that always met your own so frankly, she recognized the pair of ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... of their direction and dip, will be very useful. In the case of deep wells, it is really essential. By making inquiries as to similar well operations in the neighborhood, one may gain some useful information, and thus, to some extent, avoid guesswork. When one must drill or bore through rock for a very deep well, which necessarily is expensive, much money, often uselessly spent, may be saved by consulting the reports of the State geologist, or the publications of the United States ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various
... go any way towards an explanation of it are but guesswork, and I give them more because I would not conceal anything, than because I think they are of ...
— Lady Into Fox • David Garnett
... sound, I should say they fought their way up-hill in skirmish order, and when they got to the top the enemy— whoever they were—took to flight. But that is guesswork. There were two casualties on our side. One man shot through the arm, which did not matter much; he was well able to lie about what had happened and to boast of how many men he had slain before the bullet hit him. The other was wounded pretty ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... cannot say. Perhaps I might hazard a guess, but it's no use talking of guesswork. To-day I hope for ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... their wits end when they try to press the Bible into their service. Every movement shows that they are hard-pushed. Their odd conceits and ever varying shifts, their forced constructions, lacking even plausibility, their bold assumptions, and blind guesswork, not only proclaim their cause desperate, but themselves. Some of the Bible defences thrown around slavery by ministers of the Gospel, do so torture common sense, Scripture, and historical fact, that it were hard to tell whether absurdity, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... government and the municipal moneys. In fact, San Francisco's boss-ridden condition was due in greater degree to Daylight's widespreading battle than even San Francisco ever dreamed. For the part he had played, the details of which were practically all rumor and guesswork, quickly leaked out, and in consequence he became a much-execrated and well-hated man. Nor had Daylight himself dreamed that his raid on the steamship companies would have ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... suggest itself as an appropriate time at which the occurrence might be supposed to have taken place; and if he were writing in 1220, the revelation to the hermit would thus naturally be relegated to the year 720, the year under which the entry actually appears. This, of course, is pure guesswork, but the fact remains that the "Chronicle" was written in or about 1220, and the "Book of the Graal" ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... own opportunities otherwise we are children of circumstance. What becomes of us is a matter of guesswork. We have no hand in compelling our own future. Diffidence is a species of cowardice. It causes a man's courage to ooze out at his toes faster than it comes into his heart. Such men often have big ideas, but having ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... guesswork and such landmarks as were afforded by the lights on shore. He peered anxiously ahead, hoping to see the dim shapes of the three grabs; but this was at present impossible, since they lay between him and the seaward extremity of the fort, where ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... must be remembered that, in the absence of records, any solution of this difficult problem at present rests on mere speculation and guesswork, and the opinions expressed here must be accepted as mere conjectures unsupported by direct contemporary evidence, and based ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray
... of responsibility grow heavy indeed and doubts began to assail him as to the wisdom of the course he was pursuing. After all, there was yet time to retreat. He had only to say the word and his companions would willingly follow. His plans in remaining were built largely on guesswork and theory. If they worked out as he had reasoned, the Indians would be warned. With their aid the convicts could be surrounded, captured, and sent back to a coast town under guard. Some blood would likely be ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... biscuits in my pocket, I returned towards the palace, apparently without any anxiety or hurry, always followed by the same individual. I judged that the bargello, having failed in his project, was now reduced to guesswork, and I was strengthened in that view of the case when the gate-keeper of the palace told me, without my asking any question, as I came in, that an arrest had been attempted during the night, and had not succeeded. While he was speaking, one of the auditors of ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... intuitions oftener they would not go wrong so often, perhaps, since their best reasoning is only guesswork, after all. It was not going to be destiny that brought Davidge and Marie Louise together again so much as the man's hatred of leaving anything unfinished—even a dream or a vague desire. There was no shaking ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... some time before he recovers sufficient coolness to reflect—then only with vague comprehensiveness; nothing clear save the fact that he has completely lost himself, and his way. To go on were mere guesswork. True, the moon tells him the west, the direction of Coyote creek. But westward he will not go, dreading to again encounter that ghostly thing; for he thinks it was there ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... position by a comparison of the depths obtained with those shown on the chart, but even then the eccentricity of the tidal currents and, let it be said, the erratic and most unladylike behaviour of the Rapier's standard compass, made navigation a matter of some conjecture and a good deal of guesswork. ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... know, but you tempt me to guesswork. Sir Grenville was a keen yachtsman, and probably he is on board his yacht still resting in his coffin, waiting for his wife to bring the antidote to the drug. His son and Mr. Thompson took the body that night in the car. There must have been two of them to deal with the ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... fortress, and church now rising amid the rank tropical luxuriance of the wild forest. The mouths of the main affluents of these highway rivers were as a rule well known. But in many cases nothing but the mouth was known. The river itself was not known, and it was placed on the map by guesswork. Colonel Rondon found, for example, that the course of the Gy-Parana was put down on the map two degrees out of its proper place. He, with his party, was the first to find out its sources, the first to traverse its upper course, ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... me alone. You will notice the books, mostly occult: partly mine, partly the detective's. We have gone at it systematically from the beginning. We have learned almost everything but what would help us. Mostly sophistry—and guesswork. Beats all how much ink has been wasted to say nothing. We ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... from the north country. They were voluble in their own behalf, but their talk was slippery, so the chief felt. They were also voluble in regard to Lida Kennard, but Mern found himself more than ever enmeshed in his guesswork ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... perceptible. As far back as the year 1906 the late Count Witte and myself made a guess at the time-distance which the nation still had to traverse, assuming the rate of progress to be constant, before reaching the abyss. This, however, was mere guesswork, which one of the many possibilities—and in especial change in the speed-rate—might belie. In effect, events moved somewhat more quickly than we anticipated, and it was the World War and its appalling concomitants that precipitated ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... quailed and fell before her, and the Lord wrought victory by the hand of David. So it is David's history that stands out fullest and clearest in the whole record, from Abraham onward. How much is true history and how much is imaginative addition must be largely guesswork. But we see in David the ideal hero and type of that period of Jewish history as we see in Achilles and Odysseus the ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... where,—for everything is kept in a charming condition of perfect uncertainty, from the want of any public newspaper or journal, or other accurate means of information. So everybody asks everybody, and everybody tells everybody, until nobody knows anything, and everything is guesswork. But, nevertheless, despite impatient words, and muttered curses, and all kinds of awkward mistakes, the battle goes bravely on. There is terrible fighting at the door of the Sistine Chapel, to hear the Miserere, which is sure to be Baini's when it is said to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... they took two of myself and my guns while firing. Of course, the anxious officers of batteries had to lay the guns personally at this early stage, and every shot was a difficult matter, as at the extreme range we were firing, with the lengthening pieces on, the sighting was rather guesswork, and we had to judge mainly by the explosion at a distance of five and a half miles. We were all done up after our exertions under a broiling sun, and hence were not used any more that day (12th). Behind us we saw miles of troops and transport on the march ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne
... that we must prepare our navy in such a way that, say twenty years hence, it will be able to protect the country against any enemy, we shall then instinctively adopt a policy. The fact of having ahead of us a definite, difficult thing to do, will at once take us out of the region of guesswork, and force us into logical methods. We shall realize the problem in its entirety; we shall see the relation of one part to another, and of all the parts to the whole; we shall realize that the deepest study of the wisest men must ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... For, guesswork though it was, West felt that Mafeking must lie right ahead, and as they dashed on he began to feel a kind of certainty that if left to themselves their sagacious steeds would take them right ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... a hurried bang; dark forms, like rats running for their holes, scuttled to safety; women screamed and shrieked; children whimpered. On Jimmie Dale ran. For the second time he crashed into a form, and won by. They were firing at him from above now—but by guesswork—firing down the stair well. The pound of feet racing down the stairs came from behind him—two flights behind him—he calculated he had that much start. He gained the entrance hallway where all was dark, leaped for the front door, opened it, pulled it shut with ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... difficulties in this method of interpreting Scripture from its own history, I conceive to be so great that I do not hesitate to say that the true meaning of Scripture is in many places inexplicable, or at best mere subject for guesswork; but I must again point out, on the other hand, that such difficulties only arise when we endeavour to follow the meaning of a prophet in matters which cannot be perceived, but only imagined, not in things, whereof the understanding can give a clear idea, and which are conceivable through ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part II] • Benedict de Spinoza
... faith and a doubtful memory as guides. Every road, we well knew, would be patrolled by Federal pickets; only the broken country between could yield us the faintest prospect of success. But at best it must largely be guesswork,—Providence, luck, what you will,—and the slightest swing of the pendulum could easily frustrate our ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... slightly, had been exchanged between them every Saturday night for years. Dorcas replied now without thinking. Her mind had spread its wings and flown out into the sweet stillness of the garden and the world beyond; it even hastened on into the unknown ways of guesswork, seeking for one who should be coming. She strained her ears to hear the beating of hoofs and the rattle of wheels across the little, bridge. The dusk sifted in about the house, faster and faster; a whippoorwill cried from the woods. So she sat until the ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... risen the craft sufficiently to determine that she was a fore-and-aft schooner. Then our difficulties began, for there were no stars, and within ten minutes of the time of sunset it fell pitch-dark, from which moment our course was largely a matter of guesswork. The two girls and Julius declared that they were so tired and their hands were so raw that they could do no more; whereupon Mrs Vansittart and Anthea took one oar, while I laboured on at the other. But by this time I, too, was weak and trembling with ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... approval of the plan. Ripon chose an eleven of the likeliest boys, selecting the biggest and most active; for as there had been no room for cricket in the yard their aptitude for the game was a matter of guesswork, though most of them had played during the holidays. Mr. Porson chose the next ten and after tossing for innings, which Ripon won, they set to work. Mr. Porson played for a time as long stop, putting on two of the strongest of his team as bowlers, and changing ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... fretting guesswork on her cousin's surmise. She relied too much on Owen's sense of propriety to entertain the idea that he could be forwarding a pursuit so obviously insolent, but a still wilder conjecture had been set afloat in her mind. Could the nameless one be Robert Fulmort? Though aware of the anonymous ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... some mathematical genius will figure out this problem with exactitude and we will have a dependable table giving the maximum carrying capacity of various surface areas at various stated speeds, based on the dimensions of the advancing edges. At present it is largely a matter of guesswork so far as making accurate computation goes. Much depends upon the shape of the machine, and the amount of surface offering ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell
... given it their attention, but as yet no one has been able to conclusively decide whether a race of intelligent beings exists in any sphere other than our own. All efforts to determine the matter result in mere surmise, conjecture and guesswork. The best of scientists can ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... for. Conscious of the error into which her own impatience had led her, she was at a loss how to retrace the false step that she had taken. But two alternatives presented themselves: either to abandon the hope of making any discovery—or to attempt to penetrate Alban 's motives by means of pure guesswork, ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... to learn whether we're still on the right track, or have strayed away from it. We've been going by guesswork long enough; but, if I don't greatly mistake we'll there see something to tell us whether our guesses have been good or bad. If the redskins have come up the river at all, it's pretty sure they also have crossed the riacho at this very ford, and we should there ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... to Hilliard that here, perhaps, was evidence of design; that this very difficulty had been deliberately caused by Mr. Coburn with the object of keeping himself and Merriman under observation and rendering them harmless. This, he recognized, was guesswork, but still it might be ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... credibility, changing it in time to a mere legend, a tale told out of the hazy distance. But in America it obtrudes; it stares eternally on in all its stark unforgetfulness, absorbing its background, constantly rescuing itself from legend by turning guesswork and theory into facts, till it appears bare, irremediable, and complete,—witnessed at high noon, and in New Jersey of all places, ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... islands are common in Bering Sea. But we were interested in this one, both because of its strange appearance, and because it was unmarked on the chart. That last was not so unusual, though. The charts of that section of Bering are mostly guesswork. ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... had spent nearly half an hour in this sort of conjecturing. I began to perceive that it could serve no purpose. It would be only guesswork, at best, and it was evident I could not tell what quality of metal the mine contained, until I had first ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... of an hour after this conversation she was a little uneasy. He was a clever boy, Henry; he did watch people. But then he was very young, It was all guesswork with him. ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... investment, with relief not yet in sight. True, it was within hearing; but so it had been three weeks before, on Magersfontein day. We were weary of this interminable thunder, which showed us no results. Colonel Kekewich was as reticent as ever. Of guesswork there was plenty. Had Methuen not had time sufficiently to augment his forces to cut his way through. The troops were in the country; we were placated with the information that they were "falling over one another in Cape Town." This comforting gem glittered less in our minds as the days sped ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... Now, as a matter of fact, Mr. Frog was a very careless person. He had thrown away Brownie's measurements before he made his clothes, instead of afterwards. And he had made the new suit entirely by guesswork. It was only natural that he would make some mistake; and so he had cut the trousers entirely ...
— The Tale of Brownie Beaver • Arthur Scott Bailey
... They bear the stamp of his mind, strong, without precision. That they were written by Johnston, who seconded them, was only the rumor of the day, and very possibly unfounded." Works, vi. 484. In the face of all this tissue of rumor, guesswork, and self-contradiction, the deliberate statement of Patrick Henry himself that he wrote the five resolutions referred to by him, and that he wrote them "alone, unadvised, and unassisted," ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... acted. Beaton must have taken the same train, and the two men got friendly; probably they never knew each other in New York, but, being from the same place, it was easy enough to strike up an acquaintance. What occurred on board is all guesswork, but a sudden blow at night, on an observation platform, at some desert station, is not impossible; or it might be sickness, and the two men left behind to seek a physician. Here was where Lacy must have come in. He goes East occasionally, ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... life were imagined with a good deal of elision and an amount of guesswork that would have amused a janitor. But Rudd and Martha were chiefly interested in the boy's vacations at home, and their own trips to New Haven, and the letters of approval ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... guesswork. At any rate, we are on firm ground now. If you could please yourself, I suppose, Mr. Siddle would ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... repeated Sarka the First, dropping his own voice to a husky, frightened whisper. "Why, the oceans would be hurled out of their beds, and a wall of water a mile high or more—it is all guesswork!—would rush eastward around the world, bearing everything before it! It would uproot and destroy buildings, sweep the rocky covering of the earth free of soil; and humanity, caught on the earth below the highest level of the world's greatest ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... creatures splendidly rendered. I imagine these central lions to be more recent (having perhaps replaced others) than their neighbours, which are obliterated to the extent of being lions or lionesses only by guesswork. These nameless feline creatures hold what appear to be portions of sheep, one of them having at its flank a curious excrescence like the stinging scorpion of the Mithra groups. The griffins, on the other hand, although every detail is rubbed ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... has been some criticism based on guesswork and even on malicious falsification of fact. Such criticism creates doubts and creates fears, and weakens our ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... visible, much too fine—in short, wouldn't it pass anywhere for a woman's hand? Say a woman who bit her nails. If it were really such there would be a pair of feminine feet also to be concealed, and boards would do it very nicely—but this is all guesswork, and must not be allowed to affect any subsequent conclusions. If you will excuse me a few minutes I will use the microscope a little on the sill of the east window before we are interrupted by our friends the officers, who will be sure to ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... movement superb! To say that she "sailed in" more clearly might tell Her grace in its buoyant and billowy swell. Her robe was a vague circumambient space, With shadowy boundaries made of point-lace; The rest was but guesswork, and well might defy The power of critical feminine eye To define or describe: 'twere as futile to try The gossamer web of the cirrus to trace, Floating far in the blue of a warm ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... the rooms were empty, some further glimmering knowledge had stirred her benumbed consciousness. She may have flung herself on the bed in a paroxysm of weeping, heedless of the overturned night light and the havoc it caused. That, of course, is sheer guesswork, though the glass dish which held the light was found later on the charred floor, which was protected, to some extent, by ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... What Snap might have done if you had married him is guesswork. He might have left drink alone a while longer. But he was bad clean through. I heard Dave Naab tell him that. Snap would have gone over to Holderness sooner or later. And now he's a rustler, if ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... book was never written by Daniel or Isaiah or Jeremiah,' 'It is certain this chapter is an addition of such and such a date,' etc. It is not universally acknowledged. It is not certain. The whole thing is pure guesswork. There is only one way to prove the authorship of a book, and that is by testimony. There is nothing under the sun more absurd, philologically, than that a common and very poor stock-actor should have written 'Hamlet.' We know he did write it, however, not by 'internal ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... proved that Statius Quadratus was consul in A.D. 142; and then, by the aid of the dreamer Aristides, he has tried to show that he probably became proconsul of Asia about A.D. 154 or A.D. 155. His calculations are obviously mere guesswork. Even admitting their correctness, it would by no means follow that Polycarp was then consigned to martyrdom. The postscript of the Smyrnaean letter is, as we have seen, justly suspected as no part of the original document. Dr. Lightfoot himself tells us, that it is "generally treated as ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen
... was something like this: partly guesswork, I admit. Although I know her well I can only put her past together by deductions based on a few admitted facts, one or two letters and occasional unfinished sentences, interrupted by people coming in. Is it not always thus with our friends and acquaintances? I ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... no guesswork involved in determining which of the doors along the passage hid the machine in what, if Graylock's story was correct, had been Hovig's personal stateroom. As Dasinger approached that point, it was like climbing into silent ...
— The Star Hyacinths • James H. Schmitz
... for the future, however, must be based on clear understanding of the problems involved. And that can be gained only by straight thinking—not guesswork, not political manipulation. ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt |
