"Surmise" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... physician—then he must have a sick patient—and it is on account of this patient that he made Jean come to him. But who is the patient? Oh, ho! I surmise that it is a woman—that woman—his former mistress, who has played this card today. Sick! I suppose she has made a pretense of poisoning herself in order to show him that she loves him still and will always love him. Oh, the little wretch! ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... If his surmise were correct, and this should prove a blockade-house, he would take the garrison, though it consisted of only half-a-dozen men, attack the Gang, and smash the ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... showing not the slightest evidence of effort, though the soul Jasper had seen in Prosper's face felt shriveled for her treachery. Prosper wondered if she could be right in her surmise about Jasper. The Jew was infinitely capable of dissimulation, but there was a clarity of look and smile that filled Prosper with doubts. And the eyes he turned upon his wife were quite as apparently as ever the eyes ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... cheat, though managed with every semblance of reality (which they observe was the case) could not be carried on for any number of years without detection, and as the same idea does not appear to have been entertained at any other period, it is probable they were mistaken in their surmise. Her person they describe to have been large, and her voice ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... do it. Fred knew that he must be a Russian. Yet in every detail of his appearance he was German. His clothes, his bearing, his every little mannerism, were carefully studied. Fred guessed that this was no servant, but a secret agent of much skill and experience. He was to learn the truth of his surmise ...
— The Boy Scouts In Russia • John Blaine
... to surmise what may have given rise to many of the fabulous circumstances here narrated. It has been conjectured by some, that Pegasus and his brother Chrysaor, the two horses produced from the blood of Medusa, were really two ships ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... made it had not strength to knead it sufficiently, and must have been unwell." "It is as thou hast said," replied the sultan. "The fat of the kid," continued the second brother, "was all next the bone, and the flesh of every other animal but the dog has it next the skin. Hence my surmise that it must have been suckled by a bitch." "Thou wert right," answered the sultan; "but now ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... transitory phase—because of an absolute lack of interest in any sort of critical estimate of the whole situation. In breathless suspense, every man is concentrating the whole of his mental energy on the news of the next moment, news concerning which none can make even fairly clear surmise, and about which one fact only is known in advance, that whatever it is, it is sure to be horrible. For relief from this wretched suspense men are looking to dispatches and decisions of battles, not to ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... the friendship of the commencement to develop into a liaison is one of those problems of sexual psychology easier to describe in Balzac's own language than to explain rationally. We know that she was not happy with her husband, and can surmise that she entered upon the role she played without clearly foreseeing its dangers. No doubt, her desire to form this genius in the rough carried her away from her moorings, which, indeed, had never been very strong, since she had already once before in her married life had ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... dictate now, would he insist on that direction? It is a mistake every way, injurious to you, his child; and should you happen to die during your sojourn under your uncle's care, it would woefully defeat the testator's object, and raise such a storm of surmise and inquiry as would awaken all England, and send the old scandal on the ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... you kinda misread Ward sometimes. Them eyes of his are pretty keen, and they see a whole lot; but they ain't easy to read, for all that. I guess Ward don't think it's anything surprising that you're getting along so well, Billy Louise. I surmise he knows you're a better manager than ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... to surmise that many of our young poets, especially have nourished a secret conviction that their genius has such an origin as this. Let there be a deification of some poet who has aroused their special enthusiasm,—a mysterious ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... to torment whom has been given them. It was after prison hours—the men had been already locked in their cells, and the warden and deputy had gone home. It was left to the subordinates to put the fear of God in our hearts; we could only surmise how far they would go in that instruction. We did not then know that their power was limited only by their good pleasure. But it is an accepted and reasonable principle with them that the sooner one begins to take the nonsense ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... to one another and become so only by being spread out in Time regarded as a homogeneous medium. If, then, one of these two supposed forms of the homogeneous, viz., Time and Space, is derived from the other, we can surmise a priori that the idea of space is the fundamental datum. Time, conceived under the form of an unbounded and homogeneous medium, is nothing but the ghost of space, haunting the reflective consciousness." [Footnote: Time and Free Will, p. 98 (Fr. ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... after relating his story was for the youngest brother, whom he had left with me. I told him what I had done, in my anxiety about himself, and that more than sufficient time had elapsed for his brother's return. His reply was: "They have caught him. The poor fellow is dead." His surmise proved correct; for news soon came that the poor boy had been captured at his father's house, and hanged. The blow to Card was a severe one, and so hardened his heart against the guerrillas in the neighborhood of his father's home—for he knew they were guilty of his brother's ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... Nick's doing. She was as sure of it as if those brief, bitter sentences had definitely told her so. Nick was the motive power that had compelled Grange to this action. How he had done it, she could not even vaguely surmise. But that he had in some malevolent fashion come between them she did not for an ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... "English style" would be the English school, which she liked; only she saw, before moving, by the array on the side facing her, that she was in fact among small Dutch pictures. The action of this was again appreciable—the dim surmise that it wouldn't then be by a picture that the spring in the three ladies had been pressed. It was at all events time she should go, and she turned as she got on her feet. She had had behind her one of the entrances and various visitors who ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... a second hill-man, who gradually drew near to the first. On reaching him the second comer also became motionless, while we next saw four other trails of beaten-down grass, marking the advance of further foes. How many more were coming on behind we could only surmise, as we watched the six hill-men who headed them get into a line one before the other, and then advance, keeping about five yards apart as they came on. From the position in which our tent was pitched it was impossible for an attack to be made upon us in the rear, and this circumstance fortunately ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... the right one. We always believe in keeping a paying teller in a cheerful frame of mind. We would never admit to him that we think it is going to rain. We say, rather, "Well, it may blow over," and try not to surmise how many hundreds there are in the pile at his elbow. Probably we think the explanation for the really bizarre architecture of our bank is to keep depositors' attention from the money. Unquestionably Walt Whitman's tomb over in ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... slaves, but fearing death and exile as though greater evils, though they are in fact much smaller ones. Well, this is the position—one unanimously groaned over, but not relieved by a word from anyone. The object, I surmise, of the men in power is to leave nothing for anyone to lavish. The only man who opens his mouth and openly disapproves is the young Curio. He is loudly cheered, and greeted in the forum in the most complimentary manner, and many ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... the window, which was barred, and almost totally eclipsed by shrubs; but a clout of sky was just visible under the architrave. It was a very gray sky; gray also was Rachel's face in the sudden grip of horror and surmise. Then a ragged edge of cloud caught golden fire, a glimmer found its way into the dust and dirt of the secret chamber, and Rachel relaxed with a slight smile but an exceedingly decided shake of the head. Thereafter she escaped incontinently, but successfully, as she had entered; closed ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... warm shadows in the wood near the red-lacquered Chinese bridge, we two were alone together and we fell silent. I was trembling and full of a wild courage. I can feel now the exquisite surmise, the doubt of that moment. Our eyes met. She looked up at me with an unwonted touch of fear in her expression and I laid my hands on her. She did not recoil, she stood mute with her lips pressed together, looking at me steadfastly. I can feel that moment now as a tremendous hesitation, blank ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... seemed to rejoice in the food and fires. It was Robert's surmise that they had arrived but recently and were weary. Their numbers were large, they certainly could not be less than four or five hundred, and his experience was great enough now to tell him that half of them, at least, were Canadian Indians. All were in war paint, ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... brilliant. With these qualities, it may be asked why he was not a better Minister, and who can answer that question? or who can aver that he did not pursue the policy which he conscientiously believed to be most advantageous to his country? Nay, more, who can say but from surmise and upon speculation that it was not the best? I believe that he was seduced by his vanity, that his head was turned by emperors, kings, and congresses, and that he was resolved that the country which he represented should play as conspicuous a part as any other in the political ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... thought— Sweet, happy thought Of boyish days! Can hope no more arise? Can I no more surmise That they will come again? All happy sport! All sweet resort To merry games, To which, with spirit light, I often did unite In free and boy-like glee! The welcome call To bat and ball I used to hear With that intense delight, ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... nay, but I shall know Perchance, the grey eyes in another's eyes, Shall guess thy curls in gracious locks that flow On purest brows, yea, and the swift surmise Shall follow and track, and find thee in disguise Of all sad things, and fair, where sunsets glow, When through the scent of heather, faint and low, The weak wind whispers to ...
— Grass of Parnassus • Andrew Lang
... of following footsteps, yet, turning swiftly, I did not doubt that I should detect the presence of a follower of some kind. This conviction seized me suddenly and, as I have said, unaccountably. Nor was I wrong in my surmise. ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... being that they had all taken the alarm and fled, or, more likely still, had been captured and carried off as prisoners. I went the rounds of the place with him, frequently shouting the name of one or another of the servants without avail, and I finally came to the conclusion that his surmise ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... without doubt or surmise, Over and over and over again, The man who was murder'd was Jack Devize, And the man who murder'd ...
— Harry • Fanny Wheeler Hart
... rules in education is to impress children with a persuasion that the vices we would keep them from, such as lying and breaking one's word, are too shocking to be thought possible. A maxim this worthy of the great Fenelon, his beloved model, and which common tutors do not so much as surmise. ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... accepts whatever destiny the gods, in their wisdom, have ordained. Is life the anvil upon which the gods beat out their will? It is not so. The anvil is matter, the will of the gods is life itself, urging through whatever torment to some identity which it can only surmise or hope for; and the one order to life is that it shall not cease to rebel until it has ceased to live; when, perhaps, it can take up the shaping struggle in some other ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... lengthening reveries, Could not escape the gentle Julia's eyes; She saw that Juan was not at his ease; But that which chiefly may, and must surprise, Is, that the Donna Inez did not tease Her only son with question or surmise: Whether it was she did not see, or would not, Or, like all very ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... chosen with a view to the greatest possible security, generally in some crevice on the face of a perpendicular precipice several hundred feet in height. It is built of dry sticks of wood coated on the inside with moss. Hansel informed me of a surmise that the eyrie of this pair would be discovered in the face of the terribly steep "Falknerwand;" and although I had once before been engaged in a similar exploit, I could not resist the temptation to join in this expedition, and despatched on the spot a telegram to the friend who was awaiting ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... another inspiration.[87] As a pendant to this creditable account of the bard's principles, we are informed that he was a frequent guest at the presbytery dinner-table; a circumstance which some may be so malicious as to surmise amounted to nothing more than a purpose to enhance the festive recreations of the reverend body—a suspicion, we believe, in this particular instance, totally unfounded. He died in 1778; and he has succeeded to some rather peculiar honours for a person in ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... enemy's lines, carried there by her own steps, and accepting captivity without a murmur, ah, what were such light-as-air trials of true love's faith while she was still Anna Callender, that Anna from whom one breath saying, "I am true," would outweigh all a world could show or surmise in accusation? ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... without intrenching on the domain of faith, and unsettling the religious convictions of the whole nation. There is no greater crime possible than to introduce among people enjoying all the benefits resulting from a firm belief in holy truth a simple doubt, a simple hesitating surmise, calculated to make them waver in the least in what had previously been a solid and well-grounded faith. But to consider that crime carried to the extent of so sapping the foundation of Christian belief as to bring about the ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... was easy to surmise one thing, which was that these men hated Abe Blower most cordially. And because of this, and because they had heard that Blower was a strictly upright, honest man, the chums concluded that these fellows in the car had been trying in some manner to put through some land deal that was not strictly ...
— Dave Porter in the Gold Fields - The Search for the Landslide Mine • Edward Stratemeyer
... Desmond's surmise proved correct. Aruna's left arm was broken above the elbow: a simple fracture, but it hurt a good deal. Thea, in charge of 'the wounded,' eased them both as best she could, during the long drive home. But Aruna, still in her exalted mood, counted mere pain a little ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... hesitation McGuire sent the valet out and went himself and closed and locked the door. Peter refused his cigar, lighting one of his own cigarettes, and sank into the chair his host indicated. After the first words Peter knew that his surmise had been correct and that his employer meant to deny all share in the shooting of ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... mind was working like a trip-hammer. He was recalling a certain nomad settlement north of the city, the quarters of fishermen, poachers and horse-traders: a squalid, unclean community that lay under the walls between the northern gates and the river. These people, he was not slow to surmise, were undoubtedly hand in glove with Marlanx, if not so surely connected with the misguided Committee of Ten. This being the eve of the great uprising, it was not unlikely that a secret host lay here awake and ready for the foul observance of the coming ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... as the strong men of Shakespeare's play spoke of the dead Portia in the tent, Paracelsus and Festus talk of the pastor of Einsiedeln's gentle wife. Festus speaks in assured hope, Paracelsus in daring surmise, of a life beyond the grave, and finally with a bitter return upon himself from his sense of ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... the story I last told you, my child, it will have revealed to you the whole mystery of the circulation of the blood, and you are at the present moment wiser than all the learned men of antiquity and the middle ages, for they had none of them the faintest surmise of the truth. ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... Her surmise was correct, for a few days later the captain met Galusha on the road leading to the village and, taking the little man ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... surmise. The hour, your appearance, the letter—to what else could they point? I was afraid all along. Strange instinct we have at times. The regent is to be pitied; he took too much for granted. He has been used to power one day ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... such a defence as she might be glad of an opportunity to make, and to shame them for their monstrous credulity—but this I leave to thy own fat-headed prudence—Only it vexes me to the heart, that even scandal and calumny should dare to surmise the bare possibility of any man sharing the favours of a woman, whom now methinks I could worship with a veneration due only to ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... in well-feigned surprise and looked enquiringly over his shoulder, as though to verify a surmise that somebody had spoken. Such proving to be the case, he turned round to confront Milly—Milly true to type, wearing a grimy matutinal apron, an expression half sleepy, half sullen, and a horrid soot smudge on her ripe, ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... authorship; but already it was an accepted fact in the girl's mind. She was smitten with contrition for her blindness in having failed to see earlier what was now plain enough! Nan was in love with her father! Their collaboration upon a book only added plausibility to her surmise. Nothing could be plainer, nothing, indeed, more fitting! Her heart warmed at the thought. Her father stood forth in a new light; she was torn with self-accusations for her stupidity in not having seen it all before. Admitting ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... talked reason and demolished the pretensions of French music with great sounding strokes as of an axe.[322] Rousseau expected to be assassinated, and gravely assures us that there was a plot to that effect, as well as a design to put him in the Bastille. This we may fairly surmise to have been a fiction of his own imagination, and the only real punishment that overtook him was the loss of his right to free admission to the Opera. After what he had said of the intolerable horrors of French music, the directors of the theatre can hardly be accused of vindictiveness ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... not quite sure whether I have sorrow or joy to impart," said Lady Gertrude, still feelingly; for she guessed why Caroline believed she dare not confide in her, and she hailed it as proof that she was right in her surmise, that her brother's honourable love would ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... could talk its contempt of medical women, and act its terror of them, and keep both its feigned contempt and its real alarm safe from the test of a public examination—that crucible in which cant, surmise, and mendacity are soon evaporated or precipitated, and only ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... pricked him which filled him for the instant with serious thoughts. When he had asked the question he wished to see her at his feet. There had come no answer, and he told himself that he was justified in thinking the surmise to be true. He was justified to himself, but only for the moment, for at the next had come her declaration that all was to be over between them. The idea of the lover became buried under the ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... its modern aspect after Captain Cook's circumnavigation of the globe in high southern latitudes, accomplished between 1772 and 1775. Fact replaced the fiction and surmise of former times, and maps appeared showing a large blank area at the southern extremity of the earth, where speculative cartographers had affirmed the existence of habitable land extending far towards the Equator. Cook's ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... horrified to find my surmise correct; "can it be that they are all thus afflicted? Is it possible that you are the only man among them who ...
— To Whom This May Come - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... a trifle, and he hesitated before he said, "I am not questioning your judgment, Captain, but you and I have camped out enough to know that a good camp-mate is about the scarcest article to be found. If we take in a stranger on this trip, which I surmise from the outfits is going to be a long one, the chances are more than even that he will turn out a quitter ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... a breeze had sprung up, and had been blowing for some two or three hours—a circumstance that, if his opinion proved correct, would have an important influence upon their position—and he was anxious to ascertain how far his surmise was verified by facts. A descent was therefore effected until the ship was once more below the cloud curtain, when it was found that, instead of being immediately over the city of Saint Petersburg—as she should have been, according to the professor's reckoning—the Flying Fish was ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... surprise to find that many undergraduates, I suppose town-bred, regarded horsemanship not merely as a rare and difficult art, but also as implying a kind of moral distinction. When riding men met me riding, I saw that they "looked at each other with a wild surmise;" and soon, perhaps as a consequence, I was elected to "Vincent's." When, after a term or two, my father suggested that I had better have my own horse sent from home, I was distinctly conscious of a social elevation. Henceforward I might, if I would, associate with "Bloods"; ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... from surmise," replied the Colonel, after a few moments of pause. "The fact it, I have the vanity to imagine myself a correct reader of character, and my reading of Miss Montgomery's has not been ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... the front of the Credit Lyonnais at Bayonne. It looked so beautifully regular, so scholarly, so Latin, so sister to both Spanish and Italian, so richly and musically voweled, and yet remained so impenetrable to the most daring surmise, that I conceived at once a profound admiration for the race which could keep such a language to itself. When I remembered how blond, how red-blond our sinewy young porter was, I could not well help breveting him of ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... time seen enough of O'Gorman to recognise that he was quite acute enough to discern the advantage and safety which such a transaction would afford him over the alternative of being compelled to touch at some port, and I had little doubt that my surmise as to his intentions would prove correct. At all events, his determination to speak the barque was evident, and I began to cast about for some means whereby the encounter might be utilised to the advantage of Miss ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... escape. We were placed in a hollow square and marched across country into camp. Before we got there I had ascertained that they were Indianians, and I was further led rightly to surmise what we ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... treated to a singular surprise on the Sunday morning following, when Miss Philura Rice, newly returned from her annual visit to Boston, walked down the aisle to her accustomed place in the singers' seat. Whispered comment and surmise flew from pew to pew, sandwiched irreverently between hymn, prayer and sermon. Indeed, the last-mentioned portion of the service, being of unusual length and dullness, was utilized by the female members of the ...
— The Transfiguration of Miss Philura • Florence Morse Kingsley
... The Intendant had laughingly wished them bon voyage and a speedy return with his friend Le Gardeur, giving them no other intimation of his wishes; nor could they surmise that he had any other object in view than the pleasure of again meeting a pleasant companion of his table and ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... do," replied Abner. He wrenched his arm away and strode on towards the house. Then David Hautville and his son Eugene stood looking at each other with a surmise of horror growing in ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Cortez—when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific, and all his men Look'd at each other with a wild surmise, Silent, upon ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... not wisdom to be only wise, And on the inward vision close the eyes, But it is wisdom to believe the heart. Columbus found a world, and had no chart, Save one that faith deciphered in the skies; To trust the soul's invincible surmise Was all his science and his only art. Our knowledge is a torch of smoky pine That lights the pathway but one step ahead Across a void of mystery and dread. Bid, then, the tender light of faith to ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... metropolis of Jezreel seemed boundless, for everywhere arose tall, massive monuments of yellow marble whose facades were engraved with Sanskrit characters, thus bearing out Nelson's surmise that this was indeed a race ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... not," said the girl; "I am not so inquisitive. I come here to sit because here, only, can I be near the great, common, throbbing heart of humanity. My part in life is cast where its beats are never felt. Can you surmise why ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... if it is discovered by any one else." He looked at the other with a hard and darkened face, and struck the table with his hand. "It is terrible for me here and now. Up to this moment I was hoping against hope that I was wrong about the fact. I may still be wrong in the surmise that I base upon that fact. There is only one way of finding out that is open to me, and I must nerve myself to take it." He smiled suddenly at Mr. Cupples' face of consternation. "All right—I'm not going to be tragic any more, ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... still piecing the recollection and surmise together his fingers pressed the spring. There was a miniature within, but it was not the picture of Monsieur Delcasse. Ryder was looking down upon the face of a girl, a beautiful, spirited face, with merry eyes and wistful lips—dark ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... marry him be caused by the same fear? some crushing disgrace or misery which threatened her through the murder, and which she feared to bring upon her husband? The motive I had guessed to be strong as her love: what if it were her love? Having stepped from surmise to surmise so far, I paused to strengthen my position by the facts. There were but two ways in which this murder could have prevented her marriage—through Merrick's guilt or her own. His innocence was proven; hers I did not ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... Edward, I do not pretend to surmise the reason of your departure, nor would it be becoming in me to attempt to discover what my father thinks proper to be silent upon, but I must beg you to promise ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... success as far as this world is concerned. And it is so hard for a youth to know, to make even a fair guess, as to what his own capacities are! The right man is wanted in the right place; but how is a lad of two and twenty to surmise what place will be right for him? And yet, if he surmises wrong, he fails in taking his tide at its single flood. How many lawyers are there who should have been soldiers! how many clergymen who should have been lawyers! how many unsuccessful doctors who might have done ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... passed during the interval since he had gone out of the workshop Willie could only surmise, but it had evidently been of sufficiently inspiring a character to bring into his countenance a radiance almost supernatural in its splendor. Nevertheless he did not speak but stood immovable before the little old inventor as if awaiting a judge's decree, the glory fading from his eyes ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... "Brownie" was allowed to surmise that he had done something rather big, and Joe thanked him very nicely, but Mr. Carnegie is still ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... Calderwell, with a reproachful glance, helping himself. "Your good judgment in some matters is still unimpaired, I see," he observed, tapping the little gilded band which had told him the cigar was an old favorite. "As to other matters, however,—you're wrong again, my friend, in your surmise. I am not sick, and I ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... We may surmise that they began by being implied in each other, that the original psychical activity included both at once, and that, if we went far enough back into the past, we should find instincts more nearly approaching intelligence than those of our insects, intelligence nearer to instinct than that ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... his hand; and, in his irritable surmise of what was to come, losing his habitual self-control, "I know not what all this has to do with you; surely you trespass upon ground sacred to Miss Cameron and myself? Whatever you have to say, let me beg you to come at once ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book V • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... from a towering bluff, a slave squad was appointed for the work at the top of the chute, while Irish deck hands were kept below to capture the wildly bounding bales and stow them. As to the reason for this division of labor and concentration of risk, the traveller had his own surmise confirmed when the captain answered his question by saying, "The niggers are worth too much to be risked here; if the Paddies are knocked overboard, or get their backs broke, nobody loses anything!"[34] To these chance observations it may be added that many newspaper items and ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... thenceforth. Nowhere in Entepfuhl, on the morrow or next day, did tidings transpire of any such figure as the Stranger; nor could the Traveller, who had passed through the neighbouring Town in coach-and-four, be connected with this Apparition, except in the way of gratuitous surmise. Meanwhile, for Andreas and his wife, the grand practical problem was: What to do with this little sleeping red-coloured Infant? Amid amazements and curiosities, which had to die away without external satisfying, they resolved, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... oblivion by Asoka, who being sovereign of all India and anxious to spread Buddhism throughout his dominions would be likely to distribute the relics as widely as he distributed his pillars and inscriptions. But later Buddhist kings could not emulate this imperial impartiality and we may surmise that such a monarch as Kanishka would see to it that all the principal relics in northern India found their way to his capital. The bones discovered at Peshawar are doubtless those considered ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... separation. Upon presenting themselves before him, the Rabbi addressed them in these fatherly accents:—"My children," said he, "your divorce must not take place in pettishness or anger, lest people should surmise something guilty or disgraceful as the motive for the action. Let your parting, therefore, be like your meeting, friendly and cheerful. Go home, make a feast, and invite your friends to share it with you; and then to-morrow return ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... anything? Impossible; his reference forbad the fear. Was the girl something more than a dark woodland elf, a fairy, haggard and dishevelled, whose white shape shining through rags had made his blood stir? The mask of his face safeguarded him through this maze of surmise; nothing out of the depths of him was ever let to ruffle that dead surface. He commanded his voice to ask, How should he find such a girl? "For," said he, "in Malbank girls and boys swarm like dies on a sunny wall." The ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... The old rancher's surmise proved to be partially correct. Jorth's faction ceased the shooting. Nothing further was seen or heard from them. But this silence and apparent break in the siege were harder to bear than deliberate hostility. ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... city. Some learned people nowadays say that Vasari was wrong in many of the stories he told, but after all he lived much nearer than we do to the times he wrote about, and it is safer to believe what he tells us than what modern students surmise, except when they are able to cite other old authorities to which Vasari did ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... surmise he wants the place himself. There's talk of a railroad from Sherborn, and that'll raise the price of land right around here. It'll probably go right through the farm just south of the ...
— Cast Upon the Breakers • Horatio Alger
... heel The tremulous Paradisal plumages; The conscious sacramental trees Which ever be Shaken celestially, Consentient with enamoured wings, might know my love for thee. Yet is there more, whereat none guesseth, love! Upon the ending of my deadly night (Whereof thou hast not the surmise, and slight Is all that any mortal knows thereof), Thou wert to me that earnest of day's light, When, like the back of a gold-mailed saurian Heaving its slow length from Nilotic slime, The first long gleaming fissure runs Aurorian ...
— Sister Songs • Francis Thompson
... was Faith, ere yet she heard In heart believing: and, as when a babe Marks some bright shape, if near or far, it knows not, And stretches forth a witless hand to clasp Phantom or form, even so with wild surmise And guesses erring first, and questions apt, She chased the flying light, and round it closed At last, and found it substance. "This is He." Then cried she, "This, whom every maid should love, Conqueror self-sacrificed of sin and death: How shall we find, how please Him, how be nigh?" Patrick ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... survive in the surroundings of another planet is by itself no more significant than that fishes and other marine animals die when exposed to the air. From their point of view air is uninhabitable because they have failed to equip themselves with lungs."[79] And he adds that his surmise "leaves out of account the possibilities of the Moon's underground world, which are incalculable, for there water, the vital gases, congenial temperatures, and increased pressures will all be present. ...
— The Practical Values of Space Exploration • Committee on Science and Astronautics
... sad embroidery wears: Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed, And daffodillies fill their cups with tears To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid lies. For so to interpose a little ease, Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise; Ay me! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas Wash far away,—where'er thy bones are hurl'd; Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides Where thou perhaps, under the whelming tide Visitest the bottom of the monstrous world; Or whether thou, to our ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... hair on that goat, or the woman won't take it back. She don't want no bald goat. Well, they can run the baby and goat to suit themselves, 'cause I have resigned. I have gone into business. Don't you smell anything that would lead you to surmise that I had gone into business? No drugstore this time," and the boy got up and put his thumbs in the armholes of his vest, ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck
... faint perfumes to the night air in those olden times; but the place could hardly have been so still of a summer night as it is now, for the booming of the bullfrog and the piping of his lesser kin must have made night resonant here, and it is reasonable to surmise that owls hooted in the cedar-trees that hung over the tawny sedges of the swamp. "Jack-o'-Lantern" was the only inhabitant who burned gas hereabouts in those times, and he manufactured his own. The ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... commonwealth? A study of the list of candidates on this ballot, giving their places of residence, however, fortified one's natural supposition—"of Worcester, of Lynn, of Haverhill, of Amherst, of Pittsfield" (ah!), "of Boston." It is a reasonable surmise that this Ballot pertains to the commonwealth ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... [Footnote 971: "The surmise of Plato, that the world of appearance subsists in and by a higher world of Divine Thought, is confirmed by Christianity when it tells us of a Divine subsistence—that Eternal Word by whom and in whom all things consist."—Vaughan, "Hours with the ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... went his way, and the King went his; which, as you may surmise, was to the bath and his clean clothes. He did not go into the larder, and an hour before sunset made the ascent of the hill, and for the third time stood like a conqueror upon the crest. And as he gazed over the lands below his ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... had paid him every kindly attention. He had gathered the story of the petted daughter, and in his enfeebled state their acquaintance made rapid progress. Even now it required no acute observer to surmise the ravages of the little god. No one interfered, and for once the course of true love seemed ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... noon was approaching, when a heavy cloud of dust, apparently not more than two or three miles distant, attracted our attention. From whence it originated there was little difficulty in guessing, nor did many minutes expire before surmise was changed into certainty: for on turning a sudden angle in the road, and passing a small plantation, which obstructed the vision towards the left, the British and American armies became visible to one another. ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... course; yet, as in science and literature and art so in politics, final, because satisfactory, results are at best but slowly thrashed out. As respects wisdom, the modern statute book does not loom, monumental. Its contemplation would indeed perhaps even lead to a surmise that reasonable delay in formulating his "mandate" might, in the case of the composite Democrat as in that of the individual Autocrat, prove a not altogether unmixed, and so in ...
— 'Tis Sixty Years Since • Charles Francis Adams
... the Labour Conference at Nottingham. "I could not help thinking to myself," said my member, "that at that conference there must have been many men of sufficient classical reading to say to themselves, 'Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.'" In which surmise he was quite right. Except perhaps for "Tempus fugit," "verbum sap.," "Arma virumque," and "Quis custodiet," there is no better known relic of antiquity. But my member went a little beyond my ideas when he said: "We are ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... taste.] and by a more diligent inquiry, in which his kindness assisted me, it has been ascertained that his opinion was, as it could not fail to be, correct. The following extract from a letter written by Lord Minto at the time, referring obviously to the surmise that he was, himself, the author of the paper, confirms beyond a doubt the fact, that it was written almost solely ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... "Your surmise is correct, my young friend," said the taller man, lightly. "We are the gentlemen who were forced to leave Zeisler so ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... master knew that in that latitude (about 4 deg. south) there was not very much probability of meeting with one, every preparation was made, as violent squalls and heavy rain, at least, were certain to follow the greenish warning in the sky. In a very short time their surmise proved correct, for by four in the afternoon the Triton under short canvas, was battling with a mountainous sea and furious gusts of wind from the W.N. W. The presence of so much land around them, surrounded by networks of outlying ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... The scandalous discord which exists between Belgrade and Cetinje must be cleared off the carpet. We have most urgently pressed this on Prince Nikola when he was in Petersburg." The Prince, we may surmise, went to ask Russian support, received no sympathy, began to realize he was no longer Russia's "only friend," and ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... shown me the exact, indubitable spot where Johnson performed his penance. I was assured, moreover, that sufficient interest was felt in the subject to have induced certain local discussions as to the expediency of erecting a memorial. With all deference to my polite informant, I surmise that there is a mistake, and decline, without further and precise evidence, giving credit to either of the above statements. The inhabitants know nothing, as a matter of general interest, about the penance, and care nothing for the scene of it. If the clergyman of the parish, ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Kolde and others surmise that Luther wrote as he did because, owing to his illness, he was not acquainted with the true situation at Smalcald. Tschackert, too, takes it for granted that Luther, not being sufficiently informed, was under the erroneous impression that the princes and estates as well as the ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... Is this the pleasant little legacy which my respected ancestor has bequeathed to his only grandson? It skipped the Judge, but it caught poor Uncle Lenox, and now it has nabbed me! What a fool I have been not to surmise what this confounded pain meant between my shoulders! Grandfather Hildreth kept himself alive with nostrums until he was seventy, but he was an invalid all his life. He ought to be cursed for his contemptible selfishness in bringing so much suffering ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... opulence of my subject with the poverty of my inventions. Indisputably, to thrust words into a dead man's mouth is in the ultimate as unpardonable as the axiomatic offence of stealing the pennies from his eyes; yet if I have sometimes erred in my surmise at what Ormskirk or de Puysange or Louis de Soyecourt really said at certain moments of their lives, the misstep was due, Madam, less to malevolence than to inability to replevin their superior utterance; ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... is just a gentle man: no more, no less; a diamond polished that was first a diamond in the rough. A gentleman is gentle, modest, courteous, slow to take offense, and never giving it. He is slow to surmise evil, as he never thinks it. He subjects his appetites, refines his tastes, subdues his feelings, controls his speech, and deems every other person as good as himself. A gentleman, like porcelain-ware, must be painted before he is glazed. There can be ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... on something more or less akin to the vagueness of antiquity; to make a virtual confession of ignorance, to deny the ultimate reality of evil, like Plato and Aristotle, or, with Speusippus, the eternity of its antithetical existence, to surmise that it is only one of those notions which are indeed provisionally indispensable in a condition of finite knowledge, but of which so many have been already discredited by the advance of philosophy; to revert, in ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... with his hind legs logged and chained, was endeavouring to pick up a scanty subsistence. What the road of the other day could have been, it surpassed even my capacity, with this specimen of "the bootiful" before me, to surmise; but my companion was evidently one of those enviable individuals, whose ignorance is indeed their happiness, or whose imagination supplies ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 472 - Vol. XVII. No. 472., Saturday, January 22, 1831 • Various
... in surprise. His secret surmise was that some one had died and left him a legacy which would enable him to retire from newspaper work. (This is the unacknowledged dream that haunts many journalists.) Mr. Bleak was wondering whether this was the way in which ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... suffered out at Balls Pond, when they first suspected 'things was going wrong.' Then would Mr Perch relate to gaping listeners, in a low voice, as if the corpse of the deceased House were lying unburied in the next room, how Mrs Perch had first come to surmise that things was going wrong by hearing him (Perch) moaning in his sleep, 'twelve and ninepence in the pound, twelve and ninepence in the pound!' Which act of somnambulism he supposed to have originated in the impression made upon him by the change ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... Harry's surmise proved to be well founded, for they quickly discovered a suspicious movement close to the large hangar. Yes, the two Hun spies were undoubtedly there, and already busily engaged in doing something that could only mean trouble ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach
... tried to settle on her face. She was about to seek the passage in preference to the stuffy kitchen, when she heard a loud single knock at the front door. Believing this to be the porter with her luggage, she went to the door, to find that her surmise was correct. ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... his—the opprobrium (as I hold) of the Middle Age. For if such were the dreams of its noblest and purest genius, what must have been the dreams of the ignoble and impure multitude? But had he seen this lake, how easy, how tempting too, it would have been to him to embody in imagery the surmise of a certain 'Father,' and heighten the torments of the lost beings, sinking slowly into that black Bolge beneath the baking rays of the tropic sun, by the sight of the saved, walking where we walked, beneath cool ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... fur traders have been the same the world over: to frighten a rival off the ground if possible; if not, then to buy him off. It is not all surmise to suppose that when Thompson was sent to the Pacific there was in view some other purpose than merely to survey an unknown river. But exploration and the fur trade went hand in hand; and whatever the motives may have been, the {114} result was that, after more than four years of arduous ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut
... cutting off the abrupt exit of her quondam friends; it would be quite time enough to commence a system of reprisals when it was ascertained that the blacks had actually been guilty of any atrocity. At present it was mere surmise on our part, and putting altogether on one side the natural reluctance to shed blood, an aggressive policy would have been an unwise one, engendering, as it infallibly would, a bad feeling against any other luckless mariners whom the ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... of course not conclusive as to the time of composition of the plays, there is so much of identity between the thought in the Duke's speech, just quoted, and a notable passage in TROILUS AND CRESSIDA, as to strengthen greatly the surmise that the latter play was also written, or rather worked-over, by ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... surmise he was perfectly correct. No one of the name of Julius Hoffman was known at the Langham. The Hounslow police made no discovery, and ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... such things as were under Jack's care. We had, therefore, never doubted for a moment that all was going well, so that it was with no little anxiety that we heard him make the above remark. However, we had no time for question or surmise, for at the moment he spoke a heavy squall was bearing down upon us; and as we were then flying with our lee gunwale dipping occasionally under the waves, it was evident that we should have to lower our sail altogether. In a few seconds the squall struck the ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... Tawdrey was produced at the Duke's Theatre, Dorset Garden, in September, 1676. There is no record of its performance, and the actors' names are not given. It was a year of considerable changes in the company, and any attempt to supply these would be the merest surmise. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... you would refuse them admittance to the Hall this year because you called the meeting in the living room," was Muriel's plausible surmise. "You had had a good deal of trouble with them and they knew they were in the wrong; that you disapproved of them. They may have scented disaster and taken the bull by the horns. They calculated, perhaps, that you might appeal to President Matthews and thought they would secure themselves ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... had as yet made no attempt to rob him, he could only surmise that some incredibly foolish mistake had been made. But when he remembered the three invisible horsemen who had passed him on the broad mesa he was not so certain about the mistake. Most naturally, his thoughts went back to the little episode on the hotel porch. The passing glance ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... Lee!" And Joseph had a pair of fightin' eyes; And his granddad was a Johnny, as perhaps you might surmise; Then "Robert Bruce MacPherson!" And the Yankee squad was done With "Isaac Abie Cohen!" ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... work is so rarely played that Mr. ERNEST NEWMAN has wittily suggested that he ought to be renamed Dodo. But let that pass. Here he is abundantly like himself, rich in self-determining phrases which emerge from a Hinterland of wild surmise, and tower aloft in peaks of Himalayan majesty like Haramokh or Siniolchum —— Mr. CANDLER must finish ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 11, 1919 • Various
... "I surmise that the tall Lieutenant did not fall a victim to my wiles as I had at first supposed, but, in some unaccountable manner, one can never tell how these things happen; he was most anxious to be left alone with the coy Miss Dorothy Amhurst, who ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... in his surmise, since Melissy Lee, who had come out to see the posse off, was standing at the end of the porch with her dusky eyes fastened on him, the while he stood beside the house with one foot resting negligently on the oilcloth cover of ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... Afghan chief, who lies Beneath his cool pomegranate-trees, Clutches his sword in fierce surmise When ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... had been closely connected, you will remember, with the iniquitous affair in which Philippe de Vilmorin had lost his life. We know enough to justify a surmise that he had not merely been La Tour d'Azyr's second in the encounter, but actually an instigator of the business. Andre-Louis may therefore have felt a justifiable satisfaction in offering up the Chevalier's life to the Manes of his murdered ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini |
