"Conundrum" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you, my dear Lord, is—Will you disappoint them?" Lord Beaconsfield put his glass in his eye, fixed his gaze on Lord Odo, and then said, "There is much force in what you say. I will consider the point." And next day he opened the proceedings in English. Now the psychological conundrum is this—Did he swallow the flattery, and honestly believe that the object of Lord Odo's appeal was to secure the pleasure of hearing him speak English? Or did he see through the manoeuvre, and recognize a polite intimation that a French speech from him would throw ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... its mother among the motley and multitudinous mass of sibilant saints at a sewing society which is discussing the last wedding and the next divorce. He "who admits only what he understands" would have to look on himself as a conundrum and then give the conundrum up. He would have the longest doubts and the shortest creed on record. Agnosticism is part of the smashed crockery of ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... into languishment that seemed to make him absolutely infirm, "it is everything that shall restrain me. I am not strong. I shall become weak of the knee and tremble under the eye of Mees Boston. I shall precipitate myself to the geologian by the throat. Ask me another conundrum ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... these travelling people put on paper? Let me put it in the form of a conundrum. Q. What is it that the travelling M.P. treasures up and the Anglo-Indian hastens to throw away? A. Erroneous, hazy, distorted first impressions. Before the eyes of the griffin, India steams up in poetical mists, illusive, fantastic, subjective, ideal, picturesque. ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... Conundrum is not allowed:—Why is Hasty Pudding like the Prince? Because it comes attended by its sweet;—nor this variation to it, to wit: Because ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... the review, and finished a good lot of it. Mr. Stewart left us, amply provided with the history of Abbotsford and its contents. It is a kind of Conundrum Castle to be sure, and I have great pleasure in it, for while it pleases a fantastic person in the style and manner of its architecture and decoration, it has all the ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... to me and Bill this afternoon: 'Boys, one riddle have I for you gehabt haben. A young man who cannot riddles antworten, he is not so good by business for ein family to provide—is not that—hein?' And he hands us a riddle—a conundrum, some calls it—and he chuckles interiorly and gives both of us till to-morrow morning to work out the answer to it. And he says whichever of us guesses the repartee end of it goes to his house o' Wednesday night to his daughter's birthday party. And it means Laura for whichever ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... consider why she had gone to him and what might result from her visit; and up to a certain point, and in certain cases accurate guessing is easier than might be expected for either side to a political conundrum, in India, ample provision having been made for it by ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... question became more explicit, and the hypothesis of the play and the pill were excluded. 'What,' the new poster ran, 'is Ireland going to do for the Boers?' The public were not intensely anxious to find an answer to the conundrum thrust thus forcibly on their attention, but they became curious to know who the advertisers were who hungered for the information. Men blessed by Providence with sagacious-looking faces made the most of their opportunity, ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... why," remarked the little dog, in speaking to the tree, "Would you say that the heart of you is like the tail of me?" The tree gave the conundrum up. The pup, with wisdom dark, Explained the matter saying, "It is farthest from ...
— The New Pun Book • Thomas A. Brown and Thomas Joseph Carey
... quite depressed. "Did you think it was a conundrum?" I asked. "You so often remind me of ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... Johnson. "Very different—in fact, different enough to make a conundrum of the question—what is the difference between a shoemaker and a poet? One makes the shoes and the other shakes the muse—all the difference in the world. Still, I don't see how we can exclude the poets. It is the ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... months comin' to his grave; begad he'd ha' sold the shebeen above our heads for ten minutes' quittance of purgathory. An' he did all he could. That's why I say ut takes a strong man to deal with the Ould Church, an' for that reason you'll find so many women go there. An' that same's a conundrum.' ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... kind, alloyed (I think) here and there with errors of taste. He might have spared many of the details of the bath scene, which, for the rest, tallies exactly with Mr. Thackeray's account of the same process. This little man with all his long letters remains as much a conundrum to me as ever. Your account of the domestic joys at Hunsworth amused me much. The good folks seem very happy—long may they continue so! It somewhat cheers me to know that such happiness does exist on the earth. ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... stable; another time he gave an elephant a plug of tobacco, and retired without waiting for an answer; and still another time he pretended to be talking in his sleep, and got off a portion of every original conundrum in hearing of his father. He begs the curious not to pry into the result—as it was of no consequence to any ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... charge made for these vehicles, the driver expecting, as in similar cases in Paris, Berlin, or elsewhere, a trifle as a pourboire at the end of the service for which he is engaged. Where these ruinous structures which pass for public carriages originally came from is a conundrum; but there can be no possible doubt as to their antiquity. Mexican fleas, like those of Naples and continental Spain, are both omnivorous and carnivorous, and these vehicles are apt to be itinerant ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... specimen of irrepressible fireworks, and Prince Paul had enough to do in facilitating conversation. There was no end to his politeness, but it was an impossible task for him now and then promptly to carry over a long sentence from German to Russian, and he would give it up like an invincible conundrum, with the patient smile and head-wag and hand-wave of an amiable Dundreary. Yet I began to surmise a mystery even in him. More than once he inadvertently betrayed a knowledge of Romany, though he invariably spoke of his friends around in a ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... of his"—bobbing his head at Frick—"and a conundrum," and he looked over and smiled at Curtis, "then one of mine after that. Won't that ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... assumed the editorial charge, emanated from his pen." Mr. Browne himself wrote to a friend: "Comic copy is what they wanted for "Vanity Fair." I wrote some and it killed it. The poor paper got to be a conundrum, and so ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... pick out what we'd have. As I stood there attemptin' to decide, I couldn't help thinkin' that selectin' that candy was a good deal like choosin' a wife. You couldn't have all the different kinds, an' makin' up your mind which you preferred was a seven-days' conundrum." ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... name of Polynices, one of OEdipus's sons, means in the original "much quarrelling." In the altercations between the two brothers, in AEschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, this conceit is employed; and it is remarkable, that so poor a conundrum could not be rejected by any of these three poets, so justly celebrated for their taste and simplicity. What could Shakspeare have done worse? Terence has his "inceptio est amentium, non amanthim." Many similar instances will ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... colours, and cut it into squares of equal size, fringing two sides of each. Have ready, burnt almonds, chocolate nuts, and bonbons or sugar-plums of various sorts; and put one in each paper with a folded slip containing two lines of verse; or what will be much more amusing, a conundrum with the answer. Twist the coloured paper so as entirely to conceal their contents, leaving the fringe at each end. This is the most easy, but there are various ways of cutting and ornamenting ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... wouldn't have believed it. Would I? Squatted on the verandah chewing betel-nut, sighing and spitting all over the place for more than an hour, and as glum as an undertaker before he came out with that dashed conundrum. That's the kind of thing that isn't so funny as it looks. What was a fellow to say?—Good wife?—Yes. Good wife—old though. Started a confounded long story about some brass pots. Been living together for fifteen years—twenty years—could not tell. A ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... and my mother's in London, and what will she be doing?" the boy asked himself, as if it were a conundrum. ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... the question may rather be put—to borrow phraseology current among her critics: Had she oughter?—from a moral point of view, now. From a moral point, then, let us seek from analogy some light on the question of what, from its actual, practical bearings, may be dignified by the name Conundrum. ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... this remark all four came to be again on the same terms as of old; but suddenly a servant announced that the Empress (Yan Ch'un) had despatched a messenger to bring over a lantern-conundrum with the directions that they should all go and guess it, and that after they had found it out, they should each also devise one and send it in. At these words, the four of them left the room with hasty ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... old school part of Hermione which I have not forgotten, and then two scenes from Scribe's pretty piece of "les premieres Amours." He acts French capitally, and, moreover, bestowed upon me the two following ridiculous conundrum puns, for which I shall ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... answer was, "A honey-comb in the body of a dead lion." To-day this sort of riddle survives in such a form as, "Why does a chicken cross the road?" to which most people give the answer, "To get to the other side;" though the correct reply is, "To worry the chauffeur." It has degenerated into the conundrum, which is usually based on a mere pun. For example, we have been asked from our infancy, "When is a door not a door?" and here again the answer usually furnished ("When it is a-jar") is not the correct one. It should be, "When it ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... beyond the legitimate domain of magic: and no intellectual development to which we may hereafter attain will bring us a step nearer their solution. But with the problems proper to magic, the case is different. Magic is distinctively not Divine, but human: a finite conundrum, not an Infinite enigma. If there has ever been a magician since the world began, then all mankind may become magicians, if they will give the necessary time and trouble. And yet, magic is not simply an advanced region of the path which science is pursuing. Science is concerned with results,—with ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... and of John, was dead; and he was not so constant a follower of Christ as his wife; so she is mentioned as the mother of Zebedee's children, which saying has passed into a conundrum, "Who was the mother of Zebedee's children?" Scott in his commentaries gives her name as Salome. Whatever her name, she had great ambition for her sons, and asked that they might have the chief places of honor and authority ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... able to guess a conundrum; b badgers; c in that field; d mortally offended; e my; h noticed by me; k properly trained in a Board-School; l rushing about ...
— Symbolic Logic • Lewis Carroll
... with the boat?" asked Jean. This was a conundrum, but the Chief, as usual, was equal ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... and sold. Whatever creates a use creates value, and a great increase in use forces an increase in value, provided that the supply does not increase equally fast; and with silver that is an impossibility. If you think government cannot add value to a metal, consider this conundrum: What would be the present value of gold if all nations should demonetize it? It can be calculated approximately. There is on hand enough gold to supply the arts for forty years at the present rate of consumption. ...
— If Not Silver, What? • John W. Bookwalter
... himself on the back of the sofa, and caressing his knees as he puffed his cigarette meditatively, "you have ask a conundrum. Gif to me an easier one! It is of truth that I make much of these thing to please Urania. But I shall confess all. Behold, I appear to you, my leetle brother, in my camisa—my shirt! I blow on ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... difficult to get three pints of liquid into a quart measure, and it was a conundrum of this sort that Christy was studying upon when he tried to make a parlor, bedroom, and dining-saloon of the very limited space in the forward part of the Florence. Though he could hardly get the three pints into the quart measure, he had done the best he could, and succeeded ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... distress which indicate too early roused young womanhood. The eventual reply seemed to be affirmative, albeit accompanied with a suppressed giggle, as if the young lady had just been discovered as an answer to an amusing conundrum. ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... association had a feast. They exploited their humorous abilities, and all made merry, save one glum guest. At last, they insisted that this melancholy person should contribute to the entertainment. He consented, in response to much urging, to offer a conundrum: ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... soul present who could answer that conundrum, and after a fitting pause the chief was ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... second year he began the study of philosophy, and that added to his woes. He had nerves to feel the Big Conundrum, but not the brains to solve it; small blame to him for that, since philosophers have cursed each other black in the face over it for the last five thousand years. But it worried him. The strange and sinister detail of the world, that ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... find better progression.' Commentators have been tempted to discern some shadow before of the fatality four years later, when the patronage by Essex and his partisans of the play of Henry IV at the Globe Theatre became an article of indictment. The passage forms a conundrum to which the clue has not yet been found. If the reference be to Shakespeare's drama which Essex, Cecil, and Ralegh may have seen acted in this July, it constitutes the only ascertained association of the hand which could do all and the brain which ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... not altogether satisfactory, and Smith apparently was unable to grapple with the problem. It puzzled him; but then Handy himself was at all times more or less of a conundrum ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... consultation, Edwards entered to announce Mrs. Corcoran Dunn and Mr. Malcolm. The butler's giving the lady precedence in his announcing showed that he, too, realized who was ranking officer in that family, even though the captain's "conundrum" had puzzled him. Mrs. Dunn and her son entered at ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... obviously set his mind at rest, in the full conviction that his spiritual guides had found a law which authorized his ancestors, and the tzars and their descendants, and millions of men, to serve as he was doing himself, and that the question I had put him was a kind of hoax or conundrum on ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... hazy, distorted first impressions," Mr Aberich Mackay calls them in his "Twenty-one days in India," that most amusing Indian classic. "What is it these travelling people put on paper?" he adds. "Let me put it in the form of a conundrum. Q. What is it that the travelling M.P. treasures up and what the Anglo-Indian hastens to throw away? A. Erroneous, hazy, distorted first impressions. Before the eyes of the griffin, India steams in poetical mists, ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... the Minotaur's labyrinth, when the passage knotted itself into a low-roofed room, open at both ends, save for bomb screens, with a trench leading dismally off from an opposite doorway. "When is a door not a door?" was a conundrum of my childhood, and I think the answer was: "When it's ajar." But nowadays there is a better replique: A door is not a door when it's a dug-out. It is then a hole, kept from falling in upon itself by a log of ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... now, he was pointed out as a distinguished figure, and his quaint remarks were quoted. Few of these sayings are remembered to-day, though occasionally one is still unforgotten. At a party one night, being urged to make a conundrum, he said: ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... in the National Assembly against the minority, its speech remained monosyllabic, like that of the Christian, whose speech was to be "Aye, aye; nay, nay." It was monosyllabic, whether from the tribune or the press; dull as a conundrum, whose solution is known beforehand. Whether the question was the right of petition or the duty on wine, the liberty of the press or free trade, clubs or municipal laws, protection of individual freedom or the regulation of national economy, the slogan returns ever again, the theme ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... says Bobby, doggedly, "I never made out a conundrum in my life, except, 'What is most ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... one possible answer to that conundrum, and it doesn't take any guessing," said I. "The reply would have been: 'Cold 'am or beef, sir; chops, if you choose to wait.' Those words are probably now being spoken to some hundreds of sad travellers less fortunate than our favoured and ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... The conundrum was unanswerable. Baxter did not attempt to answer it. But there remained at the back of his mind a quaint idea that he had caught sight, as he woke, of the Honorable Frederick Threepwood, his face warningly contorted, vanishing through the doorway. Yet what could the ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... sure enough, and that's all there is to it. Now, hang it, how could a fox have come aboard our boat with twenty feet of water separating us from the shore? That's a conundrum I give up," Thad was saying ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... What's that you say? They have been to the station? You ask if I have seen three suspicious people—a man, perhaps an old man, in a dark-blue, well-cut suit, wearing a Homberg hat and goggles, a girl, and a man of whose appearance you have no knowledge? Come now, that's a conundrum! I have seen many ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... Peter directly, but a sort of back-wash did catch him keenly through young Sam Arkwright and serve as a conundrum for ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... the world as an independent institution. Singers organized themselves into quartet bands; added a fiddle and tambourine to their instruments—perhaps we should say implements—of music; introduced the hoe-down and the conundrum to fill up the intervals of performance; rented halls, and, peregrinating from city to city and from town to town, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... farm served to secure Gudger against loss, while the mention of its existence caused the commissioner again to rub his head. Why in the world should a man——? He gave up the conundrum in despair, and applied himself to the ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... a conundrum which nobody seems to have solved yet, Susan. And I can make only a guess at ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... going to propound another conundrum of a kind I've heard before—why you should have so many things you don't particularly need, while Miss Hartley must go on sewing when she's hardly able for it in her most unpleasant shack? I don't know whether the ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... with a smile: "Woman is the eternal conundrum to which the wise man always leaves her herself to supply the answer. Doubtless one of these days you'll do it. ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... his statement of the case he was politely asked if he would care to inter his talents in the Canadian Senate, and he suavely answered that such a thing might be a good way to solve the conundrum, even though it would make a thoroughly stupid last act ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... mention that it is "a cherry," but this is by no means the case with all Chinese riddles, many being exceedingly difficult of solution. So much so that it is customary all over the Empire to copy out any particularly puzzling conundrum on a paper lantern, and hang it in the evening at the street door, with the promise of a reward to any comer who may succeed in unravelling it. These are called "lamp riddles," and usually turn upon the name of ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... man of great natural ability. If you ask me, How pious is he? I treat it as a conundrum, and give it up. Personally he treated me with marked kindness throughout my ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... conversation between Vaura and her neighbour, but no, Mrs. Marchmont, though inwardly afraid of this squire of dames; and of his intellect, determined to appear at ease, and so talked on the one engrossing idea of her life; the last conundrum in fancy work, the last fashionable incongruity in the blending of colours. And poor, victimized Lionel longed to breathe in Vaura's refreshing breadth of thought; on his tormentor pausing to recover breath, it was not as balm to a wound to hear ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... was the first scientific builder? Answer.—Noah, when he invented arky-tecture. (N.B. This will do for a Sunday conundrum.) ...
— Happy-Thought Hall • F. C. Burnand
... turned two ways. In the morasses of the Haanebeek flats, in the slimy support lines at Zonnebeke, in the tortured uplands about Flesquieres, and in many other odd places I kept worrying at my private conundrum. At night I would lie awake thinking of it, and many a toss I took into shell-holes and many a time I stepped off the duckboards, because my eyes were on a different landscape. Nobody ever chewed a few wretched clues into such a pulp ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... the note to be some unauthorized impertinence of a foolish commentator. Secretly therefore, silently, stealthily—so as to draw as little attention as possible—Pope introduced into a note his wicked little brazen solution of his own wicked and brazen conundrum. France, such was the proposition, had worked a miracle upon English ground; as if with some magician's rod, she had called up spawn innumerable of authors, lyric, epic, dramatic, pastoral, each after his ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... laugh with the carefree heartiness of a boy. "I am going to make a riddle," he said. "Prepare yourself; this is the first conundrum of the new world. Why is it better to disagree than ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... beautiful really and in themselves, because they are mere conceits; the analogies in them are fortuitous, depending not on the nature of the things themselves, but on the private fancy of the writer, having no more real and logical coherence than a conundrum or a pun; in plain English, untrue, only allowable to Juliets or Othellos; while their self-possession, almost their reason, is in temporary abeyance under the influence of joy or sorrow. Every one must feel the exquisite fitness of Juliet's "Gallop apace, ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... so too. But it is a great problem what to do for the best in this case. Mebby Solomon knew enough to grapple with the question, but Josiah don't, nor Arvilly, though she thinks she duz. Robert Strong is gittin' one answer to the hard conundrum of life, and Ernest White is figurin' it out successful. And lots of other good and earnest souls all over the world are workin' away at the sum with their own slates and pencils. But oh, the time is ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... the tall, slim figure Detective Inspector Wessex stared with a sort of wonder. Mr. Nicol Brinn of Cincinnati was a conundrum which he found himself unable to catalogue, although in his gallery of queer characters were many eccentric and peculiar. If Nicol Brinn should prove to be crooked, then automatically he became insane. This Wessex had reasoned out even before he had set eyes upon the celebrated ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... stories belong to a large group of tales to which we may give the name of the "Rival Brothers." This cycle assumes various forms; but the two things that identify the relationship of the members are the rivalry of the brothers and the conundrum or "problem" ending of the stories. Within this cycle we can distinguish at least three simple, distinct types, and a compound fourth made up of parts of two of the others. These four types may be very generally outlined ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... "That's a conundrum," returned Andy. "But I have heard it said that many city-born folks would rather die between brick walls than live ...
— Young Auctioneers - The Polishing of a Rolling Stone • Edward Stratemeyer
... "That's the conundrum, Hope," answered her big brother. "I'll write to-night, and father will get the letter inside ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic
... confidence. It would have a very bad appearance to go along the highwayside asking after a man of whom I could give so scanty an account; and I should look like a fool, indeed, if I were to present myself at his door and find the police in occupation! The interest of the conundrum, however, tempted me, and I turned aside from my direct road to pass by Wakefield; kept my ears pricked, as I went, for any mention of his name, and relied for the rest on my good fortune. If Luck (who must certainly be feminine) favoured me as far as to throw ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the sturdy figures of the foreign circulation with the attenuated numerals of such visible returns as reach him, he is more puzzled in his mind than surfeited in his purse. But the relation of foreign publishers to "home talent" is an ancient and honorable conundrum, which it is not for this paper ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... a tree. How Green the Tree is! Can you See the Lightning? Oh, how red and Vivid the Lightning is! Will the Lightning Strike the Tree? Children, that is a Conundrum; we answer conundrums in our Weekly Edition, ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... station or vice versa, there are also the large general express companies or carriers, which send articles all over the United States. One of the most characteristic of these is the Adams Express Company, the widely known name of which has originated a popular conundrum with the query, "Why was Eve created?" This company began in 1840 with two men, a boy, and a wheelbarrow; now it employs 8,000 men and 2,000 wagons, and carries parcels over 25,000 miles of railway. ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... met at the Berlin station by her mother and Cousin von Briest. While drinking tea in the mother's room Cousin von Briest was asked to tell a joke, and propounded a Bible conundrum, which Effi took as an omen that no more sorrow was to befall her. The following day began the search for an apartment, and one was found on Keith street, which exactly suited, except that the house was ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... puzzling questions and clever replies is still as favourite a mental exercise in the East as it was in middle-aged Europe. The riddle or conundrum began, as far as we know, with the Sphinx, through whose mouth the Greeks spoke: nothing less likely than that the grave and mysterious Scribes of Egypt should ascribe aught so puerile to the awful emblem of ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... did see so many Democrats in my life. Or was it Republicans? I forget. I had given 'em a good, hot, mixed Princeton paper,—dog, international law, society, industrial progress, footlight favorites, and the whole business; had Sermons from Many Lands, and a Conundrum Department, as well as a Household Corner—How to get Beautiful for the ladies, How to get Rich for the men, How to get Strong for the advertisers—why, if I do say it, I don't believe any one fellow was ever much more cosmopolitan in all his life, inside ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... "Well, the conundrum is solved, I reckon," he went on to say; "that is, if both of you agree with me that this chance is something like a gift dropped from the blue sky. We made up our minds a long time ago that it must be some sort of outing for us this summer, and the only thing that looked ...
— Jack Winters' Campmates • Mark Overton
... I likes old Jeffords, an' considers him a pleasin' conundrum. About tenth drink time he'd take a cha'r an' go camp by himse'f in a far corner, an' thar he'd warble hymns. Many a time as I files away my nosepaint in the Oriental have I been ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... the second repetition of this inscrutable conundrum, a lank and tall girl of some fifteen summers, arose and said, not without something of the sublime air becoming a solitary intelligence: "It's ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... of the identity of Paulus was like all court secrets and most secrets of intriguing governments, no mystery at all to hundreds, but to thousands an insoluble conundrum. The official propagandists of the court news, absolutely in control of all the channels through which facts could reach the public, easily offset the constant leakage from the lips of slaves and gladiators by disseminating artfully concocted ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... It couldn't be expected, perhaps; but I am still of the impression that this conundrum is gradually working towards a solution in the brain of the Commander-in-Chief. I hope it don't lay heavily there; I wouldn't do anything to distress him. If GOLDWIN SMITH were expounding political economy to him in one ear, and HORACE GREELEY ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... is not. The race is to a point 100 feet away and home again—that is, a distance of 200 feet. One correspondent asks whether they take exactly the same time in turning, to which I reply that they do. Another seems to suspect that it is really a conundrum, and that the answer is that 'the result of the race was a (matrimonial) tie.' But I had no such intention. The puzzle is an arithmetical one, as it ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... Langdon of the same regiment, the scholarly soldier, with the account of every great campaign in history at his fingers' ends. I recollect one evening, when we had been talking of the Peninsular War, I ventured to spring on him the ancient schoolboy conundrum: "What lines are those, the most famous ever made by an Englishman, yet that are never quoted?" "Lines?" said he, "lines?" though I don't think he had ever heard the jest. "They must be the Lines of Torres Vedras." How well I remember the musical box that used to arouse me at seven in the morning, ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... which he calls a 'sphinx.' And O what questions asked in club-foot rhyme Of Earth the tongueless, and the deaf-mute Time! Here babbling 'Insight' shouts in Nature's ears His last conundrum on the orbs and spheres; There Self-inspection sucks its little thumb, With 'Whence am I?' ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... size of it," says I. "Danny had the bracelets all out. The conundrum is, though, Why I should do the goat act, instead of lettin' you two mix it up? But that's what happened, and now I guess it's up to you ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... them for social purposes during the Christmas party season. I do not know how it may be with others, but I have often found, when introduced to a lady, that I have said "Good evening," and then had absolutely nothing else to say. With the help of the conundrum book I would fill in any awkward pause by asking her who was the most amiable king in history. That would break the ice. Besides, if we kept the book reasonably clean, it might afterward make a very serviceable and acceptable present to Eliza's mother. I generally know ...
— Eliza • Barry Pain
... Tom Brangwen, and the company was listening to the conundrum, "an Angel can't be less than a human being. And if it was only the soul of a man minus the man, then it would be ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... Whilst you were engaged in your grand Jenny Lind speculation, the following conundrum went the ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... given up the examination of the premises, and given up the conundrum, and Christy was leading the way up-stairs. He went into his room, followed ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... but from sheer despair. By and by Therese drifted in. It was then late and, I imagine, she was on her way to bed. She looked the picture of cheerful, rustic innocence and started propounding to me a conundrum which began ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... or her loquacious landlady she heard of how Burgoyne's force, advancing from Canada, had captured Ticonderoga, and of how Sir William had put the flower of his army on board of transports and gone to sea, his destination thus becoming a sort of national conundrum affording infinite opportunity for ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... life was always to be a losing game for me, let me play my cards how I will. I begin to think there is a curse upon me, and that no act of mine will ever prosper. Who was that man, in your Greek play, who guessed some inane conundrum, and was always getting into trouble afterwards? I begin to think there really is a fatality in ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... worth doing, but as an apology for the unwarranted liberty they take in being alive. 'I am: why am I?' said the youth at prayer-meeting, and everybody gave it up. As an effort toward answering his own conundrum, he entered the ministry. Being alive, we have to make a pretense of doing something, which else might better remain undone. That is why books are written, and controversies waged; it explains most of our intellectual and moral activities. So with society: time must be killed, and we ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... shut up in the Oven. Not at all. You are quite mistaken. The thing shut up in the Oven was Eyebright herself! And the Oven was quite different from any thing you are thinking of,—cold, not hot; wet, not dry; with a door made of green sea-water instead of black iron. This sounds like a conundrum; and, as that is hardly fair, I will proceed to unriddle it at once and tell you ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... disappearance,—gone! Astounding development! Mysterious and hapless arrival, tremendous and mysterious passage, mysterious and alarming departure. No escaping it; no volition to enter it or to avoid it; no prospect of defeating it or solving it. Odd affair! Mysterious and baffling conundrum to be ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... of the lack of free trade in our country. The brick manufacturers must be protected, so a heavy tariff was placed on the foreign article. Our brick men, finding that they had a soft thing, tried to solve that conundrum which the Israelites gave up: "How do you make bricks without straw?" They made a patent brick, built the Howard Museum in Washington, (was it a museum or a college?) the thing tumbled down, and a Congressional committee sat among its ruins. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... "There are two kinds of men in this world, Charley, and which of them makes it go?" said he. "The ones who have too much to eat and too little to do, or the others who have to keep on doing something because they're hungry? Well, I needn't ask you, because the conundrum was answered long ago, and that kind of talking's no great use to anybody. That was a very fine mill, and I picked up a good deal down there. Still, we will scarcely want such a big ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... near the boil.' Elise rose with a strange little laugh and looked at a yellow silk stocking which dangled over the side of a wicker table. As if trying to solve a conundrum, she glanced from it to the shapely form of the young woman at her toilet. 'When the war's over,' she said ruminatingly, 'and our men find what kind of girls they married when they were ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... he said. "Razors have moods, and are known to sulk. But science has solved the conundrum of their antics. It has been discovered that whetting changes the location of the molecules of metal, that there is frequently left what is not a perfect edge after the supposed sharpening, but that, given time, the molecules will readjust ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... a conundrum," replied Jabez Holt, pondering. "Jake Farnum owns the yard. Jake is a young man, only a few years out of college. He inherited the business from his father, who's dead. Jake is considered a pretty good business man, though he don't know much 'bout boats, an' can't seem to learn a heap, nuther. ...
— The Submarine Boys on Duty - Life of a Diving Torpedo Boat • Victor G. Durham
... He came here long ago; But, before that, he'd been born somewhere: The conundrum started first, right there. Little shaver—afore he knew his name Or the place from whereabouts he came— On a wagon-train the Apaches caught him. Killed the old folks! But this cus'—they brought him Safe away from ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... came back, was to take a night-walk to Norwood, and, like the subject of a venerable riddle of my childhood, to go 'round and round the house, without ever touching the house', thinking about Dora. I believe the theme of this incomprehensible conundrum was the moon. No matter what it was, I, the moon-struck slave of Dora, perambulated round and round the house and garden for two hours, looking through crevices in the palings, getting my chin by dint of violent exertion above the rusty nails on the ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... proofs. But this polemical motive can hardly have induced him to becloud an obvious text and invent interpretations which never occurred to any other ecclesiastical writer before or after his time. The conundrum can only be solved by the assumption that Augustine believed in a plurality of literal senses in the Bible and held that over and above (or notwithstanding) the sensus obvius every exegete is free to read as much truth into any given passage as possible, and that such interpretation ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... find a music-box is yet an unsettled conundrum. Such is likely to be the fate of the question raised with so much temper over the Passion Music of that great man by the English critics. Shame on all critics that condemn MOZART as a fogy and BACH as a nuisance. Of ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 9, May 28, 1870 • Various
... no sense of humour—never had. I am entirely destitute of it myself. Even in Scotland, even here, this family failing has been remarked—been the subject, I may say, of unfavourable comment. The Perilous of the period lost his head because he did not see the point of a conundrum of Macbeth's. We felt, some time in the fifteenth century, that this peculiarity needed to be honourably accounted for, and the family developed that story of the Secret Chamber, and the Horror in the house. There is nothing in the ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... what Mr. Hilton Cubitt, of Riding Thorpe Manor, Norfolk, is very anxious to know. This little conundrum came by the first post, and he was to follow by the next train. There's a ring at the bell, Watson. I should not be very much surprised if ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... parrot, or like a man with a dancing bear. He must excite the creature, make him talk or dance for the edification of the company. He sidles obsequiously towards his hero and, with utter irrelevancy, propounds a question of theology, a social theory, a fashion of dress or marriage, a philosophical conundrum: "Do you think, sir, that natural affections are born with us?" or, "Sir, if you were shut up in a castle and a newborn babe with you, what would you do?" Then follow more Johnsonian laws, judgments, oracles; the insatiable audience clusters around him ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... required. His banishment had, perhaps, a good effect upon the unborn generation, whose parents had not then entered the matrimonial state. Whatever other purpose it subserved, except to show to other communities the "latest novelty" from California, is the unfathomable conundrum. John Crowe was a noisy, blatant, meddlesome fellow, the keeper of a livery stable on Kearny street, and a fierce denouncer of the Committee. There was nothing else to his discredit, so far as I could learn at the time. Reub. Maloney was a compound character—a good deal of ...
— The Vigilance Committee of '56 • James O'Meara
... anything of the object of its worship, that it can offer nothing in the shape of counsel or advice, but that its function is to sit in owl-like solemnity, contemplating nothing, meanwhile offering man an eternal conundrum that he must everlastingly give up, then, and not till then, there will be peace between science and religion. And this is called a reconciliation. Mr. Spencer finds two combatants engaged in deadly conflict, he murders one and offers ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... things, when there's so much going on around us; and how you, with all those children to look after, and their clothes to make, can care for fossils and bones, and bits of rock and mineral, is a conundrum to me." ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... "A conundrum! I never guessed one, so I shall have to give this up. But don't you see how it is, dearest? I try to be good to her, and she won't meet me half-way. On the contrary, she tries to nag me, I think. It wasn't my fault to-night. What right has she to run down my ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous
... important in the affairs of housekeeping than the choice of wholesome food. Apropos to this is an amusing conundrum which is as follows:—"A man went to market and bought two fish. When he reached home he found they were the same as when he had bought them; yet there were three! How was this?" The answer is—"He ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... heard read the other day a very interesting letter from Paris, from Mr. Appleton, Longfellow's brother-in-law, who is said to be a man of considerable ability, and who is giving himself wholly just now to the investigation of this spirit-subject, termed by him the 'sublimest conundrum ever given to the world for guessing.' He appears still in doubt whether the intelligence is external, or whether the phenomena are not produced by an unconscious projection in the medium of a second personality, accompanied with clairvoyance, and attended ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... the meal; it was she who surveyed and improved the manners of her guests by sarcastic hints or friendly admonitions; and it was she who furnished intellectual entertainment in the shape of anecdote, historical story, or excruciating conundrum. ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... to answer the conundrum, did not see fit to do so; and hence, on the 3d of November, the same parties deployed their forces to ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... long talking in the midst of a babbling Simonetta of echoes.' Inferior writers have copied the tones of the oracle without first making sure of the inspiration. They forget that a platitude is not turned into a profundity by being dressed up as a conundrum. Pithiness in him dwindles into tenuity in them; honest discontinuity in the master is made an excuse for finical incoherencies in the disciples; the quaint, ingenious, and unexpected collocations of the original degenerate in the imitators into a trick of unmeaning surprise and vapid ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... asked de Fronsac. "Is it a conundrum? In any case it is a poor substitute for a half a column of prose in La Voix. How on earth am I to arrive at the bottom of the page? If I am short in my copy, I shall be short in my rent; if I am short in my rent, ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... rising from her seat Madge walked up and down the room, and wished some good fairy would hint to Brian that he was wanted. If man is a gregarious animal, how much more, then, is a woman? This is not a conundrum, but a simple truth. "A female Robinson Crusoe," says a writer who prided himself upon being a keen observer of human nature—"a female Robinson Crusoe would have gone mad for want of something to talk to." This remark, though severe, nevertheless contains several grains of truth, ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... third largest city of India, the heat began to oppress us. Up to this time India had been unexpectedly and refreshingly cool, at night even cold. But now it was unpleasantly warm. The heat reminded us of the conundrum: "Why is India, although so hot, the coldest country on the globe?" Answer: "Because the hottest thing in it is chilly" ("chili" is the peppery sauce which the natives mix with other spices to form "curry"). We have learned to like curry. I cannot understand it; but if seems as if the hottest ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... under the influence of Buddhism in China, was identified with "the pearl that grants all desires" and is under the special protection of the Naga, i.e., the dragon. Arising out of this de Visser puts the conundrum: "Was the ball originally also a pearl, not ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... ever anticipated blooming out into a society blossom was a conundrum. Perhaps he had some secret method buried in the same box with his hoarded coin. His long evenings were passed reading the Family Herald and Weekly Star and the Ashcroft Journal by candle-light; for those were the only papers he would subscribe for. ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... at his companions and shook his head as if the conundrum was beyond his guessing. ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... with her uncovered face is a conundrum and an object of intense curiosity, even in Teheran at the present day; and in provincial cities, the wife of the lone consul or telegraph employee finds it highly convenient to adopt the native costume, face-covering included, when venturing abroad. Here, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... "If it's a conundrum I'll give it up," said Rufus; "just tell a feller all about it, for I begin to think you're crazy, or else have come across some benevolent chap that's rather loose ...
— Rufus and Rose - The Fortunes of Rough and Ready • Horatio Alger, Jr
... yet called kin for courtesy's sake, had given up trying to understand her complexities, as she had likewise given up trying to explain herself. If they were pleased forever to consider her in the light of a conundrum, ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... absolute liberty of choice. It may be a personal narrative, like Poe's "Descent into the Maelstrom" or Hale's "My Double, and How he Undid me;" it may be impersonal, like Mr. F.B. Perkins's "Devil-Puzzlers" or Colonel De Forest's "Brigade Commander;" it may be a conundrum, like Mr. Stockton's insoluble query, "The Lady or the Tiger?" it may be "A Bundle of Letters," like Mr. James's story, or "A Letter and a Paragraph," like Mr. Bunner's; it may be a medley of letters and telegrams and narrative, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... this is not a conundrum. So you need not be chirping out, "On their feet, of course;" or some foolish answer of that kind. The real answer is, "Japan,"—at least, so I'm told, and there are such numbers of other queer things there, that I don't wonder ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... try to frame a reply, he could not find a frame. He knowed it wuz a conundrum boundless as truth and God's justice, and as solemnly deep in its sure consequences of evil as eternity, and as sure ...
— Samantha on the Woman Question • Marietta Holley |
