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More "Alternative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he announced, "I am ready and willing to meet you." And considering the grim alternative with which the Republicans had threatened him, the old Marquis had not the ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... him. There was no alternative. Lamartine, without hesitation, coolly took one of the birds on to his ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... strongly of bitter sage brush the cattle had eaten at almost every camp. At a dry camp the oxen would lie down and grate their teeth, but they had no cud to chew. It looked almost merciless to shoot one down for food, but there was no alternative. We killed our poor brute servants to save ourselves. Our cattle found a few bunches out among the trees at this camp and looked some better in the morning. They had secured plenty of ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... they had no alternative but to submit. It was with a very bad grace they did so, for Englishmen have a ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... as a Republic, one and indivisible, with a keen scent and an unappeasable thirst for the blood of aristocrats, existed. They forgot all about "Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality"—these egotistical, narrow-minded young people;—they also forgot the characteristic alternative to those unparalleled blessings—"Death." But Prosper Alix did not forget any of these things; and his consternation, his provision of suffering for his beloved daughter, were terrible, when she told him, with a simple noble frankness which the grandes dames of the dead-and-gone time of ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... We disguise the alternative under more fairly-sounding names, but we cannot escape the reality; and we know not, after all, whether there is deeper sadness in a broken Mirabeau or Byron, or in the contented prosperity of a people who once knew something ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... impulse, and that was the apprehension that his strange charge would be detained by Mr. Heywood, when his only chance of recovery lay in the speedy examination, and dressing his injuries by the surgeon of the garrison. There was no alternative then, but to wait patiently for the arrival of the boat into which the boy could be placed; and so conveyed to the fort. Meanwhile, as the night air was becoming chill, and a slight fog rising from ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... alternative was often enough before him. He seldom slept for more than two or three consecutive hours in the night, and the time of wakefulness was often terrible. The various sounds which marked the stages from midnight to dawn had grown miserably familiar ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... seize the city and commence hostilities, and, in the event of their success, everything hitherto achieved would be lost. Or again, the destruction on his part of many fellow-creatures and allies was a terrible alternative, which would place the Spartans in an unenviable light with regard to the rest of Hellas, and render the soldiers ill-disposed to the cause in hand. Accordingly he took with him fifteen men, armed with daggers, and marched through the city. Falling in with one of the reed-bearers, a man suffering ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... to pay so much respect to the opinion of my fellow-citizens that the knowledge of their having given their unanimous suffrages in my favor scarcely leaves me the alternative for an option. I can not, I believe, give a greater evidence of my sensibility of the honor which they have done me than ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... condemn the prisoner according to the Criminal Code. There remains, therefore, but one issue out of the difficulty—a verdict of acquittal; and Russian juries—to their honour be it said—generally adopt this alternative. Thus the jury, in those cases in which it is most severely condemned, provides a corrective for the injustice of the criminal legislation. Occasionally, it is true, they go a little too far in this direction and ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... and a prey to the darkest humours; circumstances, however, occurred which rendered some energy on his part absolutely necessary. His creditors grew importunate, and the arrangement of his affairs or departure from his native land was an alternative now inevitable. The month of April, which witnessed the arrival of the Temples and Lord Montfort in England, welcomed also to London Miss Grandison and her guests. A few weeks after, Ferdinand, who had evaded the journey with his family, and who ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... regain its former authority. Flight was the only means, and it was requisite to legitimate it; nothing could be done in the presence of the assembly, and in the neighbourhood of Paris. Royal authority had fallen on the 23rd of June, military power on the 14th of July; there was no alternative but civil war. As it was difficult to persuade the king to this course, they waited till the last moment to induce him to flee; his hesitation caused the failure of the plan. It was proposed to retire to Metz, to Bouille, in the midst of his army; to call around the monarch ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... This last alternative did not suit our principles, and of course we adopted the former. In 1827, the subject came again before Congress, on a proposition to afford some relief to the branch of wool and woollens. We looked upon the ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... because his host thought it a good thing for the invalid, but because he was so full of his work and its difficulties and its pressing needs, and what he hoped to do on behalf of Mongolia by his visit home, that there seemed no possible alternative but to let him talk himself weary. And how splendidly he talked! He pictured his life at a Mongol inn. He ranged over the whole opium and whisky and tobacco controversy. He gave, with all the dramatic effect of which he was so great a master, the story of how he forced home upon ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... tell you that I have guessed your secret, that I have known from the first it was Jack. I always knew you were made for each other, both so splendid and noble and true. It isn't any particular credit to you two that you are good, there was no alternative—you couldn't be bad. ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... in detail (p. 761), and says that the soldiers broke open the windows and doors of the hospital (where the archbishop then was) to obtain entrance; also that the decree of banishment gave the alternative of the Babuyanes Islands, or Cagayan, or Pangasinan as his place of exile. Diaz cites (p. 762), this sentence in Sanchez's account, as proof that the latter could not have written it, since he took part ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... (with such a man as Doctor Allday) between offending him or answering him. Emily adopted the last alternative. On this occasion she had no reason to complain of ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... seen, too, that the veteran Reinier Oothout accompanied them with his spy-glass under his arm, all the old men and old women predicted that men of such weight, with such evidence, would leave the Yankees no alternative but to pack up their tin kettles and wooden wares, put wife and children in a cart, and abandon all the lands of their High Mightinesses on which ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... Homoeopathic or Imitative Magic. Charms based on the Law of Contact or Contagion may be called Contagious Magic. To denote the first of these branches of magic the term Homoeopathic is perhaps preferable, for the alternative term Imitative or Mimetic suggests, if it does not imply, a conscious agent who imitates, thereby limiting the scope of magic too narrowly. For the same principles which the magician applies in the practice of his art are implicitly believed by him to regulate the operations of inanimate ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... bristling Mike to keep to heel, threw his rifle to hip and backed hastily toward the cabin. He had no wish to employ his weapon, and as retreat was the other alternative, for his companion's sake, if not his own, indeed, discretion seemed to be, by all odds, valor's ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... welcomed a cutthroat if it came as an alternative to Constantine's society; but probably his wife would not agree with me; and the conversation I had heard left me in little doubt that her life was not safe. They could not have an epidemic, Vlacho had prudently reminded his master; the island fever could ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... in view of this declaration, which suddenly and without prior intimation of any kind deliberately withdraws the solemn assurance given in the Imperial Government's note of the fourth of May, 1916, this Government has no alternative consistent with the dignity and honor of the United States but to take the course which, in its note of the eighteenth of April, 1916, it announced that it would take in the event that the German Government did not ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... was recalled by the sense that something must be done. To place a fictitious value on the picture was at best a provisional measure; while the brutal alternative of advising Mrs. Fontage to sell it for a hundred dollars at least afforded an opening to the charitably disposed purchaser. I intended, if other resources failed, to put myself forward in that light; but delicacy of course forbade my coupling my ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... grandmother, there can be no childhood as it is understood to-day; but if Dorothea submits to the rigorous discipline enforced upon her, she will make a woman of iron fibre who will flinch from no hardship and will leave no task undone. Happily she did submit to it. The alternative would have been to return to her half-vagabond father. Too much discipline or too little was her destiny. She preferred to take the medicine in excess, and in the end was ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... persecution they were subjected to at the hands of their Jewish brethren, to renounce the cross of Christ, which it was feared they would too readily do, and so to their own ruin crucify the Son of God afresh, there being only this alternative for them, either crucifixion with Christ or crucifixion of Christ, and death of all ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... was put across the half-frozen river. It bore a summons to Lander to surrender, the alternative being a bombardment of the town. "Retaliation for Shepherdstown" read Jackson's missive. Ashby bore the summons and was led blindfold through the streets to headquarters. Lander, looking momently for reinforcements ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... about octaves. It is true they are easy for me now, but I can remember the time when they were difficult. The only alternative is to work constantly at them. Of course they are more difficult for small hands; so care must be taken not to strain nor over-tire the hand. A little at a time, in frequent doses, ought in six months to work wonders. Rowing a boat is good to ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... impossible. The night was extremely dark, the snow was now very deep, and, under these additional disadvantages, they found it very difficult to make way through the bushes and the bog for themselves, all of them getting many falls in the attempt. The only alternative was to make a fire upon the spot; but the snow which had fallen, and was still falling, besides what was every moment shaken in flakes from the trees, rendered it equally impracticable to kindle one there, and to bring any part of that which had been kindled in the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... imagine that whether there be or be not a future state after death, Secularism is the "safest side," and he puts the alternative thus: "If there are other worlds to be inhabited after this life, those persons will best be fitted for the enjoyment of them who have made the welfare of humanity their business in this. But if there are ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... upward-looking faces—but really, in the deep yearning and the secret gravitation of the soul—you do confess that here we have no continuing city, and you are seeking one to come. At least, it seems to me that without the Help of Religion, there is only the alternative of moral indifference—a cold, hard worldliness, or of recklessness and spiritual despair. And is not this the alternative which is exhibited in the midst of all our civilization—in the midst of this gorgeous materialism of the nineteenth century? Thousands, it is to be apprehended, ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... honest Doeg was poet-laureate to the city, and earned some emolument by composing verses for pageants and other occasions of civic festivity; so that when the Tory interest resumed its ascendency among the magistrates, he had probably no alternative but to relinquish his principles or his post, and Elkanah, like many greater men, held the former the easier sacrifice. Like all converts, he became outrageous in his new faith, wrote a libel on Lord Russell ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... be more equable and more to be depended upon," said Norman. "None of you appreciate Tom. However, you must hear my alternative. If you think my going would be too much grief for papa, or if Tom be set against helping him in his practice, there is an evident leading of Providence, showing that I am unworthy of this work. In that case I would go abroad and throw myself, at once, with all my might, into the study of medicine, ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... by the oldest authority extant, that the first appearance of the risen Jesus was to himself seem not worth mentioning? Did he really fail to speak of the great position in the Church solemnly assigned to him by Jesus? The alternative would seem to be the impeachment either of Mark's memory, or of his judgment. But Mark's memory, is so good that he can recollect how, on the occasion of the stilling of the waves, Jesus was asleep "on the cushion," ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... of Germany. A few days before, it had been announced that the French government required of these poor fellows that they should either enlist at once in the regiments destined for service in Algiers, or immediately leave the country—offering them the alternative of military slavery, or banishment from the country in which they had hoped ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... in no country annulled or seriously qualified unemployment. But the need to which it appeals is absolutely real; for the modern State it is a problem of the Sphinx, neither to be shirked nor wrongly answered. And the alternative remedy offered in these pages has already, as their author abundantly shows, succeeded even in the very partial forms in which it has been applied. The labour market can be steadied and equalised over a great industrial field. Part of its surplus can be provided for. What Mr. Churchill calls "diseased ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... service with something of suddenness; and a purist might have held that the severance of their ties was complicated with something very near akin to piracy. I know that they had been abominably oppressed; I know that Kettle chose running away with his steamer to the alternative of handcuffs and disgrace, and a possible hanging to follow; but there was no getting over the fact that the stern-wheeler was Free State property, and that these two had alienated ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... impious enough to tolerate darkness, you will get ever more darkness to tolerate; and at that inevitable stage of the account (inevitable in all such accounts) when actual light or else destruction is the alternative, you will call to the Heavens and the Earth for light, ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... of socialism-communism, an alternative and rival life pattern, have been concentrated in East Europe and Asia. The socialists-communists occupied a minority position in most of the countries dominated by big business. Their program called for the replacement of capitalist competition and conflict by a cooperating, planned, planet-wide ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... Wrothley the conditions are unfavourable. The bridge one mile south of the former place has been occupied by a strong force of unfriendly natives, and several cases of tarring have been reported. There is, however, an alternative route via Boozeley, but great caution is advised in passing through Wrothley, passengers being recommended to provide themselves with a good supply of loose metal before entering the village, where most of the houses ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various
... the first spring of his new life, to make a final choice between early death and a life, of sin. Matters came to press upon him, and since virtue was useful only to get one into Heaven, it was not worth the effort unless one meant to die at once. This was an alternative not without its lures, despite the warnings preached all about him. It would surely be interesting to die, if one had come properly to the Feet. Even coming to but one of the Feet, as he had, might make it still more interesting. Perhaps he would not, for this reason, be always shut up in ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... words, she quaffed her own cup, leaving no heel-taps. Mesdames Hsing and Wang also lost no time in emptying theirs; so Mrs. Hseh and 'sister-in-law' Li had no alternative ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... understand why so many people who detest the system and look back with loathing on their own schooldays, must helplessly send their children to the very schools they themselves were sent to, because there is no alternative except abandoning the children to undisciplined vagabondism. Man in society must do as everybody else does in his class: only fools and romantic novices imagine that freedom is a mere matter of the readiness of the individual to snap ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... he would have no little difficulty in working the brig and looking after his numerous prisoners, many of whom were desperate ruffians, and might possibly try to capture the brig, and cut the throats of every one on board. His only alternative, therefore, to avoid the risk of this would be to treat them as they intended to treat the slaves—clap them in irons, and shut them down under hatches, or to place a sentry with orders to shoot the first who might attempt to regain ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... his head at that alternative, as he looked sharply up and down the street. He would gain little by waiting, and—ah! He was crouched in the doorway now, the deft fingers working swiftly with the picklock. There was a faint metallic click, barely audible above his low-breathed exclamation—and ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... rendered the rich chestnut which was oftener than not his choice for clothes. Gertie flirted with him outrageously—there was no other phrase for it. It was the kind of flirting one was obliged to consider innocent, since the alternative would have been too appalling. Edith opted for the innocent construction, lending an abashed countenance to the situation out of loyalty to the sisterhood of loneliness. It was a countenance that grew more abashed whenever, ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... Even leasing them for a short term of years to the Hudson's Bay Company would have been better than annexing them to a preposterous province of Quebec. The American colonists would have doubtless objected to either alternative. But both could have been defended on sound principles of administration; while the sudden invasion of a new and inflated Quebec into the colonial hinterlands was little less than a declaration of war. The whole problem bristled with ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... of the Union, he would have been impeached. In all probability the whole Constitution would have gone to ruin, and the Presidency would have been at an end. At any rate, his Presidency would have been at an end. When secession, or in other words rebellion, was once commenced, he had no alternative but the use of coercive measures for putting it down—that is, he had no alternative but war. It is not to be supposed that he or his ministry contemplated such a war as has existed—with 600,000 men in arms on one side, each man with ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... can be much doubt about that," replied Nevill, whose quick mind had grasped the situation in all its bearings; he realized that there was no alternative—save ruin—but to submit to the scoundrel's terms. But the bargain must be made ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... H. Day, of the Third United States Artillery, who was with me, we both concluded that the dust was caused by a body of the enemy which had slipped in between us and our main force. There seemed no alternative left us but to get back to our friends by charging through these Indians; and as their cloud of dust was much larger than ours, this appeared a desperate chance. Preparations to charge were begun, however, but, much ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 1 • Philip H. Sheridan
... spent evenings and evenings debating the future of the child. They never agreed on the name—or the alternative names. For it is advisable to have two ready for any emergency. But the future was rosy. They were unanimous on that—President of the United States, mebbe; or at least ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... real work was the attack on Utilitarianism: which did real good, though there was much that was muddled and dangerous in the historical philosophy which he preached as an alternative. It is his real glory that he was the first to see clearly and say plainly the great truth of our time; that the wealth of the state is not the prosperity of the people. Macaulay and the Mills and all the regular run of the Early Victorians, ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... you do?" she said, feeling the remark fantastically conventional, but not being inspired by any alternative. "I came to tell you that one of the stags has got through a gap in ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... this explanation down merely because it does credit to my friend's ingenuity, but because it strikes me that it is the only alternative explanation that can be given of the animal's action in coming home to die. Another fact concerning the ill-tamed and barbarously treated horses of the pampas, which, to my mind, strengthens the ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... that the knights and garrison, amounting in all to six hundred men, should be conducted to the nearest Christian town. But no sooner was the sultan put in possession of the fortress than he violated the conditions of surrender, and left the knights only a few hours to determine on the alternative of death or conversion to Islamism. The prior and two Franciscan monks succeeded by their exhortations in fixing the faith of the religious cavaliers; and hence, at the time appointed for the declaration of their choice, they unanimously avowed their resolution to die rather than incur the dishonour ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... Wallas has portrayed the psychological peril of its hypnotization by colours and claptrap. All the dangers thus enumerated are real and formidable. They have, however, to be faced and overcome by men of goodwill: for there is now no alternative to democracy but anarchy. Fortunately they may be faced in confidence and hope. For the British democracy—as the revealing crisis of this great war has shown—is sound at heart, is eager to be delivered from its ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... should work upon a scale so large as is usually followed, though there is no reason against doing so if it is practicable. Tapestry weaving is so constantly associated with objects of large size, such as wall hangings, that it is scarcely realised as an art in this smaller way and as an alternative to embroidery. Yet it can be work of a most interesting kind even when produced in pieces only six inches square, as is well shown by existing specimens of the work of the weavers in Egypt who flourished ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... day or more, giving time for the cattle to rest and graze on such scant herbage as they could find. To press forward rapidly was impossible, for it would have cost the lives of most of the draught animals; to find shelter was equally impossible, for there was none. There was no alternative but to proceed slowly and persistently, saving as many as possible of the horses, mules, and oxen. Fifteen days were required ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... brought face to face with the alternative presented by his practical wife, succumbed with tolerable grace. In truth, having had his grumble out, he was not so very averse to the arrangement. He was much like old Gruff, their watch-dog, that was a redoubtable growler, but had never been ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... John the Immortal Eye Witness The Peculiar Theology of Jesus John agreed as to the Trial and Crucifixion Credibility of the Gospels Fashions of Belief Credibility and Truth Christian Iconolatry and the Peril of the Iconoclast The Alternative to Barabbas The Reduction to Modern Practice of Christianity Modern Communism Redistribution Shall He Who Makes, Own? Labor Time The Dream of Distribution According to Merit Vital Distribution Equal Distribution The Captain and the Cabin Boy ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... been correct. The swashbuckling Jack Altshuler had know his many times commander even better than Cogswell had realized. Instead of three alternative maneuvers open to the wily cavalryman, he'd ferreted out a fourth and his full force, hauling mountain guns on mule back with them, were trailing over a supposedly impossible mountain path which originally could not have been ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... himself bitterly for his behaviour that evening. Why had he given her the alternative that she must dine with him or else never see him again? Of course she refused. He should have allowed for her pride. He had burnt his ships behind him. It would not be so hard to bear if he thought that she was suffering now, but he knew her too well: she was perfectly indifferent ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... feast, and then had all of them murdered with the exception of one, who escaped by leaping his horse over a high wall. The idea was simple and very oriental. He might have made them his friends, but he thought that might be too difficult a task, so he chose the other alternative. Now Mehemet Ali thought that it would be much pleasanter to be an independent sovereign than a tributary to the Porte, so he threw off the Turkish yoke. Then he thought that he might as well rule over Syria also, and he accordingly ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... it, is named after a brother of Admiral Sir William Burnaby, who lived for some time in the neighbourhood. Beyond is Stadium Street, named after Cremorne House when it was used as a national club, and bore the alternative name of The Stadium. To the south of Lots Road are the wharves of Chelsea and Kensington. Chelsea Creek runs in here, cutting past the angle of Lots Road and turning northward to the King's Road, where it is crossed by Stanley Bridge. The West London railway-line ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... reflect; be satisfied with each succeeding hour and the privations of the hour, and, as if in the depths of a smooth water, to gather fold over patient fold of the submerged self, safe from wounds; the happiness was not noble, but it breathed and was harmless, and it gave me rest when the alternative ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... always what a woman should do in such case, what she had been taught a woman should do: grin, as Monohan had said, and take her medicine. For her there was no alternative. Fyfe had made that clear. But her heart cried out in rebellion against the necessity. To her, trying to think logically, the most grievous phase of the doing was the fact that nothing could ever be the same again. ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... As an alternative to this actual evolution toward socialism, the syndicalists propose to force society to put the means of production into the hands of the trade unions. It is perhaps worth pointing out that Owen, Proudhon, Blanc, Lassalle, and Bakounin all advocated what may be called ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... Should I send Hendricks or should I send Hicks? Hendricks was clever and Hicks discreet, but neither united both qualifications in the measure demanded by the sensible and quietly-resolved woman with whom I had just been talking. What alternative remained? But one; ...
— The House in the Mist • Anna Katharine Green
... second to spare. Tarzan could not even unsling his bow and fit an arrow in time to send one of his deadly poisoned shafts into the yellow hide. He was too far away to reach the beast in time with his knife. There was but a single hope—a lone alternative. And with the quickness of thought ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... marshes, by reclaiming waste areas, by adding farm-buildings, the "owner" of the land could demand an enhanced rent, as the condition of renewing the lease. The tenant had to submit to a continually ascending scale of extortion, sanctioned by law and exacted by armed force; or, as an alternative, he had to give up the fruit of his industry ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... and objections which I made. It is very possible that even in this diluted form my views were credited with wrong motives by the President so that he suspected my purpose. It is to be hoped that this was the true explanation of Mr. Wilson's attitude of mind, for the alternative forces a conclusion as to the cause for his resentful reception of honest differences of opinion, which no one, who admires his many sterling qualities and great attainments, will ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... to the South brought her inquiries and investigations to an end. She had suffered so much from the terrible winters of the great Northern capital, and her health was so seriously shaken, that her doctors presented to her the grave alternative of ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... at the house of Sappho, a discussion once arose upon the question whether death was a blessing or an evil. Some maintained, the former alternative; but Sappho victoriously closed the debate by saying, If it were a blessing to die, the immortal gods would experience it. The gods live forever: therefore, death is an evil.17 The reasoning was plausible and ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... hand of conquering his irritation and going to enjoy a pleasant dinner in interesting company with the prospect of speedy liberation; on the other of scornfully disdaining the olive branch, with the consequence of six-and-a-half years of heart-breaking captivity; he would have chosen the former alternative without much reluctance. There is a sentence in one of his own letters which indicates that wisdom counted for more than obstinacy in his temperament: "After a misfortune has happened, we all see very well the proper ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... else could set his mind at rest. If he were quite certain that Mr. Juxon had no intention of offering himself to the charming tenant of the cottage, he might return to his work with some sense of security in the future. Otherwise he saw only the desperate alternative of throwing himself at her feet and declaring that he loved her, or of going back to Cambridge with the dreadful anticipation of hearing any day that she had married the squire. To be laughed at would be bad, but to feel that he had lost her irrevocably, without a struggle, ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... He had no alternative. He might struggle, and destroy a good deal of apparatus, but he could not hope to overwhelm them. He lay on the couch as directed. Almost instantly the overweight one was behind him, seizing his arm. He felt the sting of a needle. The thin one ...
— The Memory of Mars • Raymond F. Jones
... Magnesia, because there was no other place from which he could be coming; and, by the same token, we shrewdly guessed him to be the one Frank inhabitant, the pro-consul, on whose good offices we had reckoned. The only alternative was, that he might be some casual visiter like ourselves, whom business or curiosity had led on a journey, whence he was returning. But, as he drew nearer, we read in the incurious expression of his face, that he was certainly at home; and the air of accustomed importance that beset ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... only wait—and wonder. The truth did not occur to Larry; he did not see that there might be another alternative to the two possible reactions he had calculated upon. He did not bear in mind that Maggie's youthful obstinacy, her belief in herself and her ways, were too solid a structure to yield at once to one moral shock, however wisely planned ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... the headway made by French influence, he wrote to Spain, explaining the situation and urging the sovereigns immediately to despatch an embassy to counteract the mischievous activity of the French. He offered, as an alternative, to himself assume the negotiations if the requisite instructions were sent to him. King Ferdinand ignored the proffer of service, but, acting upon the information sent him, entrusted the business to Lorenzo Suarez de Figueroa, who had been his ambassador in Venice in 1495. Zealous ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... said Mr. Randolph. "You must find a way to reconcile both duties. I shall not take an alternative." But after that he said no more and only applied himself to soothing Daisy; till she sat drooping in his arms, but still and calm. She started when the sound of steps and voices came upon ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... was accordingly drawn up, requiring the clergy to take the oath of abjuration before the 23d of March, 1710, under the penalties of transportation for life, and of high-treason if ever after found in the country. This bill, then, set them the alternative of abandoning either their country or ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... reparations or frontiers, but he had gone far towards a vindication of his principles by avoiding a defeat under circumstances where the odds were against him. More he probably could not have obtained and no other American at that time could have secured so much. The sole alternative would have been for the American delegates to withdraw from the Conference. Such a step might have had the most disastrous consequences. It was true, or Europe believed it to be true, that the Conference represented for the moment the single rallying-point of the elements of social ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... a tariff sufficient for revenue, or a direct tax, must soon be resorted to; and, indeed, we believe this alternative is now denied by no one. But which system shall be adopted? Some of our opponents, in theory, admit the propriety of a tariff sufficient for a revenue, but even they will not in practice vote for such a tariff; while others boldly advocate direct taxation. Inasmuch, ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... wide spread in the Union, and form a "Vigilance Committee"—contrary to all good morals, law, order, and society. Can you do nothing to induce the government to establish authority and law in this country, and avert this unhappy alternative? ...
— Memoir of the Proposed Territory of Arizona • Sylvester Mowry
... that he who discourses in our fashion preaches to the citizens instead of legislating for them. 'True.' There is, however, one advantage which we possess—that being amateurs only, we may either take the most ideal, or the most necessary and utilitarian view. 'But why offer such an alternative? As if all our legislation must be done to-day, and nothing put off until the morrow. We may surely rough-hew our materials first, and shape and place them afterwards.' That will be the natural way of proceeding. There ...
— Laws • Plato
... but in vain. They pointed out to him that his name would be dishonoured in all countries where the laws of chivalry prevailed by such a deed, and besought him to choose some other boon. Don Louis refused to yield, and Charles of Blois, finding no alternative between breaking his promise and delivering his prisoners, at last agreed to ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... our journey. Hitherto we had studiously avoided the villages that lay in our route, feeling indisposed to encounter unnecessarily the risk of being inhospitably received—perhaps even robbed of our goods, if nothing worse should befall us. There was, however, no other alternative now; for Jack's wounds were very severe, and the amount of blood lost by him was so great that he was as weak as a child. Happily, no bones were broken, so we felt sanguine that by careful nursing for a few weeks we should get him set ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... his tenants to hear a paper read to them in their native tongue, containing a renunciation of their religion, and a promise, under oath, never more to hold communication with a catholic priest. The alternative was to sign the paper or lose their lands and homes. At once the people unanimously decided to starve rather than submit. The next step of Boisdale was to take his gold headed cane and drive his tenants before him, like a flock of sheep, to the protestant ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... follow;—either I declare, in the presence of every one, the madness with which you are now affected, and I get you ignominiously ordered back to England; or if you prefer it, I will run my dagger through your throat in the presence of all here. This second alternative seems to me the least disagreeable, and I think I shall ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... way which introduces a new alternative; the path of moderation has its difficulty, it too forks and produces perplexity and peril to the voyager. Here is the point where Scylla and Charybdis appear, a new set of extremes, between which the mean is to be sought, then the passage ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... was no mere formula of desperate speech, but a real alternative in the view of a strong soul. I should have gathered from this that he was young; indeed, it is only the young who are ever confronted by such clear issues. But at the time it was pure intuition on my part. A ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... neighbor is a maiden lady of so anxious a temper;" yet, afterwards, by placing Lady Teazle between the screen and the window, he enables this inquisitive lady to indulge her curiosity at leisure. It might be said, indeed, that Joseph, with the alternative of exposure to either the husband or neighbor, chooses the lesser evil;—but the oversight hardly ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... recent period showing the name of the inventor of that cotton-paper, and the date of his discovery? Surely so important a fact as that, a novelty so transcendently memorable, would not have passed without remark. One would seem compelled, in the absence of any such chronicle, to accept the alternative theory—known to us Aryan students as a fact—that writing and writing materials were, as above remarked, known to the Brahmans in an antiquity inconceivably remote—many centuries before the epoch ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... expected, with so elevated a quality his fidelity was like the immovable rock; treachery in him was classed among the things which are impossible; and as he seldom retired before his enemies, so was he never known, under any circumstances that admitted of an alternative, to abandon a friend. The affinities of such a character were, as a matter of course, those of like for like. His associates and intimates, though more or less determined by chance, were generally of the highest order as to moral propensities; for he appeared to ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... observed that the formal and unpliable nature of the Roman cult made it quite unable to meet the requirements of advancing enlightenment. It was a superstition, not a religion; it admitted neither of allegoric interpretation nor of poetical idealisation. Hence there was no alternative but to believe or disbelieve it. There can be no doubt that all educated Romans did the latter. The whole machinery of ritual and ceremonies was used for purely political ends; it was no great step to regard it as having a purely ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... three-hundred-day contract, the laborer almost invariably owes his employer a debt which he is quite unable to pay. As he cannot obtain employment elsewhere in the colony under these conditions, he is faced with the alternative of being shipped back to China a pauper or of signing another contract. There is no breaking of the law by the planter, you see: the laborer is perfectly free to leave when his contract has expired—as free as any man can be who is ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... letter, to the ill humour produced by your present situation. I was far from thinking that after having seriously reflected upon the causes and circumstances, you should take occasion from a silence so delicate to go still further; but your last letter no longer leaves me an alternative. ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... expecting themselves to be displaced and Louisiana thereby ruined. The steaming ones were a goodly fraction of the family—the timid, the apathetic, the "conservative." The conservatives found ease better than exactitude, the trouble of thinking great, the agony of deciding harrowing, and the alternative of smiling cynically and being liberal so much easier—and the warm weather coming on with ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... inveterate habit, with desperate circumstances, is to talk to the winds. Clownish ignorance may indeed be dispelled, and taught better; but it is seldom that a criminal is not aware of the consequences of his act, or has not made up his mind to the alternative. They are, in general, too knowing by half. You tell a person of this stamp what is his interest; he says he does not care about his interest, or the world and he differ on that particular. But there is one point on which ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... familiar with the much raked-up soil from which our virtues proudly arise. For the complication of human character moving dynamically in all directions very rarely accommodates itself to adjustment through a simple alternative, as our antiquated moral philosophy ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... hall after a good long walk an' I was quite hot two ways by that time, for I was mad an' awful tired too. The little woman left me then an' a lady come up, looked at my flag, an' asked me if I was a delegate or an alternative 'cause it was important to know right off in the beginnin'. I told her I was for Mrs. Macy an' she got out a book an' looked in it very carefully to see for sure whether to believe me or not an' then she told me to go on in. There was a door as squeaked an' they pushed me through it ...
— Susan Clegg and a Man in the House • Anne Warner
... condition.' 'I wish to know, sir,' peremptorily demanded the American officer, 'whether I am to consider you as a prisoner of war or an enemy. I have no time for further parley.' 'I believe there is now no alternative. If I could fight longer, I would with pleasure; but I—must surrender—myself—a prisoner ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... seems no alternative; and, yielding to the necessity, they rein round, and commence the backward march, every eye glancing gloomily, every ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... the Athenians, and may draw a part of them to favour the Medes; but if we engage at once, and before a single dissension takes from us a single man, we may, if the gods give us equal fortune, obtain the victory. Consider the alternative—our ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... had believed possible; if she were too entirely absorbed in her own people to give even a thought to her young mistress's baby, she was not the Jane Sands he thought he had known for the last twenty years. The only alternative was that she knew nothing about the baby having been left on his door-step, nor of the meeting with his daughter in the churchyard which ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... argument was very logical, and I said so. "Life wasn't too hard to bear until I met you people," I told her sourly. "Life would be very pleasant if you'd go away. On the other hand, life is all I've got and it's far better than the alternative. So if I'm making your life miserable, that goes ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... this alternative; either that Elizabeth should assist her in recovering her authority, or should give her liberty to retire into France, and make trial of the friendship of other princes: and as she asserted, that she had come voluntarily into ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... supposed that Hamlet imagined that a "goblin damned" could actually be the spirit of his dead father; and, therefore, the alternative in his mind must have been that he saw a devil assuming his father's likeness—a form which the Evil One knew would most incite Hamlet to intercourse. But even as he speaks, the other theory gradually obtains ascendency in his mind, until it becomes strong enough to induce him ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... Hedrick refused to make the experiment until Laura suggested that he remain with Lolita while she summoned assistance; then, as no alternative appeared, his spirit broke utterly, and he consented to the trial, stipulating with a last burst of vehemence that the progress of the unthinkable pageant should ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... remembered in tradition are Cleena and Vera, celebrated in fairy and witch lore, the former perhaps akin to a river-goddess Clota, the Clutoida (a fountain-nymph) of the continental Celts; the latter, under her alternative name Dirra, perhaps a form of a goddess of Gaul, Dirona.[230] Aine, one of the great fairy-queens of Ireland, has her seat at Knockainy in Limerick, where rites connected with her former cult are still performed for fertility on Midsummer eve. If ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... in our ear, 'These two ways are philosophy and enjoyment: the wiser man will take the readier, or, not finding it, the alternative.' Thou reddenest. ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... sense forced her to speak, and as the only possible way, if quarrel were to be avoided, she began her remonstrance on the humorous note. Then when her mother had been wearying her for half an hour with complaints and lamentations over the misdoings of one Emma, Bertha as the alternative to throwing up her hands and rushing out of the house, began laughing to herself, whereat Mrs. Cross indignantly begged to be informed what there was so very amusing in a state of affairs which would assuredly ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... one side stands eventual penury and perhaps violence for ye all; on the other, marriage with a man who, whatever his faults, loves ye hotly, who will give ye a title and wealth, and who will see to it that your parents want for nothing. 'T is an alternative that few women would hesitate over, but I ask no answer now, and would rather that ye give none till ye have ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... forgave his son. After the scene on the evening of the funeral there could be no alternative but war for all time. The little man had attempted to humble himself, and been rejected; and the bitterness of defeat, when he had deserved victory, rankled like a poisoned ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... with a gentle push of the nose against his back, said: "There's your bed, and there are your bedfellows. So in with you, my stout one, and make yourself comfortable." As he still hesitated, the bearess brought him a soft dab of her paw on his back with a somewhat stronger push, which left him no alternative but to turn in as he was bidden and make the best of it. Then, humming a low, lullaby sort of a tune, Meg went 'round the bed, softly pushing up and smoothing down the grass and moss, all in a motherly way, which was so like dear mam that it brought the tears to the lost boy's eyes—the ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... the terms of the Earl of Hertford's letter, and confirmed by the letter in reply from the English Council, the attempt was to be confined to the arrestment of the Cardinal, while passing through Fife—the proposal of sleeing him, having been suggested only as an alternative, in case ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... The alternative title of the work is On the Destruction of the Temple, but its scope is larger than either name suggests. It is conjectured by the German scholar Niese that the author called it A History of the Jewish State in Its Relations with the Romans. It is in fact a history of the Jews under the Romans, ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... that people when in a throe of nature it rises and striven for its rights. For the same reason, the sentiment of patriotism was little diffused among them in comparison with the other troops. And the alternative presented was one in which it required a very clear sense of higher duty to act against habit. Generally, after wavering awhile, they obeyed and returned. The Roman States, which had received them with so many testimonials of affection and honor, on their retreat were not slack ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... or even the justice of the conduct observed towards him, but that nevertheless I might be assured it had operated as an effectual check to those who might, otherwise, have been tempted to follow Dumouriez's example; "And we have now (added he, in a tone between gaiety and despair,) no alternative but obedience or the guillotine."—I have transcribed the substance of this conversation, as it confirms what I have frequently been told, that the fate of Dumouriez, however merited, is one great cause why no desertion of importance ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... a weight in his arms, but now resting—a giant of a burden—on his responsibility? He did not know. He owned up to that ignorance frankly. But he walked on, carrying her, and put away from his thoughts the sensible alternative of placing her in the hands of those duly appointed to ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... would mount those steps, or whether, like General Monk, he would recall the fugitive king, and restore to him the sceptre of his forefathers. The brothers of Bonaparte desired the first; Josephine implored Heaven for the latter alternative. She was too completely a loving woman only, to long for the chilly joys of mere ambition; she was too entirely occupied with her personal happiness, not to fear every danger that menaced it. Should Bonaparte place a crown upon his head, he ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... of the respite. That he should accept the alternative seemed reasonable. There was a choice only between death and poverty—and Gledware wished to live so desperately—so basely! The chief cared little for life; still, he would unhesitatingly have preferred the most meager existence to a knife in ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... "There is an alternative which we might try before attempting such radical treatment," Dr. Stanley at length remarked, with some hesitation. "It—at least it could do no harm, if—if ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... meet human wants has multiplied so that each man accomplishes almost thirty or forty times what he did before, then the world at large ought to be about thirty or fifty times better off. But it is not. Or else, as the other possible alternative, the working hours of the world should have been cut down to about one in thirty of what they were before. But they are not. How, then, are we to explain this extraordinary discrepancy between human power ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... had not asked me to follow, I of course had no alternative but to ride on. As I did so, I took another look at the house and saw with a strange pang at the heart that the plastering was on the walls and the windows ready for glazing. "I was wrong," said I to myself; "it is Orrin's house ...
— The Old Stone House and Other Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... an explanation of the singular espionage which Rossland had presumed to take upon himself. He grimaced as he reflected how dangerously near that hazard he had been—and he admired her for the splendid judgment she had shown in the matter. She had saved him the possible alternative of apologizing to Rossland ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... no alternative but to assent to the innkeeper's proposition. The idea of making love second-hand was not pleasant to him; but he could not hinder the uncle from speaking his mind to the niece. One little suggestion he did make before he took his departure. 'It can't be, I suppose, ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... flock his authority was as complete as ever that of Samuel could have been as a judge. If any of them did wrong, the alternative was— ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... it is very seldom that any such alternative is presented. For as with money, most men have no superfluity, but only just enough for their needs, so with intelligence; they possess just what will suffice for the service of the will, that is, for the carrying on of their business. Having made their fortune, they are content ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... me! I have been saying in Sicilian patois that he is a hired assassin born in England of Sicilian parents, and brought up, probably, near Snow Hill—and this Whitechapel gentleman understood every word I said! If you give him the alternative of going to the nearest police-station and being charged, or of talking Sicilian patois with me, you will see that he prefers the alternative of a conversation in ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... unthankful task (February, 1861), but still it was not Thorbecke, but Baron S. van Heemstra that was called upon to take his place. For a few months only was the ministry able to struggle on in the face of a liberal majority. There was now no alternative but to offer the post of first minister to Thorbecke, who accepted the office (January ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... name of the owner of copyright in the work, or an abbreviation by which the name can be recognized, or a generally known alternative designation ...
— Copyright Law of the United States of America: - contained in Title 17 of the United States Code. • Library of Congress Copyright Office
... coolly took the seat beside me in the window, leaving to Mrs. Bliss the alternative of standing or of going away; ...
— Lemorne Versus Huell • Elizabeth Drew Stoddard
... history will agree with me in saying that the Northern States had no alternative but war. What concession could they make? Could they promise to hold their peace about slavery? And had they so promised, would the South have believed them? They might have conceded secession; that is, they might have given all that would have been demanded. ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... drafted and go abroad to do distinguished service? These questions were resolved into the conclusion that southern Negroes and southern whites both must be drafted and sent against the German foe. There was no alternative. ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... walk any distance; and were he so poor as to possess only two horses, he would ride the best of them, and leave the other for his wives and children and their baggage; and if he has too many wives or too much baggage for the horse, the wives have no alternative but to follow him ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... younger, feebly, "under that appeal I must speak truthfully. The claim is irregular; perhaps it has been paid already. There is no time for investigation. I have stocked the cards, and the trick must be taken at once or never. You have this alternative. I can take you off that committee, and I have a man in reversion who will get the post ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... much, young gentlemen," said the Doctor; "but if you will disgrace your alma mater by idleness, I have no other alternative. Duty and pleasure must ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... been attended with great loss, but might probably have been effected. The forward division had no alternative but to fight. Facing out in every direction, they sought shelter behind the trees and returned the fire of the enemy with spirit. In the beginning of the battle, the Indians, whenever they saw that a gun was fired from behind a tree, rushed up and tomahawked the person thus firing before he ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson
... and gnaw upon her, till it became a wild and passionate desire. But how persuade her father to this? Old people cling to places. He was very old and infirm to change his abode. There was no course but to make him her confidant; better so than to run away from him; and she felt that would be the alternative. And now between her uncontrollable desire to fly and hide, and her invincible aversion to speak out to a man, even to her father, she vibrated in a suspense full of lively torture. And presently betwixt these two came in one day the fatal thought, "end all!" Things ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... carry Romola with him, and not, if possible, to carry any infamy. Success had given him a growing appetite for all the pleasures that depend on an advantageous social position, and at no moment could it look like a temptation to him, but only like a hideous alternative, to decamp under dishonour, even with a bag of diamonds, and incur the life of an adventurer. It was not possible for him to make himself independent even of those Florentines who only greeted him with regard; still less was it possible for him to make himself ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... well placed upon wooden platforms and well served, while the archduke's cannon, sinking in the sands, had been of comparatively little use. Especially he expressed a warm admiration for the heroism of Maurice in sending away his ships, and in thus leaving himself and his soldiers no alternative but ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... rejects the pacifism which masks surrender and cowardice. War alone brings all human energies to their highest tension and sets a seal of nobility on the peoples who have the virtue to face it. All other tests are but substitutes which never make a man face himself in the alternative of life or death. A doctrine which has its starting-point at the prejudicial postulate of peace ...
— Readings on Fascism and National Socialism • Various
... which Stewart's philosophy approximates to the empirical school, because the Utilitarians were apt to misconceive the position. They took Stewart to be the adequate representative of all who accepted one branch of an inevitable dilemma. The acceptance of 'intuitions,' that is, was the only alternative to thoroughgoing acceptance of 'experience.' They supposed, too, that persons vaguely described as 'Kant and the Germans' taught simply a modification of the 'intuitionist' view. I have noticed how emphatically Stewart claimed to rely ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... damnable system of political tyranny and frustrate our plans for the liberation of our comrades in slavery, I apprehend the fact that we have been basely betrayed by some foul Judas among us. I am left with no alternative but to advise that you surrender your bodies to these minions of what they please to call ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... is now and will be forever denied to me; but I reckon up my privileges as well as my losses—I lay stress on what I have, and not only on what I want. And so I escape from that terrible dilemma of "all or nothing," which for me always ends in the adoption of the second alternative. It seems to me at such times that a man may without shame content himself with being some thing and ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... might be improved. At any rate, such a junction would undoubtedly have made Cornwallis more circumspect. As Lee still hung back, Washington saw this slender hope vanishing. He for a moment listened to the alternative of marching to Morristown, where the troops from the Northern army would sooner join him; but as this plan would leave the direct road to Philadelphia open, it neither suited Washington's temper nor his views, and he therefore adhered to his former one of fighting in retreat. And though ...
— The Campaign of Trenton 1776-77 • Samuel Adams Drake
... to the term has long since been discontinued. A more accurate designation, and one that we shall here adopt, is "Subordinate Song." (Other names, which the student will encounter, are "maggiore," "minore," "intermezzo," "alternative," etc.). ...
— Lessons in Music Form - A Manual of Analysis of All the Structural Factors and - Designs Employed in Musical Composition • Percy Goetschius
... of retreat. Many and many a man besides Prescott and Putnam, Stark and Pomeroy, Knowlton and McClary, raged like wolves that day at its ending, to find themselves compelled to accept a retreat as the alternative of capture or death. Like lions making for their lairs in the hills, Prescott and Putnam gave way at last before the overwhelming forces of the enemy; and, after passing through the storm of cannon-balls still hurtling across the Neck, they had leisure ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober
... manstealer, and should be excommunicated as such without asking any further questions. Two statements more palpably illogical were never put forth for the darkening of counsel. But each extreme was eager to sustain the unreason of the opposite extreme as the only alternative of its own unreason, and so, what with contrary gusts from North and South, they fell into a place where two seas met and ran the ship aground. The attempts made from 1836 to 1840, by stretching to the utmost the authority of the General Conference and the bishops, ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... forty men, and the most of them were decrepits, unfit for the hunting field. As sunset merged into the long white light of northern midnight, four hundred French mariners landed on the sands outside Churchill. {319} Hearne had no alternative. He surrendered without a blow. The fort was looted of furs, the Indians driven out, and a futile attempt made to blow up the massive walls. Hearne and the other officers were carried off captives. Matonabbee, the famous Indian guide, came back from the hunt to find ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... the hostler faintly flushes. His eyes look away from my eyes for the first time. Mrs. Fairbank furtively pinches my arm. Are we on the eve of a discovery at last? I repeat my question. The man has no civil alternative but to give me an answer. The answer is given ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... indicated must enhance the cost of production, and thus handicap the producer in the race of competition. I venture, in the first place. to doubt the fact; but, if it be [453] so, it results that industrial society has to face a dilemma, either alternative of which threatens destruction. ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... race of men on earth whose ordinary avocations present so constantly the alternative of rarest skill on the one hand, or instant destruction on the other. And for these avocations one is fitted only by a scholarship, which it requires prolonged schooling, the most patient industry, and the most ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... of an immense hostile force, and more than a thousand miles from any friendly territory. The victorious enemy proposed to the Grecians terms of accommodation, but, having invited Clearchus and other leaders to a conference, they treacherously put them to death. No alternative now remained to the Greeks but to submit to the Persians or fight their way back to their own land. They bravely chose the latter course—and, selecting Xenophon, a young Athenian, for their leader, after a four ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... friendly to woman suffrage, were determined to devote themselves wholly to Negro suffrage and to the extension of their party's influence, she could expect no help from lesser party members. Her only alternative was to appeal to the Democrats or to an occasional recalcitrant Republican, and she allowed nothing to stand in her way, not even the frenzied pleas of her abolitionist friends. She found James Brooks of New York, Democratic leader of the House, willing to present her petitions, and she made ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... flag. "The Emperor, however, gave orders to the soldiers of the guard to take off their caps and conceal themselves below, choosing rather to pass by the brig without being known, and reserving himself in case of necessity, for the alternative of making him change his colours. At six o'clock the two brigs passed alongside of each other, and their commanders, who were acquainted, spoke together. The captain of Le Zephir inquired after the Emperor, and was answered through a speaking ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... one else. She sat silently for a while after I had finished what I had to say, till at last she turned to me and tried to persuade me to alter my intention of disowning the baby. But I repeated doggedly that unless she had some alternative way to suggest of getting rid of it, I meant to leave the little girl at the door of one of the foundling hospitals, and that I would take her ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... But this alternative, fortunately or unfortunately, is not open. The detention here of body and spirit for a given period is determined for us, and we are morally bound to accept the situation. We must look then ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... once been placed in this position, and fixed in it by the inveterate enmities of prolonged war, it must from that time abide the arbitrament of arms. Two years of fierce and calamitous war seem to have brought the South to this alternative: either to restore the Union with immediate freedom to the slaves, or to accomplish its dissolution, with a doubtful and troubled continuance of the system for an uncertain period in ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... are an exact reproduction of Salaethus, they will say; or rather he was not half so bad as you, seeing that he was mastered by passion, as he pleaded in court, and moreover preferred to leap into the flames, like a brave man, when the Crotoniates were moved to compassion and gave him the alternative of exile. The difference between your precept and practice is infinitely more ridiculous; you draw a realistic word-picture of that servile life; you pour contempt on the man who runs into the trap of a rich man's house, where a thousand degradations, ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... all my efforts, fairly run away with me, I hailed Smellie, and, briefly explaining the situation to him, asked him to either give her the fore staysail or else come aft and trice up the tack of the mainsail. He chose the latter alternative, as leaving the craft under canvas easily manageable by one hand, and came aft to effect the alteration, hurriedly explaining that he would relieve me as soon as possible; but that there was still some difficult navigation ahead which he ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... under General Thomas Gage, who was also governor of the colony of Massachusetts. He was popularly regarded as an oppressor; and act after act of the British government, during a year preceding, had convinced the American people that they must choose the alternative to submit or fight. They resolved to fight, if necessary. During the summer of 1774, the people commenced arming, and training themselves in military exercises; the manufacture of arms and gunpowder was ...
— The Military Journals of Two Private Soldiers, 1758-1775 - With Numerous Illustrative Notes • Abraham Tomlinson
... lamentable family strife, and could not in any brief way or time explain the discriminations that were necessary between that which I approve and that which I most unqualifiedly condemn, without the risk of misapprehension, I preferred the only alternative left ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... night, protested and vowed that their customers' noses were mistaken; that the meat would be perfectly good and fresh on the Sunday, and on the Monday too, if they liked to keep it so long. The women, somewhat doubtfully giving ear to the assurance, knowing that the alternative was that or none, bought the meat and took it home. On Sunday morning they found the meat was—anything you may imagine. It was neither cookable nor eatable; and their anger against Peckaby was not diminished ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... to have you put to death as an impostor." Poor Ahmed was thunderstruck. He stood long without being able to speak, reflecting on his misfortunes, and grieving, above all, that his wife, whom he so loved, had, by her envy and selfishness, brought him to such a fearful alternative. Full of these sad thoughts, he exclaimed aloud, "O woman! woman! thou art more baneful to the happiness of man than the poisonous dragon of the desert!" Now the lost ruby had been secreted by the jeweller's wife, who, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... from the uncompromising little Rose herself. From the first flowering of his passion until now, he had seen marriage as the sole means to its inevitable end. Tanqueray had his faults, but it was not in him to bring the creature he loved to suffering and dishonour. And the alternative, in Rose's case, was not dishonour, but frustration, which meant suffering for them both. He would have to give Rose up unless ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... home and many friends and had no desire to escape from them or her surroundings. If it meant to fly away to heaven—? Surely she did not wish that! The world and "the things that are in the world" were very attractive to the young soprano. She had no wish for heaven save as an alternative from hell. What did it mean? Was it a heart-rest that David longed for? But she had been conscious of no unrest—until just now. Honestly, the truth was that she had not meant anything! Was it worship? But her friends would tell her she sang it with feeling, she argued defensively, ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... clerk had no hesitation in telling ME. Mr. Smalley, of the firm of Skipp and Smalley, asked for it. The Will has not been copied yet into the great Folio Registers. So there was no alternative but to depart from the usual course, and to let him see the original document. He looked it over carefully, and made a note in his pocket-book. Have you any idea of what ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... measure of equity in the arrangement, and Adrian accepted it. The only alternative, moreover, would have been a jump overboard. And so began a hard spell of life, but a few shades removed from his existence among the Chouan guerillas; a predatory cruise lasting over a year, during which the only changes ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... surprised and angry reproach for his want of faith, he has assured her many times since, he can never forget. We insisted that he should go at once to the police station and fetch constables to arrest Mrs Ragg on the charge of murder. The alternative course he proposed appeared to us weakly inadequate. However, he being a man and we being women, he had his way. We returned with him at once to Sea-Strand Cottage, the only concession he made to our fears being to take a policeman with ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... deliberations were in the open air, and under the eyes of a threatening party of seventy riflemen accidentally present from Washington County across the stream. Bradford, who instinctively felt that he had placed himself beyond the pale of pardon, and to whom there was no alternative to revolution but flight, pressed an instant decision and rejection of the written terms of the commissioners. In the presence of personal danger, the conferrees only dared to move that part of their report which advised acceptance of the proffered terms. The question ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... experimental career as tripe the sails had departed this life forever. Only two courses remained from which to choose; we could eat one another, as is the etiquette of the sea, or partake of Captain Abersouth's novels. Dreadful alternative!—but a choice. And it is seldom, I think, that starving sailormen are offered a shipload of the best popular ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... the hand, and I went home and slept for six hours. As soon as I awoke I sat up in bed, and my first thought was everything or nothing. I soon rejected the latter alternative, and I saw that I must demand a duel to the death. If Branicki refused to fight I should be compelled to kill him, even if I were to lose my head ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... in Great Britain, and scores of the waifs and strays of British aristocracy began to turn their eyes towards Canada as a possible resource in the last emergency. It was said to be a cold and comfortless land, but it was surely preferable to the Fleet Prison or the Marshalsea, with the alternative of starvation or enlistment in the army. Many of these pimps and panders to the whims or the passions of those in high station found their way to Quebec and Montreal, and were provided for at the public expense by being installed in places ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... suffer one who was knit to Him by such sacred bonds to see corruption; and the unique Sonship and perfect self-consecration of Jesus went down into the grave in the assured confidence, as He Himself declared, that the third day He would rise again. The old alternative seems to retain all its sharp points: Either Christ rose again from the dead, or His claims are a series of blasphemous arrogances and His ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... at first, but I had the comfort of having really no alternative. I had, indeed, a great desire to make a thorough visitation of Leper's Island, and Santa Cruz especially; but the wind, usually so fair, was dead against me, we had, so to speak, no trade winds, and I had to give it up. It was certainly my duty to get to the south with my invalids as ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... correctly, it would fall down so as to carry the small line across the ship. Then the sailors on board the wrecked vessel would seize it, and by means of it would draw the end of a strong line over, and thus effect the means of making their escape. It was, however, a very dreadful alternative, after all; for the rope forming this fearful bridge would of course be subject all the time to the most violent jerkings, from the rolling and pitching of the vessels to which the two extremities of it ...
— Rollo on the Atlantic • Jacob Abbott
... other alternative, should we fail to obtain an abundance of meat, than to push on at once to Fort Ross," he observed. "You and I and Martin and Pat must go. I shall be very sorry to part from Robin, but we must, of course, leave him with his father, and endeavour as soon as possible to send them assistance. I ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... these regulations, and discharge the men within one month of their being landed, the Board will be necessitated either to render the regulations more stringent, or withdraw them altogether. If the latter alternative were adopted, the discharge of the Orkney and Shetland whaling crews would have to take place under the more rigid terms prescribed by the Merchant Shipping Act, 1854, which of all other vessels at ports ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... in a chase across the pampa, with the red Centaurs pursuing. Therefore, not for an instant, or only one, entertains he thought of flight. In a second he sees it would not avail them, and decides on the other alternative—concealment. He has already made a hasty inspection of the ground near by, and sees, commencing at no great distance off, and running along the water's edge, a grove of sumac trees which, with their parasites and other plants twining around ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... named was a good and tempting one, far more indeed than the land was worth; but when the money was spent he would have nothing for it but to become a mere labourer, or else to enlist, and he did not fancy either alternative, while he could manage to live, as his father did before him, on his patch, which spade-labour made remunerative. He worked for hire in harvest-time, and that brought something; the pig- stye yielded a profit, so did a cow, and there were a few ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... one other alternative. He could remain in the house till morning, and then when they had all gone, make his way out easily. Then Garry remembered that this was impossible, as Everett would have a posse come to the house if he were not back at six. That would be disastrous ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... regretful words. Into the minds of the majority stole a sense, vague and indefinable it is true, that a tragic impasse was closing on a situation over which had flashed a rainbow gleam of possible solution. Ahead lay the future with its sinister shadows—darker because of the alternative they had glimpsed ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... evenings were given to company, her mornings were still spent in the schoolroom, of which indeed she was the chief brightness. Marian, though she had the offer of coming out at the same time, was very glad to embrace the alternative of waiting another year. She was now a little past her seventeenth birthday, which emancipated her from being absolutely Miss Morley's pupil. She breakfasted with the rest of the family, dined with them when there was not a large party, learnt more of masters, ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the west coast of Scotland, for which he was then on the eve of sailing. "You will run some little risk," he said, "as the companion of a man who has now been thrice outlawed for firing on his Majesty's flag; but I know your proud heart will prefer the danger of bad company at its worst, to the alternative of begging your way home." He judged rightly. Before daybreak we had lost sight of land, and in four days more we could discern the precipitous shores of Carrick stretching in a dark line along the horizon, and the hills of the interior rising thin and blue ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... and indolent, incapable of exertion, and a prey to the darkest humours; circumstances, however, occurred which rendered some energy on his part absolutely necessary. His creditors grew importunate, and the arrangement of his affairs or departure from his native land was an alternative now inevitable. The month of April, which witnessed the arrival of the Temples and Lord Montfort in England, welcomed also to London Miss Grandison and her guests. A few weeks after, Ferdinand, who had ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... enviable occupation. The peasant had his great umbrella-shaped straw hat, sometimes an armful of green stuff tied on his back, and a delicious feeling of being up to the knees in water or mud on a hot day-one recalled the mud baths of the West-when the alternative was walking on a dusty road, digging on the sun-baked upland or perspiring in a house ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... down to the level of his knees. He put his hands behind his back. He would now consider calmly the discretion of it before saying the final word to-morrow. His feet scrunched the gravel loudly—the discretion of it. It would have been easier to appraise had there been a workable alternative. The honesty of it was indubitable: he meant well by the fellow; and periodically his shadow leaped up intense by his side on the trunks of the trees, to lengthen itself, oblique and dim, far ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... intended for the Army, his father was a gun manufacturer. The eldest son died, and the old man saying that five thousand a year should not be lost to the family, made his other son—my friend—go into the business. He resisted, but had no alternative but to consent. Their dwelling-house was just by ours, but the old man now insisted on his son residing largely at the manufactory where he invited me to stay at times ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... go on paying for nothing. There was a meeting of the London branch a few months ago, and it was decided that unless some practical work was done in this country all English subscriptions should cease. We had no alternative but to come over and attempt something. Brott is of course the bete noire of our friends here. He is distinctly the ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... It is against the Yankees—the northern sons of free soil, free toil and intelligence, the hated abolitionists whose success would sweep away slavery and reduce the southern white men to work—no wonder they are ready to fight to the death against this detestable alternative, especially as they look to victory as the certain promotion of the refuse of the 'poor white' population of the South, of which they are one and all members, to the coveted ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... three frigates could lie in perfect safety, and the people have earned a reputation for honesty and hospitality to passing ships which belongs to the inhabitants of none of the large islands. There is another alternative—Kandavu—but to reach that island, the schooner must have run at an average of eleven knots, and the number and cupidity of the natives would have made a stay of five weeks impossible to a vessel ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... substantive state. To Turkey it could no longer signify whether Greece had a more extended or more limited line of frontier, and our desire should be to place a fit man upon the throne. France is willing to propose in the Conference that to Turkey should be offered the alternative of a Greece with extended limits under Suzerainete, &c., according to the Protocol of March 22, or a Greece with ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... singular clearness of a man about to die. For Sandersen had this mortal certainty resting upon his mind that he must try to strike down Sinclair, and that he would fail. And failure meant only one alternative—death. He was perfectly confident that this was the truth. He knew with prophetic surety that he would never again see the kind light of the sun, that in a half-light, in the cold of the dawn, a bullet would end ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... as he had read the letter Phineas felt that he had no alternative but to go. The visit would be very disagreeable, but it must be made. So he sent a line to Robert Kennedy naming a day; and wrote another to Lady Laura postponing his time at Dresden by a week, and explaining the cause of its ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... that he began to get a little tiresome," she said. "You say we are getting deeper and deeper into his hands? Well, he hinted as much, and I did not like it. When he began to get a little loving I accepted that way out as an easy alternative to a very unpleasant exposure. Whether he would have betrayed us I don't know; probably ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... That meeting would decide every thing. She might, perhaps, throw some light upon what was at present a profound mystery to me. At all events, my course was clear. Under the circumstances in which I was placed, I felt that there lay but one alternative before me. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... the minds of the slaves came as a happy solution of what had been a perplexing problem. Many Americans who considered slavery an evil had found no way out of the difficulty when the alternative was to turn loose upon society so many uncivilized men without the ability to discharge the duties of citizenship.[1] Assured then that the efforts at emancipation would be tested by experience, a larger number of men advocated ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson
... sent to investigate was said to be notorious, she had as yet discovered nothing of it for herself. It seemed to her that she must be either stupid, or that there must be something about her which made Mrs. Vincent more secretive with her than with others; and neither alternative pleased her. ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... bury him alive! Therefore I am forced to deal the death-blow! No, no, I will not; I have even braved the vengeance of my perfidious master in order not to imbue my hands in his blood, and I will not now be guilty of it. But what can I do? I have no other alternative. I must either bury him alive or kill him! And I cannot ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... plain that he was quite alone in his discovery. What was he to do? To speak to Miss Owen on the subject was out of the question. The only alternative was to communicate the good news to "Cobbler" Horn himself. But there seemed to be stupendous difficulties involved in such a course. He was aware that there was nothing his friend would more rejoice to know than that which he had to tell. From various ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... both speak and understand a good deal of English, it was singularly difficult to obtain much information from them concerning the habits of their countrymen; this was partly owing to their apparent difficulty in understanding the simplest alternative. Every one accustomed to very young children knows how seldom one can get an answer even to so simple a question as whether a thing is black OR white; the idea of black or white seems alternately to fill their minds. So it was with these Fuegians, and hence it was generally impossible to find ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... quickly in these regions, and before we had walked for quarter of an hour it became a question of seeking shelter or living for the rest of the day in soaked clothes. We decided on the former alternative, and selected a tree that, under ordinary circumstances, should have been ample protection. But a Black Forest thunderstorm is not an ordinary circumstance. We consoled ourselves at first by telling each ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... keeping almost in a direct line out into the lake. It was evident to all that he could not swim across the lake, as its farther shore was not even visible. He must either return to where they were, or drown; and knowing this to be his only alternative, they stood still and watched his motions. When he had got about half-a-mile from the shore, to the surprise of all, he was seen to rise higher and higher above the surface, and then all at once stop, with half of his body clear out of the water! He had come upon a shoal, and, knowing ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... and wildly—she was on the verge of hysterics, when Benjulia's eyes, silently questioning her again, controlled her at the critical moment. Her laughter died away. But the exciting influence still possessed her; still forced her into the other alternative of saying something—she neither knew ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... required to work for a longer time than fifteen days in the year, or for a longer time than five days in succession. The commissioners have the power to fine or imprison defaulters. Counties may, however, adopt an alternative plan for working the roads: in such counties a special tax is levied on property, the proceeds of which are spent on the roads, and able-bodied men between eighteen and fifty years of age are subject to road duty for not more than five days ...
— Elements of Civil Government • Alexander L. Peterman
... from such a fight, had not been pusillanimity, but magnanimity. But if, as English Whigs and American Democrats contended, Napoleon Bonaparte was the armed soldier of democracy, the rightful heir of the Revolution, the sole alternative to anarchy, the legitimate ruler of France; if the responsibility of those enormous desolating wars does not lie at his door, but belongs to George III. and the Tory party of England; if it is ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... so uncommonly short.—Nothing remained for her but flight, or submission to the Cruel mandate. Like a heroic girl, in whose veins the blood of the old crusaders was bounding, she preferred the former alternative. The only relation whom she could apply in so delicate, a juncture, was an aged aunt, residing somewhere in the north of Scotland. To her she wrote, beseeching her, as she regarded the memory of her buried sister, to receive her miserable child; and she appointed this town, Jedburgh, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... ceases flowing. So it bursts forth and flows over the ice with a continually renewing surface of the smoothest texture. Carrying a mercurial barometer that one dare not intrust to a sled on one's back over such footing is a somewhat precarious proceeding, but there was no alternative, and many miles were thus passed. Up the Toklat, then up its Clearwater Fork, then up its tributary, Myrtle Creek, to its head, and so over a little divide and down Willow Creek, we went, and from that divide and the upper reaches of the last-named creek had fine, clear ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... possible alternative. In case of accident to himself, and her ultimate escape, he must immediately write full details of his discovery, and entrust the document to her, to be opened only after his death or ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... more stalwart fellows, those quiet days were the hush before the breaking of the storm. Home, school, the university were behind them; before them lay the crash of war. And afterwards? Glory, or death. Their healthy, boyish optimism could see no third alternative. ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... was most teachable. When Bep was "collecting bows," Frances would obligingly bow and bob for her minutes at a time, like a Chinese mandarin, or like some small priestess observing a solemn rite. What the Bad Luck was, the terrible alternative of all these precautions, poor Frank could form no idea. But she had come to associate it with the babbling tank, which seemed at night, when all was still, to be gurgling, "Bad Luck—Bad Luck!" ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... that time, political inactivity was an impossibility. Revolt against the Republic, or active participation in its measures, was the only choice left to those who did not choose to fly their country, and many of the seigneurs of Anjou and Poitou would not adopt the latter alternative. ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... noise, chose the bold alternative of letting him drink on the spot; and retaining his prostrate condition, quickly put the pot to Bub's lips, and the child swallowed great draughts with satisfied gutturals that seemed to Charlie's apprehensive ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... having no alternative, were obliged to walk from the station to the pontoon bridge, made, Henry said, in one night. I don't know about that; but what I do know is that the French blew up my bridge in one night. Then we made the whole ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... the editor, "that alternative was not open to me. Mr. Naseby told me in a note that he had sent his letter to three other journals, and in fact threatened me with what he called exposure if I kept it back from mine. I am really concerned at what has happened; I sympathise ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... there was truth in that, and, accustoming herself to a new idea with her usual rapidity, she even began to see that the alternative offered need not be so very unpleasant. Indeed, when she came to think about it, it might be almost pleasant if the boarding-house were very select; there would be society of a kind, perhaps of a superior kind, even; she need not lose prestige and she ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... five thousand without cannon." The English landed their cannon near Flat Point; and before they could be turned against the Grand Battery, they must be dragged four miles over hills and rocks, through spongy marshes and jungles of matted evergreens. This would have required a week or more. The alternative was an escalade, in which the undisciplined assailants would no doubt have met a bloody rebuff. Thus this Grand Battery, which, says Wolcott, "is in fact a fort," might at least have been held long enough to save ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... punishment, might, unless he had been caught red-handed in certain heinous crimes, appeal to Caesar and claim to be sent to Rome. Unless the governor had been expressly entrusted with exceptional powers, or unless the case was so self-evident that he had nothing to fear from refusing, he had no alternative but to send the appellant on to the metropolis. Arrived there, the prisoner was taken to the guardrooms or cells in the barracks of a special prefect who had charge of such arrivals from abroad, and his case would ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... Its first alternative is, perhaps, to impose on its delegates an imperative mandate. Delegates under this condition become mere agents of the people. They attend the legislative assembly to register the will of the people just as they receive it, and the people in reality ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... now's the time, and now's the hour. There's plenty of space for all equestrian wants, without interfering with the sylvan delights of nurserymaids, children, lovers of nature, and all sorts of lovers too. For my part, if this is not put forward as an alternative scheme, I shall vote for tunnelling under the Gardens out of simple cussedness. If the reply, authoritatively given, be that the two schemes can go and must go together, then I will vote for both, only let's have ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... all that it signified. Some of the bishops tried to persuade him to abandon this attitude, but in vain. So far as we can judge the mood of Henry, Becket had much to justify his feeling, and if he were resolved not to accept the only other alternative of complete submission, but determined to resist to the utmost, ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... were pulling out of the bay, but no sooner did we get beyond the point than we met so heavy a sea that it was impossible to pull the whale boat against it, and we were in danger of being swamped. Our only alternative was, as I proposed, to run for the island. Even now we had to pull hard to avoid the following seas which threatened to poop us. We saw the savages on shore dancing, shouting, and gesticulating when they discovered that we had escaped ...
— The Mate of the Lily - Notes from Harry Musgrave's Log Book • W. H. G. Kingston
... his favour; but to allow the law its course with the impenitent and unreformed. In such language we discern the sentiments which prevailed: banishment, not punishment for past crimes, was implied in the cheering alternative. From that moment he possessed authority to manumit not less absolute than the sovereign, but immeasurably more ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... of pique at what had happened just before you came in. It was supposed I was much involved with another man, and circumstances made the supposition particularly objectionable. To escape it I jumped at the alternative of yourself.' ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... impossible. He was not at one with her in religious matters. He could speak lightly of her evangelical creed—it seemed he scoffed in "Fors" at her faith. She could not be unequally yoked with an unbeliever. To her, the alternative was plain; the choice was terrible: yet, having once seen her ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... I had time to leap from my saddle, the ass came direct upon me with such force that my horse was driven backwards by the concussion, and I was thrown. Ten months afterwards, another encounter of the same kind threatened me with a similar disaster, and to save myself I had no alternative but to shoot the ass. The Indian who was driving the animal neglected the usual warning cry, given by the arrieros when they enter those dangerous passes, and he was regardless of my repeated calls ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... south, have her or swing for her, when the husband frequently, after some words passed between the two concerning her relations with the other lucky mortal (he having had the pair watched), inflicted fatal injuries on his adored one as a result of an alternative postnuptial liaison by plunging his knife into her, until it just struck him that Fitz, nicknamed Skin-the-Goat, merely drove the car for the actual perpetrators of the outrage and so was not, if he was reliably ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Tourville, and attributing it to his having taken a portion of the simulated cordial, he, La Houssaye, fearful of consequences, hastily and secretly changed his abode. He had subsequently kept silence till the conviction of Eugenie left him no other alternative, if he would not see her perish on the scaffold, than a full and unreserved confession. This done—Eugenie saved, but lost to him—he had nothing more to live for in the ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... declare that she must be released, I might suffer grievously, but being a man of some intelligence, I should admit that the suffering couldn't be helped; the brutality of enforced marriage doesn't seem to me an alternative worth considering. It wouldn't seem so to any woman of the kind ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... decisiveness, that such an effect could by no possibility be appreciable at our distance from the moon.[173] Don Jose Joaquim de Ferrer, however, who observed a total eclipse of the sun at Kinderhook, in the State of New York, on June 16, 1806, ignoring this refined optical rationale, considered two alternative explanations of the phenomenon as alone possible. The bright ring round the moon must be due to the illumination either of a lunar or of a solar atmosphere. If the former, he calculated that it should have a height fifty times that of the earth's gaseous envelope. ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... bulls bellowing beneath, until casual assistance should arrive; and yet, what was this state of affairs when compared with the terrors of that impending fate from which, for some of them at least, there seemed no escape? Mr. Verdant Green fully realized the horrors of this alternative when he looked at Miss Patty Honeywood, who had not yet joined those ladies who, clinging fearfully to the boughs, and crouching among the branches like roosting guinea-fowls, were for the present in comparative safety, and out of the ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... might expect the French charge. Soult hung close on their rear until they reached Coruna; and Moore perceived that it would be impossible to embark without either a convention or a battle. He chose the braver alternative. The French were repelled gallantly; and the British were permitted to embark without further molestation. In the moment of victory (January 16, 1809) Sir John Moore fell, mortally wounded by a cannon-shot: his men buried him in ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... precarious moment, was, as he afterwards learned, brought about by the advice of the chief guide, who told the commanding officer that the Indians wished to have a parley. On seeing what was transpiring behind him, Kit Carson had no alternative but to rein up his horse also; for, to ride on alone into the midst of the savages, would have been unjustifiable rashness, and might, perhaps, have destroyed the plans his superior officers were concocting. So, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... There remained the alternative more than once hinted by the Sieur de Mauprat as the months grew into years after the mother died—marriage; a husband, a notable and wealthy husband. That was the magic destiny de Mauprat figured for her. It did not elate her, it did not disturb her; ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to being regarded as woman's last refuge, her one and only alternative to the workhouse. I cannot myself see why the woman who has faced the difficulties of existence, learnt the lesson of life, should not make as good a wife and mother as the ignorant girl taken direct, one might almost say, from the nursery, and, without the slightest preparation, put in ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... must be drawn solely from Scripture; for what can we affirm about matters transcending our knowledge except what is told us by the words or writings of prophets? And since there are, so far as I know, no prophets now alive, we have no alternative but to read the books of prophets departed, taking care the while not to reason from metaphor or to ascribe anything to our authors which they do not themselves distinctly state. I must further premise that the Jews never make any mention or ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... council, and required to lend the king two hundred pounds, or else to go himself to the army, and serve it with cheese. It was not supposed that a merchant, so aged and wealthy, would submit to resume his former mean trade; but the old man, in the spirit of the times, preferred the hard alternative, and balked the new project of finance, by shipping himself with his cheese. At Hicks's Hall the duke and the Earl of Dorset sat to receive the loans; but the duke threatened, and the earl affected to treat with levity, men who came before them with all the suppressed feelings ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... fulfilling the interests of beings having the capacity to conduct themselves rationally, and ethics is the formulation of the general principles which underlie this method. The attempt to live rationally—and, humanly speaking, there is no alternative save the total abnegation of life—brings one within the jurisdiction of these principles, precisely as thinking brings one within the jurisdiction of the principles of logic, or as the moving of one's body brings one within the jurisdiction of ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... at six; and there is a cold meat supper at nine. Meals are charged extra if taken in private. It is a good plan in travelling never to reserve oneself at the end of the day's journey for the hotel dinner, as there is a chance of arriving after it is over, when the alternative is to go without; the railway dinners are quite as good, find often better, than those at the hotel. The use of the ladies' drawing-room is restricted to ladies and gentlemen accompanying them; ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... pocket, now watching the man who never once looked his way. He was a bushranger and an outlaw; he deserved to die or to be taken; and Vanheimert's only regret was that he had neither taken nor shot him at their last interview. The bloodless alternative was to be borne in mind, yet in his heart he well knew that the bullet was his one chance with Stingaree. And even with the bullet he was horribly uncertain and afraid. But of hesitation on any higher ground, of remorse ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... (yo-loff'-ka), and then following up the west coast of the peninsula to the head of the Okhotsk Sea. The only objections to this were the lateness of the season and the probability of finding deep snow in the mountain passes. Our only alternative was to continue our journey from Kluchei up the eastern coast to a settlement called Dranka (dran'-kah), where the mountains sank into insignificant hills, and cross there to the Kamchadal village of Lesnoi (less-noi') on the Okhotsk Sea. This route was considerably longer than the one by ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... have taken with you! I have been beginning to fear for some time that you are incorrigible—and to-day is really the last straw! So it is kinder to let you know at once that you have been tried and found wanting. I have no alternative but to release you finally from your vows—I cannot allow you to remain my ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 16, 1892 • Various
... proposed an alternative scheme, to wit, the prohibition of sentimental marriages by law, and the substitution of match-making by the common hangman. This plan, as revolutionary as it may seem, would have several plain advantages. For one thing, it would purge ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... letter of the law allowed of no justification or extenuation of the fact. It left no alternative to ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... necessary, however, to decide at once where she was to sleep. All the rooms in the tower were of stone—dark, gloomy, and cold even in the summer-time. Impossible to put her in any one of them. The only other alternative was to lodge her in the little modern lean-to, which I have already described as being tacked on to the side of the old building. It contained three cottage-rooms, and they might be made barely habitable for a ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... I feel myself so much a citizen of the world, that the spot where I can enjoy a delicious climate, and every luxury, at a less expense than a common college life in England, will always be a country to me; and such are in fact the shores of the Archipelago. This then is the alternative—if I preserve Newstead, I return; if I sell it, I stay away. I have had no letters since yours of June, but I have written several times, and shall continue, as usual, on the ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... that Blink, hearing his voice, might let go to answer, remained suspended, torn with anxiety about his costume. "If she comes in," he thought, "I shall die from shame. And if she doesn't, I shall die from a broken neck. What a dreadful alternative!" And he firmly grasped the most substantial lilac-boughs within, his reach, listening with the ears of a hare for any sound within the room, in which he no longer was to any appreciable extent. Then the thought of what a public ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... cit. respexit is a mere conjecture: corrumpit, the MS. reading, is meaningless, and no satisfactory alternative has been suggested. The lines may merely refer to Apollo, but et me suggests strongly that Ladas retorts, 'I, too, have Caesar's favour.' Cp. L. 37, where hic vester Apollo ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... Chadigi, here is the money. Go even to-day to Medinet and give to Idris this writing, which the devout dervish Bellali, at my request, wrote to him. The children of the mehendes are good, but if I do not obtain a permit, then there is no other alternative. I know you will not betray me. Remember that you and your father too come from the Dongolese tribe in which ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... Death was inevitable. Of this there could be no doubt, but to die beneath the rending fangs of the carnivore, congenital terror of her kind—it was unthinkable. But there was an alternative. The lion was almost upon her—another instant and he would seize her. Pan-at-lee turned sharply to her left. Just a few steps she took in the new direction before she disappeared over the rim of Kor-ul-lul. The baffled lion, planting all four feet, barely ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... upon a treaty of peace failed. Active operations were resumed, and so weakened Mexico that she was left no alternative but to make "peace such as her powerful and successful enemy might dictate." By the Constitution of Mexico the office of President in case of a vacancy devolved upon the president of the Supreme Court provisionally; but there was no president ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... to do? The alternative was too awful; and then, in either case, he must lose Matilda. Here the recollection of how he had left her came over him with a vivid force. What must she be thinking of him at that moment? And who would ever tell her the truth, when he had been ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... of them, there have been attempts to mine the Great Wall of China. It was, therefore, only natural that, when the Austrians had us held up before a position it was vitally necessary we should have, we should begin to consider the possibility of mining it as the only alternative. The conception of the plan did not necessarily originate in the mind of any one individual, however many have laid claim to it. It was the inevitable thing if we were not going to abandon striving for ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... in truth imagined that he had been frightened by her narrow escape from falling. But when he bade her come away with that frown on his face, and with that awful voice, then she knew it all. She had no alternative but to take his arm, and to "come away." She had not courage enough,—I had better perhaps say impudence enough,—to pretend to speak to him or to anyone near him with ease. All eyes were upon her, and she felt them; all tongues ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... not see that I have any other alternative," replied the commander of the Scotian, politely enough, but it was evident that he was sorely afflicted, and even ashamed of himself. "I understand now that I am the victim of a ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic
... insulted his opponent, who was a magistrate, had threatened his life, and otherwise so bore himself that his oppressor procured him to be whipped at the cart's tail, and to be held to give large sureties for the peace, with the alternative penalty of banishment. The bitter vehemence of Brice's curses was remarkable even among the dry phrases of the complaint; and tradition relates that his fearful imprecations even caused his dignified opponent, the magistrate, to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... with that confounded alternative, before old Wilkens there. Surely, I cannot—confound the rash word!—a word that in my innermost heart I did not mean seriously, and which now becomes fate, because I did not take the pains to keep ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... the accused; and, much to Alan's confusion, the result was that he received a peremptory demand to apologise or arrange a meeting for personal satisfaction. As he declined to return the one, he was obliged to grant the desperate alternative. Reading this account of men going out to engage in personal combat for a cause so small, will lead us to consider that such a result ought to have been prevented by the interposition of friends. But it must not be overlooked ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various
... continued, "and it will be very much worse for me, because I have been used to these things all my life. You may think me very brutal at having tried to help you toward the only means of escape for either of us, but I think, dear, you scarcely realize the alternative. It is not only what you condemn yourself to. Remember that you inflict the ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... might with difficulty wriggle, I should have taken the only course possible to me. I should have instantly resigned my commission in the Austrian Navy, and taken my own life. But it happened that I had an alternative. I was ordered to damage or delay warships. I would not treacherously slay the English sailors among whom I worked, but I would, if I could, delay the ships. My experience taught me that the simplest and most ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... find much fault with the pursuit, for it gives health to thousands. The foxes may perhaps object a little; but, if a philosopher could explain to them that, if they were not preserved for hunting purposes, they would soon be exterminated, we have no doubt that they would choose the alternative which gives them a chance. Shooting is engaged in with more enthusiasm now than ever it was before; and doubtless the gentlemen who sit in snug corners and knock down tame pheasants derive benefit—physical and moral—from the lively exercise. But the word "sport" in England does not now ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... proved more amenable. It is regrettable that he was not able to deprive the conspirators of their power to juggle with the property of the corporation, for only two weeks later they developed and executed an alternative device which practically accomplished the result which the Massachusetts authorities had declared illegal and the courts of New ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... Canadians and Indians of the neighbourhood. With such an army as could be quickly gathered, and by acting in concert with Bougainville from Cap Rouge, there is at least a very fair chance of vanquishing the foe in open fight. The next alternative is for him to retire upon Jacques Cartier, leaving Quebec with an efficient garrison, and from there to harass the enemy, cut off supplies, and otherwise prolong the siege till the approach of winter forces them to take to their ships and go. The third is to give up the colony ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... they can find, and repenting in poverty and social ostracism the romance they conceived in wealth and luxury. They deserve their fate. But when a sensitive girl is motherless, cut off from friends and pleasures, presented with the alternative of solitude or marriage with some detested man, or locked up to forget a dream which was half realised and very sweet, then the case is different. If she breaks her bonds, and flies to the only loving heart she knows, forgive her, and pray Heaven to have mercy on her, for she takes a fearful ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... going now to the British Museum to read—a fearful way of getting knowledge. If I had Aladdin's lamp I should certainly use it to get books served up to me at a moment's notice. It may be better to search for truth than to have it at hand without seeking, but with books I should take the other alternative. ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... impatient natures. As against the ignoble host who think that the present ordering of men, with all its prodigious inequalities, is in foundation and substance the perfection of social blessedness, Rousseau was almost in the right. If the only alternative to the present social order remaining in perpetuity were a retrogression to some such condition as that of the islanders of the South Sea, a lover of his fellow-creatures might look upon the result, so far ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... wagons, scarcely liable as they are to lateral vibrations, had not something to do with the result, which is in some respects unique in the history of railway traction. The result, although not absolutely showing the real resistance to traction, nor the real adhesion of the engine, presents this alternative; namely, that the resistance must have been unusually small, or the ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... its progress merely increases physical wretchedness and makes moral decadence more terrible than before, if the head continues to silence the appeals of the heart, then divine Compassion will have no alternative but to destroy beneath the waters of another flood this cruel, implacable civilisation, which has ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... of this railway, and under the same roof, 200 steps lead to the road above. I was too weak to attempt the formidable flight of steps; and though I felt rather cowardly while looking at the giddy ascent of the cars, there was no alternative between choosing one or the other, or remaining behind. The American and his little boy were already in the car, and I took my seat behind them. When we were half-way, the question rose in my mind—"What if the ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... There was no alternative. Aunt Lucy was obliged to obey, at least while her persecutor was in the room. When alone for any length of time she took out Paul's stockings from under her apron, and worked on them till the approaching steps of Mrs. ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... minded, call them "Grey Wethers," and indeed in North Wilts, it is not hard to conjure up their poetic resemblance to a flock of titanic sheep, reclining at ease upon the pasturage of the Downs. The alternative name Sarsen, has an interesting derivation. It is a corruption of the word "Saracen." But what have Saracens to do with Wiltshire? Frankly nothing. The name has come to the stones from Stonehenge itself, and is a part of that ever interesting confusion of ideas, which has ...
— Stonehenge - Today and Yesterday • Frank Stevens
... of two courses to follow;—either I declare, in the presence of every one, the madness with which you are now affected, and I get you ignominiously ordered back to England; or if you prefer it, I will run my dagger through your throat in the presence of all here. This second alternative seems to me the least disagreeable, and I think I shall ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... was not guilty of a grim jest, but that this mighty discord was the announcement of that final harmony for which all that is best in us yearns. It may seem a hard vision to cherish to-day. But we must cherish it, or accept the hideous alternative that this is, after all, in very truth the madhouse of the universe. Can you live with that idea? Would it be worth while living with that idea? If not, then the other holds the field, and it is for all of us in our several ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... temporary advantage to the cause. I had a narrow escape from the Turks, and another from Shipwreck on my passage. On the 15th (or 16th) of February I had an attack of apoplexy, or epilepsy,—the physicians have not exactly decided which, but the alternative is agreeable. My constitution, therefore, remains between the two opinions, like Mahomet's sarcophagus between the magnets. All that I can say is, that they nearly bled me to death, by placing the leeches too ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... remorseless pressure on the Court of Madrid; it left two alternatives open to England, either to see Napoleon close his grip on Spain and wield her naval resources when she was fully prepared for war, or to precipitate the rupture. It was the alternative, mutatis mutandis, presented to George III. and the elder Pitt in 1761, when the King was for delay and his Minister was for war at once. That instance had proved the father's foresight; and now at the close of 1804 the younger Pitt might flatter himself that open war was better ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... But here again it is seldom that any large proportion of either party is slain; for the dense jungle everywhere offers abundant opportunities of concealment to those who condescend to seek its shelter, and there are few, even among the Kayans and Kenyahs, who will fight to the bitter end, if the alternative of ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... swelling gait of one who made an occasional coup in mines, and it went without saying that he did not write—a man who went to bed at eleven, and whose hair made no claim to distinction. One's mind fell back on the idea of law—conveyancing seemed probable—but his face lacked sharpness, and the alternative of confidential clerk to a firm of dry-salters was contradicted by an air of authority that raised observations on the weather to the level of a state document. The truth came upon me—a flash of inspiration—as I saw Mr. Perkins coming home one evening. The black frock-coat and waistcoat, dark gray ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... I suppose I had better mention that I am well aware of the inconsistency of a person who dislikes the modern caravansary and yet grumbles when he finds a hotel of the superannuated sort. One ought to choose, it would seem, and make the best of either alternative. The two old taverns at Arles are quite unimproved; such as they must have been in the infancy of the modern world, when Stendhal passed that way and the lumbering diligence deposited him in the Place des Hommes, such in every detail they are to-day. Vieilles auberges de France, ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... superstition, the aggressive factiousness of the ecclesiastics, the cruelty of bigoted tribunals—these things disgusted and wearied the more enlightened spirits, and the English philosophy only held out an inspiring intellectual alternative.[29] ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... the money wherewith he could further his gigantic combinations. All this mystery was part of his childish cunning. I hardly knew whether to box the little creature's ears, to box my own, or to laugh. I compromised with a smile on the last alternative, and baccarat being a dreary game to watch, I strolled off to the nearest ecarte table, and, to justify my presence in the room, backed one of ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... giving as much attention to the problem as he himself felt it needed. He had delighted Rose with the suggestion that they go out into the country somewhere. Not the real country of course, but up along the shore, where the train service was good and the motor a possible alternative. ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... out as he sprang toward her. It was his life or hers. There was no other alternative. Murder was in his hands, in his soul. She realized this and even as he touched her, she ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... lying on his back, looking up through the branches of a huge tree, when he reached what he considered this clear alternative. He was a man who seldom lied to himself; so now it was with a sudden sharpness that he felt the ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... a larger amount thrown on the market would have a most disastrous influence on the public credit. I do not think I can borrow two millions at more than 90 per cent. With a guaranty such as the states have offered, I can get eight millions at par. The alternative is to authorize me to accept the guaranty, or leave the treasury with scarcely anything in it and with outstanding demands, some of them very pressing, of at least six millions of dollars, for you and your political friends to provide for. If anything is done it should ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... instruments that were on their way out from England, and saw the great Ugahden caravan preparing to leave, but were undecided what to do—whether to go with them without our things from England, or wait and rely upon our strength in travelling alone. The latter alternative was unfortunately decided upon, and we saw our wonted protector depart upon ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... a man of harsh temper and oily manners, mean in figure, swarthy in face, and so false in words as to be hourly detected, need not now be told. When the moment for doing so came, she had probably no alternative. He, at any rate, had become her husband; and after a prolonged honeymoon among the lakes, they had gone together to Rome, the papal captain having vainly endeavoured to induce his ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... considered, the policy of the General Government toward the red man is not only liberal, but generous. He is unwilling to submit to the laws of the States and mingle with their population. To save him from this alternative, or perhaps utter annihilation, the General Government kindly offers him a new home, and proposes to pay the whole expense of his ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson
... surroundings. If it meant to fly away to heaven—? Surely she did not wish that! The world and "the things that are in the world" were very attractive to the young soprano. She had no wish for heaven save as an alternative from hell. What did it mean? Was it a heart-rest that David longed for? But she had been conscious of no unrest—until just now. Honestly, the truth was that she had not meant anything! Was it worship? But her friends would tell her she sang it with feeling, she argued ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... sense, vague and indefinable it is true, that a tragic impasse was closing on a situation over which had flashed a rainbow gleam of possible solution. Ahead lay the future with its sinister shadows—darker because of the alternative they had glimpsed in ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... Servia was not allowed to submit was Russia's remark, quoted above, that she would not "allow" Austria to become the predominant power in the Balkans. It was, therefore, Russia's task to prevent Servia from accepting Austria's note. Since war was her alternative, baldly stated to England from the first, she had to do three things—first, to secure as many allies as possible; secondly, to weaken her enemies, preferably by detaching from them Italy, and, thirdly, to get as much of a start ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... indecision and the state of decision seem thus fairly well understood, but the process of passing from the one to the other is often obscure. It differs from one case to another. In one case we find the rational process of deliberation, in which each alternative is weighed and the decision awarded to the one that promises best. This is essentially a work of imagination: you imagine that you have adopted the one alternative, and see how it suits you, then you do the same with the other alternative. You ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... the Constitution, or was the necessary consequence of the right to acquire. They do decide that the power in Congress is unquestionable, and in this we entirely concur, and nothing will be found in this opinion to the contrary. The power stands firmly on the latter alternative put by the court—that is, as "the inevitable consequence of the right to ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard
... possessions of a rich man are not represented, as they used to be, by wedges of gold or coffers of jewels, but by masses of men variously employed, over whose bodies and minds the wealth, according to its direction, exercises harmful or helpful influence, and becomes, in that alternative, Mammon either of Unrighteousness or ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... CIVILIAN.—Marvelous as the career of Caesar as a general was, his merit as a civilian outstrips even his distinction as a soldier. He saw that the world could no longer be governed by the Roman rabble, and that monarchy was the only alternative. He ruled under the forms of the old constitution, taking the post of dictator and censor for life, and absorbing in himself the other principal republican offices. The whole tendency of his measures, which were mostly of a very wholesome character, was not only to remedy abuses of administration, ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... second night, the want of water, and the loss of their bravest champions, determined the surviving Goths to accept the fair capitulation which the prudence of Narses was inclined to propose. They embraced the alternative of residing in Italy, as the subjects and soldiers of Justinian, or departing with a portion of their private wealth, in search of some independent country. [44] Yet the oath of fidelity or exile was alike rejected by ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... the civilized races of mankind can be reckoned on to supply it for long on conditions akin to those which have in various forms prevailed ever since the institutions of ancient times and which alone render the present social structure viable. If this forecast should prove correct, the only alternative to a break disastrous in the continuity of civilization is the frank recognition of the principle that certain inferior races are destined to serve the cause of mankind in those capacities for which alone they are qualified and to readjust social ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... another alternative offers, which would dispense both with the author's hypothesis and the need of successive organic creations by a special Providence. Is it a geological fact, since life began, that the earth has ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... now began to enter my head. Probably I had taken possession of her room, and she had no other place to sleep. If so, it was not my fault. Nobody could hold me responsible for such a peculiar family arrangement. Seeing no alternative but to test the point, I gradually began to take off my coat. So far from being abashed at the movement, she seized hold of the sleeves and helped me off with it. I did the same with my vest, and still with the same result. Then I pulled off my boots, but with no ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... be surprised if you were right, sir," replied Carroll, rather apathetically. He was going through all this without the slightest hope, but only for the sake of feeling that he had done his utmost before he took up with the alternative which so dismayed his very soul. He himself looked old that morning. He had retained his youthful appearance much longer than men usually do, but as he had viewed his reflection in the glass that morning he had said to himself that he at last was showing his years. His hair had ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... of the article Vacuum in the Penny Cyclo. (xxvi. 76), quoting Johnson's words, adds:—'That is, either all space is full of matter, or there are parts of space which have no matter. The alternative is undeniable, and the inference to which the modern philosophy would give the greatest probablility is, that all space is full of matter in the common sense of the word, but really occupied by particles ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... religious meditations, which are, perhaps, rather commonplace in expression, but when read by the light of the distresses he was enduring, show a brave unembittered spirit, not to be easily respected too highly. Starvation seemed to be approaching; or, at least, the only alternative was the abandonment of his ambition, and acceptance, if he could get it, of the post of druggist's assistant. He had but one resource left; and that not of the most promising kind. Crabbe, amongst his other old-fashioned notions, had a strong belief in the traditional patron. Johnson ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... that the times are very dark, but still there are some rays of light. You have been asked whether you will continue fighting until you are exterminated. But there is another alternative. Will you not continue fighting until you are relieved? I maintain that our independence must be a sine qua non of any negotiations that we make—we cannot give it up. So long as we have life we must continue to fight, and we must only lay down ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... he could not answer the obvious retort,—Did then God make and love a lie, or make it hating it? There must have been some other power to eteron, or, as Mill in his Apologia for Theism puts it, a limit to the assumed Omnipotence. Carlyle, accepting neither alternative, inconsequently halts between them; and his prevailing view of mankind adds ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... political design must surely lurk under it: government was alarmed, the police threatened; and it was left to Mainzer's choice either to remain in Paris without his artisan classes, or to seek elsewhere a field for his popular labours. He decided at once on the latter alternative, and departed for England, amidst the heartfelt regrets of those whom he had attached so strongly to himself, while he inculcated peace, order, and every social virtue. On his revisiting Paris long after, his old ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
... ranks, as there is little doubt that he would have shrunk with like abhorrence from any business proposed to him. His childish longing for fame had developed and taken shape, and for him, if he lacked genius, there was no alternative but the dragging out of a worthless and wearying existence. Conscious of his powers, it was a time of struggle, of passionate endeavour, possibly of bewilderment; with the one great determination standing firm in the midst of a chaos of doubt and difficulty—the determination ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... Hignett's delightful old-world mansion, Windles, in the county of Hampshire. He had gone to his room after lunch, because there seemed nothing else to do. It was still raining hard, so that a ramble in the picturesque garden was impossible, and the only alternative to sleep, the society of Mr. Henry Mortimer, had become peculiarly distasteful to ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... this system of internal surveillance, that I several times noticed strangers at the hotel or cafe counters openly explaining the object of their visits, and if there is nothing to conceal, however annoying the alternative appears, I am convinced the policy is not had, a host of suspicions being ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... dear. It seems like a crime when I look at St. Matthew's; but when I think of you all, and of home, I believe it is right that he should have the alternative. And now, if poor Lucy come, and it be ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... [History of Egypt, iii, pp. Ill, I12.] proffered an alternative view, which would make all these tribes Tunisians and Algerians, thus disposing of the identification of the Akaivasha with the Achaians, and making them the ancient representatives of the town of el-Aghwat (Roman Agbia) in Tunis. But ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... right of choosing any other representative; but he could not believe that the House would think it fit to inflict such a punishment on the electors of a great county. Should it not do so, the other alternative would be to bring into the House as representative and knight of the shire for Middlesex a man chosen by a few voters only, in contradiction to the declared sense of a great majority of the freeholders on the face of the poll, upon the supposition ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... swindler. He was compelled to appear before his worship, and had the mortification of being told that unless he could give some explanation, he must be content with a night's lodging in a house of detention. Mr. Bradshaw had no alternative but to send to the fair charmer of his heart to identify him; which she most readily did, as soon as rehearsal was over. Explanations were then entered into; but he was forced to give the reason of his being in Birmingham, which of course made a due impression on the lady's heart, ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... the Cracovian cavalary. "Krakus" is an alternative name of Krak, the legendary founder of Cracow, and is used to refer to an ...
— My First Battle • Adam Mickiewicz
... strange and unforeseen incident warned us of the great danger to which we were exposed on the surface of this diminutive moon, and left us no alternative but ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood
... phrases of her letter to Manisty ran through her mind. Had they made him her lasting enemy? The thought was like a wound draining blood and strength. But in her present state of jealous passion it was more tolerable than that other thought which was its alternative—the thought of Lucy surrendered, Lucy in ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... yet in her talent, in her artistic birthright. Redgrave would have made her path smooth. 'I promise you a great reputation in two or three years' time.' And without disgrace, without shadow of suspicion, it would all be managed, he declared, so very easily. For what alternative had she ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... in all probability sound over our slumbering dust—the millennial sun shine on the turf which may for centuries have covered our graves!—But who, on the other hand, dare venture to question the possibility of the nearer alternative?—that the Judge may be "standing before the door"—the shadow of the Advent Throne even now projected on an unthinking and unbelieving world! "He that shall come will come, and will not tarry!"—Although ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... these waifs to the Brother Director, and claimed admittance for him. The place was full, the Brother said—it could not be done. Without another word Kehoe left the child on the doorstep, and simply saying, "Good-night," left Brother Tertullian sorely perplexed, but with no alternative but to ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... really ask for a cheque for the amount due. He went on to remark that he could hardly suppose that a nephew of the Duke of Albury was unable to pay debts of honour to the amount of L200;—but that if such was the case he would have no alternative but to apply to the Duke himself. The reader need hardly be told that to this letter Mr Grendall vouchsafed no answer whatever. In his letter to Mr Melmotte he confined himself to one matter of business in hand. He made no allusion whatever ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... tranquillity of her attitude, the intelligence of her eyes, it was easy to infer that a wider field would bring into action the hidden treasures of a gifted nature. Over the dazzling halo that surrounded the fair one, which left me the alternative of admiring silence or heedless vagrancy of speech, one cloud lowered, eclipsing all her charms and bringing down my divinity from her ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... creatures had actually dwelt there from olden times, they could only get in and out of the wood by secret subterranean passages; or else they must fly through the air by night, like witches, when all around were asleep. According to tradition, the latter alternative seemed the most probable. Perhaps we shall learn more about these strange birds if we drive on the carriage of the story a little farther, and rest at ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... up the air-shaft had resolved themselves with the passing years into a strange, numb will to do. There was the light and she must reach it. Indeed the Thing there behind the narrow walls of her chest gave her no alternative. She did not think she wanted to be an actress. It was a long time after that before she knew even what an actress was. She did not know what the lodger had been. No. Instinctively, groping and inarticulate, she recognized in him the rags and shreds of greatness, knew him to be a one-time ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... this every-day scene, for it put off a few moments his encounter with the formidable Malka. As she had not appeared at door or window, he concluded she was in a bad temper or out of London; neither alternative was pleasant. ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... a crisis arrived. I had either to sacrifice my conscience or resign my position. I chose the latter alternative, and in doing so I gave up my political life forever. I need not tell the bitterness of my disappointment. But the loss of worldly prospects and of hope was as nothing compared with other things. The worst of all was the reception which I met at home. My young, and as I supposed ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... not a moment to lose; and as you appear not to be in town, I must act myself in the matter. I want to know as soon as possible what terms you would offer. I think the Count would accept either a sum down or a share of the profits; you might propose either alternative. The Taylors would execute the translation promptly and the book would appear in May. I do not suppose that you will hesitate to agree to so important a proposal; but if it does not please you, I am certain that Murray or Macmillan would ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... all the grain that found no soft place where it fell for hiding in. Even if it should happen in any case that no birds were near, the seed that fell on the way side was as surely destroyed in another way: the alternative suggested in Luke's narrative is, that "it is trodden under ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... to the Moors all night, came and whispered to me that they were asleep. The awful crisis was now arrived when I was again either to taste the blessing of freedom or languish out my days in captivity. A cold sweat moistened my forehead as I thought on the dreadful alternative, and reflected that, one way or another, my fate must be decided in the course of the ensuing day. But to deliberate was to lose the only chance of escaping. So, taking up my bundle, I stepped gently over the negroes, who were sleeping in the open air, and ...
— Travels in the Interior of Africa - Volume 1 • Mungo Park
... "to see nothing was wanting, and to take leave" of Oglethorpe; and having called the families separately before them in the great cabin they inquired if they liked their usage and voyage; or if they had rather return, giving them even then the alternative of remaining in England if they preferred it; and having found but one man who declined—on account of his wife, left sick in Southwark—they bid Oglethorpe and the emigrants an affectionate farewell. The ship sailed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... in his presence, relative to the conduct of the naval captain ill with the fever, that he could not permit. He gave a flat denial to them, and the consequence was, that language was used which left no alternative but a duel. ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... long. This I account a great change between ascending and descending Dews and Vapors (which import Levity and Weight,) and between thick Air and clear Air: which changes do sometimes continue in the Alternative course of day and night, for a week or fortnight together; and yet the Baroscope holding ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... the will of the angels is referred to opposites, as to doing many things, or not doing them. But they have no tendency to opposites with regard to God Himself, Whom they see to be the very nature of goodness; but in all things their aim is towards God, which ever alternative they choose, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... and principal citizens declared that the people could no longer sustain the labors and sufferings of a defence. "And of what avail is our defence," said they, "when the enemy is determined to persist in the siege?—what alternative remains but to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... now very clear to me. I therefore write this to inform you that I am not willing on any account to see you again. Neither will I by any course you can adopt be prevailed upon to view the matter in a different light from what I now do. I leave you the alternative of forever preventing the public avowal of a disgraceful transaction, of which you yourself said you ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... at points where success would give us the greatest advantage. I had consulted Generals Thomas, McPherson, and Schofield, and we all agreed that we could not with prudence stretch out any more, and therefore there was no alternative but to attack "fortified lines," a thing carefully avoided up to that time. I reasoned, if we could make a breach anywhere near the rebel centre, and thrust in a strong head of column, that with the one moiety of our army we could hold in check the corresponding wing of the ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... on the part of a small Trade Union of Shop Assistants," said Mrs. Pembrose. "But they have no real alternative to propose." ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... into the fire. By the measure of his full realization of what such a marriage would have meant to his young nephew he paid homage to the girl in her fine courage in refusing to take advantage of a chivalrous boy's impulsive generosity even though it left her the terrible alternative which later she had taken. And he thought with a tender little smile that there was something also rather magnificent about a lad who would offer himself thus voluntarily and knowingly a living sacrifice for "dear Honor's sake." He went back to ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... shaking his head gravely, as men are wont to do when they consider things are going a little too far, 'this is altogether such a low-minded affair, that if I didn't feel for the governor, and know that he could never get on without me, I should be obliged to cut the connection. I should have no alternative.' ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... would have had more influence if any clear idea of an alternative to parliamentary democracy had been generally apprehended. But it must be confessed that Syndicalists have not presented their case in a way which is likely to attract the average citizen. Much of what they say amounts to this: that a minority, consisting of skilled workers in vital industries, ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... have taken care to guard against his meeting with Snaffle; but as that gentleman was first in the field, she had her choice between sending Greenfield away and seeing them together. Like the clever woman she was, she chose the latter alternative, and found, too, her account in ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... intended only for the education of the blind, and not for their support. For the purpose of education there are a certain number of years allotted to each pupil, according to their age at the time of admission. At the expiration of this term they have no alternative but to go back to the poor homes of their respective counties, more unfitted to endure their privations than before they were permitted a taste of a better mode of life, and no matter how sad their sacrifices, or how bitter their trials, they are never looked after by the ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... this hypothesis will force them to relinquish the idea that the murder was committed from without. What then remains? Only the second alternative. They must either give up altogether the idea of murder, or have recourse to what is known as the ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... Farnell, but a tendency to seek for exclusively vegetable origins of gods is to be observed in some of the most recent speculations. I well know that I myself am apt to press a theory of totems too far, and in the following pages I suggest reserves, limitations, and alternative hypotheses. Il y a serpent et serpent; a snake tribe may be a local tribe named from the Snake River, not a totem kindred. The history of mythology is the history of rash, premature, and exclusive theories. We are only beginning to learn caution. Even the prevalent anthropological theory ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... Stewart's philosophy approximates to the empirical school, because the Utilitarians were apt to misconceive the position. They took Stewart to be the adequate representative of all who accepted one branch of an inevitable dilemma. The acceptance of 'intuitions,' that is, was the only alternative to thoroughgoing acceptance of 'experience.' They supposed, too, that persons vaguely described as 'Kant and the Germans' taught simply a modification of the 'intuitionist' view. I have noticed how emphatically Stewart claimed to rely upon experience and to base his philosophy ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... we had found a few days before. Their appearance was excessively ridiculous, as the garments neither suited their age nor size, and caused great mirth to us all; but my wife had preferred this disguise to the alternative ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... pains I have taken with you! I have been beginning to fear for some time that you are incorrigible—and to-day is really the last straw! So it is kinder to let you know at once that you have been tried and found wanting. I have no alternative but to release you finally from your vows—I cannot allow you to remain my ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 16, 1892 • Various
... herself hoping that by some chance she would find Peter still at home, where, with a fine dignity (which she mentally rehearsed) she would demand explanation, and listening, grant forgiveness. Or else ... she didn't like to think of the alternative. ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... schoolroom; then, ultimately, when released, to have the means to subsist in some third-rate boarding-house until the end. Or marry again? But the dark lines under the eyes, the curve of experience at the mouth, did not warrant that supposition. She had had her trial of that alternative. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... more equable and more to be depended upon," said Norman. "None of you appreciate Tom. However, you must hear my alternative. If you think my going would be too much grief for papa, or if Tom be set against helping him in his practice, there is an evident leading of Providence, showing that I am unworthy of this work. In that case I would go abroad and throw myself, at once, with all my might, into the study ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... At sight of the British frigate and the goodly display of redcoats, the Boers, who had been besieging Captain Smith for a month with three guns and six hundred men, made good their escape, leaving Pretorius no alternative but to make terms. Thus Natal ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... if during that time he had risen, the Chieftain must have seen him. And the Chieftain knew that. He knew also that a golden eagle very rarely makes a "kill" so big that he has to remain with it two hours. The alternative, therefore, would seem to be death or carrion; and the way in which he had circled down would seem to suggest carrion. And it is written among the laws of the king of birds that when carrion is about, the strict rules and regulations ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... morning, very early," before Commissioner Richard McAllister, and before any counsel could reach the spot the case had been decided against the man and woman; but the babe, having been born in Pennsylvania, they did not "dare to send that" into slavery; "so the only alternative was to take it away from its mother," which was done, and that evening the man and woman were taken South. No time had been allowed to bring forward witnesses in their behalf, and there was only a single witness against them, and he a boy about seventeen years ...
— The Fugitive Slave Law and Its Victims - Anti-Slavery Tracts No. 18 • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Hildyard found that it was necessary either to reinforce the mounted troops that were posted at Willow Grange, thus dividing the forces at his disposal, or to evacuate the place. He decided on the latter alternative, and thereupon the Boers, with delighted expedition, commenced to make preparation for ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... the practical, Scotty was made of good stuff. It was not an alternative but a necessity that faced him now, and he arose right manfully to the occasion. Despite his wife's assertion that she "never, never would go any farther into this God-forsaken country," he succeeded in getting her into a lumber-wagon and headed for what he genially termed ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... could be given to any girl—it is too awful to feel that the one she loves best in all the world has changed in his feelings towards her. It is not so much the sacrifice of my poor life I mind as the feeling that things are so bitterly altered with him. Jasper put an alternative to me last night. Either I am to marry him within a week, or I am to use my influence to induce Dr. Laurier to sign the certificate. If I accept neither proposal, he will get down two other doctors ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... all carried up to the tent, we found that we had not more rice than was barely sufficient for the present day; and as no more could be purchased, we had no alternative, but to march early in the morning for Bambarra; the distance by all accounts would not exceed fourteen or ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... identity. Yet the Canadian police had been communicated with, and had returned a positive answer that no inquest had been held, or any body found, which could by any possibility be that of the young Englishman. The only alternative appeared to be that he had taken the first opportunity to break all the old ties, and had slipped away to the backwoods or to the States to commence life anew under an altered name. Why he should do ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... mass above the surface of the water. It is a truth unquestionable, that what had been originally at the bottom of the sea, is at present the highest of our land. In explaining this appearance, therefore, no other alternative is left, but either to suppose strata elevated by the power of heat above the level of the present sea, or the surface of the ocean reduced many miles below the height at which it had subsisted during the collection and induration of ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... spite of the Antiquary the duel was easily enough arranged between these two over-hasty young men. It was the custom of the time to fight about trifles, and it seemed to Lovel that as a soldier he had really no honourable alternative. He was fortunate enough to find a second in the Lieutenant-commander of one of the King's gun-brigs, which was stationed on the coast to put down smuggling. Lieutenant Taffril only put one question to Lovel before offering him every assistance. He asked if there was anything ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... approaching. The great blow was at last to be struck. The whole month of December had been wasted in a fruitless siege, and Montgomery determined that, for a variety of imperious reasons, he must attempt to carry the beetling fortress by storm. It was a desperate alternative, but the single gleam of success which attended it was all sufficient to ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... mender of nets struck in. "I was sorry to keep you so long, Major Carrington, in such an uncomfortable position. But the arrival of the Muggletonian before he was due, together with your desire for secrecy, left me no alternative." ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... clearly. What my mind understood, my soul recoiled from accepting. "Come," I said to myself, "I have desired it, and I have done it; there is not the slightest hope that we can live together; I am unwilling to kill this woman, so I have no alternative but to leave her. It is all over; I ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... [Fr.]; necessaries &c (requirement) 630. necessarian^, necessitarian^; fatalist; automaton. V. lie under a necessity; befated^, be doomed, be destined &c, in for, under the necessity of; have no choice, have no alternative; be one's fate &c n.. to be pushed to the wall to be driven into a corner, to be unable to help. destine, doom, foredoom, devote; predestine, preordain; cast a spell &c 992; necessitate; compel &c ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... first the two feelings, and then a feeling of their succession. To have two feelings at all, implies having them either successively, or else simultaneously. Sensations, or other feelings, being given, succession and simultaneousness are the two conditions, to the alternative of which they are subjected by the nature of our faculties; and no one has been able, or needs expect, to analyze the ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... grows harder and more disagreeable until the most fatiguing and exhausting bodily labour cannot count with certainty on being able to earn even the necessities of life; if this or Communism were the alternative, all the difficulties, great or small, of Communism would be but as dust in the balance."[2] And again in the next paragraph: "We are too ignorant, either of what individual agency in its best form or Socialism in its best form can accomplish, to be qualified to decide which of the ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... of Lady Gourlay is neither in your present title nor your present property, but in her child, whom that heart yearns to recover. This, then, Sir Thomas Gourlay, is the condition which I propose; and, mark me, I propose it on the alternative of our using the means and materials already in our hands for your exposure and ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... but the heirs of Gilles implored the interference of Charles VII. to stay the sale. Charles immediately issued an edict, which was confirmed by the Provincial Parliament of Brittany, forbidding him to alienate his paternal estates. Gilles had no alternative but to submit. He had nothing to support his extravagance but his allowance as a Marshal of France, which did not cover the one-tenth of his expenses. A man of his habits and character could not retrench his wasteful expenditure ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... more into the team, and travelled down to Charchester with the others. And at this point a painful alternative faces me. I have to choose between truth and inclination. I should like to say that the Bishop eclipsed himself, and broke all previous records in the Charchester match. By the rules of the dramatic, nothing else is possible. But truth, though it crush me, and truth compels ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... the reader desiring to have at hand a stock of bromide papers, I would advise Platino A, or a similar soft paper for prints under 5 x 7 inches; Matte-Enamel for soft effects, or a similar paper, as an alternative; Platino C and Royal Bromide for soft effects, or similar papers, for prints 8 x 10 inches or larger, and for enlargements. To these might be added a package of Standard B, and another of one of the above varieties ...
— Bromide Printing and Enlarging • John A. Tennant
... for himself the importance of the new monument will be forced to wonder how and why the same word in the original gets such different renderings. Prolonged study will be needed to bring out fully the whole meaning of many passages, and it may conduce to such a result to present the public with an alternative rendering in an English dress. Needless to say, scholars will continue to use Scheil's edition as the ultimate source, but for comparative purposes a literal translation may ...
— The Oldest Code of Laws in the World - The code of laws promulgated by Hammurabi, King of Babylon - B.C. 2285-2242 • Hammurabi, King of Babylon
... life. So dreadful a punishment (to which, whatever it might be, he had on his previous release sworn to submit,) suddenly struck him to the very heart, and caused him to show some signs of a subdued mind. On which the Archbishop mitigated that sentence by adding to it an alternative, "Unless he shall be able to give bail, to the satisfaction of ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... flight! such was the only alternative that seemed to remain to continental sovereigns in presence of the exactions and the imperious will of Napoleon. The Pope alone, as already for two years past, was still resisting his demands, and was evincing ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... Commentator explains the use made of it in the text to be, a person who is unhappy either by reason of the absence of the object of his desire or by reason of the presence of what is disagreeable to him. We have however preferred the alternative meaning which ...
— Hindu Law and Judicature - from the Dharma-Sastra of Yajnavalkya • Yajnavalkya
... General Halleck not to allow the gunboats to go further up the river than Clarksville. Foote was greatly disappointed, and, absolutely certain of capturing the city, telegraphed for permission to do so, but it was refused. Thus he was left no alternative but to return ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... Ministry, upset the Cabinet of Naples, and turned out even the King himself from her bedchamber! So much for the overthrow of Spanish etiquette by Austrian policy. The King of Spain became outrageous at the influence of Maria Theresa, but there was no alternative. ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 3 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... "Then I will blast your square with my artillery" "But you don't have any guns, they are stuck in the mud." "If I show you my cannons, which are behind my first regiment, will you then surrender?" "I would have no alternative, for I would have no ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... proceed and confine themselves, for the time being, to imprecations and grumbling. When she overtook the army, it was crossing the Potomac, below Harper's Ferry. Her men refused to cross. She offered them the alternative to go forward peaceably, or to be dismissed and replaced by soldiers. They chose the former, and from that day forward were all obedience, fidelity and usefulness. The expected battle was not fought, ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... foundering, while we stay, Fate hovers o'er, and marks us for her prey." He said: Palemon saw with grief of heart The storm prevailing o'er the pilot's art; In silent terror and distress involved, He heard their last alternative resolved: High beat his bosom. With such fear subdued, Beneath the gloom of some enchanted wood, 760 Oft in old time the wandering swain explored The midnight wizards' breathing rites abhorr'd; ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... not only lawful, but profitable and glorious. Being, however, deficient in cavalry, and warned by the omen of a victim being found with an imperfect liver, he retired to Ephesus, and there collected a cavalry force, giving rich men the alternative of either serving themselves in his army, or of furnishing a horse soldier instead. Many preferred to do so, and Agesilaus soon possessed a force of warlike cavalry in the place of worthless foot soldiers; for those who did not wish to serve personally hired men who were ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... in which the action of the narrative takes place, her Majesty Queen Victoria had abdicated in favour of the present Prince of Wales, and was living in comparative retirement at Balmoral, retaining Osborne as an alternative residence.] ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... cast himself on Akbar's mercy. The emperor not only freely pardoned him, but magnanimously offered him the choice of a high place in the army or a suitable escort for a pilgrimage to Mecca, and Bairam preferred the latter alternative. When Akbar ascended the throne, only a small portion of what had formerly been comprised within the Mogul empire owned his authority, and he devoted himself with great determination and success to the recovery of the revolted provinces. Over each of these, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... young creatures have come to a premature death in consequence of it, and how many hearts have been hardened by the oppression which it necessitates. Nor does the evil stop there. The dressmakers' apprentices in a great city have another alternative; and it is quite as much to escape from the intolerable labours which are imposed upon them in the London season, as from any sexual frailty, that such multitudes of them adopt a vocation which affords some immediate relief, whilst it ensures a doubly fatal termination ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. 577 - Volume 20, Number 577, Saturday, November 24, 1832 • Various
... keeper of his own conscience, and would not be either more or less honest at heart for what he did or did not do. All the kingdoms of the earth could not have tempted Charlton to serve himself by another man's perjury. But liberty on one hand and State's-prison on the other, was a dreadful alternative. And so, when the meek and studious man whom Conger used for a partner called on him, he answered all his questions, and offered no objection to the assumption of the quiet man that Mr. Conger would carry on the case ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... her to the most menial offices; the dragons open a well for the young maidservant, and the wild beasts bring her wood. The king sends his troops to burn the nunnery, Kwan-in prays, rain falls, and extinguishes the conflagration. She is brought to the palace in chains, and the alternative of marriage or death is placed before her. In the room above where the court of the inquisition is held there is music, dancing, and feasting, sounds and sights to allure a young girl; the queen also urges her to leave the convent, and accede to the ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... same law, the positive evils of corrupt government are bound to fall heaviest upon the poorest and least capable. When the water of Chicago is foul, the prosperous buy water bottled at distant springs; the poor have no alternative but the typhoid fever which comes from using the city's supply. When the garbage contracts are not enforced, the well-to-do pay for private service; the poor suffer the discomfort and illness which are inevitable from a foul atmosphere. The ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... of this root is only a fraction of an inch in length; the rest is hidden by the surrounding earth. Is the presence of this source of sap fortuitous? Or is it the result of deliberate choice on the part of the larva? I incline towards the second alternative, so repeatedly was the presence of a root verified, at least when ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... the devil's name can you expect me to be happy in this city? Do you think it is pleasant to have no alternative to the society of American men except that of a ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... him than it did to Owen; she did not wish him to hate her, but he would hate her, and to avoid seeing her he would not go to Dowlands, and so she would rob her father of his friend—the friend who had kept him company when she deserted him. There was another alternative. If she liked him well enough to be his mistress, she should like him well enough to be his wife. But knowing that she would not marry him, she took up her other ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... unaided exertions, had they been permitted. But no such permission could be obtained. They were compelled either to abstain from preaching altogether, or to remain in connection with the Church. And even this alternative was not always left to their choice. They were frequently kept in a species of imprisonment in their own houses, not permitted to leave the Church, and yet forbidden to preach, or even to expound the word of God to the members of their own households. Such was the monstrous and intolerable ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... to be wasted?" she asked calmly; and thus questioned, there was no alternative but to reply in the negative. It would never do for the head of the house to pose as an advocate of extravagance; but all the same he was irritated by the necessity, and ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... man!'" and join in one common press to defend his system. Be it so: now we know our true enemies, and soon the working-men will know them also. But if the present Ministry will not see the possibility of a coalition between them, and the workmen, I see no alternative but just what we have been straining every nerve to keep off—a competitive United States, a democracy before which the work of ages will go down in a few years. A true democracy, such as you and I should wish to see, is impossible without a Church and a Queen, and, as I believe, without ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... feudalism is slowly taking shape, at the expense, at one time, of liberty, at another, of order; not as a real rectification of the social condition, but as the only order of things which could possibly acquire fixity, as, in fact, a sort of unpleasant but necessary alternative. No sooner is the feudal system in force, than, with its victory scarcely secured, it is attacked in the lower grades by the mass of the people attempting to regain certain liberties, ownerships, and rights, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... spring all our constitutional controversies, and we divide upon them into majorities and minorities. If the minority will not acquiesce, the majority must, or the Government must cease. There is no other alternative; for continuing the Government is acquiescence on one side ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... nothing but the name.[15] For the whereabouts of this El Dorado, and the way to it, was a trade secret most carefully kept by the Phoenician merchants of Cadiz, who alone held the clue. So jealous were they of it that long afterwards, when the alternative route through Gaul had already drawn away much of its profitableness, we read of a Phoenician captain purposely wrecking his ship lest a Roman vessel in sight should follow to the port, and being indemnified by the ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... as the deluge began, he found Hargate seated at the little wooden table with an earnest expression on his face. The table was covered with cards. Hargate had not yet been compelled to sprain his wrist, having adopted the alternative of merely refusing invitations ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... much good sense not to feel the truth of these observations of the girl and his son; but he knew also, that, cost what it might, the orphans must be delivered before the morrow. The alternative was terrible—so terrible, that, pressing his two hands to his burning forehead, Dagobert sunk back upon a stone bench, as if struck down by the inexorable fatality of ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... had used in that letter, to the ill humour produced by your present situation. I was far from thinking that after having seriously reflected upon the causes and circumstances, you should take occasion from a silence so delicate to go still further; but your last letter no longer leaves me an alternative. ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... this he was deceiving himself, and he was vaguely conscious of the fact; for, from Bunting's point of view, almost any alternative would have been preferable to that which to some, nay, perhaps to most, householders would have seemed the only thing to do, namely, to go to the police. But Londoners of Bunting's class have an uneasy fear of the law. To his mind it would be ruin for him and for his Ellen to be ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... something more than wantonness had inspired Payton's conduct the previous night. Either he had been privy from the first to the plot to waylay the horse; or he had bought it cheaply knowing how it had been acquired; or—a third alternative—it had been placed in his hands, to the end that his reputation as a fire-eater might protect it. In any event, he had had an interest in nipping inquiry in the bud; and, learning who the Colonel was, had acted on the instant, and with considerable ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... of communication betwixt the poet and the audience, we should reduce dramatic authors to the recipe of Master Puff, who makes Lord Burleigh intimate a long train of political reasoning to the audience, by one comprehensive shake of his noddle. In narrative, no doubt, the writer has the alternative of telling that his personages thought so and so, inferred thus and thus, and arrived at such and such a conclusion; but the soliloquy is a more concise and spirited mode of communicating the same information; and therefore thus communed, or thus might have ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... she had been mistaken, to humiliate herself before the impostor, and ask forgiveness for the insanity of her conduct; for, having publicly renounced her accusation by refusing to swear to it, she had no alternative left. In order to sustain her part and to save the honour of her children, she must treat this man as her husband and appear submissive and repentant; she must show him entire confidence, as the only means of rehabilitating ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... invitation from the American Social Science Association, which acted under the power of its charter from the Congress of the United States. The members thus selected, who joined the Social Science Association, were given the alternative of organizing as an independent institute or as a branch ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the evolution of the 100 species, all extinct but two, of Nautilus. The alternative theory of new construction, a hundred times over, is opposed alike to tradition and to sane science. On the other hand, evolution, tested by paleontology, proves a sound hypothesis. The great difficulty of science is in tracing every event to those causes which ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... naked and alone, surrounded by savage animals, and men still more savage. I was five hundred miles from the nearest European settlement. All these circumstances crowded at once to my recollection; and I confess that my spirits began to fail me. I considered my fate as certain, and that I had no alternative but to lie down and perish. At this moment, painful as my reflections were, the extraordinary beauty of a small moss irresistibly caught my eye. I mention this to show from what trifling circumstances the mind will sometimes derive ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... in the dark while our veins grew icy. Somebody below was begging and pleading for mercy, while somebody else was commanding quiet in a voice that meant bloodshed as an alternative. At intervals there was a fierce struggle, mingled with destruction and ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine
... back to them? Could he don the clerical frock coat and with it the clerical system and outlook of St. John's? He knew, as he sat there, that not only he could not, but that he would not. What, then? It was almost as if Julie suggested that the alternative was madcap days, such as that little scene in the bathroom suggested. He looked at her, and thought of it again, and smiled at the incongruity of it, there. But even as he smiled the cold whisper of dread insinuated itself again, small and slight as it was. Would such days fill his life? Could ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... of my readers who for a moment would attach blame to the noble Fanning? The lives of his men were of far more importance to him than the renown of perishing, like Travis, in a desperate struggle. With the latter there was no alternative, for the cry of even seven exhausted men for "quarter" was disregarded, and the garrison fell to a man. But honorable terms were offered Fanning: he remembered his men, and surrendered. Santa Anna! can there be pardon for such a ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... but if it be a greater terror to the citizen, it may answer the purpose better. I do not conceive, that out of a hundred human beings who had been thus confined for a year, one would be found at the end of it who would continue to linger on there, certain it was for ever, if the alternative of being hanged were offered to them. I had written a description of these horrible cells, but Captain Hall's picture of a similar building is so accurate, and so clear, that it is ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... world would have wagged on better or worse, the pitcher gone to the well, the scythe to the corn, and the student to his book; and no one been any the wiser of the loss. There are not many works extant, if you look the alternative all over, which are worth the price of a pound of tobacco to a man of limited means. This is a sobering reflection for the proudest of our earthly vanities. Even a tobacconist may, upon consideration, find no great cause for personal ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... these services he had to pretend that he believed in something which he did not believe in, and being truthful he could not do this. The alternative was, having made up his mind that all these outward signs were deceitful, to alter his life in such a way that he would not have to be present at such ceremonials. But to do what seemed so simple would have cost a great ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... likely to be altogether harmonious determined a decision in favor of a single president. In Switzerland, on the other hand, the cantonal tradition of a collegiate executive, combined with an exaggerated fear of the concentration of power, determined resort to the other alternative. There is a president of the Swiss Confederation. But, as will appear, his status is altogether different from that of the President of the United States, and likewise from that of the President of France. The Swiss executive consists ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... House on two successive occasions rejected Proportional Representation it was generally thought that nothing more would be heard of the other proposals for securing minority representation. To-night, however, after a brisk debate, the "Alternative vote" in three-cornered contests was saved in a free division by a single vote; and it was further decided that "P.R." itself should be adopted at University elections, despite the unanimous opposition of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 15, 1917 • Various
... character of a man who says such things, unless He was something more than one of our race? Jesus Christ, it is as clear as day, in these words makes a claim which only divinity can warrant Him in making, or can fulfil when it is made. And I would urge you to consider what the alternative is, if you do not believe that Jesus Christ here sets Himself forth as the Incarnate Word of God, sufficient for all humanity. 'I am meek and lowly in heart'—and His lowliness of heart is proved in a strange fashion, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... "sometimes justifies desperate measures. We need Mannering, the country and our cause need him. If argument will not prevail there is one last alternative left to us. It may not be such an alternative as we should choose, but beggars must not be choosers. I think that you ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... from either of them might go through the boiler or engine of the Bellevite, which would render her utterly helpless, and subject all on board to the fate of prisoners-of-war. It looked like a terrible alternative to the owner, so overburdened with anxiety for the safety of his daughter; but he was prepared to run even this risk for ...
— Taken by the Enemy • Oliver Optic
... Peredeus, and contrived some excuse for darkness and silence, till she could inform her companion that he had enjoyed the queen of the Lombards, and that his own death, or the death of Alboin, must be the consequence of such treasonable adultery. In this alternative he chose rather to be the accomplice than the victim of Rosamond, [21] whose undaunted spirit was incapable of fear or remorse. She expected and soon found a favorable moment, when the king, oppressed with wine, had retired from the table to his afternoon slumbers. His faithless ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... quadruped. The oddest part of it all was, we alone felt the incongruity; to the Maharajah, the change from Moozuffernuggar to Oxford and from Oxford back again to Moozuffernuggar seemed perfectly natural. They were but two alternative phases in a modern Indian gentleman's ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... my dear. It seems like a crime when I look at St. Matthew's; but when I think of you all, and of home, I believe it is right that he should have the alternative. And now, if poor Lucy come, and ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... very sick man may kill him. That temporally disastrous consequence is, from an absolutistic point of view, a totally irrelevant consideration, as is also the pain we feel in telling the truth under such conditions. But the single moral course is clear; there is no alternative; in absolutistic morals there are no extenuating circumstances. The truth must be told, whatever be the consequences. For to tell the truth is a universal moral law, and conformity to that law a ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... the whole line of beach behind them; and no tree could have been reached, without passing back again through the midst of the drove. Their retreat in the direction of the woods was completely cut off; and there appeared no alternative, but to make the best use they could of their heels, and if possible get ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... anticipate ministers by a spontaneous resignation, and thereby free the ministers from the odium which they would obtain from the public by his dismissal. Camden, however, seems to have had no thoughts of taking such a step, and the ministers had no alternative left but to remove him from office. Accordingly he was dismissed, and Lord Shelburne's prediction was literally verified—the great seals went a begging. The Honourable Charles Yorke, indeed, reluctantly accepted them, but before his patent of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... equal chances in the world they will cease to live merely to please the conventional fancy of men. As long as there was no alternative for women but to marry, it was about as much as any woman's life was worth to be an old maid, and her one idea was to dress and behave so as to escape this fate. She now has other objects in life, and her new liberty has brought with it a freedom ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... that his suicide was a conclusion as little premeditated by the author as it was apparently by the hero. If such ends must be, they should be a climax demanded by relentless logic: some sort of culminating event should occur which, added to what has gone before, leaves no alternative. Paul, however, had survived for years under the stress of all the circumstances which finally constrained him to make an end of himself; and, had he stayed the course—only another hour or so—he would have found that all had turned out for the best and that adequate arrangements had ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 22, 1914 • Various
... uncomfortable on his feet as were Thackeray and Irving; but his resolute will steeled him for the trial. When he dined with the Mayor of Liverpool, he was called upon for the toast of the United States. "Being at bay, and with no alternative, I got upon my legs and made a response," he wrote in his notebook, appending this comment: "Anybody may make an after-dinner speech who will be content to talk onward without saying anything. My speech was not more than two or three inches ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... of hope and fear, Of possibility, alternative, Of all that ever made us bear to live From night to morning here, Of promise even which has ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... falling again into the most entire dependence on the power of Russia, even if no further dismemberment of territory should take place." Grenville then stated that Prussia's conduct was due to fear of a strong Government in Poland; but the present alternative (a Russian occupation) would probably be worse for her. He added these sentences: "No intervention of the Maritime Powers [England and Holland] could be serviceable to Poland, at least not without a much greater exertion and ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... An Alternative Arrangement.—Should the reader prefer to have the clock quite free from the release—and this is certainly convenient for winding and setting the alarm—he should make a little wooden case for the clock to stand in, just wide enough to take the clock, and the back ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... unequal contest in the already overcrowded labour market. Mr. Ritchie answers that, while the conclusion usually drawn from this argument is a sentimental reaction in favour of the old family ideal, as, for instance, in Mr. Besant's books, there is another alternative, and that is the resettling of the labour question. 'The elevation of the status of women and the regulation of the conditions of labour are ultimately,' he says, 'inseparable questions. On the basis of individualism, I cannot see how it ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... this wonderful instinct of self-assertion, to which fighting and much of laughing are subordinate? "Assertiveness", "masterfulness", and the "mastery impulse" are alternative names. Of all the native tendencies, this is the one most frequently aroused, since there is scarcely a moment of waking (or dreaming) life when it is not more or less in action. It is so much a matter of course that we do not notice it in ourselves, and often not in other persons; ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... said Braxley, with a sneer that might have well become the lip of the devil he had pronounced the then ruler of his breast, "knows not all the alternative. Death is a boon the savages may bestow, when the whim takes them. But before that, they must show their affection for their prisoner. There are many that can admire the bright eyes and ruddy cheeks of the white maiden; and some one, doubtless, will admit the stranger to a corner ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... An alternative procedure consists in avulsing segments of the vein by means of Babcock's stylet, which consists of a flexible steel rod, 30 inches in length, with acorn-shaped terminals. The instrument is passed along the lumen of the segment to be dealt with, and a ligature applied around the ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... whether he ever opens the box or not. And he is as likely to poison as to cure himself, if, without guidance, he swallows the first drug that comes to hand. In these times a man may as well be purblind, as unable to read—lame, as unable to write. But I protest that, if I thought the alternative were a necessary one, I would rather that the children of the poor should grow up ignorant of both these mighty arts, than that they should remain ignorant of that knowledge to which these arts ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... for satire on the existing absurdities among newsmongers; although as much can hardly be said for "The Magnetic Lady," who, in her bounty, draws to her personages of differing humours to reconcile them in the end according to the alternative title, or "Humours Reconciled." These last plays of the old dramatist revert to caricature and the hard lines of allegory; the moralist is more than ever present, the satire degenerates into personal lampoon, especially ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... signification of the 'wisp' of this line than 'a bundle of straw.'" Byron offered him two hundred francs if he would destroy the MS., and engage to withhold his hand from all past or future poems. He at first refused; but, finding that the alternative was to be a horsewhipping, accepted the money, and signed ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... real advance. The far-flung battle was practically at a stand-still. And beyond, the chaos in the Balkans, the Serbian debacle! No—the world was full of lamentation, mourning and woe; and who could tell how Armageddon would turn? His quick mind travelled through all the alternative possibilities ahead, on fire for his country. But always, after each digression through the problems of the war, thought came back to the cottage at Rydal, and Nelly on the lawn, her white throat emerging from the ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... it to the kind abstracted from degree. Thus the chemical student is taught not to be startled at disquisitions on the heat in ice, or on latent and fixible light. In such discourse the instructor has no other alternative than either to use old words with new meanings (the plan adopted by Darwin in his Zoonomia;) or to introduce new terms, after the example of Linnaeus, and the framers of the present chemical nomenclature. The latter mode is evidently preferable, were it only that the former ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... to make the disaster an excuse for suing for peace, without raising such a storm at home as might have upset the Ministry. With both fleets sunk, and those of their men not slain, prisoners of war, there was no alternative policy but peace. Captain Concas Palan claims for his chief and the comrades who fell in this futile and disastrous affair "a right to the legitimate defence which our country expects from us, though it is against the interested silence which those who were ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... or without retaining the Excess Profit Duty, and so stifling industry at a time when it will need all the fresh air that it can get. Apart from this expedient, which would seem to be disastrous from the point of view of its effect upon fresh industry, the most widely advertised alternative is the capital levy, the objections to which are patent to all business men. It would involve an enormously costly and tedious process of valuation, its yield would be problematical, and it might easily deal a blow at the incentive to save on which the supply of ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... Oka. The Tartars burned Moscow, then besieged Vladimir, the royal city, which George II had abandoned to seek for help in the North. His two sons were charged with the defence of the capital. Princes and boyars, feeling there was no alternative but death or servitude, prepared to die. The princesses and all the nobles prayed Bishop Metrophanes to give them the tonsure; and when the Tartars rushed into the town by all its gates, the vanquished retired ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... condemn those who judged the former to be the better alternative? Especially those who did not adopt Baxter's notion of a 'jus divinum' personal and hereditary in the individual, whose father had broken the compact on which the ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... thicket into which the lead cattle tore with a crashing of brush and a rattle of horns that sent a chill up and down my spine. But there was no time to hesitate, for our horses were in the thicket, and with the herd closing in on us there was no alternative but to go through it, every man for himself. I gave Nigger a free rein, shutting my eyes and clutching both cantle and pommel to hold my seat; the black responded to the rowel and tore through the thicket, in places higher than my head, and came out in an open space considerably in the lead ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... not the conclusion at which I hoped you would arrive. I think I can offer an alternative. If I ask you to look at this matter like a man of the world, you will have a right to laugh at my presumption. I was a man of the world once, but that was long ago. I have lost so much that what is left to me is hidden in a cloud of self-distrust; ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... I shut off the engine it was necessary to put the nose of the machine down to approximately her gliding angle, otherwise she would "stall" and glide back on her tail. You will sympathize with me when I say that I preferred to avoid this latter alternative, although as a matter of fact, having a flat tail which carried no weight, she would no doubt have taken up her gliding angle naturally. Anyway, I didn't know this, and in April (I think) in some trepidation I got over that step in ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... by a huge bar of timber, secured by a chain, on removing which, the boats are, after a good deal of bumping, pulled through. The interior of the country being so inaccessible, the Norwegians have no other alternative but to roll the timber from the tops of the mountains, and casting it on the rivers, allow it to float to these artificial havens, where it is collected, and then, being made into immense rafts, guided by some half dozen men to the town, whence it ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... scoundrel to the dust, but at what a price! The convict's dress now worn by his brother would soon be worn by him. And what solace would it be then that the same suit would be worn by the impostor also? Yet why prate of solace in a matter like this? What alternative was left to him? In what quarter of the sky was the light dawning for him? He was traveling toward the deepening night, and the day of his life ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... remain alone in the gymnasium, neither in her present garb would she be permitted to visit the parlor, nor to linger in the halls. The only alternative was to go to her room, and meet Helen there. The injustice of the choice of substitutes at last appealed to her. Had she been an Alden in very truth, she could not have shown the old ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... the use of hyphens and alternative spelling have been retained as they appear in the original except as in the ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis
... claimed admittance for him. The place was full, the Brother said—it could not be done. Without another word Kehoe left the child on the doorstep, and simply saying, "Good-night," left Brother Tertullian sorely perplexed, but with no alternative but to take ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... with him when he broke into Riversbrook for the purpose of burglary? That seemed to be the most probable explanation. The second man had been horrified at the murder, and desired to disassociate himself from it so that he might escape the gallows. The only alternative was to suppose that the murderer had confessed his crime to some one, and that his confidant had lost no time in informing ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... Spanish courtiers, and to all other persons who did not reside upon the island, should be set at liberty, the colonists saw the entering wedge of emancipation. The discontent was so great, and the alternative of slavery or ruin was so passionately offered to the Government at home, that the system of repartimientos remained untouched; for the Government felt that it must choose between the abandonment of the island and the destruction of those who alone, if judiciously protected, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... the most magnificent style, and were then invited, under pain of death, either to eat pork, to accept a pagan mistress, or to drink wine consecrated to idols. After long consultation, the doctors, in great tribulation, agreed to save their heads by accepting the last alternative, since the first and second were forbidden by Moses, and the last only by the Rabbins. The King assented, the doctors drank the impure wine, and, as it was exceedingly good, drank freely. The wine, as will sometimes happen, created a terrible appetite; the table was covered with dishes, ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... When the famous nun, with that passionate humility all her own, had implored her to renounce the world, protested that her vocation was written in her face—she really looked like a juvenile mater dolorosa, particularly when she rolled up her eyes—eloquently demanded what alternative that hideous embryo of a city could give her—that rude and noisy city that looked as if it had been tossed together in a night after one of its periodical fires, where the ill-made sidewalks tripped the unwary foot, or the winter mud was like a swamp, where the alarm bell summoned the Vigilance ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... preserve the sensibility of the jaw. It is evident that the sensibility of the mouth is the means by which we are enabled to remain in touch with the forehand of the horse. I would here recommend the alternative, not the combined, employment of the curb and the snaffle." Thin bits which irritate horses' mouths often cause them to fight and pull hard; it is unfortunately no uncommon sight in the hunting field to see a tortured horse bleeding from ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... part, at this moment. If the archbishop had any doubts, as a man of his good judgment might well have had, knowing the new king from his boyhood, they were soon quieted or he resolved to put them aside. He had, indeed, no alternative. There is nothing to indicate that the letter of his dying master allowed him any choice, nor was there any possible candidate who gave promise of a better reign, for Lanfranc must have known Robert as well as he knew William. Together they went up to London, and on ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... be ignorant that the principal object of the Convention, and all the agitation about woman's rights, is to secure to the toiling millions of her own sex a just reward for their labor; to save them from the alternative of prostitution, starvation, or incessant life-destroying toil; and yet the whole subject furnishes her with material for scorn and merriment! Tell it not in Gath! Publish it not in the streets of Askelon, lest the sons of the Phillistines ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... was really due to the cause assigned. Pope, writing at the time to Cromwell, expresses his vexation at the difference, and professes himself unable to account for it, though he thinks that his corrections may have been the cause of the rupture. An alternative rumour,[2] it seems, accused Pope of having written some satirical verses upon his friend. To discover the rights and wrongs of the quarrel is now impossible, though, unfortunately, one thing is clear, namely, that Pope was guilty of grossly sacrificing truth in the interests ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... send the young lady on a two days' journey with this strange gentleman, who was no relative, was impossible. So well brought up as Bessie had been since she came to Caen, she would surely refuse the alternative, and decide to remain at school. Madame replied to the announcement that Miss Fairfax would appear in a few minutes, and would of course speak for herself. But Bessie was in no haste to meet the envoy from Kirkham after parting with her beloved Harry, and when ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... chapter was written my attention has been directed to Mr. Francis Galton's Theory of Heredity (already referred to at p. 417) which was published thirteen years ago as an alternative for Darwin's ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... an inappropriate place to raise black percentages. By mid-1953 Negroes accounted for some 16 percent of Army personnel in Europe and, more important to the command, the number of Negroes with combat occupation specialties continued to increase at the same rate. As an alternative to the untenable practice of reclassifying combat-trained men for noncombat assignments purely on account of race, Gruenther again raised the acceptable ratio of blacks in combat units. At the same time he directed the Seventh Army commander to treat ratios in the future merely as ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... she fancied this alternative, but of course she could not help herself. So she let the two little Dream-Fairies flutter across her shoulders and clamber up her cheeks to their proper places upon her eyelids. Gracious! but how heavy they seemed when they once stood on her eyelids! As I ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... to Colorado with ten cavalrymen and Lieutenant Belden on the road to Denver via Boulder City, to prevent the thief (who went by the name of Durant) from getting into the mountains, and so on to New Mexico. This trip proved fruitless. The alternative that suggested itself was that the thief had gone another road, towards the Smoky-Hill route. The first tidings revealed the fact to them, at the South Platte River, that the inferior horse had been disposed of near Godfrey's ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle
... I can go home again to Maam now," she broke in coldly, and she was vexed for the alarm and grief he showed at the alternative. ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... which I was compelled to witness! and with the expectation too of being the next victim selected by these ferocious monsters, whose thirst for blood appeared to be insatiable. There appeared now but one alternative left me, which was to offer up a prayer to Heaven for the protection of that Being who has power to stay the assassin's hand, and "who is able to do exceeding abundantly above what we can ask or think,"—sincerely ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... Instructions required that, "If the admiral and his fleet have the wind of the enemy, and they have stretched themselves in a line of battle, the van of the admiral's fleet is to steer with the van of the enemies, and there to engage them." There was no alternative course laid down; just as there was no punishment alternative to death in the Article of War ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... sharper—"I am aware that it is a mesalliance, a stain, a finish to our fine race, and if I could take you on the journey I am going I would not suggest this alternative to you; but one must have common-sense and be practical; and as you are young and must live, and cannot beg, this is the only certain and possible solution of the matter. The great honor you will do him by marrying him removes all sense of obligation ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... position in following the course that he had chosen was doubtful. He might turn her over to the nearest military post and then his troubles concerning her would be at an end; but he could not choose that alternative save as a last resort. She had made an appeal to him and she was a woman, a woman ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... resort; dernier ressort[Fr]; pis aller &c. (substitute) 147[Fr]; necessaries &c. (requirement) 630. necessarian[obs3], necessitarian[obs3]; fatalist; automaton. V. lie under a necessity; befated[obs3], be doomed, be destined &c. in for, under the necessity of; have no choice, have no alternative; be one's fate &c. n. to be pushed to the wall to be driven into a corner, to be unable to help. destine, doom, foredoom, devote; predestine, preordain; cast a spell &c. 992; necessitate; compel &c. 744. Adj. necessary, needful &c (requisite) 630. fated; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... made sweet by the river emptying into it. There he established a naval station and from there he set out to sail to Actium. No one came out to meet him or would hold parley with him, though he urged them to do one of two things,—come to an agreement or come into battle. But the first alternative they would not accept through distrust, nor the second, through fear. He then occupied the site where Nicopolis now stands and took up a position on a high piece of ground there from which there is a view over all the outer sea near Paxa, over the inner Ambracian Gulf, and ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... night. I had always to guard against the possibility of rain, and I generally made my couch in pleasant proximity to some place of shelter—a bridge, a cave, or a house; and more than once I had to abandon my grass bed in the very depth of the night, and take up the alternative one in shelter. ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... MARY. February 2nd. The alternative title (the "Presentation of Christ in the Temple,") suggests the lesson to be drawn from all the services of the day. The name "Candle-mas Day" is derived from the custom of a procession with torches, superseding (it is thought) the heathen festival of torches to Ceres in the ...
— The Church Handy Dictionary • Anonymous
... and a certain amount of our transport; and all the horses were discovered in course of time and brought back. Most of the morning was spent, unsuccessfully, in trying to bring up the remaining transport up a steep and narrow road which was the only alternative to the blocked one. But some of the horses jibbed, and we had eventually to give it up and bring up supplies ...
— The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade - August 1914 to March 1915 • Edward Lord Gleichen
... another seemingly interminable interval, she finally stepped forth, I noted a haggard change in her face, and that her coat had been torn open and even the front of her dress wrenched apart as if she felt herself suffocating, or as if—but this alternative only suggested itself to me later and I shall refrain ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... his rear, swam on, keeping almost in a direct line out into the lake. It was evident to all that he could not swim across the lake, as its farther shore was not even visible. He must either return to where they were, or drown; and knowing this to be his only alternative, they stood still and watched his motions. When he had got about half-a-mile from the shore, to the surprise of all, he was seen to rise higher and higher above the surface, and then all at once stop, ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... second confession and absolution and the second batch of psalms, but retained the second lesson and the second canticle. The English even-song is therefore simply the Latin vespers and compline pressed into a single service. The Reformers, by putting a psalm as alternative for each canticle, perhaps intended the English even-song to serve as either vespers (when Magnificat was sung) or as compline (when Nunc Dimittis ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... presently put to a severe and unexpected test, for the balloon, when inflated, proved unable to take up both the aeronaut and the astronomer, whereupon the latter, though wholly inexperienced, had no alternative but to ascend alone, which, either by accident or choice, he actually did. Shooting up into space, he soon reached an altitude of 11,500 feet, where he obtained, even if he did not enjoy, an unobstructed view of ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... vicissitudes, he would, if they would make a treaty with him, allow them to depart uninjured; only that they must pass under the yoke, and quit Numidia within ten days." These terms were severe and ignominious; but, as death was the alternative[137], peace was ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... also the Cure's residence. A good-sized room downstairs served as a chapel for my Sunday services. The cellar, where the A.D.V.S. and I slept was quite comfortable, though by no means shell-proof. As the only alternative abode was the cave, he and I, deciding we would rather die of a shell than of rheumatism, chose the cellar. The Corps ambulances were all together in a valley not far away, and in trenches to the east, ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... go, but there was no alternative. After he had gone and she and I were left together at the table a sense of restraint seemed to fall upon us both. To see her sitting opposite me at the table, pouring my coffee and breakfasting with me ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... been compelled by circumstances to assume command of the expedition, several sheets of open water appeared where ice had been expected, and the anxious charioteer was more than once obliged to risk the lives of the whole party by driving out to sea on the floes—that being better than the alternative of remaining where they were, ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... reasoning, and get some other idea into her mind, until the plate of seal meat is partially forgotten, and does not seem so attractive at nine in the evening as when presented with loving smiles by her old grandmother, who does sometimes resent the alternative, but is still exceedingly solicitous that the little girl should recover. As grandmother understands English imperfectly, Mollie is obliged to reiterate the doctor's orders in Eskimo, making them as imperative as possible, ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... law at once, and its operations will begin so soon as the General and his troops can be put in place. The dread alternative between its harsh rule and compliance with the terms of this measure is not suspended, nor are the people afforded any time for free deliberation. The bill says to them, Take martial ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... all cases, therefore, it becomes us, not on a partial view to reject any proposition, because it is attended with difficulties; but to compare the difficulties which it involves, with those which attend the alternative proposition which must be embraced on its rejection. We should put to the proof the alternative proposition in its turn, and see whether it be not still less tenable than that which we are summoned to abandon. In ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... of a feeling of disappointment as he threw the note upon the table. Open warfare was, after all, so much better. An amende so complete left him with no alternative save acquiescence. Even while he was coming to this somewhat unwelcome decision, the telephone bell rang. He took off the receiver and was instantly galvanised into attention. It ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... tell me they had been taken away!" commented the other, hastily, stepping from the window as the driver vanished once more into the barn. "I am sorry, but there seems no alternative but to wait—at least, until I can ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... chief of Ulva was much alarmed at the menacing apparition of so many galleys, and his anxiety was not lessened by the news, that they were commanded by the redoubted Allan-a-Sop. Having no effectual means of resistance, MacKinnon, who was a man of shrewd sense, saw no alternative save that of receiving the invaders, whatever might be their purpose, with all outward demonstrations of joy and satisfaction. He caused immediate preparations to be made for a banquet as splendid as circumstances ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 345, December 6, 1828 • Various
... under the head of the following species, and of the next genus Scalpellum, a class of allied facts to be advanced, which in some respects support the view here taken, but in others are so remarkable and so hard to be believed, that I will call attention to the alternative, if the above view be rejected. The ordinary Ibla Cumingii must have a male, for that it is not an hermaphrodite can hardly be questioned, seeing how easy it always is to detect the male organs of generation; ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin
... on a dial, the knowledge that it was time to rise and go crept upon them. Although they remained silent, each knew that the other felt the same weight of responsibility, the shadow-finger of the sundial travelling over them. The alternative was, not to return, to let the finger travel and be gone. But then ... Helena knew she must not let the time cross her; she must rise before it was too late, and travel before the coming finger. Siegmund hoped she would not get up. He ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... issues affecting important issues can ordinarily be presented in a case and so will sooner or later reach the Court. The limitations of the presumptions of statutory validity, lack of concern with the wisdom of the legislation, alternative construction, separability of provisions and the like depend for their effectiveness upon the consciousness of the individual judge of the judicial proprieties and have been equally endorsed by those judges most frequently addressing themselves ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... say? What choice had I in the face of an alternative so headstrong and so unreasonable? To rescue Eva from these miscreants I would have let every malefactor in the country go unscathed: yet the condition was a hard one; and, as I hesitated, my love went on her knees to me, there in the ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... according to public opinion. She did not think so herself, luckily, either before marriage or afterward, and I do not think it occurred to her to picture to herself the sort of career which would have been her alternative. She had been an only child, and had usually taken her own way. Some one once said that it was a great pity that she had not been obliged to work for her living, for she had inherited a most uncommon business talent, and, without being disreputably ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... winter of 1783-84, so memorable for heavy falls of snow, Napoleon was greatly at a loss for those retired walks and outdoor recreations in which he used to take much delight. He had no alternative but to mingle with his comrades, and, for exercise, to walk with them up and down a spacious hall. Napoleon, weary of this monotonous promenade, told his comrades that he thought they might amuse themselves much better with the snow, in the great courtyard, if they would get shovels and make ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... a conflict of arms, between the Union and one of its members, whether terminating in victory or defeat, would be but an alternative of calamity to all. In the holy records of antiquity, we have two examples of a confederation ruptured by the severance of its members; one of which resulted, after three desperate battles, in the extermination of the seceding tribe. And the victorious people, instead of exulting in shouts of triumph, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... I found nothing worse, nothing more degrading, nothing so hopeless, nothing nearly so intolerably dull and miserable as the life I left behind me in the East End of London. Were the alternative presented to me, I would deliberately prefer the life of the savage to that of those people in Christian London. Nothing would please me better—not even to discover a new truth—than to contribute toward the bettering ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... him to the sister of one of the murdered deputies, to take the place of her lost brother. The sister, by Indian law, had it in her choice to receive him with a fraternal embrace or to burn him; but, though she was absent at the time, no one doubted that she would choose the gentler alternative. Accordingly, he was clothed in gay attire, and all the town fell to feasting in honor of his adoption. In the midst of the festivity, the sister returned. To the amazement of the Erie chiefs, she rejected with ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... called treachery was indeed rather a proof of the longing desire Mr. Washington and other gentlemen had, not to withdraw from their allegiance to the Crown, but to remain faithful, and exhaust the very last chance of reconciliation, before they risked the other terrible alternative of revolt and separation. Let traitors arm, and villains draw the parricidal sword! We at least would remain faithful; the unconquerable power of England would be exerted, and the misguided and ungrateful provinces punished and ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... one of these terrible attacks that his alleged call to the prophetic office was dated. The prevailing theories of his time ascribed all such experiences to the influence of supernatural spirits, either good or evil, and the sufferer was left to the alternative of assuming either that he had received messages from heaven, or that he had been a victim of the devil. After a night of greater suffering and more thrilling visions than he had ever experienced before, Mohammed chose the more favorable interpretation, and announced to ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... was, were resolutely bent upon making me submit to their will. The conflict had been going on, more or less violently, for months; now I had come very near the end of it. I felt that I must either yield or go mad. There was no chance of my dying; I was too strong for that. There was no other alternative than subjection ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... has some monstrous occupant. What shall I do? There is not an hour in the day that I do not debate the question. If I say nothing, then the mystery remains unsolved. If I do say anything, then I have the alternative of mad alarm over the whole countryside, or of absolute incredulity which may end in consigning me to an asylum. On the whole, I think that my best course is to wait, and to prepare for some expedition which shall be more deliberate and better thought out than the last. As ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... William Rasche went with Pastor Landesen to hire a carriage. No such thing, however, was to be had, and they would have been happy if they could have engaged as good a vehicle as their old crazy tarantas; for the only alternative was a bauer-wagen (peasant's cart), if we except the very expensive extra-post carriage, with which they would have been obliged to take a conductor. It happened that a young man, an apothecary's assistant, wanted to go to Iekaterinoslav; his ancestors were German, and ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... we are in possession of a warrant for your own arrest, under the proclamation which was originally published in the 'Hue and Cry,' for his detention. Sir, you are now aware of the alternative. You produce the person we require, or you accompany us yourself. It has been sworn that ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... power equal to that of the intelligent one, and of handing over the supreme decision in the vital concerns of a country to unsafeguarded majorities less qualified for the task than ancient oligarchy or autocracy. But he had nothing of worth to suggest, no alternative save the return to abuses of the grossest kind which experience had proved to ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... failed in reaching any part of the main land of America. The weather became very bad, the winter approached, and provisions began to fail: there was no alternative but to return, and with bitter regret and disappointment he adopted that course. The two remaining vessels proceeded in safety as far as the meridian of the Azores; there, however, a terrible tempest ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... competent to discharge the duties of executive officer, Mr. Passford, though I appreciate your modesty in not desiring such an important position; but there is no alternative at present." ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic
... academic bodies are partly instituted for the support of speculative truth as well as truth practical, we must think it a blot upon the splendour of Oxford and Cambridge that both of them, in a Christian land, make Paley the foundation of their ethics; the alternative being Aristotle. And, in our mind, though far inferior as a moralist to the Stoics, Aristotle is often less a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... this it is absolutely impossible to stop him. Only two courses are open to the fisher—either to hold on and let him break the tackle; or follow him as fast as possible. The former alternative, we need hardly say, is only adopted when following is impracticable or involves serious danger. In the present case it was neither impossible nor dangerous, but it was difficult; and the way in which Giles Jackman went after that fish, staggering among pebbles, leaping obstructions, ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... that George had ever seen them, Billy told the story of Frank's sickness and death,—of the noble conduct of his little sister, who, when there was no other alternative, went cheerfully to the poor-house, winning by her gentle ways the love of those unused to love, and taming the wild mood of a maniac until she was harmless as a child. As he proceeded with his story, George became each moment more and more interested, and when at last ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... respects like our own. It is true that they are very unlike the typical civilised man of some of the older philosophers, whose every action proceeded from a nice and logical calculation of the algebraic sum of pleasures and pains to be derived from alternative lines of conduct; but we ourselves are equally unlike that purely mythical personage. The Kayan or the Iban often acts impulsively in ways which by no means conduce to further his best interests or deeper purposes; ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... themselves young enough to need very nearly the same attention that is bestowed on the infants; or where the mothers are such in name, but in reality are failing in every quality which we attach to that sacred office; or where the foundling hospital is the only alternative to which the real mother, confronted by the necessity of earning bread for herself and child, can turn—in such cases the creche is a real benefaction whose existence has enabled families to keep together, and children to be given a chance in life who otherwise would have had ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... of the same or a similar Asiatic character with that of the Chinese themselves. Where circumstances have brought the Government into collision with the more energetic and enterprising people of the West, it has had no alternative but to make material concessions, and to confirm these by treaties of perpetual amity and commerce. Russia and England are the only Western Powers that have thus benefited themselves at the expense of China: Russia, with a view to ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... bright were those days, and the night Which followed was full of a lurid light. Love, that of every woman's heart Will have the whole, and not a part, That is to her, in Nature's plan, More than ambition is to man, Her light, her life, her very breath, With no alternative but death, Found me a maiden soft and young, Just from the convent's cloistered school, And seated on my lowly stool, Attentive ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... takes him aback. He expected to find her defiance disappear with the cause of it. But pig-headed, as all Bennets, her opposition only drives him on]. Your ladyship is not forgetting the alternative? ...
— Fanny and the Servant Problem • Jerome K. Jerome
... And what I promise, I deliver. I demand only loyalty to me, and that only in certain things and for a relatively short period. In all else, my men do as they please. In conclusion, I can use you two conveniently, but I do not need you. Therefore you may choose now between my service and—the alternative." ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... had been correct. The swashbuckling Jack Altshuler had know his many times commander even better than Cogswell had realized. Instead of three alternative maneuvers open to the wily cavalryman, he'd ferreted out a fourth and his full force, hauling mountain guns on mule back with them, were trailing over a supposedly impossible mountain path which originally could not have been more then ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... Mr. Opp to stiffen his knees and assume a fierce and determined expression. But he was armed only with his cornet, which, though often deadly as an instrument of attack, has never been recognized as a weapon of defense. There seemed no alternative but to waken Hinton and effect a simultaneous attack from ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
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