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Alternation   /ˈɔltərnˌeɪʃən/   Listen
Alternation

noun
1.
Successive change from one thing or state to another and back again.



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"Alternation" Quotes from Famous Books



... In this alternation of feeling she passed the night. When breakfast time came she took Periwinkle down, making such explanations as she could ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston

... from whose gates you are guided to it by a stony and cypress-bordered walk, which seems a very fitting avenue to a shrine. No spot is more propitious to lingering repose than the broad terrace in front of the church, where, lounging against the parapet, you may glance in slow alternation from the black and yellow marbles of the church facade, seamed and cracked with time and wind-sown with a tender flora of its own, down to the full domes and slender towers of Florence and over to the blue sweep of the wide- mouthed cup of mountains ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James

... feelings of the most diabolical resentment and vengeance against the baronet, and yet it was impossible to get out of him the means by which he proposed to visit them upon him. On leaving Father M'Mahon, therefore, he experienced a state of alternation between a resolution to make disclosures and a determination to be silent and work out his own plans. He also feared death, it is true: but this was only when those rare visitations of conscience occurred that were awakened by superstition, instead of an enlightened and Christian sense of religion. ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... of this battle, leading his own Mississippi regiment. His horse was killed under him early this morning, and he's fought all day on foot, swearing in the strange and melodious fashion that you know. It's hop! swear! hop! swear! in beautiful alternation!" ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler

... in short," continued Montreal, "between the great families; an alternation of prosecutions, and confiscations, and banishments: today, the Guelfs proscribe the Ghibellines—tomorrow, the Ghibellines drive out the Guelfs. This may be liberty, but it is the liberty of the strong against the weak. In the other cities, as Milan, as Verona, as Bologna, the people ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... barren waste or prodigal verdure, all had beauty in his eyes; for their beauty lay in his own soul, through which he beheld them. From these walks he would return home at dusk, take his simple meal, rhyme or read away the long evenings with such alternation as music or the dreamy thoughts of a young man with gay life before him could afford. Happy Maltravers!—youth and genius have luxuries all the Rothschilds cannot purchase! And yet, Maltravers, you ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... out the practical considerations of the moment, another was equally busy with the objective and picturesque world of the river side. If the two or more threads of thought were not actually followed at the same instant, the alternation was so rapid as not to be perceived. What was to be done? How was the situation to be met, if the worst came to the worst? Ah! what far harder contests had gone on in these dwellings that one passed by the hundred. What lives of sordid toil had been ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... on increasing, is the abode of a male, superior in size to the other sex; the less spacious back room contains a female. I have already drawn attention in an earlier chapter to the wonderful problem submitted for our consideration by this breaking up of the laying into couples and this alternation of the males and females. Without calling for other work than the transverse partitions, the broadening stairway of the Snail-shell thus furnishes both sexes with ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre

... loud responses, in those rhythmic phrases, so simple, yet so fervent, almost as if every tenth heart-beat, instead of its dull tic-tac, articulated itself as "Good Lord, deliver us! "—the sweet alternation of the two choirs, as their holy song floated from side to side, the keen young voices rising like a flight of singing-birds that passes from one grove to another, carrying its music with it back and forward,—why ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)

... cheerful for both, when she found it too much to be cheerful for herself. In his absence she feigned free and open talks with him, and explained everything, and experienced a kind of ghostly comfort in his imagined approval and forgiveness, but in his presence, nothing really happened except the alternation of her kindness and unkindness, in which she was too ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... sent home in the care of one of Crito's servants. Socrates himself has just been released from chains, and is led by this circumstance to make the natural remark that 'pleasure follows pain.' (Observe that Plato is preparing the way for his doctrine of the alternation of opposites.) 'Aesop would have represented them in a fable as a two-headed creature of the gods.' The mention of Aesop reminds Cebes of a question which had been asked by Evenus the poet (compare Apol.): 'Why Socrates, who was not a poet, ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato

... grey which robes the clear-cut horizon; no variety of landscape more pronounced than the alternations of glowing sunlight and snowy moonlight and twinkling starlight, all streaming through diaphanous air. No contrast more admirable than the alternation of iron upland whereupon hardly a blade of grass may grow and the Wady with its double avenue of leek-green tamarisks, hedging now a furious rain-torrent then a ribbon of purest sand, or the purple-gray shadow rising majestic in the Orient to face ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... uttered a little squawk of delight, and went at each other like two little tigresses, and kissed in swift alternation with a singular ardor, drawing their crests back like snakes, and then darting them forward and inflicting what, to the male philosopher looking on, seemed hard kisses, violent kisses, rather than the tender ones to be expected from ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... caravan route, the traveller sees stretching before him an apparently boundless plain, wholly unbroken by natural elevations, generally green with crops or with marshy plants, and canopied by a cloudless sky, which rests everywhere on a distant flat horizon. An absolute monotony surrounds him. No alternation of plain and highland, meadow and forest, no slopes of hills, or hanging woods, or dells, or gorges, or cascades, or rushing streams, or babbling rills, meet his gaze on any side; look which way he will, all is sameness, one vast smooth expanse of rich ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson

... influences. From the sovereign down to the lowest subject, everyone composed verses. These were not rhymed; the structure of the Japanese language does not lend itself to rhyme. Their differentiation from prose consisted solely in the numerical regularity of the syllables in consecutive lines; the alternation of phrases of five and seven syllables each. A tanka (short song) consisted of thirty-one syllables arranged thus, 5, 7, 5, 7, and 7; and a naga-uta (long song) consisted of an unlimited number of lines, all fulfilling the same conditions as to number of syllables and alternation of phrases. No ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... This ceaseless alternation of voices and silence seemed the rhythm of the sacred hymn which resounds and prolongs its sound from age ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac

... soul, but a picture and effigy of that. Thou hast come to me lately, and already thou art seizing thy hat and cloak. It is not that the soul puts forth friends, as the tree puts forth leaves, and presently, by the germination of new buds, extrudes the old leaf?[293] The law of nature is alternation forevermore. Each electrical state superinduces the opposite. The soul environs itself with friends, that it may enter into a grander self-acquaintance or solitude; and it goes alone, for a season, that it may exalt its conversation or society. This method betrays itself along ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... had therefore asked the Cliffords. But the Cliffords could not come, and then she had declined to make any further attempt. Indeed, a new idea had struck her. Brooke Burgess, her guest, should sit at one end of the table, and Mr. Gibson, the clergyman, at the other. In this way the proper alternation would be effected. When Martha heard this, Martha quite understood the extent of the good fortune that was in store for Dorothy. If Mr. Gibson was to be welcomed in that way, it could only be in preparation of his ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... it went on with the same alternation of the voices through seven or eight verses; and it was curious to feel how much was gained by this simple variation of ...
— In Wicklow and West Kerry • John M. Synge

... lead to retrospect: after a year of the greatest of all wars it is natural to indulge in a stock-taking of the national spirit, and comforting to find that, in spite of disillusions and disappointments, the alternation of exultations and agonies, the soul of the fighting men of England remains unshaken and unconquerable. Three of the Great Powers of Europe espoused the cause of Liberty a year ago; now there are four, and the aid of Italy in engaging and detaching ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch

... next weeks passed in a constant alternation of oppressive fears and aspiring hopes, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... the energy of the assailants flagged and there was a lull in the storm of sound made by human voices and the clatter of arms. Then the men on the walls would look with strained attention on the cavalry battle in the plain, would follow the fortunes of the king with every alternation of joy or fear, and shout advice or exhortation as though their voices could reach their distant friends.[1041] Marius, who conducted the assault at that portion of the wall which commanded this absorbing view, formed the idea of ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge

... usually they are mild and beneficent in their action, not agents of destruction and lords of elemental misrule. The air, without whose presence we could not survive a minute, is usually a pleasant companion, now resting about us in soft calm, now passing by in mild breezes. The alternation of summer and winter is to us generally an agreeable relief from the monotony of a uniform climate. The variation from sunlight to cloud, from dry weather to rainfall, is equally viewed as a pleasant ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various

... four persons, while the plot may be summed up in a few sentences, thus: A Pardoner and a Friar, from closely adjoining platforms, are endeavouring to address the same crowd, the one to sell relics, the other to beg money for his order. By a sort of stichomythic alternation each for a time is supposed to carry on his speech regardless of the other, so that to follow either connectedly the alternate lines must be read in sequence. But every now and then they break off for abuse, and finally they fight. A Parson and neighbour Prat interfere ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne

... physical toils. He has intellect, heart, imagination, taste, as well as bones and muscles; and he is grievously wronged when compelled to exclusive drudgery for bodily subsistence. Life should be an alternation of employments, so diversified as to call the whole man into action. Unhappily our present civilization is far from realizing this idea. It tends to increase the amount of manual toil, at the very ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... story clearly. Antiochus Epiphanes—'the god made manifest'; Ptolemaios Euergetes, Ptolemaios Soter. Occasionally we have a Keraunos or a Nikator, a 'Thunderbolt' or a 'God of Mana', but mostly it is Soter, Euergetes and Epiphanes, the Saviour, the Benefactor, the God made manifest, in constant alternation. In the honorific inscriptions and in the writings of the learned, philanthropy (philanthropia) is by far the most prominent characteristic of the God upon earth. Was it that people really felt that to save or benefit mankind was a more godlike ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray

... complex developments. How this law operates, what influences determine the development of the eggs and germs, and impel them to assume constantly new forms, I naturally cannot pretend to say; but I can at least adduce the great analogy of the alternation of generations. If a 'Bipinnaria', a 'Brachialaria', a 'Pluteus', is competent to produce the Echinoderm, which is so widely different from it; if a hydroid polype can produce the higher Medusa; if the vermiform Trematode 'nurse' can develop within itself the very unlike ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley

... trembling, while Carl became nervous again, then gaily defiant, then nervous again, till the alternation of gloom and bravado disgusted him and made Ruth wonder whether he was an office-slave or a freebooter. As he happened to be both at the time, it was hard for him to be either convincingly. She accused him of vacillating; ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis

... special cell does not directly reproduce its parent form, but gives rise to a structure in which sexual special cells are developed, from whose coalescence springs again the likeness of the original plant. This is termed alternation of generations. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various

... to various tensions, he is impelled in divers directions, he hesitates, deliberates, and he finally makes a decision. During this period of deliberation he is apt to be vividly conscious of desire as such—as a tension not yet relieved, as an alternation of tensions as the attention occupies itself, first with one desirable object, then with another. And the decision, which puts an end to the strife, is clearly distinguished from ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton

... unnecessary, and so belong rather to the central scene; while the second pair (iv: iv), hurrying to the combat, are to be reckoned rather with those who are actively engaged. This is also emphasized by the symmetrical alternation of young and old ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various

... which led down the surface of the ice, and then stood to watch the effect of the current on the flame. The experiment proved that the currents alternated, and, as I fancied, regularly; and in order to determine, if possible, the law of this alternation, I observed with my watch the exact duration of each current. For twenty-two seconds the flame of the bougie was blown away from the entrance, so strongly as to assume a horizontal position, and almost to leave the wick: then the current ceased, and the flame ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne

... candlelight, the latter seemed endowed with some peculiar and emphatically weird life—their glistening, polished surfaces threw a dozen and one fantastic but oddly human shadows on the boards, as at the same time they appeared in bewildering alternation to increase ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell

... section clearly tells us of a large bay of pure salt-water, gradually encroached on, and at last converted into the bed of a muddy estuary, into which floating carcasses were swept. At Punta Gorda, in Banda Oriental, I found an alternation of the Pampaean estuary deposit, with a limestone containing some of the same extinct sea-shells; and this shows either a change in the former currents, or more probably an oscillation of level in the ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... on the selfsame spot Where thou wast born, that still repinest not — Type of the home-fond heart, the happy lot! — Deeply thy mild content rebukes the land Whose flimsy homes, built on the shifting sand Of trade, for ever rise and fall With alternation whimsical, Enduring scarce a day, Then swept away By swift engulfments of incalculable tides Whereon capricious Commerce rides. Look, thou substantial spirit of content! Across this little vale, thy continent, To where, beyond the mouldering mill, Yon old deserted ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier

... his speech, pre-occupied, all the while he "wheezes out law and whiffles Latin forth," with a birthday-feast in preparation for his eight-year-old son, little Giacinto, the pride of his heart. The effect is very comic, though the alternation or intermixture of lawyer's-Latin and domestic arrangements produces something which is certainly, and perhaps happily, without parallel in poetry. His defence is, and is intended to be, mere quibbling. Causa honoris ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons

... heavens, the elements, all the meteorological influences, have run riot for weeks past. Such caprices, abruptest alternation of frowns and beauty, I never knew. It is a common remark that (as last summer was different in its spells of intense heat from any preceding it,) the winter just completed has been without parallel. It has remain'd so down to the hour I am writing. Much of the daytime ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... implicit in the ideas of karma and reincarnation. For what is karma but the return of time, the flowering in the present of some seed sown elsewhere and long ago? And what is reincarnation but the major cycle of that sweep into objective existence and out again, of which the alternation between waking and sleeping ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon

... This form of insanity represents the inability to control an extreme degree of the varied moods to which we all are subject. Long before the modern classification of mental disorders, Burton, in his introduction to the "Anatomy of Melancholy," expressed this alternation of moods thus: ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.

... turmoil without. Pancoast says: "He delights in leading us to contemplate the infinite calm of Nature, beside which man's transitory woes are reduced to a mere fretful insignificance. All the beautiful poem of Tristram and Iseult is built upon the skilful alternation of two themes. We pass from the feverish, wasting, and ephemeral struggle of human passions and desire, into an atmosphere that shames its heat and fume by an immemorial coolness and repose;" and the same comparison constitutes the theme for a considerable portion of his poetical work. In his ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold

... however, that the ridges do not necessarily take the direction of the warp filaments, for, with a different alternation of the horizontal series—the woof—we get oblique ridges, as shown in the partly finished bottle illustrated in Fig. 295. They are, however, not so pronounced as in the preceding case. The peculiar effect of ...
— A Study Of The Textile Art In Its Relation To The Development Of Form And Ornament • William H. Holmes

... individual taste than that which gave its generic stamp to the great Victorian period, is the happy possessor of some good things. Upon the mantel-shelf, backed by a large mirror, stands old china in alternation with alabaster jars, under domed shades, and tall vases encompassed by pendant ringlets of glass-lustre. Rose-wood, walnut, and mahogany make a well-wooded interior; and in the dates thus indicated there is a touch of Georgian. ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman

... preferments, etc., were to go to the opposite party, according at times, to very singular rules, applicable, for instance, according to the month wherein the said benefice fell vacant. The usage of the "alternation" was introduced in the time of Pope Martin ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various

... custom on the stage, in all good murderous melodramas, to present the tragic and the comic scenes, in as regular alternation, as the layers of red and white in a side of streaky bacon. The hero sinks upon his straw bed, weighed down by fetters and misfortunes; in the next scene, his faithful but unconscious squire regales the audience ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... long words the due alternation of stressed and unstressed vowels was not easy to maintain. There was no difficulty in such a combination as h['o]nor['i]fic['a]bil['i] or as tud['i]nit['a]tib['u]s, but with the halves put together there would be a tendency to say h['o]nor['i]ficabilit['u]dinit['a]tibus. ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt

... great horse, or one like him, and his train of little cars. The man driving nodded to him. Again he happened on two men unloading similar cars, and passing the boards down to other men below, who piled them skilfully, two end planks one way, and then the next tier the other, in regular alternation. They wore thick leather aprons, and square leather pieces strapped across the insides of their hands as a protection against splinters. These, like all other especial accoutrements, seemed to ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White

... the severest in the memory of any inhabitant. For nearly eight weeks, we had an alternation of icy north winds and snow-storms. The thermometer went down to 20 degrees of Fahrenheit—a degree of cold which seriously affected the orange-, if not the olive-trees. Winter is never so dreary as in ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various

... years of my life has nothing to show but the alternation of such honeymooning as never was before with a dull but contented prison life, not one hour of which is worth recording, or even remembering, except as a ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al

... April days are not darkened, and the tender green of the fresh leaf-buds is all the more vigorous and luxuriant, because it is fed from the decaying leaves that litter the roots of the long-lived oak. Thus through the ages the pathetic alternation goes on. Penelope's web is ever being woven and run down and woven again. Joseph dies; Israel grows. Let us not take half-views, nor either fix our thoughts on the universal law of dissolution and decay, nor on the other side of the process—the universal ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... performances are worth watching, they have not sprung suddenly into notice by some special achievement or by doing work so sensational that it would not fail to set people talking. There has been no spasmodic brilliancy in their progress, none of that strange alternation of masterly accomplishment and hesitating effort which is apt at times to mark the earlier stages of the life of an artist who may or may not attain greatness in his later years. They have gone forward steadily year by year, amplifying their methods ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement

... not entirely the amount of work done, but the continuity of strain that wears upon the body. Even a brief rest interrupts this strain; it unclogs the wheels of action. Our bodies are not designed for continuous toil. An alternation of labor and rest diminishes the waste of life. The benign process of repair cannot go on, to any extent, during strenuous labor, but by interposing frequent though brief periods of rest, we lessen the amount of exhaustion, ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell

... represented in his portraits; but no portrait that I have seen gives any idea of his expression. There were so many things in it, and they chased each other in and out of his face. I have seen people who were grave and gay in quick alternation; but Mark Ambient was grave and gay at one and the same moment. There were other strange oppositions and contradictions in his slightly faded and fatigued countenance. He seemed both young and old, both anxious and indifferent. He had evidently ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James

... Hogg gives some details which complete the impression of Shelley's personal appearance, and which are fully corroborated by Trelawny's recollections of a later date. "There were many striking contrasts in the character and behaviour of Shelley, and one of the most remarkable was a mixture, or alternation, of awkwardness with agility—of the clumsy with the graceful. He would stumble in stepping across the floor of a drawing room; he would trip himself up on a smooth-shaven grass-plot, and he would tumble in the most inconceivable ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... traveller's comfort depends mainly upon weather. Usually the air of Maghir Shu'ayb was keen, pure, and invigorating, with a distinct alternation of land-breeze by night, and of sea-breeze by day. Nothing could be more charming than the flushing of the mountains at sunrise and sunset, and the magnificence of the windy, wintry noon. The rocky spires, pinnacles, and domes, glowing with gorgeous ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... sound of w; I said "vater" every time. Patiently my teacher worked with me, inventing mouth exercises for me, to get my stubborn lips to produce that w; and when at last I could say "village" and "water" in rapid alternation, without misplacing the two initials, that memorable word was sweet on my lips. For we had conquered, and Teacher ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin

... key, and as he did so a sharp sting, hardly worse than a leech's bite, pricked Ronald Wyde's breast. A sense of languor crept slowly upon him, his feet tingled, his breath came slowly, and waves of light and shade pulsed in indistinct alternation before his sight; but through them the old man's eyes peered into his, like a dream. Presently Ronald would have started if he could, for two old philosophers were craning over him instead of one. But as he looked more steadily, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various

... Addison's signatures in the "Spectator," consisting of the four letters composing the name of the Muse of History, used in alternation. We cannot coincide in Johnson's encomium. The allusion is, we think, at once indecent and obscure; and what, after all, does it say, but that Addison's papers aided ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... alternation of crops (p. 114). Some of the diseases remain in the soil and attack the plant year after year. Whenever any crop shows signs of root disease, or soil disease, it is particularly important that another crop be grown ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey

... great divisions of Australasia and South Africa covering between them in the southern hemisphere 5,308,506 sq. m., while the United Kingdom, Canada and India, including the native states, cover between them in the northern hemisphere 5,271,375 sq. m. The alternation of the seasons is thus complete, one-half of the empire enjoying summer, while one-half is in winter. The division of territory between the eastern and western hemispheres is less equal, Canada occupying alone in the western hemisphere 3,653,946 ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... than the punctilious euhemerism by which all the miraculous elements of the Homeric story are blinked or explained away, unless it be the painstaking endeavour simply to say something different from Homer, or the absurd alternation of fighting and truces, in which each party invariably gives up its chance of finishing the war at the precise time at which that chance is most flourishing, and which reads like a humorous travesty of the warfare of some historic periods with ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... allegorical pieces is that on the Phoenix. Of the pedigree of the fable we have already spoken; as also of the Latin poem which the Anglo-Saxon poet followed. It is rather an adaptation than a translation, and it has a second part in which the allegory is explained. At the close there is a playful alternation of Latin and Saxon half-lines, which does not at all lessen the probability that the poet may ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle

... roll up his blankets and shoulder his rifle. Then he looked about a little. There was the same alternation of woods and prairie, devoid of any human being. He did not expect to see any Texans, unless, by chance, Fannin came marching that way, but a detachment of Mexican lancers might stumble upon him at any moment. The thought, ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler

... made in the House last year, but then postponed rather than defeated, will probably come up again in Congress at this session: namely, to hold the meeting of Congress every third year in San Francisco. Alternation between Washington and St. Louis has now worked well for eleven years; and Western men are getting clamorous about their right to the same privilege in turn. Capitalists of San Francisco offer to contribute five millions of dollars towards the erection ...
— 1931: A Glance at the Twentieth Century • Henry Hartshorne

... fruit and ripen it; at His bidding let it fall and shed their leaves, and folded up upon themselves lie in quietness and rest? How else, as the Moon waxes and wanes, as the Sun approaches and recedes, can it be that such vicissitude and alternation is seen in ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus

... head of diaphoretics, often speedily arrests this disease. The employment of an infusion of red clover blossoms, in small doses, is of undoubted value in modifying the irritation of the air-passages, and may be used to good advantage with, or in alternation with the Golden Medical Discovery. Exposure to cold and wet should ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... of June he had sufficiently rallied his strength to set out with Boswell, for Oxford, where he remained about a fortnight, with Dr. Adams, the master of Pembroke, his old college. In his discourse, there was the same alternation of gloominess and gaiety, the same promptness of repartee, and keenness of sarcasm, as there ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... chapter of this book I have been much engaged by the affairs of a new destroyer we have completed. It has been an oddly complementary alternation of occupations. Three weeks or so ago this novel had to be put aside in order that I might give all my time day and night to the fitting and finishing of the engines. Last Thursday X 2, for so we call her, was done and ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells

... stood dreaming together, locked in a clasping of arms and eyes, gazing up and down on each other, Iollan staring down into sweet grey wells that peeped and flickered under thin brows, and Uct Dealv looking up into great black ones that went dreamy and went hot in endless alternation. ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens

... should have to suppose that the loss of the factor for colour caused the dominant white to appear, and then when this is withdrawn colour appears again, so that the colour factors and the inhibiting factors must lie over one another in a kind of stratified alternation. And then how should we ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham

... communicate his ecstasy and persuade other men to share it—a constant juxtaposition of concrete and metaphysical language; swift alternations between the most intensely anthropomorphic, the most subtly philosophical, ways of apprehending man's communion with the Divine. The need for this alternation, and its entire naturalness for the mind which employs it, is rooted in his concept, or vision, of the Nature of God; and unless we make some attempt to grasp this, we shall not go far in our ...
— Songs of Kabir • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)

... taken place, and far and wide, over sea and land, the black wings of the Pestilence were spread abroad. To those, nevertheless, cunning in the stars, it was not unknown that the heavens wore an aspect of ill; and to me, the Greek Oinos, among others, it was evident that now had arrived the alternation of that seven hundred and ninety-fourth year when, at the entrance of Aries, the planet Jupiter is conjoined with the red ring of the terrible Saturnus. The peculiar spirit of the skies, if I mistake not greatly, made itself manifest, not only in the physical orb of the earth, but in the souls, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... continues, "addressed a complaint to the Admiral, which obtained for him no redress. In the midst of these complaints the Admiral wished to introduce some ladies (who had arrived in the Doric) to Napoleon; but he declined, not approving this alternation of affronts and civilities." He, however, consented, at the request of their Colonel, to receive the officers of the 53d Regiment. After this officer took his leave. Napoleon prolonged his walk in the garden. He stopped awhile to look at a flower in one of the beds, and asked his companion if ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... This alternation of the four hours of deck duty is effected by the dog- watches in the afternoon, which being of only two hours duration each, from four o'clock till six the first, and the second from six to eight o'clock, change the whole order of the others; as, for instance, the ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson

... effacements.[348] Delambre pronounced them "more curious than really useful."[349] Even Herschel, profoundly as he studied them, and intimately as he was convinced of their importance as symptoms of solar activity, saw no reason to suspect that their abundance and scarcity were subject to orderly alternation. One man alone in the eighteenth century, Christian Horrebow of Copenhagen, divined their periodical character, and foresaw the time when the effects of the sun's vicissitudes upon the globes revolving ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... shake) consists of the rapid alternation of two tones to the full value of the printed note. The lower of these two tones is represented by the printed note, while the upper one is the next higher tone in the diatonic scale of the key in which the composition is written. The interval between the two ...
— Music Notation and Terminology • Karl W. Gehrkens

... observed to break up the camp of ease, and start on some fresh march of faithful service. And, looking higher still, we find those who never wait till their moral work accumulates, and who reward resolution with no rest; with whom, therefore, the alternation is instantaneous and constant; who do the good only to see the better, and see the better only to achieve it; who are too meek for transport, too faithful for remorse, too earnest for repose; whose worship is action, and whose ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston

... means of creating an entire revolution in the science of astronomy, by transferring the centre of our system from the Earth to the Sun. He accounted for the alternation of day and night by the rotation of the Earth on her axis, and for the vicissitudes of the seasons by her revolution round the Sun. He devoted the greater part of his life to meditating on this theory, and adduced several weighty reasons in its support. Copernicus could not help perceiving the complications ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard

... as a drapery. The bodice was of heavy gold net. A pleated band of pale moire, in a delicate shade of pink, crossed the left shoulder and was caught at the waist in a large rose bow, ambassadorial style. A double necklace of diamonds, one bearing a great pendant of emeralds, and the other an alternation of emeralds and diamonds, encircled her short, thick neck. A diamond coronet fitted well around her wonderful amber-colored wig—for, true to her determination, she had anticipated the now passee Mrs. Ames and had boldly launched the innovation of colored wigs among the smart set. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... species the circumnutating movements have been increased in amplitude and rendered more circular; the stimulus being here an internal or innate one. With sleeping plants the movements have been increased in amplitude and often changed in direction; and here the stimulus is the alternation of light and darkness, aided, however, by inheritance. In the case of heliotropism, the stimulus is the unequal illumination of the two sides of the plant, and this determines, as in the foregoing cases, ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin

... my hand still, and he tightened his grasp upon it. "I shall be with you; you will not be afraid with me," he said. "Come." His eyes were burning, his face flushed and paled in rapid alternation, and his hand held mine like a ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... Cincinnati paper records a heavy fall in the Pennsylvania mountains. The storm is general, and the river rose two feet over night. When we set off, in mid-morning, it was raining heavily; but in less than an hour the clouds broke, and the rest of the day has been an alternation of chilling showers and bursts of warm sunshine, with the same succession, of alluring vistas, over which play broad bands of changing light and shade, and overhead the storm clouds torn and tossed in the ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites

... opposition with the earth, it is 35 millions of miles from the earth, and its surface, as is well known from the drawings of Kaiser, the Leyden astronomer, and of Schiaparelli, Denning, Perrotin and Terby, has apparently revealed an alternation of land and water which, with the assumption of meteorological conditions, such as prevail on the earth, has gradually made it easy to think of its occupation by ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap

... are the succession of repeated designs in mouldings and wainscotings (for example, the alternation of egg and dart), the series of windows in a wall, or of the columns of a Greek temple, or of the black and white keys of a piano. Still more complex is the balanced arrangement of straight lines and curves in a geometrical design, as in certain Oriental rugs or the Gothic rose windows. ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum

... shorn of its wonted proportions, as the occasion demanded—the bivouac had been abandoned, and the little army again upon their march. What remained to be traversed of the space that separated them from the enemy, was an alternation of plain and open forest, but so completely in juxtaposition, that the head of the column had time to clear one wood and enter a second before its rear could disengage itself from the first. The effect of this, by the dim and peculiar light reflected from the snow across which they moved, ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

... freely admitted that such alternation is not the highest ideal of growth, either in the individual or in the community. Our Lord's own parables set forth a more excellent way—the way of uninterrupted increase, whereof the type is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... reason to desire to wreak vengeance upon him. It was audacity of the supremest sort. Sulla afterwards withdrew to his estate at Puteoli, where he spent the brief remainder of his life in the most remarkable alternation of nocturnal orgies and cultured enjoyment, sharing his time with male and female debauchees and learned students of Greek literature, and concluding the memoirs of his life and times, in which, through twenty-two books, he recorded the story of his deeds, colored doubtless ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman

... The alternation of moods exhibited in his conversation with Mr. Wyvern continued to agitate him during the night. Now it seemed impossible to approach Adela in any way; now he was prepared to defy every consideration in order to save her and secure his own happiness. Then, ...
— Demos • George Gissing

... dog; this is the third of the rubric. It shows (somewhat difficult of recognition) the Akbal-sign on the forehead of the dog's head occurring in it, and on the back of the head the Kin-sign, as symbols of the alternation of day and night. The same sign occurs again with adjuncts in Dr. 74 (last line, 2nd sign) and once with the death-god in Dr. 8a. The dog as lightning-beast occurs with the Akbal-sign in the eye instead of on the forehead ...
— Representation of Deities of the Maya Manuscripts • Paul Schellhas

... the thought of the expanse is associated with the alternate coming on of darkness and the breaking of the dawn; but the change and alternation gains its unity and ultimate significance from the all-inclusiveness of the ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer

... the Hive, where mothers could leave their children in the care of the Nursery Group whilst they were engaged in industrial work, or as a kindly relief to themselves when fatigued by the care of them; for a primary doctrine was "alternation of employments." It was believed that more and better work could be done by not being confined to one employment all the day of labor; that it was better for the mental as well as the physical system to have a change—in theory as often as once in ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman

... upon the car; they stop the dire momentum of grief, and insure that if misery will again drive us furiously, she must lash winded steeds anew. But what force should stay a disembodied sorrow, which unbreathed by period or alternation of despair, should be rapt onward in the whirlwind and the hurricane, gathering eternally a fresh impetus of woe? Let us rail at the body for its weakness if we will, but prize it also for its restraint of the distracted ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith

... White: Boston Med. and Surg. Jour., Dec. 2, 1915.] after studying 200 cases of heart disease, finds that men are more subject to auricular fibrillation, auricular flutter, heart block and alternation of the pulse than are women. The greater frequency of syphilis in men than in women should be considered in ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.

... to this minor adventure, Flambeau assented gracefully, and followed the old man, who ushered him ceremoniously into the long, lightly panelled room. There was nothing very notable about it, except the rather unusual alternation of many long, low windows with many long, low oblongs of looking-glass, which gave a singular air of lightness and unsubstantialness to the place. It was somehow like lunching out of doors. One or two pictures ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... of criticism regarding these refrains is whether they were rendered in alternation with the narrative verses or as a continuous under-song. Early observers of Indian dances have noted that, while one leaping savage after another improvised a simple strain or two, the whole dancing company kept up a guttural cadence of "Heh, heh, heh!" or "Aw, aw, aw!" which served the ...
— Ballad Book • Katherine Lee Bates (ed.)

... these is that as the difference of path increases, the interference becomes less distinct and finally disappears, reappears, and has a maximum of distinctness again, when the difference of path is an exact multiple of both wave lengths. Thus there is an alternation of distinct interference fringes with uniform illumination. If the length to be measured, the centimeter for instance, is such that the interference does not fall exactly at the maximum—to one side by, say, one-tenth the distance between two maxima, there would be an error of one-twentieth ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various

... are not the same length," Stoffel complained; and there is no alternation of masculine and ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli

... had been changed from a seaman into a warrior, and then from a warrior into an explorer, which was his present character. But he did not see at present the variety and majesty that all explorers wish to find. The country continued low, the same alternation of sand and salt marsh, although the bushes were increasing in size, and they were interspersed here and there with trees ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler

... desire to die was doubtless true. Like every other person involved in irretrievable sufferings and sorrows, he wanted to live, and he wanted to die. The two contradictory desires shared dominion in his heart, sometimes struggling together in a tumultuous conflict, and sometimes reigning in alternation, in calms more terrible, in fact, than the tempests which preceded and ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... of God. He declares to us the Father, and the answer of the child to the declaration of the Father is the cry, 'Abba! Father! show me yet more of Thy heart.' Thus aspiration and fruition, longing and satisfaction in unsatiated and inexhaustible and unwearying alternation, are the two blessed poles between which the life of a Christian may revolve in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren

... have been killed. Do not cover so heavily as to smother the plants, nor so lightly that the wind and rains will dissipate the mulch. Your aim is not to keep the plants from freezing, but from freezing and thawing with every alternation of our variable winters and springs. On ordinarily dry land two or three inches of light material is sufficient. Moreover, the thawing out of the fruit beds or crown, under the direct rays of the sun, injures them, I think. Most of the damage is done in February ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe

... epiceries; and their place is to be taken by odes like those of Pindar or of Horace, by the elegy, satire, epigram, epic, or by newer forms justified by the practice of Italian masters. Rich but not over-curious rhymes are to be cultivated, with in general the alternation of masculine and feminine rhymes; the caesura is to fall in accordance with the meaning. Ronsard, more liberal than Du Bellay, permits, on the ground of classical example, the gliding from couplet to couplet without a pause. "The alexandrine holds in our language the place of heroic ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden

... brown, and the natives have the idea that the bird changes its plumage at stated periods, and that the tail-feathers become white and brown in alternate years. The fact of the variety of plumage is no doubt true, but this story as to the alternation of colours in ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent

... general interest. But science can accept no broken chains. For all the thrill of mystery, we may not forget that the hypnotic state is but highly strung attention,—at the last turn of the screw,—and that the alternation of personality is after all no more than the highest power of variability of mood. In regard to the annihilation of the sense of personality, it may be said that no connection with daily experience is at first apparent. ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer

... anything was left of their wages. As their resources were almost always exhausted before the day of distribution once more came round, beggary succeeded to fulness of living, and a part of the population was literally starving for several days. This almost constant alternation of abundance and dearth had a reactionary influence on daily work: there were scarcely any seignorial workshops or undertakings which did not come to a standstill every month on account of the exhaustion ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... window. But he came not, and I learnt from Schiller that he was grievously ill. In eight or ten days he recovered, and reappeared at his accustomed station. I complained to him bitterly, but he consoled me. A few months passed in this strange alternation of suffering; sometimes it was he, at others I, who was unable even to ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico

... twelve, while the starboard watch will have been up only four hours, the former have what is called a "forenoon watch below,'' that is, from eight A.M. till twelve M. In a man-of-war, and in some merchantmen, this alternation of watches is kept up throughout the twenty-four hours, which is called having "watch and watch''; but our ship, like most merchantmen, had "all hands'' from twelve o'clock till dark, except in very bad weather, when we ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... of the fortnight which followed were a painful alternation of severe suffering and rare intervals of comparative tranquillity. They were soothed by the never-failing devotion of those that were always at hand to read to him or to receive his remarks. He often asked to hear chosen chapters from the Book of Isaiah ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... shadows gave life to the line of their barren mountains—no Goddess of Beauty rose from the pacing of their silent and foamless Nile. One continual perception of stability, or changeless revolution, weighed upon their hearts—their life depended on no casual alternation of cold and heat—of drought and shower; their gift-Gods were the risen River and the eternal Sun, and the types of these were forever consecrated in the lotus decoration of the temple and the wedge of the enduring ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... does he have and not have good and happiness, and their opposites, evil and misery, in a similar alternation? ...
— Gorgias • Plato

... published 1697) the Italian influence is even more marked than in the earlier ones. The general plan is the same, but more effect is got out of the strings without the management of the parts ceasing to be Purcellian. We get slow and quick movements in alternation, or if two slow ones are placed together they differ in character. Variety was the main conscious aim. The notion of getting a unity of the different movements of a sonata occurred to no one until long after. We learn nothing by comparing the various sequences of the movements in the different ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman

... from the unquenchable fire. If it came as a genuine experience, it was the passage from death unto life. But as there was great possibility of self-deception in the matter, the mind was constantly thrown back on self-examination, and in sensitive natures there was often an alternation of terrors ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam

... resumed the brave Captain, once more rushing to the charge. "Besides, even without this alternation of days and nights, life on the ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne

... the first of May saw many fields already specked with the green points of the springing blades. A warm, silvery vapor hung over the land, mellowing the brief vistas of the interlacing valleys, touching with a sweeter pastoral beauty the irregular alternation of field and forest, and lifting the wooded slopes, far and near, to a statelier and more imposing height. The park-like region of Kennett, settled originally by emigrants from Bucks and Warwickshire, reproduced to their eyes—as it does ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor

... attributed to Plato the doctrine of the rotation of the earth on its axis. On the other hand it has been urged that if the earth goes round with the outer heaven and sun in twenty-four hours, there is no way of accounting for the alternation of day and night; since the equal motion of the earth and sun would have the effect of absolute immobility. To which it may be replied that Plato never says that the earth goes round with the outer ...
— Timaeus • Plato

... across the town, and all the afternoon you could see signs, here and there upon the horizon, of other showers. The ground was dry again, while the breeze was cool and sweet, smelling of wet foliage and bringing sunshine and shade in frequent and very pleasing alternation. ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable

... had his enemies during his life and his detractors ever since, and we may go so far as to admit that he deserves them. He was a typical man of that heroic age in that he possessed, even to excess, all its tropic irregularity of ethics. He lived in a perpetual alternation of thunderstorm and blazing sunshine. He admitted himself that his "reason," by which he meant his judgment, "was exceeding weak," and his tactlessness constantly precluded a due appreciation of his courage and nobility. For long years his violent and haughty temper made him the most unpopular ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse



Words linked to "Alternation" :   alternate, sequence, succession



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