"Reversion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... follow. I have been fellow to a beggar again and again under circumstances which prevented either of us finding out whether the other was worthy. I have still to be brother to a Prince, though I once came near to kinship with what might have been a veritable King, and was promised the reversion of a Kingdom—army, law-courts, revenue, and policy all complete. But, to-day, I greatly fear that my King is dead, and if I want a crown I must go hunt it ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... to stand above all things, to call them to his feet and to compel their service. It is the reversion of the order for him to take the subordinate place and serve the inferior creation. Things subdued, such as wealth secured, is to minister to his highest good and to promote his noblest manhood. The order is reversed ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... encouragement to the addresses of any foreign prince whilst she herself was still a subject; well aware that to accept of an alliance which would carry her out of the kingdom, was to hazard the loss of her succession to the English crown, a splendid reversion never absent from ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... with us, yet we were still so primitive ourselves that we were incapable of a cooperative effort strong enough to kill him or cast him out. Rude as was our social organization, he was, nevertheless, too rude to live in it. He tended always to destroy the horde by his unsocial acts. He was really a reversion to an earlier type, and his place was with the Tree People rather than with us who were in ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... in view, were it only a reversion to principles familiar in the past because they are eternal, should always clear the ground. Now every one who, in the domain of ideas, brings his stone by pointing out an abuse, or setting a mark ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... know better'n I do about that, and then again, maybe you don't," he replied darkly. Then with a reversion to his air of injury, he added: "Here's Hornblower come for ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... fame above the want of any but the most honourable patronage, stooped to the unworthy arts of adulation, and abetted the views of the great with the pettifogging feelings of the meanest dependant on office—who, having secured the admiration of the public (with the probable reversion of immortality), showed no respect for himself, for that genius that had raised him to distinction, for that nature which he trampled under foot—who, amiable, frank, friendly, manly in private life, was seized with the dotage of age and the fury of a woman, the instant ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... order of British interests stands the right of pre-emption to all healthy, fertile, "unoccupied" lands of the globe not already in possession of a people capable of seriously disputing invasion, with the right of reversion to such other regions as may, from time to time prove commercially desirable or financially exploitable, whether suitable for British colonization ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... N. posteriority; succession, sequence; following &c 281; subsequence, supervention; futurity &c 121; successor; sequel &c 65; remainder, reversion. V. follow after &c 281, come after, go after; succeed, supervene; ensue, occur; step into the shoes of. Adj. subsequent, posterior, following, after, later, succeeding, postliminious^, postnate^; postdiluvial^, postdiluvian^; puisne^; posthumous; future &c 121; afterdinner, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... They have signed and sealed ten thousand pounds a year more to the Duchess of Cleveland; who has likewise near ten thousand pounds a year out of the new farm of the country excise of Beer and Ale; five thousand pounds a year out of the Post Office; and they say, the reversion of all the King's Leases, the reversion of places all in the Custom House, the green wax, and indeed what not? All promotions spiritual and temporal pass ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... apparent retrogression proves that the reversion of social institutions to primitive forms and types is a fact ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... that the Council must be a 'free' and a 'Christian' one in their sense of the terms was an impossibility for the Emperor and the Catholics; for it meant not only their independence of the Pope—which he could never assent to—but also a free reversion to the single rule and standard of Holy Scripture, with a possible rejection of tradition and the decrees of previous Councils. The Emperor thereupon granted something for appearance sake to the Protestant States by arranging another conference ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... be strong, the Hind replied, If yours were in effect the suffering side: Your clergy's sons their own in peace possess, Nor are their prospects in reversion less. My proselytes are struck with awful dread; 380 Your bloody comet-laws hang blazing o'er their head; The respite they enjoy but only lent, The best they have to hope, protracted punishment. Be judge yourself, if interest may prevail, Which motives, yours or mine, will turn the ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... Man first arose from the primitive Ape, He first dropped his tail, and took on a new shape. But Cricketing Man, born to trundle and swipe, Reversion displays to the earlier type; For a cricketing team, when beginning to fail, Always loses its "form," and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 13, 1892 • Various
... restraint, the inquisitive nature, and the nomadic temperament—these are the strains in the American character of the eighteenth century which ultimately blended to create a typical democracy. The rolling of wave after wave of settlement westward across the American continent, with a reversion to primitive conditions along the line of the farthest frontier, and a marked rise in the scale of civilization at each successive stage of settlement, from the western limit to the eastern coast, exemplifies from one aspect ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... guardianship in chivalry (which lasted till the age of twenty one, and of which we shall speak hereafter) enacts, that any father, under age or of full age, may by deed or will dispose of the custody of his child, either born or unborn, to any person, except a popish recusant, either in possession or reversion, till such child attains the age of one and twenty years. These are called guardians by statute, or testamentary guardians. There are also special guardians by custom of London, and other places[o]; but they ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... admiration and gratitude. He had been a friend for a day or two to the beasts of the forest and one of them had come to his rescue. The feeling of reversion to a primitive golden age was still strong within him, and doubtless the bear, too, had really felt the sense of kinship. He looked in the direction in which the shambling animal had gone, but there was no sign of ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... sprang out of his bunk he was a reversion: the outlaw in Lincoln-green, the Yeoman of the Guard, the bandannaed smuggler of the southeast coast. Quickly he got into his uniform. He went about this affair the right way, with foresight and prudence; for he realized that he must act ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... of ancient treasures in Herculaneum and Pompeii, but as these occurred in the former city so long before the time we are discussing as the year 1711, and in the latter in 1750, these can scarcely be the immediate cause; the reason most probably is that a reversion to simpler and purer lines came as a relief and reaction from the over-ornamentation of the previous period. There are not wanting, however, in some of the decorated ornaments of the time, distinct signs of the influence of these discoveries. Drawings and reproductions from ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... octogenarian female relative—whom I had never seen—but who, for a full decade of years, beyond the period allotted to the life of man—or women either—had obstinately persisted in standing betwixt me and a small reversion—so long, indeed, that I had ceased to regard it as an "expectation." It was of no great amount; but, arriving just then in the very "nick o' time," was doubly welcome; and under its magical influence, a large quantity of superfluous ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... much, and that I should probably be more prosperous if I paid more attention to them: so I hung up three pieces of ivy in my rooms on Xmas Eve. A few months afterwards I got the entail cut off my reversion, but I should hardly think there was much connection between the two things. Nevertheless I shall hang ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... five hundred francs to that sum," said Adeline, "and put it in trust so that you shall draw the interest for life with reversion to Hortense. Thus, you will have six hundred ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... too, this Henri of Bearn, for he was the originator of the scheme to make the great roadways of France tree-shaded boulevards, which in truth is what many of them are to-day. This monarch of love, intrigues, religious reversion, and strange oaths passed the first (and only, for the present is simply a continuance thereof) ordonnance making the planting of trees along the national highroads compulsory on ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... that there is not a tittle of contemporary evidence to justify such a view, it is manifest that the interest of the king was in this case exactly the same as that of each individual lord of a manor. The greater prospect of reversion to the donor, and the other features of the system of entails, which commended them to the petty baron, were still more attractive to the king, the greatest proprietor as well as the ultimate landlord of all the realm. Other articles of the Westminster statute ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... than she, was carrying a small easy chair and placed it before Sally. He looked at her with such a merry face as the restrained laughter came so visibly out of his eyes, that the sight brought a complete reversion in Sally's feelings, and she, all at once, laughed right out; upon which, the boy too, relieved his feelings by a bright peal of laughter, for the rushing in and then the confusion of the unexpected guest had ...
— Erick and Sally • Johanna Spyri
... fathers wished to preserve property in their families, the right of women to inherit became slowly established as civilization advanced. In Judea, Greece and Rome, certain rights of a woman to hold property were clearly settled. In the reversion to force under feudalism, woman's rights to outside property suffered; but they have been gradually restored during the last few centuries. To-day, in civilized lands, a woman's rights to property, inherited or definitely given her or purchased by her, are everywhere recognized, ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... which was thought to be connected with the lions on the English colours, was placed in a bamboo cage in sight of the prisoners, and there starved to death, in hopes of thus abating the force of the enemy. When its carcase was removed, Mr. Judson, at his own earnest entreaty, was allowed the reversion of its cage, and there, to his great joy, Moung Ing brought him his MS. translation of part of the Burmese Bible, which he had kept in his pillow at Ava till it was torn away by the jailors on his removal. The faithful Ing, thinking only to secure a relic ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... by Will could lay down the course of succession, his son was equally free to change it. It was not difficult to persuade the dying boy of the woes that would follow when a reactionary monarch was on the throne—though there had hitherto been no sign that the reaction would go beyond a reversion to the position of Henry's last years. Under Northumberland's influence, he devised the crown to the issue of the Duchess of Suffolk who was herself passed over in favour of her eldest daughter. In June this "device" ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... Alexandria with Mrs. Washington. Dined at Mr. Dulaney's and exchanged deeds for conveyances of land with him and Mrs. Dulaney, giving mine, which I bought of Messrs. Robert Adam, Dow and McIver, for the reversion of what Mrs. Dulaney is entitled to at the death of her Mother within bounds of ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... that was for carrying a Note from a Baronet in the Side Box to a Citizens Wife in the Gall'ry; but there was no harm in't, 'twas only to treat with her here by and by, about borrowing a hundred Pound of her Husband upon the Reversion of a Parsonage. [To Knap.] Red Coat your Inclinations. [To Tott.] Sir, prosperity t'you, you are ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... people who were then making their way toward stardom—Wilton Lackaye, Viola Allen, Blanche Walsh, William Faversham, Frederick Bond, Bruce McRae, Paul Arthur, W. H. Thompson, J. W. Piggott. "Aristocracy" was Bronson Howard's reversion to the serenity of the society drama after the spectacle of war. The first night's audience was fashionable. The distinction of the cast lent much to the ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... Lancashire property was worth three Newsteads. I believe we have it hollow; though the defendants are protracting the surrender, if possible, till after my majority, for the purpose of forming some arrangement with me, thinking I shall probably prefer a sum in hand to a reversion. Newstead I may sell;—perhaps I will not,—though of that more anon. I will come down ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... in the Padma Purana. The temples have been rebuilt several times, and in the eighteenth century were munificently endowed by an Ahom king, and placed under the management of a Brahman from Nadia in Bengal, with reversion to his descendants who bear the title of Parbatiya Gosains. Considerable estates are still assigned to their upkeep. There are ten[733] shrines on the hill dedicated to various forms of the Sakti. The situation is magnificent, commanding an extensive ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... for others, as, for example, parts of the Punic Wars contributed to Raleigh's "History of the World." We know from a story, little to the credit of either, that Jonson accompanied Raleigh's son abroad in the capacity of a tutor. In 1618 Jonson was granted the reversion of the office of Master of the Revels, a post for which he was peculiarly fitted; but he did not live to enjoy its perquisites. Jonson was honoured with degrees by both universities, though when and under what circumstances is not known. It has been said ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... of Man" another symbolic reversion displays itself—that reversion namely of the soul of the true artist towards the revolutionary organization which, along with insensitiveness and brutality, ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... solved the difficulties which the congress had to face in Italy. The kingdom of the Two Sicilies reverted to the Bourbon, Ferdinand; and the Bourbons also acquired a right of reversion in Parma, where the protest of Spain against the rule of Maria Louisa could now be ignored. Genoa was annexed to the kingdom of Sardinia; the pope received back the states of the Church; the Grand ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... more miserable figure was never cut than his; but how should it be otherwise? A respectable country gentleman, well versed in rural administration, in farming and sporting, with all the integrity of L15,000 a year in possession and L50,000 in reversion, is all of a sudden made leader in the House of Commons without being able to speak, and Chancellor of the Exchequer without any knowledge, theoretical or practical, of finance. By way of being discreet, and that his plan ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... monarchy. Others stayed from love of power or for what they could get. In that golden age of patronage it was possible for a man to hold a plurality of offices which would bring to himself many thousands of pounds a year, and also to secure the reversion of offices and pensions to his children. Horace Walpole spent a long life in luxurious ease because of offices with high pay and few duties secured in the distant days of his father's political power. Contracts to supply the army and the navy went to friends of the government, sometimes with ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... two advance British transports steamed into view, "Les Anglais," at last everyone cried. At once a hugely joyful reversion of feeling. The landing of the British soldiers was made a popular ovation. Their appearance, soldierly bearing, their gentleness toward women and children, their care of the horses were showered with heartfelt French compliments. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... reversion; its emphasis on sovereignty was tyrannical, but it trained the mind in exact ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... conclusion that it was caused through the repair of my boots at York. Before arriving there the heels were badly worn down at one side, and as I had been practically walking on the sides of my feet, the sudden reversion to the flat or natural position had brought on the disaster that very nearly prevented us from continuing our walk. We applied all the remedies that both our hostess and ourselves could think of, but our slumbers that night ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... the choicest and firmest adherents of Squire Mowbray and the Baronet—men who scorned that the reversion of one bottle of wine should furnish forth the feast of to-morrow, though caring nought about either of the fine arts in question, found out an interest of their own, which centred ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... coffee and cigarette, alleging as excuse the epidemic of influenza, consequent on the vile weather, which had woefully reduced the hospital staff. She seemed to be feverish and ill at ease, and tried to cover the symptoms by a reversion to her old offhand manner. As I was so seldom alone with her I could find scant opportunity for intimate conversation. I thought that she might have regretted the frank exposition of her feelings regarding Leonard Boyce. ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... her inclinations; and having entertained the most amorous ones for the count de Bellfleur, easily overcame all scruples that might have hindered the gratification of them:—her head ran on the appointment she had made him:—the means she would take to engage his constancy,—resolved to sell the reversion of her jointure and accompany him to France, and flattered herself with the most pleasing images of a long series of continued happiness in the arms of him, who was now all to her that Henricus ever ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... toward the North, they were in reality mere pawns on the chessboard of Fate, necessary tools in working out the game of civilization on this continent. Who can calculate the sum of the divine forces which the institution of slavery, and its blasphemous reversion of the commands of the Decalogue, and all its cruel outrages and inhuman crimes, have awakened in the souls of the freemen of the North? The loathsomeness of its example and the infernal malice of its designs against liberty and truth, righteousness and justice, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... death he was appointed one of the regents; and at the accession of George the first was made earl of Halifax, knight of the garter, and first commissioner of the treasury, with a grant to his nephew of the reversion of the auditorship of the exchequer. More was not to be had, and this he kept but a little while; for, on the 19th of May, 1715, he died of an inflammation ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... is, this journey, and I see it more clearly the nearer it approaches, gives me a right of reversion on the new lunatic asylum, or at least a seat for life in the Second Chamber. I can already see myself on the platform of the Genthiner station; then both of us packed in the carriage, surrounded with all sorts of child's necessaries—an ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... another, and (with the exception of the Venetian) proved to be wise, just, and clement rulers. Then the too usual practice was adopted of allotting the province to the highest bidder, and rich but incompetent or rascally Turks bought the reversion of the Pashalik. The reign of the renegades was over; the Turks kept the government in their own hands, and the role of the ex-Christian adventurers was confined to the minor but more enterprising duties of a Corsair reis or the "general of the galleys." The ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... the vacant Western territory is, by cession at least, if not by any anterior right, the common property of the Union. If that were at an end, the States which made the cession, on a principle of federal compromise, would be apt when the motive of the grant had ceased, to reclaim the lands as a reversion. The other States would no doubt insist on a proportion, by right of representation. Their argument would be, that a grant, once made, could not be revoked; and that the justice of participating in territory acquired or secured ...
— The Federalist Papers
... Hendrik Brant, the goldsmith, was a matter of common report, and glorious would be the fortune of him who could secure its reversion. This Ramiro wished to win; indeed, there was no ostensible reason why he should not do so, since Brant was undoubtedly a heretic, and, therefore, legitimate game for any honourable servant of the ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... from sudden chance and clinging to the customs of the past. They were all, so far as he had seen, characterized by the possession of high qualities, with the exception of Clarence, whom he regarded as a reversion to a baser type; but he thought that they would suffer if uprooted and transplanted in a less sheltered and less cultivated soil. Inherited instincts were difficult to subdue; he was conscious of their influence. He came from a new land where he had often ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... jealousy is a noble passion is of course to be taken with reservations. Where it leads to murder or revenge it is a reversion to the barbarous type, and apart from that it is, like all affections of the mind, liable to abnormal and morbid states. Harry Campbell writes in the Lancet ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... France compelled to retain in his service a man whom he believed to have said that it would be a meritorious act to murder him; and this man's pastry must be admitted to the royal table every day! The man held the reversion to the office of king's pastry-cook (the right to it when the occupant should die), and the right once acquired, the man could not, by court custom, be got rid of. Thus were court offices not open to merit; but conferred ...
— The Peasant and the Prince • Harriet Martineau
... impatient hands before we had finished the first volume. The books are hungered and thirsted for in Florence, and, although the English reading club has them, they can't go fast enough from one to another. Four of our friends entreated us for the reversion, and although it really is only just that we should be let read our own books first, yet Robert's generosity can't resist the need of this person who is 'going away,' and of that person who is 'so particularly anxious'—for particular reasons perhaps—so we renounce the privilege you gave ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... Sciences of Massachusetts to establish a premium to encourage improvement and discoveries, and a like sum to the Royal Society of Great Britain. He died in 1814, at the age of sixty-two, and by his will "bequeathed $1,000 annually and the reversion of his estate, to found the Rumford Professorship of Cambridge College, Mass.," to which University he felt much indebted for his early instruction in ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... station and purse, purity of life and manners, religion without clericalism, free speech and honorable administration of just laws. His native land untrammeled by French control would realize this ideal, he had fondly hoped: but the Revolution emancipated it completely, entirely; and what occurred? A reversion to every vicious practice of medievalism, he himself being sucked into the vortex and degraded into a common adventurer. Disenchanted and bitter, he then turned to France. Abandoning his double role, his interest in Corsica was thenceforth sentimental; his fine faculties when focused on the realities ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... you limb of Satan!" interrupted the Corporal fiercely, as if his whole tide of thought, so lately favourable to the Soothsayer, had undergone a deadly reversion. "Please your honour, it's getting late, ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in avenging, Master Christian. I know your puritanical principles on that point well," said the Duke. "Revenge may be well said to be sweet, when so many grave and wise men are ready to exchange for it all the sugar-plums which pleasures offer to the poor sinful people of the world, besides the reversion of those which they talk of expecting in the way ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... formulae, and molecular and percentage composition, of the different phosphates 398 II. Reactions of sulphuric acid and phosphate of lime 398 III. Table for conversion of soluble phosphate into insoluble phosphate 399 IV. Action of iron and alumina in causing reversion 399 V. Relative trade values of phosphoric acid in ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman
... he looked up from the horses he was driving, and then, letting the ropes fall, came slowly toward her across the faint purple furrows. All the boyish jauntiness she remembered was gone from his appearance; his reversion to the family type had been complete, and it came to her with a shock that held her motionless that he stood to-day where her grandfather had stood ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... 'smashing up the Mahdi' with the aid of British and Indian troops. Sir Evelyn Baring counted upon his fingers the various stages of this extraordinary development in General Gordon's opinions. But he might have saved himself the trouble, for, in fact, it was less a development than a reversion. Under the stress of the excitements and the realities of his situation at Khartoum, the policy which Gordon was now proposing to carry out had come to tally, in every particular, with the policy which he had originally advocated with such vigorous conviction in the ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... unselfishness of these United States is a thing proven; our devotion to peace for ourselves and for the world is well established; our concern for preserved civilization has had its impassioned and heroic expression. There was no American failure to resist the attempted reversion of civilization; there will be no failure today ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... student, to whom a relative bequeathed a liberal allowance, to be paid him as long as he was studying for his degree. He became known as 'the eternal student,' to the great wrath of the heirs who waited for the reversion of his legacy. For most men the ordinary course is long enough, for it averages perhaps six or seven years, though there is no fixed time, and candidates may take the examinations as soon as they please. The nominal course—that ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... a statue of the Virgin was thrown down and mutilated by unknown hands, a reversion of feeling arose immediately, and even Marguerite was not able to save poor Berquin, and he was burned at the stake. Upon learning of his imminent peril, she wrote to ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... derives from the Mid. Eng. cirurgien or sirurgien, through the Fr. from the Gr. [Greek: cheirourgos], one who operates with the hand (from [Greek: cheir], hand, [Greek: ergon], work); from the early form is derived the modern word "surgeon." "Chirurgeon" is a 16th century reversion to the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... by similar condition on a small scale in Nicaragua. Our marine and naval forces protected our citizens and their property and prevented a heavy sacrifice of life and the destruction of that country by a reversion to a state of revolution. Henry L. Stimson, former Secretary of War, was sent there to cooperate with our diplomatic and military officers in effecting a settlement between the contending parties. This was done on the assurance that we would cooperate in restoring a state ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Calvin Coolidge • Calvin Coolidge
... instructive of all, for in it we see down into the depths of humanity; for, as on a raft of shipwrecked beings without food, there is a reversion to a state of nature. The light tissue of habit and of rational ideas in which civilization has enveloped man, is torn asunder and is floating in rags around him; the bare arms of the savage show themselves, and they are striking out. The only guide ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... seems likely, those rudely improvised sheds are to be inhabited indefinitely, we may look forward to an interesting phenomenon, a reversion to a corresponding type of man. The lack of the most ordinary appliances of civilization, such as linen, washing-basins and cooking utensils, will reduce them to the condition of savages who view these things with indifference ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... is raised to a position intermediate between that of an ordinary slave and an anak mas, and is regarded as a brother, or sister, father, mother, or child; but if he or she attempt to escape, a reversion to the condition of an ordinary slave is the result. Occasionally, slaves are given their freedom in fulfilment of a vow to that effect made by the master in circumstances of extreme danger, experienced in company with ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... burst into a loud laugh. "May I then be allowed to ask, what sort of a thing is your soul? Have you ever seen it? Do you know what will become of it when you are once departed? Rejoice that you have found somebody to take notice of it; to buy, even during your lifetime, the reversion of this X, this galvanic power, this polarising influence, or whatever the silly trifle may turn out to be; to pay for it with your bodily shadow, with something really substantial; the hand of your mistress, the fulfilment of ...
— Peter Schlemihl • Adelbert von Chamisso
... obtained the reversion to the office of custos rotulorum brevium, and, according to his autobiographical notes, sat in parliament in 1543; but his name does not occur in the imperfect parliamentary returns until 1547, when he was elected for the family borough of Stamford. Earlier in that year he had accompanied ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... inclination and aptitude for the calling of arms and for administration; their reactionary sentiments will lead now to success, now to failure, and by both the inner coherence of the class will be fortified. Finally, the inevitable reversion to an appreciation of the romantic values of life will make a connexion with names of ancient lineage desirable to the leading classes, and especially to ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... at Persepolis, or those which distract him amongst the shadowy ruins of Yucatan (Uxmal, suppose, and Palenque,)—once for all, barring these pure godsends, it is hardly "in the dice" that any downright novelty of fact should remain in reversion for this 19th century. The merest possibility exists, that in Armenia, or in a Graeco-Russian monastery on Mount Athos, or in Pompeii, &c., some authors hitherto anekdotoi may yet be concealed; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... might call for what evidence they chose, including that of the interested parties, and try the case as it best could be tried. Their orders were to be final and not (save in a single excepted case) subject to any appeal. All persons in remainder and reversion were to be bound by these orders, although infants, married women, idiots, beyond seas, or under any other disability. A special power was given to order the surrender of existing leases, and to ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... this occasion his own work abhorred, So surfeited with the infernal revel: Though he himself had sharpened every sword,[ge] It almost quenched his innate thirst of evil. (Here Satan's sole good work deserves insertion— 'Tis, that he has both Generals in reversion.)[gf][501] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... maternal influence? However this may be, at any rate, Dolores early began to strike out for herself all the most ordinary and stereotyped opinions of British respectability. It seemed as if they sprang up in her by unmitigated reversion. She had never heard in the society of her mother's lodgings any but the freest and most rational ideas; yet she herself seemed to hark back, of internal congruity, to the lower and vulgarer moral plane of her remoter ancestry. She showed her individuality only ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... readiness to endeavour to obtain it for her; but on consulting the lawyers they decided that this could not be done. Her father—Master Radford—had been outlawed in the reign of King Henry for holding heretical opinions; and unless he should appear and obtain a reversion of that outlawry, the estate would remain forfeited. By petitioning the Queen's Majesty, however, there would be no difficulty in obtaining this reversion. But Master Radford had not appeared; and great doubts were entertained whether he was ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... my father the fact that she was a descendant of Negroes and he made a like confession to my mother as to his ancestry. When Shirleyville found out that my parents had Negro blood in their veins, I was regarded as a 'reversion to type,' and the storm blew over. My father became Mayor of the town, and great ambitions began to form in ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... exhibiting them at the county fair; the teaching of some pupils, in an unnecessary but conscientiously thrifty effort to get back some of the money invested in an "art education" in Chicago; and a final reversion to type after her marriage with the village lawyer, doctor or banker, or the owner of the adjoining farm. I was young; but I had studied people, and had already ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... reflect, that there would be still some chance of saving England from the general wreck of empires, but that it may not be saved, because one politician will lose two thousand a year by it, and another three thousand—a third a place in reversion, and a fourth a pension for his aunt! Alas! these are the powerful causes which have always settled the destiny of great kingdoms, and which may level Old England, with all its boasted freedom, and boasted wisdom, to the dust. Nor is it the least singular, ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... What an opening for young men of immoderately small means! The climate healthy and cool; no mosquitoes; a choice among seven beauties, perhaps the reversion of the remaining six, if Isaiah can be relied upon. In our regions, a thing of beauty is an expense for life; but with a house for three hundred dollars, and bluefish at a cent and a half a pound, there is no need any more to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... mayor and eight barons—the barons are those who have borne the office of mayor. The first return to, parliament was made in the 14th of Elizabeth. The right of election is possessed by all persons within the borough who are "seized in fee, in possession, or reversion, of any messuage, or tenement, or corporal hereditament; and in such as are tenants for life, or lives; and in want of such freehold, in tenants for years, determinable on any life, or lives, paying scot and lot."[1] The number of voters is between ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... distress of mind, by grief for the unhappy experience of the few last days, and by anxiety for the too gloomy future. Seventy thousand persons of all ages had already perished; exclusively of the many thousand allies who had been cut down by the Cossack sabre. And the losses in reversion were likely to be many more. For rumors began now to arrive from all quarters, by the mounted couriers whom the Khan had despatched to the rear and to each flank as well as in advance, that large masses of the Imperial troops were converging from ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... very nature it must have begun to shrink and to dwindle; and probably gradual and compensated emancipation, which appealed very strongly to the new President's sense of justice and expediency, would, in the progress of time, by a reversion to the ideas of the founders of the Republic, have found a safe outlet for both masters and slaves. But whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad, and when seven States, afterwards increased to eleven, openly seceded from the Union, when ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... who had told him that he would leave him at his death the little he had; Philip did not in the least know how much this was: it could not be more than a few hundred pounds. He wondered whether he could raise money on the reversion. Not without the old man's consent, and that he ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... O'Neil, "the Proud." He was the legitimate son of that Con O'Neil who had been girt with the Earl's baldric by the hands of Henry VIII. His father had procured at the same time for an illegitimate son, Ferodach, or Mathew, of Dundalk, the title of Baron of Dungannon, with the reversion of the Earldom. When, however, John the Proud came of age, he centred upon himself the hopes of his clansmen, deposed his father, subdued the Baron, and assumed the title of O'Neil. In 1552 he defeated the efforts of Sir William ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... head of the government, and was succeeded by the Duke of Grafton; although Mr. Pitt, recently created Earl of Chatham, was virtually the prime minister. Lord Rockingham retired from office with a high character for pure and disinterested patriotism, and without securing place, pension, or reversion, to himself or ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... expanded into a palace. I stoutly battled the foe, for I "took no note of time" during the next day and night; and when at last I walked forth into the air, I found that I had relieved myself of the burden of three-fourths of my reversion. A weak mind on such an occasion would have cursed the cards, and talked of taking care of the fragment of his property; but mine was of the higher order, and I determined on revenge. I had my revenge, and saw my winners ruined. They ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 337, October 25, 1828. • Various
... nurseryman into young seedling trees, which are thus changed into the selected sort. To sow the seeds of your favorite Baldwin does not imply that you will get Baldwin trees, by any means; you will more likely have a partial reversion to the acid and ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... return once more: "But now he's free." She remembered, however, in time that one of the things she had known for the last entire hour was that this made no difference. After that, and as if to turn the right way, she was on the point of a blind dash, a weak reversion to the reminder that it might make a difference, might diminish the crime for Mrs. Beale; till such a reflexion was in its order also quashed by the visibility in Mrs. Wix's face of the collapse produced ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... toast, Monsieur, Pray, why that solemn phiz:— Art thou, too, balancing 'twixt right and wrong? Hast thou a thought so mean as to give up Thy present good, for promise in reversion? 'Tis true hereafter has some feeble terrors, But ere our grizzly heads are wrapt in clay We may compound, and ...
— The Group - A Farce • Mercy Warren
... earl of Desmond was conferred on Richard Preston, Lord Dingwall, at whose death in 1628 it again became extinct. It was then bestowed on George Feilding, second son of William, earl of Denbigh, who had held the reversion of the earldom from 1622. His son William Feilding succeeded as earl of Denbigh in 1675, and thenceforward the title of Desmond was held in conjunction with ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... breast at certain moments and makes me often resolve, after dinner, "to scorn delights and live laborious days," and sell my beautiful soul, illuminated with art and poetry, to the devil of Industry, with reversion to ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... classes, and that her unpopularity was not undeserved. She was covetous for herself, and she had a number of relations, equally rapacious, who regarded her court favor solely as a means of enriching the whole family. She had procured a valuable reversion for her husband; and subsequently the rare favor of an hereditary dukedom; and it was characteristic of her disposition that she might have attained the rank of duchess for herself at an earlier date, but that she ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... in Europe, was the king the key-stone to the feudal masonry. Not an inch of ground in England was owned save under his authority, as enjoying the supremum dominium. All the land had been granted by his predecessors as fiefs, with the right of reversion to the crown by forfeiture in case of the violation of feudal obligations. Here was no allodial property, no censitive hereditary domain, as in the rest of, otherwise, feudal Europe. All English lawyers were ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... conduct of the officers of the house of correction in Cold Bath Fields, and the treatment of the prisoners confined therein. In compliance with the petition of the citizens of London, a bill passed the House of Commons to prevent the granting of places in reversion; but it was opposed and thrown out by the Lords. Petitions for the restoration of peace were likewise presented from numerous towns in the manufacturing districts of the north, which were laid upon the tables of the Houses; but no further notice ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... go to the next sheriff, And beg the first reversion of a rope: Dispatch is all my business; I'll hang ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... against him, his army was routed, and, preferring death to being taken, he fought most valiantly until he was struck to the ground by French lances, when some men-at-arms dispatched him with their swords. He had sold the reversion of his castle to King Edward III., to whom it was confirmed by the treaty of Bretigny. Edward bestowed the barony upon that pride of English chivalry, Sir John Chandos, in recompense for his great services ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... Nicholas found himself entitled to, either in possession, reversion, remainder, or expectancy, after paying his rent and settling with the broker from whom he had hired his poor furniture, did not exceed, by more than a few halfpence, the sum of twenty shillings. And yet he hailed the morning on ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... lover, I made proposals to her father—he has answered them in the most gentlemanly manner—. You have my consent to address my daughter if you will gain the approbation of your mother—He also informs me that his daughter has an estate in the County of Westchester in reversion, secured to her by a deed in trust to him—. I write all this for you—you know I am indifferent to anything of this nature. Now I have to request—you will take your hat and go to mother, the ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... alone excluded, because their dissertations treating only upon the minutes as they pass, become useless as those go off. In consideration of which, Time, whose registers they are, gives them a lease in reversion, to continue their works ...
— The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers • Jonathan Swift
... history, seems to have implied priestly predominance, in which Babylonian influence went for much. The Semitic tendency to super-Monotheism, which has already been noticed, constantly showed itself among the eastern Semites (when comparatively free from military tyranny) in a reversion of their spiritual allegiance to one supreme god enthroned at Babylon, the original seat of east Semitic theocracy. And even when this city had little military strength the priests of Marduk appear often to have succeeded ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth
... gave old Madame Lorrain no peace until she had secured to Pierrette the reversion of the eight thousand francs ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... of me, O Dalilah!"; and she said, "Verily, my father was governor of the carrier-pigeons to thee and I know how to rear the birds; and my husband was town-captain of Baghdad. Now I wish to have the reversion of my husband and my daughter wisheth to have that of her father." The Caliph granted both their requests and she said, "I ask of thee that I may be portress of thy Khan." Now he had built a Khan of three stories, for the merchants to lodge in, and had assigned ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... introduction of a law giving him an additional five years of command in Gaul, with special privileges as to his candidature for the consulship of B.C. 48; while Pompey and Crassus bargained for a second consulship in B.C. 55, and the reversion of the Spains (to be held as a single province) and Syria respectively, each for five years. The care taken that none of the three should have imperium overlapping that of the others was indeed a sign of mutual distrust and jealousy. But the bargain was made with sufficient approval of ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... prevalent mood or fashion in literature is apt to express itself either in a fresh and independent criticism of life, or in a reversion to older types. But, as original creative genius is not always forthcoming, a literary revolution commonly begins with imitation. It seeks inspiration in the past, and substitutes a new set of models as different as possible from those which it finds currently ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... Evelyn, not a very reliable authority, but still a chronicler worthy of notice even on questions of fact, says:—"Oct. 1705. Mr. Cowper made Lord Keeper. Observing how uncertain greate officers are of continuing long in their places, he would not accept it unless L2,000 a yeare were given him in reversion when he was put out, in consideration of his loss of practice. His predecessors, how little time soever they had the seal, usually got L100,000, and made themselves barons." It is doubtful whether this bargain was actually made; but long after Cowper's time, lawyers about ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... certain kinsman of her husband, an old and infirm man, whose decease was expected, if not from day to day, at all events from week to week. The event would have great importance for them, as Mr. Rymer was entitled to the reversion of several thousands of pounds, held in use by his ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... — N. posteriority; succession, sequence; following &c. 281.; subsequence, supervention; futurity &c. 121; successor; sequel &c. 65; remainder, reversion. V. follow &c. 281 after, come after, go after; succeed, supervene; ensue, occur; step into the shoes of. Adj. subsequent, posterior, following, after, later, succeeding, postliminious[obs3], postnate[obs3]; postdiluvial[obs3], postdiluvian[obs3]; puisne|!; posthumous; future &c. 121; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... and prepared for the second winter there, returning to the place for several reasons, chief among them being the right of prescription, to which the other tribes yielded tacit consent. The Indian recks little of the future, but in his reversion to primitive type Henry had taken with him much of the acquired and modern knowledge of education. He looked ahead, and, under his constant suggestion, advice and pressure they stored so much food for the winter that there was no chance of another famine, ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... to be, as the word canoe comes from the name the West Indian natives gave their dug-outs when questioned by Columbus. Nowadays the dug-out is generally used for the dirtier work of 'longshore fisheries. It has lost its elegance of form, and may be said to have reverted to a lower type. But this reversion only serves the better to remind the twentieth century of what all sorts of craft were like, not twenty, but ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... of intense solicitude with Maximilian, to secure the reversion of the crowns of Hungary and Bohemia, which were both upon the brow of Ladislaus, to his own family. With this object in view, and to render assurance doubly sure, he succeeded in negotiating a marriage ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... Hour, Rich in reversion of impending death, When HE shall fall upon whose ripe gray hairs Sit Care, and Sorrow, and Infirmity— 905 The weight which Crime, whose wings are plumed with years, Leaves in his flight from ravaged heart to heart Over the heads of men, under which burthen They bow ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... poverty, the contempt for pleasures, for honours, for riches, and the perfect conviction that any knowledge is perfectly useless to man—that is all the teaching of Antisthenes. That can lead far, at least in systematic minds. If all is contemptible except individual virtue, it is reversion to savage and solitary existence which is preached: there is no more civilization or society or patriotism. Antisthenes in these ideas was surpassed by his disciples and successors; they were cosmopolitans and anarchists. The most illustrious of this ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... Queen Anne's Court. "For of course the chances are ten to one against his surviving his daughter. Still these young women sometimes go off the hooks in an unexpected way, and he may come into the reversion." ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... to it, hardly like a human episode—the silence so far as words between them, the tragedy in each soul that the other must go; the tearing readjustments to the end of all work in the world, and the swift reversion of the mind to its innumerable broken ends of activity; and above all, the deep joy of their being together in this last intense weariness.... She wore her white veiled cap and apron; having followed the summons from ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... Hun? He is a true reversion to type. Only, whereas among the French he is a thing of the savage past, among the Germans he is a product of the kultured present. And to turn from the field note-book of the German soldier with its swaggering tale of loot, lust, and maudlin cups, its memoranda of ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... original sin, we now call reversion to type; the most lovely garden rose, if allowed to go without discipline and tendance, will in a few generations become again the common scentless dog-rose of our hedges. Such a reversion to type had taken place in Oscar Wilde. It must be inferred perhaps that the old ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... true statement to say that the Renaissance referred to—this modern Renaissance, not less formidable than the historic revolt which bears that name—is an insurrection of free spirits against Christianity. It is much rather a reversion to a humane and classic reasonableness as opposed to mob-stupidity and middle-class philistinism—things which only the blundering of centuries of popular misapprehension could associate with the sublime and the ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... over some forgotten papers in a suit-case, he came across Freya's portrait. Upon seeing her audacious smile and her calm eyes fixed upon him, he felt within him a shameful reversion. He admired the beauty of this apparition, a thrill passing over his body as their past intercourse recurred to him.... And at the same time that other Ferragut existing within him thrilled with the murderous ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... comely, athletic lad, with a nature far removed from that of the other Devitts; he had seemed to be in the nature of a reversion to the type of gentleman, who, it was said, had imprudently married an ancestress of Montague's first wife. Whether or not this were so, in manner, mind, and appearance Harold was generations removed from his parents ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... the most artificial and mysterious form he could devise. He then moulded up his appropriations of a number of scraps and remnants, many of which were nothing at all, and applied them to different objects in reversion and remainder, until the whole system was involved in impenetrable fog; and while he was giving himself the airs of providing for the payment of the debt, he left himself free to add to it continually, as he did in fact, instead of paying it. I like your idea of kneading all his little scraps ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... of his own household." This means anarchy, and society becomes like a bundle of sticks with the cord cut. The cause is always a decay of religion; for law is based on morality, and morality finds its strongest sanction in religion. Selfishness results in anarchy, a reversion to ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... well-known Canadian contractor, Mr R.G. Reid, of certain valuable colonial assets. In the first place, Mr Reid was to purchase all lines of railway from the Government for 1,000,000 dollars; this amount was the price of the ultimate reversion, the contractor undertaking to operate the lines for fifty years on agreed terms, and to re-ballast them. If he failed in this operation his reversionary rights became forfeit. For carrying the Government mails he was to receive an annual subsidy of 42,000 dollars. ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... him a face of welcome that dropped at sight of him. He scarcely new the gaunt, careworn face or the shabby figure before him, in place of the handsome, well-dressed young fellow whom he had come to greet. There seemed a sort of reversion in Barker's whole presence to the time when Sewell first found him in that room; and in whatever trouble he now was, the effect was that of his ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... of fifteen. Her father, Alexander Marchant, Sieur de St. Michel, was of a good family in Anjou, and son of the High Sheriff of Bauge (in Anjou). Having turned Huguenot at the age of twenty-one, when in the German service, his father disinherited him, and he also lost the reversion of some L20,000 sterling which his uncle, a rich French canon, intended to bequeath to him before he left the Roman Catholic church. He came over to England in the retinue of Henrietta Maria on her marriage with ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... there rose a vision of Ferrier's future, as he himself certainly conceived it. A triumphant election—the Liberals in office—himself, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and leader of the Commons—with the reversion of the Premiership whenever old Lord Broadstone should die or retire—this indeed had been Ferrier's working understanding with his party for years; years of strenuous labor, and on the whole of magnificent generalship. Deposition from the leadership of the Commons, with whatever ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... for lighting gas-burners, were hung in tiny aluminum bells from a mica vane wheel which was turned constantly and rapidly in one direction by hot air from a gas flame to keep the platinum in a glow. The inversion and reversion did not take place, as one might suppose, at the will of the observer, but was compulsory and followed regular rules. If the observer watches the rotating objects from the side, or from above or from below, the inversion takes place against his will; the condition being that the ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... have drawn may be carried farther. A reversion to the letter of the New Testament writers has been often attempted by considerable religious leaders of our time, especially Tolstoi and the Quakers. They have gone back to the injunctions of the Sermon on the Mount, and tried ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... not been in law, friend Delio, Nor in prison, nor a suitor at the court, Nor begg'd the reversion of some great man's place, Nor troubled with an old wife, which doth make Your time ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... taste. But she had not been used to contradiction, and could not bear it, and therefore they ventured not to cross her. So I bore off the prize; and a prize she really is—five thousand pounds in possession, and more in reversion, if I do not forfeit it. This will compensate for some of my past mistakes, and set matters right for the present. I think it doing much better than to have taken the little Lawrence girl I told you of with half the sum. Besides, ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... was a curious reversion to the type of his grandfather: he was the Great Elector over again with all his practical good sense if without his taste for diplomacy. His own ideal of kingship was a paternal despotism, and his ambition, to use most advantageously the limited resources ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... well that there should be a reversion to the earlier types of thinking and feeling, to earlier ways of looking at human nature, and I will not altogether refuse the pleasure offered me by the poetic romancer or the historical romancer because I find my pleasure chiefly in Tolstoy and Valdes and Thomas Hardy and Tourguenief, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... in this sudden reversion to weakness, and Berrie could not credit his remorse. "Give ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... to come to a determination as to certain new post-roads which were to connect the different parts of the empire more nearly, and finally he had to await the formal assent of the Roman Senate to some new resolutions concerning the hereditary reversion of conferred free-citizenship. This assent was, no doubt a matter of course, but the Emperor never issued an edict without it, and he was very desirous that his decree should come into operation as ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... all men to serve in Parliament, who have not some estate in land, either in possession or certain reversion, is perhaps the greatest security that ever was contrived for preserving the constitution, which otherwise might, in a little time, lie wholly at the mercy of the moneyed interest: And since much the ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... kind," Emma disputed calmly. "That child will be a throwback. The third generation generally is. With a militant mother and a grandmother such as that child has, she'll just naturally be a clinging vine. She'll be a reversion to type. She'll be the kind who'll make eyes and wear pale blue and be crazy about new embroidery-stitches. Just mark my ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... is formally evil to him. (c. iii., s. ii., n. 7, p. 33.) So there is variation and possible Evolution in bare formal good and bare formal evil, as ignorance gradually changes into knowledge; and likewise Reversion, as knowledge declines into ignorance. Even this Evolution and Reversion have their limits: they cannot occur in the primary principles of morality, as we saw in the last section. But morality material and objective,—complete morality, ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... untruth. It is true that improvement is continually going on in the various parts of the complex mechanism which constitutes a modern ship of war; although it is also true that many changes are made which are not improvements, and that reversion to an earlier type, the abandonment of a once fancied improvement, is no unprecedented incident in recent naval architecture and naval ordnance. The revulsion from the monitor, the turreted ship pure and simple, to the broadside battery analogous to that ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... affair of Hume's candidature for the Logic chair, contingent on Smith's appointment to the other. There was the affair of the Principal's possible retirement, with, no doubt, some plan in reserve for the reversion, probably in favour of Professor Leechman, mentioned in the previous letter, who did in the event succeed to it. Then there was Cullen's "own affair," which Smith was promoting in Edinburgh through Lord Kames (then Mr. Home), and which probably concerned a method ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... for the wild, and seems like an Anglo-Saxon reversion to the type of the Red {459} Indian. The most distinctive note in Thoreau is his inhumanity. Emerson spoke of him as a "perfect piece of stoicism." "Man," said Thoreau, "is only the point on which I stand." He strove to realize the objective life of nature—nature in its aloofness ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers |
