"Alternative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... manstealer, and should be excommunicated as such without asking any further questions. Two statements more palpably illogical were never put forth for the darkening of counsel. But each extreme was eager to sustain the unreason of the opposite extreme as the only alternative of its own unreason, and so, what with contrary gusts from North and South, they fell into a place where two seas met and ran the ship aground. The attempts made from 1836 to 1840, by stretching to the utmost the authority of the General Conference and the bishops, ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... forty men, and the most of them were decrepits, unfit for the hunting field. As sunset merged into the long white light of northern midnight, four hundred French mariners landed on the sands outside Churchill. {319} Hearne had no alternative. He surrendered without a blow. The fort was looted of furs, the Indians driven out, and a futile attempt made to blow up the massive walls. Hearne and the other officers were carried off captives. Matonabbee, the famous Indian guide, came back from the hunt to find ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... the hostler faintly flushes. His eyes look away from my eyes for the first time. Mrs. Fairbank furtively pinches my arm. Are we on the eve of a discovery at last? I repeat my question. The man has no civil alternative but to give me an answer. The answer is given ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... indicated must enhance the cost of production, and thus handicap the producer in the race of competition. I venture, in the first place. to doubt the fact; but, if it be [453] so, it results that industrial society has to face a dilemma, either alternative of which threatens destruction. ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... race of men on earth whose ordinary avocations present so constantly the alternative of rarest skill on the one hand, or instant destruction on the other. And for these avocations one is fitted only by a scholarship, which it requires prolonged schooling, the most patient industry, and the most ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... of an immense hostile force, and more than a thousand miles from any friendly territory. The victorious enemy proposed to the Grecians terms of accommodation, but, having invited Clearchus and other leaders to a conference, they treacherously put them to death. No alternative now remained to the Greeks but to submit to the Persians or fight their way back to their own land. They bravely chose the latter course—and, selecting Xenophon, a young Athenian, for their leader, after a four ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... friendly to woman suffrage, were determined to devote themselves wholly to Negro suffrage and to the extension of their party's influence, she could expect no help from lesser party members. Her only alternative was to appeal to the Democrats or to an occasional recalcitrant Republican, and she allowed nothing to stand in her way, not even the frenzied pleas of her abolitionist friends. She found James Brooks of New York, Democratic leader of the House, willing to present her petitions, and she made ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... flag. "The Emperor, however, gave orders to the soldiers of the guard to take off their caps and conceal themselves below, choosing rather to pass by the brig without being known, and reserving himself in case of necessity, for the alternative of making him change his colours. At six o'clock the two brigs passed alongside of each other, and their commanders, who were acquainted, spoke together. The captain of Le Zephir inquired after the Emperor, and was answered through a speaking ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... one else. She sat silently for a while after I had finished what I had to say, till at last she turned to me and tried to persuade me to alter my intention of disowning the baby. But I repeated doggedly that unless she had some alternative way to suggest of getting rid of it, I meant to leave the little girl at the door of one of the foundling hospitals, and that I would take her ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... But this alternative, fortunately or unfortunately, is not open. The detention here of body and spirit for a given period is determined for us, and we are morally bound to accept the situation. We must look then ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... once been placed in this position, and fixed in it by the inveterate enmities of prolonged war, it must from that time abide the arbitrament of arms. Two years of fierce and calamitous war seem to have brought the South to this alternative: either to restore the Union with immediate freedom to the slaves, or to accomplish its dissolution, with a doubtful and troubled continuance of the system for an uncertain period in ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... are an exact reproduction of Salaethus, they will say; or rather he was not half so bad as you, seeing that he was mastered by passion, as he pleaded in court, and moreover preferred to leap into the flames, like a brave man, when the Crotoniates were moved to compassion and gave him the alternative of exile. The difference between your precept and practice is infinitely more ridiculous; you draw a realistic word-picture of that servile life; you pour contempt on the man who runs into the trap of a rich man's house, where a thousand degradations, ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... all my efforts, fairly run away with me, I hailed Smellie, and, briefly explaining the situation to him, asked him to either give her the fore staysail or else come aft and trice up the tack of the mainsail. He chose the latter alternative, as leaving the craft under canvas easily manageable by one hand, and came aft to effect the alteration, hurriedly explaining that he would relieve me as soon as possible; but that there was still some difficult navigation ahead which he ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... under General Thomas Gage, who was also governor of the colony of Massachusetts. He was popularly regarded as an oppressor; and act after act of the British government, during a year preceding, had convinced the American people that they must choose the alternative to submit or fight. They resolved to fight, if necessary. During the summer of 1774, the people commenced arming, and training themselves in military exercises; the manufacture of arms and gunpowder was ...
— The Military Journals of Two Private Soldiers, 1758-1775 - With Numerous Illustrative Notes • Abraham Tomlinson
... lamentable family strife, and could not in any brief way or time explain the discriminations that were necessary between that which I approve and that which I most unqualifiedly condemn, without the risk of misapprehension, I preferred the only alternative left ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... night, protested and vowed that their customers' noses were mistaken; that the meat would be perfectly good and fresh on the Sunday, and on the Monday too, if they liked to keep it so long. The women, somewhat doubtfully giving ear to the assurance, knowing that the alternative was that or none, bought the meat and took it home. On Sunday morning they found the meat was—anything you may imagine. It was neither cookable nor eatable; and their anger against Peckaby was not diminished ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... to have you put to death as an impostor." Poor Ahmed was thunderstruck. He stood long without being able to speak, reflecting on his misfortunes, and grieving, above all, that his wife, whom he so loved, had, by her envy and selfishness, brought him to such a fearful alternative. Full of these sad thoughts, he exclaimed aloud, "O woman! woman! thou art more baneful to the happiness of man than the poisonous dragon of the desert!" Now the lost ruby had been secreted by the jeweller's wife, who, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... from the uncompromising little Rose herself. From the first flowering of his passion until now, he had seen marriage as the sole means to its inevitable end. Tanqueray had his faults, but it was not in him to bring the creature he loved to suffering and dishonour. And the alternative, in Rose's case, was not dishonour, but frustration, which meant suffering for them both. He would have to give Rose up unless ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... home and many friends and had no desire to escape from them or her surroundings. If it meant to fly away to heaven—? Surely she did not wish that! The world and "the things that are in the world" were very attractive to the young soprano. She had no wish for heaven save as an alternative from hell. What did it mean? Was it a heart-rest that David longed for? But she had been conscious of no unrest—until just now. Honestly, the truth was that she had not meant anything! Was it worship? But her friends would tell her she sang it with feeling, she argued defensively, ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... clerk had no hesitation in telling ME. Mr. Smalley, of the firm of Skipp and Smalley, asked for it. The Will has not been copied yet into the great Folio Registers. So there was no alternative but to depart from the usual course, and to let him see the original document. He looked it over carefully, and made a note in his pocket-book. Have you any idea of what ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... measure of equity in the arrangement, and Adrian accepted it. The only alternative, moreover, would have been a jump overboard. And so began a hard spell of life, but a few shades removed from his existence among the Chouan guerillas; a predatory cruise lasting over a year, during which the only changes ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... surprised and angry reproach for his want of faith, he has assured her many times since, he can never forget. We insisted that he should go at once to the police station and fetch constables to arrest Mrs Ragg on the charge of murder. The alternative course he proposed appeared to us weakly inadequate. However, he being a man and we being women, he had his way. We returned with him at once to Sea-Strand Cottage, the only concession he made to our fears being to take a policeman with ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... deliberations were in the open air, and under the eyes of a threatening party of seventy riflemen accidentally present from Washington County across the stream. Bradford, who instinctively felt that he had placed himself beyond the pale of pardon, and to whom there was no alternative to revolution but flight, pressed an instant decision and rejection of the written terms of the commissioners. In the presence of personal danger, the conferrees only dared to move that part of their report which advised acceptance of the proffered terms. The question ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... experimental career as tripe the sails had departed this life forever. Only two courses remained from which to choose; we could eat one another, as is the etiquette of the sea, or partake of Captain Abersouth's novels. Dreadful alternative!—but a choice. And it is seldom, I think, that starving sailormen are offered a shipload of the best popular ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... the hand, and I went home and slept for six hours. As soon as I awoke I sat up in bed, and my first thought was everything or nothing. I soon rejected the latter alternative, and I saw that I must demand a duel to the death. If Branicki refused to fight I should be compelled to kill him, even if I were to lose my head ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... in Great Britain, and scores of the waifs and strays of British aristocracy began to turn their eyes towards Canada as a possible resource in the last emergency. It was said to be a cold and comfortless land, but it was surely preferable to the Fleet Prison or the Marshalsea, with the alternative of starvation or enlistment in the army. Many of these pimps and panders to the whims or the passions of those in high station found their way to Quebec and Montreal, and were provided for at the public expense by being installed in places ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... suffer one who was knit to Him by such sacred bonds to see corruption; and the unique Sonship and perfect self-consecration of Jesus went down into the grave in the assured confidence, as He Himself declared, that the third day He would rise again. The old alternative seems to retain all its sharp points: Either Christ rose again from the dead, or His claims are a series of blasphemous arrogances and His ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... at first, but I had the comfort of having really no alternative. I had, indeed, a great desire to make a thorough visitation of Leper's Island, and Santa Cruz especially; but the wind, usually so fair, was dead against me, we had, so to speak, no trade winds, and I had to give it up. It was certainly my duty to get to the south with my invalids as ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... correctly, it would fall down so as to carry the small line across the ship. Then the sailors on board the wrecked vessel would seize it, and by means of it would draw the end of a strong line over, and thus effect the means of making their escape. It was, however, a very dreadful alternative, after all; for the rope forming this fearful bridge would of course be subject all the time to the most violent jerkings, from the rolling and pitching of the vessels to which the two extremities of it ...
— Rollo on the Atlantic • Jacob Abbott
... other alternative, should we fail to obtain an abundance of meat, than to push on at once to Fort Ross," he observed. "You and I and Martin and Pat must go. I shall be very sorry to part from Robin, but we must, of course, leave him with his father, and endeavour as soon as possible to send them assistance. I ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... these regulations, and discharge the men within one month of their being landed, the Board will be necessitated either to render the regulations more stringent, or withdraw them altogether. If the latter alternative were adopted, the discharge of the Orkney and Shetland whaling crews would have to take place under the more rigid terms prescribed by the Merchant Shipping Act, 1854, which of all other vessels at ports ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... in a chase across the pampa, with the red Centaurs pursuing. Therefore, not for an instant, or only one, entertains he thought of flight. In a second he sees it would not avail them, and decides on the other alternative—concealment. He has already made a hasty inspection of the ground near by, and sees, commencing at no great distance off, and running along the water's edge, a grove of sumac trees which, with their parasites and other plants twining around ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... named was a good and tempting one, far more indeed than the land was worth; but when the money was spent he would have nothing for it but to become a mere labourer, or else to enlist, and he did not fancy either alternative, while he could manage to live, as his father did before him, on his patch, which spade-labour made remunerative. He worked for hire in harvest-time, and that brought something; the pig- stye yielded a profit, so did a cow, and there were a few ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... one other alternative. He could remain in the house till morning, and then when they had all gone, make his way out easily. Then Garry remembered that this was impossible, as Everett would have a posse come to the house if he were not back at six. That would be disastrous ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... As an alternative to this actual evolution toward socialism, the syndicalists propose to force society to put the means of production into the hands of the trade unions. It is perhaps worth pointing out that Owen, Proudhon, Blanc, Lassalle, and Bakounin all advocated what may be called "group socialism."[28] ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... regretful words. Into the minds of the majority stole a sense, vague and indefinable it is true, that a tragic impasse was closing on a situation over which had flashed a rainbow gleam of possible solution. Ahead lay the future with its sinister shadows—darker because of the alternative they had glimpsed ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... evenings were given to company, her mornings were still spent in the schoolroom, of which indeed she was the chief brightness. Marian, though she had the offer of coming out at the same time, was very glad to embrace the alternative of waiting another year. She was now a little past her seventeenth birthday, which emancipated her from being absolutely Miss Morley's pupil. She breakfasted with the rest of the family, dined with them when there was not a large party, learnt more of masters, ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the west coast of Scotland, for which he was then on the eve of sailing. "You will run some little risk," he said, "as the companion of a man who has now been thrice outlawed for firing on his Majesty's flag; but I know your proud heart will prefer the danger of bad company at its worst, to the alternative of begging your way home." He judged rightly. Before daybreak we had lost sight of land, and in four days more we could discern the precipitous shores of Carrick stretching in a dark line along the horizon, and the hills of the interior rising thin and blue ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... and indolent, incapable of exertion, and a prey to the darkest humours; circumstances, however, occurred which rendered some energy on his part absolutely necessary. His creditors grew importunate, and the arrangement of his affairs or departure from his native land was an alternative now inevitable. The month of April, which witnessed the arrival of the Temples and Lord Montfort in England, welcomed also to London Miss Grandison and her guests. A few weeks after, Ferdinand, who had ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... enviable occupation. The peasant had his great umbrella-shaped straw hat, sometimes an armful of green stuff tied on his back, and a delicious feeling of being up to the knees in water or mud on a hot day-one recalled the mud baths of the West-when the alternative was walking on a dusty road, digging on the sun-baked upland or perspiring in a house ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... down to the level of his knees. He put his hands behind his back. He would now consider calmly the discretion of it before saying the final word to-morrow. His feet scrunched the gravel loudly—the discretion of it. It would have been easier to appraise had there been a workable alternative. The honesty of it was indubitable: he meant well by the fellow; and periodically his shadow leaped up intense by his side on the trunks of the trees, to lengthen itself, oblique and dim, far ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... intended for the Army, his father was a gun manufacturer. The eldest son died, and the old man saying that five thousand a year should not be lost to the family, made his other son—my friend—go into the business. He resisted, but had no alternative but to consent. Their dwelling-house was just by ours, but the old man now insisted on his son residing largely at the manufactory where he invited me to stay at times ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... go on paying for nothing. There was a meeting of the London branch a few months ago, and it was decided that unless some practical work was done in this country all English subscriptions should cease. We had no alternative but to come over and attempt something. Brott is of course the bete noire of our friends here. He is distinctly the ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... It is against the Yankees—the northern sons of free soil, free toil and intelligence, the hated abolitionists whose success would sweep away slavery and reduce the southern white men to work—no wonder they are ready to fight to the death against this detestable alternative, especially as they look to victory as the certain promotion of the refuse of the 'poor white' population of the South, of which they are one and all members, to the coveted ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... three frigates could lie in perfect safety, and the people have earned a reputation for honesty and hospitality to passing ships which belongs to the inhabitants of none of the large islands. There is another alternative—Kandavu—but to reach that island, the schooner must have run at an average of eleven knots, and the number and cupidity of the natives would have made a stay of five weeks impossible to a vessel ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... substantive state. To Turkey it could no longer signify whether Greece had a more extended or more limited line of frontier, and our desire should be to place a fit man upon the throne. France is willing to propose in the Conference that to Turkey should be offered the alternative of a Greece with extended limits under Suzerainete, &c., according to the Protocol of March 22, or a Greece with ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... singular clearness of a man about to die. For Sandersen had this mortal certainty resting upon his mind that he must try to strike down Sinclair, and that he would fail. And failure meant only one alternative—death. He was perfectly confident that this was the truth. He knew with prophetic surety that he would never again see the kind light of the sun, that in a half-light, in the cold of the dawn, a bullet would end ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... as he had read the letter Phineas felt that he had no alternative but to go. The visit would be very disagreeable, but it must be made. So he sent a line to Robert Kennedy naming a day; and wrote another to Lady Laura postponing his time at Dresden by a week, and explaining the cause of its ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... that he began to get a little tiresome," she said. "You say we are getting deeper and deeper into his hands? Well, he hinted as much, and I did not like it. When he began to get a little loving I accepted that way out as an easy alternative to a very unpleasant exposure. Whether he would have betrayed us I don't know; probably ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... That meeting would decide every thing. She might, perhaps, throw some light upon what was at present a profound mystery to me. At all events, my course was clear. Under the circumstances in which I was placed, I felt that there lay but one alternative before me. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... the minds of the slaves came as a happy solution of what had been a perplexing problem. Many Americans who considered slavery an evil had found no way out of the difficulty when the alternative was to turn loose upon society so many uncivilized men without the ability to discharge the duties of citizenship.[1] Assured then that the efforts at emancipation would be tested by experience, a larger number of men advocated ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson
... sent to investigate was said to be notorious, she had as yet discovered nothing of it for herself. It seemed to her that she must be either stupid, or that there must be something about her which made Mrs. Vincent more secretive with her than with others; and neither alternative pleased her. ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... bury him alive! Therefore I am forced to deal the death-blow! No, no, I will not; I have even braved the vengeance of my perfidious master in order not to imbue my hands in his blood, and I will not now be guilty of it. But what can I do? I have no other alternative. I must either bury him alive or kill him! And I cannot ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... plain that he was quite alone in his discovery. What was he to do? To speak to Miss Owen on the subject was out of the question. The only alternative was to communicate the good news to "Cobbler" Horn himself. But there seemed to be stupendous difficulties involved in such a course. He was aware that there was nothing his friend would more rejoice to know than that which he had to tell. From various ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... both speak and understand a good deal of English, it was singularly difficult to obtain much information from them concerning the habits of their countrymen; this was partly owing to their apparent difficulty in understanding the simplest alternative. Every one accustomed to very young children knows how seldom one can get an answer even to so simple a question as whether a thing is black OR white; the idea of black or white seems alternately to fill their minds. So it was with these Fuegians, and hence it was generally impossible to find ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... quickly in these regions, and before we had walked for quarter of an hour it became a question of seeking shelter or living for the rest of the day in soaked clothes. We decided on the former alternative, and selected a tree that, under ordinary circumstances, should have been ample protection. But a Black Forest thunderstorm is not an ordinary circumstance. We consoled ourselves at first by telling each ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... keeping almost in a direct line out into the lake. It was evident to all that he could not swim across the lake, as its farther shore was not even visible. He must either return to where they were, or drown; and knowing this to be his only alternative, they stood still and watched his motions. When he had got about half-a-mile from the shore, to the surprise of all, he was seen to rise higher and higher above the surface, and then all at once stop, with half of his body clear out of the water! He had come upon a shoal, and, knowing ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... and wildly—she was on the verge of hysterics, when Benjulia's eyes, silently questioning her again, controlled her at the critical moment. Her laughter died away. But the exciting influence still possessed her; still forced her into the other alternative of saying something—she neither knew ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... required to work for a longer time than fifteen days in the year, or for a longer time than five days in succession. The commissioners have the power to fine or imprison defaulters. Counties may, however, adopt an alternative plan for working the roads: in such counties a special tax is levied on property, the proceeds of which are spent on the roads, and able-bodied men between eighteen and fifty years of age are subject to road duty for not more than five days ...
— Elements of Civil Government • Alexander L. Peterman
... from such a fight, had not been pusillanimity, but magnanimity. But if, as English Whigs and American Democrats contended, Napoleon Bonaparte was the armed soldier of democracy, the rightful heir of the Revolution, the sole alternative to anarchy, the legitimate ruler of France; if the responsibility of those enormous desolating wars does not lie at his door, but belongs to George III. and the Tory party of England; if it is ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... other alternative. As in the earlier part of the story we feel sure that young Nicolo must have reproduced the ancestral documents faithfully, because it shows knowledge that he could not have got in any other way; let us now suppose that ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... so uncommonly short.—Nothing remained for her but flight, or submission to the Cruel mandate. Like a heroic girl, in whose veins the blood of the old crusaders was bounding, she preferred the former alternative. The only relation whom she could apply in so delicate, a juncture, was an aged aunt, residing somewhere in the north of Scotland. To her she wrote, beseeching her, as she regarded the memory of her buried sister, to receive her miserable child; and she appointed this town, Jedburgh, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... ceases flowing. So it bursts forth and flows over the ice with a continually renewing surface of the smoothest texture. Carrying a mercurial barometer that one dare not intrust to a sled on one's back over such footing is a somewhat precarious proceeding, but there was no alternative, and many miles were thus passed. Up the Toklat, then up its Clearwater Fork, then up its tributary, Myrtle Creek, to its head, and so over a little divide and down Willow Creek, we went, and from that divide and the upper reaches of the last-named creek had fine, clear ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... possible alternative. In case of accident to himself, and her ultimate escape, he must immediately write full details of his discovery, and entrust the document to her, to be opened only after his death or ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... more stalwart fellows, those quiet days were the hush before the breaking of the storm. Home, school, the university were behind them; before them lay the crash of war. And afterwards? Glory, or death. Their healthy, boyish optimism could see no third alternative. ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... was most teachable. When Bep was "collecting bows," Frances would obligingly bow and bob for her minutes at a time, like a Chinese mandarin, or like some small priestess observing a solemn rite. What the Bad Luck was, the terrible alternative of all these precautions, poor Frank could form no idea. But she had come to associate it with the babbling tank, which seemed at night, when all was still, to be gurgling, "Bad Luck—Bad Luck!" ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... that time, political inactivity was an impossibility. Revolt against the Republic, or active participation in its measures, was the only choice left to those who did not choose to fly their country, and many of the seigneurs of Anjou and Poitou would not adopt the latter alternative. ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... noise, chose the bold alternative of letting him drink on the spot; and retaining his prostrate condition, quickly put the pot to Bub's lips, and the child swallowed great draughts with satisfied gutturals that seemed to Charlie's apprehensive ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... having no alternative, were obliged to walk from the station to the pontoon bridge, made, Henry said, in one night. I don't know about that; but what I do know is that the French blew up my bridge in one night. Then we made the whole ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... the editor, "that alternative was not open to me. Mr. Naseby told me in a note that he had sent his letter to three other journals, and in fact threatened me with what he called exposure if I kept it back from mine. I am really concerned at what has happened; I sympathise ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... there was truth in that, and, accustoming herself to a new idea with her usual rapidity, she even began to see that the alternative offered need not be so very unpleasant. Indeed, when she came to think about it, it might be almost pleasant if the boarding-house were very select; there would be society of a kind, perhaps of a superior kind, even; she need not lose prestige and she ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... five thousand without cannon." The English landed their cannon near Flat Point; and before they could be turned against the Grand Battery, they must be dragged four miles over hills and rocks, through spongy marshes and jungles of matted evergreens. This would have required a week or more. The alternative was an escalade, in which the undisciplined assailants would no doubt have met a bloody rebuff. Thus this Grand Battery, which, says Wolcott, "is in fact a fort," might at least have been held long enough to save ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... punishment, might, unless he had been caught red-handed in certain heinous crimes, appeal to Caesar and claim to be sent to Rome. Unless the governor had been expressly entrusted with exceptional powers, or unless the case was so self-evident that he had nothing to fear from refusing, he had no alternative but to send the appellant on to the metropolis. Arrived there, the prisoner was taken to the guardrooms or cells in the barracks of a special prefect who had charge of such arrivals from abroad, and his case would ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... Its first alternative is, perhaps, to impose on its delegates an imperative mandate. Delegates under this condition become mere agents of the people. They attend the legislative assembly to register the will of the people just as they receive it, and the people in reality ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... now's the time, and now's the hour. There's plenty of space for all equestrian wants, without interfering with the sylvan delights of nurserymaids, children, lovers of nature, and all sorts of lovers too. For my part, if this is not put forward as an alternative scheme, I shall vote for tunnelling under the Gardens out of simple cussedness. If the reply, authoritatively given, be that the two schemes can go and must go together, then I will vote for both, only let's have ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... all that it signified. Some of the bishops tried to persuade him to abandon this attitude, but in vain. So far as we can judge the mood of Henry, Becket had much to justify his feeling, and if he were resolved not to accept the only other alternative of complete submission, but determined to resist to the utmost, ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... were pulling out of the bay, but no sooner did we get beyond the point than we met so heavy a sea that it was impossible to pull the whale boat against it, and we were in danger of being swamped. Our only alternative was, as I proposed, to run for the island. Even now we had to pull hard to avoid the following seas which threatened to poop us. We saw the savages on shore dancing, shouting, and gesticulating when they discovered that we had escaped ...
— The Mate of the Lily - Notes from Harry Musgrave's Log Book • W. H. G. Kingston
... his favour; but to allow the law its course with the impenitent and unreformed. In such language we discern the sentiments which prevailed: banishment, not punishment for past crimes, was implied in the cheering alternative. From that moment he possessed authority to manumit not less absolute than the sovereign, but immeasurably more ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... of pique at what had happened just before you came in. It was supposed I was much involved with another man, and circumstances made the supposition particularly objectionable. To escape it I jumped at the alternative of yourself.' ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... impossible. He was not at one with her in religious matters. He could speak lightly of her evangelical creed—it seemed he scoffed in "Fors" at her faith. She could not be unequally yoked with an unbeliever. To her, the alternative was plain; the choice was terrible: yet, having once seen her ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... I had time to leap from my saddle, the ass came direct upon me with such force that my horse was driven backwards by the concussion, and I was thrown. Ten months afterwards, another encounter of the same kind threatened me with a similar disaster, and to save myself I had no alternative but to shoot the ass. The Indian who was driving the animal neglected the usual warning cry, given by the arrieros when they enter those dangerous passes, and he was regardless of my repeated calls ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... south, have her or swing for her, when the husband frequently, after some words passed between the two concerning her relations with the other lucky mortal (he having had the pair watched), inflicted fatal injuries on his adored one as a result of an alternative postnuptial liaison by plunging his knife into her, until it just struck him that Fitz, nicknamed Skin-the-Goat, merely drove the car for the actual perpetrators of the outrage and so was not, if he was reliably ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Tourville, and attributing it to his having taken a portion of the simulated cordial, he, La Houssaye, fearful of consequences, hastily and secretly changed his abode. He had subsequently kept silence till the conviction of Eugenie left him no other alternative, if he would not see her perish on the scaffold, than a full and unreserved confession. This done—Eugenie saved, but lost to him—he had nothing more to live for in the ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... declare that she must be released, I might suffer grievously, but being a man of some intelligence, I should admit that the suffering couldn't be helped; the brutality of enforced marriage doesn't seem to me an alternative worth considering. It wouldn't seem so to any woman of the kind ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... decisiveness, that such an effect could by no possibility be appreciable at our distance from the moon.[173] Don Jose Joaquim de Ferrer, however, who observed a total eclipse of the sun at Kinderhook, in the State of New York, on June 16, 1806, ignoring this refined optical rationale, considered two alternative explanations of the phenomenon as alone possible. The bright ring round the moon must be due to the illumination either of a lunar or of a solar atmosphere. If the former, he calculated that it should have a height fifty times that of the earth's gaseous envelope. ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... bulls bellowing beneath, until casual assistance should arrive; and yet, what was this state of affairs when compared with the terrors of that impending fate from which, for some of them at least, there seemed no escape? Mr. Verdant Green fully realized the horrors of this alternative when he looked at Miss Patty Honeywood, who had not yet joined those ladies who, clinging fearfully to the boughs, and crouching among the branches like roosting guinea-fowls, were for the present in comparative safety, and out of the ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... might expect the French charge. Soult hung close on their rear until they reached Coruna; and Moore perceived that it would be impossible to embark without either a convention or a battle. He chose the braver alternative. The French were repelled gallantly; and the British were permitted to embark without further molestation. In the moment of victory (January 16, 1809) Sir John Moore fell, mortally wounded by a cannon-shot: his men buried him in ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... precarious moment, was, as he afterwards learned, brought about by the advice of the chief guide, who told the commanding officer that the Indians wished to have a parley. On seeing what was transpiring behind him, Kit Carson had no alternative but to rein up his horse also; for, to ride on alone into the midst of the savages, would have been unjustifiable rashness, and might, perhaps, have destroyed the plans his superior officers were concocting. So, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... There remained the alternative more than once hinted by the Sieur de Mauprat as the months grew into years after the mother died—marriage; a husband, a notable and wealthy husband. That was the magic destiny de Mauprat figured for her. It did not elate her, it did not disturb her; ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to being regarded as woman's last refuge, her one and only alternative to the workhouse. I cannot myself see why the woman who has faced the difficulties of existence, learnt the lesson of life, should not make as good a wife and mother as the ignorant girl taken direct, one might almost say, from the nursery, and, without the slightest preparation, put in ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... must be drawn solely from Scripture; for what can we affirm about matters transcending our knowledge except what is told us by the words or writings of prophets? And since there are, so far as I know, no prophets now alive, we have no alternative but to read the books of prophets departed, taking care the while not to reason from metaphor or to ascribe anything to our authors which they do not themselves distinctly state. I must further premise that the Jews never make any mention or ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... council, and required to lend the king two hundred pounds, or else to go himself to the army, and serve it with cheese. It was not supposed that a merchant, so aged and wealthy, would submit to resume his former mean trade; but the old man, in the spirit of the times, preferred the hard alternative, and balked the new project of finance, by shipping himself with his cheese. At Hicks's Hall the duke and the Earl of Dorset sat to receive the loans; but the duke threatened, and the earl affected to treat with levity, men who came before them with all the suppressed feelings ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... fulfilling the interests of beings having the capacity to conduct themselves rationally, and ethics is the formulation of the general principles which underlie this method. The attempt to live rationally—and, humanly speaking, there is no alternative save the total abnegation of life—brings one within the jurisdiction of these principles, precisely as thinking brings one within the jurisdiction of the principles of logic, or as the moving of one's body brings one within the jurisdiction of ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... at six; and there is a cold meat supper at nine. Meals are charged extra if taken in private. It is a good plan in travelling never to reserve oneself at the end of the day's journey for the hotel dinner, as there is a chance of arriving after it is over, when the alternative is to go without; the railway dinners are quite as good, find often better, than those at the hotel. The use of the ladies' drawing-room is restricted to ladies and gentlemen accompanying them; ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... pocket, now watching the man who never once looked his way. He was a bushranger and an outlaw; he deserved to die or to be taken; and Vanheimert's only regret was that he had neither taken nor shot him at their last interview. The bloodless alternative was to be borne in mind, yet in his heart he well knew that the bullet was his one chance with Stingaree. And even with the bullet he was horribly uncertain and afraid. But of hesitation on any higher ground, of remorse ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... (yo-loff'-ka), and then following up the west coast of the peninsula to the head of the Okhotsk Sea. The only objections to this were the lateness of the season and the probability of finding deep snow in the mountain passes. Our only alternative was to continue our journey from Kluchei up the eastern coast to a settlement called Dranka (dran'-kah), where the mountains sank into insignificant hills, and cross there to the Kamchadal village of Lesnoi (less-noi') on the Okhotsk Sea. This route was considerably longer than the one by ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... have taken with you! I have been beginning to fear for some time that you are incorrigible—and to-day is really the last straw! So it is kinder to let you know at once that you have been tried and found wanting. I have no alternative but to release you finally from your vows—I cannot allow you to remain my ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 16, 1892 • Various
... proposed an alternative scheme, to wit, the prohibition of sentimental marriages by law, and the substitution of match-making by the common hangman. This plan, as revolutionary as it may seem, would have several plain advantages. For one thing, it would purge ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... letter of the law allowed of no justification or extenuation of the fact. It left no alternative to ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... necessary, however, to decide at once where she was to sleep. All the rooms in the tower were of stone—dark, gloomy, and cold even in the summer-time. Impossible to put her in any one of them. The only other alternative was to lodge her in the little modern lean-to, which I have already described as being tacked on to the side of the old building. It contained three cottage-rooms, and they might be made barely habitable for a ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... I feel myself so much a citizen of the world, that the spot where I can enjoy a delicious climate, and every luxury, at a less expense than a common college life in England, will always be a country to me; and such are in fact the shores of the Archipelago. This then is the alternative—if I preserve Newstead, I return; if I sell it, I stay away. I have had no letters since yours of June, but I have written several times, and shall continue, as usual, on the ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... The alternative amendments to the constitution will then be put: I. To strike out the words "National and." II. To strike out the words "and State." If both are lost, the constitution will remain as it is and the National American Woman Suffrage Association ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... that Blink, hearing his voice, might let go to answer, remained suspended, torn with anxiety about his costume. "If she comes in," he thought, "I shall die from shame. And if she doesn't, I shall die from a broken neck. What a dreadful alternative!" And he firmly grasped the most substantial lilac-boughs within, his reach, listening with the ears of a hare for any sound within the room, in which he no longer was to any appreciable extent. Then the thought of what a public ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... cit. respexit is a mere conjecture: corrumpit, the MS. reading, is meaningless, and no satisfactory alternative has been suggested. The lines may merely refer to Apollo, but et me suggests strongly that Ladas retorts, 'I, too, have Caesar's favour.' Cp. L. 37, where hic vester Apollo ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... Chadigi, here is the money. Go even to-day to Medinet and give to Idris this writing, which the devout dervish Bellali, at my request, wrote to him. The children of the mehendes are good, but if I do not obtain a permit, then there is no other alternative. I know you will not betray me. Remember that you and your father too come from the Dongolese tribe in which ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... Death was inevitable. Of this there could be no doubt, but to die beneath the rending fangs of the carnivore, congenital terror of her kind—it was unthinkable. But there was an alternative. The lion was almost upon her—another instant and he would seize her. Pan-at-lee turned sharply to her left. Just a few steps she took in the new direction before she disappeared over the rim of Kor-ul-lul. The baffled lion, planting all four feet, barely ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs |
