"Alternation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Durtal continued his alternation of wanton and pious ideas. Without power to resist, he saw himself slipping. "All this is far from clear," he cried, one day, in a rage, when, less apathetic than usual, he forced himself to take stock. "Now, Monsieur ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... it. The broad daylight made everything in the house seem poor and shabby. When she went down-stairs, her heart sank within her as she entered the kitchen to help her mother, and when she sat with the family at the breakfast-table, she had no faith left in her dreams of the rosy midnight. This alternation of feeling bred in her, in the course of a few days, a sort of fever, which lent a singular beauty to her face, and a petulant tang to her speech. She rose one morning, after a sleepless night, in a state of anger and excitement in which she had little difficulty in charging ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... smoked paper on the floor were now alternated with tests in which the floor was plain. The alternation was rendered necessary by the fact that the paper was laid over the electric wires and therefore prevented the punishment of mistakes. The purpose of these tests was to discover whether the smoked paper, which was an essential ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... forks of the stream. The hills here are higher, presenting escarpments of party-colored and apparently clay rocks, purple, dark-red, and yellow, containing strata of sandstone and limestone with shells, with a bed of cemented pebbles, the whole overlaid by beds of limestone. The alternation of red and yellow gives a bright appearance to the hills, one of which was called by our people the Rainbow hill, and the character of the country became more agreeable, and traveling far more pleasant, as now we found timber and very good grass. Gradually ascending, ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... room, though over-upholstered, and not furnished with any more individual taste than that which gave its generic stamp to the great Victorian period, is the happy possessor of some good things. Upon the mantel-shelf, backed by a large mirror, stands old china in alternation with alabaster jars, under domed shades, and tall vases encompassed by pendant ringlets of glass-lustre. Rose-wood, walnut, and mahogany make a well-wooded interior; and in the dates thus indicated there ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... to decide on what principle and in what way they should share their power. "We can not both command at once," said Minucius. "Let us exercise the power in alternation, each one being in authority for a day, or a week, or a month, or any other period ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... words the due alternation of stressed and unstressed vowels was not easy to maintain. There was no difficulty in such a combination as h['o]nor['i]fic['a]bil['i] or as tud['i]nit['a]tib['u]s, but with the halves put together there would be a tendency to say h['o]nor['i]ficabilit['u]dinit['a]tibus. ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt
... the localities of almost all the important schools of Italy. In Lombardy, the mass of the ground is composed of nothing but Alpine gravel, consisting of rolled oval pebbles, on the average about six inches long by four wide—awkward building materials, yet used in ingenious alternation with the bricks in all the lowland Italian fortresses. Besides this universal rotundity, the qualities of stones which rendered them valuable to the lapidary were forced on the painter's attention ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... of the reveille— considerably shorn of its wonted proportions, as the occasion demanded—the bivouac had been abandoned, and the little army again upon their march. What remained to be traversed of the space that separated them from the enemy, was an alternation of plain and open forest, but so completely in juxtaposition, that the head of the column had time to clear one wood and enter a second before its rear could disengage itself from the first. The effect of this, by the dim and peculiar light reflected from the snow across which they moved, was ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... settings on the front stage before the closed curtains. In order that no time should be lost while properties were {44} being changed, such scenes were commonly inserted between scenes requiring properties, so that a certain alternation between set and unset scenes resulted. The fourth act of the Merchant of Venice, for example, begins with the court-room scene, which demanded the whole stage, the properties for the court-room being set on the back stage, with perhaps some moved toward the front. The fifth act takes place ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... the loud responses, in those rhythmic phrases, so simple, yet so fervent, almost as if every tenth heart-beat, instead of its dull tic-tac, articulated itself as "Good Lord, deliver us! "—the sweet alternation of the two choirs, as their holy song floated from side to side, the keen young voices rising like a flight of singing-birds that passes from one grove to another, carrying its music with it back and forward,—why should she ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... itself so readily or so inevitably to these architectural forms—the four square foundations, the end pilasters and balustrades, and so on—is to me not so clear. The peculiar rectangular jointings, the alternation of soft and hard layers, the nearly horizontal strata, and other things, no doubt, enter into the problem. Many of these features are found in our older geology of the East, as in the Catskills —horizontal ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... This ceaseless alternation of voices and silence seemed the rhythm of the sacred hymn which resounds and prolongs its sound from age ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... longer experimenting with the W-ray! He was using a new type of ray altogether, the next series, the psenium electron emanation discovered only a few years before, which had the peculiar property of non-alternation, even when the psenium electron changed its orbit around the central ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... eloquence, wherever he wished them to go. Mr. Webster did not have that versatility and variety of eloquence which we associate with the speakers who have produced the most startling effect upon that complex thing called a jury. He never showed that rapid alternation of wit, humor, pathos, invective, sublimity, and ingenuity which have been characteristic of the greatest advocates. Before a jury as everywhere else he was direct and simple. He awed and terrified jurymen; he convinced their reason; but he commanded rather than ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... encounter some of them as it advances through the unknown. Many singular speculations have been indulged in by astronomers concerning the possible effects upon the earth of the varying state of the space that it traverses. Even the alternation of hot and glacial periods has sometimes been ascribed to this source. When tropical life flourished around the poles, as the remains in the rocks assure us, the needed high temperature may, it has been thought, ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... themselves, and to organise their efforts; he was likewise engaged in the more difficult and unthankful task of counteracting the weariness, discontent, and despondency of his own countrymen—a task, however, which he accomplished by management and address, and an alternation of real firmness with apparent yielding. During many months he remained the only Englishman who did not think the siege hopeless, and the object worthless. He often spoke of the time in which he resided at the country seat of the grand master at St. Antonio, ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Catarrhs and rheumatism are as likely to follow needless exposure to the withering "along-shore wind" of the winter months in Ceylon[1], as they are traceable to unwisely confronting the east winds of March in Great Britain; and during the alternation, from the sluggish heat which precedes the monsoon, to the moist and chill vapours that follow the descent of the rains, intestinal disorders, fevers, and liver complaints are not more characteristic of an Indian monsoon than an English autumn, and are equally amenable to those precautions ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... Indian file procession, brought Sam alongside Miss Josephine, and here he stuck for the balance of the ride, leaving Princeman to ride part of the time alone between the two couples, and part of the time to be the third rider with each couple in alternation. Miss Josephine was very much concerned about Mr. Turner's accident, very happy to know how lucky he had been to come off without a scratch, except for the tear in his coat, and very solicitous indeed about any further handling of the obstreperous gray team; and, forgiving ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... at the Hive, where mothers could leave their children in the care of the Nursery Group whilst they were engaged in industrial work, or as a kindly relief to themselves when fatigued by the care of them; for a primary doctrine was "alternation of employments." It was believed that more and better work could be done by not being confined to one employment all the day of labor; that it was better for the mental as well as the physical system to have a change—in theory as often as once ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... known domain, the thought meets me: what would be the effect on us men of such a periodical alternation between nothing and abundance as these woods undergo? Perhaps in the endless variety of worlds there may be one in which that is among the means whereby its dwellers are saved from self and lifted into life; a world in which during the one half of the year they walk in state, in splendour, in ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... turned round to look for the stalk, and I found it immediately under the bush, freshly broken, between two other roses which remained on the branch, and I returned home then, with a much disturbed mind; for I am certain now, as certain as I am of the alternation of day and night, that there exists close to me an invisible being that lives on milk and on water, which can touch objects, take them and change their places; which is, consequently, endowed with a material nature, although it is impossible to our senses, ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... balance of mind, and a repose of the emotional nature, which he had never before observed, except in much older women. She had had, as he could well imagine, no romping girlhood, no season of careless, light-hearted dalliance with opening life, no violent alternation even of the usual griefs and joys of youth. The social calm in which she had expanded had developed her nature as gently and securely as a sea-flower is unfolded below the reach of tides ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... men of Scripture pass through a course of so many changes; none of them touched human life at so many points; none of them were so tempered and polished by swift alternation of heat and cold, by such heavy blows and the friction of such rapid revolutions. Like his great Son and Lord, though in a lower sense, he, too, must be "in all points tempted like as we are," that his words may be fitted for the solace and strength of the whole world. Poets "learn ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... modifying process, the two hemispheres would alternately experience this coincidence of summer with relative nearness to the sun, during a period of 13,000 years. But there is also a still slower change in the direction of the axis major of the Earth's orbit; from which it results that the alternation we have described is completed in about 21,000 years. That is to say, if at a given time the Earth is nearest to the sun at our mid-summer, and furthest from the sun at our mid-winter; then, in 10,500 years afterwards, ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... after a year of the greatest of all wars it is natural to indulge in a stock-taking of the national spirit, and comforting to find that, in spite of disillusions and disappointments, the alternation of exultations and agonies, the soul of the fighting men of England remains unshaken and unconquerable. Three of the Great Powers of Europe espoused the cause of Liberty a year ago; now there are four, and ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... distinction between special and general education has nothing to do with the transferability of function or power. In the literal sense, any transfer is miraculous and impossible. But some activities are broad; they involve a coordination of many factors. Their development demands continuous alternation and readjustment. As conditions change, certain factors are subordinated, and others which had been of minor importance come to the front. There is constant redistribution of the focus of the action, as is seen in the illustration of a game as over against pulling a fixed weight by a series of uniform ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... a further and more immediate and practical end in view. A primeval forest is a great sponge which absorbs and distills the rain water. And when it is destroyed the result is apt to be an alternation of flood and drought. Forest fires ultimately make the land a desert, and are a detriment to all that portion of the State tributary to the streams through the woods where they occur. Every effort ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... ALTERNATION OF GENERATIONS.—This term is applied to a peculiar mode of reproduction which prevails among many of the lower animals, in which the egg produces a living form quite different from its parent, but from which the parent-form is reproduced by a process ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... the vexed questions of criticism regarding these refrains is whether they were rendered in alternation with the narrative verses or as a continuous under-song. Early observers of Indian dances have noted that, while one leaping savage after another improvised a simple strain or two, the whole dancing company kept up a guttural cadence of "Heh, heh, heh!" or ...
— Ballad Book • Katherine Lee Bates (ed.)
... independence does not extend to their legs, authority over their legs being vested exclusively in the one brother during a specific term of days, and then passing to the other brother for a like term, and so on, by regular alternation. I could call witnesses who would prove that the accused had revealed to them the existence of this extraordinary fact, and had also made known which of them was in possession of the legs yesterday—and this would, of course, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and Surg. Jour., Dec. 2, 1915.] after studying 200 cases of heart disease, finds that men are more subject to auricular fibrillation, auricular flutter, heart block and alternation of the pulse than are women. The greater frequency of syphilis in men than in women should be considered in ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... Mississippi regiment. His horse was killed under him early this morning, and he's fought all day on foot, swearing in the strange and melodious fashion that you know. It's hop! swear! hop! swear! in beautiful alternation!" ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the Cliffords. But the Cliffords could not come, and then she had declined to make any further attempt. Indeed, a new idea had struck her. Brooke Burgess, her guest, should sit at one end of the table, and Mr. Gibson, the clergyman, at the other. In this way the proper alternation would be effected. When Martha heard this, Martha quite understood the extent of the good fortune that was in store for Dorothy. If Mr. Gibson was to be welcomed in that way, it could only be in preparation of his ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... the fearless Sisters waited, Watched the north for signal fires, And in eager alternation Held ...
— The Legends of San Francisco • George W. Caldwell
... sound of w; I said "vater" every time. Patiently my teacher worked with me, inventing mouth exercises for me, to get my stubborn lips to produce that w; and when at last I could say "village" and "water" in rapid alternation, without misplacing the two initials, that memorable word was sweet on my lips. For we had conquered, and ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... creator of alternating currents. A well-known type of alternator is the magneto machine which sends shocks through any one who completes the external circuit by holding the brass handles connected by wires to the brushes. The faster the handle of the machine is turned the more frequent is the alternation, and ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... into our office that July Saturday, just in time to interfere with the outing Bob Brownley and I had laid out, and who was destined to divert my chum's heretofore smooth-flowing river of existence and turn it into an alternation of roaring rushes and deadly calms, was truly the most exquisite creature one could conceive of, I know my thought must have been Bob's too, for his eyes were riveted on her face. She dropped the black lashes like a veil ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... is its proper place; but to require that gentlemen whose whole faculties should be bent upon the acquirement of a real knowledge of human physiology should worry themselves with getting up hearsay about the alternation of generations in the Salpae is really monstrous. I cannot characterise it in any other way. And having sacrificed my own pursuit, I am sure I may sacrifice other people's; and I make this remark with all the more willingness because I discovered, on reading ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... pronounced symptoms. Its early sores may easily be mistaken for some skin affection. Mercury and other means are successful in doing away with at least the more noticeable signs of syphilis during the first and secondary stages. The modern medical treatment using mercury and Salvarsan (606) in alternation, has been very successful. It is claimed that by following it, syphilis may be totally cured if taken in hand during the first stage. The sores developed during the first two or three years of the disease are very infectious. In the case of a chronic syphilis of three or ...
— Sex - Avoided subjects Discussed in Plain English • Henry Stanton
... cheeks. Her sisters, young girls as they were, could not understand her moods, either of wild mirth, eager delight in poetry and music, childish wilfulness and petulant temper or deep melancholy, all coming in turn with feverish alternation and vehemence. As the ladies approached the castle they were met by various gentlemen, among whom was Maitre Alain Chartier, and a bandying of compliments and witticisms began in such rapid French that even Eleanor could not follow ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... active participation is unnecessary, and so belong rather to the central scene; while the second pair (iv: iv), hurrying to the combat, are to be reckoned rather with those who are actively engaged. This is also emphasized by the symmetrical alternation of young and ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... to himself the lines of Shelley's fragment. Its alternation of sad human ineffectiveness with vast inhuman cycles of activity chilled him and he forgot his ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... their sides. Not a word escaped the lips of either, to break the deep stillness prevailing over the palace. Each fixed his eyes on the other, in stern and searching scrutiny, and cup for cup, drank in slow and regular alternation. The debauch, which had hitherto presented a spectacle of brutal degradation and violence, now that it was restricted to two men only—each equally unimpressed by the scenes of horror he had beheld, each vying with the other for the attainment of the ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... must admit, further, (3) that Aristotle attributed to Plato the doctrine of the rotation of the earth on its axis. On the other hand it has been urged that if the earth goes round with the outer heaven and sun in twenty-four hours, there is no way of accounting for the alternation of day and night; since the equal motion of the earth and sun would have the effect of absolute immobility. To which it may be replied that Plato never says that the earth goes round with the outer heaven and sun; although the whole question depends on the relation of earth and sun, ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... with leaves of the young form grows up into a shrub bearing leaves of no other shape, so that an ordinary observer unacquainted with the history of the plant would imagine that he had to deal with two distinct species. This fact is the more interesting when compared with the alternation of generations which takes place among the ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... indignation. Warm, glowing eloquence, is not inconsistent with accuracy of reasoning and judgment. When we have expressed our admiration or abhorrence of any action or character, we should afterwards be ready coolly to explain to our pupils the justice of our sentiments: by this due mixture and alternation of eloquence and reasoning, we may cultivate a taste for the moral and sublime, and yet preserve the character from any tincture of extravagant enthusiasm. We cannot expect, that the torrent of passion should never sweep away the land-marks of exact morality; ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... all the meteorological influences, have run riot for weeks past. Such caprices, abruptest alternation of frowns and beauty, I never knew. It is a common remark that (as last summer was different in its spells of intense heat from any preceding it,) the winter just completed has been without parallel. It ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... alone seem originally marked out for tragedy: such, for example, as the long-continued alternation of crime, revenge, and curses, which we witness in the house of Atreus. When we examine the names of the pieces which are lost, we have great difficulty in conceiving how the mythological fables (such, at least, as they are known to us,) could ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... like any peasant child—towered above us, and the scenery around became considerably more picturesque than any we had passed through that morning. The banks of the river were more shapely, and the alternation of bushes and meadow, with the varying lights and shades on the distant peaks and the nearer slopes, would have seemed more than beautiful, if our wedged positions and the accompanying warmth had not somewhat evaporated our admiration. Though the heat remained, the sun had disappeared behind huge ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... constituting harmony, have opened a new path. Henceforth melody will be able to develop and give rise to the richest combinations. We shall be able to associate various melodies, sing them at the same time, or in alternation, assign them to various instruments, vary indefinitely the pitch of singing and concerted voices. The boundless realm of musical combinations is open; it has been worth while to take the trouble to invent. Modern polyphony with its power of expressing at the same time different, ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... is often remarkably effective, but which almost invariably suggests a sense of artifice. In reading The Scarlet Letter we do not think of the style; in reading The Masque of the Red Death we are forcibly impressed by the skilful arrangement of words, the alternation of long and short sentences, the device of repetition and the deliberate choice of epithets. Hawthorne uses his own natural form of expression. Poe, with laborious art, fashions an instrument admirably ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... forest-growth, the valleys partly arable and partly pasture. Were it not for the absence of heather with its peculiar mauve tints, the traveller might well imagine himself in Scotland. There is the same smiling alternation of woodland and meadow, the same huge boulders of gneiss and granite which give a distinctive tone to the landscape, the same exuberance of living waters. Water, indeed, is one of the glories of the Sila—everywhere it bubbles ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... verses. These were not rhymed; the structure of the Japanese language does not lend itself to rhyme. Their differentiation from prose consisted solely in the numerical regularity of the syllables in consecutive lines; the alternation of phrases of five and seven syllables each. A tanka (short song) consisted of thirty-one syllables arranged thus, 5, 7, 5, 7, and 7; and a naga-uta (long song) consisted of an unlimited number of lines, all fulfilling ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... enchanted circle of your music, it would be both foolish and cruel to drag her out of it all of a sudden. Go on with your music therefore. You will always be welcome during the evening hours in my wife's apartments. But gradually select a more energetic kind of music, and effect a clever alternation of the cheerful sort with the serious; and above all things, repeat your story of the fearful ghost very very often. The Baroness will grow familiar with it; she will forget that a ghost haunts this castle; and the story will have no stronger effect ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... feelings of the most diabolical resentment and vengeance against the baronet, and yet it was impossible to get out of him the means by which he proposed to visit them upon him. On leaving Father M'Mahon, therefore, he experienced a state of alternation between a resolution to make disclosures and a determination to be silent and work out his own plans. He also feared death, it is true: but this was only when those rare visitations of conscience occurred that were awakened by superstition, instead of an enlightened and Christian sense ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... large bay of pure salt-water, gradually encroached on, and at last converted into the bed of a muddy estuary, into which floating carcasses were swept. At Punta Gorda, in Banda Oriental, I found an alternation of the Pampaean estuary deposit, with a limestone containing some of the same extinct sea-shells; and this shows either a change in the former currents, or more probably an oscillation of level in the bottom of the ancient estuary. ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... passed in a constant alternation of oppressive fears and aspiring hopes, the nights in ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... smoke or dust rising to a height. He darted towards it. As he drew nearer, the cloud seemed to condense, and presently he saw plainly enough that it was a great column of water shooting up and out from the face of the mountain. It sank and rose again, with the alternation of a huge pulse: the mountain was cracked, and through the crack, with every throb of its heart, the life-blood of the great hull of the world seemed beating out. Already it had scattered masses of gravel on all sides, and down the hill a river was shooting in sheer cataract, raving and tearing, ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... all that he required. A clever scheme! Pax had formed layers of molecular thickness of two different metals in alternation by the to-and-fro swing of his charging current. When the battery discharged the metals went into solution, each plate becoming alternately positive and negative. He wondered what Pax had used for an electrolyte ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... we "straggle down to this terrene nativity:" When, amid the sour exposures and cruel storms of the world, we have renewed our appetite for the divine ambrosia of peace and sweetness, we forsake the body and ascend to heaven; this constant recurrence illustrating the great truths, that alternation is the law of destiny, and that variety is the ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... the selfsame spot Where thou wast born, that still repinest not — Type of the home-fond heart, the happy lot! — Deeply thy mild content rebukes the land Whose flimsy homes, built on the shifting sand Of trade, for ever rise and fall With alternation whimsical, Enduring scarce a day, Then swept away By swift engulfments of incalculable tides Whereon capricious Commerce rides. Look, thou substantial spirit of content! Across this little vale, thy continent, To where, beyond the mouldering mill, Yon old deserted Georgian ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... The covenant daily and nightly, i.e., the covenant which refers to the constant and regular alternation of day and night. The ordinances of heaven and earth denote the whole course of nature,—especially the relations of sun, moon, and stars, to the earth, comp. chap. xxxi. 35—in so far as it is regulated by God's ordinance, and is, therefore, ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... which gives them, it seems to me, their special grip on actuality; they never fly into the cloud-regions of theories and dreams; their heads have not time before their hearts have intervened, their hearts not time before their heads cry: "Hold!" They apprehend both worlds, but with such rapid alternation that they surrender to neither. Consider how clever and comparatively warm is that cold thing "religion" in France. I remember so well the old cur of our little town coming up to lunch, his interest in the cooking, in the practical matters of our life, and in wider affairs ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... doctrine too well not to be ready for this trial, nor had it been sent to him without warning. Nevertheless the sensible presence of God's love had been so vivid and constant that he could alternate the joy of labor with that of prayer with the greatest ease. And now it was an alternation, not of choice but of dire compulsion, between bitter, helpless inaction, and a state of prayer which was a mere dread of an all-too-near Judge. It seemed to him as if he had boasted, "I said in my ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... was beautiful after the storm. The sky had been washed clean by wind and rain, and now it was a clear, silky blue. The country, an alternation of forest and little prairies, was of surpassing fertility. The pure air, scented with a thousand miles of unsullied wilderness, was heaven to the nostrils, and Henry took deep and long breaths of it. He had suffered no harm from the night before. His vigorous ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... already specked with the green points of the springing blades. A warm, silvery vapor hung over the land, mellowing the brief vistas of the interlacing valleys, touching with a sweeter pastoral beauty the irregular alternation of field and forest, and lifting the wooded slopes, far and near, to a statelier and more imposing height. The park-like region of Kennett, settled originally by emigrants from Bucks and Warwickshire, reproduced to their eyes—as it ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... fell was Flan, son of Conaing, chief of the district which included the plundered cemeteries, fighting on the side of the plunderers. The mother of Flan was one of those who composed quatrains on the event of the battle, and her lines are a natural and affecting alternation from joy to grief—joy for the triumph of her brother and her country, and grief for the loss of her self-willed, warlike son. Olaf, the Danish leader, avenged in the next campaign the loss of his son, by a successful descent on Armagh, once again rising from its ruins. He put ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... highway was well beaten down and I swung off countryward past St. Agatha’s. A gray mist hung over the fields in whirling clouds, breaking away occasionally and showing the throbbing winter stars. The walk, and my interest in the alternation of star-lighted and mist-wrapped landscape won me to a better state of mind, and after tramping a couple of miles, I set out for home. Several times on my tramp I had caught myself whistling the air of a majestic old hymn, and smiled, ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... approached; and now, as it came nearer and nearer, a painful and sickening alternation of incredulity and horror surged through every Irish heart. Meanwhile, the Press of England, on both sides of the Channel, kept up a ceaseless cry for blood. The government were told that to let these men off, innocent or guilty, would be "weakness." They were called upon to be ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... to a junction with their indolent outstretched feet. Itinerant street music twittered along the Piazza; officers walked arm-in-arm; now in moonlight bright as day, now in a shadow black as night: distant figures twinkled with the alternation. The light lay like a blade's sharp edge around the massive circle. Of Italians of a superior rank, Verona sent none to this resort. Even the melon-seller stopped beneath the arch ending the Stradone Porta Nuova, as if ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... plain is everywhere of good quality, and everywhere cultivated, or rather worked, for we can hardly consider a soil cultivated which is never either irrigated or manured, or voluntarily relieved by fallows or an alternation of crops, till it has descended to the last stage of exhaustion. The prince rack-rents the farmer, the farmer rack-rents the cultivator, and the cultivator rack-rents the soil. Soon after crossing the Sindh river we enter upon the territories of the ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... That was natural enough. But I looked for another expression—that unquiet anxiety produced by the alternation of hope ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... another, from one flat to another, from one set of companions to another. But there is the opposite type of minds. To them it is far more welcome to continue throughout life at the same work, in the same old home, in touch with the same dear friends. Many minds surely are better fitted for alternation in their activities, but many others, and they certainly are not the worst, are naturally much better adapted to a regular repetition. There are opportunities for both types of mental behaviour in the ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... underlies a coal seam, and there occur also beds of iron ore. We give a typical section of a very small portion of the series at a locality in Pennyslvania. Although some of the minor changes are omitted, the section shows the rapid alternation of ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... and said, "He wanted some; he thought they would taste good, so he jumped for them"; at this-point the child did jump, like his role; then he continued with his story, "but he couldn't get them." And so he proceeded, with a constant alternation of narrative and dramatisation which was enough to make ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... Death." Any one who ventured upon it thought very little of this life, and it was well that he should, as he had little of it left to think about. The armies had lain there for weeks and weeks, facing each other in a deadlock, and a fierce winter, making the country an alternation of slush and snow, had settled down on both. The North could not go forward; the South could not thrust the North back; but the North could wait and the South could not. Lee's army, crouching behind the earthen walls, grew thinner and hungrier ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... miserable for some time as a preparation for the reading of a new poem. It is true that if the sense of privation has been acute, the pleasure is proportionally increased; and that few pleasures of any great intensity grow up from indifference: still, remission and alternation may give a zest for enjoyment without ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... warrior, and then from a warrior into an explorer, which was his present character. But he did not see at present the variety and majesty that all explorers wish to find. The country continued low, the same alternation of sand and salt marsh, although the bushes were increasing in size, and they were interspersed here and there with trees of ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... crown; but if you examine it in a good light, you will convince yourself that it is not an ordinary crown. It is a heraldic crown—a badge of rank, and it consists of an alternation of four pearls and strawberry leaves, the proper badge of a marquis. We may infer, therefore, that the person whose initials end in B was entitled to wear ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... irreparable, and the papal party at home had assumed an attitude of suspended insurrection, the fortunes of the Protestants entered into a new phase. The persecution ceased, and those who were but lately its likely victims, hiding for their lives, passed at once by a sudden alternation into the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... are not the same length," Stoffel complained; and there is no alternation of masculine and ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... in which so many vast undertakings were carried out consists of units all of one dimension, and bonded by the simple alternation of their joints. Supposing a lower course to consist of two entire bricks, the one above it would be one whole brick flanked on either side by a half brick. An Assyrian wall or building consists of the infinite repetition of this single figure. Each whole ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... Aspern was awful. The French pushed in, were driven out, then turned and seized the place again. Once more, and still once more, the same alternation of success and defeat was repeated, the thickest of the fight being at the churchyard in the western end of the village. At Essling the fore-post about which the battle raged was a great barn with mighty walls and vaulted cellars. Meanwhile the Emperor was calling ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... company (under the "amicable" treaty) Brignoli, of the golden tenor voice, who sings so sweetly and sulks so proudly lazy, and Amodio, that ton of juvenile humanity, whose weighty baritone and eagerness to please make up for the see-saw alternation of his two only expressions and gesticulations,—those of vulgar love-making and mock-heroical revenge. These, with Gazzaniga, the charming, lively, natural Gazzaniga, whose voice is fresh, and who can sing and act so charmingly in genial music, such ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... shall be pleased—er to see them come back." Life to her was no alternation of joy and grief, but only of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... the only instance where Catullus has introduced a spondee into the second foot of the phalaecian, which then becomes decasyllabic. The alternation of this decasyllabic rhythm with the ordinary hendecasyllable is studiously artistic; I have retained it throughout. In the series of dactylic lines 17-22, Catullus no doubt intended to convey the idea of rapidity, as, ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... in short," continued Montreal, "between the great families; an alternation of prosecutions, and confiscations, and banishments: today, the Guelfs proscribe the Ghibellines—tomorrow, the Ghibellines drive out the Guelfs. This may be liberty, but it is the liberty of the strong against the weak. In the other cities, as Milan, as Verona, as Bologna, the people are under ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... democracy and autocracy are superficial forms, and are questions of taste, and they will not agree with Munsterberg, who says that the two forms tend inevitably toward a compromise, by a process of alternation in which first one and-then the other is the dominant ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... of this systole and diastole alternation, the glory and the pang are fused and interpenetrated in a continuous mood. Such a mood furnishes the spiritual woof of one of Browning's most consummate and one of his loveliest lyrics, The Last Ride ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... comparative tranquillity of the ocean, agglomerated these into more or less compact beds of rock (the mica-schist formation), producing the first crust or solid envelope of the globe. Upon this, other stratified rocks, composed sometimes of a mixture, sometimes of an alternation of precipitations, sediments, and occasionally of conglomerates, were by degrees deposited, giving rise to ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... abruptness. There is no blending, in the constant alternation, until the earlier (lamenting) motive conquers and rises to a new height where a culminating chorale sounds a big triumph, while the sighing phrase merely spurs a new ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... pre-occupied, all the while he "wheezes out law and whiffles Latin forth," with a birthday-feast in preparation for his eight-year-old son, little Giacinto, the pride of his heart. The effect is very comic, though the alternation or intermixture of lawyer's-Latin and domestic arrangements produces something which is certainly, and perhaps happily, without parallel in poetry. His defence is, and is intended to be, mere quibbling. Causa honoris is the whole pith and point of his plea: ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... regiments has but recently been mustered into the service, is poorly drilled and worse equipped, and is by no means fitted to picket against so wily a foe as Mosby. Though great caution is exercised by Colonel Percy Wyndham, who is in command of the brigade, to arrange and change the alternation of the pickets, so that the regiments to picket at a given point may not be known beforehand; yet by means of Miss Ratcliffe and her rebellions sisterhood, Mosby is generally informed of the regiment doing duty, and his attacks are usually directed ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... afternoon you could see signs, here and there upon the horizon, of other showers. The ground was dry again, while the breeze was cool and sweet, smelling of wet foliage and bringing sunshine and shade in frequent and very pleasing alternation. ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... owing to their insufficient training, do not produce half the effect they would if they had been subjected to the same amount of training. With the Italians great certainty and evenness throughout the role; with the Germans an unequal alternation of brilliant and mediocre ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... uttered a little squawk of delight, and went at each other like two little tigresses, and kissed in swift alternation with a singular ardor, drawing their crests back like snakes, and then darting them forward and inflicting what, to the male philosopher looking on, seemed hard kisses, violent kisses, rather than the tender ones to be expected from two ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... effacements.[348] Delambre pronounced them "more curious than really useful."[349] Even Herschel, profoundly as he studied them, and intimately as he was convinced of their importance as symptoms of solar activity, saw no reason to suspect that their abundance and scarcity were subject to orderly alternation. One man alone in the eighteenth century, Christian Horrebow of Copenhagen, divined their periodical character, and foresaw the time when the effects of the sun's vicissitudes upon the globes revolving round him might ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... gazing up and down on each other, Iollan staring down into sweet grey wells that peeped and flickered under thin brows, and Uct Dealv looking up into great black ones that went dreamy and went hot in endless alternation. ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... this literature is its elaborate doctrine of evolution and emanation from the Deity, the world process being conceived in the usual Hindu fashion as an alternation of production and destruction. A distinction is drawn between pure and gross creation. What we commonly call the Universe is bounded by the shell of the cosmic egg and there are innumerable such eggs, each with its own heavens and its own tutelary deities ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... and little enough pride to be a messenger. Only, he had no spirit of adventure to fit him for a supercargo,—even that brushed too close upon the protagonist for him; and so he stayed upon his office stool. While other clerks went away promoted, he ticked off his life in alternation from the counting-room to the bank; trustworthy on that well-taught street with any forms of other people's fortunes, only not to make his own, and even trustworthy, as we have seen it go unquestioned, ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... said he, "it's a bore! this alternation of knocking each other down which the nations of the earth practise,—and the societies,—and the men! It's a pugilistic world we live in, Linden. It's a bore to keep up with them,—for one must know ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner |
