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noun
Alternative  n.  
1.
An offer of two things, one of which may be chosen, but not both; a choice between two things, so that if one is taken, the other must be left. "There is something else than the mere alternative of absolute destruction or unreformed existence."
2.
Either of two things or propositions offered to one's choice. Thus when two things offer a choice of one only, the two things are called alternatives. "Having to choose between two alternatives, safety and war, you obstinately prefer the worse."
3.
The course of action or the thing offered in place of another. "If this demand is refused the alternative is war." "With no alternative but death."
4.
A choice between more than two things; one of several things offered to choose among. "My decided preference is for the fourth and last of these alternatives."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Alternative" Quotes from Famous Books



... contest in the already overcrowded labour market. Mr. Ritchie answers that, while the conclusion usually drawn from this argument is a sentimental reaction in favour of the old family ideal, as, for instance, in Mr. Besant's books, there is another alternative, and that is the resettling of the labour question. 'The elevation of the status of women and the regulation of the conditions of labour are ultimately,' he says, 'inseparable questions. On the basis ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... work to find its own public is far less likely to have a steady income than the worker who is employed by some large firm. If the artist or the worker in handicrafts feels that she must work alone, or if she works better by herself, then she should have either an independent income or an alternative occupation; otherwise she will need a well-developed business sense in order to handle the products of her skill to ...
— The Canadian Girl at Work - A Book of Vocational Guidance • Marjory MacMurchy

... alternative hypothesis. During revision of the foregoing essay, in preparation for that edition of the volume containing it which was published in 1883, there occurred the thought that some light on the origin of the planetoids ought to be obtained ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... then to you, that I see no alternative left but that which Congress adopted, of each party placing the other on the footing of the most favored nation. If the nations of Europe, from their actual establishments, are not at liberty to say to America, that she shall trade in their ports duty free, they may say she ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... future proceedings, Lord George said with emotion: 'In this cause I have shaken my constitution and shortened my days, and I will succeed or die.' In the course of the year 1848, walking home, talking together, from the House of Commons, he twice recurred to this terrible alternative. ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli

... commander, was in vivid contrast with the harsh orders of General Pope in Culpepper. The accents of friendship and persuasion were substituted for the "rod of iron." There would be no coercive measures; no arrests, with the alternative presented of an oath to support the South, or instant banishment. No intimidation would be permitted. In the lines of the Southern army, at least, Marylanders should enjoy freedom of thought and speech, and every man should "decide his ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke

... water was, in one form at least, the same wise alternative in after years so often offered to witches. The accused was tied up in a heap, each arm to the other leg, and flung into water. If he floated he was guilty, and must be killed. If he sank and drowned, he was innocent—but killed. Trial was therefore synonymous ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum

... country in the same time. If you take the easy course—if you throw away the opportunity placed by Providence in your hands—if you allow the vast sums of money which you have to direct the distribution of to be spent unprofitably, we shall retrograde as fast as under the other alternative we should have advanced; and those who have been year after year hoping against hope, and labouring against the tide, will ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke

... power, took place, only if it proceeded from Isaiah, but not if it was uttered only about the end of the exile, at a time when Cyrus had already entered upon the stage of history. These passages, at all events, admit only the alternative,—either that Isaiah was the real author, or that they were forged at a later period by some deceiver; and this latter alternative is so decidedly opposed to the whole spirit of the second part, that scarcely any one among the opponents will resolve to adopt it. Considering ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg

... certain size its life is suddenly threatened. The center of the cell is seen to be so far from the surface that it can no longer draw in the nutrition from without. The bulk has outrun the absorbing surface. "The alternative is very sharp," says the scientist, "the cell must divide or die." Only by losing its life and becoming two cells ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis

... Skandinavia should send this girl, this good-looker, on a journey through their forests alone. He would willingly have asked the question. But he remembered her written commission, signed by Elas Peterman. So he was left with no alternative but to yield the ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum

... that the body is the mirror of the soul! If it were so, Philippus would have the face of Orion, and Orion that of Philippus." But could Orion's heart be wholly reprobate? Nay, that was impossible; her every impulse resisted the belief. She must either love him or hate him, there was no third alternative; but as yet the two passions were struggling within her in a way that ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... monasticism, the increasing flagrancy and grossness of superstition, the aggressive factiousness of the ecclesiastics, the cruelty of bigoted tribunals—these things disgusted and wearied the more enlightened spirits, and the English philosophy only held out an inspiring intellectual alternative.[29] ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley

... carbuncle." This is the reading of H. 2, 17; T.C.D; which O'Curry quotes as an alternative to "forty" of the Book of Leinster. "Each one of them fit to adorn it" is by O'Curry translated "in each compartment." The Irish is a cach aen chumtach: apparently "for each ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy

... attacked on three sides, each force equaling our own in numbers, there was no alternative but to make our way across the Holston river ...
— History of the Seventh Ohio Volunteer Cavalry • R. C. Rankin

... authorized the highest respect for his opinion. Hardened as he was, the old man's eyes filled, his lips trembled, and his voice was husky, as he whispered the verdict in my ear. I guessed it before he said a word; yet I hoped he would have counselled against the dread alternative. As we went aft to the quarter-deck, all eyes were bent upon us, for every one conjectured the malady and feared the result, yet none dared ask ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... his discovery he was able to construct an alternative to a life like that. A skillful piano tuner could earn what money he needed anywhere and could earn enough in a diligent week to set him free, his simple wants provided for, for the rest ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster

... article Vacuum in the Penny Cyclo. (xxvi. 76), quoting Johnson's words, adds:—'That is, either all space is full of matter, or there are parts of space which have no matter. The alternative is undeniable, and the inference to which the modern philosophy would give the greatest probablility is, that all space is full of matter in the common sense of the word, but really occupied by particles ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... what a dangerous situation he was. He must risk his life if he swam out to sea. The only other alternative was to leap over the net. That he did, jumping as quickly as he could over the ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various

... formed the resolution to kill the obstinate King of Navarre and his cousin. On one occasion Charles is said to have been deterred by the supplications of his young wife from going in person to destroy them.[1074] At length, when the alternative of death or the Bastile was the only one presented, the courage of the Bourbons began to falter. Navarre was the first to yield, and his sister, the excellent Catharine de Bourbon, followed his example. On the thirteenth of September the ambassador Walsingham wrote: "They prepare Bastile ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... and then would follow another dreary hunt for work, with all its rebuffs, and sooner or later the delicately nurtured woman would succumb and go under in a mental or physical collapse, the hospital her only alternative. ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith

... men who had been officers in the army under former regimes, but had turned bandit as the safer alternative to suffering immediate death at the hands of the faction then in power. The others, for the most part, were pure-blooded Indians whose adult lives had been spent in outlawry and brigandage. All were small of stature beside the giant, Byrne. Rozales and two others spoke English. With those Billy conversed. ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... up to his grave":—I perceived that the youth's bow and arrows had dropped from his hands, and that a tremor had fallen upon his limbs:—It is not he that can split a hair with a coat-of-mail cleaving arrow that is able to withstand an assault from the formidable:—No alternative was left us but that of surrendering our arms, accoutrements, and clothes, and escaping with our lives. On an affair of importance employ a man experienced in business who can bring the fierce lion within the noose of his halter; though ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... to avoid, if possible, the alternative of being shot or having to pay one thousand pounds for being set at liberty . . . It is moreover wicked to tempt Providence systematically. I have already thrust myself into more danger than was, perhaps, strictly ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... Perhaps; or perhaps they were too taken up with maintaining their equilibrium on their high shoes, or perhaps they thought of nothing at all. Reggie, who had a poor opinion of the intellectual brightness of uneducated Japanese women, thought that the last alternative was ...
— Kimono • John Paris

... he never corrected this fault: as long as he lived, he was subjected to this alternative, yet the sufferings of the evening never had any influence on ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin

... Fighting Instructions required that, "If the admiral and his fleet have the wind of the enemy, and they have stretched themselves in a line of battle, the van of the admiral's fleet is to steer with the van of the enemies, and there to engage them." There was no alternative course laid down; just as there was no punishment alternative to death in the Article of War under which ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan

... make such few repairs as are necessary to restore the aerostat to a state of efficiency. So long as that remains in serviceable condition, we will always have a method of advance or retreat. Without it—well, I'd rather not think of the alternative." ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.

... and would have made the journey with ease in half the time. But Felipe reflected that there might be many things for Alessandro to arrange at Temecula. He would doubtless return prepared to take Ramona back with him, in case that proved the only alternative left them. Felipe grew wretched as his fancy dwelt on the picture of Ramona's future. He had been in the Temecula village. He knew its poverty; the thought of Ramona there was monstrous, To the indolent, ease-loving Felipe it was incredible that a girl reared as Ramona had been, could for ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson

... She had made her assertion in so categorical a form that to withhold her authority now meant to appear absurd, and she had not wished to betray the confidence of Marian Holbury. So she fell back on the alternative of a partial explanation. ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck

... substantial to reward your success. There will be great treasures to be divided among you if we conquer, but if we are defeated we are lost. Hemmed in as we are on every side, there is no place that we can reach by flight. There is, therefore, no such alternative as flight left to us. We ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... "The alternative presented to you last night and this morning was sent as a trial, Ishmael; such a trial as I think every man must encounter once in his life, as a decisive test of his spirit. Even our Saviour was tempted, ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... to his utter dismay, that William's forces were four times as numerous as his own. It would, of course, be madness for him to think of attacking an enemy in his intrenchments with such an inferior force. The only alternative left him was either to retreat, or else to take some strong position and fortify himself there, in the hope of being able to resist the invaders and arrest their advance, though he was not strong enough ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... follow;—either I declare, in the presence of every one, the madness with which you are now affected, and I get you ignominiously ordered back to England; or if you prefer it, I will run my dagger through your throat in the presence of all here. This second alternative seems to me the least disagreeable, and I think I shall hold ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... has heard of their journey, and thinks this my only alternative. As if I could not go with them if I chose—I wish they would ask me, though. They shall! I'll not be driven up to the Holt as my last resource, and live there under a system of mild browbeating, because I can't help it. No, no! Robin shall find it takes a vast deal of persuasion to ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... so when the alternative is put before you," said the judge, dryly; "and my advice to you is to ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths

... then were what the world would have forced upon him: the Church as an alternative to a continually worsening civilisation. While he hated the Utopias of the Futurists and while he accepted the Christian view of life as a probation he felt too that life today ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... four other Professors. The present house of Burnside might, he said, be adopted for the residence of the Principal; (3) a College Hall which for the present may be used both for lectures, exercises and refectory; (4) a Library; (5) a Chapel; (6) Steward's apartments." As an alternative to (3) he suggested three lecture rooms with some adjacent small apartments. It was proposed that prizes should be offered for the first and second best plans with specifications and estimates, not only for ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan

... that the carrying out of such arrangements as those 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 ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn

... ask you to—accept my conditions, perhaps the cleverest thing I could do would be to go away and never see you again. There's no other alternative." ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair

... valuable merchandise continually passing over the Nicaragua route. It certainly would have been most satisfactory to me if the objects of the Cyane's mission could have been consummated without any act of public force, but the arrogant contumacy of the offenders rendered it impossible to avoid the alternative either to break up their establishment or to leave them impressed with the idea that they might persevere with impunity in a career of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 5: Franklin Pierce • James D. Richardson

... But if essence is of the class of good, generation must be of some other class; and our friends, who affirm that pleasure is a generation, would laugh at the notion that pleasure is a good; and at that other notion, that pleasure is produced by generation, which is only the alternative of destruction. Who would prefer such an alternation to the equable life of pure thought? Here is one absurdity, and not the only one, to which the friends of pleasure are reduced. For is there not also an absurdity in affirming ...
— Philebus • Plato

... an alternative to obedience. The dead cannot disobey. [He takes out his pistol and places ...
— Annajanska, the Bolshevik Empress • George Bernard Shaw

... knew no alternative but to allow matters to stand as they did. The gloomy weather, however, oppressed their spirits. They had now been gone from civilization for a considerable time, and if truth be told they were becoming ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough

... miles of the city, and had left few people to tell tales. Our troops spent their time teaching women and children the use of firearms, and hoping for arms and orders to go to the relief of Abercrombie. There was no telegraph, and the last mail left no alternative but to start for Fort Snelling, with such short time to get there that every available man and horse must go to hurry them forward. They left in the afternoon, and that was a dreadful night. Many of the ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm

... side of the Marmalong Bridge, to come to terms with the invader; and within three days a treaty had been made. The treaty, said Mr. DuPre, writing to a friend, "will do us no honor: yet it was necessary, and there was no alternative but that or worse." ...
— The Story of Madras • Glyn Barlow

... handing the volume to Mr. Harris; "we have all enjoyed it. Thank you very much." There was in it the oddest mixture of the supreme feminine and the superior officer. Harris, as he took the book, had no alternative. ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... hated, hated, HATED Tuxbridge Springs, and she should die if she were forced to remain. She rained tears. She would give no reason, but she could not stay. No, millions on millions could not persuade her; go she must. There was no alternative. The party quitted the place within the hour, bag and baggage. Miss Eunice's father was perplexed and angry, and her mother would have been angry also ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various

... threw open the door, hardly knowing how the very weak ally whom she now invoked could help her, but driven by the stress of the combat to seek assistance somewhere. Miss Macnulty, who was seated near the door, and who had necessarily heard every word of the conversation, had no alternative but to appear. Of all human beings Lady Linlithgow was to her the most terrible, and yet, after a fashion, she loved the old woman. Miss Macnulty was humble, cowardly, and subservient; but she was not a fool, ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... consider things are going a little too far, 'this is altogether such a low-minded affair, that if I didn't feel for the governor, and know that he could never get on without me, I should be obliged to cut the connection. I should have no alternative.' ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... increased and nights in the trenches became one long vista of drawn-out agony. Hands and feet froze; maintain circulation was an absolute physical impossibility: but it had to be faced through the long, over long, hours of waiting, and there was no alternative, no remedy. You suffered, Royal Guernseys, men of a warm, sunny isle, who had not hitherto known the harsh winter of miles inland spots. But you stuck it well, rifle grasped in a hand gone stiff, face cut and blistered from the fierce wind; feet ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq

... these gentlemen in the inner room of Wright and Fitch's offices and laid the incontrovertible figures before them, with an alternative that they return their respective shares of the plunder or answer to an action at law. Kirkwood was an absurd person. It was politely suggested that it would be much to his advantage to allow the Sycamore Company to take its course through ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson

... fearful struggle which was approaching? We have nothing to say in defence or extenuation of the insolence, injustice, and cruelty with which, after the victory of the republicans, he and his family were treated. But this we say, that the French had only one alternative, to deprive him of the powers of first magistrate, or to ground their arms and submit patiently to foreign dictation. The events of the tenth of August sprang inevitably from the league of Pilnitz. The King's ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... and what were a few cents to the tenant of a mansion like this? I had an invincible aversion to the calling of a beggar, but I regarded with still more antipathy the vocation of a thief; to this alternative, however, I was now reduced. I must either steal or beg; unless, indeed, assistance could be procured under the notion of a loan. Would a stranger refuse to lend the pittance that I wanted? Surely not, when the urgency of ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... and independent French citizens feared that even the latter alternative meant the eventual transmutation of their tongue, religion and nationality into those of their southern neighbor. Seeking a way of salvation, they built six huge space-ships that would hold thirty thousand people, most of whom would be in deep freeze until ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer

... (even if all enemies in pursuit were thrown out of the question) it was held by those best acquainted with the difficult and obscure geography of these pathless steppes—that the loss of this one narrow strait amongst the hills would have the effect of throwing them (as their only alternative in a case where so wide a sweep of pasturage was required) upon a circuit of at least five hundred miles extra; besides that, after all, this circuitous route would carry them to the Torgai at a point ill fitted for the passage of their heavy baggage. The defile ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... 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 ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... 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, ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter

... probably be, like Cuba, a slave-holding and slave-trading island, now wealthy, luxurious, profligate; and Port of Spain would be such another wen upon the face of God's earth as that magnificent abomination, the city of Havanna. Or, as an almost more ugly alternative, it might have played its part in that great triumph of Bliss by Act of Parliament, which set mankind to rights for ever, when Mr. Canning did the universe the honour of 'calling the new world into existence to redress the balance of the old.' It might have been—probably would have been—conquered ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... of nets struck in. "I was sorry to keep you so long, Major Carrington, in such an uncomfortable position. But the arrival of the Muggletonian before he was due, together with your desire for secrecy, left me no alternative." ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston

... Cambridge that Margaret commenced several of those friendships which lasted through her life, and which were the channels for so large a part of her spiritual activity. In giving some account of her in these relations, there is only the alternative of a prudent reserve which omits whatever is liable to be misunderstood, or a frank utterance which confides in the good sense and right feeling of the reader. By the last course, we run the risk of allowing our friend to be misunderstood; but by the first we make it certain ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... angrily. "You know the alternative. If you won't do what I ask of you, I shall tell my father that you have been down here as a hired spy to find out about Jimmy Lawton's invention. I shall tell him that you offered Jimmy thousands of dollars for his patent, and advised him to sell out to you, and then to tell the Government ...
— Madge Morton's Secret • Amy D. V. Chalmers

... recorded opinions of Lord Grenville on the Regency Question differed wholly and in principle not only from those of his coadjutor in this task, but from those of the Royal person himself, whose sentiments he was called upon to interpret. In this difficulty, the only alternative that remained was so to neutralize the terms of the Answer upon the great point of difference, as to preserve the consistency of the Royal speaker, without at the same time compromising that of his Noble adviser. It required, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore

... as a wet spot in the sand. The old cotton-wood trees that grew along the bank, lamentably abused by lightning and tempest, were withering with the drought, and on the dead limbs, at the summit of the tallest, half a dozen crows were hoarsely cawing like birds of evil omen as they were. We had no alternative but to keep on. There was no water nearer than the South Fork of the Platte, about ten miles distant. We moved forward, angry and silent, over a desert as flat as the ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... situation of governess is looked upon in the light of a degradation, since those who fill it are gentlewomen who never expected to be humiliated by work. Many women marry and sacrifice their happiness to fly from such slavery. Others have not even this pitiful alternative. "Is not that government then very defective, and very unmindful of the happiness of one half of its members, that does not provide for honest, independent women, by encouraging them to fill respectable stations?" It is a melancholy result ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... derive its competence to exercise the censura; and the privileges and charters granted by popes, emperors and kings are nothing more than the acts of recognition of this prerogative of science that comes to it ex jure divino, or, as an alternative expression has it, ex jure naturali, by the law of nature. And in this, Petrus Alliacensis is substantially borne out by ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... only "her way," and must be put up with. Humiliating as this was, and fatal to domestic authority that the first thing to be taught a new servant was to "put up" with one of her mistresses, still there was no alternative.—Hilary had already foreboded and made up her mind to such a possibility, but she had hoped it would not occur the ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)

... And what I promise, I deliver. I demand only loyalty to me, and that only in certain things and for a relatively short period. In all else, my men do as they please. In conclusion, I can use you two conveniently, but I do not need you. Therefore you may choose now between my service and—the alternative." ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith

... speculations such as these, Ventimore lay awake till well into the small hours, when he dropped off into troubled dreams that, wild as they were, could not be more grotesquely fantastic than the realities to which they were the alternative. ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey

... with him that it was our only alternative; yet I knew that sometimes for miles together along the banks such a place might not be found. We turned the head of the canoe, however, down the stream, anxiously looking out for a fit spot to land. I dreaded, as ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston

... Will"—and her manner was irresistibly winning when she said such a thing—"but you are so very kind now that you make me ashamed. I only meant to ask you what I must do. Yes, I must take this position if I can, for I have no alternative." ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various

... story has it that Lieutenant Chamberlain, who fought under Lovewell, was pursued along the base of Melvin Peak by Indians and was almost in their grasp when he reached Ossipee Falls. It seemed as if there were no alternative between death by the tomahawk and death by a fall to the rocks below, for the chasm here is eighteen feet wide; but without stopping to reckon chances he put his strength into a running jump, and to the amazement of those in pursuit ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... favourable. The farms are small and their owners belong to the class to which cooperation brings most immediate benefit. The Irish peasantry are highly intelligent. They lack the strong individualism of the English, but they have highly developed associative instincts. For this reason cooperation, an alternative to communism,—which they abhor,—comes naturally to them. On the other hand, the ease with which they can be organised makes them peculiarly amenable to political influence. In backward rural communities the trader is almost invariably the political ...
— The Rural Life Problem of the United States - Notes of an Irish Observer • Horace Curzon Plunkett

... p. 226], asserts that in the best Codices, the Sections of S. Mark's Gospel are not numbered beyond ch. xvi. 8. Tischendorf prudently adds, "or ver. 9:" but to introduce that alternative is to surrender everything. I subjoin the result of an appeal to 151 Greek Evangelia. There is written ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon

... bent upon making me submit to their will. The conflict had been going on, more or less violently, for months; now I had come very near the end of it. I felt that I must either yield or go mad. There was no chance of my dying; I was too strong for that. There was no other alternative than ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton

... was able to perceive that from so nebulous a starting-point no definite advance could be made. She had also heard of women selling their jewels, and wondered vaguely who were the convenient people who bought them; though this alternative did not commend itself ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver

... inheritance—why, this was the worst that ever I heard of. A servant in my house indeed, knowing what I did about her! Why, I had sooner share the "good fortune" which Umbelazi anticipated beneath the sod. However, that was not in the question, and without it the alternative of acting as her guardian was bad enough, though I comforted myself with the reflection that the circumstances in which this would become necessary might never arise. For, alas! I was sure that if they did arise I should have to live up to them. True, I had made no promise ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard

... utterly ruinous, looked at from any point of view. While he was still expostulating, Matthew was stepping out at the door; and Mr. Tatt, who could not afford to lose even this most outrageous and unmanageable of clients, had no other alternative but to make the best of it, ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins

... and I should hardly ever have 'spoken' at all if it had not been for that unfortunate phrase 'out of season'. It really seemed that one must talk of nothing else, since if an occasion was not in season it was out of season; there was no alternative, no close ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse

... Fort Macleod. She must be safe-guarded. For three long, hard, lonely years he had dreamed of a commission, and now that he had secured it he must give it up, together with hope of further advancement. There was no alternative. ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman

... independence upon the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. Extensive hydrocarbon/natural gas reserves could prove a boon to this underdeveloped country if extraction and delivery projects were to be expanded. The Turkmenistan Government is actively seeking to develop alternative petroleum transportation routes to break Russia's pipeline monopoly. President for Life Saparmurat NYYAZOW died in December 2006, and Turkmenistan held its first multi-candidate presidential electoral process in February 2007. Gurbanguly BERDIMUHAMEDOW, ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... attempt to do this in the case of Negro Americans has strangely over-reached itself. By so much as the defective eyesight of the white world rejects black women as beauties, by so much the more it needs them as human beings,—an enviable alternative, as many a white woman knows. Consequently, for black women alone, as a group, "handsome is that handsome does" and they are asked to be no more beautiful than God made them, but they are asked to be efficient, to be ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois

... certainly hard upon Dr Thorne that he should be obliged to entertain such a guest in the house;—to entertain him, and foster him, and care for him, almost as though he were a son. But he had no alternative; he had accepted the charge from Sir Roger, and he must go through with it. His conscience, moreover, allowed him no rest in this matter: it harassed him day and night, driving him on sometimes to great wretchedness. He could not love this incubus that was on his ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope

... but one end, and the carpenters away, was indicative. Nor could the chief to whom the house belonged employ another party to finish it. It was a fixed rule of the trade, and rigidly adhered to, that no one would take up the work which another party had thrown down. The chief, therefore, had no alternative but to go and make up matters with the original carpenter, in order to have his house decently completed. When a house was finished, and all ready for occupation, they had their "house-warming," or, as they called it, its oven consecration; and formerly it was the custom to add ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner

... offered her majesty this alternative in a firm voice, I was inwardly trembling. On the reply hung, perhaps, ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward

... ridiculous after all. For it attributes to them a method, which, if it be a mere exhibition of human fancy, often seems to be but a species of ingenious trifling,—scarcely entitled to serious attention at our hands. There is no alternative, in short, between certain of the expositions which we meet with, being Divine,—and therefore worthy of all acceptation; or Human,—and therefore entitled to ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... been demanded as a compensation for some offence, but, if the cattle were of a dark or black colour, 150 were to be presented. The black cattle of North Wales apparently belong, as we have seen, to the small longifrons type: and as the alternative was offered of either 150 dark cattle, or 100 white cattle with red ears, we may presume that the latter were the larger beasts, and probably belonged to the primigenius type. Youatt has remarked ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin

... the North, or even the conservatives from the border States, they knew that in the Cotton States a widespread change of popular sentiment was then being wrought and might very soon be complete. Except upon the extreme alternative of disunion, the people of the border States were eager to espouse their quarrel, and join them in a contest for alleged political rights. Nearly half the people of the North were ready to acknowledge the justness of their complaints. The election of Lincoln was indeed a flimsy pretext for separation, ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay

... been as much astonished as those in front, and the stage manager, as soon as he had collected his wits, had adopted the only sensible alternative ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill

... been a little too quick about suggesting it, and about seeing the suggestion carried out. They had been bustled off as soon as they could be packed. The suggestion that they were in his hands, to go or stay as he wished, could have been left safely to them. As it was, they had been given no alternative, and Miss Norris, who had proposed to catch an after-dinner train at the junction, in the obvious hope that she might have in this way a dramatic cross-examination at the hands of some keen-eyed detective, was encouraged tactfully, but quite firmly, to travel by ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne

... dominance so foreign to the natural mind, or such a miraculous conversion, as it might seem. Here, too, there is no derivation of object from object, but an alternative for the mind. As M. Benda points out, natural interests and sympathies may expand indefinitely, so as to embrace a family, a nation, or the whole animate universe; we might even be chiefly occupied with liberal pursuits, such as science or ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana

... fleet, or, more likely, a much larger one, might appear at the entrance say of New York harbor within ten days after a declaration of war, and demand whatever the nation to which it belonged might choose, with the alternative ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various

... there appeared a group of figures, and Wenamon found himself confronted by the stalwart harbour-master and his police. Now, indeed, he gave himself up for lost. The image would be taken from him, and no longer would he have the alternative of leaving the harbour. He must have groaned aloud as he stood there in the black night, with the cold sea wind threatening to tear the covers from the treasure under his arm. His surprise, therefore, was unbounded when the harbour-master ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall

... side, Macquart had no alternative but to sound his sister Ursule's children. Ursule had died in 1839, thus fulfilling her brother's evil prophecy. The nervous affection which she had inherited from her mother had turned into slow consumption, which gradually killed her. She left three children; a daughter, ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola

... still being followed. In the endless stretch of rolling hills he twice caught sight of a rider picking his way toward him. The heart of the guilty man was like water. He could not face the outraged father, nor was it possible to escape so dogged a foe by flight. An alternative suggested itself, and he accepted it with sinking courage. The child was asleep in his arms now, and he hastily dismounted, picketed his horse, and stole back a quarter of a mile, so that the neighing ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine

... to swallow down this pill with what grace he could command. There was no alternative. Antonia had acquiesced in the condition with a queer, grave pleasure, as if she expected it to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... drawings, and it is absolutely necessary that these should be recovered. I am afraid that it will be necessary, therefore, to come to some arrangement with this scoundrel—to square him, in fact. Now, just take that pen and paper, and write to your confederate as I dictate. You know the alternative if you cause ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison

... the proposition to leave the island while life was his, Lorenzo Bezan had no alternative but to do so; and, moreover, when he considered the attraction that held him on the spot, how the Senorita Isabella Gonzales had treated him, when she had every reason to believe that it was his ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray

... thing that I will let myself do. I know that you are strong and brave, and that I can be if I go with you; and I am going with you—there simply is no other alternative—for I love you! Yes, dear, I saw it very plainly as I read your letter to-day. I seem to feel very differently about it all now. I know we cannot sit still and love each other—this costs me no pang. You need not love me one bit; I may simply belong to ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair

... Count. "I have an alternative. I have just drawn my balance at my banker's, a considerable sum, and I am now to place it in your hands. It will be so much for you and so much less——" he paused, and smiled with an air of malignity ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... of the fourteenth century, the counts, who had, up to then, sided with the people, went over to the French party, so that, when the Hundred Years' War broke out, Flanders found herself again faced by the cruel alternative of breaking her allegiance and being exposed to the disasters of an armed invasion from the South, or keeping it and seeing her industry ruined owing to the stoppage ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts

... announced, "I am ready and willing to meet you." And considering the grim alternative with which the Republicans had threatened him, the old Marquis had not the ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini

... lieutenant-governor under the supervision of a governor-general. Even leasing them for a short term of years to the Hudson's Bay Company would have been better than annexing them to a preposterous province of Quebec. The American colonists would have doubtless objected to either alternative. But both could have been defended on sound principles of administration; while the sudden invasion of a new and inflated Quebec into the colonial hinterlands was little less than a declaration of war. The whole problem bristled ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood

... weather improved so far as the fog was concerned and it promised to be a clear day, for the stars had not been obscured at any time during the night. The only alternative the commander could see for the chase, as he studied the chart, was to go to the southward before he could sight the Pass a l'Outre. He was so confident that this must be his course, that he decided to take advantage of the situation, and he went on deck at once, where he ordered ...
— A Victorious Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic

... and repining generally prevails in a colony. People who have lived miserably in England, who have long doubtfully hovered between suicide and highway robbery, determine at length to adopt the still more melancholy alternative of emigration. After bequeathing a few tender sighs to the country which they have hitherto regarded rather as a step-mother than a parent; and having pathetically solicited the sympathy of those who more readily bestow upon them a few pounds than a few tears, ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor

... conspicuous mise-en-scene does not suffice, as some seem to imagine, to make up deficiency in interpretation; a more profound study of the characters represented is indispensable. If in art you can join the beautiful and the good, so much the better for you; but if you give the public the alternative, it will always prefer the good ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles

... of her lips, in the caress of her hands and arms, and in the pressure of her feverish face against his own. But they brought him none of the pleasure of that which she had given to him on the Barren. Grief-stricken, he rose and faced the door. In spite of the fact that he knew there was no alternative for him, he regarded himself as worse than a thief. He was taking an advantage of her which filled him with a repugnance for himself, and he prayed for the hour when sanity would return to her, though it brought back the heartbreak and despair ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood

... persuasion, as it respects meat not killed by Jews—nothing can exceed their melancholy condition, both as it regards themselves and society. Thus excluded from the resources which other classes of the community possess, they seem to have no alternative but to resort to those tricks and devices which ingenuity suggests, to enable persons without an honest means of subsistence to live ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... about its being a shame to make such a naygur of a white man, and seeing no alternative, went on behind the guide, being followed by Mr Rogers, the ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn

... the substance of his earlier correspondence with Germany in regard to submarine warfare and recalled the promise of the German government that merchant vessels would not be sunk without warning and without saving human lives. He declared that the American government had no alternative but to sever relations, although refusing to believe that Germany would ruthlessly use the methods which she threatened, until convinced of her determination by "overt acts." Information of the move made by the United States was ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley

... fore-limbs. The rufous area of the back is confined between the two uppermost yellow lines; ears are large; all under-parts white, slightly washed here and there with yellowish; the tail moderately bushy, all the hairs annulated with four alternative orange and black bands, the terminal black band being occasionally tipped with white, and being as broad as the three remaining bands, so that the tail has a decidedly black tint washed with whitish, the orange bands, however, appearing through ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... the stream, the treacherous ice gave way, and I plunged into the water up to my armpits. I clambered out, but as the day was intensely cold, I was soon a walking pillar of ice. I was now on the school house side of the stream, and there seemed to be no alternative but to go on. I would gladly have found a shelter and a fire elsewhere, but it was out of the question. So, putting on a bold face, I hastened forward, and found the people in waiting for the minister. As I entered the school house, with the ice rattling at every movement, ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller

... looked so pittiful, & it called up so many assotiations in my mind that it affected me to tears. Drove on and encamped; turned out the cattle & put up the tent, then for a fire, no wood, but chips in abundance, no alternative, soon had a large pile of them, & set fire to them, when they immediately blazed up & burned like dry bark, it was laughable to see the boys jump around it, particularly Beth & saying it "wooled them" bad. On saying that I ...
— Across the Plains to California in 1852 - Journal of Mrs. Lodisa Frizzell • Lodisa Frizell

... concessions have purchased his life. As Breugger wrote with brutal crudity to Kepler: 'What profit did he gain by enduring such torments? If there were no God to punish crimes, as he believed, could he not have pretended any thing to save his life?' We may add that the alternative to death for a relapsed apostate was perpetual incarceration; and seven years of prison may well have made ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... separating the two enemy's bodies, and able to act decisively against a foe approaching from either direction. Thus a second time he prevented the enemy from forming a junction, unless they fought for it—an alternative Napoleon wished to avoid. To him fell all the strain of uncertainty, all the doubtful and complicated mental effort, all the active strategic movement, of the campaign, and to him consequently has been attributed justly the greater meed of glory; though care must be taken ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... the right, the rest of the walls being in shadow. While the black areas of the picture are large enough to carry a mass of gray without sacrificing the sunny look, such a scheme would be likely to produce a labored effect. Two alternative schemes readily suggest themselves: First, to make the archway the principal dark, the walls light, with a light half-tone for the roof, and a darker effect for the trees on the right. Or, second, to make these trees themselves the principal dark, as suggested ...
— Pen Drawing - An Illustrated Treatise • Charles Maginnis

... this was not the case at their earliest occurrence, there must have been some other factors which raised them to the point of selection-value. I shall return to this in discussing germinal selection. But the case may be followed still farther, and leads us to the same alternative on a still ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel

... Confederate States, and decreeing strict neutrality on the part of France. He was informed that it was necessary for the Iroquois either to cast anchor, or leave the waters of the isle, and if accepting the former alternative, that an interval of twenty-four hours must elapse between the departure of either belligerent; also that, in case of any breach of neutrality occurring, the forts would open on the offending party. After remaining stationary for some two hours, her boat returned. The Iroquois ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes

... would, it was thought, interfere less with the circulation of the limb, and would therefore be less likely to be followed by gangrene, which is so frequent a result of high ligature of the femoral. But a few days after the operation the foot became cold and mummified, and there was no alternative but to amputate the limb through the condyles of the femur. From this operation the patient made a good recovery, and when discharged there was no sign of an aneurism ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins

... night. Only thus could I bring into subjection my rebellious flesh, and save myself from the way of ordinary men which to me must have been a path of sacrilege and sin. I was devout. Had I not been devout and strong in my devotion I could never have endured what I was forced to endure as the alternative to damnation, because without consideration for my nature I had been ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini

... and more showed their dislike of slavery and their disposition to aid such colored people as were within their circle. Such conduct could not escape observation, and the result was their banishment from their Southern home. They were given the alternative of "behaving themselves" or going North to live. They were not long in deciding, and they became residents of Philadelphia. Here they joined the Quakers, because of their coincidence of views on the slavery question. They had before ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume

... into the microphone. "You wouldn't listen to reason, you wouldn't listen to Hys, or me, or to any voice that suggested an alternative to complete destruction. You are going to destroy Dis, and it's not necessary! There were a lot of ways you could have stopped it. You didn't do any of them, and now it's too late. You'll destroy Dis, and in turn this will destroy Nyjord. Ihjel said that, and now I believe ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison

... that the Scotland Yard examination will not be lowered for women taxicab drivers has elicited a number of inquiries as to whether "language" is a compulsory or an alternative subject. ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 21st, 1917 • Various

... prospect of this meeting was the want of an interpreter. Any one who knows the difficulty of public speaking or continuous discourse in a foreign language, will comprehend the anxiety which he felt when he saw no alternative but that of committing himself to preach in German. Though very familiar with the language, he never completely overcame the want of early and of thoroughly grammatical instruction in that difficult and intricate tongue. It was with feelings of this kind that he penned ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley

... well! In the first few moments, an hour ago, when he had begun to consider the problem, as seeming difficulties arose, he had turned coolly from one alternative to another. And then slowly a sickening sense of the truth had begun to dawn upon him—and like a man lost in a great forest, peril around him, he had plunged then desperately in this direction and ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard

... myths was that their intellectual progress was arrested at a comparatively early stage. It was arrested because there was not that contact and competition with other peoples which demands brain-work of an active kind as the alternative of subjugation, inferiority, or extinction, and because, as we have already seen, the knowledge required of them was mainly the parrot-like repetition of the old instead of the thinking-out of the new [1]—a ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner

... for holy orders to open his eyes to the widest. He fancied that in the confusion of his head he had not clearly comprehended the meaning of the cura's speech; and he preferred this fancy to the alternative of supposing that the worthy priest of Caracuaro was himself suffering ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid

... be settled nor discussed; the doctor's warning was no less insistent although his patient was steadily improving. I faced the alternative of my compliance or her nervous prostration and I chose the former. My desire to shake ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln

... closed the door and stood against it she had no alternative except to stay, but she walked to the window and stood with her back to them all, while Marian put into English and read, in a clear, distinct voice, and without the least hesitation, that message ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes

... her "Bon jour, monsieur! Entrez, s'il vous plait," took Edward rather by surprise, and would by no means hear of receiving the gift outside the door. This was more than he had bargained for; he had come on a message from Ellen, not for a charitable visit on her own account: but there was no alternative, and go in he must. The woman spoke a little English; and while she poured forth her gratitude to Miss Crawford, together with a long account of her daughter's maladies, saying so much in one breath that it became a question ...
— Adventures of a Sixpence in Guernsey by A Native • Anonymous

... care, is almost irresistibly driven to the belief that the soul's career is not completed with the present life upon the earth. Difficulties on theory he will naturally expect to meet in many quarters; but these will not weaken his faith, especially when he remembers that upon the alternative view the difficulties are at least as great. We live in a world of mystery, at all events, and there is not a problem in the simplest and most exact departments of science which does not speedily lead us to a transcendental problem that we can neither solve nor elude. A broad ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske

... misfortune, if this were the alternative. It is easy to pass the limit of regulated authority, but impossible to estimate the dangers we may encounter when that guardian limit is once transgressed. We may resolve that we will go thus far and no farther. So thought the honest and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... fast asleep. When he awoke it was broad daylight. It would not now do to venture down to Keyhaven. He would too probably meet some of the revenue men, who would to a certainty capture him. Home he dared not go; his only alternative was to remain in the forest until the return of night, when he could traverse the country with less risk of encountering any one. He was very hungry, but he was equally afraid of going to any cottage to beg for a crust, ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston

... time, notwithstanding its perpetual inconvenience to himself and every one around him, was here destined to come off; for after making two or three attempts, he found it impossible to get along and wear the hat too; and being of a very inquisitive disposition, he chose the degrading alternative of being uncovered, and his researches proceeded without interruption. Nothing escaped the old man's observation; whatever was shut or tied up, he requested to have opened; and in this way he rummaged the midshipmen's ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall

... in me when the news came of Harry's operation. I had been half relieved when I heard that he was wounded, and that the wound was not dangerous. For the grim alternative was seldom out of my thoughts, and at least his dear life was safe. Now I was crushed by the brave, pathetic letter in which he told me that his right leg had been amputated, and that he was lucky to get off so easily. That made me rebellious and very, very bitter. And it was against God ...
— The Comrade In White • W. H. Leathem

... Paris he had, 'of course at once' gone to see Gambetta, whom he found 'privately ridiculing the various suggestions made as to a constitution for his country.' Gambetta suggested as an alternative that they should allow the National Assembly elected after ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn

... which we have termed parasitical, are in a state of progression, by which in time they will be joined to the main land, and form one continent; or that they are in a state of degradation, by which in time they will be made to disappear. There is no other supposition to be made; and, of that alternative, there is no room to hesitate a moment which to choose. This is not a matter of mere probability, it is the subject of physical demonstration. Should we find an old manuscript in a similar condition, we could not conclude with more certainty, that the deficient ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton

... he continued, "the only alternative course is to make the best bargain you can with the scoundrels who are ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... wretchedness will teach us wisdom, and instruct us forever to renounce a power in whom we can have no trust. The inhabitants of that unfortunate city, who but a few months ago were in ease and affluence, have now no other alternative than to stay and starve, or turn out to beg. Endangered by the fire of their friends if they continue within the city, and plundered by the soldiery if they leave it. In their present situation they are prisoners without the hope of redemption, and in a general attack for their ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various

... is complete, water of crystallization cannot be attached to the salt in solution, or if it is, no heat is evolved on union more than with solvent water. The alternative is to suppose that the whole of the above thermo-chemical ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 561, October 2, 1886 • Various

... the Portuguese Government; he could be so no longer. The remarkable kindness he had so often received from Portuguese officers and traders made it a most painful trial to break with the authorities. But there was no alternative. Livingstone's courage was equal to the occasion, though he could not but see that his new attitude to the Portuguese must give an altered aspect to his Expedition, and create difficulties that might ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... back without meeting the fierce brute in the teeth. There was no branch below within his reach, and none above, and he was fifty feet from the ground. To leap down appeared the only alternative to escape the clutches of the bear, and that ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid

... agent would pursue. In this theory the agent cannot be held responsible for his action in any sense. It is the extreme antithesis of Indeterminism or Indifferentism, the doctrine that a man is absolutely free to choose between alternative courses (the liberum arbitrium indifferentiae). Since, however, the evidence of ordinary consciousness almost always goes to prove that the individual, especially in relation to future acts, regards himself as being free ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various

... ice into the hole and betook himself upon his shambling way without one word. Not a word, mark you. There was a real philosopher, if you like, a thorough-going, square-trotting philosopher. The only alternative was child-murder or silence, and my pot-hunter chose the simplest form of the dilemma. "I thought the fish would like it," said little Fred, when interrogated upon ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant

... eyes remained on the only survivor of that ill-fated first expedition. It was hard to accept him as the man they sought, but, faced with undeniable similarity between what they expected and what they had found, the two spacemen had no alternative. ...
— Say "Hello" for Me • Frank W. Coggins

... published by a distinguished contemporary, I should unquestionably have left Doctor Rochecliffe's manuscript in peace for the present season. But before I was aware of this circumstance, this little book was half through the press; and I had only the alternative of avoiding any intentional imitation, by delaying a perusal of the contemporary work in question. Some accidental collision there must be, when works of a similar character are finished on the same general system of historical manners, and ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... this, in great part, to the undoubted fact that the men greatly exceed the women in number; but he does not know whether this is due to a failure of female offspring, or to more females dying during early youth. The latter alternative, according to all analogy, is very improbable. He adds that "infanticide, properly so called, is not common, though very frequent recourse is had to abortion." If Dr. Coulter is correct about infanticide, this case cannot be advanced in support of Colonel Marshall's view. From the rapid decrease ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... Theirs—and ours... That was but a little while ago, and there is not a man here who will not bear me out in saying that we were never more loyal, in word and deed, than we are now. And that very state of things has created for us an undermining alternative... ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan

... I had no alternative, and was turning to go back for the blanket, when, all at once, my eye rested upon a clay-coloured line running across the prairie beyond where the animals were feeding. It was a break in the surface of the plain, ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid

... gave my own bleeding heart—a part must be wounded, that the whole of the empire may not perish. If better terms could be had, think you, my lords, that I would not have embraced them? I had but the alternative either to accept the terms proposed or continue the war." The Lord Chancellor held that the stipulations of the treaty were "specific," and said: "My own conscious honour will not allow me to doubt the good faith of others, and my good wishes to the Loyalists ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson

... lady of so anxious a temper;" yet, afterwards, by placing Lady Teazle between the screen and the window, he enables this inquisitive lady to indulge her curiosity at leisure. It might be said, indeed, that Joseph, with the alternative of exposure to either the husband or neighbor, chooses the lesser evil;—but the oversight hardly requires ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore

... insurgents. We believed that they were a necessary evil, and that if Aguinaldo was placed in command, and was acceptable to the insurgents as their leader, that Admiral Dewey or General Merritt would have some one whom they could hold responsible for any excesses. The other alternative was to allow the entire islands to be overrun by small bands bent only on revenge and looting. We considered that Aguinaldo had more qualifications for leadership than any of his rivals. We made him no pledges ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead

... sure that the last desperate means of escape from his embraces lay open still. She meant, in the final crisis, to spring to the crevice, before he could approach within reach of her. There, with the verge of the cliff only a step away, she would make her plea, with death in the gulf as the alternative of failure, the ultimate safeguard ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily

... Great Britain, as they stand in connexion with a general pacification, are so very inconclusive, that I am fully in sentiment with your Excellency, that we should hold ourselves in a hostile position, prepared for either alternative, peace or war. ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. XI • Various

... the main body and support Canning's Government, or whether they will join with the Tories in their efforts to overturn it. Lord Grey's temper, irritated by the attacks which have been made on him, seems likely to urge him to the latter alternative. ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... the evil she was 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

... the one to go to college if either of you did, Prue. You would make a capital lawyer, if I believed in the higher education of women, but I don't. Murray can take or leave the farm as he chooses. If he prefers the latter alternative, well and good. But he gets no help from me. You're a foolish little girl, Prue, to back him up ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... He was born of the Virgin it was united to God, so that the Nature seemed to be made one. Or if this be not his opinion, since he says that there were two Natures before the union and one after, supposing the union to be established by conception, an alternative view may be that Christ indeed took a body from Mary but that before He took it the Natures of Godhead and manhood were different: but the Nature assumed became one with that of Godhead into which it passed. But if he thinks that this union was effected not by conception ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius

... stern and unpromising result of necessity, arising from unsuccessful insurrection. The white population of the State accept the condition which has been imposed upon them, simply because there is no alternative. ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz

... happens that books being taken from the shelf, the volumes left behind fall down in an untidy heap. To obviate this, there is a very simple form of metal book support sold, which keeps a half-filled shelf neat and tidy. An alternative to this is the old plan of inserting dummies, whereby no blanks are seen. As I have so strongly advocated shelves the tops of which are within reach of the hand, I need not say much about steps, but where steps are ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys

... name, and say that I was going to visit my son, an officer in the Federal army." Now, as I have barely entered on my eighth lustre, I can only suppose that the great bitterness of my heart imparted to my face, for the moment, a helpless—perhaps imbecile—look of senility. I had no alternative, however, but to retreat, as my men had done; the place was evidently too hot to hold me: already, through the window, I saw a shabby dragoon paying auspicious attention to my horses, contraband, and saddle-bags. I was greatly relieved, ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence

... they lived. And in that event he may be able to maintain his position when his case is called before the synod, even against the popular impression as to the real meaning of the Confession. Failing in this, the only alternative will be recantation or withdrawal from the Presbyterian Communion. From the stand already taken it is impossible to imagine the professor stultifying himself and teaching what he does not believe; while his withdrawal will unquestionably ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various

... himself on Akbar's mercy. The emperor not only freely pardoned him, but magnanimously offered him the choice of a high place in the army or a suitable escort for a pilgrimage to Mecca, and Bairam preferred the latter alternative. When Akbar ascended the throne, only a small portion of what had formerly been comprised within the Mogul empire owned his authority, and he devoted himself with great determination and success to the recovery of the revolted provinces. Over each of these, as it was restored, he placed ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... great improvement, however, is made if the grid is carried on a horizontal spindle in such a way that it can be rocked periodically in order to assist in freeing the lumps of carbide from the adhering particles of lime. As an alternative to the movable grid, or even as an adjunct thereto, an agitator scraping the conical sides of the generator may be fitted which also assists in ensuring a reasonably complete absence of undecomposed carbide from the sludge drawn off at intervals. A further ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield

... three days later, we had been hailed from Moro Castle and had returned the usual answer. A couple of doubloons in gold made the boarding officer conveniently blind, and a similar fee thrust quietly into the doctor's hand insured a "clean bill of health," under which we were permitted to land! The alternative was twenty-one days' quarantine. ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... in the Bantu languages may be traced back to an original ka, ta or sa, ki, ti or si in the Bantu mother-tongue. Apparently in the parent language this particle had already these alternative forms, which resemble those in some West African Negro languages. In the vast majority of the Bantu dialects at the present day, the negative particle in the verb (which nearly always coalesces with the pronominal particle) is descended from this ka, ta or sa, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various



Words linked to "Alternative" :   decision making, obverse, impossibility, option, deciding, default option, secondary, alternate, soft option, disjunctive, druthers, substitute, alternative pleading, alternative birthing, alternative birth, alternative energy, impossible action, preference, unconventional, choice, possibility



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