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Reversion   Listen
noun
Reversion  n.  
1.
The act of returning, or coming back; return. (Obs.) "After his reversion home, (he) was spoiled, also, of all that he brought with him."
2.
That which reverts or returns; residue. (Obs.) "The small reversion of this great navy which came home might be looked upon by religious eyes as relics."
3.
(Law) The returning of an estate to the grantor or his heirs, by operation of law, after the grant has terminated; hence, the residue of an estate left in the proprietor or owner thereof, to take effect in possession, by operation of law, after the termination of a limited or less estate carved out of it and conveyed by him.
4.
Hence, a right to future possession or enjoyment; succession. "For even reversions are all begged before."
5.
(Annuities) A payment which is not to be received, or a benefit which does not begin, until the happening of some event, as the death of a living person.
6.
(Biol.) A return towards some ancestral type or character; atavism.
Reversion of series (Alg.), the act of reverting a series. See To revert a series, under Revert, v. t.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Reversion" Quotes from Famous Books



... what they could get. In that golden age of patronage it was possible for a man to hold a plurality of offices which would bring to himself many thousands of pounds a year, and also to secure the reversion of offices and pensions to his children. Horace Walpole spent a long life in luxurious ease because of offices with high pay and few duties secured in the distant days of his father's political power. Contracts to supply the army and the navy went to friends of the government, ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong

... troops, as much as was possible of the hardships incident to actual service, and as much as he dared of the once rigorous discipline. Hadrian first found himself in circumstances, or was the first who had courage enough to decline a momentary interest in favor of a greater in reversion; and a personal object which was transient, in favor of a ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... Macau's economy two years after reversion to China remains one of the most open in the world, according to the World Trade Organization. The government collects no duty on imports and sets no restrictions on exports beyond those required by international ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government

... y'e s'd H—— solemnly declared as in y'e presence of Almighty God & before many witnesses, that she was in no way in possession of her former husband's estate of whatever kind soever neither possession or reversion." An excellent Deacon married an elderly matron, Dorothea ——, and before the Justice of Peace "Y'e s'd Dorothea declared she was free from using any of her former husband's estate, and so y'e s'd Nathaniel ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various

... Transfer Tax, and that there should be no Property Tax. A more miserable figure was never cut than his; but how should it be otherwise? A respectable country gentleman, well versed in rural administration, in farming and sporting, with all the integrity of L15,000 a year in possession and L50,000 in reversion, is all of a sudden made leader in the House of Commons without being able to speak, and Chancellor of the Exchequer without any knowledge, theoretical or practical, of finance. By way of being discreet, and that his plan may be a secret, he consults nobody; and then he closets himself with his ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville

... done certain literary hack-work for others, as, for example, parts of the Punic Wars contributed to Raleigh's "History of the World." We know from a story, little to the credit of either, that Jonson accompanied Raleigh's son abroad in the capacity of a tutor. In 1618 Jonson was granted the reversion of the office of Master of the Revels, a post for which he was peculiarly fitted; but he did not live to enjoy its perquisites. Jonson was honoured with degrees by both universities, though when and under what circumstances is not known. It has been ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson

... He showed me a letter from a rich banker in Lisbon, a man in great esteem at the Palace; another letter from one of the first noblemen in Portugal, entreating him to use his influence with the Prince Regent for the reversion of the decree of confiscation of some nobleman's estate; another from the Grand Prior of Aviz (in French). Mr. Beckford was treated as a grandee of the first rank in Germany; he showed me an autograph of the Emperor Joseph. Voltaire said ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown

... taken occasion to speak of the reversion of an estate, which she said she wished to go to augment the property of the title; and now she should have no hesitation in bequeathing it to him, provided she could see him, on his side, make such a connection as would be for the consequence of ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge

... verbiage. He came up again with a discovery. In spite of its feebleness, verbosity, obscurity, and idiotic way of expressing itself, the Deed managed to convey to David and Mrs. Dodd a life interest in nine thousand five hundred pounds, with reversion to Julia and the children of the projected marriage. Sampson and Edward put their heads over this, and it puzzled them, "Why, man," said Sampson, "if the puppy had signed this last night, he would ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... perhaps,—judging from looking at it—a very fine shagbark for commercial purposes. Isn't it true that within the next ten years there will, in all probability, be a complete reversion in the mind of the nut culturist as to the kind and quality of the nut he will propagate. I will supplement that by saying that heretofore, both in the pecan and other nut fields, the whole tendency has been toward something big. Now, the wise fellows ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Second Annual Meeting - Ithaca, New York, December 14 and 15, 1911 • Northern Nut Growers Association

... pale, and calculated the chance of a broken neck in reversion, with that of a broken crown in immediate possession. The former being at least contingent, appeared the milder alternative, and they might have been inclined to adopt it had not a further obstacle stood in their ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... near Kelso, and on the 18th of July, 1290, the treaty was concluded. It contained, besides the provisions of the marriage, clauses for the personal freedom of Margaret should she survive her husband; for the reversion of the crown failing her issue; for protection of the rights, laws, and liberties of Scotland; the freedom of the church; the privileges of crown vassals; the independence of the courts; the preservation of all charters and natural muniments; and the holding of parliaments only within Scotland; ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty

... of an octogenarian female relative—whom I had never seen—but who, for a full decade of years, beyond the period allotted to the life of man—or women either—had obstinately persisted in standing betwixt me and a small reversion—so long, indeed, that I had ceased to regard it as an "expectation." It was of no great amount; but, arriving just then in the very "nick o' time," was doubly welcome; and under its magical influence, a large quantity of superfluous timber soon disappeared ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid

... important transactions we have just endeavoured to relate. On the death of Elizabeth, Sir Walter Raleigh, to whom the mansion had been given by that queen, was obliged to surrender it to Toby Matthew, the then Bishop of Durham, in consequence of the reversion having been granted to that see by queen Mary, whose bigoted and narrow mind regarded the previous exchange as ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 384, Saturday, August 8, 1829. • Various

... Henry VI. Grant by Thomas Tudenham, Knight, John Leventhorp, Esquire, and Thomas Radclyff, of the reversion of the manor of Newhall to John Neell and others. All the seals, which are large and thick and more than two inches in diameter, have the impression of a signet ring inclosed with a "hayband" of parchment pressed into ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 78, April 26, 1851 • Various

... branches of normal and pathological histology: by advances in method, advances in knowledge full of importance result. It is therefore little comprehensible, that an author quite recently should recommend a reversion to the old methods, and emphatically announce that he has managed to make a diagnosis in all cases, with the examination of fresh blood. At the present time, after the most important points have been cleared up by new methods, ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich

... Academy very much deserve our Attention. The Students are to have in Possession, or Reversion, an Estate of two thousand French Livres per Annum, which, as the present Exchange runs, will amount to at least one hundred and twenty six Pounds English. This, with the Royal Allowance of a Thousand Livres, will ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... marriages for their sons and daughters in perfect comfort and security. It is but a question of money on one side and the other. Mademoiselle has so many francs of dot; Monsieur has such and such rentes or lands in possession or reversion, an etude d'avoue, a shop with a certain clientele bringing him such and such an income, which may be doubled by the judicious addition of so much capital, and the pretty little matrimonial arrangement is concluded ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... bosom. What had become of Monsieur Paragot? It was more than a fortnight since he had been in the cafe. I lied, drank a glass of beer and went home. I could not take away Paragot's character by declaring his reversion ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke

... certain conditions, offered to relieve the State of the entire burden. Two results followed—first, all grievances vanished; and secondly, the whole pauper population of England within ten years was Catholic in sympathies. And yet all this is only a reversion to medieval times—a reversion made absolutely necessary by the failure of every attempt to supplant Divine ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson

... to speculate on the contingency of her husband's death, to talk of it in language the coarsest, as 'waiting for dead men's shoes,' and bandying to and fro the chances that this man or that man, according to the whim of the morning, should 'have her,' or should not 'have her'—that is, have the reversion of the queen's person as a derelict of the king. All this, though most injurious to her prospects, was made known by Anne Boleyn herself to the female companions who were appointed to watch her revelations in prison. And certainly no chambermaid ever rehearsed her own colloquies ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... like Schopenhauer, who advocate the legalizing of polygyny in civilized countries, are hardly worth replying to. It is safe to say that any widespread practice of polygyny in civilized communities would lead to a reversion to the moral standards of barbarism in many if not in all matters. That polygyny is still a burning question in the United States of the twentieth century is merely good evidence that we are not very far removed ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood

... he could understand their shrinking from sudden chance and clinging to the customs of the past. They were all, so far as he had seen, characterized by the possession of high qualities, with the exception of Clarence, whom he regarded as a reversion to a baser type; but he thought that they would suffer if uprooted and transplanted in a less sheltered and less cultivated soil. Inherited instincts were difficult to subdue; he was conscious of their influence. He came from a new land where he ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss

... did not wish that his niece should be richer, and grander, and altogether bigger than himself? Or was it possible that his guardian was anxious to prevent him from marrying from some view of the reversion of the large fortune? That there was some such reason, Sir Louis was well sure; but let it be what it might, he would get the better of the doctor. "He knew," so he said to himself, "what stuff girls were made ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope

... eight hundred pounds per annum, on the strength of which he spends between two thousand pounds and three thousand pounds: of course, in order 207to do this, he has to raise money on his expectancies. About two months ago he wanted to sell the contingent reversion of a large estate in Yorkshire, from which the greater part of his future income is to be derived; and a client of ours thought of buying it—ergo, we were set to work upon the matter: whilst we were investigating ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... course inevitably led to the action forced on the Ameer, which culminated in the forced resignation of his power and the total annihilation of the national government. The Ameer in thus resigning reserved to himself the right of seeking, when occasion offered, restoration to his heritage and its reversion to his heir. Nothing has occurred to justify the ignoring ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... to persuade her to accept of the estate, and of the husband; and next, with her pride, to take her sister's refusals, as she once phrased it!—Or, it may be, my brother is insisting upon equivalents for his reversion in the estate: and these sort of things take up but too much the attention of some of our family. To these, no doubt, one or both, it must be owing, that my proposal admits ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... next sheriff, And beg the first reversion of a rope: Dispatch is all my business; I'll ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... perverse, universe, university, traverse, subversive, divorce; (2) vertebra, vertigo, controvert, revert, averse, versus, versification, animadversion, vice versa, controversy, tergiversation, obverse, transverse, reversion, vortex. ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... Sir Thomas had expressed his readiness to endeavour to obtain it for her; but on consulting the lawyers they decided that this could not be done. Her father—Master Radford—had been outlawed in the reign of King Henry for holding heretical opinions; and unless he should appear and obtain a reversion of that outlawry, the estate would remain forfeited. By petitioning the Queen's Majesty, however, there would be no difficulty in obtaining this reversion. But Master Radford had not appeared; and great doubts were entertained whether he was ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston

... from the am[oe]ba to the amphioxus, from the ancestor of the parent cell to the ancestor of the vertebrates. We could carry it further, but it is unnecessary. Effemination and viraginity, are due directly to the influence of that strange law laid down by Darwin—the law of reversion to ancestral types. It is an effort of nature to return man to the old hermaphroditic form from which he was evolved. It is an effort on the part of nature to incorporate the individualities of the ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir

... make it tender. The girl seemed the one happy person among us; for supper was going forward with the invariable alkali etiquette, all faces brooding and feeding amid a disheartening silence as of guilt or bereavement that springs from I have never been quite sure what—perhaps reversion to the native animal absorbed in his meat, perhaps a little from every guest's uneasiness lest he drink his coffee wrong or stumble in the accepted uses of the fork. Indeed, a diffident, uncleansed youth nearest Miss Buckner presently wiped his mouth upon ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister

... and ... bounded betwixt two Creeks." Colonel John's half was bequeathed to his son Lawrence, and by Lawrence's will it was left to his daughter Mildred. She sold it to the father of George, who by his will left it to his son Lawrence, with a reversion to George should Lawrence die without issue. The original house was built about 1740, and the place was named Mount Vernon by Lawrence, in honor of Admiral Vernon, under whom he had served at Carthagena. After ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford

... any such variety in the seedlings raised from the purchased seed. It must therefore have arisen either through ordinary variation, or, judging from its appearance amongst both the crossed and self-fertilised plants, more probably through reversion to a formerly ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin

... never heard him so designated before except in pleasantry. "As honest as any man living, that is an old man, and not honester than I." We cannot go further than Verges; it is a stretch of charity to go so far when we call to mind the magnificent reversion and the French jobs. A ruined spendthrift, although he may have many good qualities, can never, strictly speaking, be termed honest. It is absurd to say of him that he is nobody's enemy but his own—with ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... check with a different expression from any which her face had hitherto worn for him. In fact, for the first time, although she was in reality simple and humble enough, she realized him on a footing with herself. And she could not have told what had led to this reversion of her feelings, nor would it have been easy for any one to have told. The forces which stir human emotions to one or another end are as mysterious often as are the sources of the winds which blow as they list. The ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... success to North America. The northern hemisphere contains, therefore, "the zone of greatest historical density," from which the track of the South Seas is inconveniently remote. Hence we find in recent decades a reversion to the old east-west path along the southern rim of Eurasia, now perfected by the Suez Canal, and to be extended in the near future around the world by the union of the Pacific with the Caribbean Sea at Panama; so that finally the northern ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... is none over which history has cast so magic a spell, for this barren, dusty land has been the arena in which the races of eastern Europe have battled since history began. Within its borders are represented all the peoples who are disputing the reversion of the Turkish possessions in Europe. Macedonia might be described, indeed, as the very quintessence of the ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell

... disputes, and alone of Romans is exempt from the patria potestas, can control his earnings and bequeath them to whom he will. At this point the satire breaks off abruptly, and we have no means of judging the extent of the loss. It is a striking reversion to his earlier manner. Once more the satire takes the form of a series ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler

... comes from the name the West Indian natives gave their dug-outs when questioned by Columbus. Nowadays the dug-out is generally used for the dirtier work of 'longshore fisheries. It has lost its elegance of form, and may be said to have reverted to a lower type. But this reversion only serves the better to remind the twentieth century of what all sorts of craft were like, not twenty, ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood

... marks a reversion to her traditional policy, which viewed that Power as the friend and Austria as the enemy. It undid the life-work of Prince Kaunitz, now nearing his end at Vienna, and left the Hapsburg States enfeebled. True, they had a profitable share in the third and last Partition of Poland, ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... is the view taken by Colin, Rome et la Grece, 200-146 B.C., p. 269 foll. This reaction was probably only a part of the general reversion to conservatism which we have been noticing in the action of ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler

... admiration of my imprisoned father—was as if I had drunk a stupefying liquor. I was unable clearly to reflect on it. Daily afterwards, until I released him, I made journeys to usurers to get a loan on the faith of the reversion of my mother's estate. Heriot, like the real friend he was, helped me with his name to the bond. When my father stood free, I had the proudest heart alive; and as soon as we had parted, the most amazed. For a long while, for years, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... the separately elected School Boards were abolished, and it is certain that the Guardians of the Poor will soon follow them. The Rural Parish Councils, which were created in 1894, and which represented a reversion by the Liberal Party to the older type of democratic thought, have been a failure, and will either be abolished or will remain ineffective, because no real administrative powers will be given to them. ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas

... a little taller than she, was carrying a small easy chair and placed it before Sally. He looked at her with such a merry face as the restrained laughter came so visibly out of his eyes, that the sight brought a complete reversion in Sally's feelings, and she, all at once, laughed right out; upon which, the boy too, relieved his feelings by a bright peal of laughter, for the rushing in and then the confusion of the unexpected guest had long ...
— Erick and Sally • Johanna Spyri

... with all the necessary forms, legitimating this person, and bestowing upon her the title of Albany, by which he had himself been known for fourteen years, with the rank of duchess. To legitimate his natural daughter, and give her the reversion of his own title, was very unlike the action of a pseudo-king who had a lawful son alive. In 1784, also, when the pretender executed his will, he left this same Duchess of Albany, of his own constitution, all that he possessed, with the ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous

... toast, Monsieur, Pray, why that solemn phiz:— Art thou, too, balancing 'twixt right and wrong? Hast thou a thought so mean as to give up Thy present good, for promise in reversion? 'Tis true hereafter has some feeble terrors, But ere our grizzly heads are wrapt in clay We may compound, and make ...
— The Group - A Farce • Mercy Warren

... rose a vision of Ferrier's future, as he himself certainly conceived it. A triumphant election—the Liberals in office—himself, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and leader of the Commons—with the reversion of the Premiership whenever old Lord Broadstone should die or retire—this indeed had been Ferrier's working understanding with his party for years; years of strenuous labor, and on the whole of magnificent generalship. Deposition from the leadership of the Commons, with ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... father—he has answered them in the most gentlemanly manner—. You have my consent to address my daughter if you will gain the approbation of your mother—He also informs me that his daughter has an estate in the County of Westchester in reversion, secured to her by a deed in trust to him—. I write all this for you—you know I am indifferent to anything of this nature. Now I have to request—you will take your hat and go to mother, the boys, girls, and say to them have ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips

... reversionary interest in the feud capable of taking effect as soon as B.'s interest should determine. If the subinfeudatory lord alienated, it would operate as a forfeiture to the person in immediate reversion. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 231, April 1, 1854 • Various

... bishops, and upwards) and placed on their tables, whereof, when they have taken what it pleaseth them, the rest is reserved, and afterwards sent down to their serving men and waiters, who feed thereon in like sort with convenient moderation, their reversion also being bestowed upon the poor which lie ready at their gates in great numbers to receive the same. This is spoken of the principal tables whereat the nobleman, his lady, and guests are accustomed to sit; besides which they have a certain ordinary allowance daily appointed for ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed

... matter?" he went on, confidently appealing to his brother; yet with a certain inflection of anxiety in his voice. It would have wounded Everett cruelly, had he been misunderstood or rebuffed in this. "You have your commission, and Uncle Everett's legacy, and the reversion of my mother's fortune, which will not be touched. This act of justice, therefore, can injure ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various

... amaze. The suddenness of this reversion to another stage of their argument enhanced his natural difficulty ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing

... was filled with admiration and gratitude. He had been a friend for a day or two to the beasts of the forest and one of them had come to his rescue. The feeling of reversion to a primitive golden age was still strong within him, and doubtless the bear, too, had really felt the sense of kinship. He looked in the direction in which the shambling animal had gone, but there was no sign of him. Perhaps he had disappeared ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler

... now known that many infants are rendered blind by negligence of certain precautions at birth—this may have been a case of that kind. We consider any attempt to attribute physical infirmities to "sin" unconnected with the physical trouble to be a reversion to primitive theological dogmas, and smacking strongly of the "devil idea" of theology, of which we have spoken. And Poverty results from economic conditions, and not as punishment for "Sin." Nor is Wealth the reward ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson

... an used for lighting gas-burners, were hung in tiny aluminum bells from a mica vane wheel which was turned constantly and rapidly in one direction by hot air from a gas flame to keep the platinum in a glow. The inversion and reversion did not take place, as one might suppose, at the will of the observer, but was compulsory and followed regular rules. If the observer watches the rotating objects from the side, or from above or from below, the inversion takes place against his will; the condition being ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... system of law, the great Plantagenet sovereign waged determined warfare upon both the rebellious nobility and the independent clergy. He was not entirely successful, especially in his conflict with the clergy; but he effectually prevented a reversion of the nation to feudal chaos, and he invested the king's law with a sanction which it had known hardly even in the days of the Conqueror. The reign of Henry II. has been declared, indeed, to "initiate ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg

... where the purple fritillaries, so reminiscent of the lotus, blossom in the early spring. In the curious formal pattern of their petals I see a symbol of the Oxford manner—something archaic, rigid, severe. The Oxford Don may well be a reversion to some earlier type, learned, mystic, and romantic as those priests of whom Herodotus has given us so vivid a picture. The worship of Apis, as Mr. Frazer or Mr. Lang would tell us, becomes then merely the hieroglyph for a social standard, a manner of life. This, I think, ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross

... About this time, John, Duke of Bedford, the King's brother, had an offer of the reversion of the crown of Naples; but the negociations ended in no ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler

... a curious reversion to the type of his grandfather: he was the Great Elector over again with all his practical good sense if without his taste for diplomacy. His own ideal of kingship was a paternal despotism, and his ambition, to use most ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... here, Monsieur Dionis," cried Cremiere, whose wife had been nudging him, "if the good man took the thing seriously and married his goddaughter to Desire, giving her the reversion of all the property, good-by to our share in it; if he lives five years longer uncle may ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac

... himself possessed the quick mobile temperament of the artist, and he could penetrate but not understand the poise assumed with such careless ease by his friend. Dutch blood had something to do with it, and there was breeding, but there was something more than these: he was a reversion, perhaps, to the type of man which had made the rovers of the Lowlands feared on land and sea, now hemmed in by convention, hampered by the barriers of progress, and striving futilely to find an outlet for his ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath

... forehead; a magnificent animal, lithe and graceful as a lady's silken scarf, untiring and enduring as a Damascus blade. A horse that comes but once during twenty generations of Spanish-Arabian stock, and then is rare, and which, through some trick of nature or reversion, blossoms forth in all the beauty of an original type, taking upon himself the color and markings of some shy, wild-eyed dam, the pride of the Bedouin tribe and is known as the "Pearl of the Desert." The type of horse that bore Alexander and Jenghis Khan and the Prophet's ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown

... banks of the Brahmaputra, about two miles below Gauhati. It is mentioned in the Padma Purana. The temples have been rebuilt several times, and in the eighteenth century were munificently endowed by an Ahom king, and placed under the management of a Brahman from Nadia in Bengal, with reversion to his descendants who bear the title of Parbatiya Gosains. Considerable estates are still assigned to their upkeep. There are ten[733] shrines on the hill dedicated to various forms of the Sakti. The situation is magnificent, commanding an extensive prospect ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... Alexandria with Mrs. Washington. Dined at Mr. Dulaney's and exchanged deeds for conveyances of land with him and Mrs. Dulaney, giving mine, which I bought of Messrs. Robert Adam, Dow and McIver, for the reversion of what Mrs. Dulaney is entitled to at the death of her Mother within bounds of Spencer ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore

... as to why he should do it or why others do it. War is a sudden, violent and spectacular destroyer of all established habits. In its conduct and preparation it has rules of its own which have no analogy in civil life. The battlefield is a reversion to the primitive; a reversion which man finds it easy to make, for it appeals to fundamental instincts which civilization holds in leash with great difficulty and never with entire success. War especially appeals to the young. Their desire for activity, their impatience with restraint, their ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow

... had solved the difficulties which the congress had to face in Italy. The kingdom of the Two Sicilies reverted to the Bourbon, Ferdinand; and the Bourbons also acquired a right of reversion in Parma, where the protest of Spain against the rule of Maria Louisa could now be ignored. Genoa was annexed to the kingdom of Sardinia; the pope received back the states of the Church; the Grand Duke of Tuscany and the Duke of Modena ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... said Lady Merrifield, as Gillian walked beside her, 'you must be satisfied with giving Miss Hacket the reversion of our tree, and you and Mysie can go and help her. It will not do to make these kind of works a nuisance to ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge

... classic taste to the discoveries of ancient treasures in Herculaneum and Pompeii, but as these occurred in the former city so long before the time we are discussing as the year 1711, and in the latter in 1750, these can scarcely be the immediate cause; the reason most probably is that a reversion to simpler and purer lines came as a relief and reaction from the over-ornamentation of the previous period. There are not wanting, however, in some of the decorated ornaments of the time, distinct signs of the influence of these discoveries. Drawings and reproductions from ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield

... A reversion, conceivably, to a mediaeval type! Yes, but also the exemplar of the excessively modern! Externally he was a consequence of the fact that, years previously, the leading tailor in Bursley had permitted his son to be apprenticed in London. The father died; the son had the wit to return and make a ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... remained, at least for a while and in a few districts, not so much in active opposition as in latent persistence, capable of resurrection under the proper conditions. In such cases the provincial had become a Roman. But he could still undergo an atavistic reversion to the ancient ...
— The Romanization of Roman Britain • F. Haverfield

... employing the constitutional machinery placed at their disposal to secure the repeal of obnoxious laws, are going to resist and rebel whenever the majority does something of which they strongly disapprove, there is an end of democratic government altogether, and a reversion to the state of nature. T. H. Green in his Principles of Political Obligation puts the case clearly and well. He asks this very question, What shall an individual do when he is faced by a command of a democratic government which he believes to be wrong? He replies: ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw

... running over some forgotten papers in a suit-case, he came across Freya's portrait. Upon seeing her audacious smile and her calm eyes fixed upon him, he felt within him a shameful reversion. He admired the beauty of this apparition, a thrill passing over his body as their past intercourse recurred to him.... And at the same time that other Ferragut existing within him thrilled with the murderous violence of the Oriental who considers death as the only means of vengeance. ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... no—if I had wanted him I would have had him," with which reversion to the normal Georgia ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell

... would have deserved to live as a masterly survey of the state of India—the first authoritative one since the transfer to the Crown just sixty years before. For the first time since the Mutiny it marked a reversion to the spirit in which the Bentincks and Munros and Elphinstones had almost a century earlier conceived the mission of England in India to lie in the training of the Indian people to govern themselves, and for the first time an ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol

... grief for the unhappy experience of the few last days, and by anxiety for the too gloomy future. Seventy thousand persons of all ages had already perished; exclusively of the many thousand allies who had been cut down by the Cossack sabre. And the losses in reversion were likely to be many more. For rumors began now to arrive from all quarters, by the mounted couriers whom the Khan had despatched to the rear and to each flank as well as in advance, that large masses of the Imperial troops were converging from all parts of Central Asia to the fords of the ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... Edward III. that a claim to the crown descended through females was to be set aside. In fact the real importance of the change of kings lay not in what Henry said, but in what he avoided saying. It was a reversion to the old right of election, and to the precedent set in the deposition of Edward II. Henry tacitly announced that in critical times, when the wearer of the crown was hopelessly incompetent, the nation, represented by Parliament, might step in and change the order ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner

... portionless girl of fifteen. Her father, Alexander Marchant, Sieur de St. Michel, was of a good family in Anjou, and son of the High Sheriff of Bauge (in Anjou). Having turned Huguenot at the age of twenty-one, when in the German service, his father disinherited him, and he also lost the reversion of some L20,000 sterling which his uncle, a rich French canon, intended to bequeath to him before he left the Roman Catholic church. He came over to England in the retinue of Henrietta Maria on her marriage with Charles I, but the queen dismissed him on finding that ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... correction in Cold Bath Fields, and the treatment of the prisoners confined therein. In compliance with the petition of the citizens of London, a bill passed the House of Commons to prevent the granting of places in reversion; but it was opposed and thrown out by the Lords. Petitions for the restoration of peace were likewise presented from numerous towns in the manufacturing districts of the north, which were laid upon the tables of the Houses; ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt

... arose from the primitive Ape, He first dropped his tail, and took on a new shape. But Cricketing Man, born to trundle and swipe, Reversion displays to the earlier type; For a cricketing team, when beginning to fail, Always loses its "form," and "developes ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 13, 1892 • Various

... to the Hindu dogma, 604-l. Indra, Ormuzd, Ahura-Mazda is the bright firmament, 601-l. Indra, the God of the glittering firmament, Father of the Devas or Powers, 602-m. Industry never wholly unfruitful, 152-m. Inertia and immobility of Forces or Impulses cause Death, 846-u. Ineffable Name, by reversion and division, becomes bi-sexual, 849-m. Ineffable name embodies the idea of the Absolute Existence, 700-m. Ineffable name embodies the idea of the Male and Female principle, 700-m. Ineffable Name given its esoteric or inner meaning, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... situation may seem idle, since no positive doctrine can gain thereby in plausibility, and no particular line of action in reasonableness. Yet this transcendental exercise, this reversion to the immediate, may be recommended by way of a cathartic, to free the mind from ancient obstructions and make it hungrier and more agile in its rational faith. Scepticism is harmless when it is honest and universal; it clears the air and is a means of reorganising belief on its natural foundations. ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... as adventurers, but with all that was needed to give them immediate prestige in the new community; and, among those that still retained their estates in the San Mateo Valley, at least, there was as little prospect of their reversion to shirt sleeves as of their conversion to the red shirt of socialism. Their wealth might be moderate but it ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton

... it away from him to provide for a young man who could do none of these as well as he, merely because he was a godson of one of the trustees. However, they promoted Gottlieb to the post of watchman, with the reversion of it to his son Philip, who had in the meantime bound himself to a gardener. It was only the good housewifery of Mistress Katharine, and the extreme moderation of old Gottlieb, that enabled them to live happily on the little they possessed. Philip gave his services to the gardener for his board ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various

... then called up, and he deposed to different charges against the defendants—such as taking beforehand, or in reversion, several small farms over the heads of poor but solvent tenants, turning them adrift on the world, and converting their small agricultural farms into one or more large farms for grazing; thereby adding to the number of the destitute, and contracting the supply of agricultural produce—the ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... sirurgien, through the Fr. from the Gr. [Greek: cheirourgos], one who operates with the hand (from [Greek: cheir], hand, [Greek: ergon], work); from the early form is derived the modern word "surgeon." "Chirurgeon" is a 16th century reversion to ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... from him, were enraged. I was compelled to complain to the king, who instantly sent the princesse de Guemenee an order to quit Marly forthwith, and betake herself to the princesse de Marsan, of the children of the royal family of France, of whose post she had the reversion. Never did a just chastisement produce a greater effect. The outcry against me was louder than ever, it seemed as tho' the whole nobility of France was immolated at "one fell swoop." To have heard the universal clamor, it would have been thought that the princess ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon

... partly a reversion; its emphasis on sovereignty was tyrannical, but it trained the mind in exact and ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam

... years before. Both sign and fame had disappeared, for the building served later as the city poorhouse, still harboring, indeed, numerous guests who had lived to see the setting of the sun taken down from the sign, and had acquired at its bar the reversion of ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... the misfortune to be a man of business; that, you will say, is a most grievous one; but what makes it the more so to me, is, that my wife has nothing to do: at least she had too good an education, and the prospect of too good a fortune in reversion when I married her, to think of employing herself either in my shop-affairs, or ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson

... Master Christian. I know your puritanical principles on that point well," said the Duke. "Revenge may be well said to be sweet, when so many grave and wise men are ready to exchange for it all the sugar-plums which pleasures offer to the poor sinful people of the world, besides the reversion of those which they talk of expecting in ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... Nicholas found himself entitled to, either in possession, reversion, remainder, or expectancy, after paying his rent and settling with the broker from whom he had hired his poor furniture, did not exceed, by more than a few halfpence, the sum of twenty shillings. And yet he hailed the morning on which he had resolved to quit ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... rushing away five minutes after her coffee and cigarette, alleging as excuse the epidemic of influenza, consequent on the vile weather, which had woefully reduced the hospital staff. She seemed to be feverish and ill at ease, and tried to cover the symptoms by a reversion to her old offhand manner. As I was so seldom alone with her I could find scant opportunity for intimate conversation. I thought that she might have regretted the frank exposition of her feelings regarding Leonard Boyce. But she showed no sign of it. She spoke in the most ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke

... in common with Catholicism and Judaism. They will retain their inclination and aptitude for the calling of arms and for administration; their reactionary sentiments will lead now to success, now to failure, and by both the inner coherence of the class will be fortified. Finally, the inevitable reversion to an appreciation of the romantic values of life will make a connexion with names of ancient lineage desirable to the leading classes, and especially ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau

... did not always remain the only permissible emblem of Deity. The image of a man—an archetypal man—was in after days placed in the temples and adored as the highest representation of the divine. In some ways this might be considered a reversion to the Rmoahal worship of the Manu. Even then the religion was comparatively pure, and the occult fraternity of the "Good Law" of course did their utmost to keep alive in the hearts of the people the ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot

... wife, of the same age and nearly the same height as himself, was of sanguine colouring and a Cornish family, which had held land in such a manner that it had nearly melted in their grasp. All that had come to Eileen was a reversion, on the mortgageable value of which she and Ralph had been living for some time. Ralph Wotchett also had expectations. By profession he was an architect, but perhaps because of his expectations, he had always had bad luck. The involutions of ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy

... 348. In famine. Reversion to cannibalism under a total lack of other food ought not to be noted. We have some historical cases, however, in which during famine people became so familiarized with cannibalism that their horror of it was overcome. Abdallatif[1090] mentions a great famine ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... prince whilst she herself was still a subject; well aware that to accept of an alliance which would carry her out of the kingdom, was to hazard the loss of her succession to the English crown, a splendid reversion never absent ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... favourite, which was thought to be connected with the lions on the English colours, was placed in a bamboo cage in sight of the prisoners, and there starved to death, in hopes of thus abating the force of the enemy. When its carcase was removed, Mr. Judson, at his own earnest entreaty, was allowed the reversion of its cage, and there, to his great joy, Moung Ing brought him his MS. translation of part of the Burmese Bible, which he had kept in his pillow at Ava till it was torn away by the jailors on his removal. The faithful Ing, thinking only ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... a great new truth was born in Edith Duncan. Suddenly she realized that if the steel at any time prove unfaithful to the magnet the fault lies not in the steel, but in the magnet. What a change of view, what a reversion of all accepted things, came with the realization of that truth which roots down into the bedrock of all nature! ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead

... was in this part of the world, the apparent negligence in the protection and jurisdiction of these possessions, by the administration of the day, had so far alienated the minds of the inhabitants, that their reversion to the former government did not appear to be a subject which would excite their regret; although they were originally predisposed in favour ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry

... appeal I must speak truthfully. The claim is irregular; perhaps it has been paid already. There is no time for investigation. I have stocked the cards, and the trick must be taken at once or never. You have this alternative. I can take you off that committee, and I have a man in reversion who will get the post ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend

... contrary course. That Colin should detach himself from her, love again, and marry, was what Ermine schooled herself to think fitting; but Alison alternated between indignant jealousy for her sister, and the desire to warn Rachel that she might at best win only the reversion of his heart. Ermine was happy and content with his evening visits, and would not take umbrage at the daily rides, nor the reports of drawing-room warfare, and Alison often wavered between the desire of preparing ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... President Brand, had changed the sentiments of the Free State. Federation, then, was impossible. On the other hand, the Transvaal was in a state of political unrest and of danger from native aggression, which gave a pretext for reversion to the long-abandoned policy of annexation, and to that extreme Carnarvon promptly went in April, 1877. He took this dangerous course without ascertaining the considered wishes of the majority of the Boers, ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers

... without number in branches of Naval warfare hitherto unknown and unsuspected. Among these is the Submarine Hunter. The Reserve man belonged to this type, which is simply a reversion to the most primitive and savage of the fighting instincts. At the first mention of the German ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie

... land to each. This land, held in direct tenure from Jehovah, their sovereign, was in theory inalienable. The accumulation of debt upon it was prevented by the prohibition of interest, the release of debts every seventh year, and the reversion of the land to the proprietor, or his heirs, at each return of the year of jubilee. The owners of these small farms cultivated them with much care, and rendered them highly productive. They were favoured with a soil extremely fertile, and one which their skill and diligence kept in good condition. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... thrill follows thrill with daring rapidity. The plot is of the simplest, but worked out with surprising skill, while the events are related with that vivid imagination which the subject demands. Who is there that does not feel a glow of exaltation and rejoice with the heir when he comes, upon reversion, into the property from which he has been so long excluded? Mr. Blewitt treats this incident with a sense of romance and picturesqueness of language reminiscent of the ballad of "The Lord of Lynn." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 18th, 1920 • Various

... signed on the 30th of May 1814. Next year the Congress of Vienna modified the arrangement by providing that the Spanish Infanta Maria Louisa, on whom had been bestowed the ex-republic of Lucca, should have the reversion of Parma and Piacenza, while Lucca was to go in the end to Tuscany. Murat having been destroyed, the Neapolitan Bourbons recovered all their old possessions. San Marino and Monaco were graciously recognised as independent, which brought the number of Italian states up to ten. The Sardinian ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... and last lines we see a reversion to the ante-classical irregularities of scansion. The reader should refer to the remarks on this subject ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... is well that there should be a reversion to the earlier types of thinking and feeling, to earlier ways of looking at human nature, and I will not altogether refuse the pleasure offered me by the poetic romancer or the historical romancer because I find my pleasure chiefly in Tolstoy and Valdes and Thomas Hardy and Tourguenief, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... matter as well as the seeming misapprehension in England that the servant was entitled to a fifty-acre grant. Under the articles of the treaty of 1651 between Virginia and the commissioners of the Commonwealth, the reversion to the term "for every person" was made and the policy of no land to servants was implicit in the sixth article of the agreement: "That the priviledge of haveing fiftie acres of land for every person transported in the collony shall continue ...
— Mother Earth - Land Grants in Virginia 1607-1699 • W. Stitt Robinson, Jr.

... cutting, and cameos began to improve, and to resemble once more their classical ancestors. Indeed, their resemblance was rather academic, and there was little originality in design. Like most of the Renaissance arts, it was a reversion instead of a new creation. Technically, however, the work was a triumph. The craftsmen were not satisfied until they had quite outdone the ancients, and they felt obliged to increase the depth of the cutting, in order to show ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison

... that Angad had secured, through the love of the Vanars, the reversion of Sugriva's kingdom; or, as another commentator explains it, perceived that Angad had obtained a new kingdom in the enchanted cave which the Vanars, through love of him, ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... this hole that the English entered France." On receipt of the news of his father's murder, the new Duke of Burgundy, Philip le Bon, flung himself into the arms of the English, and by the treaty of Troyes on May 20, 1420, Henry V. was given a French princess to wife and the reversion of the crown of France, which, after Charles' death, was to be united ever more to that of England. But the French crown never circled Henry's brow: on August 31, 1422, he lay dead at Vincennes. His body after being embalmed was ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey

... change in the struggle for existence, in such a case as that indicated above? Simply in a partial reversion to the form of struggle of the first, the cannibal, epoch ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... Stevenson, in a phrase omitted for the moment in one of the quotations from "A Humble Remonstrance" set forth at the beginning of this chapter, advised the fiction-writer to "avoid a sub-plot, unless, as sometimes in Shakespeare, the sub-plot be a reversion or complement of the main intrigue." It seems safe to state that a sub-plot is of use in a novel only for the purpose of tying minor knots in the leading strands of causation, and should be discarded unless it serves that purpose. There is no reason, however, why a novel ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton

... nonsense; people are jealous. Why, there's no such 'dot' in Havre," cried Butscha, beginning to count on his fingers. "Two to three hundred thousand in ready money," bending back the thumb of his left hand with the forefinger of his right, "that's one item; the reversion of the villa Mignon, that's another; 'tertio,' Dumay's property!" doubling down his middle finger. "Ha! little Modeste may count upon her six hundred thousand francs as soon as the two old soldiers have got their marching ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac

... the cases in women follow the law of the menstrual and sexual periodicity; the majority of the cases in men follow the law of the more irregular periodicities of the nisus generativus in that sex. Many of the cases in both sexes follow the seasonal periodicity which perhaps in man is merely a reversion to the seasonal generative activities of the majority of the lower animals." He found that among 338 cases of insanity, chiefly mania and melancholia, 46 per cent, of females and 40 per cent, of males showed periodicity,—diurnal, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... dreamless sleep, but his momentary reversion to the wilderness awoke him after a while. He sat up in his blankets and looked around. A mere mass of black coals showed where the fire had been, and two long dark objects looking like logs in the ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler

... remark, Rogron gave old Madame Lorrain no peace until she had secured to Pierrette the reversion of the eight ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac

... himself. He gave to the debt, in the first instance, in funding it, the most artificial and mysterious form he could devise. He then moulded up his appropriations of a number of scraps and remnants, many of which were nothing at all, and applied them to different objects in reversion and remainder, until the whole system was involved in impenetrable fog; and while he was giving himself the airs of providing for the payment of the debt, he left himself free to add to it continually, as he ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... days after the middle of March, a cruel misfortune happened to the Marechal de Boufflers. His eldest son was fourteen years of age, handsome, well made, of much promise, and who succeeded marvellously at the Court, when his father presented him there to the King to thank his Majesty for the reversion of the government of Flow and of Lille. He returned afterwards to the College of the Jesuits, where he was being educated. I know not what youthful folly he was guilty of with the two sons of D'Argenson; but the Jesuits, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... abolishing conditions in which their fellow beings may live. This is the atavistic type of criminals which represents an involutionary, or retrogressive, form of abnormality, due to an arrested development or an atavistic reversion to a savage and primitive type. These constitute the majority in the world of criminals and must be distinguished from the minority, who are evolutionary, or progressive, abnormals, that may also commit crime in a violent form, ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri

... belongs to the higher grades of vertebrates—in other words, is of later origin. We need not be astonished, therefore, to find that in many cases among birds and other advanced vertebrates a partial reversion to the earlier habit not infrequently takes place. With doves, for example, the cock and hen birds sit equally on the eggs, taking turns about at the nest; and as for the ostriches, the male bird there does most of the ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various

... be wanting. And, for my part, I should be quite content to see the battle joined as speedily as possible upon the plain, simple issue of aristocratic rule against representative government, between the reversion to protection and the maintenance of free trade, between a tax on bread and a tax on—well, never mind. And if they do not choose, or do not dare to use the powers they most injuriously possess, if fear, I say, or tactics, or prudence, ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill

... again and again under circumstances which prevented either of us finding out whether the other was worthy. I have still to be brother to a Prince, though I once came near to kinship with what might have been a veritable King and was promised the reversion of a Kingdom —army, law-courts, revenue and policy all complete. But, to-day, I greatly fear that my King is dead, and if I want a crown I must go and hunt ...
— The Man Who Would Be King • Rudyard Kipling

... advertisements which seemed to promise. He thought of his uncle, who had told him that he would leave him at his death the little he had; Philip did not in the least know how much this was: it could not be more than a few hundred pounds. He wondered whether he could raise money on the reversion. Not without the old man's consent, and ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham



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