"Drift" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... south, and followed the silver stream of the Hudson. The river, lonely as the sky, seemed to drift oily and sluggish down to plunge beneath the city at the lower end of the Tappan Zee. Allan Dane came over New York, gazed down at the ruin of its soaring towers, at the leaping arabesque of its street bridges. He peered into vast rifts of tumbled, chaotic ...
— When the Sleepers Woke • Arthur Leo Zagat
... anywhere; even on the steep Kleiner Berg side she could easily have found footing; she was well used to climbing its narrow ledges, and knew every crack and crevice and projection where a step could be taken. But, no; the boat was not going to drift ashore. It had stopped in a tangle of lily-leaves, far out in the water, and there was not a breath of wind to stir it. If the water had not been deep she could have waded ashore; but her practised ear told her, from the sound ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... marine species include the manatee, seals, sea lions, turtles, and whales; drift net fishing is hastening the decline of fish stocks and contributing to international disputes; municipal sludge pollution off eastern US, southern Brazil, and eastern Argentina; oil pollution in Caribbean Sea, Gulf of ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... to enter had to step up over a foot of boarding to effect his object, just as we were compelled to do on Fridtjof Nansen's ship the Fram,[E] when she lay in Christiania dock a week or two before leaving for her ice-drift. In the case of the Fram the doors were high up and small, to keep out the snow, as they are likewise in the Finnish peasants' homes, excepting when they arrange a snow-guard or sort of fore-chamber of loose pine trees, laid wigwam fashion on the top of one another, to keep back ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... twenty years. It couldn't have been much deeper without smothering us all. Our street was a sight to be seen, or, rather, it was a sight not to be seen; for very little street was visible. One huge drift completely banked up our front door and half covered ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... earnestly together, going over many of their strange and thrilling hunting experiences. We understood but little Russian and Aleut, yet their expressive gestures made it quite possible to catch the drift of what was being said. It seemed that Ignati had had a brother killed a few years ago, while bear hunting in the small bay which lies between Eagle Harbor and Kiliuda Bay. The man came upon a bear, which he shot and badly wounded. ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... order to have time, later in the morning, to go for a walk with Maisie Maidan. He discovered himself using little slang words that she used and attaching a sentimental value to those words. These, you understand, were discoveries that came so late that he could do nothing but drift. He was losing weight; his eyes were beginning to fall in; he had touches of bad fever. He was, as he described ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... broke in, laughing, for I took the drift of her meaning, and was wishful to prove myself alert. "Most allegorical lady," I protested, "I take you very clearly when you explain your own fable." And I rubbed my hands, instantly pleased ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... wails loud, and the sea wails long, As the ages of waiting drift slowly by, But the sea shall sing no bridal song— As well know ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... veritable labyrinth that defied dissolution. Suddenly, as if by magic, the key log would be ejected, and the whole jam would break, shatter down in one stupendous crash, settle and dissolve, leaving at last only drift logs floating quietly in the river. Thus it was with the confusion in his brain. All at once it seemed to dissolve, the tangled skeins straightened out, the association areas of his mind stirred full into life once more. As he sat there, pale as the twilight ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... landing at the Stairs, where a drift of chips and weed had been trying to land before me and had not succeeded, but had got into a corner instead, I found the very street posts to be cannon, and the architectural ornaments to be shells. And so I came to the Yard, which was shut ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... happy, Sylvestre, and I owe my happiness to you, to her, and to others. I have done nothing myself to deserve happiness beyond letting myself drift on the current of life. Whenever I tried to row a stroke the boat nearly upset. Everything that others tried to do for me succeeded. I can't get over it. Just think of it yourself. I owed my introduction ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... for a certain book. The polite man of books replied that he was sorry he had not a copy at present. "But," said Roger, slily, "you have the Barber of Seville, have you not?" "O yes," said the bookseller, not seeing the poet's drift, "I have the Barber of Seville, very much at your ladyship's service." The lady drove away, evidently much offended, but the beard afterwards disappeared. Talking of barbers—but they deserve a whole paper to ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... in office, one with a policy of drift, everything may become possible; but, so long as foresight and vigilance are shown, the Republic remains impregnable. If military malcontents become obstreperous it is only necessary to treat them as ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... the drift of this remark, but her father dismissed the subject in his lightest manner before ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... somebody said the desert was lonesome," said Roger to himself. "Me—I run a regular wayside inn." He lighted his pipe and sat down on the well curb to wait. Gradually he discerned that the pink parasol, undulating now against the sapphire of the sky, now against the dancing yellow of a sand drift, was upheld by a woman who sat astride a tiny burro. It was ten minutes after he discovered this that the lady rode majestically into the camp and dismounted, with magnificent gesture, throwing one leg over ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... that in ancient times a few persons knew how to draw a fairy ring about those they wished to injure or protect, placing them thus outside the reach of time and change. This has now happened the world over, perhaps through some drift in the ether or germ in the brain. That is what we must find out so we can solve the mystery and take steps to ...
— The End of Time • Wallace West
... even knew that he went by, None saw or heard him pass; Softly he moved as clouds drift down the sky, Or shadows ...
— The Miracle and Other Poems • Virna Sheard
... rosy rise Through turquoise skies, And life looks out through tender eyes; While cloudlets lift Through rent and rift, Where floating islands drive and drift. ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... who were soon round me, and we resolved to pass the night there, as we considered that a good meal or two would enable us so much better to continue our fatiguing journey. A little above us was also discovered a large quantity of drift, timber left dry upon the sand, and in a short time every one of us were actively employed in preparing for a jovial meal. Gabriel, being the best marksman, started for game, and I continued fishing, to the great delight of the doctor and the parson, ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... to stay on after that, for the woman could not be left alone. And he was glad of the respite, willing to drift until he got his bearings. Certain things had come back, more as pictures than realities. Thus he saw David clearly, Lucy dimly, Elizabeth not at all. But David came first; David in the buggy with the sagging springs, David's loud voice and portly figure, David, ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... gregarious animal, confederating in herds numbering from ten to fifty, and in some instances no doubt larger numbers may be found together. On calm days they rest in unmolested peace on pans of broken ice which drift up and down the waters of Whale Sound. It is unfortunate that no soundings were taken in the region where the walrus were found, as a knowledge of the depth of water would have furnished some information as to the distances to which the animal will ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... to the farthest corner of the vacant lot on which the school-house stood, and by the appearance of things were preparing to have an animated game of foot-ball; but by the gestures and general drift of motions Joe saw, to his horror, that poor little Bob was evidently to be the victim. Already they were rolling him in the snow, and cuffing him about as if he were made of India rubber, ...
— Harper's Young People, January 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... she let herself drift into it. And knowing she was drifting, and not knowing it was for just the moment, he rose and ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... had spent the hours before dusk in a prolonged tramp through the forests of the Northern shore. And never for one moment was their talk and apparent interest allowed to drift from the wealth of long-fibred timber ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... the day's efforts, my mother's positiveness dissipated and she allowed her mind to drift into negative thoughts, complaining endlessly about my irresponsible father and about how much she disliked him for treating her so badly. These emotions and their irresponsible expression were very difficult for me to deal with as a child, but it taught ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... insane as the rest of the company. I strode aimlessly to and fro, striving at every coign to pierce with my eyesight the white drift. I pushed back my hat; I gnawed my knuckles; I felt that I could not stay still, yet knew not for what point to make. Almost I felt that in another moment I should screech out—when a breath of sea air caught the skirt ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... a mind based on the same deeps as Khoeleth, brooding on the same world-wide things. Like him, he looks out into the black and eyeless storm, the ceaseless drift of atoms; like him, he surveys the States and Empires of the past, and sees in their history, their revolutions, their rise and decline, but the history of the wind which, in the Hebrew phrase, goes circling in its circles, sov[)a]v ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... single instance, she withdraws from her poor husband all the help of her keener spiritual perceptions, which she should have used with authority to hold his grosser nature in check, and leaves him to drift about on his own conceit, prejudices, and inclinations, until ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... gone down with them, they were tossing about among the rocks and seaweed, so much human drift on the great ocean of Death! And we four were saved. But one day a sunrise will come when we shall be among those who are lost, and then others will watch those glorious rays, and grow sad in the midst of beauty, and dream ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... automatic mental processes may run smoothly (memory and calculation may be excellent) and there may yet be a certain shallowness in thinking, a defect of attention (a purely descriptive term) which is most obvious in the patient's inability to grasp clearly the drift of what is going on or the meaning of complicated questions. I am inclined to think that poor results in retention tests are entirely due to this attention disorder, for we have no evidence of any fundamental ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... Clarendon a cautioning letter from Woburn, apprising him of some serious crisis, of which he would soon hear, and speaking of his former wish to exchange the Lord-Lieutenancy for some other Office. Lord Clarendon at once perceived the drift of the hint, and wrote to the Duke of Bedford what he said he did not wish to write to his brother John, that, if it was that Palmerston was going, and he were thought of as a successor, nothing would be so disagreeable to him, as the whole change would ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... along the course of the last-mentioned river, we arrived at its junction with the Limpopo, on the farther side of which lay my goal, Mashonaland; and here we again outspanned, while Piet and I went on a prospecting tour in search of a drift by means of which the wagon might be ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... and correct cards. Again, a great set towards the races, though not so great a set as on Wednesday. Much packing going on too, upstairs at the gun- smith's, the wax-chandler's, and the serious stationer's; for there will be a heavy drift of Lunatics and Keepers to London by the afternoon train. The course as pretty as ever; the great pincushion as like a pincushion, but not nearly so full of pins; whole rows of pins wanting. On the great event of the day, both Lunatics and Keepers become inspired with ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... needed to account for the living machine. The blind action of physical forces seemed inadequate. Thus the phenomena of life, which had been studied longer than any other phase of nature, continued to stand aloof from the rest and refused to fall into line with the general drift of thought. The living world seemed to give no promise of being included among natural phenomena, but still persisted in retaining ...
— The Story of the Living Machine • H. W. Conn
... the Mechanical Value of Heat.' Even at the present day this memoir is tough reading, and at the time it was written it must have appeared hopelessly entangled. This, I should think, was the reason why Faraday advised Mr. Joule not to submit the paper to the Royal Society. But its drift and results are summed up in these memorable words by its author, written some time subsequently: 'In that paper it was demonstrated experimentally, that the mechanical power exerted in turning a magneto-electric machine is converted into the heat evolved by the passage of the currents ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... weeping softly against her cheek, had been her only happiness in the four black months since the change had come to him. He still loved her. Yes.... Oh, God, it was something else. Perhaps madness. She would drift to sleep as his weeping ceased, long after it ceased, and half dreams would come to her of nursing him through terrible darknesses, of warming him with her life, of magically driving away the things that ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... leading chiefs was present, and took an active part in the deliberations of this council. It was well attended by the Indians, as also by several American gentlemen, and a number of speeches were interchanged, whose general drift was in the direction ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... boat for running before the wind Jack had never seen before. The sea stood up round about them like a deep snow-drift, although it was almost calm. But they hadn't gone very far before a nasty piping began in the air. The birds shrieked and made for land, and the sea rose like ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... defenders? It was no pleasant situation. It was more than perplexing. Presently he turned and, using such signs as he thought might be comprehensible, asked the impassive runner if he knew where the first fight took place, and the Hualpai, as would almost any Indian partially gathering the drift of a question, began a rambling reply, pointing as he spoke, with shifting finger, all over the range ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... manifestation of character. Take, for instance, the case of a bankruptcy. Most people, probably, who figure in the Gazette do not go through any one, or two, or three critical moments of special tension, special humiliation, special agony. They gradually drift to leeward in their affairs, undergoing a series of small discouragements, small vicissitudes of hope and fear, small unpleasantnesses, which they take lightly or hardly according to their temperament, or the momentary state of their liver. In this average process of financial decline, there ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... and can take your drift. As for my faith, I believe in truth, and wish all men to do the same. By-the-bye, might I inquire the name of him who is the inmate of ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... shout of discovery startled Drylyn as genuinely as if he had never known, and he joined the wild rush of people to the hill. Nor was this acting. The violence he had set going, and in which he swam like a straw, made him forget, or for the moment drift away from, his arranged thoughts, and the tracks on the hill had gone clean out of his head. He was become a mere blank spectator in the storm, incapable of calculation. His own handiwork had stunned him, for he had not foreseen that consequences ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... resembles, in fact, the other reef at the entrance of the Gulf, where tile soundings have changed, in late years, from 7-7 1/2 fathoms to 3-3 1/2. Geologists differ as to the cause—elevation or accretion by current-borne drift. ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... the rim, without water and with the hot wind blowing the same direction they were going. The machine lasted four miles, and then quit in the middle of a sand drift, with the most infernal finality in its ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... Ten thousand of these delectable pieces of highly engraved treasure had definitely flowed into some pocket unknown, as a result of the Lightfoot gang episode. The whole transaction he felt was wicked, absolutely wicked. What right had any ten thousand dollars to drift into any unknown pocket? Known, yes. That was legitimate. It always left an enterprising individual the sporting chance of dipping a hand into it. But the other was an outrage against commercialism. Why, if that sort of thing became the general ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... In the drift of such thoughts, her white, handsome face grew almost angelic. She sat motionless and let them come to her; as if she were listening to the comforting angels. For God has many ways of saying to the troubled soul: "Be at peace"; and, certainly, Antonia had not anticipated ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... most curious to observe, as far as the eye could range, how level and truly horizontal the line on the mountain side was, at which trees ceased to grow: it precisely resembled the high-water mark of drift-weed ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... interesting enough, but I mean queer people, and celebrities and things. That's what Van Buren wants, and that's what he must have. And that's one reason why he's so delighted with Harry, because Harry can get them all, through being a sort of artist, you see. What a good thing, after all, that he didn't drift into diplomacy! As he's an American you can't expect Van Buren to be really modern, and he has all the old-fashioned ideas about what he calls culture. He wants to go in for being intellectual and artistic ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... jumped into my mind and stopped its tumid flow for a moment. I remember the intelligent detachment of my sudden interest. I turned sharply, and stood looking at the moon and the great white comet, that the drift of the clouds had now ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... and his partner were judged improper objects of mirth, Jack Wilson had resolved to execute some jokes on Lismahago, and after supper began to ply him with bumpers, when the ladies had retired; but the captain perceiving his drift, begged for quarter, alledging that the adventure, in which he had engaged, was a very serious matter; and that it would be more the part of a good Christian to pray that he might be strengthened, than to impede his endeavours to finish the adventure. — He was spared accordingly, and ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... suggested Rowlee suddenly; "let's go to Allen's Branch and have a good dinner, and then drift around to Belle's place and see if there's any excitement ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... the Island is to a great extent overcome by the inhabitants collecting their fuel from the Gulf Stream, which brings drift wood in large quantities from Mexico, Virginia, the Caroline Islands, and even from the ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... box—Mornin standing at his side, her charge in her arms—he did it with tremulous fingers, and when, having laid one article after another in a snowy drift upon the bed, he drew back to look at them, he found it necessary after a few moments' inspection to turn about and pace the floor, not uneasily, but to work off steam as it were, while Mornin uttered her ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the shore frosty and clear after the subsided storm, and the earliest wreckers, seeking in the drift for Christmas gifts to give their children, found well-remembered parts of the Eli and portions of the tenement of its proprietor. A wave rolled higher than the rest and cast upon the shore two bodies—a young man of the comely face and symmetry ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... with accuracy, and then to depict on his map with precision. He must learn furthermore to read the maps of his fellows—a task presupposing some knowledge of how they had been made. He must learn to fly by a map, to recognize objects by the technical signs upon it, to estimate his drift before the wind because of which the machine moves sidewise en crabe—or like a crab as the French ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... Drift of rotten wood stuck to the house sides, and broken trees or stumps, jammed under gallery roofs, resented the current, and broke the surface as they rose and dipped. Strange craft, large and small, rode down the turgid sweep. Straw beehives rolled along like gigantic ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... boat into the sea, pretending that they were going to lay out anchors from the bow, when Paul said to the officer and to the soldiers, "Unless these men stay on board, we cannot be saved." Then the soldiers cut the ropes which held the boat and let her drift away. ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... think of what I had read of the destruction of Pompeii. We got to Hampton Court without misadventure, our minds full of strange and unfamiliar appearances, and at Hampton Court our eyes were relieved to find a patch of green that had escaped the suffocating drift. We went through Bushey Park, with its deer going to and fro under the chestnuts, and some men and women hurrying in the distance towards Hampton, and so we came to Twickenham. These were the first ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... alternating calls of a little troop of this kind echoing through the glades of the woods on a still, sunny day in winter: the vivacious chatter of the chickadee, the slender, contented pipe of the gold-crest, and the emphatic, business-like hank of the nuthatch, as they drift leisurely along from tree to tree. The winter seems to be the season of holiday enjoyment to the chickadee, and he is never so evidently and conspicuously contented as in very cold weather. In summer he withdraws to the thickets, and becomes less noisy and active. His plumage becomes dull, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... unless they fake to boot, and then they drown us out of hand that moment, curse 'em!' We came to Strasbourg. And I looked down Rhine with longing heart. The stream how swift! It seemed running to clip Sevenbergen to its soft bosom. With but a piece of timber and an oar I might drift at my ease to thee, sleeping yet gliding still. 'Twas a sore temptation. But the fear of an ill welcome from my folk, and of the neighbours' sneers, and the hope of coming back to thee victorious, not, as now ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... they entered into the city at sunset, the workmen met 'em all dressed in holiday attire, and their cheers and blessings followed the carriage till they reached their own door, which wuz banked up with odorous blossoms as high as ever a snow drift blocked up the houses in Jonesville, and they had to fairly wade through the sweet posies to git to ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... strange to me. A crisis like this has, for the woman who loves, a tragic solemnity that baffles words; the whole of life rises before you then, and you search in vain for any horizon to it; the veriest trifle is big with meaning, a glance contains a volume, icicles drift on uttered words, and the death sentence is read in ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... they cannot be treated as though they were not parts of one organic whole. No sane person now suggests that the foreign policy of the country should be dealt with by the laissez-faire policy. No one would dare openly to contend that the national policy should be one of 'drift,' although I admit that there are many most excellent persons who by their attitude seem to resent any attempt to steer the ship of State along a definite course as being an impious attempt to usurp the functions of Providence, whose ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... nether extremities; or until some lucky geologist turns up the bones of his ancestor and prototype in France or England, who was so busy "napping the chuckie-stanes" and chipping out flint knives and arrow-heads in the time of the drift, very many ages ago—before the British Channel existed, says Lyell [III-1]—and until these men of the olden time are shown to have worn their great-toes in the divergent and thumblike fashion. That would be evidence indeed: but, until some testimony of the sort is produced, we must needs believe ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... our edge of the Great Swamp was led by a wrinkled old cow, wise beyond belief. Scrag we called her. She would take the herd in to the bedding-ground by the river, to a landing-point on the opposite side, never twice the same, and drift noiselessly through the canebrake, choosing blowy hours when the swish of cane over woolly backs was like the run of the wind. Days when the marsh would be full of tapirs wallowing and wild pig rootling and fighting, there might be hundreds feeding within sound of you and not a hint of it ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... they happened to come short of the conventional standard of piety. Once, when their grandfather reported to him that the boys had been seen throwing stones on Sunday at the body of a dog lodged on some drift in the river, he rebuked them for the indecorum, and then ended the matter, as he often did, by saying, "Boys, consider yourselves ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... and slipped over the sea-weed at the mouth of the cave, and presently found themselves standing on a floor of light-coloured sand, strewn with shells and sea-drift. The sides of the cave were black and shiny with wet, and water dripped ...
— The Adventure League • Hilda T. Skae
... of the pyramid of civilization which rests upon the soil is shrinking through the drift of population from farm to city. For a generation we have been expressing more or less concern about this tendency. Economists have warned and statesmen have deplored. We thought for at time that modern conveniences and the more intimate contact would halt the movement, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... this article compel me to glance hastily over succeeding epochs in a career with the main drift of which the civilised world is already familiar. After saving Marseilles to the Republic, by a series of actions alternating between desperate valour and brilliant strategy, I went to Paris to report on the great event. Calling on the official entrusted with the duty of considering claims ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various
... its northern namesake, is a sluggish, muddy stream, rather small, flowing between abrupt clay banks. Farther down it drops into great canons and eroded abysses, and acquires a certain grandeur. But here, at the ford of Agate's Drift, it is decidedly unimpressive. Scant greenery ornaments its banks. In fact, at most places they run hard and baked to a sheer drop-off of ten or fifteen feet. Scattered mimosa trees and aloes mark its course. The earth for a mile or so is trampled by thousands of ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... said, with her musical drawl. "I know what that means. You drift into the middle of the lake or the river, the wind drops, and you sit in a scorching sun and get a headache. Please leave me out. I shall stick to my original proposal. Perhaps, if you don't drown anyone this time, I may ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... believe; but should they believe with such vile hearts, and presume to believe in Christ, and be so filthy? Now all this is because the spirit of the law still ruleth in such souls, and blinds them so that they cannot see the terms of the Gospel. To clear this, take the substance or the drift of these poor souls, which is this—"If I were better, then I think I could believe; but being so bad as I am, that is the reason that I cannot." This is just to do something that I may believe, to work that I may ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... current they were carried down faster than we could run. One of them at last reached the bank and got ashore, but the other went down under the tree we had cut, and the first we saw of him he came up about twenty yards below, heels upward. He finally struck a drift about a hundred yards below, and we succeeded in getting him out almost drowned. We then tied ropes together, part of the men went over, and tying a rope to each horse, those on one side would force ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... a force ever making for righteousness. At the same time, he numbered many divines among his most cherished friends, and he frequently, and with admitted edification, was to be found in chapel and church. Meanwhile he continued busily to educate himself for whatever profession he might choose or drift into, supplemented by such fitful periods of schooling as his delicate health permitted, as well as by many jaunts with his parents to the English lakes and other parts of the kingdom, and by frequent tours on the Continent, especially in Italy and Switzerland. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... establishment," though undoubtedly useful for the purposes of the story, might have been changed for something else, and his personality have been considerably altered, without very much affecting the general drift ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... battling with it ever since. It is only now I realise that there is something else beyond work to make the world pleasant. Until now it has been a case of fighting hard and keeping myself straight by means of religion. Once I was tempted to drift—that was after my trouble, over there in Golden Vale—but I was fortunate enough to find an old friend, a Father, who put things before me in their ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... most strike the eye at a distance, are green and yellow. The yards are apt to be full of sand-drifts, which are much prized by the possessors, with whom it is an object to be secured from high tides and other more permanent aggressions of the ocean. The whole island is but a verdureless sand-drift, of which the outlines are constantly changing under the influence of winds and waters. Fort Moultrie, once close to the shore, as I am told, is now a hundred yards from it; while, half a mile off, the sea flows over the site ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... snow amidst it; but down from that cloudy head The scars of fires that have been show grim and dusky-red; And lower yet are the hollows striped down by the scanty green, And lingering flecks of the cloud-host are tangled there-between, White, pillowy, lit by the sun, unchanged by the drift of the wind. ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... to drift into a cheap cynicism, and apotheosize the old days at the expense of the new. We are often inclined to paint the Past with a halo round its head which it never wore when it was the Present. We can reproduce neither the children nor the conditions of fifty ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... born of his thoughts before breakfast. It was to release one cook, one engineer, and one helmsman at a time; to guard them until sleep was necessary, then to shut off steam, lock them up, and allow the boat to drift while they slept. Against this plan was the absolute necessity, to a seaman's mind, of a watch—even a one-man watch—and this one man could work mischief while he slept—could even, if handy with tools, file out a key ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... promising trail, Breed caught a fugitive scent of meat. He circled and looped, now catching it, then losing it again. The broad valley stood white and silent, gripped in a dead calm, and the few vagrant breezes were imperceptible, merely the sluggish drift of local air pockets that shifted a few ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... is a boyish excitement in making the first path. Looking back upon our track, it proves to be like all other human paths, straight in intention, but slightly devious in deed. We have gay companions on our way; for a breeze overtakes us, and a hundred little simooms of drift whirl along beside us, and whelm in miniature burial whole caravans of dry leaves. Here, too, our track intersects with that of some previous passer; he has but just gone on, judging by the freshness of the trail, and we can study his character and purposes. The ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... the guiding star of genius. Without it, genius would drift hither and thither upon the restless, ever-changing waves of circumstance, never casting anchor in a secure haven. Upon opportunity, too, depends the success of institutions. By opportunity we mean a real and acknowledged public want. Whoever ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... every direction. The Indians went through & our Small Canoe followed them, as it was late we deturmined to camp above untill the morning. we passed Several Stoney Islands today Country as yesterday open plains, no timber of any kind a fiew Hack berry bushes & willows excepted, and but few drift trees to be found So that fire wood is verry Scerce- The hills or assents from the water is faced with a dark ruged Stone. The wind blew ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... and whirl and scurry, these riders of the drift Will mount and wheel and column, and pass ...
— Ballads of Lost Haven - A Book of the Sea • Bliss Carman
... all right," he replied; "please don't go and take fancies in your head. He has his innings now, but we got the best of him this afternoon." Elizabeth's merry answering laugh reached Malcolm's ears, and made him lose the drift of the vicar's argument. ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... now. Thoughts of an almond tree flowering in a white town; of pink blossoms, fragile, without leaves, casting a thin shadow on white stones; the smell of almond flowers and the sting of white dust in an east wind; a drift of ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... recognised as an artist in proportion as the senses of his body drift their glow and splendour over into the creations of his mind. He is an artist because his flesh is informed with the spirit, because in whatever he does he incarnates the spirit ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... visible to us than to him. We are looking on the same map; it will go hard if we cannot follow the demonstration. The longest and most abstruse flight of a philosopher becomes clear and shallow, in the flash of a moment, when we suddenly perceive the aspect and drift of his intention. The longest argument is but a finger pointed; once we get our own finger rightly parallel, and we see what the man meant, whether it be a new star or an old street-lamp. And briefly, if a saying is hard to understand, it is ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... away, back and forward; which I cannot, right here in this first page, let it do. It would tell—taking the little carriage for a text and key—ever so much about aims and ways and principles, and the drift of a household life, which was one of the busy little currents in the world that help to make up its great universal character and atmosphere, at this present age of things, as the drifts and sweeps of ocean ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... one day understand," she answered, earnestly, "that God has helped us both, and how futile my efforts would have been without such help. But, Mr. Gregory," she continued, looking frankly into his flushed face (for she was beginning to suspect now something of his drift, and instinctively sought to ward off words which might disturb their pleasant relations), "I do not intend to give you up from this day forth. As our quaint old friend suggests, I do mean to stand right by you as far as circumstances will allow me. I recognize how isolated and lonely you are, ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... depths and saw that it burned undimmed, indicating that the air was pure, and then descended cautiously, testing each rung as they went. The shaft was not more than fifty feet deep, and they found themselves standing on the bottom and peering off into a drift which had been crudely timbered and had fallen in here and there as the unworked ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... to blaze fire. For the first time she perceived the drift of the cruel suspicion which her fellow-students were seeking to cast upon her. "How wicked you are!" she said to Rosalind. "Why do you look at me like that? Miss Day, why do you smile? Why do you all smile? ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... the most subtle hand at touching the stops of her delicate soul instead of one who had just bound himself to let her drift away from him again (if she would) on the wind of her estranging education, he could not have acted more seductively than he did that day. He chanced to be superintending some temporary work in a field opposite her windows. She could not ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... day the brig continued to drift steadily to the north and east, and at sunset she was within eight or ten miles of the land. The native crew, although they had continued their work quietly after the fight, were evidently much dissatisfied, and when at six o'clock ...
— Edward Barry - South Sea Pearler • Louis Becke
... the cathead ready to let go when the schooner floated in the harbor, he loosely connected with one of the chain-plates by a length of small wire rope, so that, when let go, it would hang a few feet under water and the schooner must drift, possibly ashore, before another anchor could be cleared and ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... Fergus perceived the drift of the question at once. The penurious character of the baronet was so well known throughout the whole barony that if he had replied in the affirmative every man of them would have felt that the assertion ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... the great hulk that swam so majestically, there was a little toiling steam-tug, with heart of fire and arms of iron, that was hugging it close and dragging it bravely on; and I knew, that, if the little steam-tug untwined her arms and left the tall ship, it would wallow and roll about, and drift hither and thither, and go off with the refluent tide, no man knows whither. And so I have known more than one genius, high-decked, full-freighted, wide-sailed, gay-pennoned, that, but for the bare toiling arms, and brave, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... Lieutenant," says Brown, pointing into the "blank height of the dark;" "and I was on the pier too, and couldn't see; but the look-out man here says—" A shift of wind, a drift of cloud, and the moon flashes out ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley |
