"Drift" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... our side of the island. Some of the people eat cats, which I could not bring myself to, and declared they were sweet nourishing food. When the weather allowed us to fish, we were delivered from these hardships; but some of our mischievous crew set the boat a-drift, so that she was lost: after which we contrived wicker boats, covered with sea-lions skins, which did well enough near shore, but we durst not venture in them out into the bay, and consequently were worse provided with fish than we might otherwise have been. We ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... "Such is the drift of Paine's argument, and it would seem indeed that he could not be a foreigner and a citizen at the same time. It was hard that his only privilege of citizenship should be that of imprisonment. But this logic was a little too refined for the revolutionary ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... with the fist wickedly." These words are expounded by Gregory (Pastor. iii, 19) as follows: "The will indicates joy and the fist anger. In vain then is the flesh restrained if the mind allowed to drift to inordinate movements be wrecked by vice." And Augustine says (in the same sermon) that "fasting loves not many words, deems wealth superfluous, scorns pride, commends humility, helps man to perceive ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... the spirit blends with the Greater Spirit, and I myself have seen every atom that was mortal lift again and again to new life, out of the desert's atom drift." ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... of the river we plunged into a deep snow-drift; but he plunged on, and, planting his feet on firm ground, sprung upward again, and on he went breasting the side of a steep hill. We gained the summit. I looked back for an instant. I thought I could discern in the far distance several black spots. I was sure that they were ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... and at length, all notion of time and distance gone, began to wonder whether he must not be near the place where the parish-road turned off. He stood, and sent sight into his eyes, but nothing was to be seen through the drift save more drift behind it. Was he upon the road at all? He sought this way and that, but could find neither ditch nor dyke. He was lost! He knew well the danger of sitting down, knew on the other hand that the more exhausted he was when he succumbed, the sooner would the cold get the ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... ne'er leavest, Genius, Thou wilt wrap up warmly In the snow-drift; Tow'rd the warmth approach the Muses, Tow'rd the warmth approach ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... to her seat—for she had started up. 'It isn't the father, it's herself. Now that I won't let her drift any longer, she can't bring herself to it. She's honest, anyway, my little Lucy. She won't fall back ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... the office of the landlord, and paid him their rent punctually. I often sat at the kitchen hearth as neighbor after neighbor came in in the evening and told in Irish the tale of some hard occurrence that had taken place. I understood enough to guess the drift of the story. I understood well the language of eye and clinched hand with which my host listened. The people who suffered were his people; their woe was his; he felt for them a sympathy of which the landlord never dreamed; but ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... all the world like a camp-meetin', when a reformed ring-tail roarer calls out to the minister, 'That's a fact, Welly Fobus, by Gosh; amen!' or when preacher says, 'Who will be saved?' answers, 'Me and the boys, throw us a hen-coop; the galls will drift down stream on a bale o' cotton.' Well then, our very lowest, and their very highest, don't always act pretty, that's a fact. Sometimes 'they repudiate.' You take, ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... numbers and swept away the cattle of the colonists, driving them through the Fish River. In carrying away this booty they passed, with great hardihood, close to the fortified post called "Trompetter's Drift." The guns of the position opened with grape and canister, at point-blank range, and accomplished a dreadful slaughter, but none of the booty was recaptured; the enemy even earned away all ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... was hurt so bad he could hardly keep his head above water. He floated down a long ways and the current carried him to a pile of driftwood which had lodged against a little island. I saw the Injun crawl up on the drift. I went down stream and by keepin' the island between me and him I got out to where he was. I pulled my tomahawk and went around the head of the island and found the redskin leanin' against a big log. He was a young brave and a fine lookin strong ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... and deeming that if any attempt on the batteries was in contemplation, the troops ordered for that duty would naturally embark at a point whence, crossing the river considerably above the object of their expedition, they might drift down with the current, and effect a landing without noise, he determined to direct his course between the merchantmen and vessels of war, and pursue his way to the opposite end of the town. The enterprise, it is true, was bold, and not by any means, without hazard; but Grantham's was ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... world.[12] In Oxford, mostly in a different way, more dry, more dialectical, and, perhaps it may be said, more sober, definite, and ambitious of clearness, the same spirit was at work. There was a certain drift towards Dissent among the warmer spirits. Under the leading of Whately, questions were asked about what was supposed to be beyond dispute with both Churchmen and Evangelicals. Current phrases, the keynotes of many a sermon, were fearlessly taken to pieces. Men were challenged ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... small masses, incrustations, and even in small crystals. It occurs embedded in or incrusting the trap, and also with calcite and apopholite. The only sure place to find it is at the southwest side of an opening through the pile of drift rock under the trestle work of the tramway, between shaft No. 1 and the dump, and within a few feet of a number of wooden vats sunk into the ground seen just before descending the hills and near the edge. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... fardel^, stack, sheaf, haycock^; fascicle, fascicule^, fasciculus [Lat.], gavel, hattock^, stook^. accumulation &c (store) 636; congeries, heap, lump, pile, rouleau^, tissue, mass, pyramid; bing^; drift; snowball, snowdrift; acervation^, cumulation; glomeration^, agglomeration; conglobation^; conglomeration, conglomerate; coacervate [Chem], coacervation [Chem], coagmentation^, aggregation, concentration, congestion, omnium gaterum [Lat.], spicilegium^, black ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... describe the effect of so instantaneous a change upon us. The boats were allowed to drift along at pleasure, and such was the force with which we had been shot out of the Morumbidgee, that we were carried nearly to the bank opposite its embouchure, whilst we continued to gaze in silent astonishment ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... tendency to travel in the straight line of its discharge, and a tendency to fall straight to the ground. But sometimes a tendency can be isolated: as when,—after dropping a feather in some place sheltered from the wind, and watching it drift to and fro, as the air, offering unequal resistances to its uneven surface, counteracts its weight with varying success, until it slowly settles upon the ground,—we take it up and drop it again in a vacuum, ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... the men begin to gather together the pieces of drift-wood that the peaceful waves throw up on to the shore. They are evidently planning to make a raft; but as one of them casts his lazy eyes in the direction in which ours were at first thrown, he exclaims with evident joy, in his native French "Voila les vaisseaux!" or words ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... I should say we had best make for the river, take a boat and drift down; or else make for the walls, and lower ourselves by a rope from them. If it is in the day we could not do that; and I have found a hovel, at present untenanted, close to the walls, and we ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... business, and could only do so by throwing dust in the eyes of the American public. He hoped by these means to get rid of the Lusitania incident unostentatiously, and told me, through one of his personal friends, 'to let it drift.' The idea at the back of his mind is that it shall be left to an international tribunal sitting after the war, to decide whether we shall ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... to the conclusion that if he could only build himself a vessel which would withstand the pressure of the ice, and once get into the stream, he and his vessel would be carried with the rest of the drift from Asia to America, and in the course of the trip would be borne right ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 56, December 2, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... to her in intentions at least, if not in reality. He knew from her letters how much she had learned to like Maddy Clyde, and so, he argued, there was no harm in his liking her too. She was a splendid girl, and it seemed a pity that her lot should have been so humbly cast. This was usually the drift of his thoughts in connection with her; and now, as he stood there its that cottage, Maddy's home, they recurred to him with tenfold intensity, for well he foresaw that a struggle was before him if he rescued Maddy as he meant to do ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... dramatic expression, are diagrams wrought out imaginatively from the stored-up resources of a lifetime. It may be argued that it was impossible to pose models, in other words, to appeal to living men and women, for the foreshortenings of falling or soaring shapes in that huge drift of human beings. This is true; and the strongest testimony to the colossal powers of observation possessed by Michelangelo is that none of all those attitudes are wrong. We may verify them, if we take particular pains to do so, by training ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... her whom he could not name kept him from answering. And in the drift of his silence the vision capriciously failed him. He looked at Julia. He looked back at the wall. It was nothing but a funny old picture which hung there confronting them. The commonplaceness, beside it, of Julia's long-drawn ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... had found the cavern. It was no longer a ridge. The wind had piled the snow up over it in grotesque and monstrous shapes. Rocks and bushes were obliterated. Where the mouth of the cavern should have been was a drift ten feet deep. Cold and hungry, thinned by his days and nights of fasting, and with his last hope of comradeship shattered by the pitiless mountains of snow, Miki turned back over his trail. There was nothing left for him now but the old windfall, and his heart was no longer the heart of the joyous ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... quarter hours decide the destinies of nations. How many quarter hours do we let drift by aimlessly! Robert Louis Stevenson conserved all his time; every experience became capital for his work—for capital may be defined as "the results of labor stored up to assist future production." He continually tried to put into suitable language the scenes ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... waft you speedily thither, and so convey you thither that for the time to come we may live sound and well, and that we may never see the sun rise on you again." Then ten or twelve men carry the vessel to the shore, and let it drift away with the land-breeze, feeling convinced that they are free from sickness for ever, or at least till the next time. If sickness attacks them again, they are sure it is not the same sickness, but a different one, which in due time they dismiss in the same manner. When ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... 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 they ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... sooner reached the vessel than the latter began to drift, carrying the boat along with her. Instantly those on board endeavoured to hoist the mainsail of the Smeaton, with the view of working her up to the buoy from which she had parted; but it blew so hard, that by the time she was got round to make a tack towards the rock, she had drifted at least ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... to impossible; the drift darkened the lower panes of the casement, and, on looking out, one saw the sky and air vexed and dim, the wind and snow in angry conflict. There was no fall now, but what had already descended was torn up from the earth, whirled round by ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... worse, there was a raw wound on one of them, the result of a similar day's toil; and his knees chafed sore against the branches in the craft's bottom. There was, however, no respite—the moment they slackened their exertions they would drift to lee—and he held on, keeping awkward stroke with Jake, while Lisle ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... that a city has any direct connection with episcopal affairs, he is quite in error. Cities are distinctly royal and imperial institutions. The accident of the number of cities and sees being the same comes from the natural tendency of the two institutions to drift together, ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... capturer only retaining the head and legs. The head, however, was sometimes greatly extended, so as to include several joints of the back-bone. At length the explorers found themselves among a complete labyrinth of islands, amidst which strong currents set in various directions, while fogs and drift ice made navigation perilous in the extreme. Successive masses assailed the Fury. At one time her anchor was dragged along with a grinding noise, two flukes being broken off. She was afterwards carried forward by a violent stream amid thick mist, while it was ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... ore or float, as they called it, and then follow it up the gorge until they came to rock or indications that 'd give 'em reason to think that the vein was around there somewhere. Then they 'd start to make their tunnel—to drift in on the vein. I 'm telling you all this, so you ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... words of cheer, But tedious to the bridegroom's ear. He knew the chart, Of the sailor's heart, All its pleasures and its griefs, All its shallows and rocky reefs, All those secret currents that flow With such resistless undertow, And lift and drift with terrible force, The will from its moorings and its course. Therefore he ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... from out the cloudless blue sky that arched it day after day, seemed to drift down upon the village. Han-Lin, with no more facial expression than an orange, suddenly reappeared on the streets, and went about repairing his laundry, unmolested. The children were playing in the sunny lanes again, unafraid, ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... me there's nought I would not leave For the good Devon land, Whose orchards down the echoing cleeve Bedewed with spray-drift stand, And hardly bear the red fruit up That shall be ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... middle row after the usher, with Marjorie puffin' behind, I felt like one of them dinky little river tugs towin' a floatin' grain elevator. I was lookin' for the house to let loose a "Ha-ha!" It didn't, though. They expect most anything to drift into them ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... covered me over, and my soul had rest in the green water, and rejoiced and believed that it had the Burial of the Sea. But with the ebb the water fell again, and left me alone again with the callous mud among the forgotten things that drift no more, and with the sight of all those desolate houses, and with the knowledge among all of us ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... the time when the paper was presented to him, though at first pleased with the attention of his friend, whom he thanked in an earnest manner, soon exclaimed, in a loud and angry tone, 'What is your drift, Sir?' Sir Joshua Reynolds pleasantly observed, that it was a scene for a comedy, to see a penitent get into a violent passion and ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... was misty and calm. We therefore did not go as far as the current would have carried us. We had to come to anchor in consequence of the mist, in order not to drift against the ships, or ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... The drift of this flattery, to make a long story short, was to have me build a boat for the Alfandega, or, his government not allowing money to build new—pointing to one which certainly would require new keel, planks, ribs, stem, and stern-post—"could I ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... talking about?" Dorothy's eyes, too, were blazing now, but more in championship of Wade than of herself. She still did not fully understand the drift of what ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... Sark looked very near, and the sea, a plain of silvery blue, seemed solid and firm enough to afford me a road across to it. A white mist lay like a huge snow-drift in hazy, broad curves over the Havre Gosselin, with sharp peaks of ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... course of this day the walruses became more and more numerous every hour, lying in large herds upon the loose pieces of drift-ice; and it having fallen calm at one P.M., we despatched our boats to kill some for the sake of the oil which they afford. On approaching the ice, our people found them huddled close to, and even lying upon, one another, in separate droves of from twelve to ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... bowed her head, like one imprisoned in a sand drift, not to be crossed in any direction, but closing in and weighing down. She was in a pitfall, overpowered like Gratian had been, subjugated, soon to be put to the yoke and compelled to draw steadily the harrow of transcendental ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... can't tell you how, but some way of it, it come over me in a flash who the feller was. I don't know as ever I moved quicker in my life. I had him by the scruff of his neck and the slack of his pants, and out of that and standin' on his head in a snow-drift before he could have winked more than ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards
... had not the same emotions. She had heard him now too often, knew too exactly how he produced those sounds; knew that their fire and sweetness and nobility sprang from fingers, ear, brain—not from his soul. Nor was it possible any longer to drift off on those currents of sound into new worlds, to hear bells at dawn, and the dews of evening as they fell, to feel the divinity of wind and sunlight. The romance and ecstasy that at Wiesbaden had soaked her spirit came ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... fragment raised. The explanation may perhaps be found in the fact that at the later date men's minds were more at leisure to consider the questions raised than they were at the earlier, and also that they perceived, or fancied they perceived, more clearly the drift of such speculations. A little tract, published towards the end of the seventeenth century, entitled 'The Growth of Deism,' brings out these points; and as a matter of fact we find that for the next half century the minds of all classes were on the alert—some in sympathy ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... brains when I ain't looking," growled Brokaw. "I guess—before long—you'll be willing to tell where the Indian's shack is." He kicked his way through a drift of snow to the smoother surface of the stream. There was a breath of wind in their faces, and Billy bowed his head to it. In the hours of his greatest loneliness and despair Billy had kept up his fighting spirit by thinking of pleasant things, and now, as he followed in Brokaw's trail, he began ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... doing with so much court-plaster?" asked the grocery man of the bad boy, as he came in and pulled off his boots by the stove and emptied out a lot of snow, that had collected as he walked through a drift, which melted and made a ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck
... a week of the wedding, who should drift in to spend Christmas but Curly Thorn. His cousins, of course, lost no time in giving him the lay of the land. But Curly acted indifferent, and never even offered to call on Miss Sallie. Us fellows joked him about his girl going to marry another fellow, and he didn't seem a little bit put out. ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... said Phellion. "The dinner hour summons us; I think that, little by little, we have allowed this conversation to drift toward ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... pleasant meeting between the two officers. And pleasanter still when the cloud of dust that heralded our force appeared on the crest of the southern ridge and the long column began to pour down the slope and to cross the drift. Soon it was filling the valley and mingling with the other force already encamped, and now everyone is busy washing or eating near the picturesque little cluster of Kaffir kraals and big shady trees; for the region of karoo and shadeless plain has ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... of the grout or putty, made of good stone-lime, or the lime of cockle-shells, which is better, properly tempered and sufficiently beat, mixed with sharp grit-sand, in a proportion which depends on the strength of the lime: drift-sand is best for this purpose, and it will derive advantage from being dried on an iron plate or kiln, so as not to burn; for thus the mortar would be discoloured. When this is properly compounded, it should be put up in small parcels against walls, or otherwise, to mellow, as the ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... not your doors to me proud libraries, For that which was lacking on all your well-fill'd shelves, yet needed most, I bring, Forth from the war emerging, a book I have made, The words of my book nothing, the drift of it every thing, A book separate, not link'd with the rest nor felt by the intellect, But you ye untold latencies will ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... our attention to making a series of actual measurements of the lift and drift of the machine under various loads. So far as we were aware, this had never previously been done with any full-size machine. The results obtained were most astonishing, for it appeared that the total horizontal pull of the machine, while sustaining a weight of 52 lbs., ...
— The Early History of the Airplane • Orville Wright
... to ask his father why he did not hit a man his own size, or to stop him midway in the story with a remonstrance against being kicked when he was down. The boy was too much shocked and shaken to be inventive; he could only drift and stammer out that the ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... buoy, reinforced by a couple of spars, was thrown out on to the surface of the ocean. The end of the line was solidly struck beneath, and only submitted to the ebb and flow of the surges, so that it would not drift much. ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... love with Lady Lufa. He said as much to himself, at least; and in truth he was almost possessed with her. Every thought that rose in his mind began at once to drift toward her. Every hour of the day had a rose-tinge from the dress in which ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... who half his life had spent Toiling at ledgers in a city grey, Thinking that so his days would drift away With no lance broken in life's tournament: Yet ever 'twixt the books and his bright eyes The gleaming eagles of the legions came, And horsemen, charging under phantom skies, Went thundering past beneath ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... for you, mere onlooker, Who drift through the world's great mart! But we of the human sorrow Have ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... rescuing most of their ships and brought them down by their camp; eighteen however were taken by the Syracusans and their allies, and all the men killed. The rest the enemy tried to burn by means of an old merchantman which they filled with faggots and pine-wood, set on fire, and let drift down the wind which blew full on the Athenians. The Athenians, however, alarmed for their ships, contrived means for stopping it and putting it out, and checking the flames and the nearer approach of the ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... doors, it seemed a perfect wall of falling snow that the lamplight streamed out upon. Fortunately it was not very cold, nor did the wind blow. But at the corner of the house there was a drift as deep as ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... the morning breaks, Melt into space when light and heat abound, As though they ne'er had been. Relentless fate! This ruthless law the world's wide ways hath fringed With wreckage of a host of peerless lives; And Saul is numbered 'mongst the broken drift. Saul, though the Lord's anointed, saw not God: But—curse of life! ingratitude prevailed. His faith waxed weak as days of trial came: And when, deserted by his teeming hosts At Gilgal, he the Prophet's priestly right ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... 'John, hae ye forgotten the twenty-third psalm?' 'Forgotten the twenty-third psalm!' quo' he; an' his face lighted up in a moment frae the inside: 'The Lord's my shepherd,—an' I hae followed Him through a' the smorin' drift o' the warl', an' he'll bring me to the green pastures an' the still waters o' His summer-kingdom at the lang last. I shall not want. An' I hae wanted for naething, naething.' He had been a shepherd himsel' in's young days. And so ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... of my curate and myself in our study of the Greek authors is not so steady or so successful as we had anticipated. Somehow or other we drift away from the subject-matter of our evening lessons, and I am beginning to perceive that his tastes are more modern, or, to speak more correctly, they tend to less archaic and more interesting studies. Then again I have read somewhere ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... and altar, Bow down and hear our cry Our earthly rulers falter, Our people drift and die; The walls of gold entomb us, The swords of scorn divide, Take not thy thunder from us, But take away ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... eyes, with a heavy questioning look, but dropped them again without in the least comprehending the drift ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... and friend again. I am glad to feel that friendships springing from the pure and good feelings of the heart are not so transient as I have sometimes been tempted to think them. They may be buried for years under a drift of new interests; but give them air, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... poor woman, who had fallen just outside the city, too sick and tired to get in where she might have found shelter. The soft snow made of a drift a sort of pillow for her, and she would soon be so sound asleep, in the wintry air, that no one could ever waken her again. All this Pedro saw in a moment and he knelt down beside her and tried to rouse her, even tugging at her arm a little, as though he would have tried to carry her away. ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... strictly detached position. The astronomer, archaeologist, geologist, and anthropologist have each their share in the solution of the problem, but each also has the bias due to his own special science. The mineralogist solves the problem of the Foreign Stones by suggesting a "glacial drift" without reference to the geologist, who will tell him that the local gravels contain no pebbles which belong to those classes of stones known as Foreign Stones. The astronomer, in his quest for alignments, will convert barrows into observation mounds, without reference to their uses ...
— Stonehenge - Today and Yesterday • Frank Stevens
... convolutions drifted through his mind—a shape, perhaps, and a color. He felt no curiosity, and let the impression drift. As a sunbather drowsing on a crowded beach, hearing the background hum of the crowd and now and then a more clearly spoken phrase, so he caught the edge of this communication. It was not for him. A second mind entered ... was it a mind? ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan
... castle of the noble family Von R——, called R—sitten. It is a wild and desolate neighbourhood, hardly anything more than a single blade of grass shooting up here and there from the bottomless drift-sand; and instead of the garden that generally ornaments a baronial residence, the bare walls are approached on the landward side by a thin forest of firs, that with their never-changing vesture of gloom despise the bright garniture of Spring, and where, instead ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... the other. An airship had the great advantage that she could carry long-distance wireless apparatus, and could send or receive a message over a space of three hundred miles. She could stop her engines and drift over suspected places, for the detection of submarines and mines. The seaplane, he maintained, should also be developed, and he saw no insuperable difficulties in devising a machine that should be able to alight on either water or land and to rise again into the air from either. 'I think ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... ancient ships, in the upper and broadest part, at which people entered. The adit of a military mine, is the aperture by which it is dug and charged: the name is also applied to an air-hole or drift. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... his feet from the top of the porch railing and shrugged himself deeper into his chair. It was marvelous how comfortable Vance could make himself. He had one great power—the ability to sit still through any given interval. Now he let his eye drift quietly over the Cornish ranch. It lay entirely within one grasp of the vision, spilling across the valley from Sleep Mountain, on the lower bosom of which the house stood, to Mount Discovery on the north. Not that the glance of Vance Cornish lurched across this bold ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... marked on the chart the limits of the belt of drift-ice during the three passages the Fram had already made. The supposition that an available opening is always to be found in the neighbourhood of the 150th meridian appears to be confirmed. The slight changes in the position of the channel were only caused, according to Nilsen's experiences, ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... see it's like this," said the hairy little man; "they're kind o' suspicious nacherly of the white man—they can't understand what he says, and they don't get his drift always. They make mistakes that way, but they mean all right. Of course they have young plug-uglies amongst 'em jest the same as 'mongst any other c'munity, but the majority of 'em druther be peaceful with ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... wish to represent well a storm, consider and weigh its effects when the wind, blowing across the surface of the sea and the earth, removes and carries with it those things which are not stable in the universal drift. And in order to represent this storm adequately, you must in the first place represent tattered and rent clouds rushing with the rushing wind, accompanied by sandy dust caught up from the seashores, and boughs and leaves torn up by the ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... height of the occasion, or bring ourselves to the wrench that is required. Or the wearing recurrence of monotonous duties seems to take ail freshness out of our lives, and all spring out of ourselves; and we are ready to give over struggling any more, and let ourselves drift. Can we not feel that large hand laid on ours; and does not power, more and other than our own, creep into our numb and relaxed fingers? Yes, if we will let Him. His strength is made perfect in our weakness; and every man and woman who will make life a noble struggle against ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... his head emerged from the drift, looking like an animated snow-ball, "and I would have reached there, too, ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... wind died the logs had begun to drift slowly out into the open water. The surface of the pond was covered with the scattered timbers floating idly. After a few moments the clank of the bars and ratchet was heard as two of the men raised the heavy sluice-gate on the dam. A roar of water, momently increasing, marked the slow rise of the ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... the world a horrible confusion of storm. It could hardly be called morning—a heavy, flying darkness of drift, a wind filled with icy edges that stung the face and cut the eyes, a wind with the voice of a driven saw. The little cabin was caught in the whirling heart of a snow spout twenty feet high. The ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... to," said Yulee, "or else it will drift away in the night time. We'll tie it here, though, because you know we may want to sail round our island, and I don't see any log of wood here to make a boat out of as Robinson Crusoe did. Where's the rope, Bo?" she said, as she ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder
... note must shift for itself. I cannot but think that this passage is at present in confusion. The poet asks a question, and stays not for an answer, nor has his question any apparent drift or consequence. I would ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... saw the drift of the questioning. Their food was nearly gone, yet the castaways from the RESOLUTE thought there was still plenty. As a matter of fact there was not another can, except those ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton
... were sailing about those islands of Burias and Masbate. They remained there a fortnight, without being able to repair the champan in order to make their journey until our Lord was pleased to have the same mast that they cut down in the champan drift into the port, for the islet contained no suitable trees. They repaired the champan with that mast, made a half-way rudder and a jury-mast, and set sail on the sea for Panay, from which they were not very far. But, after sighting the land ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various
... appeared at the head of the straightaway. The muffled thud of hoofs became audible, rising in swift crescendo as the shadow resolved itself into a gaunt bay horse with a tiny negro boy crouched motionless in the saddle. A rush, a flurry, a spatter of clods, a low-flying drift of yellow dust and the vision passed, but the Bald-faced Kid had seen enough to compensate him for the early hours and the lack of breakfast. He glanced ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... becoming clothes, Or sport a hat that has a longer feather— And lo! the strain has broken 'friendship's tether.' Maurine's sweet smile becomes a frown or pout; 'She's just begun to find that Helen out' The breach grows wider—anger fills each heart; They drift asunder, whom 'but death could part.' You shake your head? Oh, well, we'll never know! It is not likely Fate will test you so. You'll live, and love; and, meeting twice a year, While life shall last, you'll hold each ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... But I mustn't drift away from him. I remember so many things that tie us together, here in this strange, stormy city. What happy times we used to have! He'll understand better by and by, ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... Emperor Francis on August 10th, 1809, "we must confine our system to tacking and turning, and flattering. Thus alone may we possibly preserve our existence, till the day of general deliverance."[219] This was to be the general drift of Austrian policy for the next four years; and it may be granted that only by bending before the blast could that sore-stricken monarchy be saved from destruction. An opportunity soon occurred of carrying the new system into effect. Metternich offered the conqueror an Austrian Archduchess ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... gridiron stood against the jamb on one side, a hoe for baking hoe cakes and a little wrought-iron trivet were in order on the other. The breakfast fire had burned out; only the great backlog, hoary with gray ashes, lay slumbering at the back of the fireplace. The planter poked the drift of ashes between the andirons with a green oak stick until he saw a live coal shining red in the gray about it. This he rolled out upon the hearth, and then took it between thumb and finger and deposited it within the bowl of his pipe ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... than ever disposed to see all questions in the white light of pure reason. He was thus the very man to pour a cool Mephistophelean spray upon Schiller's emotional fervors. One can easily imagine the general drift of the philosophical discussions that took place during the lengthening evenings of September, 1785, when we find Schiller expressing himself to the absent Huber ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... from Everywhere! much as I like Maria, I think he would be the more restful neighbour of the two. What a complete couple they might have made, but that is a bit of drift thought that I have put out of my head, for if any two people ever had a chance this summer to fall in love if they had the capacity, it was Maria and The Man, and the strange part of it is that as far as may be known neither is nourishing the sentiment of a melancholy past and ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... downstream, rowing strongly though cautiously for some minutes, careful to avoid all plunge of the oars, all swish of them or drip. Then, the lights now hidden by the higher level and scrub of the warren, he sat motionless letting the boat drift on the ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... drift away, and I was presently left alone with Father Payne. "Now you come along of me!" he said to me; and when I got up, he took my arm in a pleasant fashion, led me to a big curtained archway at the far end ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... 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 was a lie, and he ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... to a soaring bird looking down from the sky it must have appeared like another sea of a pale or pearly grey colour, with the hills rising like islands from it. When the sun rose in the morning, if the sky was clear so that it could shine, then the sea-fog would drift and break up and melt away or float up in the form of thin white clouds. Now, whenever this sea-mist was out over the world the Lady of the Hills, without coming out of her chamber, knew of it, and ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... change since this was written—for better and for worse. It is a thriving place in these later days, and new farming conditions have improved the country roundabout. But it was a desert outpost then, a catch-all for the human drift which every whirlwind of discovery sweeps along. Gold and silver hunting and mine speculations were the industries—gambling, drinking, and murder were the diversions—of the Nevada capital. Politics developed in due course, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... and the old ranch-house which had been the headquarters for their gang so many days, when they saw a faint drift of smoke across the sky—not a thin column of smoke such as rises from a chimney, but a broad stream of pale mist, as if a dozen chimneys were ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... tides Do you drift to my fire, You waifs of strange waters? From what far seas, What murmurous sands, What desolate beaches— Flotsam of those ...
— Fires of Driftwood • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... and Missouri, but are more like the shores of the Ohio. They are generally covered with grass or bushes down to the edge of the water. There are no shifting sand-bars to perplex the pilot, but the channel remains with little change from year to year. I saw very little drift wood and heard no mention of snags. The general features of the scenery were much like those below Mihalofski. The numerous islands and the labyrinth of channels often permit boats to pass each other without their captains knowing it. One ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... better now.' It describes the woes of a fond lover, or rather his physical ailments, until he went through a course of Poulter. Here's another: 'I'm ninety-five! I'm ninety-five!' You catch the drift of that, of course—a healthy old age, secured by taking Poulter's Pills. Ah! what's this? 'Little sister's last request.' I fancy the idea of that is to beg the family never to be without Poulter's Pills. Here again: 'Then you'll remember me!' I'm ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... time at his companion. The old man sat more erect; but his eyes were blood shot. A puff of wind, a lift and fall and drift of sand, the wind met them in a peppering shower of ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... 'coloured-audition.' Perhaps! Not Helmholtz or Chevreul can tell me anything new in the science of optics. I am the possessor of the rainbow secrets—for somewhere in Iceland, a runic legend runs, there is a region vast as night, where all the rainbows—worn out or to be used—drift about in their vapoury limbo. I have the key to this land of dreams. Over the earth I shall float my rainbows of art like a flock of angels. With them I propose to dazzle the eyes of mankind, to arouse sleeping souls. From the chords of the combined arts ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... function was especially to stir people up, to make them dissatisfied with themselves and their institutions, and to force them to think, to become individual. Everywhere in his works one is confronted by his unvarying insistence upon the supremacy of conduct and duty. The modern tendency to drift away from the old, established religious faith was a matter of serious thought to him and led him to give to the world a rational creed that would satisfy the sceptics and attract the indifferent. We cannot do better than quote for our closing thought ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... where His patron saint descended in the sheen Of his celestial armor, on serene And quiet nights, when all the heavens were fair. Not this I see, nor yet the ancient fable Of Phaeton's wild course, that scorched the skies Where'er the hoofs of his hot coursers trod; But the white drift of worlds o'er chasms of sable, The star-dust that is whirled aloft and flies From the invisible chariot-wheels ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... surface of the dark, sticky pool, and a wave seemed to bear her up and down with it; she had ceased to have any will of her own; she lay on the top of the wave conscious of some pain, but chiefly of weakness. The wave was replaced by the side of a mountain. Her body became a drift of melting snow, above which her knees rose in huge peaked mountains of bare bone. It was true that she saw Helen and saw her room, but everything had become very pale and semi-transparent. Sometimes she could see ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... matter what we think? We drift along, knowing nothing of one another, like the errant winds or the stars in the skies. We pass by hundreds, without so much as a glance, until fate as in a lightning flash brings us face to face with the one appointed. And then—in a moment we know that we belong ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski
... landmarks, by whose disappearance I had measured its advance, here a crag, there a brave pine tree, now began, in the inverse order, to make their reappearance into daylight. I judged all danger of the fog was over. This was not Noah's flood; it was but a morning spring, and would now drift out seaward whence it came. So, mightily relieved, and a good deal exhilarated by the sight, I went into the house ...
— The Sea Fogs • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of cloud belong exclusively to calm weather; attached drift cloud, (see Note 11) can only be formed in ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... to bear upon her, and he could not even find out whether she was pleased to listen to his congratulations, or angry, or merely indifferent. It was rather a humiliating position for a clever man—for a critic who knew himself to be capable of understanding most things, of catching the drift of most thoughts, however imperfectly expressed. He was vaguely conscious of defeat. He felt that he was nonplussed by a pair of soft round eyes like the eyes of a kitten, and the dignified repose of a pair of demure red lips. Both eyes and lips, as well as shoulders and golden hair, ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... do not know what he, so good, so high-minded, saw in me; but certainly he loved me with a true affection. When he avowed it, a strange joy seized me; I felt that now I held in my hand the key of William's destiny. Now I should not lose my hold on him; we could not drift apart in the tide of life. As John's bride, John's wife, there must always be an intimate connection between us. So I yielded with well-feigned tenderness to my lover's suit,—only stipulating, that, as some ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... passages as 'The Lord created me,'[3] or 'The Father is greater than I.'[4] Athanasius constantly complains of the Arian habit of relying on isolated passages like these without regard to their context or to the general scope and drift of Scripture. ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... temper; and though he had never had a single "object lesson," or been taught to "use his intellectual powers," he knew the names and ways of every bird, and fish, and fly, and could read, as cunningly as the oldest sailor, the meaning of every drift of cloud which crossed the heavens. Lastly, he had been for some time past, on account of his extraordinary size and strength, undisputed cock of the school, and the most terrible fighter among all Bideford boys; in which brutal ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... over a torn sea, and the drift was swept so that the moon was obscured with every fresh gust. High overhead a clear, steely sky was flecked here and there with fleecy white, and, ever and again, the moon slipped her mantle of cloud from her rounded shoulder, and looked around ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... to his genius every time he sought to fetter it by rules, classifications, and an arrangement that was not his own, and could not accord with the exigencies of his spirit, which was one of those whose grace displays itself when they seem to drift along [alter a la derive]....The classical attempts of Chopin nevertheless shine by a rare refinement of style. They contain passages of great interest, parts ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... swift is the stream. If I were to let the boat drift we should be at Tours to-morrow, and from there it would be easy to defy pursuit. We have enough money to reach Spain. What say ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... said the chief, with a gesture of disgust. "The pakeha is a sheep, in the water. We must go to them. Now, remember: when you get near the ship, call out for a rope. We can drift back ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... from my languid and half-contented acquiescence in the place of beauty; and now the woods began to change their kind; there were fewer forest trees now, but bare heaths with patches of grey sand and scattered pines; and there began to drift across the light a grey vapour which hid the delicate hues and colours of the sunlight, and made everything appear pale and spare. Very soon we came out on the brow of a low hill, and saw, all spread ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... house is made more comfortable; beds and chairs are bought, and a great fire burns in the fireplace. But do the best they can the rain will beat in between the logs, and after the first snowstorm one night, a white pointed drift is found on the breakfast-table. They laugh at it, and call it ice-cream, but they almost feel more like crying, with cold blue fingers, and toes that even the warm knit stockings can't keep comfortable. ...
— The Seven Little Sisters Who Live on the Round Ball - That Floats in the Air • Jane Andrews
... sustained music, a long rill of rolling white cloud. There was nothing in the world like the hawthorn. First it put out little bluish-green buds firm as elastic, and then came a myriad of white stars. And then the white drift turned a delicate red, dropped, and the scarlet haws came out, a tasteless bread-like fruit you shared with the birds, and the stone of it you could whip through your ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... storm continued unabated, the whole country becoming like an undulating ocean of snow. Drift snow, mountain high, was accumulated in the valleys between hills; whole herds of sheep and cattle were suffocated; and the bodies of several teamsters, whose teams were overset, were dug out lifeless from under the drifts by the men who had assembled with their ox teams and shovels to ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... enough for God should be time enough for us. Saul's son was a poor, weak creature, who would never have thought of resisting David but for the stronger will behind him. To be weak is, in this world full of tempters, to drift into being wicked. We have to learn betimes to say 'No,' and to stick to it. Moral weakness attracts tempters as surely as a camel fallen by the caravan track draws vultures from every corner of the sky. The fierce soldier who fought ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... 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 concrete ...
— When the Sleepers Woke • Arthur Leo Zagat
... then they point straight back. He was made to be eaten, and he knows it. So it is with the whole tribe of deer, and even with the horse, pampered and cared for and unacquainted with danger; his ears are a weathercock registering the drift of all his petty hopes and fears. I see the left ear go forward and prepare for a desperate shy at that wheelbarrow. He knows a wheelbarrow familiarly—there is one in his stall all day—but I am taking him a road he does not want to go, and so the hypocrite is going to pretend that barrow is of ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... the special branch of the profession into which I have chanced to fall is a very low one,—and I do not know whether, if the world were before me again, I would allow myself to drift into an exclusive ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... Clery's division, while the mounted forces under Dundonald moved forward to take the bridge across the Little Tugela at Springfield, and, finding this unoccupied, pushed on and seized the heights overlooking Potgieter's Drift on the Tugela, On the 12th Warren's division, comprising the brigades of Lyttelton and Woodgate, with three batteries, marched to Springfield, where they camped. On the 13th the mounted troops, holding the heights above Potgieter's ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... robins and wrens, pick quarrels with swallows, and seem to deliberate for days over the policy of taking forcible possession of one of the mud-houses of the latter. But as the season advances they drift more into the background. Schemes of conquest which they at first seemed bent upon are abandoned, and the settle down very quietly in their old ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... creation of national epics and romances of chivalry from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century. German Jews, being more than is generally recognized diligent readers of the poets, were well acquainted with the drift of mediaeval poetry, and to this familiarity a new department of Jewish literature owed its rise and development. It is said that a Hebrew version of the Arthurian cycle was made as early as the thirteenth century, and at the end of the period we run across epic poems ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles |
