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Derelict   /dˈɛrəlˌɪkt/   Listen
Derelict

noun
1.
A person without a home, job, or property.
2.
A ship abandoned on the high seas.  Synonym: abandoned ship.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Derelict" Quotes from Famous Books



... honesty, and industry without a peer. She hated to dress or to leave the kitchen, but she washed, baked, and did the housework without assistance, and was kind to the children. These constituted her inner circle, but she was always taking in and caring for derelict children. At this time there were several in the house or yard. Two were twins five months old, whom she had found lying on the ground discarded and forlorn, and who had developed into beautiful children. Their father ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone

... the companion and left Marjorie and her father below, until he was called to have his coffee. When they went on deck again Corregidor Island was astern, rising out of the channel like a derelict battleship. ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore

... but this is not one of them; there are admonitions, probations, suspensions, in several minor cases; mercy is shown the derelict, in those cases he is gently used, and in time he can get back into the fold—even when he has repeated his offence. But let him think, just once, without getting his thinker set to Eddy time, and that is enough; his head comes off. There is no second offence, and there ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... judging from the screeds that were received as to "the true spirit of salvage" we were wrong, and found that the returns of salvage that got the most marks were those containing such items as "socks 200" (got generally from derelict Quarter-Master's Stores found in the forward area, and packed into a limber in about half-a-minute), but the work entailed in hauling 18-pounders and limbers out of dangerous parts of the front, apparently counted for little. Towards the end ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman

... That meant that its gyros were stopped; that it was helpless, drifting, disabled, powerless to avoid hurtling meteoric stones. Had it blundered unawares into the belt of swarms—been struck before the danger was realized? Was it a derelict, ...
— Salvage in Space • John Stewart Williamson

... Ride Proud, Rebel! Storm Over Warlock Galactic Derelict The Time Traders Star Born Yankee Privateer ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton

... it is—for the taking! In a country where you mustn't trade. In a country where the company waits for good kind men to find it riches and then take 'em away from 'em. There you have it—derelict." ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells

... in bed, with an army surgeon straightenin' out my broken bones. The hurricane still raged over Galveston. We had been derelict for two days and a half, at the pumps for fifty-seven hours, without food or water for forty hours, yet not a man was lost. No other dismasted vessel has ever lived through the eye of a hurricane and been tossed over ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler

... she explained. "There aren't any Sunday trains on the loop line, Hurley Junction is fifteen miles away, and the Jervaises' car is Heaven knows where and the only other that is borrowable, Mr. Turnbull's, is derelict just ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford

... sailed for the last time from Otaheite his mind was full of misgiving; that he bitterly repented the rash act by which the ship had fallen into his hands and by which in all probability nineteen men had lost their lives, and also the wrecked and criminal lives of his followers. The picture of the derelict crew in their little boat was ever in his mind as he had last seen them watching with despairing eyes their ship sail away; and again as distance blurred all form, and it lay a blot on the sunny waters, immediately before it was hidden by the ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various

... a passing allusion to the large and friendly manner in which he rakes up, out of brothel, out of gutter, out of tenement, out of sweat-shop, out of circus-tent, out of wharf shanty, out of barge cabin, every kind and species of human derelict to immortalise their vagrant humanity in the amber of ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... light cast by his lantern. There were one or two petrol cans and some odd lumber suggesting that the garage had been recently used, but no car, and indeed nothing of sufficient value to have interested even such a derelict as the man whom we had passed some ten minutes before. That is if I except a large and stoutly-made packing-case which rested only a foot or so from the entrance so as partly to block it, and which from its appearance might ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer

... no unusual thing for a barraco of superfine Hollands, a bolt of silk cloth, or a keg of brandy to find its way into the house of some influential merchant or Colonial dignitary. But in no such manner was Lieutenant Goodhouse derelict in his duties. He would have sacrificed his dearest friendship or his most precious attachment rather than fail in his duties to the Crown. In the intermission of his duties it might please him to relax into the softer humors of conviviality, but at ten o'clock in the morning, whatever ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle

... North Sea, wallowing sullenly in the trough of the waves, her masts gone by the board and her deck awash, lay the derelict schooner "Valkyrie" of Bergen. She would have been at the bottom of the sea had it not been for her cargo of Norway pine, keeping her painfully afloat against her will. Fate, with its little finger, moved this uncharted peril right in the track of the "Starlight," ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg

... says he, 'it was the late lamented Diamond's. Now it's our noble Emperor's, Gorblessim!—a derelict picked up on the igh seas by one of His ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant

... disapproval deepened. In a sense, we are all brothers; but that did not prevent him from considering that this mud-stained derelict had made an impudent and abominable mis-statement of fact. Not unnaturally he came to the conclusion that he had to do with a victim of the ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... strange chance which renewed the acquaintance between Fenimore Cooper and Ned Myers. Their ways were long separated. Myers had continued to follow the sea, and became at last a derelict at the "Sailor's Snug Harbor" at the port of New York. Here it was that having read some of Cooper's sea tales it occurred to the old sailor that the author might be the young James Cooper whom he ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall

... sister States; that she has been faithful to her constitutional obligations—seeking for nothing but what was right, and ever ready to remedy any wrong. Occupying this position, her representatives on this floor would be derelict in their duty if they attempted to assume any other, or to pursue any course of action ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden

... history. It was built in Concord, N.H., and sent by water to San Francisco to run over a route infested with road-agents. A number of times it was held up and robbed. Finally, both driver and passengers were killed and the coach abandoned on the trail. It remained for a long time a derelict, but was afterward brought into San Francisco by an old stage-driver and placed on the ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)

... drifting. It obeyed absolutely the touch of the wind and not that of their hands, which rested as lightly as down upon the trunk. Once the wind stopped entirely and the tree had no motion save that of the swell. It wandered idly, a lone derelict upon a solitary lake. ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler

... Nay, never so have wrung From eyes and speech weakness unmanned, unmeet; As when his terrible dotage to repeat Its little lesson learneth at your feet; As when he sits among His sepulchres, to play With broken toys your hand has cast away, With derelict trinkets of the darling young. Why have you taught—that he might so complete His awful panoply From your cast playthings—why, This dreadful childish babble to his tongue, Dreadful ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson

... Andrew. If I asked her to come back and save my lad, I'd have to surrender him to her, and I would be derelict in my duty as a father if I permitted that. Better that he should pass out now than know the horror of a living death through all the years to come. God knows best. It is up to Him. Let there be no talk of this thing again, Andrew." Abruptly he quitted the room and ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne

... gravely, a great confidence in her eyes. "I wish you knew how much in earnest I am—in wishing to help you. Believe me, that is the first thought. For the rest I am—shall I say it?—the derelict of a life; and I can only drift. You are young, as young almost as I in years, much younger every other way, for I began with tragedy ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker

... to founder. Nevertheless, the weather being fine, and the condition of the sea such that the craft could be boarded without much danger or difficulty, Leslie determined to give her an overhaul; and accordingly the brig, having by this time arrived almost directly to windward of the seeming derelict, he gave orders to back the main-yard, and instructed the carpenter to take the lee quarter-boat, with three hands, and ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... a little piece of sea mystery to which we had no clew. So we debated it for an hour, and then set about the more important work of salvaging the stranded derelict. Fortunately she went ashore near the last of the ebb, and now lay comfortably in the mud, apparently little damaged except for some long scratches on her side, and a broken blade in her propeller. We dug away the mud at bow and stern, made fast a ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke

... me, and listened to my report without a word. When I had finished, she deliberately wrung the last atom of water out of the derelict stocking, smoothed it out carefully by the side of the chemise in the sun, laid herself down on the sand, ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates

... every one was merry, because the Prince had overcome Lovain of the Great-Tooth, and was to punish the upstart on the morrow. But Raimbaut de Vaquieras, a spent fellow, a derelict, barren of aim now that the Holy Wars were over, sat in this unfamiliar place—where when he was young he had laughed as a cock crows!—and thought how at the last he had crept home to die as a dependent on ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell

... with great consistency and enjoyment till his money was gone and his protection worthless, when the inevitable overtook him. The ubiquitous gang deprived him of his only remaining possession, his worthless liberty, and sent him to the fleet, a ragged but shameless derelict, as a punishment for his ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson

... beach; use unknown; but probably erected in the hope of gratifying some mumbo jumbo whose very name is forgotten, by some thick-witted gentry whose very bones are lost. Then the island (witness the Directory) has been twice reported; and since my tenancy, we have had two wrecks, both derelict. ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... derelict porpoise was cast on the shore Our village policeman was much to the fore; He measured the beast from its tip to its tail, And blandly pronounced it "an ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 12, 1917 • Various

... I said, "I will teach you. You are a pitiable little derelict of your race, you know: and two hours every day I will let you come to the palace, and I will teach you. But be sure, be careful. If there be danger, I will kill you: assuredly—without fail. And let me begin with a lesson now: ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel

... of its wrecking by the New Haven criminals will some day serve in school text-books as the classic illustration of that financial piracy which brought on the American social revolution. Ben Hampton had bought the old derelict "Broadway Magazine", with twelve thousand subscribers, and in four years, by the simple process of straight truth-telling, had built up for it a circulation of 440,000. In two years more he would have had a million; but in May, ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair

... said one of them. "It's like finding a derelict at sea. Where are the Captain and the crew? Where ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes

... product. A democratic government has little or less reason to interfere on behalf of the non-union laborer than it has to interfere in favor of the small producer. As a type the non-union laborer is a species of industrial derelict. He is the laborer who has gone astray and who either from apathy, unintelligence, incompetence, or some immediately pressing need prefers his own individual interest to the joint interests of himself and his fellow-laborers. From the point of view of a constructive national ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... poorer classes are excluded because of the increased value of the land. Then there grow up slums which are inhabited by great numbers of the poorer classes who are unable to defend themselves from association with the derelict and vicious. In the course of time every section and quarter of the city takes on something of the character and qualities of its inhabitants. Each separate part of the city is inevitably stained with the peculiar sentiments of its population. The effect of this is to convert what ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... the lug-sailed boat altered his course slightly and reached down towards the derelict As he neared her he dropped his sail and ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham

... a derelict when we picked her up, wasn't she? She couldn't move a foot. Well, then, we're entitled to salvage. We'll put in a bill that will ...
— Boy Scouts in a Submarine • G. Harvey Ralphson

... bulrushes. The distance across was no more than fifty yards, but I would have swum a mile more readily in deep water. The place stank of crocodiles. There was no ripple to break the oily flow except where a derelict branch swayed with the current. Something in the stillness, the eerie light on the water, and the rotting smell of the swamp made that stream ...
— Prester John • John Buchan

... and "A Wild Stormy Night" with several of his brother officers, and a sickening conviction that it was not the first or the last time he had indulged in these festivities. At that moment he loathed himself, and then after the usual derelict fashion cursed the fate that had sent him, after graduating, to a frontier garrison—the dull monotony of whose duties made the Border horse-play of dissipation a relief. Already he had reached the miserable point of envying the veteran capacities of his superiors and equals. "If I could drink like ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... granite, bound together by masses of aluminium, a vast labyrinth of precipitous walls and crumpled heaps, amidst which were thick heaps of very beautiful pagoda-like plants—nettles possibly—but wonderfully tinted with brown about the leaves, and incapable of stinging. It was evidently the derelict remains of some vast structure, to what end built I could not determine. It was here that I was destined, at a later date, to have a very strange experience—the first intimation of a still stranger discovery—but of that I will speak in its ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... to her, the associations of the years which had preceded the time of affliction, and the play of emotions and passions which she had known before the side-wash of life's stream caught her and drifted her, a dismantled derelict, on to the dreary salt-marsh of blind solitude, were enough to shed a glamour over him, however selfish and shallow-minded ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott

... of the sturdy craft "Nomad" and the stranger experiences of the Rangers themselves with Morello's schooner and a mysterious derelict form the basic of this well-spun ...
— What Two Children Did • Charlotte E. Chittenden

... had once gloried in dashing regimentals and mistook them for power, was deeply touched. He recognized a lone unit of what had been none other than the Batallon del Emperador. He paused, to have a word with the miserable derelict. ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... the forlorn derelict was carried to the graveyard where nameless burdens on the city were given to the earth, a curious funeral procession followed him. There were two tall and soldierly looking men and two boys, one of whom walked on crutches, and behind them were ten other boys who ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... Indian Colonel ripening for pension on the shelf of General Duty is an object at once pitiful and ludicrous. His profession has ebbed away from him, and he lies a melancholy derelict on the shore, with sails flapping idly against the mast and meaningless ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay

... chersonese[Fr], delta; tongue of land, neck of land; isthmus, oasis; promontory &c. (projection) 250; highland &c. (height) 206. coast, shore, scar, strand, beach; playa; bank, lea; seaboard, seaside, seabank[obs3], seacoast, seabeach[obs3]; ironbound coast; loom of the land; derelict; innings; alluvium , alluvion[obs3]; ancon. riverbank, river bank, levee. soil, glebe, clay, loam, marl, cledge[obs3], chalk, gravel, mold, subsoil, clod, clot; rock, crag. acres; real estate &c. (property) 780; landsman[obs3]. V. land, come to land, set foot on the soil, set ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... you have me! One merely surmises just as one's temperament or convictions lean. Grisel says it's some poor derelict soul in search of peace—that the poor beggar wants finally to die, in fact, and can't. Sallie smells crime. After all, what is every man?' he talked on; 'a horde of ghosts—like a Chinese nest of boxes—oaks that ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare

... put to lodge above this old and now derelict Capture chapel when the present one was made. The date of the removal is given by Cusa as 1570, who says that the Marchese del Guasto contributed largely to the expense. If the figures were then completed and arranged as we now see them, Giovanni D'Enrico can have had no hand in them, but ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler

... Erasmus from the north, Meyer from the east, and Viljoen from the west. By midday, communication by rail with Ladysmith was cut off—not, however, until a party of fifty of the 1st King's Royal Rifles had returned in safety from a visit to Waschbank, where they had rescued some derelict trucks left by a train, which, having been fired on at Elandslaagte, had dropped them for greater speed. Three companies 2nd Royal Dublin Fusiliers, which had been railed to the Navigation Collieries, north-east of Hatting Spruit, at 3 a.m., to bring back eight ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice

... a being who is quite unable to recognise architectural merit. He sees everything to please him if the background of his group be sufficiently tumble-down and derelict. If this be incorrect, how could such swarms of artistic folk paint and actually lodge in Staithes? The steep road leading past the station drops down into the village, giving a glimpse of the beck crossed by its ramshackle wooden foot-bridge—the view one has been prepared for by guide-books ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home

... it was a proof not only of his wonderful self-control but also of the confidence which he invariably inspired, that not a single one of them had the slightest idea how things were. Not a soul knew that the firm of Laverick & Morrison was already practically derelict, that they had on the morrow twenty-five thousand pounds to find, neither credit nor balance at their bankers, and eight hundred and fifty ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... skipper; and—"Luff it is!" echoed the man at the wheel mechanically as he put the helm up; and a moment afterwards the ship glided by the derelict hull, her speed lessening as she came up to the wind and her canvas quivering, like a bird suspending its flight in the ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson

... on the theological thought of Europe, which it maintained until the new learning of the Renaissance (16th century), together with its own dogmatic conservatism, left it hopelessly stuck in the "Sorbonnian bog" of derelict scholastic theology; became an object of satiric attacks by Boileau, Voltaire, and others, and was suppressed in 1789 at the outburst of the Revolution; was revived by Napoleon in 1808; is at present the seat of the Academie Universitaire ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... goes without saying. Curiously enough, the penetration of the barrier erected upon the obnoxious personality of a managing clerk proved a less formidable business than Mr. Slumper had expected. The very truculence of the fellow stung the derelict to a sudden defiance. This was but a flash in the pan—yet enough for a bully.... After a moment's delay, Mr. Slumper was admitted ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... was about a hundred yards past the highest point of the road, where a picket was on the watch. Across the road was a bit of a dip, and here my dragoons were making themselves comfortable round a roaring fire, fuel for which was provided by the smashed-up carcass of a derelict wagon. The country was as bare as a bird's tail, but by a slice of great good luck one of them had shot a stray sheep on the way up, and the air was thick with the smell ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough

... touched a much earlier phase of history when we discovered and bought derelict French helmets and cuirasses of 1798 that must once have been the booty of some Mameluke. Who would wish ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst

... stayed there until the police had finished their inquiries. The boat was rowed by a couple of watermen, and as soon as the party of four had taken their seats it was pulled down the river and up the creek to the spot where the derelict old barquentine lay. ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore

... Miniature of the First Printed Verses of "Derelict" Published and Copyrighted by William ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock

... telling himself that he was loyal, and now he realized that he was drifting like the lotus-eaters. Things that had gripped his soul were becoming myths. Nothing in his life was honest—he had become as they had prophesied, a derelict. In that thorn-choked graveyard lay the crude man whose knotted hand had rested on his head just before death ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck

... the worst human derelict I ever saw. And it occurred to me that this was the one place in the whole of America where any sort of a creature could get a kind of employment ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various

... passed, and he went about his work in a helpless way, like a derelict without rudder or sail and with the sea roaring about it. Every afternoon when he came home from Soho Mrs. Callender would trip into the hall wearing a new cap with a smart bow, and finding that he was alone she would say, ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine

... on with his chant. As he had begun in English for his auditors, so he continued, although he was now oblivious of their presence. Harley, watching him, knew it, and he knew, too, that the chief's mind was far back in the past. His was not the song of the broken derelict, but of the barbarous and triumphant warrior, and as he sang he gathered ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... finished. On their way home they fell in with a schooner, the foretopmast and bowsprit of which were gone. As she was drifting towards the sands they hailed her. No reply being made, the lifeboat was towed alongside, and, on being boarded, it was found that she was a derelict. Probably she had got upon the sands during the night, been forsaken by her crew in their own boat—in which event there was small chance of any being saved—and had drifted off again at the change ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne

... "true," but mostly rough copies of a poem about the Saints Julitta and her child Cyriac. Hope sank as another stormy day rose; and still the poor old artist lingered in hopes of news by some returning craft which might have picked up the derelict. His chief comfort was in walking about between the showers with Magdalen, as an old friend, and trying to think of the two as innocent creatures, engulfed like mayflies ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... command in readiness, with three days' rations, for detached service, and to report to General Jackson for further orders. That was all the information that Hill could give me. I had been in Jackson's corps since the battles round Richmond, and had been very derelict in not paying my respects to my old professor. As I rode to his headquarters I wondered if he would recognise me. I certainly expected to receive his orders in a few terse sentences, and to be ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... grass between the walks was the color of verdigris, a poisonous green, reminiscent of the horde of derelict humans that had breathed upon the soil during the summer and autumn. The bursting tree buds looked strangely familiar to those who had botanized among the garnishings of the fish course of a forty-cent dinner. ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry

... first intimation of Destiny, but the meeting was still to remain in the future. "Sordello" was published in 1840,—"a colossal derelict on the ocean of poetry," as William Sharp terms it. The impenetrable nature of the intricacies of the work has been the theme of many anecdotes. Tennyson declared that there were only two lines in it—the opening and the closing ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting

... more than on any other at the mountain Hazel was like a small derelict boat beached on a peaceful shore. There was a hypnotic quiet about the place, with no sound of Martha's scrubbing, no smell of cooking. There was always cold meat on Lord's Day, with pickled cabbage, that concomitant of mysterious Sabbath blessedness. ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb

... of the deep blue sea—of the search for a derelict carrying a fortune. Brandon Tarr is a manly lad, and all lads will be eager to learn whether he failed ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the Coast • Victor Appleton

... she is like now! A wreck, a poor derelict woman, with no life to call her own. The life of an actress which I gave her, and which was so beautiful, wrecked; and the life of a nun, which she insisted on striving after, wrecked." A cold, blighting sorrow like a mist came up, it seemed to penetrate to his very bones, ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore

... multitude of perhaps a hundred people or more standing in a great irregular circle, in ditches, behind bushes, behind gates and hedges, saying little to one another and that in short, excited shouts, and staring, staring hard at a few heaps of sand. The barrow of ginger beer stood, a queer derelict, black against the burning sky, and in the sand pits was a row of deserted vehicles with their horses feeding out of nosebags or ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells

... the United States and other countries, this clay land was widely cultivated for wheat and beans. So long as wheat was 60/- to 100/- a quarter it was a very profitable crop, but, when some forty years ago it fell to 40/- and then lower still, the land either went out of cultivation like the "derelict" farms of Essex, or it was changed to grass land and used for cattle grazing. Great was the distress that followed; some districts indeed were years in recovering. But new methods came in: the ...
— Lessons on Soil • E. J. Russell

... unreconciled, Though throbbing, is as truly dead As though by foul decay defiled; That heart is as a grinning skull, With smiling mockery, and stare Of eyeless sockets, or the hull Of shipwrecked vessel, bleached and bare, Derelict, morbid, apathetic, dull, As drowning men, who clutch the empty air, The heart goes down, which ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King

... a derelict, or some bit of wreckage," explained the first mate, when he could command silence. "There is a slight hole below the water-line, but the bulkheads have been closed, and there is ...
— Tom Swift in the City of Gold, or, Marvelous Adventures Underground • Victor Appleton

... sleeping-car, but though his chief anxiety was dispelled, his reluctance to go was not. And he looked at the long, brightly-lit train which was to carry him from this busy and high-hearted city with a desire that it would start before its time, and leave him a derelict upon the platform. He could not bend his thoughts to the work which was at his hand. The sapphire waters of the South had quite lost their sparkle and enchantment. Here, here, was the place of life! The ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason

... she was continually coming upon similar scenes, or upon degraded and derelict types. It was as though she had been blind and was suddenly able to see—or had the ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan

... cities and provinces who by neglect or otherwise had permitted uprisings, and for the adoption of stern measures by the Emperor's Government for the protection of the life and property of foreigners, were followed by the disgrace and dismissal of certain provincial officials found derelict in duty and the punishment by death of a number of those adjudged guilty of actual participation ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland

... left the youthful pair, Some stanzas back, before a lady's bower; 'Tis to be hoped they were no longer there, For stars were pointing to the morning hour. Their escapade discovered, ill 'twould fare With our two heroes, derelict of orders; But, like the ghost, they "scent the morning air," And back again they steal across the borders, Unseen, unheeded, ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte

... which, by keeping pace with the improvements of the age, shall place us upon an equal footing with other civilized countries of the world, without the necessity of an overgrown and expensive naval establishment proper, in time of peace, they would feel themselves derelict in the performance of their duties, did they not recommend the measure, with the earnestness which ...
— Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post • Thomas Rainey

... parts of the world he had visited with her. Only this time, humbly. Standing on the outside of palaces and embassies, recollecting the times when he had been a guest within. Rubbing shoulders with the crowd outside, shabby, poor, a derelict. Seeking always to recover ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... that she had been over the house and everything was then fastened." O'Ryan looked anxiously at the coroner. Would he make him out derelict in his duty? It would seriously affect his standing on the Force. "I took Miss McIntyre's word for the house, for I had the ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln

... courtship I knew not; but he gave me the whole history of it from its modest beginnings to its now penultimate stage. From what I could make out—for the mistral whirled many of his words away over unheeding Provence—he had entered the Cafe de l'Univers one evening, a human derelict battered by buffeting waves of Fortune, and, finding a seat immediately beneath Mme. Gougasse's comptoir, had straightway poured his grievances into a feminine ear and, figuratively speaking, rested his weary ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke

... Navajos enlivened the days and I secured five good blankets in exchange for old Yawger, who was now about useless for our purposes. Prof. gave him to me to get what I could for him, and he also gave Clem another derelict for the same purpose. On the 9th of October Jack, Andy, and Clem, started with Jacob on his annual trip to the Mokis by way of Lee's Lonely Dell while Jones went north to Long Valley on the head ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... speedier-seeming of the two launches—Gavin sprang as he shoved it free from the float. And, before the nearest of the island men could reach shore, he had the motor purring. Satisfied that the tide had caught the rest of the fleet and that the stiff tradewind was doing even more to send the derelict boats out of reach from shore or from possible swimmers he turned the head of his unwieldy launch toward the mainland, pointing it northeastward and making ready to wind his course through the straits which laced the various islets lying between ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune

... common thing to call such men wrecks; if the comparison be used here it is the specific one of a derelict come to grief through fire. Even yet some flickering combustion illuminated the drifting hulk. His face and hands had been recently washed—a rite insisted upon by Phillips as a memorial to the slaughtered conventions. In the candle-light he ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry

... principal counting-house in Sourabaya. There had long existed a connection between Heyst and the Tesmans. The incongruity of a hermit having agents did not strike us, nor yet the absurdity of a forgotten cast-off, derelict manager of a wrecked, collapsed, vanished enterprise, having business to attend to. We said Sourabaya, of course, and took it for granted that he would stay with one of the Tesmans. One of us even wondered what ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad

... the frantic wife had received no intelligence of the missing man. As dawn appeared, a farm wagon containing a farmer and the derelict husband drove up to the house, while behind the wagon trailed the broken-down auto. Almost simultaneously came a messenger boy with an answer to one of the telegrams, followed at intervals by five ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers

... of interest are the barks that sail as fancy whispers in the chart room or the tramp trader, at Sidney today, tomorrow at Malta, or the derelict. And who would not rather hear and know the story of such a vessel and voyage than smell the oil of the tanker or hear from daybreak to midnight the victrola, the piano and the chit-chat of the ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt

... naturally, was Faversham's appointment. Every landowner there was full of it. He had been seen in Brampton on market day driving in a very decent motor; and since his accession he had succeeded in letting two or three of the derelict farms, on a promise of repairs and improvements which had been at last wrung out of Melrose. It was rumoured also that the most astonishing things were happening in the ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... don't know what I am. I was a woman once, just as a derelict was a ship once. But whatever I am, I am not fit to come into a self-respecting house. I am one ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley

... legend, the identification of Proserpine's twofold existence with the grand alternation of nature's seasons, has been entirely neglected by the author. Surely his work, though published, is quite as deservedly obscure as Mrs. Shelley's derelict manuscript. Midas has the privilege, if it be one, of not challenging any obvious comparison. The subject, since Lyly's and Dryden's days, has hardly attracted the attention of the poets. It was so eminently fit for the lighter kinds of presentation that the agile bibliographer who aimed at ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley

... far, Abud. Long before this I should have relieved you of your post, and ordered you to the Death Bath. I am derelict in my duty that I do not do so. By my weak leniency I imperil the lives of your comrades, and my own. It is your good fortune that a Council delegate has not been present at one of your exhibitions. But I dare not risk more. Let the warning whistle come from your station just once ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various

... the boat three were without life. Those whose faint breathing indicated that they had not yet reached the point of death were too weak and indifferent to rid the boat of the bodies of the others. Ever since the homeward-bound whaler had struck a derelict in a gale of wind north of the Falklands and foundered, this little boat, surviving the shipwreck as by a miracle, ...
— And Thus He Came • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... for an opportunity to strike the enemy a blow. It deals more particularly with his descent upon Whitehaven, the seizure of Lady Selkirk's plate, and the famous battle with the Drake. The boy who figures in the tale is one who was taken from a derelict by Paul Jones shortly after this ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis

... the damp black earth. "You ought to be glad—helping the unfortunate, building a haven for the derelict...." ...
— A World is Born • Leigh Douglass Brackett

... his way along the Boulevard des Invalides, his umbrella swaying and snapping in the wind much like the sail of a derelict, could see in fancy that celebrated field whereon this eclipse had been supernally prearranged. He could hear the boom of cannon, the thunder of cavalry, the patter of musketry, now thick, now scattered, and again not unlike the subdued rattle of rain on the bulging silk careening before ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath

... time, The last— That time is past; yet in too-golden day My heart goes from me whispering, "Where are you—you—you—you?" And comes back easeless to an easeless breast. But at night I rest Dreamless as derelict ships ride out to sea Empty, and no bird even on the snapp'd mast Pauses: into oblivion her shadow's cast; Into the empty night goes lonely she, And into sleep go—oh, more ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman

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

... being increased and prolonged, unemployment on a large scale was bound to result. With the Anti-Waste panic and the Geddes Axe, social reform was cut first, and, in their hurry to stop the provision of homes for heroes, the Government is indulging in such false economies as leaving derelict land acquired and laid out at enormous cost, even covering over excavations already made, and paying out to members of the building trade large sums in unemployment benefit, while the demand for the houses on which they might be ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various

... plaintiff would have come out victorious. That wretched Bolliver! ... the memory of him wincing and flushing in the witness-box would haunt him for the rest of his days. He could see him, too, with equal clearness, broken-heartedly slitting the gizzards of his, pets. A poor old derelict—the amen to a life which, like most lives, had once been flush with promise. And it had been his Mahony's., honourable portion to give the last kick, the ultimate shove into perdition. Why, he would rather have lost the ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... species—a being antagonistic to himself, whom he could fight, and crush, and revenge himself upon. But most of all he loathed his past, not on account of her, but of his own weakness that had made him her dupe and a misunderstood man to his friends. He had been derelict of duty in his unselfish devotion to her; he had stifled his ambition, and underrated his own possibilities. No wonder that others had accepted him at his own valuation. Clarence Brant was a modest man, but the egotism of modesty is more fatal than that of pretension, ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte

... A Red Girl's Reasoning The Envoy Extraordinary A Pagan in St. Paul's Cathedral As It Was in the Beginning The Legend of Lillooet Falls Her Majesty's Guest Mother o' the Men The Nest Builder The Tenas Klootchman The Derelict ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson

... the officer, looking thoughtfully at the derelict. The boat was pulling up towards the lee side and the smoke was stifling. The burning steamer was rolling heavily and there was a litter ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... as a dresser in one of those temporary hospitals which sprang up everywhere in such hurry as the streams of wounded began to pour back from France. Ours was pitched in a derelict pleasure-ground on the right bank of Thames some way below Greenwich. . . . I don't suppose you ever visited Casterville Gardens: as neither had I until I entered them to do stretcher-drill, tend moaning men, and carry bloody slops in the overgrown alleys that wound among its tawdry, ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... recall the distress of bitter disillusionment which has followed the collapse of some plausible system of "sweet reasonableness" under the granite-like impact of a rock of reality which has knocked the bottom out of it and left it a derelict upon the waves? This collapse of an ordered and reasonable system under the impact of some atrocious projection of "crass casuality" is a proof that if a philosophy has not got in it some "iron" of its own, if it has not got in it something formidable ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys

... the dory fast alongside and hoppin' out into the drink. ''Course we can land! What's the matter with your old derelict? ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln

... the border population entering through Virginia and containing much of a backwoods and derelict nature, came many Huguenots, the best of folk, and industrious Swiss, and Germans from the Rhine. Then the Scotch began to come in numbers, and families of Scotch descent from the north of Ireland. The tone of society consequently changed from that of ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston

... were when we camped, having been steering for some time by the faint gleam of the sun through the mist. Just after camping Dimitri suddenly pointed to a black spot which seemed to wave to and fro: we decided that it was the flag of the derelict motor near Corner Camp which up to that time I thought was ten to fifteen miles away: this was a great relief, and we debated packing up again and going to it, but decided ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... their pastimes, while ahead the future lay always threatening. Stiffening muscles, disease, age. The king of them all in his youth, in age would be abandoned and driven forth, weary in body, aching in limbs, a derelict in the ranks ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum

... leader, "that the one found guilty of deceiving or betraying the others to the very smallest extent should pay the penalty which we are all sworn to exact. A part of this agreement, as we all remember, is that the one found derelict shall be the first to insist on the visitation of the penalty, and that should he fail to do so—but I trust that it is unnecessary to mention ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow

... meeting to protest against the denial of liberty to American women. All over the world to-day we see surging and sweeping irresistibly on, the great tide of democracy, and women would be derelict in their duty if they did not see to it that it brings freedom to the women of this land . . ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens

... shaken with sobs. Then he began walking up and down by the jail yard. He had not slept an hour in weeks and was weary, but he could not bear to come away and walked slower as the night wore on, hearing only the tread of his own feet. He knew not where to go and was drifting up and down, like a derelict in the sea. By and by people began to pass him,—weary crowds,—and they were pointing at the patches on his coat, and beneath them he could feel a kind of burning, but the crowd was dumb. He tried to say, ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller

... must Smith pass behind the scenes of the play. He comes no more to Coralio nor to Doctor Gregg, who sits in vain, wagging his redundant beard, waiting to enrich his derelict audience with his moving ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry

... regards our body and that, when we have lost the agent of our sufferings, we shall not meet any of the earthly sorrows again. But our anxiety does not end here; and will not our mind, lingering upon our erstwhile sorrows, drifting derelict from world to world, unknown to itself in the unknowable that seeks itself hopelessly; will not our mind know here the frightful torture of which we have already spoken and which is doubtless the last which the imagination can ...
— Death • Maurice Maeterlinck

... astonishment. "Son of a hundred sheiks, forgive my seemingly derelict hospitality. But I should have asked you before this to go to the opera with us, if I had not thought that the principles of your faith were opposed thereto. For you must know, O Father of the Defenceless, that our women ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky

... we must attend to the derelict, now whistling her death song, as she falls beneath ...
— With The Night Mail - A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the - comtemporary magazine in which it appeared) • Rudyard Kipling

... his face, and it had never seemed so dear to me. "The time for that is past," I said, my tone as calm and even as his own. "A man like you cannot burden himself with a derelict like me—mast gone, sails gone, water-logged, drifting. Five years from now you'll thank me for what I am saying now. My place is with this other wreck—tossed about by wind and weather until we both go down together." There ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber

... mouth and fangs so minute that, although classed as venomous, it is not considered injurious to man. Though strange and interesting, on the plea that the family is quite sufficiently represented, the derelict was unwelcome, save as a living proof of the practicability of natural transports. By what grace, indeed, could the creature which earned the Almighty's bitter curse be accepted as "wilsam"—goods of God's mercy driven ashore, no wreck or ship ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... was built in two storeys, and was, therefore, by a storey taller than the rest; and, secondly, because all its windows were closely shuttered, and it wore in that falling light a drooping, melancholy aspect, like a derelict ship upon the seas. It stood in the middle of this scanty village, and had a little unkempt garden about it inclosed within a wooden paling. There was a wicket-gate in the paling, and a rough path from the gate to the house door, and a few ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason

... Terra for Sirius in 2171," Gibson said. "But not with these people aboard, or their ancestors. That expedition perished after less than a light-year when its hydroponics system failed. The Hymenops found the ship derelict when they invaded us, and brought it to Alphard Six in what was probably their first experiment with human subjects. The ship's log shows clearly what happened to the original complement. The rest is ...
— Control Group • Roger Dee

... wife of that great Greek scholar, thirsty Dr. Porson. Perry had begun life as the editor of the Gazeteer, but being dismissed by a Tory proprietor, and on the Morning Chronicle being abandoned by Woodfall, some friends of Perry's bought the derelict for L210, and he and Gray, a friend of Barett, became the joint-proprietors of the concern. Their printer, Mr. Lambert, lived in Shire Lane, and here the partners, too, lived for three or four years, when they removed ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... forty feet long, I should judge, and five feet or so out o' water, right dead under the bow. I could see the lift o' the water where the current pushed ag'in' it, and the swirl on t'other side, showin' it was no derelict, bottom up. No, it was a rock. 'Starboard!' I yells to the felly at the wheel. 'Starboard! Hard up!' Well, the skipper was below, an' the second mate, who had the deck, was mixin' paint under the fo'c'sle; so the wheel went up an' the old wagon payed off 'fore the wind. Then I lost it ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson

... part of every day in wandering, like a derelict, drifting aimlessly this way or that, up into the Park or along Fifth Avenue. She gazed intently into shop windows, apparently inspecting carefully all the articles on display; but she passed on, unconscious ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... is dead," said Stoss, now attacking his roast with appetite. "We won't be wrecked on the dead stoker's corpse. But last night a derelict was sighted. Those corpses, the corpses of vessels, are dangerous. When the sea is rough, they ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann

... Guardian, Weekly Edition, Feb. 6, 1920, quoted by Norman Angell in "The Fruits of Victory," p. 27: "Suddenly all this elaborate structure of economic life was swept away. Vienna, instead of being the vital center of fifty millions of people, finds itself a derelict city, with a province of six millions. It is cut off from its coal supplies, from its food supplies, from its factories, from everything that means existence. It ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson

... wipes up moisture from a slate. Or the sun itself may cool, so that the last of our race will stand huddled together in a solarium somewhere on the Equator. Or as our sun rushes toward Lyra, it may bump into a derelict sun, just as a ship bumps into a wreck. If that derelict were as big as our sun, astronomers would see it at least fifteen years before the collision. For five or six years it would even be visible to the naked eye, ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer

... said. "I came across an old derelict of a rowboat the other day when we were exploring the upper river, but I didn't say anything to you girls about it because I thought it was too much of a wreck to bother with. For all I know it isn't even ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge - or, The Hermit of Moonlight Falls • Laura Lee Hope

... that the Light of the world, the God-in-Man, the only God we can ever know, is by His own authority represented for all time by the poorest of the poor. Yet whosoever fails to recognise in the marred visage of any social derelict the image of Him who was despised and rejected of men—whosoever resents not the spectacle of that image weighted down by fraternal neglect and oppression till a human heart pulses with no higher aspiration ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... going on outside. Now, through our present glass, this belief is relegated to the region of forgotten things, but nevertheless it has hold on Westcountry people still. I was, some years since, investigating the case of a derelict ship which had been found off the Scilly Islands, and towed by the pilots into a safe anchorage for the night. Next morning the pilots going out to complete their salvage, saw some men on board ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme

... spirit—a ghost—he will go forth with an inward, deathless worm, and an inward, quenchless fire, to be like "a wandering star unto whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever," an exile from God, outside the orbit of divine grace, love and life—a hopeless, an eternally hopeless—human derelict, upon the measureless sea of night ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman

... in me a secret envy; for—I here confess it—I always have been a bit afraid of horses, whether spirited or not; not much, but just enough to make me cautious. I never take any liberties with even a blind and spavined derelict. ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk

... dreams, and woke to a gathering calm on the sea. As our eager eyes swept the view by daylight, we found that we were in a semicircular and unsheltered bay, whose choppy water harboured two warships that were desultorily firing. Near us a derelict trawler lay half submerged. ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond

... use to anyone! Not yet twenty-six, and in a nunnery! With a shiver, but not of cold, she drew her wrapper close. This time last year she had at least been in the main current of life, not a mere derelict. And yet—better far be like this than go back to him whom memory painted always standing over her sleeping baby, with his arms stretched out and his ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... the important part of this long discourse,' said the professor, smiling at our eagerness. "'Ever since the carcass of our derelict thermosaurus was first noticed, every captain who has seen it has also reported the presence of one or more gigantic birds in the neighborhood. These birds, at a great distance, appeared to be hovering over the carcass, but on the approach of a vessel they disappeared. Even ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers

... great creepers netted across its vacant portals. Several flights of strange yellow butterflies with semi-transparent wings crossed the river that morning, and many alighted on the monitor and were killed by the men. It was towards afternoon that they came upon the derelict cuberta. ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... sturdy craft "Nomad" and the stranger experiences of the Rangers themselves with Morello's schooner and a mysterious derelict form the basis of this well-spun yarn ...
— A Sunny Little Lass • Evelyn Raymond

... innocent encounter between an adventurous negro and an amiable human derelict in the streets of a far city,—those two atoms shaken into contact while the gods affected to be engaged with weightier matters,—the cultured widow of that derelict recalled the name of a gentleman in the East who was accustomed to buy ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... years afterward, poorer than when he went away, broken in health, old to the point of decrepitude, bedraggled, unkempt and prideless. And once more Thomas Bingle took him in and provided the prospective death-bed for him. They made the old derelict as comfortable as it was in their power to do, and sacrificed not a little in order that he might have some of ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon

... at once to the protection of her territory and to the fulfilment of her engagements or cede to the United States a province of which she retains nothing but the nominal possession, but which is in fact a derelict, open to the occupancy of every enemy, civilized or savage, of the United States and serving no other earthly purpose, than as a post of ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson

... of his company, who had been derelict in duty and had been reported accordingly, accused him of making a false report, and this in those days was an accusation not to be borne. Consequently my impetuous brother, with a mistaken sense of honor, fostered by the teachings and usages of fifty years ago, sent the young ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve

... cares more about her form and colour than about her vote; and if we are nationalising the great masters, let us remember that there is something we may find and lose in a single Mantegna more important to us than all the galleries in the world. The derelict 'Victory,' with her romantic lines, means as much to the nation as the ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James

... on the drive, but the hardness of our bed didn't matter, as we were out all night—all of us, including the two, Grimers and Cecil. It was nervous riding in the forest. All the roads looked exactly alike, and down every glade we expected a shot from derelict Uhlans. That night I thought out plots for at least four stories. It would have been three, but I lost my way, and was only put right by striking a wandering convoy. I was in search of the Division Train. I looked for it at Tournan and at Villeneuve and right through the forest, but couldn't ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson

... safely from the party. He does not permit her to cross the threshold after nightfall unaccompanied by himself, and unless the dowry and the husband are provided before she is eighteen he will consider himself derelict in his duty towards her. "Francesca can't even come to the Sodality meeting this winter. She lives only across from the church but her mother won't let her come because her father is out West working on a railroad," is a comment one often hears. The system works well ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams

... it, boy—the faith that it wants and the patience that it wants! Sometimes it takes the heart out of a man! There're days when I feel like a derelict; when I say to myself, 'Here I am, thirty-eight years old, unanchored, unharbored.' Oh, I know I'm young as the world counts age! I know that plenty of men and women like me, and that I pass the time of day to plenty as I go along! But all the same, if I died to-morrow there isn't one would break ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... of your reverence is a dead word you will get no oracles from the shrine. If the sacred People remains impassive, inarticulate, non-existent, there are always the keepers of the shrine who will oblige. Professional politicians, venal and violent men, will take over the derelict political control, people who live by the book trade will alone have a care for letters, research and learning will be subordinated to political expediency, and a great development of noisily competitive religious enterprises will take the place of any common ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells

... these days this criterion of family and parentage is insufficient; for, sad as it may seem, the children of really excellent parents are often so derelict in duty, so lacking in conscientiousness, so idle and aimless and frivolous that their companionship should be dreaded for susceptible young people especially for young girls. One thing is very certain: that in these days young people, when out of sight of their ...
— Letters to a Daughter and A Little Sermon to School Girls • Helen Ekin Starrett

... back of the blacksmith shop, the wreck of an old cart which years ago had been used for breaking colts; he improvised shafts and seat; he discovered the encouraging fact that Old Bots, a shambling derelict who had lost an eye when Wayne Shandon was quite young, was gentle and trustworthy. After that, wherever he went abroad, and he travelled all over the countryside, he rode in the cart, steering Old Bots this ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory

... now, Guy. A good old soul, my uncle, d'y' see; but the blood was everything to him. And he put it in the bond and I am bound by it: that only the lawful issue, a son of the house, shall inherit. 'I'll have no strange derelict child inherit my estate.' His own words. So this fair estate, lacking lawful issue of my body or my old uncle's son—and he is dead—it goes out of the family. Oh, a stormy, intolerant, but well-meaning old uncle, who would ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly

... says Leggett, "who in any way countenances slavery is derelict to his duty, as a Christian, a patriot, a man; and every one does countenance and authorize it who suffers any opportunity of expressing his deep abhorrence of its manifold abominations to pass unimproved." The whole world has an interest in this matter. The influence of our democratic ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... for commerce the town with the river Witham, and so with Lincoln, Boston, and the sea, though now a derelict, was formerly of much value. Its history is here ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter

... porkers, has been received with some indulgence; why should not my harsh school of solitude possess its interest as well? Let us try to describe it. And who knows? Perhaps, in doing so, I shall revive the courage of some other poor derelict hungering after knowledge. ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... hopeless of futures before her. He argued with himself that no doubt the gatekeeper's guess was correct; the money had belonged to some sailor or pilot, who had been drowned, and his personal effects, whether found on his dead body, or perhaps in the hold of a derelict, sold. Certainly these notes did not belong to the old-clothes' man in the Minories. It almost seemed as if a special act of Providence had placed this money at his disposal to succour this helpless one in her sickness, ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black

... had never spoken of Gracie to Marcia, or to Anne. They were so far removed from this poor little derelict that he was not sure they would understand. He said after a ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler

... could be more foolhardy—this he admitted to himself—nothing, he consoled himself by reflecting, but something stronger than danger could justify it. Of all the motley Morgan following within the mountain fastness he could count on but one man to help him in the slightest degree—this was the derelict, Bull Page. There was no choice but to use him, and he was easily enlisted, for the Calabasas affair had made a heroic figure of de Spain in the barrooms. De Spain, accordingly, lay in wait for the old man and intercepted him one day on the road to Sleepy Cat, walking the twenty miles patiently ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman

... spend an hour or so there occasionally, smoking and watching the crowd. Every sixth visit on an average I would happen upon somebody interesting among the ordinary throng of medical students and third-rate clerks—watery-eyed old fellows who remembered Cremorne, a mahogany derelict who had spent his youth on the sea when liners were sailing-ships, and the apprentices, terrorised by bullying mates and the rollers of the Bay, lay howling in the scuppers and prayed to be thrown overboard. He told me of one voyage on which the Malay cook went mad, and, ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse

... would, probably, very soon be boats out too, seeking with a machine-gun or pompom for a chance at your occasionally emergent conning-tower. In no way can a submarine be more than purblind, it will be, in fact, practically blind. Given a derelict ironclad on a still night within sight of land, a carefully handled submarine might succeed in groping its way to it and destroying it; but then it would be much better to attack such a vessel and capture it boldly with a few desperate men ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... faithful, impartial performance of his sworn duty as such Senator; and by thus accepting fees he has placed himself in a position where his personal interests conflict with the obligations of his oath of office; while the Justices of the Supreme Court are, I conceive, derelict in the performance of their sworn duty, for permitting such practices to be inaugurated ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham

... peril hovering over the progress of the little boat during every hour of that night. It might come in the sudden leap of a wild animal, that judged any port would be better than a floating log. Then there was a chance of their running afoul of a monster derelict, in the shape of a drifting snag, that might punch a hole in their bow, and bring ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy



Words linked to "Derelict" :   ship, worn, delinquent, negligent, uninhabited, damaged, pauper, abandoned



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