"Drift" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... weakening of the will and the vital force. If I remained too long in that lovely land—so admirably governed that I could not have lost myself, or my cat, had I possessed one—I should in no long course yield utterly to a certain resentfully admitted tendency to dream and drift and live for pure beauty; finally desert my own country with the comfortable reflection: Why all this bustle, this desire to excel, to keep in the front rank, to find pleasure in individual work, when so many artistic achievements are ready-made for all to enjoy without ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... and amused us with native songs. An inebriated moujik, riding on a small sled, turned from the road to enter the station yard. One side of the sled passed over a log, and as the man had not secured his balance, he rolled out of sight in a snow drift. I watched him as he emerged, much as Neptune might appear from the crest of a ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... ideas logical, no matter in what order or at what length they may have been given by the one interviewed. Often in conversation a man will give more time to an idea than is its due, and often the most important part of an interview will not be introduced until the last. Or, again, a person may drift away from the immediate topic and not return to it for some minutes. In all such cases it is the duty of the reporter to regroup and develop the ideas so that they shall follow each other logically in the printed interview and shall present the thought ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... as her eye dwelt in admiration of the scene, of the beautiful passages in Revelation, and of the gates of pearl and jasper, "which shall not be shut at all by day, for there shall be no night there." It almost seemed as if she could drift through these cloud portals into the peace and rest beyond. Her heart yearned for the loving clasp of the sweet pilgrim, who had gone before, and who had entered into "the joy of her Lord." The thought comforted her. ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... the girls will all tumble over you—because you've got a couple of millions in your sock. And we fellows who yanked you out of hell by the left hind leg can pocket our pay and go jump off the dock, for all anybody cares. Ho-hum! All the same, I'd rather be me than you, old thing. Free to drift and able to handle myself. You can have the money and the moths that hang ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... to continue the argument, but unconsciously caught in the drift of Barney Bill's philosophy, "my private life isn't politics, and there's not going to be another lie in my private life as long as ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... your Mountebanking cease, COFFEE'S a speedier Cure for each Disease; How great its Vertues are, we hence may think, The Worlds third Part makes it their common Drink: In Breif, all you who Healths Rich Treasures Prize, And Court not Ruby Noses, or blear'd Eyes, But own Sobriety to be your Drift. And Love at once good Company and Thrift; To Wine no more make Wit and Coyn a Trophy, But come each Night and ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... slowly diminishing sounds, that he was drifting further and further away from Tankred and his crowded fore-deck. But he was still within the area of that ever-betraying searchlight. Some time, he knew, he must drift beyond it. But until that moment came he dare make no move to ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... My idea was to get this book and coach the dear old chap. Rehearse him, don't you know. He could bone up the early chapters a bit and then drift round and try his convincing ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... seen a few green tussocks, with their scant blades, their amphibious flavor and unpleasant dampness. And if you chose to indulge your fancy, although the flat monotony of Duck Island was not inspiring, the wavy line of scattered drift gave an unpleasant consciousness of the spent waters and made the certainty of the returning tide a gloomy reflection, which sunshine could not wholly dissipate. The greener salt meadows seemed oppressed with this idea and made no positive attempt at vegetation. In the low bushes, one might ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... Christian Filipino prisoners. Being unable to reach China, they land at Cochinchina, "where the king of Tunquin seizes their cargo, and two large pieces of artillery embarked for the expedition to Maluco, the royal standard, and all the jewels, ornaments, and money. He let the galley drift ashore." The news causes great lamentation in Manila. "Some of those who hated the governor rejoiced, but their wrath immediately vanished and they wept generally." Subsequent ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... and soap; all which it might be difficult to bring together harmoniously. Here the artist, the man of true science, will discover himself. SHELLEY affords a good choice of rhymes; chasm and spasm; rift and drift; ravine and savin, are useful conjunctions. If you have a ravine, it will be very easy to stick in a savin, but you must avoid a spavin, or your verse may halt for it. This we call being artistical. Benissimo! then. Having fixed upon your subject, all you have to ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... effort as a bird expends in hopping from twig to twig. Indeed, his motion was as light as if he were flying through the air, and his hoofs seemed hardly to leave their print in the grassy soil over which he trod. With his spotless hue, he resembled a snow drift, wafted along by the wind. Once he galloped so far away that Europa feared lest she might never see him again; so, setting up her childish voice, ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... its curiously painted signboard, has its own story to tell, of the old coaching days, and of the great people who used to travel along the main roads, and were sometimes snowed up in a drift just below "The Magpie," which had always good accommodation for travellers, and stabling for fifty horses. All was activity in the stable yard when the coach came in; the villagers crowded round the inn doors to see the great folks from London who were regaling themselves ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... the hedge, how do they know? The great blackbird has planted his nest by the ash-stole, open to every one's view, without a bough to conceal it and not a leaf on the ash—nothing but the moss on the lower end of the branches. He does not seek cunningly for concealment. I think of the drift of time, and I see the apple bloom coming and the blue veronica in the grass. A thousand thousand buds and leaves and flowers and blades of grass, things to note day by day, increasing so rapidly that no pencil can put them down and no book hold them, not even to number them—and how ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... results. And he could tell how many eight-ounce tacks make a pound, and what electricity is, and could cure a wart in ten minutes, and recite "Oh! why should the spirit of mortal be proud?" And this evening, the seventh since the storm, when for one weak moment she had allowed the conversation to drift toward wedlock, he had stated a woman's chances of marrying between the ages of fifteen and twenty, to wit, 14-1/2 per cent; and between thirty ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... course of the last-mentioned river, we arrived at its junction with the Limpopo, on the farther side of which lay my goal, Mashonaland; and here we again outspanned, while Piet and I went on a prospecting tour in search of a drift by means of which the wagon ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... speakers in the radar room repeated them. Ship-gravity was out all over the ship. Emergency lights were functioning, and were all the lights there were. There was a slight, unexplained gravity-drift toward what had been the ship's port side. But damage-control reported no loss of pressure in the Niccola's inner hull, though four areas between inner and outer hulls had lost ...
— The Aliens • Murray Leinster
... allowed Molly to earn, as an old hand, to be kept off the parish. Little Judith was apprenticed to Mrs Pearson, according to the old fashion which bound out pauper girls as apprentices to service, and which had one happy effect, namely, that they could not drift foolishly from one situation to another, though, in bad hands, they sometimes had much to suffer. But Mrs Pearson was a kind, conscientious mistress, and Judy was a good girl, ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... This, the main drift of Carlyle's political teaching, rests on his absolute belief in strength (which always grows by concentration), on his unqualified admiration of order, and on his utter disbelief in what his adverse friend Mazzini was wont, with over-confidence, to appeal to as "collective ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... observance of Sunday "as enjoined by an absolutely binding decree," are reproached as "thus at once putting themselves under a law." (p. 44.) ... Dr. Temple has written an Essay which he calls "an argument," and for which he claims "a drift." (p. 31.) That argument is neither more nor less than a direct assault on the Faith of Christian men; and carried out to its lawful results, can lead to nothing but open Infidelity;—which makes it a very solemn consideration that the ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... marine species include the manatee, seals, sea lions, turtles, and whales; drift net fishing is hastening the decline of fish stocks and contributing to international disputes; municipal sludge pollution off eastern US, southern Brazil, and eastern Argentina; oil pollution in ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... characterized by continuous daylight, damp and foggy weather, and weak cyclones with rain or snow Terrain: central surface covered by a perennial drifting polar icepack that averages about 3 meters in thickness, although pressure ridges may be three times that size; clockwise drift pattern in the Beaufort Gyral Stream, but nearly straight line movement from the New Siberian Islands (Russia) to Denmark Strait (between Greenland and Iceland); the ice pack is surrounded by open seas during the summer, but more than doubles in size during the winter and extends ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... it easily," declared Ben. But he proved to be mistaken, for a little distance farther on they ran again into the deep snow and had to pass around one drift after another, finally going clear across several fields to another highway. As a result it was well after dark before they gained the road leading past ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer
... repudiate a principle (even when it is proved to be false and pernicious) involves a political upheaval akin to a revolution. It is easier to continue to stand on an obsolete platform and watch a nation drift to disaster than to abandon the platform and endanger the party organization—euphemistically termed for the occasion "national unity." An excellent case in point is the pathetic devotion of successive Governments to the voluntary principle ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... The main drift of the tale indicates the existence of much corruption[46] in the presbytery; yet the heart of the exiled people in general had a healthy tone; witness the sorrowful sympathy with Susanna (v. 33), and the delight at justice being ultimately ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney
... hall were low-ceiled parlours wainscotted with dark wood, beams of which supported the ceilings. The floor of the room to the right was paved with stone and carpeted with fresh rushes, a yawning chimney of carved granite, on which a fire of drift-wood was burning with parti-coloured flames, occupied one end of the room, which was occupied by the ladies of the house. At the back were the kitchen and offices, looking out upon a paved court-yard containing a well, and ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... that Owen interrupted him Harding was thinking that perhaps a woman who had attempted suicide to escape from another man would not drift as easily into marriage as Owen thought; but, of course, he did not dare to confess such ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... by the arrival of winter, which, as the Scheldt was filled with drift-ice, occasioned a considerable delay in the building of the bridge. The prince had contemplated with anxiety the approach of this season, lest it should prove highly destructive to the work he had undertaken, and afford the enemy a favorable opportunity for making ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... get from gesticulation alone is an abstract notion of the essential drift of what is being said, and that, too, whether I judge from a moral or an intellectual point of view. It is the quintessence, the true substance of the conversation, and this remains identical, no matter what may have given ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... at such times. In the cold bleakness of night, it would seem he sat on a bare hill and raised his howl to the stars, while out of the dark, from far away, would drift to him an answering howl. And other howls, near and far, would drift along until the night was vocal with his kind. His kind it was. Without knowing it he knew it, this camaraderie of the land ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... first, it is a great help to his Invention. When a Man has plann'd his Discourse, he finds a great many Thoughts rising out of every Head, that do not offer themselves upon the general Survey of a Subject. His Thoughts are at the same time more intelligible, and better discover their Drift and Meaning, when they are placed in their proper Lights, and follow one another in a regular Series, than when they are thrown together without Order and Connexion. There is always an Obscurity in Confusion, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... the girls who drift because strong, capable, efficient mothers cannot conceive of them as anything but "little girls," cannot realize that they have grown up and continue to plan for them, to make all their decisions and choices as they did when their daughters, now twenty, were children of ten. This sort of girl needs ...
— The Girl and Her Religion • Margaret Slattery
... unparalleled in her history. The Palace, instead of being a hall of justice, was the abode of debauchery and gambling; and the mad revellers, whom a cynical fate had placed at the head of affairs, allowed the ship of state to drift upon the rocks. Even the fine palace within the city gave too little scope for the diversion of the Intendant and his confederates, and, accordingly, a rustic chateau was built near the high hill of Charlesbourg. Here they paused when tired ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... look at the girls, and the girls must look on their books," was said at least a dozen times by the village school-master, on that stormy morning when Cora Blanchard and I—she in her brother's boots, and I in my father's socks—waded through drift after drift of snow to the old brown school-house at the foot of the ...
— Rosamond - or, The Youthful Error • Mary J. Holmes
... a house as a temporary measure, my father in the meantime endeavoring to secure a suitable farm. In this he was unsuccessful, so after six weeks we hired another wagon and started for King William's Town. The rains had been heavy, and the drift of the Fish River on the direct road was consequently impassable, so we took the longer route and crossed by the old wooden military bridge at Fort Brown. This bridge was swept away by the great flood of 1874. A great iron girder structure has been ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... to cheer them up they sigh softly and say, 'Ah, no; it is too late. Once I had aims and aspirations, but Fate has swept them all away. I shall only drift and drift now, until ...
— Said the Observer • Louis J. Stellman
... Poetaster' is laid at the court of Augustus Caesar. Jonson therein describes himself under the character of Horace. The whole drift of the play is, to take the many enemies of the latter to task for their calumnies and libels against him. Rome is the place of action, and the persons of the drama bear classic names. There are, besides Augustus and Horace, ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... pollution in large cities; acid rain; water pollution from the discharge of sewage and industrial effluents; drift net fishing ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... when spring and the Sioux came, they found Bradford and a handful of helpers just breaking camp in a sheltered hollow in the hills. Hiding in the crags, the warriors waited until Bradford went out alone to try to shoot a deer, and incidentally to sound a drift, and then they surrounded him. He fought until his gun was unloaded, and then emptied his revolver; but ever dodging and crouching from tree to rock, the red men, whose country he and his companions had invaded, came nearer and nearer. In a little while the fight was hand ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... fuisset expensa. Sed palam est, nec regem commodum, nec regnum ex hac fructum aliquem percepisse.... Non enim est credible regem carere infinita thesauri quantitate si fideles fuerint qui ministrant ei" (p. 73). The drift of the speech is, as may be seen, exactly the same as in the Rolls of Parliament. Another specimen of pithy eloquence will be found in the apostrophe addressed to the Earl of Stafford by John Philpot, a mercer of London, after his naval feat ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... herself at this moment whether she was glad or sorry that the impressive manager was awaiting her presence. She was slightly flurried and tingling in the cheeks, but it was more nervousness than either fear or favour. She did not try to conjecture what the drift of the conversation would be. She only felt that she must be careful, and that Hurstwood had an indefinable fascination for her. Then she gave her tie its last touch with her fingers ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... calling, or even a hope of advancement in the world. To be sure, it seems a shame; yet if I could steal the money this priest is boasting about, I could live at ease for the rest of my days;" and so he began casting about how best he might compass his purpose. But the priest, far from guessing the drift of his comrade's thoughts, journeyed cheerfully on till they reached the town of Kuana. Here there is an arm of the sea, which is crossed in ferry-boats, that start as soon as some twenty or thirty passengers are gathered together; and in ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... five minutes at the task. Then the young people would slip quietly away, as merry as truants from school. They wandered beneath the shade of the giant oaks, or climbed the rocks that stood by the river bank. Sometimes, seated in a dilapidated boat, they would drift down the stream with its flower-bedecked banks. The water was often almost covered with rushes and water lilies. Two months of enchantment thus fled past, two months of the intoxications of love, though the mention of the tender passion never rose to their lips from ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... were expected to talk together without waiting for the formality of an introduction. The rules, in short, were the same as at the familiar "Cos.," and for a time the club was very successful. But it seems almost inevitable that clubs of this description should drift, sooner or later, into the hands of a clique. The same men went every night, and you had to listen to the same platitudes, or the same cheap cynicism. Once or twice the dulness of the evening at the Century was enlivened by something ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... sea. But they would hardly attempt such feats with a swift gliding steamer, even if a trailing rope were to offer them the chance. Now and then the ship would sail for an hour or more through a prolific drift of that queer, indolent bit of animal life, the jelly-fish. How these waters teemed with life! Every school-boy knows that the ocean covers three quarters of the globe, but how few realize that it represents more of organic life than does the land. It is a world in itself, immense ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... condition. 'You will be soon weary of all contentious books,' he wrote to CASPER LINDERN, 'if you entertain and get The Threefold Life of Man into your mind and heart.' 'The subject of regeneration,' says Christopher Walton, 'is the pith and drift of all Behmen's writings, and the student may here be directed to begin his course of study by mastering the first eight chapters of The Threefold Life, which appear to have been in great ...
— Jacob Behmen - an appreciation • Alexander Whyte
... reflecting no doubt upon the drift of my announcement. "Yes?" he said dubiously. "And to what market are ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... the kind. We will starve you out and fight you, and you will see what the end will be, Dan Baxter," retorted Dick; and then the two yachts began to drift apart ...
— The Rover Boys on the Ocean • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)
... of the mountain to the valley, a distance of about 800 feet, the trap rock projected from 75 to 125 feet, the intermediate layers of friable rock having been washed out. The trap formation is about twenty-five feet wide, and covered with stunted pine trees. Opposite our camp is a high drift formation of granite boulders, gravel and clay. The boulders are the regular gray Quincy granite, and those in the middle of the river are hollowed out by the action of the water into many curious shapes. We have here found our ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... up in jars to make their acidity presentable! "There's beggary in the love that can be reckoned," and degradation in the dignity that has to be preserved. Simplicity is the only dignity. If one has not the genuine article, no affluence of starch, no snow-drift of white-linen decency, will furnish any substitute. If one has it, he will retain it, whether he stand on his head or his heels. Nothing is really undignified but affectation or conceit; and for the total extinction and annihilation of every vestige of these, there are few things ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... I lay in the per-rair-ree. And gazed at the stars in the sky, I wondered if ever a cowboy, Could drift ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... that none of us was well acquainted with the road; indeed, I could see nothing which was fairly entitled to that appellation. The way from Salamanca to Valladolid is amongst a medley of bridle-paths and drift-ways, where discrimination is very difficult. It was not long before we were bewildered, and travelled over more ground than was strictly necessary. However, as men and women frequently passed on donkeys and little ponies, we were not too proud to be ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... essentially a reformer. Time-honored ceremonies were of little importance in his eyes when they stood in the way of the direct and practical, and he abolished hosts of ancient customs that had grown wearisome and unmeaning. This sweeping away of the drift-wood of the past was far from agreeable to the officials, to whom formalism and precedent were as the breath of life. One of the ancient customs required the emperors to ascend high mountains and offer sacrifices on their summits. The literary class had ancient ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... more favorable than they appeared to be. A change, latent but influential, had taken place in the mental attitude of the governing class in England. There had been a notion that American independence would not last long and that the country would eventually be restored to the British Crown. The drift of events was rather in that direction until Hamilton's measures gave the ascendancy to the forces making for American national development. The practical statesmanship of Great Britain perhaps saw more clearly ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... the courage of a martyr, nor the faith of a saint; and so I drift along, trying to make the condition of our slaves as comfortable as I possibly can. I believe there are slaves on this plantation whom the most flattering offers of freedom ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... sat speaking very little, each afraid lest the talk should drift into an awkward channel, for I felt sure that she knew how her father had robbed us ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... water was found in sandstone, but at a much greater depth, and also in sandstone of a different character, viz., the Keuper at Scarle, the Northampton at Woodhall. Another difference is that in the Scarle strata we pass at once from the surface drift to the lower Lias; the Kimeridge clay and all the Oolite formations, which are found at Woodhall, with a thickness of some 630ft., being entirely absent. These differences, of course, illustrate the fact that, owing to abrasion and other causes, not only do the ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... I drift into a nightmare of Two Hundred elusive cabbages which I am endeavouring to plant in my new allotment, where a harsh fate forces me to dig and dig and DIG, and, as a natural consequence, also to ache and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 18, 1917 • Various
... All day long he was for ever forcing his attention upon some matter or other to the exclusion of the lady. A thousand times she came tripping—always he fobbed her off. Considering how much of late he had been content to drift with the stream, the way in which his mind bent to the oars was amazing. His output of mental energy was extraordinary. Will rode Brain with a bloody spur. When night came, ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... Varley! He smiled to think how earnestly he had been talking to the dog; but he did not cease to do it, for although he entered into discourses the drift of which Crusoe's limited education did not permit him to follow, he found comfort in hearing the sound of his own voice, and in knowing that it fell pleasantly on another ear in ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... are not here to play, to dream, to drift; We have hard word to do, and loads to lift, Shun not the struggle; face it, ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... Alexander, and not be secured by the French alliance, then the only available constitutional ruler would, he thought, be a member of his own princely family and not one of the rival Poniatowskis. The autocrat did not clearly understand the drift of his boyhood friend, but he saw enough to render the notion of reconstructing Poland in any form distasteful, and finally abandoned it. He then took the sensible resolution to recruit his strength, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... at the time could not gather the drift of the conversation; but a month later, when their knowledge of the language had greatly increased, Olga, when driving in a sledge with Jack, enlightened him as to the position in ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... to supply a fitting introduction to the drama, as though from the lips of a Yarmouth Chorus. Scarcely had the social carouse there in the old boat, on that memorable evening of Steerforth's introduction, been recounted, when the whole drift of the story was clearly foreshadowed in the brief talk which immediately took place between him and David as they walked townwards across the sands towards their hotel. "Daisy,—for though that's not the name your godfathers and godmothers ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... other things he sent from Paris a body of three hundred men to the assistance of the peasants who were besieging the castle of Ermenonville. It is the due penalty paid by reformers who allow themselves to drift into revolution, that they become before long accomplices in mischief or crime which their original design and their own personal interest made it incumbent on them to ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... execute a strategical movement which brought him to Madame Deberle's side, and she could hear the conversation that ensued behind her chair. Of a sudden there was a change in the tones, and she leaned back to gather the drift of ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... age and easy living. A planter of the back country, and a politician, his capital was a certain native shrewdness and little else. Of course, in company such as this, and at such a day, the conversation must drift toward the ever ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... awoke the next morning, there was no abatement in the storm. A huge drift covered the boulder and the place where their fire had been, and nearly enclosed the front of the lean-to; and before they could lay a fire, a half hour's hard work was necessary to clear the snow away, each using a snowshoe in lieu ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace
... such transposition of the events of the allegory as time might produce after the important truths were forgotten, the drift of the fable seems to be this: Man, at his creation, was endowed with the gift of perpetual youth, that is, he was not formed to be a sickly, suffering creature, as we now see him, but to enjoy health, and to sink by slow degrees into the bosom of his parent earth, without disease or pain. ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... not want to displease his father; on the other hand, it was impossible to let things drift as they had been doing. There must be an understanding sooner or later. Why ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... close of the first quarter of the nineteenth century, geologists began to examine the caves and beds of drift in various parts of the world; and within a few years from that time a series of discoveries began in France, in Belgium, in England, in Brazil, in Sicily, in India, in Egypt, and in America, which established the fact that a period of time much greater than any which had before been ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... the men, who had been sent further into the country, to ascertain its character, brought back the welcome news that there was a stream of excellent fresh water not far distant, and that along its banks lay piles of drift wood. As we considered it possible, after this discovery, to pass the winter here, we gave up the desperate plan we had formed, of making our way back to the continent in our two miserable boats, and commenced erecting a roomy and substantial hut. While ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... despairs. It jeopards, perhaps loses, the State."[346] A few weeks later, in company with several friends, Seward, as was his custom, made an estimate of majorities, going over the work several times and taking accurate account of the drift of public sentiment. An addition of the columns showed the Democrats several thousands ahead. Singularly enough, Fillmore, whose accustomed despondency exhibited itself even in 1840, now became confident of success. This can be accounted for, perhaps, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... mantle of his own self-esteem, the sufferer fails to catch the drift of sentiment round him, or to put himself in touch with the opinions of others. His chair in any room is soon surrounded by vacant seats or by patient sufferers. The vice has, in fact, turned inwards, and corroded the mentality. Far ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook
... the westward drift from Asia into peninsular Europe, in its three parallel columns, through tundra, forest, and steppe; and the southward drifts, subsidiary to this, from East Central Europe into the Balkan lands and ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... if wearied, and the earth was warm to the hand. I held the flowers in my fingers, and they smelled, somehow, like the roses on our terrace at home on moonlight evenings when I had been young and thought myself in love. I watched a drift of white butterflies hang over an opening red blossom. Such moments pay for hours of famine. It disturbed me to have the ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... with whom they are connected by circumstances, there would be some reason in assuming a jurisdiction over their faith, and disputing their claims to rationality and to respectful treatment; but not to insist upon the moral constitution of the female sex, and the whole drift of divine revelation, the very terms of the initiatory ordinance of the Christian church, to which they are equally entitled, illustrates and secures their prerogatives—for it is "the answer of a good conscience towards God." When men ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... the river at the forks, and had to follow up the bank thirty or forty rods. We had gone only a few steps when we came upon a dead wolf, lying close down to the water's edge, among brush and drift-stuff. ...
— The Youth's Companion - Volume LII, Number 11, Thursday, March 13, 1879 • Various
... Yasmini's. But she won't let 'em drink at her place. Have to give her credit for that, y'know; her place has never been a stews. Sooner or later they grow tired of virtue, 'specially with so much intrigue goin' on under their noses, and back they all drift to Ali's and tell him tales to tell the Germans—and the round begins again. Yasmini coaxes all their stories out of 'em and primes 'em with a few extra good ones into the bargain. Everybody's fooled— 'specially the Germans—and exceptin', of course, Yasmini ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... yards, their guide went on to tell them. They brought about ten thousand head of cattle every day, and as many hogs, and half as many sheep—which meant some eight or ten million live creatures turned into food every year. One stood and watched, and little by little caught the drift of the tide, as it set in the direction of the packing houses. There were groups of cattle being driven to the chutes, which were roadways about fifteen feet wide, raised high above the pens. In these chutes the stream of animals was continuous; it was quite uncanny to watch them, pressing ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... was now whipping the sea into angry breakers that dashed resoundingly against the rocky barrier of the island. To drift within reach of those frightful destroyers would mean the instant annihilation of the Halfmoon and all her company, yet this was precisely what the almost unmanageable hulk was doing at the wheel under the profane direction of Skipper ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... islands, north of the Thames, save certain ice-clad mountain-tops, were buried for long ages under an icy sea. From whence did vegetable and animal life crawl back to the land, as it rose again; and cover its mantle of glacial drift with fresh life ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... which were commonly known in poems in the mother tongue. In the footsteps of these poems, being as it were classic books of antiquity, I have trod; and keeping true step with them as I translated, in the endeavour to preserve their drift, I have taken care to render verses by verses; so that the chronicle of what I shall have to write, being founded upon these, may thus be known, not for a modern fabrication, but for the utterance of antiquity; since this present work promises not a trumpery dazzle ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... was no longer a possibility of escape. The crew immediately proceeded to set all sail the storm would permit, in hopes of weathering the point; but their gallant efforts could not long delay the fate of the doomed vessel, she continued to drift towards the beach, on which she struck a little before six o'clock, and within five minutes was totally demolished. It would be a useless attempt to describe the horrors of that short but fearful period: all that ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon
... his head emerged from the drift, looking like an animated snow-ball, "and I would have reached there, ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... about half an hour the beauty of his reasoning and comparison reached his brain, but mine was impenetrable to his most honeyed apologies; as I very sweetly assured him, 'I couldn't understand, didn't see the drift, couldn't connect the links.' Leon says ancient history is a fable, and Herodotus a myth, and all because a woman sat upon the tripod at Delphi, and because a woman wore the helmet and carried the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... love to contend against the fatal drift of our age toward over-education could find in Alice Tarleton, foster daughter of Gaspard Roussillon, a primitive example, an elementary case in point. What could her book education do but set up stumbling blocks in the path of happiness? She was learning to prefer the ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... he caught the drift of this complication. That ten thousand dollars represented only a small part of the value of his property was true, but many another man had sold property for less than it was worth. If a perfectly good check for ten thousand dollars, ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... go thus. You must hear me,' he cried, and he wheeled round an easy-chair, with a gesture of entreaty; which she obeyed, partly because she was hardly alive to understand his drift, partly because she could scarcely stand; and there she sat, in the same drowsy resignation with which she had listened ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... those miserable first weeks of her life at the Red Mill—that Ruth felt she could never be really angry with Helen. It only made her sorrowful to think that perhaps Helen, in this new and wider school life, might drift away from her. ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson
... saw islands to the westwards. These were considered by Columbus as the same with those mentioned by Pliny in his Natural History, where he says, "That the sea to the northwards cuts off some pieces of woods from the land; and the roots being very large, they drift on the water like floats, and looked at ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... "that a small bundle of connected corks was launched in a sluggish current upon a voyage across the Atlantic. The corks drift slowly on from day to day with the same conditions all round them. If the corks were sentient we could imagine that they would consider these conditions to be permanent and assured. But we, with our superior ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... soon round me, and we resolved to pass the night there, as we considered that a good meal or two would enable us so much better to continue our fatiguing journey. A little above us was also discovered a large quantity of drift, timber left dry upon the sand, and in a short time every one of us were actively employed in preparing for a jovial meal. Gabriel, being the best marksman, started for game, and I continued fishing, to the great delight of the doctor and the parson, ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... Geary's dictatorship and he thus early began to contract easy, irresponsible habits, becoming indolent, shirking his duty whenever he could, sure that Geary would think for the two and pull him out of any difficulty into which he might drift. ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... who gloats over human anguish, but according to a benevolent and wonderfully patient law of evolution. Many members of the class we are considering do not really attain an intelligent appreciation of this fact at all, but drift through their astral interlude in the same aimless manner in which they have spent the physical portion of their lives. Thus in Kamaloka, exactly as on earth, there are the few who comprehend something of their position and know ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... in so calm and self-possessed a tone that all concern for the swimmer was set at rest. Drawing in our oars we faced round to have a look at him. The drift of the boat had brought us so close that he could have grasped the gunwale ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of no use trying to speak to the men without shouting in their ears, and getting to windward to do that, moreover, and so I looked round to see if there was any change coming. But all was grey overhead, and a grey wall of rain and flying drift from the wave tops was all round us, blotting out all things that were half a mile from us, if there were anything to be blotted out. It always seems as if there must be somewhat beyond a thickness of any sort at sea. ...
— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler
... speaks three different languages. I found at Airolo regular files of Swiss journals printed respectively in French, Italian, and German: the last entirely baffled me; the two former I read after a fashion, making out some of their contents' purport and drift. Those in French, printed at Geneva, Lausanne, &c., were executed far more neatly than the others. All were of small size, and in good part devoted to spirited political discussion. Switzerland, though profoundly Republican, is almost equally divided into parties known respectively ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... edging outwards, the ones on the right towards their own right and the ones on the left towards their own left, to prevent themselves from being overlapped by the long red line of fire and steel when the two fronts closed. But this drift outwards, while not enough to reach Wolfe's flanks, was quite enough to make a fatal gap in Montcalm's centre. Thus the British, at the final moment, took the French on both the outer and both the inner flanks as ...
— The Passing of New France - A Chronicle of Montcalm • William Wood
... 84,198 paupers enumerated in almshouses on January 1, 1910, and 88,313 admitted during the year, which indicates that the almshouse paupers are a rapidly shifting group. This population, probably of several hundred thousand persons, who drift into and out of almshouses, can hardly be characterized accurately, but in large part it must be considered at least inefficient and probably ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... gives way and lets the waters loose; it is a flood of bees which breaks upward into the air, and becomes a maze of whirling black lines to the eye, and a soft chorus of myriad musical sounds to the ear. This way and that way they drift, now contracting, now expanding, rising, sinking, growing thick about some branch or bush, then dispersing and massing at some other point, till finally they begin to alight in earnest, when in a few moments the whole swarm is collected upon ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... quite happy, Sylvestre, and I owe my happiness to you, to her, and to others. I have done nothing myself to deserve happiness beyond letting myself drift on the current of life. Whenever I tried to row a stroke the boat nearly upset. Everything that others tried to do for me succeeded. I can't get over it. Just think of it yourself. I owed my introduction to Jeanne to ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... hill and dale And steel-bright thread of stream, a-smoke with mist, A-sparkle with May morning, diamond drift ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... characters, Brooks, Joy, etc., occur at Aylesford. There is a very fine quarry here, from whence the famous Kentish rag-stone—"a concretionary limestone"—is obtained. It forms the base, and is overlaid by the Hassock sands and the river drift. In the distance is seen the bold series of chalk rocks constituting the ridge of ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... scrambled and slipped over the sea-weed at the mouth of the cave, and presently found themselves standing on a floor of light-coloured sand, strewn with shells and sea-drift. The sides of the cave were black and shiny with wet, and water dripped slowly from ...
— The Adventure League • Hilda T. Skae
... know not where His islands lift Their fronded palms in air; I only know I cannot drift Beyond His ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... breaking such bonds. It was a shipwreck where nothing could survive, and where the waves did not even drift some shapeless waif and ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... changes in the situation which have occurred since the eventful Friday have not been numerous. The wreckage impacted beneath the arches has been removed from three of them, leaving four, which are closed by masses of timber and drift material. I climbed over the debris in the famous cul-de-sac and reached the second from the Johnstown side after half an hour's labor. The appearance was singular. Beneath the conglomeration of timber which filled the cavity of the arch to a distance ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... therefore aduised him to raise his siege, and suffer the empresse to be at libertie to go to some other place, where he might with more ease and lesse damage get hir into his hands. [Sidenote: The king raiseth his siege.] The king not perceiuing the drift of those secret practisers, followed their counsell. Wherevpon the empresse being now at libertie, went from place to place to trie and solicit hir frends: and as a riuer increaseth in the passage, so the further the ladie went, the more hir power increased. About the ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (4 of 12) - Stephan Earle Of Bullongne • Raphael Holinshed
... a little piece of fanciful criticism on the text, or a comment on some side-view or transaction, or the suggestion of a probability or a possibility, which remind one of the thin puerilities of the commentators whom Dr. Furness despises more than of the general drift of his own discussion. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... soul in all his drift Is still behind the proper gift— With other souls he don't unite, Nor is he zealous to do right. Among Believers he's a drug, And ev'ry ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... 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 ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... knows something of the nature of exchange. Dubourg was determined I should have one youngster at least about my hand who understood business. But I see his drift, and he shall find that I do so when he looks at the balance-sheet. Owen, let Clement's salary be paid up to next quarter-day, and let him ship himself back to Bourdeaux in his father's ship, which is ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... rain, trying all the leaks of the mossy roof, testing all the newly laid drains, pressing the fountain at my door to an exuberant gush,—a rain that makes outside work an impossibility; and as I sit turning over the leaves of an old book of engravings, wondering what drift my rainy-day's task shall take, I come upon a pleasant view of Dovedale in Derbyshire, a little exaggerated, perhaps, in the luxuriance of its trees and the depth of its shadows, but recalling vividly the cloudy April morning on which, fifteen years agone, I left the inn of the "Green Man ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... so after making our camp, we began to doubt the wisdom of our choice of a location, for a downpour of rain threatened to send a stream of water under the tent. The stream was easily turned aside, while a door and numerous boards found in the drift pile, made a very good floor for the tent and lifted our sleeping bags off the wet sand. We had little trouble in this section to find sufficient driftwood for fires. The pile at this camp was enormous, and had evidently been gathering for years. Some of it, we could be sure, was ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... the smile of our beautiful interlocutor, with bows and gestures of amity, and it looked as though we might soon be within touch of her hand, for the vessels continued to drift nearer, when suddenly Juba clambered out of the window and stood beside us, his moon eyes blinking in the unaccustomed light. The greatest agitation was immediately manifest among the crowd on the deck of the air ship. They ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... his mind! He went out on the roof, and mechanically took his way toward the nest of the music. At the base of the chimneys he sat down, and stared into the darkness. The lightning came; he saw the sea lie watching like a perfect peace to take up drift souls, and the land bordering it like a waste of dread; then the darkness swallowed both; and the thunder came so loud that it not only deafened but seemed to blind him beyond the darkness, that his brain turned to a lump of clay. Then came a silence, ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... or two before he saw her, gazing at him. Old tenderness awoke in her, old angers also. She remembered how he had made her suffer in the obstinate course of his own will, and how free she had felt when at last she had broken their engagement and seen him drift under Ardelia's charm. But he would always mean something to her more than other men, in a fashion quite peculiar to himself. She had agonized too much over him. She had protected him too long against the faults of his own nature, and now she could not be content ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... of Christianity, you would only consider how infinitely indebted European humanity is to it, and to the religion which, after the lapse of some time, followed Christianity from its old home in the East! Europe received from it a drift which had hitherto been unknown to it—it learnt the fundamental truth that life cannot be an end-in-itself, but that the true end of our existence lies beyond it. The Greeks and Romans had placed this end absolutely in life itself, ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... Mississippi are always accompanied with an immense quantity of "drift-wood," which is swept away from the banks of the Missouri and Ohio; and the navigation is never totally devoid of danger, from the quantity of trees which settle down on the bottom of the river. Those trees which stand perpendicularly ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... spring-tides, a phantom sphere an intrepid star was daring to go close to. This brig had not been disappointing her backers, for wagers had been freely laid that she would drag her moorings in the wind, and drift. Fenwick and Vereker stopped in their walk to lean on the wooden rail above the beach that skirted the two inclines, going either way, up which the waggons had been a couple of hours ago scrambling over the shingle against ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... graciously pleased to accept "the information and advice of parliament in discovering the causes of the great evils, and redress their grievances." The king accepted this "as a satisfactory answer;" but Charles comprehended their drift—"You specially aim at the Duke of Buckingham; what he hath done to change your minds I wot not." The style of the king now first betrays angered feelings; the secret cause of the uncomplying conduct of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli |
