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Drift   Listen
noun
Drift  n.  
1.
A driving; a violent movement. "The dragon drew him (self) away with drift of his wings."
2.
The act or motion of drifting; the force which impels or drives; an overpowering influence or impulse. "A bad man, being under the drift of any passion, will follow the impulse of it till something interpose."
3.
Course or direction along which anything is driven; setting. "Our drift was south."
4.
The tendency of an act, argument, course of conduct, or the like; object aimed at or intended; intention; hence, also, import or meaning of a sentence or discourse; aim. "He has made the drift of the whole poem a compliment on his country in general." "Now thou knowest my drift."
5.
That which is driven, forced, or urged along; as:
(a)
Anything driven at random. "Some log... a useless drift."
(b)
A mass of matter which has been driven or forced onward together in a body, or thrown together in a heap, etc., esp. by wind or water; as, a drift of snow, of ice, of sand, and the like. "Drifts of rising dust involve the sky." "We got the brig a good bed in the rushing drift (of ice)."
(c)
A drove or flock, as of cattle, sheep, birds. (Obs.) "Cattle coming over the bridge (with their great drift doing much damage to the high ways)."
6.
(Arch.) The horizontal thrust or pressure of an arch or vault upon the abutments. (R.)
7.
(Geol.) A collection of loose earth and rocks, or boulders, which have been distributed over large portions of the earth's surface, especially in latitudes north of forty degrees, by the agency of ice.
8.
In South Africa, a ford in a river.
9.
(Mech.) A slightly tapered tool of steel for enlarging or shaping a hole in metal, by being forced or driven into or through it; a broach.
10.
(Mil.)
(a)
A tool used in driving down compactly the composition contained in a rocket, or like firework.
(b)
A deviation from the line of fire, peculiar to oblong projectiles.
11.
(Mining) A passage driven or cut between shaft and shaft; a driftway; a small subterranean gallery; an adit or tunnel.
12.
(Naut.)
(a)
The distance through which a current flows in a given time.
(b)
The angle which the line of a ship's motion makes with the meridian, in drifting.
(c)
The distance to which a vessel is carried off from her desired course by the wind, currents, or other causes.
(d)
The place in a deep-waisted vessel where the sheer is raised and the rail is cut off, and usually terminated with a scroll, or driftpiece.
(e)
The distance between the two blocks of a tackle.
13.
The difference between the size of a bolt and the hole into which it is driven, or between the circumference of a hoop and that of the mast on which it is to be driven.
14.
(Phys. Geog.) One of the slower movements of oceanic circulation; a general tendency of the water, subject to occasional or frequent diversion or reversal by the wind; as, the easterly drift of the North Pacific.
15.
(Aeronautics) The horizontal component of the pressure of the air on the sustaining surfaces of a flying machine. The lift is the corresponding vertical component, which sustains the machine in the air. Note: Drift is used also either adjectively or as the first part of a compound. See Drift, a.
Drift of the forest (O. Eng. Law), an examination or view of the cattle in a forest, in order to see whose they are, whether they are commonable, and to determine whether or not the forest is surcharged.
continental drift (Geology), the very slow (ca. 1-5 cm per year) movement of the continents and parts of continents relative to each other and to the points of upwelling of magma in the viscous layers beneath the continents; causing, for example, the opening of the South Atlantic Ocean by the movement of Africa and South America away from each other. See also plate tectonics.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Drift" Quotes from Famous Books



... true about anything. What chance have I, anyway? inquires the young man who thinks sometimes and occasionally wants to read. What sort of leading-strings are these that I am getting into? Look at the drift of things. Is the feminization of the world a desirable thing for a vigorous future? Are the women, or are they not, taking all the virility out of literature? Answer me that. All the novels are written by, for, or about women—brought to their standard. Even Henry James, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... that might explain the presence of so many cowboys in town that day. Frequently he heard Gary's name mentioned. He had not seen Gary with the others. But the talk was casual, and he learned nothing until some one remarked that it was about time to drift along. They left in a body, taking the mesa trail that led to the Blue. This was significant. They usually left in groups of two or three, as their individual pleasure dictated. And there was a business-like ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... there are three points here. In the first place—if I do not misapprehend Mr. Asquith's drift—in working for the abolition of militarism, we are working for a great diminution in those armaments which have become a nightmare to the modern world. The second point is that we have to help in every fashion ...
— Armageddon—And After • W. L. Courtney

... 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 ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... expense necessitated by her husband's illness, the costliness of chicken broth, butcher's meat, Bordeaux wine, medicine, and doctors' fees. Her doleful conversation greatly embarrassed Florent, and on the first few occasions he did not understand the drift of it. But at last, as the poor woman seemed always in a state of tears, and kept saying how happy and comfortable they had been when they had enjoyed the full salary of eighteen hundred francs a year, he ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... to grow, but that morning no sun rose upon the sight of the thousands who waited for its coming. The whole heaven was dark with a gray mist that seemed to drift up in billows from the sea, bringing with it a salt dampness. For this mist Miriam was thankful, since had the sun shone hotly she knew not how she would have lived through another day. Already she grew very weak, ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard

... imagination, for he knows that his task is not to create something, but to call aloud to that which is slumbering in the depths of the heart. He knows that he must shake off the torpor from a feeble life as he would shake the snow from a living body buried in a drift, not build up a puppet of ice which will melt under the rays ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori

... account in one of the most popular English periodicals, because I am there brought into a society to which I do not belong. The author of an article in the July Number of the Edinburgh Review ... appeals to me, misunderstanding the drift of my words, and erroneously believing that I had already published an apology of my orthodoxy.... A sharp attack upon me in the Dublin Review I know only from extracts in English papers; but I can see from the vehemence with which the writer pronounces ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... or gritty, may also be used with good results. If free from weeds, sticks, stones and rough drift, it may be used at once, but it is much better to stack it in a pile to rot for ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer

... never come to the surface, and when at length she did, she did not attempt to seize the rope thrown to her, but sank without a movement. The truth flashed upon me in an instant. She had struck her head against some of the floating drift and was unconscious! Something must be done at once. I seized the rope and sprang in after her, taking good care to avoid obstructions, and although, as you know, I never learned to swim, I succeeded in ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy

... (1366), is evident from the answer given to the application from Rome for the arrears of thirty-three years of the tribute promised by King John, or rather from what must unmistakeably have been the drift of that answer. Its terms are unknown, but the demand ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward

... take him back. The grave was accordingly opened, and lo! he they had buried was found sucking his thumb; so they took him up instantly, placed him on a car, harnessed two oxen to it, and dragged him over heaths and bogs out to the sea; then the sand drift stopped, but the sand-hills have always remained. To all this Joergen listened eagerly; and he treasured this ancient legend in his memory, along with all that had happened during the pleasantest days of his childhood—the days ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen

... matter of too much tea or tobacco, no excitation of unusual incident or stimulating conversation. In fact, you turn in with the expectation of rather a good night's rest. Almost at once the little noises of the forest grow larger, blend in the hollow bigness of the first drowse; your thoughts drift idly back and forth between reality and ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White

... it were caught under precisely these conditions, could have done little more than drift down the channel. The boys resigned themselves to their fate. Now and again the fog shut down. Wild cries of sea-birds were about them. Now and then the leap of a great dolphin feeding in the tide splashed alongside, to startle them yet more. Each moment, as they knew, carried them ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough

... religious school of Knox; but he shrank instinctively from Calvinism with its consecration of rebellion, its assertion of human equality, its declaration of the responsibility of kings, while he detected and hated the republican drift of the thinkers of the Renascence. In later years James denounced the chronicles of both Buchanan and Knox as "infamous invectives," and would have had their readers punished "even as it were their authors risen again." His temper and purpose ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green

... of the world, is a stumbling-block unto some, and a rock of offence unto others. But yet again, consider that neither HE, nor any of God's doctrines, are so simply, and in their own true natural force and drift: for they beget no unbelief, they provoke to no wantonness, neither do they in the least encourage to impenitency; all this comes from that ignorance and wickedness that came by the fall: Wherefore it is by reason of that also, that they stumble, and fall, and grow weak, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... 1888. It is six weeks all but a day since we left London. We might have reached Hopedale three days ago, for we were within eighty miles. But a dense fog made it impossible to venture among the islands, where drift ice might be added to the dangers of rocks. So we have been driving to and fro for the last three days and nights over a high sea, studded with icebergs hidden from us by a thick white mist, which made everything wet and cold. It has been the least pleasant and ...
— With the Harmony to Labrador - Notes Of A Visit To The Moravian Mission Stations On The North-East - Coast Of Labrador • Benjamin La Trobe

... proceeded eighteen miles up the Saskatchewan. Its banks are low, covered with willows, and lined with drift timber. The surrounding country is swampy and intersected by the numerous arms of the river. After passing for twenty or thirty yards through the willow thicket on the banks of the stream we entered an extensive marsh, ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin

... sleighs made the first tracks, and it seemed almost a pity to sully the purity of the white, drift-covered road. ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe

... Here he directed them to spread their blankets, and lie down with the locks of their muskets between their knees, and the muzzle protected by a wooden stopper kept for the purpose. Nick enforced this command with an explanation of its advantages: the snow being dry, and not subject to drift, would soon cover them, keeping them quite warm, and would also conceal them at their ease. The porous quality of the ground would enable them to distinguish the distant approach of the enemy, and therefore they could snatch a few moments sleep in the snow. To prevent its being fatal or ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson

... her dressing-room. She had not undressed, but was standing by a window. She made no sign that she heard him enter, and he hesitated. Why try to talk things out with her? Why hurt her? Why not let things drift along? There was no hope of bettering them. One of two things he must do, either tear open the situation between them, ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... clean as air, with a fragrance like sustained music, a long rill of rolling white cloud. There was nothing in the world like the hawthorn. First it put out little bluish-green buds firm as elastic, and then came a myriad of white stars. And then the white drift turned a delicate red, dropped, and the scarlet haws came out, a tasteless bread-like fruit you shared with the birds, and the stone of it you could whip through your lips like ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne

... were most cordially welcomed. The officers[5] for the centennial year were chosen and a campaign[6] and congressional[7] committee appointed to take charge of affairs at Philadelphia and Washington. The resolutions show the general drift of the discussions:[8] ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... near at hand, F—— set to work to manufacture some sledges out of old packing-cases. Quite close to the house, a hill sloped smoothly for about 300 yards, at an angle of 40 degrees; along its side lay a perfectly level and deep drift, which did not show any signs of thawing for more than a month, and we resolved to use this as a natural Montagne Russe. The construction of a suitable sledge was the first difficulty to be surmounted, and ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker

... curious, and not without impressiveness: I should still be alive, intensely alive, but so scattered that I would not know it. I should not be dead—no, one cannot call it that—but I should be the next thing to it. And to think what centuries and ages and aeons would drift over me before the disintegration was finished, the last bone turned to gas and blown away! I wish I knew what it is going to feel like, to lie helpless such a weary, weary time, and see my faculties decay and depart, one by ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... bad as that?" The Duke was beginning to catch the drift of what Margaret was saying. She had no intention of telling him any more, however. Bitterly as she felt towards Barker, she would not allow herself the triumph of telling her friend she had refused to ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford

... Germany later in dealing with the Socialist movement makes a brief statement of the German situation essential. For this purpose it will be sufficient to quote a few of the principal statements of the excellent summary and analysis by William C. Dreher entitled "The German Drift towards Socialism": ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling

... subject was his choice and not hers. He had interrupted her warm assurances of personal devotion with a matter-of-fact inquiry. He found her, as he had already found several other latter-day women that night, less well informed than charming. Suddenly, struggling against the eddying drift of nearer melody, the song of the Revolt, the great song he had heard in the Hall, hoarse and massive, came beating down ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells

... of expressing it. The proof of the pudding is in the eating! The case is simply this. I desire immensely to be near Christina Light, and it is such a huge refreshment to find myself again desiring something, that I propose to drift with the current. As I say, she has waked me up, and it is possible something may come of it. She makes me feel as if I were alive again. This," and he glanced down at ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James

... very dark night. Perceiving this, and fearful that the dip of the paddles might be heard, le Bourdon ceased to urge his canoe through the water, telling the Chippewa to imitate his example, and let the boats drift. In consequence of this precaution the fugitives were still quite near the shore when, first, the dogs, then a party of their masters, came rushing down to the very spot whence the canoes had departed scarcely two minutes before. As no precautions were taken to conceal the advance of ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper

... did not quite understand such a move, harbored their suspicions, and among the doubting was Belle Shockley—shrewd and very much alive to the drift of things since her struggle with a cyclone. Had Belle, instead of Kate, been out at the ranch, things now coming along that Kate failed to see, would have ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman

... the current of air from the propeller had deceived me into thinking that I was driving dead into whatever breeze there was at that altitude. I discovered that it was blowing out of the east, therefore I headed a quarter into it, to overcome the drift, ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall

... is important as showing that some persons at the village had begun to express their disbelief of the witchcraft doctrine of Mr. Parris, "altogether denying it." The title and drift of the sermons in connection with the date, and his proceedings, the month before, against Samuel Nurse, Tarbell, and Cloyse, members of his church, give color to the idea that he was designing to have them ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... Herrings reach the breeding grounds that they sought, and the eggs are laid. The eggs of most sea-fish just drift on the surface of the ocean, at the mercy of their enemies, and washing here and there as the current sends them. The Herring's eggs sink to the bottom and, being rather ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith

... and the 24-horse-power engine was quite incapable of conquering so stiff a breeze, and making its way home again. After several gallant attempts to circle round the dome, Mr. Spencer gave up in despair, and let the monster air-ship drift with the wind over the northern suburbs of the city until a favourable landing-place near Barnet ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton

... precious self and for all who know her. She must be thoughtful and intelligently alert to the opportunities lying all about her ready to be fashioned into shining deeds. She must know that she is a precious craft on the sea of life and that she must not be permitted to drift from the harbor of youth and of home without a life pilot. And this pilot should be her own conscience, hedged about with the learning, the good breeding, the fine character that she herself, under proper guidance, must cultivate ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman

... late in November; and the snow lying four or five feet thick in the beaten road on the summit (in other parts the new drift was already deep), the air was piercing cold. But, the serenity of the night, and the grandeur of the road, with its impenetrable shadows, and deep glooms, and its sudden turns into the shining of the moon and its incessant ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens

... of his class is not from fur-getting. He is a lonely man, but a creature of action. He never seeks to avoid the Indian trails. Cautious and crafty he is, certainly, but he follows closely the westward drift of the red men, and when opportunity comes he spares not at all. He is a hunter of Indians, vengeance personified. He is the boy who hid beneath the brush-heap; the memory of that awful day and night is ever ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo

... continued, coming up to Burr and placing both hands on his shoulders, "I must reflect on all this; you broach momentous matter and you take me by surprise. No doubt you have considered the subject in all its phases. I have not. Tell me what you have learned, so far, in regard to the drift of ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable

... open to me: to let her drift, consuming my oil, in the hope that it would blow over; to run into a Spanish port; or to run for France, my destination, and, if I fell short of it, to yell for help by radio, and trust to luck that they could send out and ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various

... he has done what he did not perchance design.—Wondrous, that our will should ever oppose itself to the strong and uncontrollable tide of destiny—that we should strive with the stream when we might drift with the current! My brain will serve me to question it no farther—I would Schoefferbach were here—yet why?—I am on a course which the vessel can hold without a pilot.—Farewell, George of Douglas—I die true to thy father's house." He fell into convulsions at ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... measure, they should consider the state of the nation. The design of Wharton and Somers was to raise the earl of Orford once more to the head of the admiralty; and the tories, who did not perceive their drift, hoped, in the course of the inquiry, to fix the blame of all mismanagement upon the whig ministers. A day being fixed for this examination, the house received a petition from the sheriffs and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... a snow-drift to the knees, and when they had floundered through it for thirty yards or so Weston sank suddenly well over his waist. He flung himself forward, and with the help of Kinnaird wriggled clear, but when they looked down ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss

... near the water, and the lookout had probably seen the light over the top of the bank, as it could not be made out on the bridge. Christy expressed his belief that the sun would burn the fog off soon after it rose. No variation of the drift lead had been reported, and the Bronx was not even swinging at her anchor. For an hour longer entire silence was preserved on the deck, and the lookout made ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic

... the bridges, And crushing among the piles, In gray mottled masses the drift-ice passes, Like seaward-floating isles;— So Life shall return from its solstice, and burn In trappings of gold and blue, The world shall pass like a shattered glass, And the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... and the small rent it would have brought them through the summer months was not enough to warrant the expense of putting it in order. It looked neglected and shabby; it was almost buried in the dry over-growth of the untended garden. There was a drift of colourless leaves on the porch, the steps were deep in the dropped needles of the redwoods, the paths were quite lost to sight under a fine wash of winter mud, and the roses and lilacs were grown ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris

... have been obliged to insert two or three of these sentences between brackets, which are not found in the original, for the sake of showing the drift of the arguments of Philus. He himself was fully convinced that justice and morality were of eternal and immutable obligation, and that the best interests of all beings lie in their perpetual development and application. This eternity of Justice is beautifully illustrated by Montesquieu. ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... theologians differed rather widely, and when, upon several occasions, they met in Bok's office, on bringing in their different articles to go into the magazine, lively discussions ensued. Bok did not often get the drift of these discussions, but he was intensely interested in listening to the diverse views of the ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok

... 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 to ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... it provided no kind of solution for the problem of her existence. This was left to be settled, very much offhand, by a detached iceberg, which sank the ship in which Mary was emigrating. I thought that iceberg rather an evasion on the part of Miss THOMPSON. Perhaps however all this effect of drift is part of a subtle intention. I can certainly call the book admirably written, with restraint and an emotional sympathy that impressed me as the outcome probably of an intimate knowledge of the scenes and persons described. Whether her lethargy is "typical" or ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 11, 1919 • Various

... esteemed official of the town. Incidentally he poetized in the inflated and ornate style which has given the so-called second Silesian school its evil reputation. His work is decidedly vacuous as poetry, but has its interest as indicating the literary drift of the age of puffs, powder, and pedantry. The selections follow Bobertag's edition in Krschner's ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas

... are abundant in Professor L. T. Townsend's "Art of Speech," which, as examples, are all the better for not being of that exaggerated description sometimes met within the newspapers. Vol. i, p. 131: "Very often adverbs, prepositions, and relatives drift so far from their moorings as to lose themselves, or make attachments where they do not belong." Again, p. 135: "Every law of speech enforces the statement that there is no excuse for such inflated and defective style. [Such style!] ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)

... understood words generally relate to some action which the dog is accustomed to perform, yet there are instances so well attested that they deserve credit, which seem to show that the creatures can get some sense of the drift of conversation even when it is carried on by persons with whom they are not familiar and does not clearly ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... pitiful even than this drift back were scenes which followed. As I turned back into the town I saw thousands of boys who had been called to the colors and had been brought up from the country to be sent forward to ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various

... that was the best of all; for they liked nothing so well as to look up at the white flakes falling fast and thick, like down frown the breasts of millions of white birds, and to see how smooth and deep the drift was, and to listen to the hush ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey

... connected land of the Eastern hemisphere, the narrow Malacca Strait being all that has kept marsupials and mammals apart, though the separating power has been increased by the rapid current setting through. This has decreased the chance of creatures carried to sea on drift-wood or uprooted trees getting safely over to such a degree that apparently none have survived; for, had they done so, we may be certain that the mammals, with the advantage their young have over ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor

... mention a small observation, made by me two or three years ago, near Southampton, but not followed out, as I have no strength for excursions. I need say nothing about the character of the drift there (which includes palaeolithic celts), for you have described its essential features in a few words at page 506. It covers the whole country [in an] even plain-like surface, almost irrespective of the present outline ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin

... to the road they saw a short distance from them an object in the snow and as they drew nearer it proved to be a little fellow, deep in a snow drift. His hands were blue with the cold and as Father Brown picked him up in his arms he tried to speak, ...
— Christmas Holidays at Merryvale - The Merryvale Boys • Alice Hale Burnett

... his drift yet, and thinking it always desirable for the sake of peace and quietness to be on the lawyer's side, I said I thought so too. Mr. Franklin ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins

... directness; the life of a scene created simply is its simplicity. And simplicity, directness, impetus, emotion, nature fall out of the trailing, loose, long dialogue, like fish from the loose meshes of a net—they fall out, they drift ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell

... health. But she had died in a few months, and he, perhaps because the flooding sunshine and the brilliant skies of the southwestern plains reminded him of the home of his youth, stayed on and on, went into business, and became one of the prominent citizens of the town. The leisurely, let-things-drift spirit of the region, which could be so easily stirred to violent storms and ardent enthusiasms, was near akin to his own volatile nature. Nobody in the town could be more quickly and more thoroughly convinced by first appearances than ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly

... Jews, heavily oppressed and persecuted though they were, in the creation of national epics and romances of chivalry from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century. German Jews, being more than is generally recognized diligent readers of the poets, were well acquainted with the drift of mediaeval poetry, and to this familiarity a new department of Jewish literature owed its rise and development. It is said that a Hebrew version of the Arthurian cycle was made as early as the thirteenth century, and at the end of the period we run across epic poems on Bible characters, ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles

... hear no sound; the swell is strong; Though the wind hath fallen, they drift along, Till the vessel strikes with a shivering shock,— "O Christ! it is ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... city lies, Beneath its drift of smoke; And ah! with what delighted eyes I turn to ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson

... building, increasing the danger from fire, or, floating off, they obstruct the river. This was not only a saw-mill, but a grist-mill, then. The inhabitants of Oldtown, Stillwater, and Bangor cannot suffer for want of kindling-stuff, surely. Some get their living exclusively by picking up the drift-wood and selling it by the cord in the winter. In one place I saw where an Irishman, who keeps a team and a man for the purpose, had covered the shore for a long distance with regular piles, and I was told that he had sold twelve ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various

... 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

... this coterie of dark spirits, Quebec became the scene of a profligacy 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. ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan

... such an enormously different level that conversation on them was merely waste of time. It was as if a man upon a cliff started a dissertation with another in a boat lying on the sea beneath. Half the excellent arguments would drift away upon the wind, lost, rendered nil by the mere difference of level in the two planes. The two main chains that bound my whole psychological system—self-control and self-respect—were entirely absent in him. He looked at ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross

... side of the island. Some of the people eat cats, which I could not bring myself to, and declared they were sweet nourishing food. When the weather allowed us to fish, we were delivered from these hardships; but some of our mischievous crew set the boat a-drift, so that she was lost: after which we contrived wicker boats, covered with sea-lions skins, which did well enough near shore, but we durst not venture in them out into the bay, and consequently were worse provided with fish than we might otherwise ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr

... and Memory Rejoice and Men Will Seek You Loves Language Love's Impatience The Common Lot Love Triumphant Cool, Verdant Vales The Old Delight that We Cast Away They Drift Down the Hall Together Answered But One A June Rose I Love Thee; Thee Alone The Duet Happiest Days in Our Lives A Dream Delilah The Milky Way Time and Love Desolation Tired of the Oft-read Story From the Grave Silver Bell in Steeple The ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... maneuvered back together, and locking arms so they would not drift apart, scanned the void around them for Connel. Suddenly Tom jerked free. ...
— Sabotage in Space • Carey Rockwell

... was not deceived in her opinion: he went up to her again at the staircase, and, as they were improvided with a male attendant, insisted upon squiring the ladies to their lodgings. Emilia saw his drift, which was no other than to know where she lived; and though she approved of his contrivance, thought it was incumbent upon her, for the support of her own dignity, to decline the chivalry; she therefore thanked him for his polite offer, but would by no means consent to his giving himself such ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... Gentleman's Magazine, with whom he had previously corresponded, and contributed to the pages of the magazine, earning thereby a meagre livelihood, eking out his means by reporting Parliamentary debates in terms which expressed the drift of them, but in his own pompous language; in 1740 he published a poem entitled the "Vanity of Human Wishes," and about the same time commenced his world-famous Dictionary, which was Published in 1755, "a great, solid, square-built edifice, finished, symmetrically complete, the best of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... to describe the effect of so instantaneous a change upon us. The boats were allowed to drift along at pleasure, and such was the force with which we had been shot out of the Morumbidgee, that we were carried nearly to the bank opposite its embouchure, whilst we continued to gaze in silent astonishment on the capacious channel we had entered; and when we looked for that by which ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... building, until at last only Tomasini (the Prince's favourite violinist) and Haydn remained. Finally, Tomasini blew out his candle, bowed to the Prince, and retreated, and as Haydn prepared to follow his example, the Prince's eyes were opened to their drift. Good-humouredly regarding the whole thing in the light of a joke, he exclaimed, 'If all go, we may as well go too!' and immediately quitting the theatre, he gave directions for the departure of ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham

... he composed the "Guardian," in which Phillips's Pastorals were insidiously preferred to his own. Pope sent this ironical, panegyrical criticism on Phillips anonymously to the "Guardian," and Steele not perceiving the drift, hesitated to publish it, till Pope advised it. Addison detected it. I doubt whether we have discovered all the supercheries of this kind. After writing the finest works of genius, he was busily employed in attracting the public attention to them. In the antithesis of his character, he ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... she has her eyes on his particular portion of it. She insists on making it a test case. She wanted to know what you had done to me; and before I could guess her drift I blundered ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton

... number, written on a more diffuse principle. If you miss one line you find the idea repeated or persisting in the next. It is quite possible to derive pleasure from the Faerie Queene by attending to the leading words, and, for the rest, floating onward on the melody. You can catch the drift with ease. The stream circles in so many eddies that to follow it laboriously throughout its course is felt to be hardly necessary: miss it once and you can often join it again at very near the ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh

... above with its hot and cold shower-bath, and the Chinaman's promise, thanks to the proximity of Irapuato, of "stlaybelly pie." Though the American force numbered several of those fruitless individuals that drift in and out of all mining communities, it was on the whole of rather high caliber. Besides "Sully the Pug," a mere human animal, hairy and muscular as a bear, and two "Texicans," as those born in the States of some Mexican blood ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck

... gentlemen, and the girls ladies in wonderful toilets. As for herself and Joe, hidden away in a bureau drawer Esther had a poster of one of Frohman's plays. It represented a bride and groom standing together in a drift ...
— Different Girls • Various

... alone. Beneath them, on the shore, squatted the cub, watching its northern home drift slowly away; once it made as if it would have plunged into the waves and followed it, but, seeming to change its mind, ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis

... January last, on my road to Ayrshire, I had put up at Bailie Whigham's, in Sanquhar, the only tolerable inn in the place. The frost was keen, and the grim evening and howling wind were ushering in a night of snow and drift. My horse and I were both much fatigued with the labours of the day, and just as my friend the Bailie and I were bidding defiance to the storm, over a smoking bowl, in wheels the funeral pageantry of the late great Mrs. ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... passed, during which but little progress was made. The schooner seemed rather to drift than to sail. Whenever a slight breeze would arise, it was sure to be adverse, and was not of long duration. Then a calm would follow, and the schooner would lie idle upon the bosom of ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille

... which they themselves must escape. The small men of this country are not deluded, and not all of the big business men of this country are deluded. Some men who have been led into wrong practices, who have been led into the practices of monopoly, because that seemed to be the drift and inevitable method of supremacy, are just as ready as we are to turn about and adopt the process of freedom. For American hearts beat in a lot of these men, just as they beat under our jackets. They will be as ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson

... disagreeable discovery you may make by an easy manner and remarks such as are ready at hand to a man of society. As we are unable to detail the minutiae of this subject we leave them entirely to the sagacity of the reader, who must by this time have perceived the drift of our investigation, as well as the extent of this science which begins at the analysis of glances and ends in the direction of such movements as contempt may inspire in a great toe hidden under the satin of a lady's slipper or the leather ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... Versailles and Florence, or inexpensive watering-places where their meagre incomes become affluence by contrast. The first thought on dropping in on such a settlement is, "How in the world did these people ever drift here?" It is simple enough and generally comes ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory

... wood in the Island is to a great extent overcome by the inhabitants collecting their fuel from the Gulf Stream, which brings drift wood in large quantities from Mexico, Virginia, the Caroline Islands, and ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... allowing Nature centuries of time to make new shores, it would, of course, be full only a month or two in the spring, when the snow is melting fast; then it would be gradually drained, exposing the slimy sides of the basin and shallower parts of the bottom, with the gathered drift and waste, death and decay of the upper basins, caught here instead of being swept on to decent natural burial along the banks of the river or in the sea. Thus the Hetch Hetchy dam-lake would be only a rough imitation of a natural lake for ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir

... of the core. The gears are each tested in this way at several points on the teeth and elsewhere, the scrap gear being also subjected to the test. Finally, the scrap gear is securely clamped in the straightening press shown in Fig. 57. With a 3-1/2-lb. hammer and a suitable hollow-ended drift manipulated by one of Sandow's understudies, teeth are broken out of the scrap gear at various points. These give a record confirming the center-punch tests, which, if the angle of the center punch is kept at ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin

... were delivered 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 had he been ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle

... and the drift is slowly from the coupon to the registered form, and so to an increase of the ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell

... rock-rimmed heights to the wild ravines below, Near and far-off, the limitless wings of the tempest hurl and go In roaring gusts that plunge through the cracking forest, and lull, and lift, All day without stint and all night long with the sweep of the hissing drift. But winter shall pass ere long with its hills of snow and its fettered dreams, And the forest shall glimmer with living gold, and chime with the gushing of streams; Millions of little points of plants shall prick through its matted floor, And the wind-flower lift ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman

... the reader that I am most conscientiously employed upon my subject; and I should have thought every one would have seen this: however, since the objection is made, I may be allowed to pause awhile, and show distinctly the drift of what I have been saying, before I go farther. What has this to do with my subject! why, the question of the site is the very first that comes into consideration, when a Stadium Generale is contemplated; ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... it's like this," said the hairy little man; "they're kind o' suspicious nacherly of the white man—they can't understand what he says, and they don't get his drift always. They make mistakes that way, but they mean all right. Of course they have young plug-uglies amongst 'em jest the same as 'mongst any other c'munity, but the majority of 'em druther be peaceful with their neighbors. What makes 'em wildest is seein' the buffalo killed ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland

... submerged, as to the streets and ground floors of the houses. At Shipping Port, one of these suburbs, I saw the women and children clustering in the up-stairs room, while the men were going about in punts and wherries, collecting drift-wood from the river for their winter's firing. In some places bedding and furniture had been brought over to the high ground, and the women were sitting, guarding their little property. That village, amid the waters, was a sad sight to see; but I heard no complaints. There was ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope

... drift out in the deserts of doubt, And some who in brutishness wallow; There are others, I know, who in piety go Because of a Heaven to follow. But to labour with zest, and to give of your best, For the sweetness and joy of the giving; To help folks along with a hand and a song; Why, there's the real ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service

... typical of the enduring resentment which was left behind that when, after the Jameson raid, it seemed that the leaders of that ill-fated venture might be hanged, the beam was actually brought from a farmhouse at Cookhouse Drift to Pretoria, that the Englishmen might die as the Dutchmen had died in 1816. Slagter's Nek marked the dividing of the ways between the British Government and ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle

... persons immediately concerned as an eccentric mistake. Even Colonel Hitchcock, to whom Louise was almost infallible, could not trust himself to discuss with her, her decision to marry Dr. Sommers. It was all a sign of the irrational drift of things that seemed to thwart his energetic, honorable life. Even Sommers's attitude in the frank talk the two men had about the marriage offended the old merchant. Sommers had met his distant references to money matters by saying bluntly that he and Louise had decided it would be ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... all are laid asleep: One alone looks out o'er the snow-wreaths deep, Watching every cloud, dreading every breeze That whirls the wildering drift ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair

... There was a general drift towards the supper room. But Milly hesitated. She had promised Hazel to join her after the speaking and be introduced to some of the leaders,—especially to the pretty young woman who had denounced Man,—in the hope that a paid position ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick

... sigh of content. After all, it was so delightful to drift like this with some one infinitely stronger to take the responsibility for everything. They drove to a large and popular restaurant close at hand, where Arnold ordered the dinner, with frequent corrections ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... such a small thing, a tag of ragged stuff looped about a length of splintered sapling. Ross climbed stiffly over the welter of drift caught on the sand spit and pulled it loose, recognizing the string even before he touched it. That square knot was of McNeil's tying, and as Murdock sat down weakly in the sand and mud, nervously fingering the twisted cord, staring vacantly at the ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton

... of manhood and womanhood, fruitful or fruitless as the case may be; on to the often frigid, lonely shores of old age, snow-crowned and ice-veined; and individual destinies seem to resemble the tangled drift on those broad gulf billows, strewn on barren beaches, stranded upon icebergs, some to be scorched under equatorial heats, some to perish by polar perils; a few to take root and flourish, building imperishable ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss

... of these, slipping and splashing to their knees, aided here and there by a bit of half decayed log or drift-wood, they got across and scrambled up the opposite bank just as Farmer Ellison, out of breath, appeared on ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith

... in the end he took some of the Ofaera land and the three creeks Byrgisvik, Kolbeinsvik, and Kaldbaksvik as far as Kaldbak's Cliff. Afterwards Eirik gave him Veidileysa with Reykjarfjord and the outer part of Reykjanes on that side. Nothing was settled about the drift which came to the coast, because there was so much of it that every one could have what he wanted. Onund made his home in Kaldbak and had a large household. His property increased and he had another house in Reykjarfjord. Kolbeinn lived ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown

... process very much more indirect even than that of the Church, this decentralization and drift also worked against the slave-state of antiquity. The localism did indeed produce that choice of territorial chieftains which came to be called Feudalism, and of which we shall speak later. But the direct possession of man by man the same localism tended to destroy; though this negative influence ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton

... the soil in the valley of the Genesee. The Onondaga Salt Group, and other contiguous strata, which extend into Canada West, form soils of extraordinary capacity for growing wheat. Indeed, the rocks and "drift" of a district give character to its ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... happily obsolete statecraft, insisted on the expensive toy of a southern and unpractical line, until our representatives, harassed by the problem how to gratify her without incurring the contempt of the financial world, gave over to the drift of events the settlement of their country's chief commercial question. We are now in a position to decide coolly; no entangling alliances with a dead-weight social system bias our plain judgment of practical pros ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... never losing its polarity, that he would reach port whether he made sail or not, whether he minded his helm or not. He knew he couldn't drift into port. With waterlogged and becalmed Christians or those who heaved to crafts expecting to drift to the celestial heaven, he had but little fellowship. Such he would cause to shake out reefs and have yards well trimmed to catch every breeze from ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock

... leaped clear of the roadbed, and he struck almost to the knees in a drift of sand. Otherwise, he might well have broken his legs with that foolhardy chance. As it was, the fall whirled him over and over, and by the time he had picked himself up the lighted caboose of the train was rocking past him. Donnegan watched it grow ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand

... 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

... millions of sparkling atoms, rendered light by the burning sun of the tropic, have been lifted on the wings of the wind, and thrown into hills and ridges hundreds of feet in height, and trending in every direction like the wreaths of a great snow-drift. I advance with difficulty over these naked ridges, where no vegetation finds nourishment in the inorganic heap. I drag myself wearily along, sinking deeply at every step. I climb sand-hills of strange and fantastic shapes, cones, and domes, and roof-like ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid

... either," commented the western lad. "I begin to see your drift, as the wind said to the snowstorm. You mean to build a sort of high platform up ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker

... wood, and fourteen miles to get to the mainland, and a head-wind. What was to be done? By the kindly light of day we discovered that our position was not so distressing as we had at first imagined. A little way over the rocks was a shore with drift-wood lying on it, our cook was despatched with the frying-pan and his bag of flour, and after all ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson

... said Eglantine, as usual mistaking the drift of the argument. "I'll bail no man! If you're in difficulties, I think you had better go to your senior partner, Mr Woolsey." And Eglantine's cowardly little soul was filled with a savage satisfaction to think that his enemy was in distress, and actually obliged ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray

... men begin to gather together the pieces of drift-wood that the peaceful waves throw up on to the shore. They are evidently planning to make a raft; but as one of them casts his lazy eyes in the direction in which ours were at first thrown, he exclaims with evident ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... were cast off from the island. The jangada, again started on the river, began to drift off diagonally. Araujo, cleverly profiting by the bendings of the current, which were due to the projections of the banks, and assisted by the long poles of his crew, succeeded in working the immense ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne

... diver rarely escaped without injury of some kind. With regard to the ordinary shark, however, our divers actually sought them. Their method of capturing them was almost incredible in its simplicity and daring. Three or four of our divers would go out in a boat and allow themselves to drift into a big school of sharks. Then one man, possessed of more nerve than the rest, would bend over the side and smartly prick the first one he came across with a spear taken out for the purpose. The moment he had succeeded in this the other ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont

... indeed an adventure: what kind of surface was it, and how about these beastly crevasses of which we had read so much? Scott was ahead, and so far as we could see there was nothing but the same level of ice all round—when suddenly he was above us, walking up the sloping and quite invisible drift. A minute after and our ponies and sledges were up and over the tide crack, and beneath us soft and yielding snow, very different from the hard wind-swept surface of the frozen sea, which we had just left. Really it was rather prosaic and a tame entrance. But the Barrier is a tricky place, and ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... upon the bed, and when Grizzie had done all that custom required, left it covered with a sheet, dead in the room where it dared not sleep, a mound cold and white as any snow-wreath outside. It looked as if Winter had forced his way into the house, and left this one drift, in signal of his capture. Grizzie went about her duties, and the laird back to ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... poetic interpreter of the thought of the Victorian age. Huxley called him "the first poet since Lucretius who understood the drift of science." In these four lines from The Princess, Tennyson gives the evolutionary history of the world, from nebula ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... to the point of any Cabinet member's advocacy of change, but in a restlessness at the slow development of a solution in America. Russell was beginning to think, at least, of recognition of the Confederacy. This was clear to Lyons who, though against such recognition, had understood the drift, if Schleiden is to be trusted, of Ministerial opinion. Schleiden reported on December 31 that Lyons had expressed to him much pleasure at the peaceful conclusion of the Trent affair, and had added, ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams

... than anybody could have anticipated. The sky, in the middle of the afternoon, became clouded, the sun was quickly hidden, and a cold blast arose, quickly strengthening into a regular blow. The Ark began to drift as the rising ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss

... lives in this lake, and what brings you here yourself?" "Yes!" responded the bird; "the Prince of Serpents lives here, and I am watching to see whether the obiquadj of Manabozho's grandson will not drift ashore, for he was killed by the serpents last spring. But are you not Manabozho himself?" "No," he answered, with his usual deceit; "how do you think he could get to this place? But tell me, do the serpents ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft

... drift an' snaw, And with it news frae the bridal-ha', That death had been busy, and blood was spilt, May Heaven ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 533, Saturday, February 11, 1832. • Various

... when it seemed utter folly to talk about the end of competition. He analyzed the situation, pointed to the process of big capitalists crushing out the little capitalists, the union of big capitalists, and the inevitable drift toward monopoly. He predicted that the process would continue until the whole industry, the main agencies of production and distribution at any rate, would be centralized in a few great monopolies, controlled by a very small handful ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo

... water flowed out from the lake, its bed strewn with tumbled rocks and easy enough to cross, the water being less in volume by reason of the dry weather. All at once I stopped, for amid these rocks and boulders I saw caught all manner of drift, as sticks and bushes, branches and the like, washed down by the current and which, all tangled and twisted together, choked this narrow defile, forming a kind of barrier against the current. Now as I gazed at this, ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol

... Pohyola, From the copper-bearing mountain. Where the miracle lies anchored." Ilmarinen thus made answer: "By the land the way is safer, Lempo travels on the ocean, Ghastly Death upon his shoulder; On the sea the waves will drift us, And the storm-winds wreck our vessel; Then our bands must do the rowing, And our feet must steer us homeward." Spake the ancient Wainamoinen: "Safe indeed by land to journey, But the way is rough and trying, Long the road and full of turnings; Lovely is the ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.

... L40 a year for four years," said I, understanding very imperfectly the drift of these remarks, but pleased at least to find I had succeeded in ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed

... themselves "stewards of the Lord and recipients of the Holy Ghost." In fact, the stream of tendency towards Naturalism, the course of which I have briefly traced, has, of late years, flowed so strongly, that even the Churches have begun, I dare not say to drift, but, at any rate, to swing at their moorings. Within the pale of the Anglican establishment, I venture to doubt, whether, at this moment, there are as many thorough-going defenders of "plenary inspiration" as there were timid questioners of that doctrine, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... them in English land? I loved the Cock of Capperlaw; the Kerrs had not an honester man in their clan, and they have had men that might have been a pattern to the Border—men that would not have lifted under twenty cows at once, and would have held themselves dishonoured if they had taken a drift of sheep, or the like, but always managed their raids in full credit and honour.—But see, his worship halts, and we are close by the bridge. Ride up—ride up—we must have ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... windows was an overgrown garden, a snow-covered tree lay prone on the earth; further off were snow-clad fields, the valley and the forest. Sky and air were pale and transparent, and the sun was hidden behind a drift of fleecy ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak

... so I was unable to take action myself. With deep interest I watched the animal swim and with regret that our fresh meat was so fortunate, for it was two-thirds of the way across, before a rifle cracked. The deer's efforts ceased instantly and she began to drift down with the current. We ran our boat out and hauled the carcass on board. At the same time as we were being carried down by the swift current we got a view of the other side of the island where Cap. up ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... in hand With the carles they stand. But ere to the measure the fiddles strike up, And the elders yet treasure the last of the cup, There stand they a-hearkening the blast from the lift, And e'en night is a-darkening more under the drift. ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris

... could speak no English, he understood it sufficiently to appreciate the drift of the youth's words, even though he had failed to comprehend the meaning of the angry frown and the glittering knife. But, however much he might have wished to reply to the question, Henry took care to render the attempt impossible, by compressing his windpipe until he became ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne

... mattress, the bedstead, just above your head, makes a sort of jump; while every time the body succeeds in struggling out again, you are aware by the thud upon the floor. After a time the struggle wanes, or maybe the bed collapses; and you drift back into sleep. But the next moment, or what seems to be the next moment, you again open your eyes under the consciousness of a presence. The door is being held ajar, and four solemn faces, piled one on top of the other, are peering at you, as though you were some natural ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome

... state is perhaps the best physical analogy for that mental one in which our hero now found himself. The real crises was over; he had managed to pass through the eye of the storm, and drift for the present at least into the skirts of it, where he lay rolling under bare poles, comparatively safe, but without any power as yet to get the ship well in hand, and make her obey her helm. The storm might break over him again at any minute, and would ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... "English—English as I am; leastways Englisher, bein' Amurrican-born myself. Overtook her et Hottentot Drift. Thort I'd spur on an' tell yer. We'd do wi' a clean-up, some ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various



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