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Drift   Listen
verb
Drift  v. t.  
1.
To drive or carry, as currents do a floating body.
2.
To drive into heaps; as, a current of wind drifts snow or sand.
3.
(Mach.) To enlarge or shape, as a hole, with a drift.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Drift" Quotes from Famous Books



... that unfortunate territory. If you choose to repeal the laws of any territory conferring the right of suffrage upon women you have the power in congress to do it; but there are no measures introduced here and none advocated in that direction. The whole drift of this movement is in the other direction. This committee is sought to be raised either for the accommodation of some senator who wants a chairmanship and a clerk, or it is sought to be raised for the purpose of encouraging a raid on the laws and traditions of this ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... shall bring up the ambulances. He returns to his own land where he soon finds that he is not of much account. After a great war there may be a period of evanescent patronage; or a deed of Dargai, Rorke's Drift, or Balaklava may have temporarily thrilled the audience into Music Hall enthusiasm; but he is not greatly impressed, and stoically reflects that like the battle, the starvation, and the Field Hospital it is "all in the day's work" and ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited

... lowly earth, upon which they bother And beg and wrangle for rank and gift, I mix the races among each other, I lay the centuries, drift on drift. Forlorn and friendless Exists no pleasure; In shadows endless No pomp, or treasure. Their owners left them when on came night— Now others claim ...
— The Angel of Death • Johan Olof Wallin

... and tide-drift Of the streaming hosts a-wing! Breast of scarlet, throat of yellow, Raucous challenge, wooings mellow— Every migrant is my fellow, Making northward with the spring. Loose me in the urge and tide-drift Of the ...
— Songs from Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey

... profound melancholy. For the first time in his life, the once stout and active Wapaw had reached the point of giving way to despair. A wide open plain stretched out before him. The cold wind was howling wildly across it, driving the keen snow-drift before it in whirling clouds. Even a strong man might have shrunk from exposing himself on such a plain and to such a blast on that bitter arctic day. Wapaw felt that, in his case, to cross it would be certain death; so, with the calm philosophy of a Red ...
— Silver Lake • R.M. Ballantyne

... took the salute from the aeroplanes. There was a cross-wind, so that the symmetry of the spectacle was a little marred by the crab-like motion of the aeroplanes, which had to keep their noses some points into the wind to allow for drift. ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh

... and the Beast, Pride and Humility, Bluebeard and Fatima, Prose and Poetry, Riches and Poverty, Youth and Crabbed Age— Oh, sorrowful procession! All so wretched, when perhaps all might have been so happy if they had only paired differently! I halted a moment to let the weird shapes drift by. As the last of the train melted into the darkness, my vagabond fancy went wandering back to the theatre and the play I had seen—Romeo and Juliet. Taking a lighter tint, but still of the same ...
— A Midnight Fantasy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... impossible 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 ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... has its periods of activity and life, like the great world outside. At three or four o'clock, in the gray dawn, fishermen appear, singly, or two by two; there is often then a failure of wind, and they have to get out to sea by heavy rowing or by the drift of the tide. Then there is silence for some hours, and when the world awakes the cove is nearly deserted. At seven o'clock begins the life of the shop. Amateur fishermen appear,—boarders from New York or ...
— By The Sea - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin

... sea also comes health. The breezes that blow from it and the fogs that drift down over the ridges combine to give San Francisco a paradoxical climate—winters as warm as those in the south and summers that are matchless for ...
— Fascinating San Francisco • Fred Brandt and Andrew Y. Wood

... objectionable: e.g. "Careless by nature, and too much engaged with business to think of the morrow, spoiled by a long-established liberty and a fabulous prosperity, having for many generations forgotten the scourge of war, we allow ourselves to drift on without taking heed of the signs of the times." The remedy is to convert the participle into a verb depending on a conjunction: "Because we are by nature careless, &c.;" or to convert the participle into a verb co-ordinate with the principal verb, e.g. "We are by nature careless, &c., and ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott

... lyric drama by the same composer, "Tote Augen" (under which title a casual reader would never suspect that a Biblical subject was lurking), call for a little attention because of their indication of a possible drift which future dramatists may ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... once-loved human forms, Grown hideous and forgotten, left alone, But every agony my heart has known,— The new-born trusts that died, the drift ...
— Along the Shore • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... they'll get one on the mouth!" said Peter, disdainfully. And then the steamer began to move; the last cheers were given from the outer breakwater. Pelle could have thrown himself into the sea; he was burning with desire to turn his back on it all. And then he let himself drift with the crowd from the harbor to the circus-ground. On the way he heard a few words of a conversation which made his ears burn. Two townsmen were walking ahead ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... the water for a surprising length of time. An instance is recorded in strong proof of this, which occurred at Kingsland upon James river in Virginia, where tobacco, which had been carried off by the great land floods in 1771, was found in a large raft of drift wood in which it had lodged when the warehouses at Richmond were swept away by the overflowing of the freshets; an inundation which had happened about twenty years before this ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... sucking motion, which must have propelled it through the water, and it made quite fair progress. Around every one of these strange jellyfish was a little school of tiny minnows, as clear-colored as crystals. These all swam on in the same direction as the drift of ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey

... seemed an unthinkable desecration at which his flesh crawled. He vainly argued with himself that this was no sudden loss which had struck his life barren, but one to which he had already shaped his resignation. All that self-schooling had been swept away as fiercely as fragments of drift in the freshet of news that came with her letter. She had not exiled him but had asked him to return. She had spoken of a bitterness born of disappointment, which she had conquered: a bitterness for which he was responsible. Stark pictures shaped themselves across his brooding: pictures of the ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck

... to the most vital question of all, the greatest of our concerns: Could there be built in the world a durable structure of security, a lasting peace for all the nations, or would we drift, as after World War I, toward another terrible disaster—a disaster which this time might be the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Harry S. Truman • Harry S. Truman

... No drift or dream of passing bell, Dying afar in twilight dell, Hath any heard, Whose chimes have stirred More yearning ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter

... lang is the travel to the bonnie Pier o' Leith, Oh! dreich it is to gang on foot wi' the snaw drift in the teeth! And oh, the cauld wind froze the tear that gather'd in my e'e, When I gaed there to see my luve ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... in its inception; men who, while ruling under the name of a republic, really at heart disliked it, and were, in fact, only enduring it as a temporary expedient on the road to something better. And so the republic drifted. There are times when it is well to drift; and in this case it has ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele

... Squatooks, the exile's ribs were well encased in fat. But that fortunate condition was not to last long. When the giant winds, laden with snow and Arctic cold, thundered and shrieked about the peak of Sugar Loaf, and in the loud darkness strange shapes of drift rode down the blast, he slept snugly enough in the narrow depths of his den. But the essential winter lore of his kind he had not learned. He had not learned to sleep away the time of storm and famine. As for instinct, it failed him altogether in this emergency. During ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts

... sure I did not want to drift down the stream with copper kettles. I only wanted to be with Tom, to see England with him, to enjoy Dr. Johnson's haunts, to go to the "Cheddar Cheese" and the Strand, to Waterloo Bridge, and down the road the Romans built before England ...
— The Log-Cabin Lady, An Anonymous Autobiography • Unknown

... white sediments of the sea draw themselves, in process of time, into smooth knots of sphered symmetry; burdened and strained under increase of pressure, they pass into a nascent marble; scorched by fervent heat, they brighten and blanch into the snowy rock of Paros and Carrara. The dark drift of the inland river, or stagnant slime of inland pool and lake, divides, or resolves itself as it dries, into layers of its several elements; slowly purifying each by the patient withdrawal of it from the anarchy of the ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin

... intermission at short range. They ceased only when the last cartridge was spent, and every man was weary with labor. They took no prizes, and they attempted to take none. Their orders were to sink and destroy. They saw three great galleons go down, and three more drift toward the sands, where ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot

... marine species include the manatee, seals, sea lions, turtles, and whales; drift net fishing is hastening the decline of fish stocks and contributing to international disputes; municipal sludge pollution off eastern US, southern Brazil, and eastern Argentina; oil pollution in Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico, Lake Maracaibo, Mediterranean Sea, ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... studio Mr. D'Arcy found me, believe that I had been super-naturally sent to him? I shuddered as a thousand dreadful thoughts flowed into my mind. "Mr. D'Arcy," I said to myself, "must know more than he has told me." Then, of course, came thoughts about you. I wondered why you had allowed me to drift away from you in this manner. True, I was probably removed from Raxton immediately after my illness, when you were very ill, as I knew; but then ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... battalions nearest the flanks kept 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

... these stormes, the winds were so fierce and the seas so high, as the ship could not bear a knot of sail, but was forced to hull drift under bare poles for divers days together. A succession of strong westerly gales. In one of the heaviest storms, while lying at hull, [hove to D.W.] a lusty young man, one of the passengers, John Howland by name, ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames

... Italian book to becalm his fever may be safely presumed to know that language. In or about 1569 when Arias Montano read aloud the anonymous Italian work which disturbed Zuniga's scrupulous conscience, Luis de Leon, though of course able to catch the author's drift, did not really know Italian at that time.[171] This deficiency had been made good, as he gives us to understand, previous to March 12, 1573—twenty eight months, or more, before Luis de Leon asked that his copy of Le prose dil Bembo should be ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly

... took place near the spot in which they are found, about 120 years ago; for, as the bodies of the slain were interred on the sea-shore, their skeletons may have been subsequently covered by sand-drift, which has since consolidated into limestone. Dr. Moultrie, of the Medical College, Charleston, South Carolina, U.S., is, however, of opinion that these bones did not belong to individuals of the Carib tribe, but of the Peruvian race, or ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt

... the verge of the precipice, he saw the animal despite the gathering shadows. The horse was quite safe, having doubtless slipped down in the soft densities of a great drift dislodged from the crevice by his own weight. His pack was still on his back, now piled twice as high with snow. He lifted his arched neck as he sprang about with undiminished activity, vainly seeking to ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock

... calm, uneventful life of the convent, of London and its gayeties, of the Massachusetts coast with its gray fogs and open, drift-wood fires, came the return to her own country. There, with her father, she rode over his plantations among the wild cattle, or with her mother and sister sat in the patio and read novels in three languages, or sleepily watched the shadow of the ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis

... The drift of this design was, that they who employed them might by this means get a full account what number of Dissenters' meetings, of every sort, there were in each county, and where kept; what number of persons frequented them, and of what rank; who amongst them were persons of estate, ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood

... quarter-boat and I let her drift till maybe I am a quarter of a mile away, and then I out oars and heads her in for where I can see the Hattie's riding light. I comes alongside. Archie's shape looms up over the rail. 'Hi-i!' he yells, ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly

... was led by a wrinkled old cow, wise beyond belief. Scrag we called her. She would take the herd in to the bedding-ground by the river, to a landing-point on the opposite side, never twice the same, and drift noiselessly through the canebrake, choosing blowy hours when the swish of cane over woolly backs was like the run of the wind. Days when the marsh would be full of tapirs wallowing and wild pig rootling and fighting, there might be hundreds feeding within sound of you and not a hint of it except ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al

... the pain of toil, or some peasant woman harder of heart than the oxen in her yoke, had left it there to drift away to death, not reckoning for the inward ripple of the current or the toughness of the ...
— Bebee • Ouida

... fact, keep just one perfect sample, and let all the rest placidly drift back to nothingness? Or, better, why not take all the goodness that there is in all the men and women that ever were and melt it all down into one ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane

... to 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 of the ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen

... me there's nought I would not leave For the good Devon land, Whose orchards down the echoing cleeve Bedewed with spray-drift stand, And hardly bear the red fruit up That shall be next ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt

... to gain them entirely. They communicated everything to M. de Chartres, who quietly looked on, allowed things to take their course, and, when he believed the right moment had arrived, disclosed all he had learnt to Madame de Maintenon. She was strangely surprised when she saw the extraordinary drift of the new doctrine. Troubled and uncertain, she consulted with M. de Cambrai, who, not suspecting she had been so well instructed, became, when he discovered it, embarrassed, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... is one title that I should covet above all others," resumed the judge, without appearing to notice the drift of the other's remark, "it would be the one I have named. What can be a more truly honorable distinction? I have often regretted being so trammelled by my station on the bench, as to prevent me from acting as I would otherwise like to do. But a judge, you know, colonel, in ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson

... On we drift; where looms the dim port? One Two Three Four Five contribute their quota: Something is gained if one caught but the import, Show ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... momentum, the drift of a machine against a wind, is the same, dynamically, as a plane at rest with the wind moving past it. But there is this pronounced difference: The cord which supports the kite holds it so that the power is ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***

... quilt, an' I had to git up every half hour to put wood on the fire so's we wouldn't freeze to death, all because Joe Wadley an' his wife an' her father an' mother an' his sister with her three children dropped in sort of unexpected on account of havin' their two wagons git stuck in a snow drift a mile er so from here. No, sirree, don't you worry. There's a spare tick up in the attic what we use fer strangers when they happen along, an' Zachariah has put your blankets right here by the door,—an' your pistols, too, I see,—so ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon

... the King seemed to die out at once, and giving his orders sharply, in a very brief space of time the shallow barge had been allowed to drift astern, there was a fairly clear space on deck, there was the open gangway on the side of the vessel nearest the shore, and the time had come for ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn

... summer night, fortunately, and fine weather. When I had recovered my breath, and had got rid of a stifling sensation in my throat, I rose up and went on. In the midst of my distress, I had no notion of going back. I doubt if I should have had any, though there had been a Swiss snow-drift ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... water should be imbibed daily under the varying conditions of the body's garden? Those who give no consideration to the problem of how to attain and maintain a healthy and vigorous physical basis are persons who usually drift into habits for which they will, sooner or later, have to pay ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison

... too, shortly afterward disperse, and one by one drift away to their rooms. Captain Ringwood and Maitland the surgeon being the last ...
— The Haunted Chamber - A Novel • "The Duchess"

... o' weather it was all day: and by sundown Cap'n Eb he got clean bewildered, so that he lost his road; and, when night came on, he didn't know nothin' where he was. Ye see the country was all under drift, and the air so thick with snow, that he couldn't see a foot afore him; and the fact was, he got off the Boston road without knowin' it, and came out at a pair o' bars nigh upon Sherburn, where old Cack ...
— Oldtown Fireside Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... iron car holding several tons of copper rock was run into the plat with a tremendous clatter from the little railway that penetrated to every "drift" and "stope" of the level. Each of these cars was pushed by a team of three wild-looking men, who were stripped naked to the waist. Their haggard faces and naked bodies were begrimed with powder-smoke, stained red ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe

... eerie dawn—was creeping ghostly over the iron-bound shore, when the fragments of wreckage began to drift in. Such are the currents upon those coasts that bodies are rarely recovered from wrecks on the ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer

... the fine, powdery snow in drifts. But still the sun shone, though it seemed to grow a little dimmer, a little paler; finally, about two hours after the others had left, Foster-father felt uncertain whether it was all drift that seemed to fill the air with a fine white film, or whether fresh ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel

... Catholic gentry, and the growing ascendancy of O'Connell and the democratic and sacerdotal party in Irish popular politics. Grattan had long predicted that, if concession was not speedily and wisely made, population in Ireland would drift away from the guiding and moderating influence of property; that seditious and anarchical men would gain an ascendancy which would make the whole problem of Irish Government incalculably difficult; that a priesthood unconnected with the English Government ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... "It seems to me that my invitations are all for funerals in these days," said she to her venerable maid Hannah, who had helped her dress for her parties fifty years before. She had given up society little by little. Her friends had died, or she had allowed herself to drift away from them, while the acquaintances from whom she might have filled their places were only acquaintances still. She was the last of her own family, and, for years before her father died, he had lived mainly in his library, avoiding society and caring for nothing but books; and this, ...
— An Arrow in a Sunbeam - and Other Tales • Various

... 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 a few of the spring months, ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir

... seemed to have hopes and love to look to but he—"I alone am alone! The whole world is in love with me, and I'm utterly alone." Alone as a wreck upon a desert ocean, terrible in its calm as in its tempest. Broken was the helm and sailless was the mast, and he must drift till borne upon some ship-wrecking reef! Had fate designed him to float over every rock? must he wait till the years let through the waters of disease, and he foundered obscurely in the immense loneliness ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore

... of the new family. But her constant industry and thrifty habits were a silent reproach to the step-mother, I fancy, for she left no stone unturned to rid herself of the troublesome grown up daughter. She tried every means, threw out hints, until at last Lizzie perceived her drift. Even her father seemed restrained and annoyed by her presence; and when she proposed to him that she should do something now for herself, in the way of support, he made no opposition; on the contrary, seemed relieved, saying the times were hard, and he had always had an expensive family. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various

... 'Yes, Sir,' quoth I, when he stayed. He turned him around, and looked in my face with his dark eyes, that seemed to burn into me, and he saith, 'Learn this, Dorothy,—that 'tis the easiest thing in all the world for a man to drift away from God. Ay, or a woman either. You may do it, and never know that you have done it,—for a while, at least. David was two full years ere he found it out. Oh Dorothy, take warning! I was once as innocent as you are. I have drifted from God, oh my child, how far! The Lord keep you ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt

... time Kayak's warning regarding the arrival of the funeral canoes. But Jean, determined not to miss any detail of the strange Thlinget festival, watched till an opportunity presented itself, and then, disregarding Ellen's advice, slipped away to the beach to a pile of silvery drift-logs that lay at the edge of the rice-grass, where she knew she could not be seen except from the sea. The girl settled herself comfortably among the logs just as the long ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby

... and dark, They drift in close embrace, With mist and rain, o'er the open main; Yet there ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various

... heavy lateral beams across the ceiling—built, like the rest of the house, with a certain maritime strength—and looked not unlike a saloon cabin. An enormous open Franklin stove between the windows, as large as a chimney, blazing with drift-wood, gave light and heat to the apartment, and brought into flickering relief the boarded walls hung with the spoils of sea and shore, and glittering with gun-barrels. Fowling-pieces of all sizes, from the long ducking-gun mounted on a swivel ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... 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

... days," he said, "I shall write a really great drama. No one will understand the drift of it, but everyone will go back to their homes with a vague feeling of dissatisfaction with their lives and surroundings. Then they will put up new wall-papers ...
— Reginald • Saki

... or ten million years. The entire solar system is gradually losing its internal heat, and must inevitably die of sheer inanition. The time is coming when the sun will drift through space, a black star in the midst of dead worlds. Perhaps the system will fall together, perhaps it will run against a star. In either case there would probably be a 'new heaven ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro

... This was the drift of Mrs. Noah's remarks, and as Guy depended much on her judgment, he decided to write to Lucy to see if she had the slightest objections to his teaching Maddy Clyde. Accordingly he wrote that very night, telling her frankly all he knew concerning Maddy ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes

... by making choice and moral action impossible. Man has no distinct and separate personality. He is for a little while detached in appearance from the soul of the universe (anima mundi), but in reality no more detached from it than is a boulder or a log of drift-wood from the surface on which it rests. He still remains a part of the universal soul, the multiform, all-embracing God, who is himself not a self-conscious, freely willing being, but impelled by necessity in all his ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody

... In drift-mining the rich gravel is covered by hard lava rock thrown up by some old volcanic outburst. Tunnels are driven by blasting with dynamite, or by drilling under the rock to reach the gravel which usually lies in the buried channel of an old river. ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton

... branch away, back and forward; which I cannot, right here in this first page, let it do. It would tell—taking the little carriage for a text and key—ever so much about aims and ways and principles, and the drift of a household life, which was one of the busy little currents in the world that help to make up its great universal character and atmosphere, at this present age of things, as the drifts and sweeps of ocean make up the climates and atmospheres that ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... and became aware of the drift of her wishes, feeling stirrings and promptings at the roots of her life, her imagination seized now on the passionate human tragedies which, according to the legends, had been enacted in the building. She had a sweetheart ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce

... wings to make my purpose swift, As thou hast lent me wit to plot this drift!] I suspect that the author concluded the act with this couplet, and that the next scene should begin the third act; but the change, as it will add nothing to the probability of the action, is of ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson

... however, that he must have had very incorrect notions of the Trinity if, as Garcilasso states, the interpreter, Felipillo, explained it by saying that "the Christians believed in three gods and one God, and that made four." But there is no doubt he perfectly comprehended that the drift of the discourse was to persuade him to resign his sceptre and acknowledge ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various

... have in the mass seen little that did not accord with that progress. They saw the expansion of cities, but not the accretion of slums; they cheered the census statistics, but refused to consider overcrowding; they pointed with pride to their growth, but would not see the drift from the land, or the unassimilated immigration. They expanded industry furiously at reckless cost to their natural resources; they built up gigantic corporations without arranging for industrial relations. They grew to be one of the most powerful nations on earth without preparing ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann

... Knapp," I said politely. I was in deep waters. It was plainly unsafe to do anything but drift. ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott

... sailor cry twice, and then his voice fainted away. I began to weep at the oar while I strained upon it, and called 'Help!' and implored God's intervention. At last I sat down in the boat, worn out and in despair, and let it drift down all the city's front, past lights and glooms and floating ice, and wished that I were dead. My father's kindness and all our disagreements rose to mind, and it seemed God's punishment that I had married where his intentions were. Yet to know the truth of this, ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend

... he opened the door, he beheld the form of the maiden Seated beside her wheel, and the carded wool like a snow-drift Piled at her knee, her white hands feeding the ravenous spindle, While with her foot on the treadle she guided ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... of the pada (42-45) refers, according to the unanimous statement of the commentators, to the doctrine of the Bhagavatas or Pa/nk/aratras. But /S/a@nkara and Ramanuja totally disagree as to the drift of the Sutrakara's opinion regarding that system. According to the former it is condemned like the systems previously referred to; according to the latter it is approved of.—Sutras 42 and 43, according to both commentators, raise objections against ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut

... says, "the bird is little more than a drift of the air, brought into form by plumes," the particular bit shaped into the form we call the orchard oriole must be a breath from a Western tornado, for a more hot-headed, blustering individual would be hard ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller

... went by, no one seemed to notice the signals, or, if they did, they would not stop, on account of the tempest, which still continued. She then took the desperate resolution of putting her two little children in the small boat, and trusting to the flood-tide to drift them somewhere in the vicinity of Charleston. She placed a letter in the hand of one of them, to be given to the first person they met, imploring that a physician might be sent to her at once. It was a terrible experiment, ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday

... Ricketts, and was then ordered to fall back on Front Royal. Reinforcements were ordered to Romney, to Harper's Ferry, and to Winchester; and McDowell, who kept his head throughout, struggled in vain to reunite his scattered divisions. Divining the true drift of the Confederate strategy, he realised that to protect Washington, and to rescue McClellan, the surest method was for his own army corps to march as rapidly as possible to the Chickahominy. But his pleadings were disregarded. Lincoln and Stanton had not yet discovered ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... no expert, but I think I got the drift. To start with, the most common thing in space is hydrogen gas. It gives off energy that can be detected on the 21-centimeter wave length. This is important to the radio astronomers, because they can use their telescopes to figure out how hydrogen is distributed ...
— The Egyptian Cat Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin

... has sounded its death-knell by asserting that certain combinations alone produced beauty—the weakness of to-day being an inclination to see art only in the obscure and the recondite. As a result we drift each hour further from the truth. Modern intellectuality has formed itself into a scornful aristocracy whose members, esteeming themselves the élite, withdraw from the vulgar public, and live in a world of their own, looking (like the Lady of Shalott) into a mirror at distorted ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory

... was heard from the roof, the muffled noise which accompanied it ceased. The stranger groping about in the snowy gloom had stepped off the roof into the huge drift outside the Heavenly Bower, and a minute later, lifted the latch of the door and pushed in among the astonished miners. They saw the figure of a sturdy man holding something in his arms, so wrapped ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis

... start, I yet regarded that huge dazzle upon the beach, so many landed, so many coming from the ships, the ships themselves so great a drift of sea birds! As for those dark folk—what should they think of all these breakers-in from heaven? It seemed to me to-day that despite their friendliness shown us here from the first, despite the ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston

... "You might drift around by there if it ain't too much out of your way, and see if he's got a man on the ranch," Lone suggested. "But you better not touch anything in the house, Swan. The coroner'll likely appoint somebody to look around ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower

... subject of their son's second marriage. Isabella wished that a bride should be sought in England, and this wish was apparently echoed by Charles himself. The important topic was discussed with more or less freedom among the young courtiers, until the drift of the conversations, whose burden was wholly adverse to his own fixed purpose, came to Philip's ears, together with the information that one of his own children was among those who incited the count to independent ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam

... his rear. And though with kicks and bangs he ply'd The further and the nearer side, (As seamen ride with all their force, And tug as if they row'd the horse, 60 And when the hackney sails most swift, Believe they lag, or run a-drift,) So, though he posted e'er so fast, His fear was greater than his haste: For fear, though fleeter than the wind, 65 Believes 'tis always left behind. But when the morn began t' appear, And shift t' another scene his fear, He found ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... more swift, As the crowding peace Doth to joy increase In the wide blind eyes uplift Thro' the darkness and the drift! ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning

... all for the best though. Better a thing should be nipped in the bud than in the blossom. And this puts it all on a right footing. One might easily drift into depending too much upon Honoria. I own I was dangerously near doing that this spring. I don't mind telling you so now, mother, because this, you see, disposes finally of ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... little way out of Landrecies, I refused to go any farther; and sat in a drift of rain by the side of the bank to have a reviving pipe. A vivacious old man, whom I take to have been the devil, drew near and questioned me about our journey. In the fullness of my heart I laid bare our plans before him. He said it was the silliest enterprise that ever he heard ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... inspired by envy, and got away. Space forbids me to enumerate the hairbreadth escapes of that journey. We put men ashore when the banks permitted and were towed like a canal boat. Once we were swept into mid-stream, where the poles were useless on account of the great depth, and had to drift back till the water shoaled again. In late afternoon we took on a supply of sugar cane, and chewed affably all the rest of ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee

... sot! Drink water alone, and drink more, and drink much— But, liquors or wines? Not a taste, not a touch! Yet, is not this fever a fervour of thrift? It is wine you denounce, but its cost is your drift; The times are so hard and the wines are so bad (For good at low prices are not to be had), That forthwith society shrewdly shouts high For water alone, the whole abstinence cry! And, somehow supposed suggestive ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... and I passed the time playing piquet, and listening to our natives, who talked earnestly together, going over many of their strange and thrilling hunting experiences. We understood but little Russian and Aleut, yet their expressive gestures made it quite possible to catch the drift of what was being said. It seemed that Ignati had had a brother killed a few years ago, while bear hunting in the small bay which lies between Eagle Harbor and Kiliuda Bay. The man came upon a bear, which he shot and badly wounded. Accompanied by a friend he followed up ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various

... the wreckage of that silent fray Strange fishes swam in circles, round and round— Black, double-finned; and once a little way A bubble rose and burst without a sound And a man tumbled out upon the ground. Lord! 'twas an eerie thing to drift apace On that pellucid sea, beneath black skies And o'er the heads of an undrowning race; And when I woke I said—to her surprise Who came with chocolate, for me to drink it: "The atmosphere is ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce

... many of the trees were covered with them, and on cutting them down, large quantities were easily obtained. Mr. Peale shot several birds, among which was a Nicobar pigeon; some interesting plants and corals were also added. On the island a large quantity of drift-wood was found, which with that which is growing affords ample supplies of fuel for ships. No fresh water is to be had, except by digging, the island being but a few feet above ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.

... from 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 glad to be free as we shall be to set them ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson

... can, now that the water is so rough," replied Alfred; "recollect that they are soldiers in the fort, and not sailors, who are accustomed to look on the water. A piece of drift timber and a punt is much the same to their eyes. Come, let us in ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat

... know what to do, as no one on board could tell where we were or what dangers might surround us, the only one of our crew who was acquainted with the coast of Waigiou having been left on the island. We therefore took in all sail and allowed ourselves to drift, as we were some miles from the nearest land. A light breeze, however, sprang up, and about midnight we found ourselves again bumping over a coral reef. As it was very dark, and we knew nothing of our position, we could only guess how ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... I think that the change from these conditions can, or will, be easy. Women may, and do, protest against the triviality of their lives, but emotional interests are more immediate than intellectual ones. Human nature does not drift into intellectual pursuits voluntarily, rather it is forced into them in connection with urgency and practical activities. It is much easier to be kept, dressed, and petted, than to work. Women have not participated in the mental activities of men because it has not been necessary ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... or burden of "Leaves of Grass" is no more difficult of comprehension than the general drift of Emerson's essays, which helped to inspire it. The starting point of the book is a mystical illumination regarding the unity and blessedness of the universe, an insight passing understanding, but based upon the revelatory experience of love. ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry

... cabane. Let go!" He shoved one of the boys away and sent a few mighty cuts into the side of the birch that was farthest from the cabin; then two short cuts on the other side; the tree shivered, staggered, cracked, and swept in a great arc toward the deep snow-drift by the brook. As the top swung earthward, Raoul jumped clear of the crashing branches and landed safely in the feather-bed of snow, buried up to his neck. Nothing was to be seen of him but his head, like some new kind of fire-work—sputtering ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke

... later we had cast off, and the Sainte-Vierge steamed slowly through the drift ice that packed the gulf. There were no lights upon the Claire, and I surmised that the conspirators were keeping quietly hidden in expectation of Jacqueline's arrival, though how Dubois had outwitted them I could not ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert

... trail, Breed caught a fugitive scent of meat. He circled and looped, now catching it, then losing it again. The broad valley stood white and silent, gripped in a dead calm, and the few vagrant breezes were imperceptible, merely the sluggish drift of local air pockets that shifted a ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts

... the square tower of the light-house in the fog, and I was not willing to trust myself in unknown waters near the shore without a pilot. I directed Washburn to stop the engine, and keep a sharp lookout for the drift ...
— Down South - or, Yacht Adventure in Florida • Oliver Optic

... took the flat-iron and went to work," continued Wallace. "Presently, however, he thought he would go out into the shed and see if the snow had blown in, during the night. He found that it had, and so he stopped to play with the drift a few minutes. At last he came back into the kitchen, and he found, when he came in, that Dorothy had finished ironing his towel and had put it away. He began to complain of her for doing this, and then, in order to punish her, as he said, he took two of her ...
— Stuyvesant - A Franconia Story • Jacob Abbott

... day,—get up at night and harness your own horse,—drive again ten miles in a snow-storm, shake powders out of two phials, (pulv. glycyrrhiz., pulv. gum. acac. as partes equates,)—drive back again, if you don't happen to get stuck in a drift, no home, no peace, no continuous meals, no unbroken sleep, no Sunday, no holiday, no social intercourse, but one eternal jog, jog, jog, in a sulky, until you feel like the mummy of an Indian who had been buried in the sitting posture, and was dug up a hundred ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.



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