"Drift" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... possession of it, while the other branch remained in the power of the Christians. Mutual cruelties were exercised; the Turks, seizing on the survivors of the knights who had so long defended St. Elmo, cut the Maltese cross on the bodies of the slain, and, tying them to planks, let them drift with the receding tide into the other branch of the harbour still defended by the Christians. The Grand-Master, in resentment of this cruelty, caused his Turkish prisoners to be decapitated and their heads thrown from mortars into ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... 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 ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... telling tales away from home. One of his faults, however, the most conspicuous, though, by no means, the most grievous, I must mention here at the outset, it being that trait of his character which imparts to our story its particular color and drift. I allude to his vanity, which displayed itself in a ridiculous fondness for fine clothes, not to mention that he was, in every way, a very handsome boy; and the fools, as usual in such cases, had blabbed this into his ears, until he had ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... attention, no less than the speech they pronounced, of which a great number of printed copies were distributed through all parts of the country. Without making any particular remarks on the harangue, she only observed, that the drift of it did not tend to facilitate the negotiation begun with Great Britain, nor to induce the nation to prefer a convention to a rupture with that crown. From this circumstance she inferred, it was more than time to finish the deliberations on the proposal for ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... wax candles in quaint heavy silver candlesticks, the spotless table-cloth, the dish of fried fish made picturesque with sprigs of parsley, the Sabbath loaves shaped like boys' tip-cats, with a curious plait of crust from point to point and thickly sprinkled with a drift of poppy-seed, and covered with a velvet cloth embroidered with Hebrew words; the flask of wine and the silver goblet. The sight was familiar yet it always struck the simple old Reb anew, with a sense of ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... coast. In two of these cases (Iroquoian and Siouan) history and tradition indicate expansion and migration from the land of bays between Cape Lookout and Cape May, while in the third there are similar (though perhaps less definite) indications of an inland drift from the northern Atlantic bays and along ...
— The Siouan Indians • W. J. McGee
... exclaimed the man addressed, who, judging from his appearance, was a small tradesman, "I can ill afford to have this evil thing lying upon my step, preventing what little trade might drift this way." ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... the mantle of his own self-esteem, the sufferer fails to catch the drift of sentiment round him, or to put himself in touch with the opinions of others. His chair in any room is soon surrounded by vacant seats or by patient sufferers. The vice has, in fact, turned inwards, and corroded the mentality. Far better the enemies and the mistakes of youth than ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook
... went round to your house before I called here and left my card on you. You'll find it there when you get back. I always like to be strict in the observance of the rules of civilised society. I particularly dislike the slack ways into which people in places like this are inclined to drift. I must say for the Major, he's not as bad as the rest in that respect. ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... out in the open, found the Sixteenth Corps in line in the rear of our Army, and he was as much surprised to find us there as our Army was at the sudden attack in our rear. The driving back by the Sixteenth Corps of Hardee's Corps made the latter drift to the left and against Blair,—not only to Blair's left, but into his rear,—so that what Hood declares was the cause of his failure was not Hardee's fault, as his attacks on the Sixteenth Corps were evidently determined ...
— The Battle of Atlanta - and Other Campaigns, Addresses, Etc. • Grenville M. Dodge
... brought out after breakfast by the galley under cover of the pinnace, and was towed off to some distance. The paddles having been taken out and the spears broken and left in her, she was let go to drift down toward a village whence the attacking party were supposed to have come. Some blood in this canoe, although not the one most aimed at, showed that the firing had not been ineffective. This act of deliberate treachery was perpetrated by persons who had ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... person fit the occupation, the more congenial and successful is the career. To follow the "natural bent," whenever it is possible, appears to be eminently wise. For square men should be put into square holes and round men into round holes. Failing to regard the drift of one's being in the choice of an occupation, is almost sure to put square men into round holes, and round men into square holes. In this way good mechanics have been spoiled to make poor clergymen or merchants, and a good minister spoiled ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... in all the ways of a great city, it was difficult to conceive him in his early youth, well as I knew it; difficult to reflect that his dreams at night were not of the varying results of some late scheme, nor of white shoulders at the opera, nor the mood of the Ninth Ward, nor of the drift of business, but of some farm-house's front yard in mid-summer with a boy aiming a long shot-gun at a red-winged poacher in a cherry tree, or that he saw, in sleep, the worn jambs beside the old-fashioned ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... time I came to the drift of my letter, which is that if "An Earnest Clergyman" has not cheated himself into thinking he is telling the truth, he will do no great harm by stopping where he is. Do not let him make too much fuss about trifles. The solemnity of ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... sailing about those islands of Burias and Masbate. They remained there a fortnight, without being able to repair the champan in order to make their journey until our Lord was pleased to have the same mast that they cut down in the champan drift into the port, for the islet contained no suitable trees. They repaired the champan with that mast, made a half-way rudder and a jury-mast, and set sail on the sea for Panay, from which they were not very far. But, after sighting the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various
... unknown M. de Puisaye from some hidden fastness in the Bocage of Brittany came to divert the course of Adrian Landale's existence into a channel where neither he, nor any of those who knew him, would ever have dreamed to see it drift. ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... influence with her," joined in Bertha, suspecting the count's drift, and feeling desirous of ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... intelligent, clear-cut faces, of the Greek order, as though the statues of a garden had been stained brown and had come to life. They leaned on their sweeps, thrusting slowly but strongly against the little wind and current that would drift them back. ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... goatherd, the hunter of the chamois, and the outlaw-smuggler are alone accustomed to venture; amidst precipices where to slip a foot is death; beneath glaciers from which the percussion of a musket-shot is often sufficient to hurl an avalanche; across bottomless chasms caked over with frost or snow-drift; and breathing ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... he doubtless would have pressed his way into a genuine experience of salvation and would have lived a consistent Christian life, but under the unwholesome teachings of Mount Olivet he had given himself over to a mighty religious drift and had drifted far away from God and was completely destitute of redeeming grace. Oh, to be sure, he testified regularly at the church services and gave of his limited means toward the church's support, but he was ...
— The Deacon of Dobbinsville - A Story Based on Actual Happenings • John A. Morrison
... and to miss her when she did not come? And with those whom Domini knew were assembled their friends, and their friends' friends, men of Beni-Mora, men from the near oasis, and also many of those desert wanderers who drift in daily out of the sands to the centres of buying and selling, barter their goods for the goods of the South, or sell their loads of dates for money, and, having enjoyed the dissipation of the cafes and of the dancing-houses, drift away again ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... speaking abruptly although his voice was as gentle and low-toned and pleasant as when he had spoken with the cashier, "three days ahead of time. It won't take me a minute to get through. And if you and the young lady will excuse me I'll say my little speech and drift, giving you a free swing for your business. Besides, I'm in a ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... such buildings, I wish to devote a few words to the question of foundations, because in the excessive loads imposed by this class of buildings, and in the frequent necessity of constructing them upon sites where alluvial drift or quicksands form compressible foundations, there is afforded an opportunity for the widest range of engineering skill in dealing with the problem. In such instances, a settling of the building must be foreseen and provided for, in order that it may be uniform under the whole ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 647, May 26, 1888 • Various
... beautifully shared her ambition, was an exciting and tempting proposition. Like most girls of her type, when her personal concerns became too complex for reason, she abandoned herself to impulse. She merely shut her eyes and allowed herself to drift toward a destination that was not of her choosing. Like a peripatetic Sleeping Beauty, she moved through the days in a sort of trance, waiting liberation from her thraldom, but fearing to put her fate to the test by laying ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... sunlight fell through a rift in the flying clouds and stained the tossing foliage pale gold; it was followed by a sudden drift of rain, then once more the naked wind. Woolfolk was fast determining to go up to the house and insist upon Millie's hearing him, when unexpectedly she appeared in a somber, fluttering cloak, with her head uncovered and hair blown ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... John must settle it," she said, resignedly; "perhaps you had better see him. I can't interfere one way or the other. I have no head for business," she added, apologetically; "I'm not sure that any of us have except Allis. We just seem to drift, ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... the storm continued unabated, the whole country becoming like an undulating ocean of snow. Drift snow, mountain high, was accumulated in the valleys between hills; whole herds of sheep and cattle were suffocated; and the bodies of several teamsters, whose teams were overset, were dug out lifeless from under the drifts by the men who had assembled with ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... replaced drift and deadlock with renewal and reform. And I want to thank every one of you here who heard the American people, who broke gridlock, who gave them the most successful teamwork between a president and a Congress in ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William J. Clinton • William J. Clinton
... passion rising within him, clinched his fists, started with a bound for the dark shadows coming up the road, felt a terrible blow on his head, and—well, it must have been a long while before he thought again. Then he was lying down in the depths of a snow-drift, where he had fallen when he started so angrily for Dan and had struck his head against the limb of the old oak at the turn and been hurled back twenty feet down through the snow on the rock ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... contained a shadow cast by the side, and the dazzling white above and the dark within produced a blue tint. Yonder by the limes the rabbits ventured out for a stray bunch of grass not quite covered by the drift, tired, no doubt, of the bitter bark of the ash-rods that they had nibbled in the night. As they scampered, each threw up a white cloud of snow-dust behind him. Yet a few days and the sward grew greener. The pale winter hue, departing as the spring mist came trailing over, caught for ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... keep tab on all who come here. When they get straightened up and go out to hunt work, I give 'em identification cards. Just as soon as I can get funds I'm going to put a billiard table back there and fit up a little chapel, so's the Catholic men who drift in here can attend service. You know, a lot of 'em don't have the nerve to go to a church. Too proud. But they'd attend ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... our anxieties may be a real factor in our success, and may give us the touch of prudence and vigilance we want, it does not do to allow ourselves to drift into vague fears and dull depressions, and we must fight them in a practical way. We must remember the case of Naaman, who was vexed at being told to go and dip himself in a mud-stained stream running ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... day the king and his mother watched the boys at their play. The older two amused themselves by building barns, in which they put toy cows and sheep; but Harold launched mock boats on a pond and watched them drift away. ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... 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
... of the kind; would a canoe do? Somehow a canoe would not do. I never took kindly to canoes, excepting always the Canadian birch-bark pattern; evidently there was no boat for me. There was no place on the great river for an indolent, dreamy particle like myself, apt to drift up into nooks, and to spend much time absorbing those pleasures which enter by the exquisite sensitiveness of the eye—colour, and shade, and form, and the cadence of glittering ripple and moving leaf. You ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... commanded the boatswain's mate, as he moved aft to take his place at the wheel, and let her drift astern. "Come back here, sir, and sit down," he added, in a vain effort to cheer Marcy up a little. "He's a fine lad. I'll ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... anchovies in the English Channel has been carefully studied at the laboratory of the Marine Biological Association at Plymouth. They were most abundant in 1889 and 1890. In the former year considerable numbers were taken off Dover in drift nets of small mesh used for the capture of sprats. In the following December large numbers were taken together with sprats at Torquay. In November 1890 a thousand of the fish were obtained in two days from the pilchard boats fishing near Plymouth; these were caught near the Eddystone. When ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Had he been less occupied with the personage in the grand parlor, he would certainly not have allowed the conversation to drift in this channel. He understood his mistake; and, in ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... slender hand sprang on the attorney's collar, coat and waistcoat together, and his knuckles, hard and sharp, were screwed against Mr. Larkin's jaw-bone, as he shook him, and his face was like a drift of snow, with two ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... 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
... greatly pleased with what his host had been so kind as to show him, remarking that the power to do such things implied labor more continuous and severe than would have sufficed to the learning of two or three trades. In reply, Franks, mistaking the drift of the remark, and supposing it a gentle remonstrance with what the doctor counted a waste of labor, said, in a tone that sounded sad in ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... 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 small nationalities, or, ...
— Armageddon—And After • W. L. Courtney
... Yes, perhaps. But I should infinitely have preferred dull sleep to the knowledge. For, unable to control my movements, I wandered to and fro, attracted, owing to my partial development and premature arrival, to parts of this new world that alarmed me more and more. It was the awful waste and drift of a monstrous world, so utterly different to all we know and see that I cannot even hint at the nature of the sights and objects and beings in it. More than that, I cannot even remember them. I cannot now picture them to myself even, but can recall only the memory of the impression they ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... concentrated her efforts upon the sea, and have maintained a glorious struggle with England, on the sole condition of keeping peace on the Continent. The policy was simple, and the national interest palpable; King Louis XV. and some of his ministers understood this; but they allowed themselves to drift into forgetfulness of it. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... I. 'I'll sell you the gasoline, but you'll have to go with me in the skiff to get it. Get your anchor over or this craft'll drift to Eastham. Hurry up.' ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... and, whenever the eye loses itself in shade, wherever there is a dark and sharp corner, there, if he can, he should introduce a wreath of flower-work. The carving will be preserved from the weather by this very propriety of situation: it would have moldered away, had it been exposed to the full drift of the rain, but will remain safe in the crevices where it is required; and, also, it will not injure the general effect, but will lie concealed until we approach, and then rise up, as it were, out of the ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... resolved into vapor may be lifted above the starry heaven, is a mere absurdity. The solid nature of the firmament, the intervening region of fire, wherein all vapor must be consumed, the tendency in light and rarefied bodies to drift to one spot beneath the vault of the moon, as well as the fact that vapors are perceived not to rise even to the tops of the higher mountains, all to go to show the impossibility of this. Nor is it less absurd to say, in ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... from Dr. Elkin's inquiries that six of Bessel's stars are exempt from the general drift of the group. They are being progressively left behind. The inference is obvious that they do not in reality belong to, but are merely accidentally projected upon, it; or, rather, that it is projected upon them; for their apparent immobility (which, in two of the six, may be called ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various
... of high resolve and great, And until Death fidelity! Whose horse is waiting at your gate? Whose 'rickshaw-wheels ride over me? No Saint's, I swear; and—let me see Tonight what names your programme fill— We drift asunder merrily, As drifts the ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... subjection to his will. Such a tendency is certainly normal. To abandon herself to her lover, to be able to rely on his physical strength and mental resourcefulness, to be swept out of herself and beyond the control of her own will, to drift idly in delicious submission to another and stronger will—this is one of the commonest aspirations in a young woman's intimate love-dreams. In our own age these aspirations most often only find their expression in such dreams. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... we often came suddenly out of a cold into a stratum of warm water (at the surface); and perhaps the difference in the temperature may have caused the drift, for the bay was in shadow half the day. Now, wherever there is motion there will fish assemble; so as the punt approached the shoal the sail was doused, and at twenty yards' distance I put the anchor into the water—not dropping ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... up his mind that he could not let the son of his only brother, the youth whom he had regarded almost as a son, and who had lost so much by the discovery of the child, drift away into expatriation, without being personally satisfied as to these new companions. This was ostensible reason enough for a resolution to go out himself to the transatlantic Northmoor to make arrangements for his nephew. Moreover, he was bent on doing ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... December 2003, the World Bank, IMF, and UNDP were forced to step in to provide emergency budgetary support in the amount of $107 million for 2004, representing over 80% of the total national budget. Government drift and indecision, however, have resulted in continued low ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... revelation of the Immensity of the Universe. The night was not sufficiently advanced for the stars to have paled; and the earth seemed to me more profoundly asleep—perhaps because I was alone now. Not having Fyne with me to set the pace I let myself drift, rather than walk, in the direction of the farmhouse. To drift is the only reposeful sort of motion (ask any ship if it isn't) and therefore consistent with thoughtfulness. And I pondered: How is one an ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... I get from gesticulation alone is an abstract notion of the essential drift of what is being said, and that, too, whether I judge from a moral or an intellectual point of view. It is the quintessence, the true substance of the conversation, and this remains identical, no matter what may have given rise to the conversation, or what it may be about; the relation ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... the 11th of the same month. These Union- loving men were energetic and zealous. They realized that with the secession of Virginia, completed and proclaimed, they must do one of two things—either proceed at once to organize a State government which would be faithful to the National Constitution, or drift helplessly into anarchy and thus contribute to the success of the rebellion. Their prompt and intelligent action is a remarkable illustration of the trained and disciplined ability of Americans for the ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... finished what he had to say, Pritha's son Arjuna, well skilled in the science of Profit, and conversant also with the truths of both Virtue and Profit, urged on (by the drift of Yudhishthira's ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... your drift, and partly meet your counsel. But must it not in me appear prodigious, To say the least, unnatural, and suspicious, To move hot love, where I have shown cool scorn, And undissembled ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... expecting to hear the crash of the falling building; but, impelled by the force of some mysterious current, it shook itself ponderously, and then, with one magnificent movement, slid up the river-bank, tier following tier in grand confusion. This left a water way for the main drift; the ice broke in every direction, and down, down, down, from Bonnie Eagle and Moderation swept the harvest of the winter freezing. It came thundering over the dam, bringing boats, farming implements, posts, supports, and every sort of floating lumber with it; and ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Seal Island, we landed on the sandy beach abreast of the anchorage; in doing this the boat filled, and the instruments were so wetted, that they were left on the beach to dry during our absence. Our ascent, from the hill being steep, and composed of a very loose drift sand, was difficult and fatiguing; but the beautiful flowers and plants, with which the surface of the hill was strewed, repaid us for our toil. These being all new to Mr. Cunningham fully occupied his attention, ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... stretched flat, east and north and west to the horizon, the Cayuga warriors said farewell and turned again to their own lands. It was at noon of a bright day. The water lay close to the white beach, with hardly a ripple to mar the long black scallops of weed and drift which the last storm had left on the sand. The sky was fair and ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... 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 in Kolbeinsvik ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown
... courage of a martyr, nor the faith of a saint; and so I drift along, trying to make the condition of our slaves as comfortable as I possibly can. I believe there are slaves on this plantation whom the most flattering offers of ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... I experienced a greater feeling of solitude than while listening to these strange sounds, and knowing that I, in this frail canoe, was the only human being near. Giving myself up to contemplation, I rested my paddle, and allowed my cajack to drift slowly on. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... forbearance he felt instinctive respect. He admitted force as a form of right; he admitted even temper, under protest; but the seeds of a moral education would at that moment have fallen on the stoniest soil in Quincy, which is, as every one knows, the stoniest glacial and tidal drift known in ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... with listening and smiling without replying a word. Milady, however, saw that this sort of narrative amused her very much, and kept at it; only she now let her conversation drift toward the cardinal. ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Priscilla's presence the evening of the day when he drove her before him while Richard Travers implored her to hold to her ideal. Fortunately, youth spared Priscilla from a full understanding of her father's words, but she caught the drift of his thought. She was convinced that he feared greatly for her here on earth, and had grave doubts as to her soul's ultimate salvation. There was that within her, so he explained, which, unless curbed ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... drift of my teaching: trying to keep to the great main truths, so as not to perplex their minds with a multiplicity ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fishing, and women washing clothes in others. The boys in the boat did not call for help, and so nobody attempted to come and help them. Gerald's plan was to keep the boat headed right, and so let her drift on until she had passed through the town, in hopes of being able to bring her up ...
— Rollo in Geneva • Jacob Abbott
... red-handed—and let the boat drift me down upon retributive justice. A while ago I had been mentally composing a number of effective retorts upon Captain Branscome for his tyrannical behaviour. Now, of a sudden, all this eloquence deserted me: I felt it leaking away ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... 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 ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... trading loon Wad gar the water ca' his wheel, And drift his dyes and poisons doun By fair Tweed-side ...
— Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations • Andrew Lang
... motor which had caused Tom Swift to shut off the power and drift down to earth was soon remedied, once the young inventor began an examination of the craft. One of the oil feeds had become choked and this automatically cut down the gasoline supply, causing one or more cylinders to miss. It ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Scout - or, Uncle Sam's Mastery of the Sky • Victor Appleton
... temper; and though he had never had a single "object lesson," or been taught to "use his intellectual powers," he knew the names and ways of every bird, and fish, and fly, and could read, as cunningly as the oldest sailor, the meaning of every drift of cloud which crossed the heavens. Lastly, he had been for some time past, on account of his extraordinary size and strength, undisputed cock of the school, and the most terrible fighter among all Bideford ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... They were not the strongest possible champions of the heroic age, but they were there, in the field, and in view of all spectators. At this distance of time, we can see how much more fully the drift of the old Teutonic world was caught and rendered by the imagination of Iceland; how much more there is in Grettir or Skarphedinn than in Ogier the Dane, or Raoul de Cambrai, or even Roland and Oliver. But the Icelandic work lay outside of the consciousness of Europe, and the French epic ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... distracted a state that both Spaniards and British would probably be expelled. He then complained that somehow England always got the better of Spain; witness Nootka Sound, Hayti, and Corsica. In spite of Bute's assurance that he came to end these jealousies, Godoy continued to drift on the tide of events. "No plan is prepared," wrote Bute on 11th July, "no measures are taken. The accident of the day seems to determine everything, and happy do the Ministers feel when the day is passed." He therefore advised ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... that Madeline liked to feel in the spring. And the sweet, thin, rare atmosphere began to affect her strangely. She breathed deeply of it until she felt light-headed, as if her body lacked substance and might drift away like a thistledown. All at once she grew uncomfortably sleepy. A dreamy languor possessed her, and, lying under a pine with her head against Florence, she went to sleep. When she opened her eyes the shadows of the crags stretched from the west, and between them streamed a red-gold light. ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... and round as winter apples, and where there wasn't a wrinkle there was a dimple; and no doubt there was a dimple in his chin, and his chin maybe was double, only you couldn't tell, for it was hidden ever so deep under a beard as white as a snow-drift. ...
— Little Prudy's Sister Susy • Sophie May
... the sun rose that morning, Mrs. Dalton and the hired man set out on horseback in search of the missing one. Tracing his course through the snow for four miles they at length caught sight of him standing up to his waist in a deep drift, beside his horse. His face was turned toward them. So lifelike and natural was his position that it was only when his wife grasped his cold rigid fingers that she knew the terrible truth. Her husband and the horse ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... the snaw-drift, Her throat is like the swan, Her face it is the fairest That e'er the sun shone on; That e'er the sun shone on, And dark blue is her ee; And for bonnie Annie Laurie I'd lay ...
— Old Ballads • Various
... She'll dirk her neighbour o'er the board. If any ask her of her drift, Forsooth, her nainself lives ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... After the Seattle incident she climbed to a great altitude above the Rockies, apparently using an updraft with very little wing-motion. There was no means of calculating her weight, or mass, or buoyancy. Dead or injured, drift might have carried her anywhere within one or two hundred miles. Then she seemed to be following the line of the Platte and the Missouri. By the end of the day she was circling interminably over the huge complex of St. ...
— The Good Neighbors • Edgar Pangborn
... seemed to Roland an awkward silence. As if he had said something improper, the marquises and counts began to drift from the room, till only Bombito was left. Roland regarded him with some apprehension. He was looking larger and ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... and at the mouth of this lay the boat. The distance we could see in either direction was of tantalizing shortness, and the boat was provided with no means of guidance or control, save an abundance of slender twine which secured it to a log of drift from the outside; so I decided to leave my companions in charge of the main coil of twine while I went on an excursion alone, there being not much evident cause for apprehension as no living cow could ever have made the trip to this ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... moment whether she was glad or sorry that the impressive manager was awaiting her presence. She was slightly flurried and tingling in the cheeks, but it was more nervousness than either fear or favour. She did not try to conjecture what the drift of the conversation would be. She only felt that she must be careful, and that Hurstwood had an indefinable fascination for her. Then she gave her tie its last touch with her fingers and ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... middle of the night, after having run a distance of about 250 miles, during which time the boats and rafts of the President Lincoln had drifted 15 miles from the position reported by radio, and it had been necessary for the commanding officers of these destroyers to make an estimate of the probable drift of the boats during that time. The only thing they had to base their estimate on was the force and direction of the wind. The discovery of the boats was not accidental, as the course steered was the result of mature deliberation and ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... of matters when, on the 26th of April, the Caffres came down in great numbers and swept away the cattle of the colonists, driving them through the Fish River. In carrying away this booty they passed, with great hardihood, close to the fortified post called "Trompetter's Drift." The guns of the position opened with grape and canister, at point-blank range, and accomplished a dreadful slaughter, but none of the booty was recaptured; the enemy even earned away all his ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... indeed be alive. Our prospect outwardly was gloomy indeed, though we kept up hope. I was sorry when I thought that we should be lost; that Tom had, as I fancied, thrown away his life for my sake. However, we will not talk of that now. We were drifting, that was certain, and might drift on shore, or we might be driven against a reef, when we must be lost. It was now night, though there was light enough to distinguish the dark white-crested seas rising up around us, and the inky sky overhead. Still we knew that there was the ...
— Mountain Moggy - The Stoning of the Witch • William H. G. Kingston
... and I don't like them. Too much palaver! I've got 'em sized up. They're regular salt-water gipsies; I've heard of 'em before. They drift round from one place to another, fish a little, lobster a little, smoke a good deal, and drink more. They'd be worse than a pestilence on this island. Yes, sir! They've got to go! They know just as well as I do that they've no right to stop here; but they're going to bluff it through. ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... barren of practical results." Now these men, I believe, are basing their argument upon the fallacy of immediate expediency. The old is bad, the new is good. That is their argument. They have no sheet anchor out to windward. They are willing to drift ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... 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
... every direction, hoping to see signs of a dwelling, or of a road, but I could only see the whirling of the snow-drift. All at once I thought I saw some thing black. "Halloo! coachman," I cried out, "what ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... feeble attack was made on Godfrey's camp that he beat off without the loss of a single man, exaggerated accounts of which were telegraphed home representing it as a "Rorke's Drift defence." ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... John did clearly understand the drift of the question put to him, or whether he conceived that he was solicited to be the subject of some benevolent experiments for the advantage of future generations, it is certain that no man ever looked ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... there was, no doubt, something in the claim if I could get the true contact with calcimine walls denoting a true fissure. He thought I ought to run a drift. I told him I ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... go boating and swimming. Boys and girls, equally good swimmers all, would plunge in turn into the little arm of the Seine enclosed within the park, and nothing more delicious can be imagined than to cast oneself into deep water near the bridge at Neuilly, and to let oneself drift down almost as far as Asnieres, under the great willows, returning afterwards on foot by the "Ile de ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... human forms, Grown hideous and forgotten, left alone, But every agony my heart has known,— The new-born trusts that died, the drift of storms. ...
— Along the Shore • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... he forgot himself. His eyes were half-closed, his thoughts seemed to have wandered into the strangest places. As his allegory proceeded, he seemed to drift away from all knowledge of his immediate surroundings. He chose his words always with the most exquisite and precise care. They listened, entranced. Then suddenly he stopped short ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... he announced in an arrogant, almost insulting tone, though below the surface he was an entirely genial person, "that the new vein in the Amphalula runs into the west drift of Horse's Neck almost to where we quit work in Number ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... would surprise the Nixy, and the divine strain should no more drift like a melodious mist through his brain; for at midsummer night the Nixy always plays the loudest, and then, if ever, is the time to learn what he felt must be the highest secret ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... shore of the Holy Isle, Osla sat alone. The spell of summer weather had passed from the islands, and in its wake the wind blew keenly from the north, and the grey cloud-drift hurried low overhead. All colour had died out of land and sea; the hills looked naked ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... old sanctuaries of the past, shut in amidst the squalor, the hurry, the crowds, the unloveliness and the commerce of the modern world; and all day long the clouds drift and the birds circle, and the winds sigh around them, and beneath the earth at their ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... interpreter of the party, asked the name of the place, and was again told that it was San Ildefonso; but when he asked what country it was in and how far it was to San Francisco, he was met with a polite "I do not understand you, Senor." Here was a puzzle: becalmed in a strange port only two days drift from the city of San Francisco; a town which the schoolmaster declared was not laid down on any map; a population that spoke only Spanish and did not know English when they heard it; a Mexican flag flying over the town, and ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... refer to an 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 himself against ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... from the uplands Bury the still valleys, drift them deep. Low along the mountain, lake-blue shadows, Sea-blue shadows in the hollows sleep. High above them Blinding crystal ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... sometimes very fast, then scarcely making way in the teeth of the strong north-easter. To the north and north-east the fog banks hung low on the sea. So light was the wind, that the sails scarcely filled. The schooner seemed merely to drift.... Toward night we entered among the fog-banks. The whole face of the sea steamed like a boiling kettle. The mist rose thin and gauze-like. We could scarcely see the length of the deck. It was blind work ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... acknowledge with gratitude the many able and kindly notices by the Press of my first volume ("The Gold Mines of Midian," etc. Messrs. C. Kegan Paul & Co., 1878). But some reviewers succeeded in completely misunderstanding the drift of that avant courier. It was an introduction intended to serve as a base for the present more extensive work, and—foundations intended to bear weight must be solid. Its object was to place before the reader the broad outlines of a country whose name was known to "every schoolboy," whilst it ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... after the hail 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 round with blankets and coverings ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... directed against herself considerable activity was shown; when the attack developed and it was seen that the objective of the Turks was Malta, the procrastinating Spanish king and his incompetent viceroy allowed matters so to drift that, had any other man than La Valette been in command at Malta, the fall of ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... that are coming, or the prick-eared fears of the elders, a fine lot of young bunnies with tails on the frisk scour everywhere over the warren. Up and down the grassy dips and yellow piles of wind-drift, and in and out of the ferny coves and tussocks of rush and ragwort, they scamper, and caper, and chase one another, in joy that the winter is banished at last, and the glorious ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... though many declare they cannot understand it. The simplest looking prose may be obscure to the mind which is slow in comprehending. When we read we get general ideas, cursory impressions; we catch the drift of the author's meaning. Reading for material must be more thorough than that. It must not merely believe it understands; it must preclude ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... for mental and physical work; greater capacity for the true enjoyment of life, and the best insurance against failure and poverty. Therefore, he who builds health is of greater value to humanity than he who allows people to drift into disease through ignorance of Nature's laws, and then attempts to cure them by ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... quiet archway of the long brick building. The place was desolate with the desolation of autumn. Through the funereal arch he saw the sunset barred by a network of naked branches, while about him the darkening lawn was veiled with the melancholy drift of the leaves. The only sound of life came from a brood of turkeys settling to ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... did not want to displease his father; on the other hand, it was impossible to let things drift as they had been doing. There must be an understanding sooner ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... Baltasar, who, without comprehending the drift of these questions, began to entertain hopes that his rank and former comradeship with many officers of the Christino army were about to obtain him an indulgence rarely accorded, during that war, to prisoners of any grade—the captured Carlists ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... unwholesome, and my band are apt to be harsh in their treatment of captives. They have found in the vaults some instruments of torture belonging to old Blackburn, the freebooter, the efficacy of which in an obstinate case I fear they might be inclined to try. You now begin to see the drift of my discourse, madam, and understand the sort of men you have to ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... these variable features were not consciously manipulated by the author; and, even when a general drift in a certain direction is clearly observable in his practice with regard to them, it is not to be assumed that his progress was perfectly regular, without leaps forward and occasional returns to an earlier usage. It is to be noted also ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... he reached forward and lighted his cigarette at the fire. "I was settin' on a crazy bronc', holdin' his head up so he couldn't go to buckin'—outside a little old adobe down in Yuma, Arizona, then," he explained, glancing at the girl. "Did you ever drift away complete, like that, jest from some little old ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... "Entretiens Litteraires," will help us to understand how far Frenchmen were from appreciating not only our point of view, but the true place assigned by fate to the United States in contemporary history. Nothing could so plainly reveal the failure of the French to understand the natural drift of events on this side of the Atlantic, and account for the extraordinary, though shortlived, success of Napoleon's wild Mexican scheme. In this article, written with a servile pen, the poet-statesman attacked the character of the people of the United States, and brought out Napoleon's ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... perhaps, no disadvantage to what we call "dumb animals" if they understand the general drift of our remarks without minutely following every word. They have generally the sense, too, to leave well alone, and, without pressing the question of the new comer's adoption, the two dogs curled themselves round, put their noses into their pockets, and went ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... as though he were persuaded that it was morally impossible that I could by any means divine the deep purpose of his visit, and that it must be hidden from all human ken. Therefore, although I was rejoiced to think that I had anticipated his drift, I feigned to be quite ignorant of it, and after a brief consideration shook ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... on the ice, and ran hastily up and down the chasm. I could see that my fears were true. The whole body of ice was beginning to break away, and drift from this shore also, as it had done from the other. I saw a place not more than five feet wide. Back I rushed to my companion. I seized her, and, lifting her in my arms, without a word, I carried her to that place where the channel was narrowest; ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... he said, "the people who drift into, and out of, and around this Settlement House, are not very unlike the little bugs. And, after all, they do help to make ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster
... where the wheeling systems darken, And our benumbed conceiving soars: The drift of pinions, would we harken, Beats at ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... inexhaustible wealth of Le Morvan is in its forests. In these several thousand trees are felled annually, sawn into logs, branded and thrown by cart-loads into the neighbouring torrent, which, on reaching a more tranquil stream, are lashed into rafts, when they drift onwards to the Seine, and are eventually borne on the waters of that river to the capital. The forests of the Nievre are some of the most extensive in France; thick and dark, and formed of ancient oaks, maple, and spreading beech, they cover nearly 200,000 acres ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... life of constant quarrel with his mother-in-law, and exchange flying crockery at meal-times; to take refuge in distant tutorships, and in the course of years, after begetting several children, to drift further and further, and finally disappear ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... sanction its being sent round to the laity," replied the priest, not aware of the drift and true ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... wonderest, sweet bloom, at me, A man so hideous to see. The arrow-drift o'ertook me, girl, A fine-ground arrow in the whirl Went through me, and I feel the dart Sits, lovely lass, too near ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... firm enough to bear our weight. Therefore, we resigned ourselves to circumstances, and all of us having been refreshed with a little cold rice and honey, and water from the stream, we permitted the canoe to drift down with the current, for our men were too much fatigued with the labours of the day to work any longer. But here a fresh evil arose which we were unprepared to meet. An incredible number of hippopotami arose very near us, and came plashing, snorting, and plunging all ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 535, Saturday, February 25, 1832. • Various
... going to 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 of ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... plague were there prevalent. Year after year the North and West became more national in their prejudices and modes of thought and action; while the South remained little changed, except by a natural reactionary drift toward a more extreme colonialism. The natural result, in the next period was the development of a quasi nationality in the ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... about until nine years had passed by unnoticed. Then he came to the strand of the Western Sea and it occurred to him: "No doubt there are gods and saints on the other side of the sea!" So he built another raft, floated it over the Western Sea and reached the land of the West. There he let his raft drift, and went ashore. After he had searched for many days, he suddenly saw a high mountain with deep, quiet valleys. As the Ape King went toward it, he heard a man singing in the woods, and the song sounded like ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... it is that the drift of the whole poem is fulfilled. The evils consequent on the quarrel between him and Agamemnon, at last teach Achilles himself this wisdom—that wrath and strife are criminal and pernicious; and the confession is extorted from his own lips, that the lesson ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... heart-felt, heart-filling wishes carried out into life on the instant; of aims obviously, inevitably proportioned to my highest nature. Sometime, in God's good time, let me live as swift and earnest as a flash of the eye. Meanwhile, let me gather force slowly, and drift along lazily, like yonder cloud, and be content to end in a few tears ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... said the chief, with a gesture of disgust. "The pakeha is a sheep, in the water. We must go to them. Now, remember: when you get near the ship, call out for a rope. We can drift back ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace |
