"Drift away" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... withdrawal; retreat; retrocession &c 283 [Obs.]; departure, &c 293; recoil &c 277; flight &c (avoidance) 623. V. recede, go, move back, move from, retire; withdraw, shrink, back off; come away, move away, back away, go away, get away, drift away; depart &c 293; retreat &c 283; move off, stand off, sheer off; fall back, stand aside; run away &c (avoid) 623. remove, shunt, distance. Adj. receding &c v.. Phr. distance oneself from ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... was maintained, by which time almost the last cartridge was spent, and the crews worn our by their incessant labour. They took no prizes, for they never attempted to board. They saw three great galleons go down, and three more drift away towards the sands of Ostend, where they were captured either by the English garrisoned there or by three vessels sent by Lord Willoughby from Flushing, under the command of Francis Vere. Had the English ammunition lasted but a few more hours the whole of the Armada would have been either driven ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... steadfast. This being so, ultimate success became assured. Wise and cool-headed men, in a frame of mind to contemplate the situation as it really was, saw that the tide was about at its turning, and that the Union would not drift away to destruction in this storm at any rate. They saw that the North could whip the South, if it chose; and it was now sufficiently evident that it would choose,—that it would endure, and would finish its task. It ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... 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 ...
— An Arrow in a Sunbeam - and Other Tales • Various
... 'Where do you teach?' said I. 'In the State prison' he said. A few years ago seventy-five per cent. of the inmates of the Minnesota State prison were boys who had once been in Sunday School and had been permitted to drift away. The later teen age, sixteen to twenty, is the criminal period. It is an appalling thing that 12,000 children were brought before the courts of New York in 1909, and in the same year more than 15,000 boys and girls suffered arrest in Chicago. Our criminal ranks are added to, ...
— The Personal Touch • J. Wilbur Chapman
... rode a cow and shot at a goat," Flint answered, and was rather relieved to have the conversation drift away on to the comparative merits, as hunting-grounds, of the different sections of the country. The subject was not specially exciting to Flint; but it was at least impersonal, and he felt an unaccountable aversion to hearing any further discussion of ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... lies a clerk who half his life had spent Toiling at ledgers in a city grey, Thinking that so his days would drift away With no lance broken in life's tournament; Yet ever 'twixt the book and his bright eyes The gleaming eagles of the legions came, And horsemen, charging under phantom skies, Went thundering ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... a boat and row across. I shall go to that village instead of the other, because the loss of a boat may cause anger and, even if well disposed to the cause, they might not receive you well. However, I shall tie the boat up on the opposite bank when I leave it, so that it will not drift away down the river; and when they see it in the morning, they will only have to send another boat ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... they were not downcast. They did not seem apprehensive that Folly Bay would get salmon for forty cents. MacRae had said he would still buy. For them that settled it. They would not have to sell their catch to Folly Bay for whatever price Gower cared to set. Presently they began to drift away to their boats, to bed, for their work began in that gray hour between dawn and sunrise when the schooling salmon ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... him to go up to New York, or visit somewhere for a while, and let me stay here until my baby is born. Does that seem so very unreasonable? It does not to me, but poor Aunt Varina is in agony about it—I am letting my husband drift away ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... the landing-stage, putting on his red glasses as he went. His horror was complete when he found there was no craft of any kind about, not even a rowboat. Alas! I had idiotically allowed the dinghy to drift away. He ran along the shore, every now and then looking anxiously through his binoculars for any sign of any kind of boat that would get him over to Glasnabinnie in time to fulfil his promise of ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... I will. I will," she whispered to herself, a hand pressed to each temple to constrain her mind. And for five minutes she would attend, and then she would drift away on a sea of pleasant indolence, and time fluttered away from her like an escaping bird, and she knew herself for a light woman who would never excel. And Kay's brown head was bent over his book, and raised sometimes to chaff or talk, and bent ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... he made few acquaintances beyond those with whom he was intimately associated. It seemed more politic to obey his instincts and remain unobtrusive in company and drift away inoffensively when the chance occurred. One of the men with whom he talked occasionally was a red-headed little cockney by the name of Shendish. For some reason or the other—perhaps because his name conveyed ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... window in his stocking feet, he listened again. There were more voices murmuring on the veranda of the hotel now, but within a few moments forms began to drift away down the street, and finally there was silence. Evidently the widow had not secured backing as strong as she could have desired. And Terry went to bed and ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... the poor little attempts I made to ascertain my own position. "That's all right," he would say; or, "Leave all that to me. I'LL look after them." And he would drift away towards the philosophy and moral of the situation. What ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... was evident the people did not care to go too near to the dangerous place. There was a row of thick bushes which concealed the gulf below, and as they approached these bushes the rain abruptly ceased, and the clouds began to break and drift away in the sky. "Two of you seize the girl and throw her over," said Tourmaline in a calm, matter-of-fact way, "and two others must throw the boy over. It may take four, perhaps, to lift the ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum
... Centuries drift away, and the giddy, old reprobate—earth, dying a hideous, ghastly death, with but one solitary human to shudder in unison with its last throes, to bask in the last pale rays of a cold sun, to inhale the last ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... been planning something like this, and then to have it taste like stale wine! Vaguely he knew that he had made a discovery. The girl! If he were poring over his chart, his glance would drift away; if he were reading, the printed page had a peculiar way of vanishing. Of course it was all nonsense. But that night in Shanghai something had drawn him irresistibly to young Cleigh's table. It might have been the colour of her hair. At any rate, he hadn't ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... my mind, and compare them both with each other, and with all that was already in my memory. And whatever appeared to me most rational, most scriptural, I treasured for future use, allowing the rest to drift away ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... cross her mind was that these associations meant only evil for Jack, and that to be absorbed in the sort of life that seemed to please him was for her to drift away ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... gone by, for the Spider now had grown old—had grown to be an old man—for it had begun of late to be whispered that he talked more than he had been wont to talk in the days of his prime, that he was not as safe as he had been, and in consequence his trade of late had begun to drift away from him. ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... as it were, to drift away from me. But I was more and more beset by the thought of the higher duties that laid ...
— Little Eyolf • Henrik Ibsen
... be if he is afraid of it," returned Bob in the same low tone. "You can be afraid of any fancy if you want to. It doesn't need to exist. I guess most fears are of things that don't really exist Come on, now. Let me shovel this drift away." ...
— Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp • Alice B. Emerson
... betrothal, the marriages, and suddenly all that wonderful starlight and firelight life ended. For a while, the men seemed to drift away from each other. For a while, we—the 'devoted five,' as our people called us—seemed to drift away from each other. It was as though they took back something they had freely given each other to give to us. It was as though we took ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... back to the hotel, and as he lay for a long time in the bathtub, letting the warmness drift away from the water, the thought ran over and over in his mind. They might be able to stay there, Allenby said to himself. They might be able to stay there. He smiled warmly at a crack in the plaster as he thought of the first of the week and the ...
— Pleasant Journey • Richard F. Thieme
... that Mrs. Fenton recoiled. "He is not weak and wicked. It is abominable for you, his sister, to say so. He is far too good for any of you, and whatever he has done wrong, you are to blame for it. You never tried to understand him or help him. You just left him drift away because he didn't fall in with your narrow-minded ideas. I may have done wrong, I have done wrong; but he has always been all that is good and true and honourable. He may leave me, but he'll never go back to you, never, never, never." She ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... to high school in Fallon, making the long daily ride to and from town on horseback. He was a good pupil and the hours he spent with his lessons were precious; they made the farm drift away. To his mind, which was opening like a bud, it seemed that history was the recorded romance of men who were everything but farmers. School books told fascinating stories of conquerors, soldiers, inventors, ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... for cartridges; it had to be refined zinc and very pure, or the shooting went wrong. Well, we had let the refining business drift away from England to Belgium and Germany. There were just one or two British firms still left.... Unless we bucked up tremendously we should get caught short of cartridges.... At any rate of cartridges so made as to ensure good shooting. "And ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... compelled to sell all articles of one kind and quality at one price. The man who should fix a higher price on his portion of the supply would be passed by in favor of other sellers who were disposing of their final increments, and his business would quietly drift away from him. There cannot be two prices for one commodity in the same market at the same time. This fact is fundamental. Even the monopoly is able to get different prices for different parts of its output only by offering them at different times; and competing producers ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... dear my Rose, good-bye; The wind is up; so; drift away. That songs from me as leaves from thee may fly, ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... halted, giving the camels a chance of grazing on what tamarisks they could find during day-light, for indeed camels are troublesome animals. They must not eat after sundown or it makes them ill. They are let loose on arrival at a camp, and they drift away in search of lichens or other shrubs. At sunset they are driven back to camp, where they kneel down and ruminate to their hearts' content until it is time for the caravan to start. The heavy wooden saddles with heavy padding under them are not removed from the camel's hump ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... minutes brought them close to the frigate, which, on seeing a small boat making for her, threw her sails aback to wait for it. As they came close a rope was thrown; Will grasped it and swung himself up the side, leaving the boat to drift away. The sailors stood looking in surprise at him, but Will went straight ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... population takes place largely through recruits from other sections of the Country. They must find industrial and social adjustment to a new environment largely made up of the white population. They are either killed off by the conditions under which they work and live, or drift away from the city at a ...
— The Negro at Work in New York City - A Study in Economic Progress • George Edmund Haynes
... know why, but—but I dread something," Hermione said. "I feel as if—no, I don't know what I feel. But if Vere should ever drift away from me I don't know how I could bear it. A boy—one expects him to go out into the world. But a girl! I want to keep Vere. I must keep Vere. If anything else were to be taken from me I don't ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... block of workmen's buildings in West Kensington, Pat Moloney lay dying. He and his wife had been thriftless and uncertain, they drifted into marriage, drifted in and out of work, and, having watched their children grow up with some affection and a good deal of neglect, had now seen them drift away, some back to the old country, and some to ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... Pemberton and Martin Venables. I loved them at the first with all the enthusiasm a boy feels when he thinks he has found his ideal friends. They supplied to me the lack of brothers; they were true, manly, high-minded friends. But as soon as I began to drift away from the good I had ceased to strive after, I ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... watch over; to try to guard their happiness. You would say that I had plenty of opportunities in my profession; it is true in a sense, and I think I am perhaps a better schoolmaster for being unmarried. But these boys are not one's own; they drift away; they come back dutifully and affectionately to talk to their old tutor; and we are both of us painfully conscious that we have lost hold of the thread, and that the nearness of the tie that once existed exists ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... whisper, "we know the secrets of one another's hearts. Oh, Brooke! Brooke! why have we never met before? Oh, Brooke! how strangely we have drifted together! How much we have learned about each other! Is Fate so bitter as to make us drift away, after—after—" ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... flowers were asleep in the garden, and there was a steady, gentle shower of yellow leaves down the Forest. That morning when he woke the little house seemed suspended in a golden mist. As he stood in the doorway he felt as though it might drift away up over the trees and into space any minute. But after a little he knew it was not Helma's little forest house that was to go swinging away into space and adventure,—it was himself. And suddenly he wanted to go then,—to the sea and over and beyond. He called ...
— The Little House in the Fairy Wood • Ethel Cook Eliot
... self-sufficiency, a thing not of the Father, but of the world, who does not know in himself, or see in somebody he watches, something of this pure pride in life? Just to live is so attractive that the higher ends and responsibilities of living drift away out of sight. This instinctive almost physical selfishness is the philosophy of more than we think both of the good and of the bad ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... ice which is behind. In fact, it is this pushing process which causes the end of the tongue to shed its bergs, because, when the point is thrust into deep water and floats, the motion of the sea cracks the floating mass off from that pail which is still aground, and lets it drift away. ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... mind fixed upon the devout meditations proper to the eve of Good Friday. But thoughts of Montanelli and Gemma got so much in the way of this devotional exercise that at last he gave up the attempt and allowed his fancy to drift away to the wonders and glories of the coming insurrection, and to the part in it that he had allotted to his two idols. The Padre was to be the leader, the apostle, the prophet before whose sacred wrath the powers of darkness were to flee, ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... platform of rock situated on the south side of Little Razorback. We had one small meal here, but our condition was not a pleasant one, since little food remained and fuel was short. There was undoubtedly a chance that the sea ice would break up and drift away in this high wind. Had that happened we should have been left to starve on the tiny island. The position was not an enviable one. We got back into our bags, which were, as stated, wet and beastly, after a scanty supper ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... to see that each canoe, before being abandoned there amidst the friendly rushes, was securely staked, so that it could not drift away, through the ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... company—for he did all the talking. We fell together, as modest people will, in the tail of the herd that was being shown through, and he at once began to say things which interested me. As he talked along, softly, pleasantly, flowingly, he seemed to drift away imperceptibly out of this world and time, and into some remote era and old forgotten country; and so he gradually wove such a spell about me that I seemed to move among the specters and shadows and dust and mold of a gray antiquity, holding ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... shortly afterward disperse, and one by one drift away to their rooms. Captain Ringwood and Maitland the surgeon being ...
— The Haunted Chamber - A Novel • "The Duchess"
... I feel ouch and see desert and then I drift away up to sky again," answered Firio. "All right now, eh? Pretty soon you so strong I have to broil five—six—seven quail a ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... eagerly for the sign of life which the stimulating properties of the spirit might reveal. The girl allowed her thoughts to drift away to the lonely trail over which her lover had driven. She saw in fancy the crouching assailants firing from the cover of some wayside bluff. She seemed to hear many shots, to see the speeding horses, to hear the dull sound of the fatal ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... way she thought that maybe after awhile that the big, big violet might drift away, away, and great grown people might say, "No, Bessie Bell, there never was a violet in all ...
— Somebody's Little Girl • Martha Young
... see through't," murmured Junkie, after watching for some time. "See! he has hooked another. Ye see, Tonal', it must be lettin' the hook drift away down under the ledges that does it. ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... privateer saw the rest of the squadron drift away to leeward, she again headed for the Rock. The Spanish admiral, Barcelo, in a seventy-four gun ship, endeavoured to cut her off—firing two broadsides of grape and round shot at her—but, with the other man-of-war, was compelled to retire by the batteries at Europa; ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... love you!" hers would come as surely as the echo to the sound; and yet he shrank from saying it. Their talk would drift near to it, dally with it, flash about it, play attack and defence across it, and drift away again, leaving the essential thing unspoken. The skill with which she fenced with this most fragile of all topics, never losing her guard, never missing her thrust or parry, and yet never inflicting anything like a wound, filled him with a sort of rapture. ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... companies in 1821, the Hudson's Bay Company became the sole authority on the Pacific coast. Settlers straggled in slowly until, in the late fifties, the discovery of rich placer gold on the Fraser and later in the Cariboo brought tens of thousands of miners from Australia and California, only to drift away again almost as quickly when the sands ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... do!" cried one of the men. "We can make a rope of ti leaves and tie the canoe so it cannot drift away." ...
— Legends of Wailuku • Charlotte Hapai
... chair, drink from his glass. It wrought a change in all his nature; everything that went to make up his daily life—wife, business, the methodical prudence of the small bourgeois—seemed suddenly to become unstable and drift away from him. And he shut himself up in his house and barricaded it, he paced the empty apartments with the restless impatience of a caged wild beast, going from room to room to make sure that all the doors and windows were securely fastened. He counted his cartridges and ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... mates said nothing more at the time, however. They all made their way to the stables, kicked the drift away from the door, and got the horses into their stalls. They all went inside out of the storm and closed the doors against the driving snow. In five minutes, when the animals were made secure and fed, and they tried to open the doors again, the wind had heaped the snow to such a height against them ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson
... their gorgeous gowns and plied me with foolish questions which I had better sense than to try to answer with the slightest degree of truth. But their power of sustained interest in such weighty matters was not great and soon the conversation would drift away, especially if Marguerite was about, when the talk would turn to ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... the river, don't let them drag for me. Let me calmly drift away, and be borne off into the Atlantic Ocean. I want oblivion. ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... my hopes abreast Turns ever from my way its pregnant tide. My laden boat, torn from its rest, Drifts to the other side. So all my hopes are set astray, And drift away, and drift away. ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... of organised Christianity.—For a generation or more in every part of Christendom there has been a steady drift away from organised religion as represented by the churches, and the question is being seriously asked whether Christianity can much longer hold its own. Protestant controversialists frequently draw attention to the decline of church-going in Latin ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... that vast patience so necessary to the successful African traveller. Occasionally a group of the chatting natives would drift toward his throne, would fall into awestricken silence, would stare, would drift away again; but none addressed him. The Leopard Woman, obeying rules that Kingozi had managed to convey as very strict, held apart. Only in the evening, after the lion- fearing visitors had all departed, did they sit together sociably ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... said Yulee, "or else it will drift away in the night time. We'll tie it here, though, because you know we may want to sail round our island, and I don't see any log of wood here to make a boat out of as Robinson Crusoe did. Where's the rope, Bo?" she said, as she ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder
... the foot of the bed. I thought it was mother when she came in, and it was the touch of mother's hand that fell so soft and tender upon my temple, soothing the hot pain. Gradually the mists seemed to drift away, and I saw the gray-blue ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... six years later. The others, ascertaining, on a closer view, that their expected income of fifty thousand dollars a year is farther off than they anticipated, and that fifty thousand cents is about as much as they can expect for a good many years to come, drift away into other employments, and some of them, no doubt, will be much astonished to learn from the newspaper reporters what ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... it, and being complete in its own arrangements. There are eighteen cottages, a large, generous school-room, a small infirmary for the sick, and a little church. About two hundred children of criminals and the unfortunate class are here cared for. Instead of allowing them to drift away and to perpetuate vice, crime, and immorality, they are taken entirely from their old surroundings, and new influences of knowledge and purity are thrown about them. There is no part of Mrs. Meredith's mission which has such ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... the pity of it, Edith brushed away a tear or two. She was not at all sleepy, but drew the blanket closer around her, for the night grew chill as the earth swept farther and farther away from the sun. The clouds had begun to drift away, and faintly, through the shadow, glimmered one pale star. Gradually, others came out, then a white and ghostly moon, with a veil of cloud about it, grey, yet ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... prahus and men for my journey up the river. The controleur and the Sultan also co-operated in assisting me to make a start, but when at last all seemed in readiness, the Malays allowed one of our prahus to drift away down toward the sea; after other similar delays I finally began my ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... has a more or less extraneous institution called a school for the children. The church spends its money for adults; it compasses sea and land to make one proselyte and coerce him back in old age, and allows the many that already as children are its own to drift away. It often fails to see that if it is to grow lives it must grow them in the growing period. There still remain many churches that must be converted from the selfishness of adult ministry and entertainment to self-giving ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... threatening every moment to snap them in two, and drive us from our anchorage. We held on for several hours, till, at nine P.M., some swell having set in upon the margin of the ice, it began to break off and drift away. Every possible exertion was instantly made to shift our stream cable farther in upon the floe; but it broke away so quickly as to baffle every endeavour, and at ten the ship went adrift, the wind blowing still harder than before. Having ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... with a half gasp. It looked so very gloomy around the spot which they had reached that not for worlds would he drift away from his association with one or the other of his companions. Besides, they might need him in some way or other; because there were some things he could do, if he wasn't cut out for an agile fellow because of ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... expedient was there to keep the two countries in touch with each other—to maintain that "representation" in England which they craved?—whereas, were they to choose governors from among themselves, they would soon drift away from sympathy with and understanding of England. And why all this uproar about the stamp tax? What easier, more equitable way could be devised to get the financial tribute required without pressing hard on ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... had spoken to her querulously, almost sharply. Yet in her tears there was no reproach for him, rather for herself—the fear that she might lose her influence over him, that she could not keep him close to her heart, that he might drift away from her in the commonplaces and monotony of work and domestic life. Everything so depended on her being to him not only the one woman for whom he cared, but the woman without whom he could care for ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... from Paco and Loo, his cabinmates, Hank had built an Iron Curtain all of his own between himself and the other members of the Progressive Tours trip. Which was the way he wanted it. He could foresee a period when having friends might be a handicap when and if he needed to drift away from the main body for ...
— Combat • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... the goral's blood we again climbed the cliff at the end of the meadow. When we were nearly 2,000 feet above camp the clouds shut in and, as the impenetrable gray curtain wrapped itself about us, we could only sit quietly and wait for it to drift away. ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... shirts, jean trousers, and broad black hats. Some of the oldest men may sport a patched pair of moccasins or so, but most are conventional enough in clumsy shoes. After a longer or shorter stay they hoist their red sails and drift away toward some mysterious destination on the north shore. If the buyer is curious enough and persistent enough, he may elicit the fact ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... the question then was, whether we should separate or keep together. After some discussion, we agreed to separate in twos, and the Portuguese captain and I agreed to keep each other company. We first pushed the boat into the stream, that she might drift away, and then, shaking each other by the hand and bidding adieu, we all started in different directions. For some time the captain and I threaded the woods in silence, when we were stopped by a stream of deep water, with such high banks, that in the dark ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... They drift away. Ah, God! they drift for ever. I watch the stream sweep onward to the sea, Like some old battered buoy upon a roaring river, Round whom the ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... he was a fascinating companion for a voyage down the sparkling stream of life; only his boat was very small. There was room in it for a girl-partner at the oar, but no accommodation for passengers. He was allowed to drift away from the threshold of the Belgravian mansion while Winnie averted her tearful eyes. He was not a lodger. The lodger was Mr Verloc, indolent, and keeping late hours, sleepily jocular of a morning from under his bed-clothes, but with ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... 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 in ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... or three large spars and a spare mast or two, which I threw overboard, tying every one with a rope that it might not drift away. Climbing down the ship's side, I pulled them toward me and tied four of them fast together in the form of a raft, laying two or three pieces ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody |
