"Drifting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as easily as a spider's web; lead and glass scattered all over the rooms, leaving only the shattered frames, through which rushed the resistless wind and blinding snow. . . . Through the joints of doors and windows, the cracks and crevices, before unknown to the eye, the drifting snow penetrated and piled up in ridges, so that rooms and passages had to be cleared like the pavement in the streets. . . . On an examination of Cotehele Woods, the scene presented gives one the ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... inevitable, but which was wholly and familiarly uninteresting. He did not even see how it must strike the girl who was going through it all for him, for David's thoughts were out on the flood-tide of sorrow, drifting against ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... that Mrs Massey was on the forecastle talking with Peggy Mitford. A smart breeze was blowing— just enough to fill all the sails and carry the ship swiftly on her course, without causing much of a sea. The moon shone fitfully through a mass of drifting clouds, mingling its pallid light with the wondrous phosphoric sheen of the ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... Hawkes came drifting downward. He started to cry out in fear, until he noticed that the ground was coming up at him slowly, and that he was slipping sideways. He landed on a street back of the tanks, ...
— Pursuit • Lester del Rey
... touched the drifted masses at its base and incontinently came striding with seven-leagued boots towards us. The distant cliff seemed to shift and quiver, and at the touch of the dawn a reek of gray vapour poured upward from the crater floor, whirls and puffs and drifting wraiths of gray, thicker and broader and denser, until at last the whole westward plain was steaming like a wet handkerchief held before the fire, and the westward cliffs were no more than ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... was sitting on the wharf, watching the ebb of the tide. The current was swift, for there had been heavy rains within a few days; the river was full of drifting logs, bits of bark, odds and ends of various kinds; the water, usually so blue, looked brown and thick. It swirled round the great mossy piers, making eddies between them; from time to time the boy dropped bits of paper into these eddies, and saw ...
— Nautilus • Laura E. Richards
... merely drifting now, and its strange visitor had alighted upon the water, rushing along a little way in front and leaving two long, milky paths of white foam behind. Both the pilot and the passenger were drenched by every wave. They watched the latter as he was taken off, and their eyes ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... These rivers and torrents swell with those rains of money and home and fame and happiness, and then fall and run almost dry, but the ocean of civilization has gathered up all these waters, and holds them in sparkling beauty for all subsequent use. Civilization is a fertile delta made by the drifting ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... bottom upwards, and there he was presently joined by Captain Burgoyne and several others of the crew. Then he beheld the vessel turn over and go down, stern first; the whole catastrophe being over in a few minutes. The launch was drifting a few yards off, and May called out to his comrades, "Jump, men! it is our last chance." May with three others succeeded in reaching the boat, in which fifteen of the remainder of the crew also found a refuge. It is uncertain whether poor Captain Burgoyne remained ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... chamber one day, he opened the window, and unfortunately a strong gust of wind carried several pages of MS. which were lying on his table into the street. A priest who happened to be passing the house examined one or two of the drifting poems, and, discovering that they were impious, denounced Petit to the authorities. His rooms furnished a large supply of similar work, and, as we have said, the poet paid the penalty for his rashness at ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... drifting American women one sees over here!' Miss Buckston ejaculated; to which Franklin cheerfully replied: 'Oh, we'll work them all in; they are of use to us in their own way, though they often don't know it. They ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... the fog shut down again denser than ever before. One could almost "stand on it." It continued so for a number of days, the wind increasing to a gale. The waves rose high, but I had a good ship. Still, in the dismal fog I felt myself drifting into loneliness, an insect on a straw in the midst of the elements. I lashed the helm, and my vessel held her course, and ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... dangerous a glacier in his life. The ice was excessively slippery, and out of all its chasms came wild sounds of gushing water; not monotonous or low, but changeful and loud, rising occasionally into drifting passages of wild melody, then breaking off into short melancholy tones, or sudden shrieks, resembling those of human voices in distress or pain. The ice was broken into thousands of confused shapes, but none, Hans thought, like the ordinary ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... before all these arrangements had been made, and during the time so occupied, the ships lay idly side by side, drifting slowly before the wind, the sails having been lowered as soon as the struggle was over. Up to this time, the knights had been too busily engaged to think of food, but they were right glad when they were summoned to a meal ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... traders' camp-fire was curling up and drifting away into thin veils of film before the sun showed over the horizon hills. The bull-teams had taken up their steady forward push while the quails were still flying to ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... walk to Kensington Gardens a poisonous current had run at the back of his mind. Drifting on it, might he not escape? Was he not of too fine a porcelain to mingle with the coarse and common pottery of the ranks? Was it necessary to go into the thick of the coarse clay vessels, just to be shattered? It was easy for Phineas to proclaim that he found no derogation ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... an' drifting out on the ocean," answered the old tar, and then he continued: "You know how they tried to board us—after Carey, Bossermann, that skunk o' a Wingate, an' Ulligan went to 'em. Well, fust we kept 'em off with fireworks and with a shotgun. We didn't have much steam up, but Frank Norton—bless ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)
... deep water at once and swam— I swam beside him and held his mane— Till we touched the bank of the broken dam In shallow water—then off again, Swimming in darkness across the flood, Rank with the smell of the drifting mud. ...
— Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses • A. B. Paterson
... I fulfilled your engagement in grand, tout ensemble style, but there is a sad bon jour look about the thirty-eight cents left in my vest pocket that would make a hired man weep. All day long the heavens wept, and the heavy, sombre clouds went drifting about over head, and the north wind howled in maniacal derision, and the hack drivers danced on the pavements in wild, fierce glee, for they knew too well what the stormy day betokened. The hack was to call for me at eight. At five minutes to eight ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... on, afternoon came, and I fell into a troubled sleep. The pain of my throat directed my wandering thoughts perhaps, and conjured up horrible visions. I was lashed to the wheel of the Aguila, and the schooner went drifting, drifting far away into an unknown sea. All was still around me, though I was not alone. Sailors walked the deck or huddled in the forecastle—sailors with skin of wrinkled parchment, with deep-set, burning yet ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... their bands to work them down to the low country and the camp tender stayed to help them with the crossing. Breed listened long to the droning undertone, the maddening blat of five thousand woollies on the bed ground, its querulous volume persisting through the sound of water and wind and drifting to him across a distance of five miles. Then he stretched forth his head ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... the enemy's deck before his own ship sank. Strange to say, the same thing happened to Robert of Namur, a Flemish friend of Edward's, whose vessel, grappled by a bigger enemy, was sinking under him as the two were drifting side by side, when Hanekin, an officer of Robert's, climbed into the Spanish vessel by some entangled rigging and cut the ropes which held the Spanish sails. Down came the sails with a run, flopping about the Spaniards' heads; and before the confusion could be put right Robert ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... direction, it is often extremely useful; but, when the product of such speculation is placed on a level with those generalisations of morphological truths which are represented by the definitions of natural groups, it tends to confuse fancy with fact and to create mere confusion. We are in danger of drifting into a new 'Natur-Philosophie' worse than the old, because there is less excuse for it. Boyle did great service to science by his 'Sceptical Chemist,' and I am inclined to think that, at the present day, a 'Sceptical Biologist' might exert an ...
— The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century • T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley
... in Khartoum. Shall we feel less for the servants of Christ who have given up home and country to suffer and it may be to die for Him? Some of us remember that when Missions were destroyed, when clouds were all around us, and the very ground drifting from under our feet, that we were made brave to work and wait for the salvation of God by the prayers which went up to God for us. When "prayers were made without ceasing of the Church unto God," the fast-closed ...
— Five Sermons • H.B. Whipple
... California ranches, my boyhood hustling newspapers on the streets of a healthy Western city, and my youth on the ozone-laden waters of San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean. I loved life in the open, and I toiled in the open, at the hardest kinds of work. Learning no trade, but drifting along from job to job, I looked on the world and called it good, every bit of it. Let me repeat, this optimism was because I was healthy and strong, bothered with neither aches nor weaknesses, never turned down by the boss because I did not look ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... and his spirit madly drank in the illusive hope: 'Whither fliest thou, Aeneas? forsake not thy plighted bridal chamber. This hand shall give thee the land thou hast sought overseas.' So clamouring he pursues, and brandishes his drawn sword, and sees not that his rejoicing is drifting with the winds. The ship lay haply moored to a high ledge of rock, with ladders run out and gangway ready, wherein king Osinius sailed from the coasts of Clusium. Here the fluttering phantom of flying Aeneas darts and hides ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... We are drifting away from our old-fashioned homes; fathers have grown too busy, mothers have delegated their God-given work to others. We have lost instead of gained. Wherever the homes are full of weakness the government is in danger. ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... all that night, it was only to imagine myself drifting down the river on a strong spring-tide, to the Hulks; a ghostly pirate calling out to me through a speaking-trumpet, as I passed the gibbet-station, that I had better come ashore and be hanged there at once, and not put it off. I was afraid to sleep, even if I had been inclined, for I knew ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... snow had piled up fast. What promised to be a heavy storm had become a reality, and it was whirling and drifting dreadfully. You must remember that I had on my little thin ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... and methodically on his squared map paper, the smoke drifting fragrantly from his brier pipe, nodded in silence, glancing down now and then at the barometer and compass ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... sat on the sand, and hid her tearful eyes in her two trembling hands; then suddenly, struck by the silence, she looked up in terror. There in front of her she saw a boat drifting, and in the boat her boy, her little lad of eight years old, who was laughing right merrily, paddling as well as he could with one oar that he could hardly hold, and crying out, "I am going to see what there is behind the mist, and I will ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... enemy.' During the forenoon the ship was within seven or eight miles of the high bold coast-line to the south of Cape Adare, but later she had to be turned outwards [Page 46] so that the heavy stream of pack-ice drifting along the land could be avoided. By the morning of the 11th she was well clear of the land, but the various peaks and headlands which Sir James Ross had named could be distinctly seen, and gave everyone plenty to talk and think about. Progress, however, was ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... cloud, Fountain head and Source of rivers... Dew cloth, dream drapery— Drifting meadow ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... Wife?" and "The Strange Gentleman." Trifles light as air though these effusions might be, the radiant bubbles showed even then, as by a casual freak which way with him the breeze in his leisure hours was drifting. A dozen years or more after this came the private theatricals at Tavistock House. Beginning simply, first of all, with his direction of his children's frolics in the enacting of a burletta, of a Cracker Bonbon for Christmas, and ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... by a perennial drifting polar icepack that averages about 3 meters in thickness, although pressure ridges may be three times that size; clockwise drift pattern in the Beaufort Gyral Stream, but nearly straight line movement from the New Siberian Islands (Russia) ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... white ribbon in their buttonholes, were idling. They were quiet, curious, dully waiting to see what this preposterous stroke might mean for them. In the heavy noonday air of the streets they moved lethargically, drifting westward to the hall where the A. R. U. committees were in session. Oblivious of his engagements, Sommers followed them, hearing the burden of their talk, feeling their aimless discontent, their bitterness at the grind of circumstances. This prodigal country ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... at once and looked at his friend, but could not clearly see his face, for the moon was still behind thick drifting clouds. ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... in the shadow of the shed, watched him. A vague fear beset him,—of the vast, white cold,—the glowering mountains,—of himself; he clung to the familiar face, like a man drifting out into an unknown sea, clutching some relic of the shore. When Lamar fell asleep, he wandered uncertainly towards the tents. The world had grown new, strange; was he Ben, picking cotton in the swamp-edge?—plunging his fingers with a shudder in the icy drifts. Down ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... No longer slowly drifting, for they had spread out their sails to the new and cool breeze, and cracked on all ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... resolved never to part with him. Since then we have had great years together. We have been hungry and happy together, and together we have played by the cabin, faced danger in the wilds, slept peacefully among the flowers, followed the trails by starlight, and cuddled down in winter's drifting snow. ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... light. His eyes were almost closed by the swelling of his forehead. Soon after he discovered a castle high up on the banks on one side of the river, the inhabitants of which he stirred up by a blast on his bugle as he was drifting helplessly. A boat shot away from shore and picked him up. The boat contained an Austrian officer and two soldiers. The officer informed him that the castle to which he was being conveyed, was the fortress Komorn. His wounds were quickly ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... is full of grief Or when my heart is merry; Come with the falling of the leaf Or with the redd'ning cherry. Come when the year's first blossom blows, Come when the summer gleams and glows, Come with the winter's drifting snows, And ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... probably above the average in intelligence; and yet the speed with which he had succeeded in monopolising Leonetta's attention made him feel in his gratified vanity, so immensely grateful to the girl, that willy-nilly, he found himself drifting all too pleasantly along that warm and intoxicating stream that the nineteenth century called "Love," without feeling either the obligation or even the desire to realise calmly and dispassionately what had ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... for yards. As his mad eyes softened and filmed, he saw once more, perhaps,—or so the heavy-hearted keeper who had slain him would have us believe,—the shadowy plains unrolling under the wild sky, and the hosts of his vanished kindred drifting ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... bad as could be, with the drifting of the smoke, and the flare of fire, and the pelting of bullets, and of grapnel from coehorns, and the screams of Frenchmen exulting vastly, with scarcely any Englishmen to stop them. It seemed as if they were to do as they pleased, level the bulwarks of English rights, and cover themselves ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... March winds were blowing, Not so very long ago, And it still kept snowing, snowing, Piling, drifting, Heaping, sifting, Snow on snow, Faithless Fanny said, "Spring never Will be here; 'twill snow forever; And I don't believe I ever ...
— The Nursery, June 1873, Vol. XIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest People • Various
... branches. Up and up she sailed, but paling as she rose from red to orange, from orange to the yellow of hay; and at yellow she remained, when the last branch had dropped past her face of light, and she was drifting in the height ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... vitality; but none had struck upon the really characteristically French note. They lacked form, and those fine qualities of strength and clarity which form alone can give. Their sentences were indeterminate—long, complex, drifting, and connected together by conjunctions into a loose aggregate. The 'Precious' writers had dimly realized the importance of form, but they had not realized at all the importance of simplicity. This was Pascal's great discovery. His sentences are clear, straightforward, and distinct; and they ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... of population, and not by the lapse of time. [Page: 136] The first permanent white settler came to Chicago precisely one hundred years ago, and the city has a population at present of about two and a quarter millions. It is here not a question of slow historic development but of the rapid drifting towards a certain point, of a population from all quarters of the globe, and the ethnological standpoint therefore becomes of ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes
... of the noblest family in all the land," sighed old Gretel. "His grandfather was a fine man." I contrived to subdue my rage and disappointment and somewhat loudly returned to the topic from which we were drifting. ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... croziers and white-robed acolytes in its streets; with the subtle smoke of incense coming out from the cathedral door to mingle with the odours of the fruits and flowers in the market-place; with great flat-bottomed boats drifting down the river under the leaning eaves of its dwellings; and with the galleries of its opposing houses touching so nearly that a girl leaning in one could stretch a Provence rose or toss an Easter egg across to ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... Hendrik, who having been in their midst could tell what way they were drifting, "they came down upon us from a northerly direction. When we headed our horses homewards, we soon galloped out from them, and they did not appear to fly after us; I am sure they were ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... stars, then, are either drifting past our solar system, which alone remains fixed; or, the fixed stars are all actually at rest, and our sun is drifting through them; or, our solar system and the so-called fixed stars are both in motion. One or ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... orchard straggling up to the back door. And in one of them I was born, and in the other Old Hundred. Down the road was another house, a deep red, half hidden in the trees. Smoke was rising from the chimney now, and drifting rosily against the first flush ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... stars. They were not still and changeless and winking, as they appeared from the moon. These stars seemed to stir uneasily, to shift ever so slightly among themselves, like flecks of bright color drifting on a breeze. ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... the direction, and after a few moments caught sight of an immense hay barge bearing down upon him. The hay barge had been towed by a steam tug, but the rope had parted, and the barge was now drifting at the mercy ...
— The Young Bridge-Tender - or, Ralph Nelson's Upward Struggle • Arthur M. Winfield
... said the captain; "I have; but your life is as valuable as mine, and I would hold you at no disadvantage. The fact is, we are becalmed, and there is no prospect of any wind reaching us here till night, when we shan't know which way we are drifting, and may as well give up all hope. There is wind overhead, I know, and it is going straight for France. If we could get up another thousand feet or so, we should catch the current and be over land in ten minutes. But all the ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... deadwater were several floating platforms; the men called them "headworks." On the platforms were capstans. The headworks were anchored far in advance of the drifting logs, around which were thrown pocket booms; men trod in weary procession, circling the capstans, pushing against long ashen bars, and the dripping tow warp hastened the ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... of ocean currents in drifting vessels out of their course, and in sweeping away great bodies of ice, is very great; although, from the fact that there is no land to enable the eye to mark the flow, such drifts are not perceptible. One of the most celebrated drifts of modern times, and the most ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... he come from?" continued the baron, drifting innocently farther and farther away from the ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... beside the Ocstall River Where trailing mists went drifting softly by; And waterfalls in thunderous voices calling, Their vaporous breath raised to ...
— The Last West and Paolo's Virginia • G. B. Warren
... City of Nan-king Memories with the Dusk Return An Emperor's Love On the Banks of Jo-yeh Thoughts in a Tranquil Night The Guild of Good-fellowship Under the Moon Drifting ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng
... now, sitting thus in total unconsciousness of his scrutiny, Hampton made no attempt to analyze the depth of his interest for this waif who had come drifting into his life. He did not in the least comprehend why she should have touched his heart with generous impulses, nor did he greatly care. The fact was far the more important, and that fact he no longer questioned. He had been a lonely, unhappy, discontented man for many ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... upon principles that are just, enduring, as old as the nation itself, yet ever young, vigorous, and progressive, because there is ever work for them to do. Our party was not founded for a single mission, which accomplished, left it drifting with no fixed star of principle to guide it. It was born and has lived to uphold great truths of government that need always to be enforced. The influence of the past speaks to us in the voice of the present. Jefferson and Jackson still lead ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... thought restrained him from that blunder of etiquette. It was his; it had been given him. It—and, oh, what an elysium it opened to the gaze of his mind's eye! He had tumbled to the foot of the ladder; he was hungry, homeless, friendless, ragged, cold, drifting; and he held in his hand the key to a paradise of the mud-honey that he craved. The fairy doll had waved a wand with her rag-stuffed hand; and now wherever he might go the enchanted palaces with shining foot-rests and magic ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... Snowdrop, various attempts were made by the Tamarisk and two trawlers and a tug to tow the Cassin. An eleven-inch towing hawser from the Tamarisk parted. All ships, except her, lost the Cassin during the night. The Cassin was drifting rapidly on a lee shore, and had it not been for the Tamarisk getting out a line in the early morning, the vessel would have undoubtedly grounded on Hook Point, as it is extremely doubtful if her anchors would ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... clearly that simple pride and cheerfulness in such an act were singularly out of harmony with Filmer's private constitution. It occurred to no one at the time, but there the fact is. We can guess with some confidence now that it must have been drifting about in his mind a great deal during the day, and, from a little note to his physician complaining of persistent insomnia, we have the soundest reason for supposing it dominated his nights,—the ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... during the months of July, August and September, cannot be told fully here, because it is long and intricate, nor summarized, because the fairness of any summary not supported by citations would be disputed. There are, however, some phenomena in the process of drifting towards war which may ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... The engines are working, yet we do not appear to be making any headway. So far as I can judge we seem to be simply drifting bodily to the westward and more toward the ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... into Latin to induce the learned to read them; native poets composed their verses in Latin, and all lectures at the universities were delivered in that tongue. The work of Luther was undone: ambitious princes and quarrelsome divines continued the rulers of Germany, and everything seemed drifting back into the Middle Ages. Then came the Thirty Years' War (1618- 1648), with all its disastrous consequences. At the close of that war the public mind was somewhat awakened, literary societies were organized, and literature was fostered; ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... Vague drifting thoughts like this followed Kit's shiver of repulsion at that Indian joy song over the promise of a veritable live Judas. On him they could wreak a personal vengeance, and go honestly to confession in some future day, with the conviction ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... during Shirley's two weeks' visit she and David were together, sometimes, through Mrs. Jim's contrivance, with others and often, by grace of their own ingenuity, alone, drifting carelessly down the most traveled stream of life. If Mrs. Jim's warning had awakened any doubts in Shirley's mind—and it had—the doubts were quickly laid by David's presence. She let herself drift; this in spite of certain very definite and very different plans which she had made for ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... useful and honourable life, which he might have hoped to close in a quiet haven, he was launched suddenly upon stormy waters, to which he was too brave to yield, which he was too timid to contend against; and the frail vessel drifting where the waves drove it, was soon piteously ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... reef, when the wind and current carried it, as near as might be, directly towards the crater. He was calling to Mark to come to his assistance, to help get the raft into a sort of bay, ahead of him, where it might be lodged; else would there be the danger of its drifting past the Reef, after all his pains. Our young man saw, at once, what was wanted, got a line, succeeded in throwing it to Bob, and by hauling upon it brought the whole mass ashore in the very spot Betts wished to see ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... not long until the sculptor was drifting down toward Memphis under a starry sky—the shadowy temples of Thebes hidden by the sudden closing-in of the ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... up into mountains; the distracting details scatter the attention and break up thinking, while the mere problem of exercising power crowds out speculation about what to do with it. Personal jealousies interrupt co-ordinated effort; committee sessions wear out nerves by their aimless drifting; constant speech-making turns a man back upon a convenient little store of platitudes—misunderstanding and distortion dry up the imagination, make thought timid and expression flat, the atmosphere of publicity requires ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... over-excitement of the strong and active brain behind them. The Wonder gained a fresher bloom, and looked full enough of life to radiate vitality into a statue of ice. They had a boat of their own, in which they passed many delightful hours on the lake, rowing, drifting, reading, telling of what had been, dreaming of ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... am as stubborn as you are, dear girl; I will not live on my wife's money—you will not live in my mother's house—and we are drifting apart. It is not that I care less for you dear, or at all for anyone else, but ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... sat intently watching the canoe. It seemed an age to him before he saw a hand emerge from the bushes and take hold of the head-rope. The motion given to the canoe was so slight as to be almost imperceptible; it seemed as if it was only drifting gently before the slight breeze which was creeping over the surface of the lake. Half its length had disappeared from the open space, when an Indian appeared by the edge of the water. He looked at the canoe, looked over ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... state of anarchy and incipient violence, Mirabeau, whose power in the Assembly was still unimpaired, wished to halt. He foresaw the future. No man in France had such clear insight and sagacity as he. He saw the State drifting into dissolution, and put forth his hand and raised his voice to arrest the catastrophe which he lamented. "The mob of Paris," said he, "will scourge the corpses of the King and Queen." It was then that he gave but feeble ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... She lay tugging at her anchor, with her stern toward the reef, and the waves washing over her; she looked like an old horse kicking out viciously at some obstacle with its hind legs. The anchor was not holding, and she was drifting backward on to ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... red sun hiding behind the drifting powder cloud. The ever-deepening roar of ceaseless contest had moved westward down the valley, when an aide wheeled his smoking horse in front of the Colonel, spoke a dozen hasty words, pointed impetuously to ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... face there passes the shadow of a deadly thought. He rises from the fire; he takes the wood back to the boat. His iron strength is shaken, but it still holds out. They are drifting nearer and nearer to the open sea. He can launch the boat without help; he can take the food and the fuel with him. The sleeper on the iceberg is the man who has robbed him of Clara—who has wrecked the hope and the happiness of his life. Leave ...
— The Frozen Deep • Wilkie Collins
... a mess!" said his father; but, without more words, he unhitched the oxen and drove them up the bank. The rest of the party hastily picked up the articles that were drifting about, or were lodged in the mud of the creek. It was a sorry sight, and the boys forgot, in the excitement of the moment, the discomforts and annoyances of their previous experiences. This was a ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... December of the eighteenth century. All night a fierce northeast snow-storm had been hissing and drifting through the frozen air, pelting angrily at the shuttered and curtained windows of the rich, and shrieking with scornful laughter as it forced its way through the ill-fitting casements and loose doors of the poor, clutching at them with icy fingers as they cowered over their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... fog-bank as a snake is drawn from the hole; They bellow one to the other, the frightened ship-bells toll, For day is a drifting terror till I raise the shroud with my breath, And they see strange bows above them and the two ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... as possible to where the iceboat was drifting in a sheet of open water—a spot where some days before a farmer had been cutting ice. To the craft Coulter was clinging and still ...
— The Mystery at Putnam Hall - The School Chums' Strange Discovery • Arthur M. Winfield
... embodiment of the tender sky and the wistful soil. What a loss, I said, to the coming generations of dwellers in the country — no bluebird in the spring! What will the farm-boy date from? But the fear was groundless: the birds are regaining their lost ground; broods of young blue-coats are again seen drifting from stake to stake or from mullen-stalk to mullen-stalk about the fields in summer, and our April air will doubtless again be warmed and thrilled by this lovely harbinger of spring. — JOHN ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... direction that the Indians had taken. The savages were overtaken and a parley ensued. The leader's thoughts were now in two places at once, and he was not far enough from the shore not to be able to cast a glance towards the Aimable, and to say to his lieutenants, as he saw the vessel drifting near shoal water, "If she keeps on in that course, she will soon be aground." Still, no time was to be lost. The parley with the Indians did not hinder them long, and soon they were on the way towards the village whither ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... spirit of disloyalty toward Ferdinand VII himself. Under circumstances like these, when the junta and its successor, the council of regency, refused to make substantial concessions to the colonies, both parties were inevitably drifting toward independence. In the phrase of Manuel Belgrano, one of the great leaders in the viceroyalty of La Plata, "our old King or none" became the watchword that gradually shaped the ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... a long silence. She was absorbed in the drawing, and I in my own thoughts, as I stared through the upper pane, as directed, at the grey, drifting, hurrying November clouds. Had I descried a quoit there about to descend upon me I should have been rather pleased than not. At last I became conscious of an intolerable ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... souls, incline to this dark coast, Where all too long, too faithlessly, we dream. Stoop to the world's dark pool, its crags and scars, Its yellow sands, its rosy harbour-bars, And soft green wastes that gleam But with some glorious drifting god-like ghost Of cloud, some vaguely passionate crimson stain: Rend the blue waves of heaven, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... westward in enormous billows. The silver surfaces of several lakes gleamed here and there like whitecaps on the rolling waves. Far off upon the verge of the horizon, fifty miles away, three snow-capped, sharply pointed mountains looked like a group of icebergs drifting from the Polar Sea. They did not move, however, nor will they move while this old earth shall last. They antedate by ages the Pyramids which they resemble. They will be standing thus, in majesty, when Egypt's royal sepulchres shall have returned to dust. Forever anchored there, those ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... the crowd of men of inferior rank and share in the affairs of their country; content to see their names once so exclusively glorious, set on a par with those of plebeians, to lead the modernized peoples into the new paths whither they are rapidly drifting. Nay, so low have the mighty fallen, that even dethroned kings and princes sometimes ask to be admitted as simple citizens in the countries which they or their ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... outside roared a grotesque ballad. He gazed at the interior of a rough shack built of pine boards, with bunks constructed in tiers on both sides. There were figures in them—Western cowboys, perhaps. Then it seemed, somehow, that the voice drifting from the outside was strangely familiar. Back at Bannister College, where he remembered he had gone in the dim and dusty past, he had often heard that same fog-horn voice, roaring songs of a less blood-curdling character, and accompanied by ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... was stricken with brain fever, which intervened as a mercy between her and the great sorrow that was overshadowing her young life. Tears would fill the servants' eyes as they saw the dear child drifting from them like a lovely vision, too bright for earth's dull cares and ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... was now drifting to its close. His health had for some time given him cause for alarm, and in August 1588, he left his Kenilworth home to seek relief by taking baths and drinking healing waters; and from Rycott he wrote the last of his many ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... there shall be no drifting whatever. I shall marry, if ever, one whom I have learned to love according to Nature's simple laws—one to whom I can go without effort or calculation. I could give my heart, and be made rich indeed by the gift. I ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... mounted the locomotive, and especially as he pulled the starting-bar, all other functions seemed insignificant. Every day I contemplated him; often I dreamed of him; saw him in my mind's eye dashing through the dark night, through the rain and hail, through drifting snow, through perils of "wash- outs'' and "snake-heads,'' and no child in the middle ages ever thought with more awe of a crusading knight leading his troops to the Holy City than did I think of this hero standing at his post in all weathers, conducting his train to its destination ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... of smoke drifting and floating through the air, but it caused less inconvenience and annoyance than it did when they fled to ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... she and Peter Coleman had their evening at the Chutes, and a wonderful evening it was; then came a theater trip, and a Sunday afternoon that they spent in idly drifting about Golden Gate Park, enjoying the spring sunshine, and the holiday crowd, feeding the animals and eating peanuts. Susan bowed to Thorny and the faithful Wally on this last occasion and was teased by Thorny about Peter Coleman the next day, to her secret pleasure. She liked anything ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... feelings for her were not as yet definite, expressed, or grasped; they were rather the atmosphere in which all things occurred and were felt and judged. From an amusing pastime she had come to be a companion and thought-mate; and now, beyond this, insensibly they were drifting to a silenter, mightier mingling of souls. But drifting, merely—not arrived; going gently, irresistibly, but not yet at the ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... our fire blew wide across leagues of shallow, sparkling water, or, when the wind veered, whirled back into our faces across the reef, curling and eddying among the standing mangroves like fog drifting. ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... now, that nothing could have served as so fit an accompaniment to it as the shouting of those pines. They sang like heroes, and in their swaying gave me fleeting glimpses of the stars, unbelievably brilliant in the dusky purple sky, and half-obscured now and then by drifting clouds. ...
— Painted Windows • Elia W. Peattie
... brought Jasper to the side of the object in question: it was the other canoe, empty and bottom upwards. No sooner did the young man ascertain this fact, than he began to search for the swimmers, and, to his great joy, Cap was soon discovered drifting down with the current; the old seaman preferring the chances of drowning to those of landing among savages. He was hauled into the canoe, though not without difficulty, and then the search ended; for Jasper was persuaded that the Pathfinder ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... their feet above the half-submerged planks. Down the glimmering lake there are miles of silence and still waters and green shores, overhung with a multitudinous and scattered fleet of purple and golden clouds, now furling their idle sails and drifting away into the vast harbor of the South. Voices of birds, hushed first by noon and then by possibilities of tempest, cautiously begin once more, leading on the infinite melodies of the June afternoon. As the freshened air invites them forth, so the smooth ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... marked by a broad belt of fine sand, the grains of which are all globular. Along its upper margin is a rank growth of reeds and salt grass. Swarms of tiny flies cover the surface of every half-evaporated pool, and a few white sea-gulls are drifting on the swells. Nowhere is there a sign of refreshing verdure except on the distant mountainsides, where patches of green grass glow in the sunlight among the vast fields ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... to impress their importance on a scoffing world. No girl should become a teacher because she does not know how else to gain her living. The profession is lamentably overstocked with mediocrities, lacking enthusiasm and vigour, drifting more and more hopelessly from one post to another. But there is plenty of room for keen and competent women, eager to learn and to teach, and this is true of all branches of the profession. No work can well be more thankless, more full of drudgery and of ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... Drifting along, or rather flung and battered about on the current, they passed within near sight of the lighthouse, and they might have thanked God that they passed no nearer, for to have passed nearer would have been certain death. The white waves ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... been out in the water for days and nights. All alone. Tossed about. Days and nights. She! who'd never hurt a soul. Couldn't. She was always laughing and happy. Drifting about. All alone. Quite ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... no great principles, begot no far-reaching consequences. It was not inspired by the "holy glee" with which in Wordsworth's sonnet Liberty fights against a tyrant, but by the faltering boldness, the drifting, purposeless unresolve of statesmen who did not desire it, and by the irrational violence of a Press which did not understand it. It was not a necessary war; its avowed object would have been attained within a few ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... situated about half-way across. Bering Straits are never completely closed, for even in midwinter floes are ever on the move, which, with broad and shifting "leads" of open water, render a trip on foot extremely hazardous. Our subsequent experience on nearly seven miles of drifting ice, across which we were compelled to walk in order to land on American soil, inspired me with no desire to repeat ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... silent as the grave and steadfast as a wall. Presently the substitutes in the Languedoc battalion could not endure the strain any longer. They fired without orders and could not be stopped. At the same time Montcalm saw that his five little bodies of men were drifting apart. When the Canadian regulars had moved off, they had left the French flanks quite open. In consequence, the French battalions nearest the flanks kept edging outwards, the ones on the right towards ...
— The Passing of New France - A Chronicle of Montcalm • William Wood
... there is competition for food, for life, within the species, human and other. But that competition is not usual; it arises out of unusual and special conditions. There are instances of hunger-maddened mothers tearing away food from their children; men drifting at sea have fought for water and food as beasts fight, but these are not normal conditions of life. "Happily enough," says Kropotkin again, "competition is not the rule either in the animal world or in mankind. It is limited among animals to exceptional periods.... Better conditions are created ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... the head of Marat. His restless spirit was reaching out for expression, and we find him drifting to London for ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... "Legends of Vancouver," "Flint and Feather," and the present volume, "Shagganappi," all tell of the spirit that tells them. Love of the blessed life of blue air without gold-lust is felt in the line and the interline, with joy in the beauty of beaver stream, tamarac swamp, shad-bush and drifting cloud, and faith in the creed of her fathers, that saw the Great Spirit in all things and that reverenced Him at all times, and over and above it all the sad note that tells of a proud race, conscious that it has been crushed by numbers, ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... the floe drifted faster out to sea, and Annatock was observed running anxiously towards the land; but before he reached the edge of the ice-raft on which he stood, the increasing distance and the drifting clouds of snow hid him from view. Then his companions, fearful for their own safety, hastened back to the camp with the ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... or jest above thar, about sunset of a pleasant day, that we came drifting along with our flat-boat, or broad horn, as they were called in them days, when Captain Paul said he thought it would be a snug place just behind the pint, to tie up to them same big trees yet standin' ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... than the present ignoble attitude of the Nation toward its own laws and its own ideals—without courage to enforce them, without conscience to change them, the United States presents the spectacle of a Nation drifting aimlessly, so far as this vital, National problem is concerned, upon the sea of irresolution, toward ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... put a new heart into our semi-barbarian theology, politics, manners, literature, and law. And especially do I rejoice, that having defrauded the feminine element of its due share in practical affairs for so many ages, and found ourselves, as a natural consequence, drifting toward barbarism with all our wealth and wisdom, we are compelled at last to learn that justice to woman is simply mercy ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... beach-plums, and then lay down on their beds of boughs in the little enclosure. They could see the moon shining over the water, the big dory hauled up in front of their shelter, and they all felt very glad that they were not drifting out ...
— A Little Maid of Province Town • Alice Turner Curtis
... up his life to the independence and unity of his country, who had known how to be as enthusiastic in his generosity as the youngest of those who fell for that very cause of which old Giorgio Viola was a drifting relic, as a broken spar is suffered to float away disregarded after a naval victory. The Marchesa led a still, whispering existence, nun-like in her black robes and a white band over the forehead, in a corner of the first floor of an ancient ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... days we tossed there helpless. The seventh some sail was got on her, but she was an unwieldy vessel at the best, and we made little but leeway. All the time, indeed, we had been drifting to the south and west, and during the tempest must have driven in that direction with unheard-of violence. The ninth dawn was cold and black, with a great sea running, and every mark of foul weather. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of this battle. It commenced at daybreak and lasted little over an hour, and when Jack, with hundreds of other officers and soldiers, reached points from which a view of the plain could be commanded, a thick cloud of smoke was drifting across it, through which nothing could be seen until the heavy masses of Russians were observed making their way back covered by their cavalry, and the dying away of the cannonade told that the battle ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... with the horses at six next morning. By seven o'clock we were well on the road, which for the first ten miles or so led by the sea-shore, through dense thickets of brushwood, alternating with patches of loose drifting sand. I was agreeably disappointed in the ponies; for though it was deep, heavy going, they stepped out well and freely. The clear sunshine, keen air, and lovely scenery seemed to have the same inspiriting effect on ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... Arthur and his Emma, for the lucky youth who held that drifting nymph seemed most unhappy in his pride. The girl was talking amiably, but the man was grim and furtive and as careless of his steering as a ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... drifting slowly toward a little village, and as the lights became clear enough to discern objects distinctly, she saw ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... fourteenth night came and we were drifting about in the Adriatic Sea, the sailors about midnight thought that they were nearing land. So they took soundings and found one hundred and twenty feet of water; and when they had gone a little farther they found ninety feet. Fearing that we might be wrecked on the rocks, they threw ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... youthful passion, and leave untold those years of the real burthen of manhood, and still more the tranquil brightness when toil has been overlived, and the setting sun gilds the clouds that are drifting away. ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in one corner of the veranda of the Royal Poinciana. The veranda looked strangely deserted that night, the dance being at its height in the ballroom within, and it being still a little early for the inevitable drifting of couples from the heat of the ballroom to the cool ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... their professions and circumstances are, and then, getting into conversation, find out how near the truth their surmises have been. Therefore, dear reader, if you find yourself in a few months' time drifting into conversation with a good-looking, bronzed stranger, this side of fifty, who puts rather pointed questions to you, after having studied your thumbs, boots, and whiskers intently, take special delight in leading him harmlessly ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... unabated for another hour; but at that time the greater part of the enemy's ships ceased to fire; some of the lighter vessels were adrift, and the carnage on board their ships was dreadful the crews having been continually re-enforced. Soon after this, the Danish commodore's ship took fire, and drifting in flames before the wind, spread terror and dismay throughout their line. The ships a-head, however, with the crown-batteries, as well as the prizes made by the British, still continued to lire, and Nelson, humane ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... plank of drift-wood Tossed on the watery main, Another plank encountered, Meets—touches—parts again; So tossed, and drifting ever, On life's unresting sea, Men meet, and ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... Derec crumpled from the pistol bolt. There was thick, strangling smoke. Hoddan disappeared. When the thickest smoke drifted away there was nothing to be seen but Derec, lying on the ground, and thinner smoke drifting ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... Deringham saw at first sight, but he realized that it was very beautiful, and then commenced to note details with observant eyes. There was a sawmill beside the river, for he could faintly hear a strident scream and see the blue smoke drifting in gauzy wisps across the hill. The square log-house which stood some little distance from the lake looked well built and substantial, and the road that wound through the green oblong had been ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... showed little or no sign of breaking up, except at a great distance from land, where the heaving of the waves had cracked it up into large fields. These were gradually parting from the main body, and drifting away with surface-currents to southern waters, there to be liquefied and ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... drifting over to Cannondale pretty rapidly, general," I interposed. "We must go ahead, or we shall ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... now in Rome; living together in Alsace, drifting to Paris; and, when the Revolution drove them from the French capital, seeking refuge in London, where we find the uncrowned Queen of England chatting amicably with the "usurper" George in the Royal box at the opera—always inseparable, and ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... introduced a note of gaiety by wearing a flannel shirt and a check suit of remarkable virulence. Every day Mr. Polly looked round to mark how many of the familiar faces had gone, and the deepening anxiety (reflecting his own) on the faces that remained, and every day some new type joined the drifting shoal. He realised how small a chance his poor letter from Easewood ran against this hungry cluster of competitors at ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... proboscidiform mouth, and above with an obliquely vertical crest, the whole of a rich blue colour with white lines and dots, the soft parts conceal a transparent cartilaginous framework. The crest acts as a tiny sail (hence the name) and communicates to the animal a slow rotatory movement while drifting before the wind. Two kinds of Janthinae (J. globosa and J. exigua) molluscs with a fragile, snail-like shell, and a vesicular float, were drifting about, and, together with a very active, silvery-blue Idotea, half an inch long, prayed upon the Velellae. At another time, among many other pelagic ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... broken-down that she was obliged to go to bed and remain there for several days. On January 29th the unfortunate lady had risen, and was sitting near the window which overlooked the deserted rue des Menetriers, where clouds of snow were drifting before the wind. Who can guess the sad thoughts which may have possessed her?—all around dark, cold, and silent, tending to produce painful depression and involuntary dread. To escape the gloomy ideas which ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... thoughts. Here he was, in the crowd and not of it, greatly moved and yet not as the others were, because he did not understand. And though the voice and the answering enthusiasm went on for a long time, and still he did not understand, he was not tired but exhilarated only. The moon, the drifting clouds, the dramatic voice playing upon the hearts of the multitude, their hot responses, all this gave him a sense of augmented life and the feel of his own past youth. Suddenly he fancied Madame Beattie's ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... of the hour; it looked like morning, smelt like morning, there was the distinct, clean, pure, inspiring feel of morning. The skies were an even turquoise with little filmy, fleecy shreds of clouds drifting across; the air was elixir; and the blue waters, capped here and there with white, ran joyously to meet the green sloping shores, where the haze still lingered. Ahead, an island glowed like ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... in the afternoon, sort them and bunch them up, and then stand them in water right up to their heads, and keep them there over night. A basin is the best thing to put the flowers in, unless the stalks are very long, and a jam-pot or two in the water will help to keep them from tumbling over and drifting about. Be very careful that the blooms do not touch the water. Keep the flowers in water until you are ready to pack them. Tin boxes are best to send flowers away in; but generally one has to use cardboard ones. Choose the strongest you can ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... path pursue The crux ansata wearers knew Who sleep with folded hands, Where, like a naked, lidless eye, The staring Nile rolls wandering by Those mountain slopes that climb the sky Above the drifting sands? ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Drifting with the throng, Taurus Antinor, still holding his trembling companion by the wrist, soon found himself being carried down the long flight of steps which leads from the heights crowned by Caligula's palace to the Forum below. Without attempting to work against the crowd, he presently ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... embarked once more. The wind increased, and the waves tossed furiously. Nothing saved them but the skill and courage of Mestigoit. At length they could see the rock of Quebec towering through the gloom, but piles of ice lined the shore, while floating masses were drifting down on the angry current. The Indian watched his moment, shot his canoe through them, gained the fixed ice, leaped out, and shouted to his companions to follow. Pierre scrambled up, but the ice was six feet out of the water, and Le Jeune's agility failed him. He saved himself ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... the bleak sea-beach, A fisherman stood aghast, To see the form of a maiden fair, Lashed close to a drifting mast. ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... I tell you. On my word, it is as well, though, that you have had it out with me here in the meadows. Listen: there is no harm in the drifting hither. ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... Germans were huddled in groups. And away behind the South Loamshires, on the shell-pocked ground that now boiled and heaved like some monstrous sulphur spring, with thick black and yellow fumes drifting slowly across it, there lay the first fruits of the harvest: a few of the gaps in the ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... wrapping the horrible idol in his pilgrim's mantle, had placed it on a marble altar in the midst of perfumes and holy incense. Already the children were clenching idle hands and drinking in a bitter cup the poisoned brewage of doubt. Already things were drifting toward the abyss, when the jackals suddenly emerged from the earth. A deathly and infected literature, which had no form but that of ugliness, began to sprinkle with fetid blood all the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... together up the old porch-steps, halting a moment where the grape-vines clustered thickest about the shingled wall. The house was silent; even the village slept in the moonlight: no sound of life in the great sweep of dusky hill and valley, save the wreaths of mist over the watercourses, foaming and drifting together silently: before morning they would stretch from base to base of the hills like a Dead Sea, ashy and motionless. They stood silent a moment, until the chirp of some robin, frightened by their steps in its nest overhead, had ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... three past dreary years, remembered what a weary blank they were, thought, with a heavy sigh, what a shipwreck his life had been, and how he was now floating about without rudder or compass or anchor, merely a drifting wreck. And as he sits there in the sunshine which streams through the wide, high old window, we will see him ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... art and beauty, found scattered almost at random over so many pages, and in so many different tongues, have been brought together, and, closely linked in logical sequences, placed in such connections that they now mutually illustrate and corroborate one another. No longer drifting apart in the bewildering chaos of multitudinous pages, they now revolve round a common centre, the heart of all artistic beauty, through whose manifestations alone it gains its power to charm the human soul: viz., 'the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Dan; but I do not suppose that we are very many miles away from shore. The mast and oars prevent our drifting fast, and I don't think we are further off now than we were when we left that ship yesterday. But even if we were four or five times as far as that, we should not take very long in sailing back again when the wind drops, and as we have got ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... with, and presently I made her stay with me. And of course I soon saw there was a history. She possessed jewels, laces, little personal belongings of various kinds, that wanted explaining. So I laid traps for her; I let her also perceive whither my own plans were drifting. She did not wait to let me force her hand. She made up her mind. One day I found, left carelessly on the drawing-room table, a volume of Saint-Simon, beautifully bound in old French morocco, with something thrust between the leaves. I opened it. On the fly-leaf ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... texture—upper, inner and lower voices—and we are carried vigorously onward by the daring modulations. Just at the close of the Development we see Mozart's constructive skill in the fusion of this part with the subsequent Recapitulation. A series of drifting chromatic chords in the flutes and oboes, like light fleecy clouds, keeps us in a state of suspended wonder when quietly there emerges the first theme and the return home has begun. It is one of the truly poetic touches in musical ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... lonesome—lend me your light!' she raised her dark eyes for a moment and looked at my face through the dusk. 'I have come to the river,' she said, 'to float my lamp on the stream when the daylight wanes in the west.' I stood alone among tall grasses and watched the timid flame of her lamp uselessly drifting in the tide. ...
— Gitanjali • Rabindranath Tagore
... but were quickly brought down as Otah's drifting rear-guard deployed to their assignments. It became evident early that Otah's tribe was more ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse
... drifting rapidly upon a sunken coral reef, which seemed to extend a reasonless number of leagues to the right and left without a break, and I was reading Macaulay's "Naseby Fight" to the man at the wheel. Everything was, in fact, going ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... of squat square buildings their ship passed, decreasing speed and drifting lower with every moment. The lofty structures that were the nucleus of the strange city loomed closer. Now they were soaring slowly down a wide thoroughfare; and now, at last, they hovered above a great open square that ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... describe the methods by which Germany has endeavoured to intimidate France at various stages of the African question. The trouble arose out of a Moroccan Agreement between England and France, which was the first definite proof that these two Powers were drifting into relations closer than that of ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... like fun!" cried Jack presently. "I can't see as well as I'd like, though, on account of the sea fog that keeps drifting along in patches like clouds. I really believe they'll get up before she founders. Now the crew have started putting off boats to make sure of saving the passengers if the ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... In her fate and in her fortune, in her power to establish and maintain a settled government, we have a far deeper interest, socially, commercially, and politically, than any other nation. She is now a wreck upon the ocean, drifting about as she is impelled by different factions. As a good neighbor, shall we not extend to her a helping hand to save her? If we do not, it would not be surprising should some other nation undertake the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson |
