"Drifting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a feeling of revulsion had seized Frank Merriwell. Of a sudden he had perceived whither he was drifting. He realized what false steps he had already taken, and he was ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... courageous beyond the measure of human valour. Thus the prosperity of mankind is wont ever to be incomplete. Then all these warriors embraced the service of King Hakon, the mightiest of the rovers, like remnants of the war drifting to him. ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... out of the crowded garden down upon the Quai. It was a superb night, and the moon and its golden beams were mirrored in the lake. Little waves came running tranquilly across the shivering silver sheet and tossing themselves gently up against the stone-sheathed bank; some merry boat-loads were drifting out among the shadows, listening to the music from the shore and sending a silver echo of laughter ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... 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 skilfully laid with rounded strips sawn off the great fir-trunks. ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... his own body—the same sparks were drifting in about him, edging his arms, thighs, chest. He pushed back into the bushes while the sparks still flitted, but they no longer gathered in strength enough to light his presence. Now he could see they drifted about the vegetation, about the log where the man sat, about rocks and reeds. Only they ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... 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 captive had been taken. Just as they entered its precincts and ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... channel had widened; the tang of salt came on the wind; and when I ventured to raise my head a little, I saw the point at the mouth of the river looming purple-black. Then, as we began to round it, we came suddenly on a canoe, drifting broadside, with a single salmon hunter crouching in it, ready with his spear. It flashed over me that he was one of the two Indians who had tracked me to the Duckabush; the taller one who had tried to drink at the rill; then he made his throw ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... drifting clouds there was just enough light to enable them to perceive the dark forms of the melons lying side by side upon their vines. The agent took out his big clasp knife and recklessly ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... away under a little stone bridge. He planted the pond with rainbow trout, and on the margin a rampart of Lombardy poplars, which grew and grew until they threatened to reach up and tear ragged holes in the drifting clouds. Their slender shadows lay, like gigantic fingers, far up the bluff when the sun sank low in ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... drifting snow she sweeps To the couch where Olaf sleeps; Suddenly he wakes and stirs, His eyes ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... Barnaby True became aware that there was another boat coming down the river toward where they lay, now drifting with the strong tide out into the harbor again, and he knew that it was because of the approach of that boat that the other had called upon his ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... elaborate bonnet this Easter morning, and whether her dress is a mass of pleats and puffs and marvellous trimmings, which, when profusely extravagant upon the form of an elder woman, always remind me of signals of distress hung out upon a craft that is drifting far away from the enchanted isles of youth. Is it the instinctive effort to prolong the brilliancy of youth that induces the advancing woman to decorate herself so brightly? Is it the involuntary hope that she will really seem ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... were all cut away. The vessel was now little better than a raft, and was drifting at the mercy of the ocean currents. For my part I did not much care. I had no desire to go to Manilla or any where else; and the love of life which is usually so strong did not exist. I should have preferred to have been ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... occasion, on a hand-car. He was as young as everybody else in that young country, utterly fearless, and, it seemed, utterly tireless. He rode out into the night careless alike of blinding sleet and drifting snow. At grilling speed he rode until his horse stood with heaving sides and nose drooping; then, at some ranch, he changed to another and rode on. Over a course of a hundred miles or more he would ride relays at a speed that seemed incredible, and at the end of ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... and there a smoking fire around which groups warmed themselves. From the thin line came irregularly spurts of smoke, and the spattering of rifle shots. It reminded me of an old picture of the field of Antietam, spiritless in itself, but here made alive by the movement, the noise, the drifting smoke, and the gray monotone. I watched it while the captain explained tomorrow's work; then, glad that today had not fallen to our lot, we marched on, taking up our route step in the soft sand ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... cheek. At last the moon rose; the whole party, regardless of wet slippers, sauntered with Mr. Raleigh to the shore, where the little Arrow hung balancing on her restraining cord. Mrs. Laudersdale stepped in, Mr. Raleigh followed, took up an oar, and pushed out, both standing, and drifting slowly for a few rods' distance; then Mr. Raleigh made the shore again, assisted her out, and shot impatiently away alone. The waters shone like white fire in the wake he cut, great shadows fall through them where island ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... little vessel had taken refuge with many others from an intensely violent gale and drifting snow in Yarmouth Roads, they saw lights disappear, as vessel after vessel foundered. My father, after having done all that was possible for the safety of the ship, went to bed. His cabin door did not shut closely, from the rolling of the ship, and the man who was sentry ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... and like so many shadows moved cautiously forward, with a motion more like drifting than walking, their ears alert, their eyes strained, their hearts ...
— Army Boys in the French Trenches • Homer Randall
... another hour, but the land was as far away as ever. She was in the main grip of the current; the canoe was too large; the paddle was too inadequate; and too much of her time and strength was wasted in bailing. Besides, she was very weak and growing weaker. Despite her efforts, the canoe was drifting off to the westward. ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... and is running well, but the weather has been cold and stormy, with snow drifting in from the hills. I took Mme. Derfelden and her husband to Kajura to-day. Now that I have the car everyone wants me to work with them. The difficulty of transport is indescribable. Without a car is like being without a leg. One simply can't get about. In order to get a seat on ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... For Shelley still remains before the world misconceived because misdescribed; and if society is gradually clearing its ideas of the man, it is not only because the preconceptions of that multitudinous authority are themselves gradually drifting away, but also because substantial facts are slowly coming into view. Their development has been hindered by obstacles which will be understood when I have proceeded a little farther, and even within the compass of this brief sketch I hope that I shall be able to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... golden rules regarding concentration; but we must not suppose that because we have to be on our guard against idle drifting there is to be no such thing as repose; on the contrary it is during periods of repose that we accumulate strength for action; but repose does not mean a state of purposelessness. As pure spirit the subjective mind never rests: it is only the objective ...
— The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... sleds. There were four mules for each sleigh, so not much attention was paid to the great depth of snow. Both horses knew when we got to the bridge and gave Bryant trouble. Every bit of the trail out had been obliterated by drifting snow, and I still wonder how these animals recognized the precise spot when the snow ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... of a man-of-war? One vital way would be to increase the size and number of its guns. To strengthen your memory, increase both the number and the force of your mental impressions by attending to them intensely. Loose, skimming reading, and drifting habits of reading destroy memory power. However, as most books and newspapers do not warrant any other kind of attention, it will not do altogether to condemn this method of reading; but avoid it when you are trying ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... attentive to keep the long canoe in the greatest strength of the current. Jim bowed his head, and our last talk seemed to flicker out for good. He was seeing me off as far as the mouth of the river. The schooner had left the day before, working down and drifting on the ebb, while I had prolonged my stay overnight. And now ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... night or in the freshness of early morning, regardless of the hours, unfretted by the tyrannous remembrances of appointed times. Milestones passed slowly, like things drifting, which ask no attention, and hardly perceived in the moment of their disappearance, serve only to enrich and replenish the mind's voluptuous repose. It was a joy to lie drowsily back upon the straw, awaiting sleep and looking out upon ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... away from Lola. His triweekly visits to the Golden Cloud dropped off a bit. He took to drifting about from saloon to saloon, to being less pronounced in his frequenting of one or ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... themselves; peopled by a nation of aliens; endless in the variety of their life; abounding in weird and beautiful pictures which even the landsman can appreciate. Alban rarely tired of that panorama of swirling waters and drifting hulks and the majestic shapes of resting ships. And upon such a day as this which had made an idler of him, their interest increased tenfold; and to this there was added a wonder which had never come into his life before. For surely, ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... seated himself with his back to the stem. The position was a precarious one, and after a time he gained the wooden carved work above, and obtained a seat there just below the bowsprit, and hidden from the sight of those on deck a few feet above him. As he knew the vessels were drifting to leeward towards the shoals, he hoped to remain hidden until the vessel struck, and then to gain ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... to seek to know what is right for myself, I attribute more largely to my natural hereditary mental bent, than to any particular merit of my own. I trust this book will help us all to realize the danger of drifting with traditionary religion, and thus defeating the revealed truth of Jesus Christ, and the need of searching the truth for ourselves that thus we may be used of God to advance his kingdom of unity and truth. Christian civilization would make much more rapid strides if we ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... and the others boosted Gif upward as far as they could. Then he mounted from branch to branch, and the others waited below as patiently as possible for what he might have to report. In the meantime a few flakes of snow came drifting downward, and ...
— The Rover Boys on a Hunt - or The Mysterious House in the Woods • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)
... strangely to a state of perfect relaxation—a state not pleasing to Joan, and rather puzzling to David Martin, who postponed a proposed trip to the West until he felt sure of Doris's health. It seemed that, having dropped the old life, Doris was not merely willing to step into a new one—she was drifting in. Without resistance she floated. She would lie for a whole afternoon on the porch watching the play of colour on The Rock. She smiled, recalling, rather vaguely to be sure, the superstitions concerning ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... and the baskets lay in vermilion patches on the sun-smitten green, like gouts of arterial blood. White vapors round the mountain peaks rose tortuously toward the blue; while seaward, rain still filled the air as with black sand drifting down aslant, through gaps in which we could descry far off a steel-bright strip of fair weather that joined sea and sky, cutting under a fairy island so that it seemed suspended ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... ease. "It even makes one doubt a little the people one believes in most: take you and me, for instance. In my sane moments I know nothing could get between us; but sometimes I get to imagining—times like the last few days when I am—raw—that we're gradually drifting apart. A little difference of opinion comes up and imagination magnifies until it becomes a mountain and—I know I'm preposterous, Elice, and there's nothing really to it, but the thing's been on my mind and I wanted to tell you and get it out of my system." ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... To whom could she turn in her trouble? The thought of her father was both a reproach and a humiliation. He was drifting hopelessly, and almost unresistingly, towards final wreck, and, so far from seeking to restrain, she had added to the evil impetus. She shrank from the very idea of confiding in her garrulous, superficial mother. ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... scrutinizing the household gear that was to come under the hammer, glad at last to know what the house walls had really held; or they visited with their neighbors in little groups. But this was a day of fall sunshine and drifting leaves. Miss Letty, standing at an upper window looking out on her pear tree, the leaves leathery brown, felt a twitching of the lips. She gazed farther over her domain, and it seemed to her that it had never been so pleasant before, so mellowed ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... colonization has not removed the 450,000 free persons of color from our country. They remain as a floating body in our midst, drifting, as the census tables show, hither and thither, as the effects of climate at the north, or foreign emigration at the east, or prejudice at the south, repel it from those points. It is an interesting subject of investigation to watch the movements of the colored population, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... holy matrimony." He went on through the beautiful service, while the light streamed in, bearing its fairy freight of colour and gold, and the swift patter of the Little People of the Forest rustled through the drifting leaves. ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... pretense to a town between our ranch and Red Gap—a post-office, three general stores, a score of dwellings, and a low drinking place known as The Swede's. The news had not come to us; so the veterinary obliged. A dozen Indians, drifting into the valley for the haying about to begin, had tarried near Kulanche and bought whiskey of the Swede. The selling of this was a lawless proceeding and the consumption of it by the purchasers had been hazardous in the extreme. Briefly, the result had been ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... drowning mouths, of men and women, of little children and the very beasts: "Brother! We hold!" But the black flood rolled over and on. There, down in its dark tumult, beneath its cruel tumult, I saw men still with arms linked; women on their knees, clinging to earth; little children drifting—dead, all dead; and the beasts dead. And their eyes were still open facing that death. And above them the savage water roared. But clear and high I heard the Voice call: "Brothers! Hold! Death ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... revived the spirit of patriotism, has restored the national unity, and has reenforced the principle of civic service. We can see under the revealing searchlight of the war the anarchy towards which we have been drifting during the past ten ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... broader, but still magnificent under the cotton gown; her arms full of flowers and ferns, was escorted by two more children, sturdy little boys, who doubled and redoubled on their tracks like puppies. The tiny barefoot girl, in her father's arms, was only a tangle of blue gingham and drifting strands of silky hair; but the boys were splendidly alert little lads, and their high voices loitered in the air after the radiant, chattering little caravan ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... other matters, and to be miserable. The honest village logicians could make no stand against him, especially as he was seconded by his proselytes; when, to their great joy, Master Simon and the general came drifting down into the field of action. I saw that Master Simon was for making off, as soon as he found himself in the neighbourhood of this fire-ship; but the general was too loyal to suffer such talk in his hearing, and thought, no doubt, that a look and ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... across hills holding to their final flare of color, where leaves were drifting down from trees of yellow and crimson. He threaded alder thickets and passed through groves of silver birches that shivered fastidiously in the breeze. Wild apple trees raised gnarled branches under which ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... said, was mixed sand hill and links; links being a Scottish name for sand which has ceased drifting and become more or less solidly covered with turf. The pavilion stood on an even space: a little behind it, the wood began in a hedge of elders huddled together by the wind; in front, a few tumbled sand hills stood between it and ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... 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 their own right ...
— The Passing of New France - A Chronicle of Montcalm • William Wood
... Harriet. "See! The rowboat is drifting ashore. You stay on board. I'm going after it. I'm not tired. Keep the houseboat away from ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Afloat • Janet Aldridge
... through the woods. Hester sat erect, her slender body adjusting itself with unconscious grace to the quiet movements of the horse, which Meynell was leading. Overhead the October day was beginning to darken, and the yellow leaves shaken by occasional gusts were drifting mistily down on Hester's hair and dress, and on the glossy flanks of ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that ship; and in its depths concealed Lies all the wealth of this vast universe— Yea, lies some part of God's omnipotence The legacy divine of every soul. Thy will, O man, thy will is that great ship, And yet behold it drifting here and there— One moment lying motionless in port, Then on high seas ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... wonderful that the time can pass so quickly as it does. For one thing we are in better spirits, knowing that we are drifting steadily north. A rough estimate of to-day's observation gives 79 deg. 50' north latitude. That is not much since Monday; but then yesterday and to-day there has been almost no wind at all, and the other days it has been very light—only ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... music he was carried out and away beyond the boundaries of time and space, and there he found that rest for his soul, without which he would have sunk to earth and been covered by the kindly, drifting leaves of oblivion. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... not far from the roof already," said I, pointing to a corner of the ceiling through which, even as we spoke, flakes of snow were drifting ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... grave the east winds blow, And from the marsh-lands drifting slow The sea-fog comes, with evermore The wave-wash of a lonely shore, And sea-bird's melancholy cry, As Nature fain would typify The sadness of a closing scene, The loss of that which should have been. But, where thy native mountains bare ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... came from the shore just then, and the officers were in a state of uncertainty in regard to the situation which allowed them to do nothing. They waited for half an hour, when the leadsman reported that the water was shoaling, which indicated that the Teaser was drifting towards the island. ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... seriously, a fault which does not tend 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 ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... on the horn of the saddle he slipped over the edge, but although he let down to the full reach of his arms his feet did not touch bottom and he drew himself aboard again. The boat was moving very slowly, drifting lazily across a bit of slack water that had backed into the mouth of a wide coulee. Fifty yards away, at the head of the little bay formed by the backwater, the Texan saw a bit of level, grass-covered beach. Glancing helplessly ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... of the river the Germans were at work. Barelegged, and armed with long poles, they waded carefully through the flooded fields towards the river to catch the drifting logs. ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... 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 ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... And then went down to the gates of death for father and brother and friend. Deeper and deeper into the sea, ready of heart and head, Hauling them home through the blinding foam, and raising them from the dead. There's many of you to-morrow who, but for a woman's hand, Would be drifting about with the shore lights out and ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... came upon her by degrees. In what way would her husband receive Hepworth Closs? How would he accept the position the two persons out yonder were drifting into? Would he consent to a union which even her partiality admitted as unsuitable, or would he, in his cold, calm way, plant his foot upon their hearts and crush her fond desire out ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... to face hard truths and take strong steps, but we have not done so. Instead we have drifted, and that drifting has eroded our resources, fractured our economy, and shaken our confidence. Though our challenges are fearsome, so are our strengths. Americans have ever been a restless, questing, hopeful people, and we must bring to our task today the vision ...
— Inaugural Presidential Address • William Jefferson Clinton
... understood, felt and knew and resolved all in one. The moon shone, and the clouds went flitting like ice-floe about the sky, now gray in distance, now near the moon and white, now in her very presence and adorned with her favour on their bosoms, now drifting again into the gray; and still the two, Ginevra and Gibbie, stood motionless—Gibbie with the tears in his eyes, and Ginevra weeping as if her heart would break; and behind the ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... deal of smoke drifting and floating through the air, but it caused less inconvenience and annoyance than it did when they fled to the ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... opened on us one arter another, the 'Beaucenture,' the 'San Nicholas,' and the 'Redoutable' swept and battered us wi' their murderous broadsides; the air seemed full o' smoke and flame, and the old 'Bully-Sawyer' in the thick o' it. But still we could see the 'Victory' through the drifting smoke ahead o' us wi' the signal flying, 'Engage the enemy more closely,' and still we waited and waited very patient, and crept down on the enemy nearer ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... very difficult, the dangers of the Channel being aggravated by the strength of the current and bad weather. The Captain, Vesuvius, and Royal William were aground for some time, but were ultimately got off again without much damage; and the Terrible, which was drifting and in great danger, was only brought up by means of an anchor constructed for the occasion by lashing one of the quarter-deck guns to two small anchors. When her large anchors were hauled up they were found to be broken; and so great was the loss of these articles that Lord ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... minds of its members. 'Tis a strange fancy of nature, however, gradually to forget many of the associations and circumstances of sombre hue as the silver linings appear in our respective clouds of life in greater radiance as each day finds us drifting farther from ties of ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman
... and the current increasing dashed this against the buildings, which at length gave way and all went floating down across the points—ice, log houses with dogs and cats frantic on their roofs. One eye-witness says: "The most singular spectacle was a house in flames, drifting along in the night, its one half immersed in water and ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... waist, dashed again and again into that awful surging to snatch victims from death,—clutching at passing hands, heads, garments, in the cataract-sweep of the seas,—saving, aiding, cheering, though blinded by spray and battered by drifting wreck, until his strength failed in the unequal struggle at last, and his men drew him aboard senseless, with some beautiful half-drowned girl safe in his arms. But well-nigh twoscore souls had been rescued by him; and the Star ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... coughing at the foot of the stairs, while all Peterhoff hummed like a hive. Red Lancers came in, and the head Chaprassi who speaks English came in, and mace-bearers came in, and ladies ran downstairs screaming, 'Fire'; for the smoke was drifting through the house and oozing out of the windows, and bellying along the verandahs, and wreathing and writhing across the gardens. No one could enter the room where Mellish was lecturing on his Fumigatory till that unspeakable powder had ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... on the bleak sea-beach A fisherman stood aghast, To see the form of a maiden fair Lashed close to a drifting mast. ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... stopped, but the sky was heavy and the clouds hung low. Twice Anton had to jerk on the tow-rope to jolt Ross awake, for, unnoticing, he was heading for deep water. Even near the shore the torrent was full of floating debris. The bodies of horses and cattle drifting down the stream told of many impoverished farms and the flotsam was eloquent of wrecked and demolished houses and ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... third person; therefore his faults and delusions interest him equally with his successes. Though he wishes to prosper in affairs, he wishes more to know the history and destiny of man; whilst the clouds of egotists drifting about him are only interested in a low success. This idea reigns in the Dichtung und Wahrheit, and directs the selection of the incidents; and nowise the external importance of events, the rank of the personages, or the bulk of incomes. Of course, the book affords ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Thus drifting afar to the dim-vaulted caves Where life and its ventures are laid, The dreamers who gaze while we battle the waves May see us in sunshine or shade; Yet true to our course, though our shadow grow dark, We'll trim ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... had been about forty days out from Palos, the ship ran into what is marked upon your maps as the Sargasso Sea. This is a vast meadow of floating seaweed and seagrass in the middle of the Atlantic; it is kept drifting about in the same place by the two great sea currents that flow past it but ...
— The True Story of Christopher Columbus • Elbridge S. Brooks
... away in the listless trees; A mother wept on her beaded knees For sons gone out to the long war's end; But more than mother or man wept I Who had no son in the world to send. The hour lagged by, and drifting high Came the fitful hum Of the little drum, And faint, but still with an ardent flow, The pibroch, call ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... it being now three and thirty years since he first took a part in public affairs among the Achaeans, having in that time been the chief man in credit and power of all Greece; but he was now deserted on all hands, helpless and overpowered, drifting about amidst the waves and danger on the shattered hulk of his native city. For the Aetolians, affected whom he applied to, declined to assist him in his distress, and the Athenians, who were well affected to ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... he was, drifting in from the northern spaces, he had evidently lost the pack-horse that bore his troubles. Suddenly, out of the wall of dusk that edged the strip of road loomed a horse's head, and then another. The lead horse bore a pack. ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... started drifting, at a sudden current or breeze sent the tail before the wind. The rear of the hydroplane was forced ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood
... 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
... tremendous fire from Fort Constantine and other batteries. Now flames were seen to burst forth from the Queen, when, a steamer taking her in tow, she stood off to extinguish them. Some time afterwards the Albion was seen to be on fire, fearfully mauled and unable to fire a shot, with the risk of drifting on shore. She also stood off, helped ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... their wont of drifting, put off all decisive action, and let things slip and slide, for the Germans to put in order. There were no Russians, therefore, at the Conference, and there lies no obligation on any political group or party in the anarchist Slav state to hold to the Allies. But it would be an error ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... Drifting from a man who paid no heed to scoundrels, I am led to allude to the attitude of a profession, the members of which profited by their amenities—I, of course, mean solicitors—because some one put a question to me on the subject only ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... Claim No. 30, Eldorado, on the Klondyke, started drifting on his claim with four men. The men agreed to work the claim on shares, the agreement being that they should work on shares by each receiving half of what they could get out. The five together took out $95,000.00 in twenty-eight ...
— Klondyke Nuggets - A Brief Description of the Great Gold Regions in the Northwest • Joseph Ladue
... stood outside the cabin, with the moon high in the sky, a gentle wind sweeping up the canyon and loose masses of clouds drifting in front of the orb of night. Here and there a light twinkled from a shanty and the hum of voices sounded faintly in their ears. Further off, at the extreme end of the settlement, stood the Heavenly Bower, with the yellow rays streaming from its two windows. They could picture the group gathered ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... He awoke abruptly, to find himself twirling the sharp-ribbed stem of his empty glass. Abstractedly he stared into this, as though seeking there a clue to what they had been talking about. Hazily he understood that they had been drifting close upon the perilous shoals of intimate personalities. What had he told her? What ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... now opposite the sheriff, and still drifting with the current, though held back by the turning ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... her mind drifting back to that crazy notion of an evil spirit wandering to seek a home; as the hermit-crab, dispossessed of one shell, goes in search of another. After a lull which had looked for a moment like coming sleep, she said with an astonishing calmness:—"But ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... the 3rd of June north of Tsalal Island...Still there...Captain William Guy and five of the men of the Jane—the piece of ice I am on is drifting across the iceberg...food will soon fail me...Since the 13th of June...my last resources exhausted...to-day...16th of June . . . I am ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... the wind, close reefed, and straining at their anchors. There were days when the steamers had to steam full speed ahead in order to keep at their berths; and then the big sailing ships would drag their anchors and come drifting, drifting helplessly towards the shore, and have to fly before the gale if they could, or take their chance of stranding if the water were low, or being battered to bits against the cliffs if the tide were in. Many a time ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... light air filled the upper canvas, and just gave us command of the ship. The mountains of Corsica, with Monte Christo and Elba, had all been sunk some hours, and we were on the yards, keeping a look-out for a land-fall on the Roman coast. A low, thick bank of drifting fog lay along the sea, in-shore of us, which all believed to be the sweat of the land, and thought no more of; though none wished to enter it, for that is a coast where foul airs rise, and through which the gulls and land-birds ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... doctrine of a particular providence, taught in every leaf of the Bible. Now, Armytage, look back calmly over your past life, and forward, whither you were drifting, and see if the very kindest thing that could be done for you by an all-wise and all-loving God was not to bring you up suddenly, and lay you aside, and force you to think. Beware of trying to ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... there was no foliage on the trees, except tiny leaflets bursting into life. Night advanced and the moon shone effulgent, but her rays were obscured by the divergent limbs of the forest, when we sometimes plunged into its depths. The gloom was intensified by drifting clouds, hanging low; but these momentarily lifted, briefly restoring the cheery moonbeams and silver roadway. Many tree-trunks were white, contrasting with the darkness within the dense woods, glistening like spectres, as the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... knuckled tight and gave not back an inch, and was faithful of days and faithful of nights, And chalk'd in large letters on a board, Be of good cheer, we will not desert you; How he follow'd with them and tack'd with them three days and would not give it up, How he saved the drifting company at last, How the lank loose-gown'd women look'd when boated from the side of their prepared graves, How the silent old-faced infants and the lifted sick, and the sharp-lipp'd unshaved men; All this I swallow, it tastes good, I like it well, it ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... possibly occurred to Beatrice that, considering the exceeding brevity of their acquaintance, they were drifting into somewhat confidential conversation. At any rate, she ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... 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, as ...
— Pursuit • Lester del Rey
... by this time was checked, and it was drifting with the current. The two young men had no desire for a nearer approach to ...
— The Ranger - or The Fugitives of the Border • Edward S. Ellis
... anything but the howling wind and the driving spray, and he himself, Logotheti, gripping a spar, one of those long booms the fishermen carry for running, half-drowned again and again, but gripping still, and drifting with the storm past the awful death of sharp black rocks and pounding seas, into the ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... mother tells me you wrote Grace, that you went to a theatre and that you did not go to a Methodist church last Sunday, as you promised. You remember what Pastor told you about the danger to young men of drifting from church to church in a large city like Baltimore, ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... danger of rain; Castle Island lay in the misted water, faint and grey, reminding me of what a splendid burial I might have if the law did not intervene to prevent me. And as we followed the straggling grey Irish road, with scant meagre fields on either side—fields that seemed to be on the point of drifting into marsh land—past the houses of the poor people, I tried to devise a scheme for the safeguarding of the vase. But Rameses the Second had not succeeded in securing his body against violation; it had been unswathed; I had seen his photograph in the Strand, and where he failed, ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... and I guessed that the fog had blurred for him the distance as well as the direction of the sound. Very quietly I heaved myself over the stern and into the boat, which swung broadside to the current and so was borne up and beyond danger from him. But the mischief was, we were drifting up the main channel which ended in the Lostwithiel marshes and must pretty certainly lead us into the enemy's hands, unless before striking the moors below the town we could by some means push across to the farther bank. We leaned over, dipped our arms in the water, and with the least possible noise ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... a day in September of drifting clouds and unbroken rain that Stella spoke at length of a resolution that had been gradually forming in her mind. She found no difficulty in speaking; in fact it seemed the natural thing to do. And she felt even as she gave utterance to the words ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... the vicinity of St. Robert's Cave. Clarke and Aram, he said, went over the hedge and advanced toward the cave, and Aram struck Clarke several times upon the breast and head, and so killed him. It was a dark night, and in the middle of winter, but the moon was shining through drifting clouds, and Houseman said he could see the movement of Aram's hand but not the weapon that it held. He was about twelve yards from the spot of the murder. He testified that the body of Clarke was buried in the cave. The presiding justice charged against the prisoner ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... association on board the Star of the North after his rescue from the drifting boat, in which he greatly exaggerated the help I was able to render him, Colonel Vereker was kind enough to notice me much more than my subordinate position on board would have seemed to warrant; ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... her gaze uncertainly to the gleaming bay. Abreast of them the fleet of fishing-boats were drifting with the tide; in the distance others were dotted, clear away to where the opal ocean lay. A tug was passing, and she saw the sun flash from the cargo in its tow, while the faint echo of a song came wafting to her ears. She stood so for a long ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... their sudden ending: the degradation and drudgery of the life he was to return to on the morrow: all rose up in tumultuous conflict. A feeling of anguish that was elemental and not of the moment filled him. Drifting and vacillating nature—he saw himself as in a boat borne along by currents that carried him, now near isles of beauty, and then whirled him away from their vanishing glory into gloomy gulfs and cataracts that ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... central surface covered 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) to Denmark Strait (between ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... boat was close now and drifting alongside. Arthur Miles and Tilda stared down upon the faces of the rowers. They were eight or ten, and young for the most part—young men of healthy brown complexions and maidens in sun-bonnets; and they laughed, with upturned eyes, as they fell to their oars again to keep pace ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... gave a great bound at the remembrance. He permitted himself no speculation as to where he was drifting. He just sat there thrilling in every limb and every sense and every quality of ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... "Over the foam we glide," in and out through the other dancers, the violins weaving that story of love never ending. "What though the world be wide"—Nellie's head was just below his face—"Love's golden star will guide." Nellie's hand was in his as they floated on the rainbow-sea. "Drifting along, glad is our song"—her hair blew against his cheek as they swept past the open door. What did he care what his mother would say. He was Egbert now. Edythe was in his arms. "While we are side by side" the ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... never had been so still before. It appeared impossible that anything uncanny should hide beneath that lovely mirror; and yet when some floating wisp of reeds suddenly coiled itself around my neck, or some unknown thing, drifting deeper, coldly touched my foot, it gave that undefinable sense of shudder which every swimmer knows, and which especially appeals to the imagination by night. Sometimes a slight sip of brackish water would enter my lips,—for I naturally tried to swim as low as possible,—and then would follow a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... much as both of them admired Handel I cannot see that they allowed his music to influence theirs. Handel even in his own lifetime was more or less of a survival and protest; he saw the rocks on to which music was drifting and steered his own good ship wide of them; as for his musical parentage, he grew out of the early Italians and out ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... heart-ache. I can hardly bear to talk of it even now, and it will be two years this August. But come up to my room. By Jove, I am glad to see you! How is it you are in Geneva? I was thinking about you yesterday, and wondering whether you were drifting down the Nile in a dahabeeah, or crossing the desert on a dromedary. Of course you have hunted tigers and elephants: ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... "This is good enough. And if we stay here and have a nice luncheon perhaps the fog will go away. What's the sense in drifting ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... shooting gallery and his familiar. They arise, roll up and stow away their mattresses. Mr. George, having shaved himself before a looking-glass of minute proportions, then marches out, bare-headed and bare-chested, to the pump in the little yard and anon comes back shining with yellow soap, friction, drifting rain, and exceedingly cold water. As he rubs himself upon a large jack-towel, blowing like a military sort of diver just come up, his hair curling tighter and tighter on his sunburnt temples the more he rubs it so that it looks as if it never could be loosened by any less ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... among it, the champion fishers of the world, who spent their spare time in drifting past the English boats and hurling salty wit—at which pastime they ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... was gathering the sweet-smelling tangle in her lap into some more portable arrangement. And afterward, when they were drifting slowly homeward in the lengthening shadows, a ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... was just to breathe the air! Never had her step been so light, or her daily walk to the dingy office—dingy no longer—so bracing. And the out-of-doors—the sky and drifting clouds; the low hills, bleak in the winter's gloom—what changes had come over them? Was it the first blush of the coming spring that had softened their lines, or had her eyes been blind to all their beauty? Oh! Marvellous elixir that makes hopes ...
— Abijah's Bubble - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... a sample of the travel and exposures of the year of labor, on which Brother Frink had entered. Amid the drifting snows of winter, and the copious rains of summer, he was compelled to traverse the dreary, and almost unbroken forests of his field, and on more than one occasion he found the night around his camp-fire ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... the following morning, the wind having changed in the night, the breakers were heard very distinctly. The lead gave no bottom at 140 fathoms, but at daybreak the reef was not a mile away, and they found themselves in a dead calm, rapidly drifting with the current towards the breakers. The yawl and long-boat were got out, the pinnace being under repair, and the sweeps were used from the gun-room ports. By six o'clock she was heading north ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... drifted with the stream, I pondering the issue of my affair; and the drifting ceased not till I came to the place where it disappeared beneath the mountain. I rowed my conveyance into the place which was intensely dark; and the current carried the raft with it down the underground channel.[FN79] The thin stream bore me ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... fell very unpleasantly upon Blanche's cars. She was utterly unconscious of her mother's schemes and hopes. She had not as yet recognized that she was drifting into love with Lionel Beauchamp, but she did know that his confidential intimacy with Sylla Chipchase was very distasteful to her. What was this present she had made him? and what was this commission she had given ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... the other clan leader had tendered. The Terrans were aware that Koros mining was a dangerous business but they had not known that the stock of available stones was so very small. Within ten minutes the last of the serious bargaining was concluded and the clansmen were drifting away from the burned over space about ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... the red and gold leaves were slowly drifting to the ground as Betsy and Uncle Henry drove back from the station after seeing Aunt Frances off. They were not silent this time, as when they had gone to meet her. They were talking cheerfully together, laying their plans for the winter which was so near. "I must begin to bank the house ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield
... possibility in the slow current of events. But he was constantly possessed with a large dim sense of something that lay beyond, waiting for him; something toward which the tide of things was with certainty drifting him, but with which he had nothing more to do than wait. He did not see that to do the things given him to do was the only preparation for whatever, in the dim under-world of the future, might be preparing for him; but he did feel ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... unite in some sort of federation and declare themselves independent of Great Britain. It was with regret that he had come to this conclusion, and he was very slow in proclaiming it, but after 1768 he kept it distinctly before his mind. He saw clearly the end toward which public opinion was gradually drifting, and because of his great influence over the Boston town-meeting and the Massachusetts assembly, this clearness of purpose made him for the next seven years the most formidable of the ...
— The War of Independence • John Fiske
... with the Boer scouts at Acton Homes and Besters Station, these being the voortrekkers of the Orange Free State force. On the 18th also a detachment was reported from Hadders Spruit, seven miles north of Glencoe Camp. The cloud was drifting up, and it could not be long before ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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 ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... After drifting an hour or two in the lower woods, I set out for the summit of a hill 900 feet high, with a view to getting as near the heart of the storm as possible. In order to reach it I had to cross Dry Creek, a tributary of the Yuba that goes crawling along the base ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... greater foe to intemperance than John B. Gough. No words of this great leader have left a more lasting impression than those which he used in his striking picture of the young men drifting in a boat on the Niagara river. Happily, it adapts itself to the requirements ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... She could scarcely believe that she had ever left Limasito; the climacteric weeks in New York, the trip to Topaz Gulch and the later scene in Jim Baggott's hotel had alike faded into a vague, nebulous shadow without substance or coherence, and she herself seemed drifting. . ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... human habitation, the few settlers being located on the banks of inlets or lakes some distance from the shores of the main river. We met only one vessel during the whole of the time, and this did not come within hail, as it was drifting down in the middle of the current in a broad part of the river, two miles from the bank along which we were laboriously warping our ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... themselves. Truths which one has found out for himself always mean more than matter that is dogmatically forced upon him. The pupil who has watched the bees sucking honey from clover blossoms and then going with pollen-laden feet to another blossom, or one who has observed the drifting pollen from orchard or corn field, is better able to understand the fertilization of plants than he would be from any mere ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts
... preexisting in the atmosphere, through reduction of temperature; we show how they assumed the form they present. We assign optical reasons for the brightness or blackness of the cloud; we explain, on mechanical principles, its drifting before the wind; for its disappearance we account on the principles of chemistry. It never occurs to us to invoke the interposition of the Almighty in the production and fashioning of this fugitive form. We explain ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... Her lips were dry, her eyes wide, her bosom heaving. Boundaries hitherto unchangeable, were suddenly submerged. Desperately, as if for her life, she sought to cling to such floating landmarks as Duty, Conscience, Virtue—but they were drifting madly ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... now praetor, warmly supported Metellus. To him, if to no one else, it was clear as the sun at noonday, that unless some better government could be provided than could be furnished by five hundred such gentlemen as the Roman senators, the State was drifting on to destruction. Resolutions to be submitted to the people were generally first drawn in writing, and were read from the Rostra. When Metellus produced his proposal, Cato, who was a tribune also, sprang to his side, ordered him to be silent, and snatched the scroll out of his hands. Metellus ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... and other foreign countries, and ship-lines are projected from its western seaports to foreign countries. Railroad-building is also being greatly stimulated by private enterprise. A vast amount of capital is drifting into the Rocky Mountain and Pacific coast regions from Eastern cities, and a great empire is being built up there which will be a source of wealth to those who obtain possession of land, timber, minerals and manufacturing facilities before the general enhancement of values takes place. ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... overcast with dark clouds, and for several hours the snow fell unceasingly, and now the darkness of night was added to the gloomy scene. As the night set in, the snow continued to fall in a thick shower, and a strong easterly wind arose, which filled the air with one blinding cloud of drifting snow; and the lights in the scattered habitations in the then primitive settlement of D. could scarcely be distinguished amid the thick darkness. It was a fearful night to be abroad upon that lonely and almost impassable road; and Mrs. W. fully realized the peril to which ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell |
