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Drift   Listen
noun
Drift  n.  
1.
A driving; a violent movement. "The dragon drew him (self) away with drift of his wings."
2.
The act or motion of drifting; the force which impels or drives; an overpowering influence or impulse. "A bad man, being under the drift of any passion, will follow the impulse of it till something interpose."
3.
Course or direction along which anything is driven; setting. "Our drift was south."
4.
The tendency of an act, argument, course of conduct, or the like; object aimed at or intended; intention; hence, also, import or meaning of a sentence or discourse; aim. "He has made the drift of the whole poem a compliment on his country in general." "Now thou knowest my drift."
5.
That which is driven, forced, or urged along; as:
(a)
Anything driven at random. "Some log... a useless drift."
(b)
A mass of matter which has been driven or forced onward together in a body, or thrown together in a heap, etc., esp. by wind or water; as, a drift of snow, of ice, of sand, and the like. "Drifts of rising dust involve the sky." "We got the brig a good bed in the rushing drift (of ice)."
(c)
A drove or flock, as of cattle, sheep, birds. (Obs.) "Cattle coming over the bridge (with their great drift doing much damage to the high ways)."
6.
(Arch.) The horizontal thrust or pressure of an arch or vault upon the abutments. (R.)
7.
(Geol.) A collection of loose earth and rocks, or boulders, which have been distributed over large portions of the earth's surface, especially in latitudes north of forty degrees, by the agency of ice.
8.
In South Africa, a ford in a river.
9.
(Mech.) A slightly tapered tool of steel for enlarging or shaping a hole in metal, by being forced or driven into or through it; a broach.
10.
(Mil.)
(a)
A tool used in driving down compactly the composition contained in a rocket, or like firework.
(b)
A deviation from the line of fire, peculiar to oblong projectiles.
11.
(Mining) A passage driven or cut between shaft and shaft; a driftway; a small subterranean gallery; an adit or tunnel.
12.
(Naut.)
(a)
The distance through which a current flows in a given time.
(b)
The angle which the line of a ship's motion makes with the meridian, in drifting.
(c)
The distance to which a vessel is carried off from her desired course by the wind, currents, or other causes.
(d)
The place in a deep-waisted vessel where the sheer is raised and the rail is cut off, and usually terminated with a scroll, or driftpiece.
(e)
The distance between the two blocks of a tackle.
13.
The difference between the size of a bolt and the hole into which it is driven, or between the circumference of a hoop and that of the mast on which it is to be driven.
14.
(Phys. Geog.) One of the slower movements of oceanic circulation; a general tendency of the water, subject to occasional or frequent diversion or reversal by the wind; as, the easterly drift of the North Pacific.
15.
(Aeronautics) The horizontal component of the pressure of the air on the sustaining surfaces of a flying machine. The lift is the corresponding vertical component, which sustains the machine in the air. Note: Drift is used also either adjectively or as the first part of a compound. See Drift, a.
Drift of the forest (O. Eng. Law), an examination or view of the cattle in a forest, in order to see whose they are, whether they are commonable, and to determine whether or not the forest is surcharged.
continental drift (Geology), the very slow (ca. 1-5 cm per year) movement of the continents and parts of continents relative to each other and to the points of upwelling of magma in the viscous layers beneath the continents; causing, for example, the opening of the South Atlantic Ocean by the movement of Africa and South America away from each other. See also plate tectonics.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Drift" Quotes from Famous Books



... won't do that, as I can't live always to watch it. I know that I could make Dr. Eaton manager of it, and you gentlemen directors and my idees would be carried out as long as you was alive; but you all got to die sometime, and it'd git to be a business thing, payin' a lot of officials, and it'd drift into an institution like lots I've seen, with no heart in it. I've thought a lot about them foundations that leaves the money to be used as the times sees fit, and they seem kind of sensible, because times change and what I'd leave it fer now might not be needed ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper

... pleasant wind among the mulberry trees, and the streams are bright with snow-water, and the caravans go up and the caravans go down, and a hundred fires sparkle in the gut of the Pass, and tent-peg answers hammer-nose, and pack-horse squeals to pack-horse across the drift smoke of the evening. It is good in the North now. Come back with me. Let us return to our ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling

... A few others drift into the refuge, or are pressed in by the crowd outside. The Canadian sister, a competent young woman, has found her way here and settled down her helpless V.A.D. on a valise—a lumpy, uncomfortable seat. A private from a Scottish regiment is ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham

... as landmarks, he fails to realise the fact that he is drifting, or, even if he becomes aware of this fact, it is by no means a simple straightforward matter for him to make adequate allowance for the factor. Side-drift is the aviator's greatest enemy. It cannot be determined with any degree of accuracy. If the compass were an infallible guide the airman would be able to complete a given journey in dense fog just as easily as in clear weather. It is the action of the cross currents ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot

... vocation, which is not exactly the same thing. There are "many thyrsus bearers, few mystics," many are called, few chosen. Still, to be sensible of a vocation is something, nay, is much, for most of us drift without any particular aim or predominant purpose. Nobody can justly censure people whose chief interest is in letters, whose chief pleasure is in study or composition, who rejoice in a fine sentence ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang

... found, and that you wish her to name her firstborn son after you. Good-night. Use that assegai at once, for your wound must be painful, or perhaps as you are down upon the ground Ibubesi will do it for you. Good-night, my brother, and Ibubesi, goodnight to you also. We cross the Tugela by another drift, wait you here for the Inkosazana, and tell ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard

... so if you knew what the boys were like. There isn't one in ten that a girl with any sense or self-respect could force herself to marry if she ever saw anything better. Do you begin to see my drift?" ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance

... the revulsion of my feelings get hold of the sense. She talked apparently of life in general, of its difficulties, moral and physical, of its surprising turns, of its unexpected contacts, of the choice and rare personalities that drift on it as if on the sea; of the distinction that letters and art gave to it, the nobility and consolations there are in aesthetics, of the privileges they confer on individuals and (this was the first connected ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad

... bundle of tales and traditions to account for the origin of the great kingdom, and can take our choice. There are many others also. Perhaps the most reasonable account would be one culled from the general drift of the Hindu legends combined with the certainties of historical fact; and from this point of view we may for the present suppose that two brothers, Hindus of the Kuruba caste, who were men of strong ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell

... be one of those young men who do not know what they want to do in life, and the reaction from the strain of his military life had, as was natural, intensified this tendency to drift. After the time that he had determined to be a soldier, then to go West and hunt Indians and grizzly bears, and then shifted to the desire to be a pirate or a policeman, Tom Cameron had really expressed very little ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson

... to insert two or three of these sentences between brackets, which are not found in the original, for the sake of showing the drift of the arguments of Philus. He himself was fully convinced that justice and morality were of eternal and immutable obligation, and that the best interests of all beings lie in their perpetual development and application. This eternity of Justice is beautifully illustrated by Montesquieu. "Long," ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... flowing beneath the black star-sprent sky, they were often thrilled with undefinable emotion, and lowered their voices, although there was nobody to hear them. Surrendering themselves as it were to the silent waves of night, over which they seemed to drift, they recounted to one another, with lovers' rapture, the thousand trifles of ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola

... immense spongy accumulations of vegetable matter in the marshes, through which we poked the boat-staves without finding bottom: they were for the most part formed of decomposed grass roots, with occasionally leaves, but no quantity of moss or woody plants. Along the courses of the greater streams drift timber and various organic fragments are no doubt imbedded, but as there is no current over the greater part of the flooded surface, there can be little or no accumulation, except perhaps of old canoes, or of such vegetables as grow on the spot. The waters are ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... other dogs, e.g. in keeping them from breaking after game. In such a case he will sometimes turn and bark in the opposite direction; ... and in crossing a naked and boundless tundra in darkness or snow-drift he will guess his way to a hut that he has never visited but once before" (I. 159). Kennan also says: "They are guided and controlled entirely by the voice and by a lead-dog, who is especially trained for the purpose." The like is related of ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... to which I was determined to cling with grim resolution. If I allowed his treatment of me to become too casual we might continue to drift apart even when we had some one to ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick

... state there be, Dearer than life to mortality; The hand of the Dark hath hold thereof, And mist is under and mist above. And so we are sick of life, and cling On earth to this nameless and shining thing. For other life is a fountain sealed, And the deeps below are unrevealed, And we drift on legends for ever! [PHAEDRA during this has been laid on her couch; she speaks to ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides

... time when the paper was presented to him, though at first pleased with the attention of his friend, whom he thanked in an earnest manner, soon exclaimed, in a loud and angry tone, 'What is your drift, Sir?' Sir Joshua Reynolds pleasantly observed, that it was a scene for a comedy, to see a penitent get into a violent passion ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... with a little home persuasion from Helen, the boys got reconciled to his company—found, indeed, that he was not such bad company after all; for often, when they were tired of pulling, and let the boat drift into some quiet little bay, or rock lazily in the middle of the loch, the little earl would begin talking—telling stories, which soon caught the attention of the minister's boys. These were either fragments out of the books he ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... and thence, changing the direction of its rush, swept through the valley of the Conemaugh. With the procession of the deluge, trees, logs, debris of buildings, rocks, railroad iron, and the indescribable mass of drift were more and more compacted for battering power; and what the advance bore of the flood spared, the mass in the rear, made up of ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum

... was, whose forward prate Controlled all matters in debate; Whether he knew the thing or no, His tongue eternally would go. For he had impudence at will, And boasted universal skill. Ambition was his point in view; Thus, by degrees, to power he grew. Behold him now his drift attain: He's made chief treasurer of the grain. 90 But as their ancient laws are just, And punish breach of public trust, 'Tis ordered (lest wrong application Should starve that wise industrious nation) That all accounts be stated clear, Their stock, and what defrayed the year: That auditors ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... observed there. Instead of being vertical, as here, this circulation is horizontal: the water coming from the source of the polar snows finds its way into the canals and seas, and returns to be condensed at the poles by a light drift of invisible vapors directed from the equator to the poles. There ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion

... conditions may have acted upon the very earliest human inhabitants of Sussex—the palaeolithic savages of the drift—before the last Glacial epoch, it is impossible to say, because we know that many of them did not then exist, and that the present configuration of the county is largely due to subsequent agencies. Britain was then united to the continent by a broad belt of land, filling up the bed ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... but very tough line from his pocket. It had a series of running nooses in it, and he slipped one of these about the wrist of each native, drawing it tight. Then he half-led, half-dragged them out of the stockade, to the mine entrance, and down the drift to the rise they had to climb to get to the stope ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans

... inspiration fills Nature's fair fabric, sun- and star-inwrought, Like airy dew ere any drop distils, Like perfume in the laden flower, like aught Unseen which interfused throughout the whole Becomes its quickening pulse and principle and soul. Now when, the drift of old desire renewing, Warm tides flow northward over valley and field, When half-forgotten sound and scent are wooing From their deep-chambered recesses long sealed Such memories as breathe once more Of childhood and the happy hues it wore, Now, with ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger

... So I drift about and about by myself, looking after myself, living alone. I miss that seal of Bishop Pavel's. One of his descendants gave it to me, and I had it in my waistcoat pocket this summer, but, looking for it now, I find I have lost it. Well, well; but, anyhow, I have been paid in advance for that ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun

... ascertain while the aeroplane was maintaining its enormous speed; certainly there was none to cause unsteadiness. If wind there was, it blew in his, favour, and all that he would have to do would be to allow in steering for a slight northerly drift. He would certainly sight the Nicobar group, and possibly the Andaman Islands if he did not make sufficient allowance for the wind; but he was determined not to alight if he could help it until he arrived at Penang; he had ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang

... pleasures they are alike. Yes, retorts Socrates, pleasure is like pleasure, as figure is like figure and colour like colour; yet we all know that there is great variety among figures and colours. Protarchus does not see the drift of this remark; and Socrates proceeds to ask how he can have a right to attribute a new predicate (i.e. 'good') to pleasures in general, when he cannot deny that they are different? What common property in all of them does ...
— Philebus • Plato

... thing to do is to find out whether there is a path either from this river, or the other branch, to the pool. If so, at dark, after destroying the town, we will recall all the men on shore, buoy the anchor and drop it noiselessly, and drift down the river till we are far enough away to use the engines, then steam down to the junction of the two streams, and up again to the entrance to the creek on that side. Then we will at once land a very strong party, land also two twenty-four pounders, and drag them to the pool. We might hope ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty

... grandfather just as though I were here. I shall be everywhere about you and yours, Katje. Always. In the stockings at Christmas, in the big, busy, teeming world of shadows, just outside your threshold; or whispering to you in the stillness of the night. And, as the years drift on, you can never know what pride I shall take in your middle life—the very best age of all! After the luxuries and the eager gaieties and the vanities and the possessions and the hot strife for gain cease to be important, ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco

... no disadvantage to what we call "dumb animals" if they understand the general drift of our remarks without minutely following every word. They have generally the sense, too, to leave well alone, and, without pressing the question of the new comer's adoption, the two dogs curled themselves round, put their noses into their pockets, and went to sleep with an air of its being ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... to himself. Except for swallowing once or twice, he never made a move, but stood there in the water and waited. He waited for Master Meadow Mouse's raft to drift closer; for it was plain to him—as to Master Meadow Mouse—that the current of Black Creek was slowly bearing the board straight down upon him. "When it gets near enough I'll just reach out and pluck that fellow off," Mr. Heron promised himself ...
— The Tale of Master Meadow Mouse • Arthur Scott Bailey

... have a long trip ahead of us and we need to save all the elevating gas we can save. If worst comes to worst, and we can't navigate as an aeroplane any more, we can even drift along as a dirigible. But while we have the gasolene we might as well make speed and ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Glider - or, Seeking the Platinum Treasure • Victor Appleton

... the idea of a suit. "The whole thing," said he, "is merely a question of tactics. Things are going along very satisfactorily as they are. There's a drift on, a tendency—you might say. The clothing people have come in. Magees have come in. Why, they've agreed to do every blessed thing you asked—fireproofed stairways and ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... drift is observable at tennis, golf, base-ball and cricket; but this effect is explainable by the inequality of pressure due to a vortex of air carried along by the rotating ball, and the deviation is in the opposite direction of the drift observed in artillery practice, so artillerists are still ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... her place of peace: and yet she knows, in her heart, if she would only look for its knowledge, that, outside of that little rose-covered wall, the wild grass, to the horizon, is torn up by the agony of men, and beat level by the drift of their life-blood. ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin

... 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 drift of ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day

... ornithologist?" said Tolly, who had no desire that the conversation should drift ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne

... time to make new shores, it would, of course, be full only a month or two in the spring, when the snow is melting fast; then it would be gradually drained, exposing the slimy sides of the basin and shallower parts of the bottom, with the gathered drift and waste, death and decay of the upper basins, caught here instead of being swept on to decent natural burial along the banks of the river or in the sea. Thus the Hetch Hetchy dam-lake would be only a rough imitation of a natural ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir

... had first given to the world this policy of commercial constraint and the great enrichment of the Spanish monarchy was everywhere held to be its outcome. France, by reason of her similar political and administrative system, found it easy to drift into the wake of the Spanish example. The official classes in England and Holland would fain have had these countries do likewise, but private initiative and enterprise proved too strong in the end. As for New France, there were spells during which the grip of the trading monopolies relaxed, ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro

... unexpected talent for the concert had developed. The piano in the chapel proving out of order, the elevator man proved to have been a piano tuner. He tuned it with a bone forceps. Strange places, hospitals, into which drift men from every walk of life, to find a haven and peace within their quiet walls. Old Tony had sung, in his youth, in the opera at Milan. A pretty young nurse went around the corridors muttering bits of ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... grave again. "I fancy it would have been better if we had not displayed so much of it and let things drift, but that is not the question now," she said. "How could any one willing to ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss

... ships of burden, two junks, and eight or ten of the country boats. The nabob sent me a message by Lacandas, that these were not for the purpose of fighting, but were full of combustibles, meant to be set on fire, and allowed to drift with the tide upon our ships in the night. I was glad of this information, and took immediate measures to prevent the consequences of such an attempt, as well as to defend ourselves from the smaller vessels. The spring-tides were now near the highest, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr

... would expect the General. At the early dinner-hour, accordingly, Monk was at his Lordship's house in Leadenhall Street, coldly received at first, but gradually with more of curiosity and goodwill as his drift was perceived. He begged earnestly that his Lordship would send out summonses for an immediate meeting of the Common Council in Guildhall, notwithstanding the dissolution of that body by the Rump, saying he would accompany his Lordship thither and make ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... the answer of all was that the Duke should be their King. When, conducted by the two archbishops, he ascended the vacant throne, he was greeted with the joyous acclaim of those assembled. The Archbishop of Canterbury made a speech full of unction, the drift of which was, that henceforth it would not be a child, such as the late sovereign had been, self-willed and void of understanding, but a Man that would rule over them, in the full maturity of ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... list has come out without his name in it—never beaten, in short, until the last remotest chance is over. That is the spirit which won at Agincourt, at Waterloo, at Meeanee, at Dubba, at Lucknow, at Rorke's Drift. It was this that Saurin was deficient in, and that would have now stood him in such stead. Edwards was not the one to infuse any of it into him, for he was as much dismayed by the effects of the last round as his friend ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough

... right course in the Far East will mean the loss of England's commercial supremacy, and, eventually, the disintegration of the British Empire. He maintains that, since November 16, 1896, when the German government was compelled by Bismarck's revelations to disclose the drift of its future policy, it has been apparent that there is an increasing tendency toward cooperation in the Near East and the Par East between Germany and Russia, and therefore, also, between those powers ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... her speech, he had been making a swift, but futile effort to chart the future. He knew that Lorimer was drifting carelessly, thoughtlessly; he also knew that Beatrix was allowing herself to drift idly in his wake. And how about himself? And would they all make the same port in the end? If not, where would the diverging currents be ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray

... to be preached as well as to the Jews. While sectarian divisions are largely due to selfish and wicked men, most of them are due to devout Christians who are misled by inherited prejudices or simply drift with ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz

... dirty, trading loon Wad gar the water ca' his wheel, And drift his dyes and poisons doun By fair ...
— Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations • Andrew Lang

... Dacier) the Poet pays, en passant, a very natural and delicate compliment to the Pisos." The drift of the Poet is evident, but ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace

... they slay on account of the marriage-bed, but all the males at the same time, that they might thereafter pay no retribution for the grim murder. And of all the women, Hypsipyle alone spared her aged father Thoas, who was king over the people; and she sent him in a hollow chest, to drift over the sea, if haply he should escape. And fishermen dragged him to shore at the island of Oenoe, formerly Oenoe, but afterwards called Sicinus from Sicinus, whom the water-nymph Oenoe bore to Thoas. Now for all the women to tend kine, to don armour ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius

... answer to the question, What do you give in place of what you take away? For my text I have chosen two significant passages of Scripture. One is from the seventh chapter of Hebrews, the nineteenth verse; and it sets forth, as I look at it, the drift and outcome of the process of which we are a part, the bringing in of a better hope. Then from the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, the thirty- ninth and fortieth verses, expressing the relation in which we stand to those who have looked for God and his work in the past: And these all, ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage

... editor to fall in; but the success of the news printed depends upon a pre-apprehension of all this. Some papers, which nevertheless print all the news, are always a day behind, do not appreciate the popular drift till it has gone to something else, and err as much by clinging to a subject after it is dead as by not taking it up before it was fairly born. The public craves eagerly for only one thing at a time, and soon wearies of that; ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... the worst day's march of the journey. The wind was booming along at sixty miles per hour with dense drift and falling snow. What made it worse was that it came from the south-east, forcing us to pull partly across it. I was the upwind wheeler and had to hitch on to the side of the sledge to reduce the leeway as much as possible. The sledge was being continually jammed into ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... welcome, night And solitude, and ye swift-flying stars That drift with golden sands the barren heavens, Welcome once more! The Angels of the Wind Hasten across the desert to receive me; And sweeter than men's voices are to me The voices of these solitudes; the sound ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... This, the main drift of Carlyle's political teaching, rests on his absolute belief in strength (which always grows by concentration), on his unqualified admiration of order, and on his utter disbelief in what his adverse friend Mazzini was wont, with over-confidence, to appeal to as "collective ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol

... a good league. This is where the sailors went to get fresh water for the ships. He found that the sand at the mouth of the river, which is very large and deep, was full of very fine gold, and in astonishing quantity. The Admiral thought that it was pulverized in the drift down the river, but in a short time he found many grains as large as lentils, while there was a great ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various

... Accordingly Lecomte, who was at that time architect of the Tuileries, merely received orders to clean the Palace, an expression which might bear more than one meaning, after the meetings which had been there. For this purpose the sum of 500,000 francs was sufficient. Bonaparte's drift was to conceal, as far as possible, the importance he attached to the change of his Consular domicile. But little expense was requisite for fitting up apartments for the First Consul. Simple ornaments, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... the oars going, or the big boat will drift back into shallow water again. I'll get back there all right." Harriet unshipped her oars and stood up in the boat. She took a clean, curving dive into the ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Afloat • Janet Aldridge

... towing astern of the vessel in case the wind should fall light and the ship drift in too close to the shore. It was a fine night, with a light breeze, and there was, they thought, a good chance of getting to the southward, to one of the Samoan group, where they could settle, or by shipping on board a trading schooner they ...
— "The Gallant, Good Riou", and Jack Renton - 1901 • Louis Becke

... on the right track, Queenie?" he said, addressing his animal, as was his custom when they were alone. "It would be strange if we didn't drift away from our bearings. Hello! that can't be Dick Hawkridge's ranch; we haven't gone far enough for that; but what the mischief can it be, unless a fire that some one ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis

... of the river the sight presented to view was a magnificent one. London had vanished, even to the dome of St. Paul's, but we knew where the great city lay by the mist that shrouded it and shone white in the rays of the sun. Save for this patch of mist, that seemed to drift after us far away below the car, there was nothing to obscure the range of vision. I am afraid to say how many miles it was computed lay within the framework of the glowing panorama. But I know that we could follow the windings of the river that curled like a dragon among the green ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy

... of Shakespeare's avowedly ethical utterances which bear on conditions of civil society—on morals in their social aspect. There is no obscurity about their drift. Apart from direct ethical declaration, it may be that ethical lessons touching political virtue as well as other specific aspects of morality are deducible from a study of Shakespeare's plots and characters. Very generous food for reflection seems to be offered the political philosopher by ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee

... he made few acquaintances beyond those with whom he was intimately associated. It seemed more politic to obey his instincts and remain unobtrusive in company and drift away inoffensively when the chance occurred. One of the men with whom he talked occasionally was a red-headed little cockney by the name of Shendish. For some reason or the other—perhaps because his name ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke

... end. Between these forks they had carefully sewed this flag with twine, and this part of the canvas I left and made it serve as the blade of my paddle; and so in due time I paddled to the Kansas shore. The river was rapid, and there were in the river heaps of drift-wood, called "rack-heaps," dangerous places into which the water rushed with great violence; but from these I was mercifully saved, and though I could not swim, I landed a few miles below Atchison without harm or accident, and made my way to ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler

... canoe and go to their assistance would be dangerous in the extreme, as, should she drift away, Robin would be unable by himself to paddle her back. I could not, however, resist the temptation of sending Bouncer, and one pat on the back while I pointed to the top of the rock was sufficient to make him leap on to it and ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston

... is I love to drift Upon the flood-tide's lazy swirls, While from the level rice fields lift The spiritu'ls ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen

... space, or which has an ascertained common proper motion. Its constituents form a magnificent system in which the stars bear a mutual relationship to each other, and perform intricate internal revolutions, whilst they in systemic union drift along through the depths of space. There are two allusions to the Pleiades in 'Paradise Lost.' In describing the path of the newly created Sun, Milton introduces them as indicative of the joyfulness associated with ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard

... would add tenfold bitterness to my already overflowing cup if I saw no chance for you, Belle, and the little ones. You may soon have to be mother and sister both. I forewarn you, because, as Roger says, you are strong as well as gentle, and you must not just drift helplessly toward we know not what. Oh, Millie, my poor crushed heart must have one consolation before it is at rest. Roger is not, and never will be, a weak man. It is not in his nature to give way to fatal habits. I, too, with a woman's eye, have seen his deep, strong affection for you, and ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe

... to see the drift of this long exordium, although my purpose was indeed twofold. First, I wished, after the example of my betters in literature, to give you a slight glimpse of the immense extent of my learning. Secondly, I wished to lead you through ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote

... escape from the ship and had even lowered the boat into the sea, pretending that they were going to lay out anchors from the bow, when Paul said to the officer and to the soldiers, "Unless these men stay on board, we cannot be saved." Then the soldiers cut the ropes which held the boat and let her drift away. ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman

... Yunsan knew. But in him, this poor-clad, lean-bellied priest, I sensed the power behind power in all the palace and in all Cho-Sen. I sensed also, through the drift of speech, that he had use of me. Now was this use suggested by the Lady Om?—a nut I gave Hendrik Hamel to crack. I little knew, and less I cared, for I lived always in the moment and let others forecast, forfend, and ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London

... Shafts No. 1 and 2, in very small masses, incrustations, and even in small crystals. It occurs embedded in or incrusting the trap, and also with calcite and apopholite. The only sure place to find it is at the southwest side of an opening through the pile of drift rock under the trestle work of the tramway, between shaft No. 1 and the dump, and within a few feet of a number of wooden vats sunk into the ground seen just before descending the hills and near the edge. Here on a number of blocks of trap it may be found, a greenish white incrustation about ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various

... Immensity of the Universe. The night was not sufficiently advanced for the stars to have paled; and the earth seemed to me more profoundly asleep—perhaps because I was alone now. Not having Fyne with me to set the pace I let myself drift, rather than walk, in the direction of the farmhouse. To drift is the only reposeful sort of motion (ask any ship if it isn't) and therefore consistent with thoughtfulness. And I pondered: How is one an ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad

... complexions and dark skins are alike tinted by the sunset; they are all swarthy. On the sea a dull redness reaches away and is lost in the vapour on the horizon; eastwards great vapours, tinged rosy, stand up high in the sky, and seem to drift inland, carrying the sunset with them; presently the atmosphere round the houses is filled with a threatening light, like a great fire reflected over the housetops. It fades, and there is nothing left but a dark cloud at the western horizon, tinted blood-red ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies

... whole patronage of the Government, the right to succeed to the most sacred and exalted offices in the Church, were bartered and intrigued for in the chamber of a harlot and procuress, and under the influence of the Pompadours and the Du Barrys a crowned roue allowed the state to drift into ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey

... proposed that we should row to it, which we gladly did. Its shores were steep and rocky, and we found much difficulty in landing; but at last we got ashore and pulled the boat up after us. Among the rocks we found a quantity of drift-wood; we gathered some, and built a fire. Uncle James produced some bread and crackers from his basket, and, after roasting some of the nice, fat mackerel on sharp sticks before the fire, we sat down to what seemed to us a delicious breakfast. We were in ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various

... should we get on in the ordinary intercourse of life, and how would commerce get on, if we disregarded men's testimony? Things social and commercial would come to a dead-lock within forty-eight hours! This is the drift of the apostle's argument here. "If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater." God has borne witness to Jesus Christ. And if man can believe his fellow men who are frequently telling untruths and whom we are constantly finding unfaithful, why should we not ...
— The Way to God and How to Find It • Dwight Moody

... melodious tones through the long August afternoon two summers ago, while we, the chief, his happy-hearted wife and bright, young daughter, all lounged amongst the boulders and watched the lazy clouds drift from peak to peak far above us. It was one of his inspired days; legends crowded to his lips as a whistle teases the mouth of a happy boy, his heart was brimming with tales of the bygones, his eyes were dark with dreams and that strange mournfulness that always haunted them when he spoke ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson

... knows) is as follows. The boats, by means of which the river is bridged, are flat. They are anchored up stream a little above the spot where the bridge is to be constructed. When the signal is given, they first let one ship drift down stream close to the bank that they are holding. When it has come opposite the spot to be bridged, they throw into the water a basket filled with stones and fastened with a cord, which serves as ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio

... now going to mention a small observation, made by me two or three years ago, near Southampton, but not followed out, as I have no strength for excursions. I need say nothing about the character of the drift there (which includes palaeolithic celts), for you have described its essential features in a few words at page 506. It covers the whole country [in an] even plain-like surface, almost irrespective of the present ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin

... tempt a trusting heart From faith and hope to drift apart, May they themselves be spared the pain Of losing power to trust again. God help us all to kindly view The world ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... little snowstorm!" she said, nodding approval at the whirling white drift. "Go on, and you will be worth while, my dear." She went singing to her algebra, which she could not have done if it had ...
— The Green Satin Gown • Laura E. Richards

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

... she said. "Is it school that makes you so? If it is, I don't think I shall stay long. I like to drift along and do only what my inclination prompts me to do. I hate responsibility of ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower

... meaning of the suggestive phrases contained in the aphorisms. The sutras thus contain sometimes allusions to the views of the rival schools and indicate the way in which they could be refuted. The commentators were possessed of the general drift of the different discussions alluded to and conveyed from generation to generation through an unbroken chain of succession of teachers and pupils. They were however free to supplement these traditionary ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta

... not one tear will rise for this... A little while hence No regret Will stir for a remembered kiss— Not even silence, When we've met, Will give old ghosts a waste to roam, Or stir the surface of the sea... If gray shapes drift beneath the foam We ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... 8. Back again in our camp, we thought to pause awhile, rest on our oars, and drift comfortably with the gentle summer tide of things. We have transplanted all the ferns and wild herbs for which we have room, and as a matter of course trees and shrubs must wait until they have shed their ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright

... crowded out. All day long he was for ever forcing his attention upon some matter or other to the exclusion of the lady. A thousand times she came tripping—always he fobbed her off. Considering how much of late he had been content to drift with the stream, the way in which his mind bent to the oars was amazing. His output of mental energy was extraordinary. Will rode Brain with a bloody spur. When night came, the ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... before him for the future was not to do his work but to do what somebody else would take for it. I had the question out with him on the next opportunity, and of all the lively discussions into which we had been destined to drift it lingers in my mind as the liveliest. This was not, I hasten to add, because I disputed his conclusions: it was an effect of the very force with which, when I had fathomed his wretched premises, I took ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James

... the Good Adventure and the Sotomayor with her, were drifting right down upon the second Spaniard and her antagonists. The Spaniards on the Sotomayor, finding themselves almost overpowered, had cut their cable purposely, to drift down with the tide on board their consort, in the hope of being able to make a better stand together than separately. But they were mistaken in their expectation. The other vessel, having had two to contend ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

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

... stormy moon Slide westward toward the River Plate, Death and the Raven drift above And Sweeney ...
— Poems • T. S. [Thomas Stearns] Eliot

... too funny," laughed Herbert, now that the drift of his friend's seemingly crazy remarks was plain to him. "How can you manage to joke so seriously, and why do you make fun of me? Because I am from the country, ...
— The Boy Broker - Among the Kings of Wall Street • Frank A. Munsey

... from the sea before nightfall. And now he had that mournful satisfaction which is the special privilege of the pessimistic. These fog-banks, the pest of the east coast, are the materials that form the light fleecy clouds which drift westward in sunny weather like a gauze veil across the face of the sky. They roll across the North Sea from their home in the marshes of Holland on the face of the waters, and the mariner, groping his way with dripping eyelashes and a rosy face through them, can look up and see the blue sky through ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman

... is unobtrusively proclaimed by the drift of his whole narrative, and especially by two or three among the more remarkable of its ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent

... endow these private institutions, it made the education of daughters very expensive, and fathers with daughters, seeing their neighbors' sons in the State University educated at the public expense, from financial considerations were readily converted to the theory of coeducation. Again the general drift of thought was in favor of coeducation throughout the young western States. Then institutions of learning were too expensive to build separate establishments for girls and boys, and the number of boys able to attend ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... Wen explained, "I told her to go and have her meal. And as for She Yeh, P'ing Erh came just now and called her out of doors and there they are outside confabbing in a mysterious way! What the drift of their conversation can be I don't know. But they must be talking about my having fallen ill, and my not leaving this place to ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... Though I chance not to want to drink there, I like to behold a clear fountain, and I may want to drink next time I pass, or some traveler, or heifer, or milch cow may. Leaves have a strange fatality for the spring. They come from afar to get into it. In a grove or in the woods they drift into it and cover it up like snow. Late in November, in clearing one out, I brought forth a frog from his hibernacle in the leaves at the bottom. He was very black, and he rushed about in a bewildered manner like one ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... proper," Pao-ch'ai answered. "If we made no allusion to learning, we'd all soon enough drift among ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... was the best of all; for they liked nothing so well as to look up at the white flakes falling fast and thick, like down frown the breasts of millions of white birds, and to see how smooth and deep the drift was, and to listen to the hush ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey

... settlers. This was the state of matters when, on the 26th of April, the Caffres came down in great numbers and swept away the cattle of the colonists, driving them through the Fish River. In carrying away this booty they passed, with great hardihood, close to the fortified post called "Trompetter's Drift." The guns of the position opened with grape and canister, at point-blank range, and accomplished a dreadful slaughter, but none of the booty was recaptured; the enemy even earned away all ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... Drift-net fishing - done with a net, miles in extent, that is generally anchored to a boat and left to float with the tide; often results in an over harvesting and waste of large populations of non-commercial marine species (by-catch) by its effect ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... through the whole extent of the drifts, we shall easily understand that the working by inverted grades, or "overstoping," is the only proper or feasible method. In this case, the blasts being all made from the roof, or "back," as it is called, of the drift, the barren or "dead" rock containing no gold is left on the floor of the drift, and there is then only the labor and expense of bringing the valuable quartz itself, a much less amount in bulk, to the surface of the ground. The accumulating ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various

... establishing of his own, and also for the convincing and converting of some of them, who aforetime was not converted. And friend, why dost thou say, that we join with Magog in the defence of the dragon against the Lamb, when thou seest the whole drift both of my brother's epistle, and also of my writing, is to exalt and advance the first-born of Mary, the Lord of glory, and to hold on his side, notwithstanding there are so many tempests go through the world, And the rather, because we know that it is he, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... convention did not please all members of the party. To some the drift of the speeches and resolutions seemed an encouragement to armed rebellion; to others, although jealous of individual rights, it appeared to confuse the liberty of the press with license. One paper, an able representative of the party, disclaiming any desire "to rekindle animosities by ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... paid him their rent punctually. I often sat at the kitchen hearth as neighbor after neighbor came in in the evening and told in Irish the tale of some hard occurrence that had taken place. I understood enough to guess the drift of the story. I understood well the language of eye and clinched hand with which my host listened. The people who suffered were his people; their woe was his; he felt for them a sympathy of which the landlord never dreamed; but he never said ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall

... drift. If Joe had his way he'd march Diane and him off to the nearest parson with no more delay than was ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum

... the mental demand. The first thing demanded was a letter to Mr. Carlisle. It was in vain to think to tell him in spoken words what she wanted him to know; he would cut them short or turn them aside as soon as he perceived their drift, before she could at all possess him with the facts of the case. Eleanor sat down before dressing, to write her letter, so that no call might break her off ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner

... him, at first casually and carelessly, so it seemed to Curly. But presently he discerned a drift in the talk. They were trying to find out who had been his partners in ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine

... foggy weather, and weak cyclones with rain or snow Terrain: 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 Greenland and Iceland); the ice pack is surrounded by open seas during the summer, but more than doubles in size during the winter and extends ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... of that great river that is always coming from the depths of their being, and have never asked whether the current is bringing down sand or gold. Exercise control, as becomes you, over the run and drift of your thoughts. I said that many of us had minds like cities broken down. Put a guard at the gate, as they do in some Continental countries, and let in no vagrant that cannot show his passport, and a clear bill of health. Now, that is a lesson ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... by our Lord Jesus Christ to show you the state of two single persons only, as some, through ignorance of the drift of Christ in his parables, do dream; but to show you the state of the godly and ungodly to the world's end; as is clear to him that is of an understanding heart. For he spake them to the end that after generations should take notice thereof, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... ejaculation. Rolfe, his friend, was a Jacobin of the blackest, who preached sedition and the right of tenants to vote as they chose; and the Hamiltons were renegades who gained titles and honours by supporting a failing Ministry, from the most opportunely patriotic of motives. The general drift of the plot is neither very readily to be summarised nor indeed very satisfactory, and one might disagree with Mr. JOHN HERON LEPPER at several points. At the same time, as his many friends would expect, there is much ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 153, November 7, 1917 • Various

... the beach is in marked contrast to what might have been witnessed a generation ago. Then one would have found here and there a family group just driven down in the old-fashioned carryall, and enjoying a feast of clam-chowder cooked over a fire of drift-wood. Now the beach is thronged by crowds of many thousands; immense hotels vie with those of the metropolis in grandeur; there are avenues and parks, flying horses, tennis-grounds, shops for the sale of everything that the city affords, and some that it does not, dog-carts and goat-wagons, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3 • Various

... not all; did he not have the impudence to ask me what had become of his wood? 'Your wood! why not your forest at once?' I answered. Now it is true, for two mean cart-loads of nothing at all—one of drift and the other new wood, for he did not buy all new wood—the save-penny made a fuss! His wood? 'I burned all your wood,' said I, 'to save your furniture from the damp; otherwise mushrooms would have sprung up on your embroidered cap, and on your glowworm robe de chambre ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue

... expect, is that I 've the positive, you 've the negative, temperament; I 've the active, you 've the passive; I 've the fertile, you 've the sterile. It's the difference between Yea and Nay, between Willy and Nilly. Serenely, serenely, you will drift to your grave, and never once know what it is to be consumed, harried, driven by a deep, inextinguishable, unassuageable craving to write a song. You 'll never know the heartburn, the unrest, the conscience-sickness, ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland

... of Representatives in 1811, at the age of twenty-nine. From the very first his voice was heard. He made a speech in favor of raising ten thousand additional men to our army to resist the encroachments of Great Britain and prepare for hostilities should the country drift into war. It was an able speech for a young man, and its scornful repudiation of reckoning the costs of war against insult and violated rights had a chivalric ring about it: "Sir, I here enter my solemn protest against a low and calculating avarice entering this hall of legislation. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord

... must settle it," she said, resignedly; "perhaps you had better see him. I can't interfere one way or the other. I have no head for business," she added, apologetically; "I'm not sure that any of us have except Allis. We just seem to drift, drift, drift." ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser

... should have gone farther up the river, but for a dangerous boom which kept back a great number of logs in a large brook that here fell into the St. Mary's; the stream ran with force, and if the Rebels had wit enough to do it, they might in ten minutes so choke the river with drift-wood as infinitely to enhance our troubles. So we dropped down stream a mile or two, found the very brickyard from which Fort Clinch had been constructed,—still stored with bricks, and seemingly unprotected. Here Sergeant Rivers again planted his standard, ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... misleading as to the conditions of real income. Further, a higher standard of output prevails in the cities where organization is greatest, and older men and the less efficient that are unable to "keep up the pace" drift away into unorganized shops or to villages where no standard union rate is in force. So far as unions help to develop the intelligence and promote the sobriety and efficiency of their members, they are a positive ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter

... and up to a favourite spot where there was a special haunt of the fish, where the stream curved round and formed a deep pool. But I felt as if I must stop again and again to let the boat drift, and watch humming-birds, or brightly-painted butterflies and beetles, flitting here and there, so that it was quite a couple of hours before we reached the spot, and suddenly turned the curve of ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn

... had caught at last the drift of what she was saying. "There is no need for any comedy, Suzanne. Enough of that had ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini

... first 'twas Peter's drift To be a kind of moral eunuch, He touched the hem of Nature's shift, 315 Felt faint—and never dared ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... seemed to drift quickly down, that night, because her supper had been delayed, and she washed her dishes by lamplight. When she had quite finished, and taken off her apron, she stood a moment over the chest, before sitting down to her task of memorizing verse. She was wondering whether she might ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown

... alone. Beneath them, on the shore, squatted the cub, watching its northern home drift slowly away; once it made as if it would have plunged into the waves and followed it, but, seeming to change its mind, paused ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis

... box, so quickly did he reach the ground. Then he stretched out his hands appealingly to me, and implored me not to go. There was just enough of English mixed with the German for me to understand the drift of his talk. He seemed always just about to tell me something—the very idea of which evidently frightened him; but each time he pulled himself up, saying, as he ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker

... had a glimmer of real interest in meeting her father. For in those remarks of hers he recognized at once the rare superior man—the man who works by plan, where the masses of mankind either drift helplessly or are propelled by some superior force behind them without which they would be, not the civilized beings they seem, but even as the savage in the dugout or as the beast of the field. The girl opened a door; a bright light streamed into ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips

... on and on in the gloom, with the hurricane roaring over us, carrying the spray and drift in a smothering storm into our faces. A hand would slip with a wet grip only to take a fresh hold again, and strain away ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains

... time we had been sailing sometimes very fast, then scarcely making way in the teeth of the strong north-easter. To the north and north-east the fog banks hung low on the sea. So light was the wind, that the sails scarcely filled. The schooner seemed merely to drift.... Toward night we entered among the fog-banks. The whole face of the sea steamed like a boiling kettle. The mist rose thin and gauze-like. We could scarcely see the length of the deck. It was blind work ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens

... when her cousin silenced her. Then the rope was untied, and the rowboat was allowed to drift astern of ...
— The Rover Boys on the River - The Search for the Missing Houseboat • Arthur Winfield

... "harassing them as a swarm of wasps worry a bear." Several of the Spanish vessels were captured and one blown up. At last the commander sailed for Calais to repair damages and take a fresh start. The English followed. When night came on, Drake sent eight blazing fire ships to drift down among the Armada as it lay at anchor. Thoroughly alarmed at the prospect of being burned where they lay, the Spaniards cut their cables and made sail ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery

... artistic workmanship is so minute as to fail even to support one maker of excellence, and thus, when deprived suddenly of its legitimate protection, the art, with other similar handicrafts, must drift into decadence. If we look around the Violin world, it is everywhere much the same. In Italy there is no Stradivari in embryo, in France no coming Lupot, in Germany no Jacob Stainer, and in England no future Banks or Forster. Why so? The answer ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart

... however, what I get from gesticulation alone is an abstract notion of the essential drift of what is being said, and that, too, whether I judge from a moral or an intellectual point of view. It is the quintessence, the true substance of the conversation, and this remains identical, ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer

... to drift and trust to chance for the welfare of her children, and however they develop, for good or ill, she must in greater or ...
— Three Things • Elinor Glyn

... "but it won't be any use; I shall drift about the streets, seeking to put heart into myself, but all the while my footsteps will be bearing me nearer and nearer to the recruiting office; and outside the door some girl in the crowd will smile approval ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome

... heard him, or saw by his manner that he was being played upon, or perceived the secretary's drift of himself, he came in his blunt way to the ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... general drift of the reasonings of the traversers' counsel. What was their effect upon the assembled judges—those experienced and authoritative expositors of the law of the land? Why, after nearly two months' time taken to consider and ponder ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various

... that bided with me, making me wretched and yet glad, for it told me that her thoughts were as mine. And more than that neither of us would show. The tide of war had hold of me, and whither it would drift me none could say. Nor did I lose much. I had nought to lose ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler

... at the girls, and the girls must look on their books," was said at least a dozen times by the village school-master, on that stormy morning when Cora Blanchard and I—she in her brother's boots, and I in my father's socks—waded through drift after drift of snow to the old brown school-house at the foot of the long, ...
— Rosamond - or, The Youthful Error • Mary J. Holmes

... whole of this scene, Glibly was consistent with himself; in giving it such a turn and complexion as to make it requisite, for the preservation of my character above the rest, to prevent the pamphlet from being published. If, whenever I detected his drift, I urged the true motives by which I was actuated, he always immediately admitted them, praised them, and allowed them to be superlatively excellent: but never failed to give them such an air as should suit the project he had conceived; and allow ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... "Let her drift for a minute," said Abe. "I've got a letter from James Rutledge that I want to read to you. There's a big lesson in it for both of us—something to remember ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller

... now happily obsolete statecraft, insisted on the expensive toy of a southern and unpractical line, until our representatives, harassed by the problem how to gratify her without incurring the contempt of the financial world, gave over to the drift of events the settlement of their country's chief commercial question. We are now in a position to decide coolly; no entangling alliances with a dead-weight social system bias our plain judgment of practical pros and cons; but the opportunity ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... when she came, as thin as a sickle, clinging tight round the business moon that saw to the spring-tides, a phantom sphere an intrepid star was daring to go close to. This brig had not been disappointing her backers, for wagers had been freely laid that she would drag her moorings in the wind, and drift. Fenwick and Vereker stopped in their walk to lean on the wooden rail above the beach that skirted the two inclines, going either way, up which the waggons had been a couple of hours ago scrambling over the shingle against time, to land one more load yet while ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... application as we may well resent. The Roman Catholics do the same, and with limitations that are still more uncompromising. We of the Free Churches must not be astonished if, as a result of definite and positive teaching within other walls and a lack of such teaching within our own, the people drift away from us. To build up the Church we must preach the Church. She needs the ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson

... he observed that she was becoming a little conscious in her air, and giving a slightly sentimental turn to the conversation. It was not for some time that he saw her drift, so utterly without connection in his mind were Ida and this comfortable matron before him, and when he did, a smile at the exquisite absurdity of the thing barely twitched the corners of his mouth, and ended in a sad, puzzled stare that rather put ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various

... house as a temporary measure, my father in the meantime endeavoring to secure a suitable farm. In this he was unsuccessful, so after six weeks we hired another wagon and started for King William's Town. The rains had been heavy, and the drift of the Fish River on the direct road was consequently impassable, so we took the longer route and crossed by the old wooden military bridge at Fort Brown. This bridge was swept away by the great flood of 1874. A great iron girder structure has ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully

... not intend to sail very fast in the houseboat. In fact, for many days, he expected to just drift along, or push the boat with a long pole through some shallow creek, or in parts of the lake where it was not deep. When he wanted to move more quickly from place to place, there was the gasoline engine all ready to use. And Captain White knew how ...
— The Bobbsey Twins on a Houseboat • Laura Lee Hope

... last 20 miles or so was by an absolutely straight single track, through a sand desert, without a trace of animal life, and with only scattered clumps of fibrous vegetation. On looking forward one could see the sand flying like snow drift in front of a gentle breeze. This must continually block the line. The only surfacemen I saw were old fellows in dug-outs about a mile apart, each with a plentiful supply of great water jars. As we neared ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson

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

... shore, on reflection I thought that we had better not land so soon, as the sailors had told us that they had seen the Indians in their canoes. I therefore recommended that we should allow the boat to drift up the river with the tide, and then drift down again when the tide turned, remaining in the middle of the stream till it was dark, when we would land and make our way into the woods. My advice was followed; we sat still in the boat, just keeping ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat



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