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Drift   /drɪft/   Listen
Drift

verb
(past & past part. drifted; pres. part. drifting)
1.
Be in motion due to some air or water current.  Synonyms: be adrift, blow, float.  "The boat drifted on the lake" , "The sailboat was adrift on the open sea" , "The shipwrecked boat drifted away from the shore"
2.
Wander from a direct course or at random.  Synonyms: err, stray.  "Don't drift from the set course"
3.
Move about aimlessly or without any destination, often in search of food or employment.  Synonyms: cast, ramble, range, roam, roll, rove, stray, swan, tramp, vagabond, wander.  "Roving vagabonds" , "The wandering Jew" , "The cattle roam across the prairie" , "The laborers drift from one town to the next" , "They rolled from town to town"
4.
Vary or move from a fixed point or course.
5.
Live unhurriedly, irresponsibly, or freely.  Synonym: freewheel.
6.
Move in an unhurried fashion.
7.
Cause to be carried by a current.
8.
Drive slowly and far afield for grazing.
9.
Be subject to fluctuation.
10.
Be piled up in banks or heaps by the force of wind or a current.  "Sand drifting like snow"



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"Drift" Quotes from Famous Books



... living machine. The blind action of physical forces seemed inadequate. Thus the phenomena of life, which had been studied longer than any other phase of nature, continued to stand aloof from the rest and refused to fall into line with the general drift of thought. The living world seemed to give no promise of being included among natural phenomena, but still persisted in ...
— The Story of the Living Machine • H. W. Conn

... structures she forms strata covering whole provinces, and builds up from the depths of the sea large islands, if not continents. There are, it is true, near the mouths of the great Siberian rivers which empty themselves into the Polar Sea, drift islands composed, in an incredibly large proportion, of the bones and tusks of elephants, mastodons, and other huge pachyderms, and many extensive caves in various parts of the world are half filled with the skeletons of quadrupeds, ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... unescorted soundless, the Populace and Municipals stop him as a fugitive, are not unlike massacring him as a traitor; the National Assembly, consulted on the matter, gives him free egress as a nullity. Such an unstable 'drift-mould of Accident' is the substance of this lower world, for them that dwell in houses of clay; so, especially in hot regions and times, do the proudest palaces we build of it take wings, and become Sahara sand-palaces, spinning many ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... Mr. Judd he begs him to pay him a visit, saying that since Lyell's death he hardly ever gets a geological talk. His observations, made only a few years before his death, on the upright pebbles in the drift at Southampton, and discussed in a letter to Mr. Geikie, afford another instance. Again, in the letters to Dr. Dohrn, he shows how his interest in barnacles remained alive. I think it was all due to the vitality and persistence of ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin

... in November; and the snow lying four or five feet thick in the beaten road on the summit (in other parts the new drift was already deep), the air was piercing cold. But, the serenity of the night, and the grandeur of the road, with its impenetrable shadows, and deep glooms, and its sudden turns into the shining of the moon and its incessant roar of falling water, rendered the journey ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens

... magnificent fellow!" ejaculated Dominguez, as the creature vanished in the trough on our weather quarter, "we must have him! Senor, if we lower the sail, so that the felucca cannot drift far, will you have any objection to being left by yourself for a few minutes, while Miguel and I and the boy go after that turtle with ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood

... not do I love her, but does she love me? She was my friend from the beginning. The night on the terrace at Antioch, how child-like she begged me not to make Rome my enemy, and had me tell her of the villa by Misenum, and of the life there! That she should not see I saw her cunning drift I kissed her. Can she have forgotten the kiss! I have not. I love her.... They do not know in the city that I have back my people. I shrank from telling it to the Egyptian; but this little one will rejoice with me over ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... are ten thousand children living on the streets of New York, gaining their bread by blacking boots, by selling newspapers, watches, pins, etc., and by stealing. Some are thrust into the streets by dissolute parents, some are orphans, some are voluntary outcasts, and others drift here from the surrounding country. Wherever they may come from, or however they may get here, they are here, and they are nearly all leading a vagrant life which will ripen into ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... Osiris-Apis by the fine paved road for processions along which Klea now rapidly proceeded. There was a shorter way to Memphis, but she chose this one, because the mounds of sand on each side of the road bordered by Sphinxes—which every day had to be cleared of the desert-drift—concealed her from the sight of her companions in the temple; besides the best and safest way into the city was by a road leading from a crescent, decorated with busts of the philosophers, that lay near the principal entrance to the new ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... evening stroll in the same place for pleasure. Somehow or other he had made a speaking acquaintance with Miss Blomfield, and we afterwards discovered that he had made all needful inquiries as to the names, etc., of Polly and myself from her—she, however, being quite innocent as to the drift of ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... fading power of a failing land, Who for a kingdom kneeleth to implore thee, Now menaced by this tyrant's spoiling hand; No one but thee can hopefully withstand That crooked blade, he longeth so to lift. I pray thee blind him with his own vile sand, Which only times all ruins by its drift, Or prune his eagle wings that ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... announced that there would be a change of weather before night, and set about rubbing the barrel of the flintlock till it gleamed. The day dragged slowly by. At last, about three in the afternoon, a slight wind from the northeast sprang up, and the wreaths of vapor began to drift away seaward. ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader

... representative to see him in regard to each new book issued. In New York City he is called upon on an average of once a week by some one from each publishing house. At certain seasons of the year these "commercial travellers," as they prefer to be titled, seem to drift in ten or a dozen at a time. They will often be found waiting in line outside the buyer's office, each taking his turn. Each will have from two to ten new books, all to be ready within ...
— The Building of a Book • Various

... i. p. 51. Few persons will think that Mr. Landor's drift, which is obvious enough, could be favoured if these passages could be all shuffled over to Mr. Southey. It would be unwise and inconsistent in Mr. Landor of all men to intimate that Southey's judgment in poetry was inferior to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various

... Gholson,] has labored to show that the Abolition of Slavery, were it practicable, would be impolitic, because as the drift of this portion of his argument runs, your slaves constitute the entire wealth of the state, all the productive capacity Virginia possesses. And, sir, as things are, I believe he is correct. He says, and in this he is sustained by the gentleman from Halifax, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... her chin on her hand, red-lit and saying little, and Miss Miniver discoursed. As she talked, the drift and significance of what she was saying shaped itself slowly to Ann Veronica's apprehension. It presented itself in the likeness of a great, gray, dull world—a brutal, superstitious, confused, and wrong-headed world, that hurt ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells

... perused thy paper she was wroth with exceeding wrath; but I soothed her and spake her fair, till she consented to write thee a reply." He took the letter joyfully but, when he had read it and understood its drift, he wept sore, whereat the old woman's heart ached and she cried, "O my son, Allah never cause thine eyes to weep nor thy heart to mourn! What can be more gracious than that she should answer thy letter when thou hast done what thou diddest?" He replied, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton

... one in the afternoon, or whether we should put off early in the morning, was the question we discussed. On the whole we deemed it the better course to lie where we were, until within an hour or so of the steamer's time, and then to get out in her track, and drift easily with the tide. Having settled to do this, we returned into the house and went ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... was falling softly and steadily, falling, as it never falls in England, in little more than fine powder, with a temperature forty degrees below freezing-point. A drift—constant, restless, never altering—sped over the level plain like the dust on a high-road before a steady wind. This white scud—a flying scud of frozen water—was singularly like the scud that is blown from the crest of the waves by a cyclone ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman

... allowing Nature centuries of 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 lake for a few of the spring ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir

... it impossible to reach shore. The best they could do was to get to an island near which the raft had drifted. Here they passed the night, exposed to extreme cold, in great danger of freezing; but in the morning the drift ice was found so tightly wedged together that they were able to cross over on it to the opposite bank ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland

... born before him), and now he belies his name, "Lord Keppel," by starting at every soft glimmer of the sea. Therefore now he is left to roam at his leisure above high-water mark, poking his nose into black dry weed, probing the winnow casts of yellow drift for oats, and snorting disappointment through a ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... if it has that appearance to you. But indeed, my dear Mamma, there seem to be snares laying in wait for me. Too well I know my brother's drift. With a good word he shall have my consent for all he wishes to worm me out of—neither he, nor my sister, shall need to take ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... cellar," said the cricket, "I saw a ball last night In honor of a lady Whose wings were pearly-white. The breath of bitter weather Had smashed the cellar pane: We entertained a drift of leaves And then of snow and rain. But we were dressed for winter, And loved to hear it blow In honor of the lady Who makes potatoes grow— Our guest, the Irish lady, The tiny Irish lady, The fairy Irish lady ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay

... and dead. Not a cell is left the God, no roof, no cover In his hand the prophet laurel flowers no more. And the great king's high sad heart, thy true last lover, Felt thine answer pierce and cleave it to the core. And he bowed down his hopeless head In the drift of the wild world's tide, And dying, Thou hast conquered, he said, Galilean; he said it, and died. And the world that was thine and was ours When the Graces took hands with the Hours Grew cold as a winter wave In the wind from a wide-mouthed grave, As a gulf ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... Poetaster' is laid at the court of Augustus Caesar. Jonson therein describes himself under the character of Horace. The whole drift of the play is, to take the many enemies of the latter to task for their calumnies and libels against him. Rome is the place of action, and the persons of the drama bear classic names. There are, besides Augustus and Horace, Mecaenas (sic), ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis

... the King seemed to die out at once, and giving his orders sharply, in a very brief space of time the shallow barge had been allowed to drift astern, there was a fairly clear space on deck, there was the open gangway on the side of the vessel nearest the shore, and the time had come for the ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn

... as long as Spain considered this new expedition was directed against herself considerable activity was shown; when the attack developed and it was seen that the objective of the Turks was Malta, the procrastinating Spanish king and his incompetent viceroy allowed matters so to drift that, had any other man than La Valette been in command at Malta, the fall of that ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey

... tying a man down to a single branch once he finds that he does not like it, or finds that he likes one of the other branches better, after he has given his chosen branch a trial in the years immediately following graduation. Not a few mining graduates drift over into straight civil work after leaving school, and, likewise, not a few in the electrical branches find themselves in time pursuing mechanical work. Fate here, as in the matter of specialization, works her hand. A ...
— Opportunities in Engineering • Charles M. Horton

... enemies. But, at bottom, I believe the proper objection is to the immediate, first effect of the whole—its moral effect—which is dependent on the contrary supposition of its being really understood, in the main drift of it. Yet I don't know; for I wrote it with the intention of producing the best of all effects—perhaps the truth is, that I am tired, rather, and desirous of getting done, and 'Luria' will answer my purpose so far. Will not the best way be to reserve ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... scope of this essay to discuss the particular form given by Lucretius to the Democritean philosophy. He believed the universe to be composed of atoms, infinite in number, and variable, to a finite extent, in form, which drift slantingly through an infinite void. Their combinations under the conditions of what we call space and time are transitory, while they remain themselves imperishable. Consequently, as the soul ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... and, far off, the meadow-land, Are like the fading depths beneath a sea, While over waves of misty shadows we Drift onward, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various

... you. You perhaps lose, at last, the realization of your own inhuman plight, and are received, unawares, into the gray prison protoplasm, no longer really sensitive to impressions, though presenting the semblance of human reactions. You drift down the stream, passive, in a sort of ghastly contentment. You have forgotten that ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne

... as to show him, remarking that the power to do such things implied labor more continuous and severe than would have sufficed to the learning of two or three trades. In reply, Franks, mistaking the drift of the remark, and supposing it a gentle remonstrance with what the doctor counted a waste of labor, said, in a tone that sounded sad in the ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... But there was no occasion for desperate haste, for the gun was ready for use a second time if the first shot had failed to do its work. On the other hand, if the Vampire was disabled, she would stay where she was, or drift down the river with the turn of the tide, and it was just about "full ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic

... treat, and after their tumblers of pink and brown and white ice-cream had been emptied, and Mrs. Todd had made her usual joke about "good- looking couples," they had taken two skiffs for a slow drift down ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland

... tune of they-'avn't-found-'im-yet, they-'avn't-found-'im-yet-they 'avn't. The skipper and crew rose, fumbling at his feet for a rope. There did not seem to be much of the Lizzie. She was but a little raft to drift out on those tides which move among the stars. "Now's your chance," said her crew, and I took it, on all fours. The last remnant of London was then pushed from us with a pole. We were launched on night, which had begun its ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson

... Possibly some lost singer of convictdom poured out his regrets in words straight from the soul, and produced a song worthy to rank as a classic: but all the songs of that day have been mercifully allowed to drift into oblivion; and their singers, with their grey clothes and their fetters, have gone clanking down to ...
— The Old Bush Songs • A. B. Paterson

... do something and not let everything drift," Cuthbert retorted, joining in the laugh at his own unaccustomed vehemence; "but there, we have broken our agreement, now let us revert to art;" but the effort was vain, the talk soon drifted back again to ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty

... profit by it, and encouraged and even supported it at several points. Amongst other things he sent from Paris a body of three hundred men to the assistance of the peasants who were besieging the castle of Ermenonville. It is the due penalty paid by reformers who allow themselves to drift into revolution, that they become before long accomplices in mischief or crime which their original design and their own personal interest made it incumbent on them ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... the 28th of July Colonel Harley, Chief Staff Officer Eighth Division, led two companies of the Leinsters and the full strength of the Scots Guards in a night attack on De Villier's Drift, which was to clear the way for the whole of the Eighth Division towards Fouriesburg. The movement had been well and carefully planned, and was neatly and expeditiously carried out. The following day we advanced in open order over the rolling veldt; now and again a man paused, lurched ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales

... His islands lift Their fronded palms in air; I only know I cannot drift Beyond His love ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson

... question without bringing that disaster upon Europe. But the noble Lord again misinterpreted my hon. Friend (Mr. Cobden). I appeal to every Gentleman who heard my hon. Friend's speech whether the drift of it was not this—that in this quarrel, Prussia, and certainly Austria, had a nearer and stronger interest than England, and that he could not understand why the terms which Austria might consider fair and safe for herself and for Turkey, might not be accepted with honour by this country and by ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright

... being what it is, I suppose we must expect to drift into monarchy by and by. It is a saddening thought, but we cannot change our nature: we are all alike, we human beings; and in our blood and bone, and ineradicable, we carry the seeds out of which monarchies and ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain

... walk extending from the Fort point to the Marine Hotel. With the report of the evening gun, or, as Horace termed it, the admiral's grog bell, we had quitted the cabin, and mustering our little party upon deck, suffered the Rover to drift nearer in shore with the tide, that we might enjoy the gratifying spectacle of more closely observing the young, the beautiful, and the 163accomplished elegantes who traversed to and fro upon the beach to catch the soft whispers of ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... origin, where can we stop? Can we find any point in his history where we can say, Here his natural history ends, and his supernatural history begins? Does his natural history end with the pre-glacial man, with the cave man, or the river-drift man, with the low-browed, long-jawed fossil man of Java,—Pithecanthropus erectus, described by Du Bois? Where shall we stop on his trail? I had almost said "step on his tail," for we undoubtedly, if we go back far enough, ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs

... conscientious declamatory cry and warning—as, very lately, from an eminent and venerable person abroad[24]—things, problems, full of doubt, dread, suspense, (not new to me, but old occupiers of many an anxious hour in city's din, or night's silence,) we still may give a page or so, whose drift is opportune. Time alone can finally answer these things. But as a substitute in passing, let us, even if fragmentarily, throw forth a short direct or indirect suggestion of the premises of ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... more rapidly than anybody could have anticipated. The sky, in the middle of the afternoon, became clouded, the sun was quickly hidden, and a cold blast arose, quickly strengthening into a regular blow. The Ark began to drift as the rising ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss

... of snow, kicked up by the horses' hoofs, fall on one's cap, on one's back, down one's collar, on one's chest; let the runners ring on the snow, and the traces and the sledge be smashed, deuce take them one and all! And how delightful when the sledge upsets and you go flying full tilt into a drift, face downwards in the snow, and then you get up white all over with icicles on your moustaches; no cap, no gloves, your belt undone.... ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... the reader. America, indeed, has not produced a round dozen authors who equal him as a brilliant stylist with a great deal to say. And yet this man, who wrote some of his best books in the Eighties and who is still alive, has been allowed to drift into comparative oblivion. Even his early reviewers shoved him impatiently aside or ignored him altogether; a writer in "Belford's Magazine" for July, 1888, says: "Edgar Saltus should have his name changed to Edgar ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten

... lasses, clean frae tap to taes, Are busked in crunklin' underclaes; The gartened hose, the weel-fllled stays, The nakit shift, A' bleached on bonny greens for days, An' white's the drift. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... elaborate oral discussions and thus could easily follow the 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 explanations ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta

... their researches with such ease, for Florence is incurious about them. Either the Florentines are too much engrossed in their own affairs or the peering foreigner has become too familiar an object to merit notice, but one may drift about even in the narrowest alleys beside the Arno, east and west, and attract few eyes. And the city here is at its most romantic: between the Piazza S. Trinita and the Via Por S. Maria, all about ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas

... little boat with all the might Of the wild-hissing surges holds debate, Plunging and struggling, till at last we see A spacious haven, sudden and serene And, high aloft, the twinkle of Portree. At once the winds are hushed, the moon is seen To free her face from cloudy drift, and fill With silver light the clefts ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... others. They may be more or less true, in certain times and places, but the conditions which have permitted them will likewise mend them. It is said in the Alps that "not all the vulgar people who come to Chamouny can ever make Chamouny vulgar." For similar reasons, not all the sordid people who drift overland can ever vulgarize California. Her fascination endures, whatever ...
— California and the Californians • David Starr Jordan

... beckoning persistently with his whole arm. Examining the edge of the forest above and below, I was almost certain I could see movements—human forms gliding here and there. I steamed past prudently, then stopped the engines and let her drift down. The man on the shore began to shout, urging us to land. 'We have been attacked,' screamed the manager. 'I know—I know. It's all right,' yelled back the other, as cheerful as you please. 'Come along. It's all right. I ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad

... sliding bow. Dan went to see who it was, and found standing on the threshold a tall, lean old man in a long, ragged coat, with a thick, knotted blackthorn in his hand. A few hard-frozen granules pattered in at the opened door, which admitted a glimpse of the moon, tarnished by a thin drift of scudding cloud. ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane

... the boat. The distance we could see in either direction was of tantalizing shortness, and the boat was provided with no means of guidance or control, save an abundance of slender twine which secured it to a log of drift from the outside; so I decided to leave my companions in charge of the main coil of twine while I went on an excursion alone, there being not much evident cause for apprehension as no living cow could ever have made the trip to ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen

... view under the obscurity of a very dark night. Perceiving this, and fearful that the dip of the paddles might be heard, le Bourdon ceased to urge his canoe through the water, telling the Chippewa to imitate his example, and let the boats drift. In consequence of this precaution the fugitives were still quite near the shore when, first, the dogs, then a party of their masters, came rushing down to the very spot whence the canoes had departed scarcely two minutes before. As no precautions ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper

... and brought-to for the night at Tanjong Siri. In the evening I walked along the fine sandy beach as far as the entrance of the Sumpudin river. We saw many wild hogs; and on one occasion I was able to get within twenty yards of some ten of them together, among some large drift-wood. Just as I was crawling over a tree and balancing, I found myself confronted by these animals; but they were out of sight almost before I could cock my gun and fire. They were of a large size, and most of them we saw during ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... omnibuses; but the courier puts you into a vehicle without a moment's loss of time, and when you reach your hotel you find your rooms have been secured two or three days in advance, everything is ready, you can go at once to bed. Some of those other people will have to drift around to two or three hotels, in the rain, before they ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... greatest that come into the lives of most children. Love of home, of parents, of brothers and sisters, of children, are the perfectly natural things of existence. Yet often the ties are weak; not infrequently are they broken. Children drift away from the restraining and helpful influence of their parents, and families disintegrate. The results are bad. By properly teaching such selections as the following, much may be done to correct the evil and to intensify the highest, holiest ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester

... what cannot easily be said in verse.[14] A little patience will generally make it clear what Campanella meant, except in cases where the text itself is corrupt. But it may sometimes be doubted whether Michael Angelo could himself have done more than indicate the general drift of his thought, or have disengaged his own conception from the tangled skein of elliptical and ungrammatical sentences in which he has enveloped it. The form of Campanella's poetry, though often grotesque, is always clear. Michael Angelo has left too many of his ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella

... had nearly reached the houseboat. Madge and Phyllis were allowing the "Water Witch" to drift in. Their friends on board had seen them and were signaling ...
— Madge Morton's Secret • Amy D. V. Chalmers

... curiosity. An unprepossessing young gentleman, with a scar that divided his nose and his upper lip, and a silver-mounted dagger, took a seat near the Mullah, and a violent discussion immediately commenced, of the drift of which, we were, happily, ignorant. Soon, another party of villagers appeared, headed by another young man, who was quite the counterpart of the first, even to the scar in his lip; but his dagger-hilt and sheath were of solid ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman

... I loved you and you loved me!' Alas, 't is a joy we shall never see! You are too fair—I am too cold;— We shall drift along till we both grow old, Till we reach the grave, and gasping, die, Looking back on the days that have passed us by, When 'what might have been,' can no longer be,— When I lost ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... the person introduced it is better to find some polite excuse for declining to be the medium of the introduction. Fortunately, if the blunder is made of introducing uncongenial people they can easily drift apart again without rudeness on the ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton

... to have understood the drift of your conversation before it reached this point," Walter said, hotly. "I had rather never own a mill than get it as you propose; and as for evil companions,' I am proud to have been ...
— Neal, the Miller - A Son of Liberty • James Otis

... very doers of them, that Mr. Jefferson most deeply impressed his listener. For there was no attribute of Mr. Jefferson's mind so keen, so unerring, so forceful as that peculiar power of divining the drift of the masses. It was this power which later made him so greatly feared and greatly respected in his own land. Forewarned and forearmed, he had but to range himself at the head of multitudes, whose will he knew almost before they were aware of it themselves, or else ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe

... meet him in the garden before?" asked Miss Dora, painfully, in a low voice. During this conversation Mr Elsworthy had been looking on, perplexed, not perceiving the drift of the examination. He roused himself up to answer now—a little alarmed, to tell the truth, by the new lights thrown on the subject, and vexed to see how unconsciously far both the ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... we'll lose sight of Long Tom, and we're likely to drift, because, unless the cattle are driven into the storm, they'll turn tail to it and ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor

... the old swimmin' hole! whare the crick so still and deep Looked like a baby-river that was laying half asleep, And the gurgle of the worter round the drift jest below Sounded like the laugh of something we onc't ust to know Before we could remember anything but the eyes Of the angels lookin' out as we left Paradise; But the merry days of youth is beyond our controle, ...
— A Spray of Kentucky Pine • George Douglass Sherley

... and Follett had lingered a little at the latter's suggestion, for he had caught the drift of the talk. When he had comprehended its meaning they set off up the hill, full ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson

... elevation and wealth were blasted, when two years after that gallant dash at Gettysburg, that ragged, starved, wretched host surrendered at Appomattox. The blasted hopes of the poor white caused him to drift further away from the aristocrat who had fooled him into a foolhardy and disastrous struggle. Land was cheap but he hadn't the money to buy it, and the aristocrat didn't have the "nigger" and the mule to give him. He grew lukewarm politically, got his rod and went a fishing. But ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton

... happiness; and she also knew, if there must be a wife, what was needed for the happiness of his mother and sister. She had not thought to inquire about the second-class passengers, for it never occurred to her that a son of hers could drift out of his natural first-class sphere into the slums of a ship, and Mr. Twist had seen no reason for hurrying the Twinklers into her mental range. Not during those first hours, anyhow. There would be plenty ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim

... head of the straightaway. The muffled thud of hoofs became audible, rising in swift crescendo as the shadow resolved itself into a gaunt bay horse with a tiny negro boy crouched motionless in the saddle. A rush, a flurry, a spatter of clods, a low-flying drift of yellow dust and the vision passed, but the Bald-faced Kid had seen enough to compensate him for the early hours and the lack of breakfast. He glanced at ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan

... that main wind drift were through," Jack said one day, six months after his appointment, as he was sitting over his tea with Bill Haden. "The gas is coming in very bad ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty

... to the left!" bawled a Captain till he was hoarse. "No good! Cease firing, and let it drift away a bit." ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... girlish face remained perfectly grave, and it was impossible to tell whether he was joking. There was but the slightest yellow twinkle of spitefulness in the depths of his grey eyes. And he finished with a sarcastic allusion, the drift of which was as yet patent to him alone. 'Ah, well! if you let yourself be influenced by the fools who laugh, you'll have enough ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... 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 Port William, a small town ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler

... religion makes wild beasts civil, superstition makes wise men beasts and fools; and the discreetest that are, if they give way to it, are no better than dizzards; nay more, if that of Plotinus be true, is unus religionis scopus, ut ei quem colimus similes fiamus, that is the drift of religion to make us like him whom we worship: what shall be the end of idolaters, but to degenerate into stocks and stones? of such as worship these heathen gods, for dii gentium daemonia, [6545]but to become ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... with your subject?" Now I beg to assure the reader that I am most conscientiously employed upon my subject; and I should have thought every one would have seen this: however, since the objection is made, I may be allowed to pause awhile, and show distinctly the drift of what I have been saying, before I go farther. What has this to do with my subject! why, the question of the site is the very first that comes into consideration, when a Stadium Generale is contemplated; ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... to that dreadful city in which she had suffered so much. No, it was unthinkable! Better by far for her to lie down somewhere in that great forest and die. And now she was about to see more strangers and remain over night in new surroundings. Where would she drift to ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick

... sake don't drift into thinking that you're the only person who can understand him. Once think that about ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope

... have fared better with a man of quicker intelligence. Peterson was so slow at catching the blackmailer's drift that he spoke in perfectly good faith when he made the suggestion that he tell Bannon, and Grady went away a good deal perplexed as to the best course to pursue,—whether to go directly to Bannon, or to try ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin

... has anything to do with this basis. But brethren differ on another point. Some receive the very letter of the Confession on all points of doctrine; others, who receive it to the letter on most points, receive it only as to its main drift on a few. Let, then, that which is apart from the substance be left out of view, and be the subject neither of affirmation nor of denial. Let us make the affirmation simply on the substantial correctness ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente

... smiled to think how earnestly he had been talking to the dog; but he did not cease to do it, for although he entered into discourses the drift of which Crusoe's limited education did not permit him to follow, he found comfort in hearing the sound of his own voice, and in knowing that it fell pleasantly on another ear in ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... diminishing sounds, that he was drifting further and further away from Tankred and his crowded fore-deck. But he was still within the area of that ever-betraying searchlight. Some time, he knew, he must drift beyond it. But until that moment came he dare make no move ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer

... (Leguminosae, so generally killed by sea-water), which the bird had naturally eaten, have grown well. You will say gulls and dog-fish, etc., would eat up the carcase, and so they would 999 times out of a thousand, but one might escape: I have seen dead land-birds in sea-drift. ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... same Brown! I was figuring on the hay to kinda ease through next winter. Do yuh know, Dilly, the range is just going t' be a death-trap, with all them damn fences for the stock to drift into. Another winter half as bad as the last one was will sure put the finishing touches to the Double-Crank—unless we get busy and do something." Billy, his face worn and his eyes holding that tired look which comes of nights sleepless and of looking long upon ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower

... democratic place," she said in a more sympathetic tone, "every girl finds her own level sooner or later. The basis is not money or social rank of the families at home. It is not brains or clothes or stuff like that. It is simply that the same kind of girls drift together. They're congenial. It seems to be a law. A general law, you understand. Of course," she hesitated for an instant before being spurred on by her sense of scrupulous honesty, "there are ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz

... existence. This was left to be settled, very much offhand, by a detached iceberg, which sank the ship in which Mary was emigrating. I thought that iceberg rather an evasion on the part of Miss THOMPSON. Perhaps however all this effect of drift is part of a subtle intention. I can certainly call the book admirably written, with restraint and an emotional sympathy that impressed me as the outcome probably of an intimate knowledge of the scenes and persons described. Whether her ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 11, 1919 • Various

... and as I sat watching the light grow dim, the water receded slowly, and strange little things floated past downstream. And I thought of the no less real human tide which long years ago had flowed to my very feet and then ebbed, leaving, as drift is left upon the sand, the convicts, a few scattered Indians, and myself. In the peace and quiet of this evening, time seemed a thing of no especial account. The great jungle trees might always have been lifeless emerald water-barriers, ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe

... thrown it back into the year 1494, and that he speaks through the mouths of four interlocutors. Therefore we may presume that he intended his readers to regard it as a work of speculative science rather than of practical political philosophy. Yet it is not difficult to gather the drift of his ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... be done now?" said Barnstable, as he stood and gazed with a diminished excitement at their victim; "he will yield no food, and his carcass will probably drift to land, and furnish ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper

... night. He made his way through the battlement of grit, found the little path behind, gleaming white in the moonlight, because of the quartz sheddings which wind and weather are forever teasing out of the grit, and which drift into the open spaces; and at last, guided by the sound and the gleam of water, he made out the top of the Downfall, climbed a high peat bank, and the illimitable plateau of the Scout lay wide and ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... you begin 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 the various stages of literary treatment of the ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote

... however, there had been no advent of the hated "woollies" as they were sometimes called. But the boy ranchers and their friends did not relax their vigilance. The sheep and their human owners might drift in across the creek at any hour, day or night, so a ...
— The Boy Ranchers at Spur Creek - or Fighting the Sheep Herders • Willard F. Baker

... waters. He soon found what he wanted in the shape of a small log canoe, tied to a tree on the river bank. Pressing this into his service, and disposing himself and his burden safely within, he paddled down the stream, hoping to reach the Mississippi and drift down to the city front before break ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... issues: air pollution in large cities; acid rain; water pollution from the discharge of sewage and industrial effluents; drift ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... kind. With regard to the ordinary shark, however, our divers actually sought them. Their method of capturing them was almost incredible in its simplicity and daring. Three or four of our divers would go out in a boat and allow themselves to drift into a big school of sharks. Then one man, possessed of more nerve than the rest, would bend over the side and smartly prick the first one he came across with a spear taken out for the purpose. ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont

... 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, ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun

... life of constant quarrel with his mother-in-law, and exchange flying crockery at meal-times; to take refuge in distant tutorships, and in the course of years, after begetting several children, to drift further and further, and ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... aduised him to raise his siege, and suffer the empresse to be at libertie to go to some other place, where he might with more ease and lesse damage get hir into his hands. [Sidenote: The king raiseth his siege.] The king not perceiuing the drift of those secret practisers, followed their counsell. Wherevpon the empresse being now at libertie, went from place to place to trie and solicit hir frends: and as a riuer increaseth in the passage, so the further the ladie went, the more hir ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (4 of 12) - Stephan Earle Of Bullongne • Raphael Holinshed

... whose voyage is on the track of the trade winds nevertheless needs more than dead reckoning for his course; he needs to take the sun at noon, to study the heavens at night, and to con his chart. To follow one's interior drift only is to sail the ocean without chart or compass. The sail that is wafted by the impulses of the divine Spirit in the interior life must have, besides, the guarantee of divine veracity in the external order to justify ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott

... distinct periods of civilization, some of which probably preceded the immigration of these Indo-European races. These three belong to what they call the Stone, the Bronze, and the Iron Age. In the gravel and drift, from ten to twenty feet below the surface, along with the bones of the elephant and the rhinoceros, and other animals long since extinct, are found hundreds of flint instruments, axes, arrow-heads, and tools, indicating that ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke

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

... up to your high-falutin' talk, Langford, but I get the drift; and I guess you think I'd be batty enough to give you a ranch worth seven thousand bucks on an Agreement for Sale in exchange for a bunch of old spavined mules and ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson

... hour or two, charging into the camp in his racing car, introducing hilarious friends, accepting a sandwich and a bottle of beer, and then tearing off again. Straker Thomas, silent, mysterious, ill, would drift about for a week or two; Peter Pomeroy would go up late in July, and be adored by everyone, and take ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris

... leader; and his impatience found vent in a phrase of biting irony. In a morning walk with a friend, waving his arm toward the white tents of the great army, he asked: "Do you know what that is?" The friend, not catching the drift of his thought, said, "It is the Army of the Potomac, I suppose." "So it is called," responded the President, in a tone of suppressed indignation, "But that is a mistake. ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay

... would she give her hand and heart. And although the priest protested his innocence before heaven, and the girl, whose name was Matura, declared her chastity as unsullied as the driven snow, the father was not to be moved, but per-emptorily ordering them both into a canoe, sent them to drift at the mercy of the waves, a merited banishment-in his eyes. Many years passed, and nothing being heard of the priest and Matura, it was thought the sea had swallowed them up, when they were discovered on ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"

... which sometimes afflicts the issues of deep-laid schemes, the end of the drift on the creek by the scrub was reached several days sooner than was expected, and when the labour of an entire morning resulted in nothing, Palmer Billy grew impatient, and said it was a visitation upon them for working in ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott

... 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 until it ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner

... understand that as a basic principle, you can see that it is only a question of controlling yourself and directing your moods with those currents whose augmentation can bring you good. You must never be negative and drift. You can be drawn in any adverse way ...
— The Point of View • Elinor Glyn

... admire and love this lady, to accept her as the type of a most precious truth. For to behold, even afar off, "silent upon a peak" of sympathy, the ocean of love and pathos, of passion and patience, on which the lives of these our pagan sisters drift, is to be gratefully sensible of a loving, pitying, and sufficing Presence, even in the darkness of error, superstition, slavery, and death. Shortly after her marriage, Koon Ying Phan, moved partly by compassion for the wrongs of her predecessor, partly by the "aching ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens

... country on 'im. Finest little horse you ever saw! If I want to I can ride right down into the summer at the foothills with miles o' Injun pinks jest a-laffin' an' tiger lilies as mad as blazes. There's a river there, too—the Injuns call it a water-road—an' I can git on that an' drift an' drift an' smell the wild syringa on the banks. An if I git tired o' that I can turn my horse up-grade an' gallop right into the winter an' the lonely pines an' firs a-whisperin' an' a-sighin'. Lonely? Mountains lonely, did you say? Oh, my mountains, ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco

... wake up at last out of his entrancement, and the red sun was there before his eyes. He stared at it, at first without intelligence, and then with a gathering recognition. Into his mind came a strange echo of that ancestral fancy, that fancy of a Stone Age savage, dead and scattered bones among the drift two hundred ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells

... succeeded when he pleaded for the Repeal of the Corn Laws and the extension of the Suffrage: he failed when he opposed the Crimean War, and lost his seat when he protested against our aggression on China. It must often fall to the lot of the patriotic orator thus to set himself against the drift of national sentiment, and to pay the penalty. No such perils ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell

... 16th we proceeded eighteen miles up the Saskatchawan. Its banks are low, covered with willows, and lined with drift timber. The surrounding country is swampy and intersected by the numerous arms of the river. After passing for twenty or thirty yards through the willow thicket on the banks of the stream, we entered an extensive ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin

... that from New York southward. Besides the peculiar local actions, there are general ones, which are changing, slowly or rapidly, the whole of the sandy coast line. While here the pebbles of the ancient drift are being assorted by size and shape, and rolled into ridges and heaps, by the action of the waves, there heaps and ridges of wet sand are formed by the waves and travel under their motion, and the dry sand is ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... of hills, the biting gale appeared to greet them with a fury pent up for the purpose. Unobstructed it swept across the desert of snow, flinging not only the shotlike particles from the sky, but also the loose, roving drift, as dry as salt, that lay four inches deep upon the solider snow that floored the plain. And such miles and miles of the frozen waste were there! The distant mountains looked like huge windrows of snow wearing away in ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels

... Hukeem from India impelled by a spirit of benevolence to visit unknown lands for the sake of caring the ailments of his fellew creatures. Had he attempted to talk Pushtoo, his foreign intonation would have been detected, while his knowledge of that tongue enabled him to detect the drift of any conversation that was carried on in his presence. Once, we believe, he was in imminent danger, a proposal having been set on foot to put an end to the wanderings of the Hukeem, as an English spy. A rapid change ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard

... look, the men begin to gather together the pieces of drift-wood that the peaceful waves throw up on to the shore. They are evidently planning to make a raft; but as one of them casts his lazy eyes in the direction in which ours were at first thrown, he exclaims with evident joy, in his native French "Voila les vaisseaux!" or words to that effect, ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... with gleams Of Paradisal air, Some wings, perchance, of earth may glance Around our slumbers there; Some breaths of may might drift our way With scents of leaf and loam, Some whistling bird at dawn be heard From those old woods of home. Hark! That's the thrush With speckled breast From yon white bush Chaunting his best, Te ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes

... argument If we are conscious of If we find that If we resign ourselves to facts If you want to find out what If you wish the most conclusive proof In a broader and a larger sense In a sense, and a very real sense In answer to this singular theory In like manner In order to carry out In proof of this drift toward In proportion as In proportion, then, In pursuance of these clear and express In saying all this, I do not forget In something of a parallel In such cases In support of this claim In support of what I have been saying In the first place In the first place, then, I say In the first place ...
— Phrases for Public Speakers and Paragraphs for Study • Compiled by Grenville Kleiser

... go. He says, Monsieur, that his principles won't admit of his drinking; but that if Monsieur wants to live another day to drink, then Monsieur had best drop all four boats, and pull the ship away from these whales, for it's so calm they won't drift. By this time Stubb was over the side, and getting into his boat, hailed the Guernsey-man to this effect, —that having a long tow-line in his boat, he would do what he could to help them, by pulling out the lighter whale of the two from the ship's side. ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... whilst ALPHEUS talked to CLEOPHAS. When he sat down, it appeared he had desired that his remarks should reach ear of Home Secretary; concluded by asking question; MATTHEWS unwarily protested, that, owing to noise in House, he had not been able to catch the drift ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 1, 1891 • Various

... and followed the silver stream of the Hudson. The river, lonely as the sky, seemed to drift oily and sluggish down to plunge beneath the city at the lower end of the Tappan Zee. Allan Dane came over New York, gazed down at the ruin of its soaring towers, at the leaping arabesque of its street bridges. He peered into vast rifts of tumbled, chaotic ...
— When the Sleepers Woke • Arthur Leo Zagat

... Orleans Egalite himself, for one begins to pity even him, what does he do with them? The disowned of all parties, the rejected and foolishly be-drifted hither and hither, to what corner of Nature can he now drift with advantage? Feasible hope remains not for him: unfeasible hope, in pallid doubtful glimmers, there may still come, bewildering, not cheering or illuminating,—from the Dumouriez quarter; and how, if not the timewasted Orleans Egalite, then perhaps ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... this town 'cause you'd know very well as if you did n't get 'round pretty quick an' tell it first the other one would be gettin' ahead o' you an' tellin' it before you. Of course I could see Elijah's drift all right. Them city papers has turned his head completely just as they do everybody else's when they first get a new idea. Elijah wants us to be eatin' bluing for blueberries an' cats for calves jus' so he can be the first to tell us about it, ...
— Susan Clegg and a Man in the House • Anne Warner

... sits in Wall Street, a central power, directing the inevitable drift of great industry toward monopoly. And as the industries one after another come into it for control, it divides the wealth created by them. To the producer, steady conditions of labor; to the investor, ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling

... of Elizabeth, and what did we find? A race of hardy men, who took delight in sailing virgin seas, in becoming familiar with new countries; who were opening up fresh tracks across the globe. Following upon that, consider the drift of legislation in the British Isles, from the period of Elizabeth. It was to appropriate the land into the hands of a few, to create great landlords, to make individual men the owners, nay the tyrants, of vast areas. This meant depriving the common people of their natural ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne

... of the knoll and all the inside of the stockade had been cleared of timber to build the house, and we could see by the stumps what a fine and lofty grove had been destroyed. Most of the soil had been washed away or buried in drift after the removal of the trees; only where the streamlet ran down from the kettle a thick bed of moss and some ferns and little creeping bushes were still green among the sand. Very close around the stockade—too close for defense, ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson

... you've likely killed 'em both," Rusty retorted angrily. "You want to remember you can't come into town and rip things up the back the way you used to, and nobody say a word. You better drift, before that feller that went out comes back with an officer. ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower

... many other young men, accepted things pretty much as they came without troubling to scrutinize their import too closely. It was easy for him, then, to overlook the faint shadows than ran before coming events. It had been the most natural thing in the world to drift placidly until in more or less surprise he found himself caught fairly in a sweeping current. Some of the most important turns in his life had caught him unprepared for their denouement, left him a trifle dizzy as he found ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... Klingsor or the witch-ladies in the Arabian Nights. There was a piece of music Mother played, that was like that. You could almost see the white clouds begin to come streeling out between the piano-keys, and drift all around her. All but her face ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... black smooch, with only four letters plain, on an invelup. 'Taint that, it's the drift of things. Those girls have got Boston in their minds as hard and fast as they've got heaven; and I mistrust mightily they'll get there ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... teasing him. I threatened him, told him the inhumanity of such a proceeding, aroused his sense of shame, and came home resolved to do better before I took my work back to England. I have been doing better. But somehow the things drift back again: the stubborn beast-flesh grows day by day back again. But I mean to do better things still. I mean to conquer that. ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells

... give." By these events we had clearly turned the corner and were pacing backwards to pre-Union days, going back, back, and still further backward, to the conditions which prevailed in the old Republics, and (if a check is not applied) we shall steadily drift back to the days of the old ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje

... marine species include the manatee, seals, sea lions, turtles, and whales; drift net fishing is hastening the decline of fish stocks and contributing to international disputes; municipal sludge pollution off eastern US, southern Brazil, and eastern Argentina; oil pollution in Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico, Lake Maracaibo, Mediterranean Sea, and ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... clude' a larm' ex change' a maze' ad jure' a far' in flame' a brade' de pute' re mark' ob late' cru sade' re fuse' de bark' par take' de base' ma nure' em bark' ad dress' re gret' in ject' ac quit' re flex' ex cept' in vent' a drift' ar rest' ex pect' mo lest' re miss' con test' ex pend' op press' be fit' de press' ex ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey

... miscalculation of a bad workman. Most people go through life without thinking of these things: they do not stop and consider from whence and by what means has come to their table the flesh-food that is served there. They drift along through a mundane existence without feeling a pang of remorse for, or even thought of, the pain they are accomplices in producing in the sub-human world. And it cannot be denied, hide it how we may, either from our eyes or our conscience, that however skilfully the ...
— No Animal Food - and Nutrition and Diet with Vegetable Recipes • Rupert H. Wheldon

... in Chinese for the first time during the thirteenth century in Chao Ju-kwa under the form Yen-t'o-man; Chao Ju-kwa specifies that going from Lambri (Sumatra) to Ceylon, it is an unfavourable wind which makes ships drift towards these islands; on the other hand, texts show that the Ts'ui-lan islands were on the usual route from Sumatra to Ceylon.—Gerini, Researches, p. 396, considers that Ts'ui-lan shan is but the phonetic transcript of Tilan-chong ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... continued very light, and the vessel did little more than drift with the tide, and when it turned at two o'clock they had to drop anchor again close under some high land, on the top of which ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty

... drift"—Fom misunderstood the drift of his question—"from the Silver King to the Diamond Heart, and the earth keeps coming down. Then Bep tries to make it harder by ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson

... reuenge, or transported by vnsatiable loue to obtaine some thing they desire; and these hee taking aduantage, assaulteth with golden and glorious promises, to performe vnto them the wishes of their owne hearts; the drift whereof is (hee being as at the first incased in a subtile Serpents skinne) onely to enthrall and invassall them slaues to himselfe. The first of these mentioned, are slie and masked Atheists, who ouer-shadow their secret impiety, loose and dissolute behauiour with some outward ...
— A Treatise of Witchcraft • Alexander Roberts

... Floki, who sailed away, meaning to take possession of the newly discovered country. At the Faroe Islands he let fly three ravens. The first returned, the second came back to the ship, the third guided the navigator to the island which he sought. He met a quantity of drift ice about the northern part of the island and called it Ice-land, the name it has borne ever since. But amid the Arctic ice he spent a desolate winter; the island seemed full of lofty mountains covered with eternal snow. His companions, however, ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge

... that her rival, for as such she now considered her, gave her lover no encouragement. "Is it possible that the girl is such a fool as not to see that this here gentleman is in love with her? No; that is out of the nature of things. Oh! it's all artifice; and I will find out her drift, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth

... exclaimed, seeing the drift of his remarks at last. "You had better tell me whom ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss

... we could run. One of them at last reached the bank and got ashore, but the other went down under the tree we had cut, and the first we saw of him he came up about twenty yards below, heels upward. He finally struck a drift about a hundred yards below, and we succeeded in getting him out almost drowned. We then tied ropes together, part of the men went over, and tying a rope to each horse, those on one side would force him into the water, and the others would draw him across. We lost a half day at this place. That ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan

... drift or dream of passing bell, Dying afar in twilight dell, Hath any heard, Whose chimes have stirred More yearning pathos ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter

... do my best," I replied, "but you must not expect me to work miracles. Now, I am going to ask you a number of questions, and I wish you to answer them without regard to their apparent drift. Who were ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton

... I saw her face, framed in mist, pale and wet with tears, beseeching me. There at that moment, born in danger and nursed by her helplessness, there came to me a new feeling, that was yet an old one; now I knew that I would not leave her. Nay, for an instant I was tempted to abandon all effort and drift on to the French shore, looking there to play my own game, despite of her and despite of King Louis himself. But the ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope

... exchange of home commodities, many of the arts which are used to such profitable purpose abroad existed in this country and served greatly to modify home expenses and increase home comforts. To account for the cessation of these household industries, it is only necessary to notice the drift of certain periods in the short history of America's settlement ...
— How to make rugs • Candace Wheeler

... I eat and drink, and afterward composed me to my sleep, and had many a thought of Naani, as I did drift unto slumber; yet also had I memories of the strange half-fear that had been with me all that day, as though something went constantly near me in the Dark. And because of this, twice did I rise unto mine elbow, and listen; but heard no sound to trouble me, and afterward did trust that ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson

... time Steve Roberts has ever seen the sea. How he happened to drift from the western cattle-ranges to New York he did not explain, any more than did he explain how he came to ship on the Elsinore. But here he is, not a sailor on horseback, but a cowboy on the sea. ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London

... to and fro. We searched among that drift of lumber—wood and iron, nails and rails, and sleepers and the wheels of trucks. We gazed up the cleft into the bosom of the mountain. We sat by the margin of the dump and saw, far below us, the green treetops standing still in the clear ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... within, quite strange to me. A crisis like this has, for the woman who loves, a tragic solemnity that baffles words; the whole of life rises before you then, and you search in vain for any horizon to it; the veriest trifle is big with meaning, a glance contains a volume, icicles drift on uttered words, and the death sentence is read in a movement ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac

... was like a Florida swamp; the air seemed to thicken, thicken, as I looked. A quick instinct warned me to look for George in the shadow: it seemed to me that he stood there, in ... glue ... like a caught fly. To let go—to drift in a warm, relaxing current ... I had to shake my shoulders, actually, as if there had been a net ... ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon

... Matazaemon had farms there, and the nanushi or village bailiff was his servant. Besides, he would be a runaway. Matazaemon surely would come down on Kyu[u]bei as the security. So the months passed, and matters were allowed to drift. Perhaps it was some gossip of the quarter which reached the deaf ears of Matazaemon. As he was about to go forth one day he followed the figure of O'Mino sharply with his little eyes all screwed up. "Naka, there seems change in the figure of Mino. Surely the gossip ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville

... philosophers, the comforters of old age, poets who "had for weary feet the gift of rest." But boys never hear of Byron, Swinburne and Rossetti, men with big flaming hearts that cried for physical beauty and the loveliness of tangible things. As a result they drift out into the world, to take their place with the dull, commonplace Philistine who has made the House of Commons what ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh

... anxieties of those who knew were very great, since the wind showed signs of rising, and if any swell should spring up that crowded cutter could scarcely hope to live. In fact, two hours later they were forced to lower the sail again and drift, waiting for the dawn. Mr. Thompson strove to cheer them, saying that now they were in the track of vessels, and if they could see none when the light came, he would run along the shore in the hope of finding a place free of breakers where they might land. If they did not inspire ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard

... along the bank, leaving only two men abreast of each ship, so that in the course of two or three minutes the cables for the length of forty ships were severed, and these and their consorts beyond them began to drift out into ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty

... accordingly opened, and lo! he they had buried was found sucking his thumb; so they took him up instantly, placed him on a car, harnessed two oxen to it, and dragged him over heaths and bogs out to the sea; then the sand drift stopped, but the sand-hills have always remained. To all this Joergen listened eagerly; and he treasured this ancient legend in his memory, along with all that had happened during the pleasantest days of his childhood—the days of ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen



Words linked to "Drift" :   activity, gad, subsist, mining, action, live, waft, vary, excavation, roam, pasture, natural process, tide, go, plane, change, drive, evolutionary trend, graze, linguistic process, strain, pile up, mass, ship, inclination, gather, stream, amass, disposition, natural action, drumlin, leeway, maunder, accumulate, conglomerate, cumulate, tenor, jazz around, travel, aeroplane, gravitation, crop, gallivant, move, airplane, circulate, force, melioration, survive, tendency, exist, passageway, drifter, locomote



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