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Adrift   Listen
adverb
Adrift  adv., adj.  Floating at random; in a drifting condition; at the mercy of wind and waves. Also fig. "So on the sea shall be set adrift." "Were from their daily labor turned adrift."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Adrift" Quotes from Famous Books



... bad as that," said Mr. Bobbsey, as he quickly put on his hat. "But the watchman at the dock just telephoned me that our houseboat, the Bluebird, has gotten adrift, and is ...
— The Bobbsey Twins on a Houseboat • Laura Lee Hope

... week we heard from Zol. He gave the ruby capsule to Maya. She sleeps and will continue to sleep for twenty years unless the antidote which looks like curdled yellow flame is given to her. I have it. Grim Hagen may kill her or cast her adrift in space, but he cannot awaken her. That hound of hell can taunt her no more. She sleeps, until ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam

... have got him out of the mud; and serve him right! But it was not he who suffered; it was Tom. His compass was broken, his chart destroyed, his chronometer had stopped, his masts were gone by the board; his anchor was adrift, ten ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... knows nothing of what we know. His father treated him shamefully, and set him cruelly adrift years ago; and, when he was hung, the poor fellow, in sheer ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... and she would be met on every hand by suspicion, distrust and cruel curiosity. Then, indeed, she would need a friend—someone to believe in her and to love her. Of what use to save the life tossed up by the storm, only to set it adrift again? As Miss Farwell meditated in the twilight the conviction grew that her responsibility could end only when ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright

... of confidence in the blessed Virgin, had still preserved the chaplet of Xavier, and feared not drowning while he held it in his hand. The float of planks was hardly adrift upon the waves, when he found he was transported out of himself, and believed he was at Meliapor with Father Francis. Returning from his extacy, he was strangely surprised to find himself on an unknown coast, and not to see about him the companions of his fortunes, nor ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden

... re-live the dreaming, Adrift in my canoe? To watch my paddle blade all wet and gleaming Cleaving the waters through? To lie wind-blown and wave-caressed, until Your ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson

... no power in earth or hell to effect a divorcement after Christ and the soul are united. Other kings have turned out their companions when they got weary of them, and sent them adrift from the palace gate. Ahasuerus banished Vashti; Napoleon forsook Josephine; but Christ is the husband that is true forever. Having loved you once, He loves you to the end. Did they not try to divorce Margaret, the Scotch girl, from Jesus? They said: "You must give up your ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage

... but if the enquirer be a young book-lover, a worthy answer is far to seek. The diagnosis and opinion of the physician do not present greater difficulties, and in many cases are not attended by more momentous results. To turn a juvenile adrift in Sir John Lubbock's list would be to prescribe an exclusive diet of richly seasoned dishes and rare wines to a convalescent patient—to feed him on strong meats, on cavaire and truffles, and to omit the simple, wholesome, homely fare on which, in his condition, ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various

... human and likeable, I was never persuaded that any more real motive than regard for an amusing situation would compel him to saddle himself with the continued society of a squint-eyed maid-servant and her yellow cat, turned adrift through his unfortunate attempts to befriend them. I think I need not tell you all, or even a part of all, that happens to Mr. Tubbs and Belinda and the yellow cat after their arrival as fugitives at the pleasant village of Holmes-Eaton, or do more than hint at the trials of this poor knight-errant, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various

... England had turned adrift, and France had won in her stead, concluded his long oration by dropping on his knees ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... had been carried out. I, the unsuspecting messenger, the loyal, eager dupe, was made the cat's-paw. I was put on an old, condemned freighter, with food and supplies supposed to last me a lifetime, but with no power capsules and no means of steering the ship. I was set adrift in a derelict on a lonely orbit of exile around the sun—the man without ...
— In the Orbit of Saturn • Roman Frederick Starzl

... her with setting-poles, but they could have done nothing with the unwieldy craft in the deep water. I therefore concluded that they had merely pushed her out into the lake, and then turned her adrift. It was probable that she had been driven ashore by the north-west wind somewhere in the ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic

... set adrift, and had a hard scrub of it to get along for a time. I almost starved for a while in Albany, trying to pick up odd jobs. Then I came ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.

... thought wildly, at last he knew the meaning of Hell! ... the frightful spiritual torment of a baffled intelligence set adrift among the wrecks and shadows of things that had formerly been its pride and glory! What was any physical suffering compared to such a frenzy of mind-agony? Nothing! ... less than nothing! This was the everlasting thirst and fire spoken of so vaguely ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... which way he went—his thoughts being busy with the martyrdom he had witnessed, flushing one moment with a glorious indignation, and fainting the next with despondent reflections on his own friendless state. For he looked upon himself as adrift on the tides of the world, believing that his patron, the Earl of Glencairn, would to a surety condemn his lack of fortitude in not enduring the servitude of the Archbishop, after having been in so miraculous a manner accepted into it, even as if Providence ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt

... go," he said, "that is quite evident. I have seen, for some time, that we wanted a younger man, more abreast of the times than White is; but I don't like turning him adrift altogether. He has been here upwards of thirty years. What am I ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty

... and wretched, whom I had seen for years as beggars in the streets;-young women,—perhaps the unhappy victims of seduction, who, having lost their reputation, and being turned adrift in the world, without a friend and without a home, were reduced to the necessity of begging, to sustain a miserable existence, now recognized me as their benefactor; and, with tears dropping fast from their cheeks, continued their work ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford

... There are many instances on record showing that people have been planted on Pacific shores many hundred miles from their native land. It seems that the primitive Pacific Islanders have sent people adrift from their shores, thus adding a rational cause to those many fortuitous causes for the interisland migration ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks

... native. He replied to the question as to where they had received their hurts that they were survivors of the Armada, and grumbled that it was hard indeed that men who had fought in the Netherlands and had done their duty to their country should be turned adrift to starve. ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty

... that if they keep back the money they are doing the same thing. Now, we shall see, if I go on this plan, whether those who can pay will pay, while those who cannot pay, it is very evident, will not do so; but to my mind, there is no use turning a man adrift in the world if you can help it. A better day may come, and then he may prove a good tenant. If you turn him out of one property he will just build a hut in another corner of the land, and you will have him there starving before ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston

... glittered before the bulging eyes. Snorri rolled back with alacrity and an oath; and after a moment Frode's daughter dropped down again and hid her face in her hands. If the King should be slain and she be left adrift in this foul sea! She might as well have screamed as moaned, for all that they ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz

... another split as this would happen t'other side," said the Frenchman, "I believe this block would go adrift." ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell

... answer to questions which a young man asked himself when, fresh from the university, he found himself adrift in the great galleries of Europe. As he stood helpless and confused in the presence of the visible expressions of the spirit of man in so many ages and so many lands, one question recurred insistently: Why are these pictures? What is the meaning of all this ...
— The Enjoyment of Art • Carleton Noyes

... former spelling). Phantasy or fantasy, so understood, presents numerous and varied images, often combining them into new forms with exceeding vividness, yet without any true constructive power, but with the mind adrift, blindly and passively following the laws of association, and with reason and will in torpor; the mental images being perhaps as varied and as vivid, but also as purposeless and unsystematized as the visual ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... there is also the push lateral. A good example of the latter style of operation is afforded by the dowager who is fortunate enough to have an eldest son to use as a pushing machine. Handled with tact, a young heir, not yet cut adrift from the maternal apron-string, may be turned to excellent account. There is, or was, a sentimental ballad entitled, "I'll kiss him for his mother." One might reverse the sentiment in the case of Madame Mere. Of her the dowagers with daughters to marry sing in chorus, "I'll visit her ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... and defeating Marcella Maxwell. The long process of political argument was perhaps tending every day to the loosening and detaching of those easy convictions of a young Chauvinism, that had drawn him originally to Fontenoy's side. Intellectually he was all adrift. At the same time he confessed to himself, with perfect frankness, that he could and would have served Fontenoy happily enough, but for another ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... outline: gallant, too, when, we being all aboard, the anchor came up to the sturdy chorus 'Cheerily men, oh cheerily!' and she followed proudly in the towing steamboat's wake: but bravest and most gallant of all, when the tow-rope being cast adrift, the canvas fluttered from her masts, and spreading her white wings she soared away upon her free and ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens

... know," replied Jack. "Whatever it was, we don't seem to be sunk yet, though. Maybe it was just a few floating boards washed adrift from ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson

... perfectly-equipped house—rented during the War, and after, by the Y.W.C.A.—in a densely-populated district in South London. The offer holds good for only a few days, and, if it is not taken, over two hundred girls will be turned adrift to wander in search of lodgings. The price is thirty thousand pounds. It is difficult to think of any cause to which money could be more usefully subscribed. Mr. Punch begs his readers to send to the promoters of this good work some token of their sympathy and appreciation. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 5, 1920 • Various

... in one canoe, were soon a quarter of a mile in advance of the others, and lifting their paddles from the water they floated with the slow current. The singing voices of the party behind them came softly adrift along the water. All of the singers were young and the songs had to do ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck

... of this hymn was suggested by the dying words of John Adams, one of the crew of the English ship Bounty who in 1789 mutinied, set the captain and officers adrift, and ran the vessel to a tropical island, where they burned her. In a few years vice and violence had decimated the wicked crew, who had exempted themselves from all divine and human restraint, until the last man alive was left with only native women and half-breed children ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth

... Santa Cruz, who, with his squadron of reserve, was moving about redressing the wrongs of Christian fortune. Aluch Ali had no mind for the fate of Giustiniani, and resolved to content himself with the banner of Malta. Cutting his prize adrift, he plied his oars and escaped, leaving the prior grievously wounded to the care of his friends, and once more master, not only of his ship, but of three hundred dead enemies who cumbered the deck, a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various

... rolling the body with my hands: 'God hath judged between us, Hirnam Singh, that thy blood might not be upon my head. Now, whether I have done thee a wrong in keeping thee from the burning-ghat, do thou and the crows settle together.' So I cast him adrift into the flood-water, and he was drawn out to the open, ever wagging his thick black beard like a priest under the pulpit-board. And I saw ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling

... Cuba be a reality, not a name, a perfect entity, not a hasty experiment bearing within itself the elements of failure. Our mission, to accomplish which we took up the wager of battle, is not to be fulfilled by turning adrift any loosely framed commonwealth to face the vicissitudes which too often attend weaker States whose natural wealth and abundant resources are offset by the incongruities of their political organization and ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... of the ice was high and the pans were moving rapidly, and to their chagrin they heard a smashing and splintering of wood, and the next instant were aware that the stern of the boat had been completely bitten off and that they were adrift on an ice pan, cut off from ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace

... at once we were working against them, and they'd cut us adrift. Then we would be out of it. And I haven't any desire," added Jack, with a shrug of his shoulders, "to go out to ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose

... Argos, had been warned by an oracle that he should perish by the hand of his grandson. On discovering, therefore, that his daughter Danae had given birth to a son, Acrisius endeavored to escape his fate by setting both mother and child adrift on the sea. They were saved, however, by the help of Jupiter; and Perseus, the child, grew up at the court of Polydectes, king of Seriphos, an island in the Aegean Sea. On reaching manhood, Perseus was sent by Polydectes to fetch ...
— Ritchie's Fabulae Faciles - A First Latin Reader • John Kirtland, ed.

... Vance looked uneasy and perplexed. "She is not my maid. She is Fraulein Arpent. The Ewalts brought her as governess from Paris, don't you remember? They sent the girls to Bryn Mawr last week and turned her adrift, almost penniless. She wished to go back to France. I engaged her as ...
— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis

... no lover of sentimental trips on the sea; but this was not the time to draw back. She leaped into the boat, and I after her; and I had not time to recover my wits before I observed that we were adrift. ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov

... his liquor with his former assurance. While outwardly he was the same suave, debonair old beau, he was beginning to have inner doubtings and despairs. And Joe, who had, as it were, taken up the pen when he had cast aside the sword, became for him a potential straw adrift on the ...
— Stubble • George Looms

... as the first sight of our ship may have given them had disappeared from their faces, and there were tears and signs of faltering as the women were helped up the ladders or hoisted aboard in swings. For lack of room to put them, several of the Titanic's boats, after unloading, were set adrift. ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various

... what will you do then, brother? And what shall I do? for I am almost as bad as you. The people where I lodge are all gone into the country but a maid, and she is to go next week, and to shut the house quite up, so that I shall be turned adrift to the wide world before you, and I am resolved to go away too, if I knew but where ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe

... something big and flimsy that was drifting loose, I got my hand on the cord quite close to the studs, and reached them. I lit the little lamp first of all to see what it was I had collided with, and discovered that old copy of Lloyd's News had slipped its moorings, and was adrift in the void. That brought me out of the infinite to my own proper dimensions again. It made me laugh and pant for a time, and suggested the idea of a little oxygen from one of the cylinders. After that I lit the heater until I felt warm, and then I took food. Then I set to work in a very ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells

... slack sail shifts from side to side, The boat, untrimm'd, admits the tide, Borne down, adrift, at random tost, The oar breaks short, the rudder's lost. ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... made many mistakes and been saved often by the skin of his teeth, for the skin of one's teeth is the most teaching thing about one. He should have been, or at any rate believed himself, a great fool and a great criminal. He should have cut himself adrift from society, and yet not be without society. He should have given up all, even Christ himself, for Christ's sake. He should be above fear or love or hate, and yet know them extremely well. He should have lost all save a small competence and know what a vantage ground it is to be an outcast. ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler

... to-night since there was born, at Clonmel, in Ireland, a son to a subaltern in an English regiment just home from the Low Countries. "My birthday," Laurence Sterne tells us, "was ominous to my poor father, who was, the day after our arrival, with many other brave officers, broke and sent adrift into the wide world with a wife and two children." The life of the new baby was one of perpetual hurry and scurry; his mother, who had been an old campaigner, daughter of what her son calls "a noted suttler" called Nuttle, had been the widow of a soldier before ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse

... fallen and misguided, was not entirely unregenerate; a lie sat awkwardly on his honest lips, and now that his feeble effort at deception had miscarried, he felt himself adrift on a boundless sea. He wildly felt around for a reply, and was greatly relieved by the arrival of his father on the scene, who, seeing the lights of the auto in the yard, had come out hurriedly to see what was the matter. Grandpa Kennedy, although nearing his ninetieth birthday, was still a ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung

... holds you hard an' fast in one spot most of the time I don't see's you do much sailin'," taunted Jan. "'Pears to me you're just adrift an' goin' nowheres a good ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett

... shattered this ideal; you failed this faith in you. His fanciful, artistic, eclectic nature with all its unused possibilities of faithful and passionate devotion, had found its haven in your love; and in twelve hours you turned it adrift. Jane—it was a crime. The magnificent strength of the fellow is shown by the way he took it. His progress in his art was not arrested. All his best work has been done since. He has made no bad mad marriage, in mockery of his own pain; and no ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay

... stone and rapid of that flood, and had engraved them in ineffaceable characters. With the unintelligible vagary of thought, while his breast seemed crushed, his heart broken, he had imagined himself adrift on that surging river, and he had planned his ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey

... Mrs. Ferrall suavely; "and in doing so you insure your own safety. Sylvia dear, I wish I hadn't meddled; I'm meddling some more I suppose when I say to you, don't give Howard his conge for the present. It is a horridly common thing to dwell upon, but Howard is too materially important to be cut adrift on ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers

... who were standing half a block away from the thoroughfare, and on the edge of a lagoon of yellow water, whose main current was the thoroughfare he was seeking, and between whose houses, submerged to their first stories, a steamboat was really paddling. Other boats and rafts were adrift on its sluggish waters, and a boatman had just landed a passenger in the backwater of the lower half of the street on which he ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte

... that had been in the Tower with the Lady Alianora his wife—five cups and two ewers of silver, and twenty-seven cups and six ewers of gold; and his horses and hers delivered into the keeping of Adam le Ferrour, keeper of the Queen's horses: and his servants either cast adrift, or drafted, some of them, into the household of the Lord John of Eltham. Go to! saith man: was all this more than is usual in like case? Verily, nay: but should such things be usual in Christendom? Was it ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt

... calamities of a different nature. The scheme in which my father had embarked his fortune failed, the Indians rose in a body, burnt his settlement, murdered many of his people, and turned the produce of their toil adrift on the wide and merciless ocean. The noble patrons of his plan deceived him in their assurances of marine protection, and the island of promise presented a scene of barbarous desolation. This misfortune was rapidly ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson

... done their best to make a love-sick poet pay court to wisdom. I could scarcely keep from laughing at the look of perplexity and indignation in Tullus's face when he quoted Propertius's reply. The boy actually asked them if they thought the poor flute ought to be set adrift just because swelled cheeks weren't becoming to Pallas! The long and short of it is that he wants me to interfere, and convince Propertius of his public duty. That public duty may conceivably take the form of writing poetry ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson

... spheres to ours; and when we speak of celestial sweetness or beauty, we may be nearer the literal truth than we dream. If mankind generally are the shipwrecked survivors of some pre-Adamitic cataclysm, set adrift in these little open boats of humanity to make one more trial to reach the shore,—as some grave theologians have maintained,—if, in plain English, men are the ghosts of dead devils who have "died into life," (to borrow an expression from Keats,) and walk the earth ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various

... beneficial. He, at the same time, always taught that Ireland was utterly unfit for democracy, and that under her peculiar conditions no policy could be more disastrous than one which would 'destroy the influence of landed property'; 'set population adrift from the influence of property'; subvert or weaken the guiding influence of the loyal and educated. When the United Irishmen proposed a Reform Bill which would have made the Irish Parliament a purely democratic body, Grattan denounced it with the greatest vehemence. ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... Hudson made another voyage in search of a passage to Asia. This time he sailed far north into Hudson Bay. Here his crew mutinied and refused to obey him. They seized him and put him, together with his son, into an open boat, and set them adrift in the icy water. ...
— Discoverers and Explorers • Edward R. Shaw

... away on a derelict and finally made an escape with their "sneering idol" by aeroplane into the wilds of Mexico, is a later and more remarkable chapter in the adventures of Ned Napier and Alan Hope, to be told in "The Air-Ship Boys Adrift, or Saved ...
— The Air Ship Boys • H.L. Sayler

... things to consider than my own feelings you should have felt, more vigorously than you shall, my displeasure. You dared to speak to me yesterday in a manner that would warrant me in setting you wholly adrift until you came to your senses.... But I shall not do that. Family considerations demand your presence in our offices. You are to take my place and to carry on our line.... This hasn't seemed to ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland

... secret studies. He confesses that his library was dukedom enough for him, and that he had volumes that he prized above his dukedom. This was his weakness, and upon this his false brother preyed, until one night in the dead of darkness the Duke and the crying Miranda were set adrift in the rotten carcass of a boat, which the very rats instinctively ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester

... transformed into a majority! Picture to yourself a man on a vessel standing by the gun-room with a lighted match, in his hand; he is alone, but the rest obey him, for at the first disobedience he will blow up himself with all the crew. This is precisely what has been going on in America since she went adrift. The working of the ship was commanded by the man who held the match. "At the first disobedience, we will quit you." Such has always been the language of the Southern States. They were known to be capable of keeping their word; therefore, there ceased to be ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin

... and the smoky air darkened into deepest gloom, the canoe was taken out into the main current of the Columbia, and fire was set to the dry knots that made up the funeral pyre. In an instant the contents of the canoe were in a blaze, and it was set adrift in the current. Down the river it floated, lighting the night with leaping flames. On the shore, the assembled tribe watched it in silence, mute, dejected, as they saw their great chief borne from them forever. Promontory and dusky fir, gleaming ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch

... Matsyas, the Srinjayas, the Chedis, the Kalikeyas, thus routed after being broken in battle by Drona with his shafts, beholding them thus driven from the field by those showers of fleet arrows shot from Drona's, bow, like vessels sent adrift by the awful waves of the tempest-tossed ocean, the Kauravas with many leonine shouts and with the noise of diverse instruments, began to assail the cars and elephants and foot-soldiers (of that hostile host) from all sides. And beholding those (fleeing soldiers of the Pandavas) king ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... himself;—he thought that he would make a clean breast of it to his mother. It made him sad to think that he should cut the rope which fastened his own boat among the other boats in the home harbour at Plumstead, and that he should go out all alone into strange waters,—turned adrift altogether, as it were, from the Grantly fleet. If he could only get the promise of his mother's sympathy for Grace it would be something. He understood,—no one better than he,—the tendency of all ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope

... himself, had again to make his escape. At first he only dismissed his military suite; afterward he separated from his faithful servant in the hope that separately they might more easily baffle their pursuers. Next he had to turn his horse adrift, as the poor animal was incapable of continuing his journey. Thus he made his way alone and on foot toward the frontiers of his native land. After a while, looking down from the top of a piece of elevated ground, he perceived a large body of Turks, from whom he hid himself in a neighboring ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson

... son came of age, seven hundred were dined. No well-behaved workman was ever turned adrift. Fathers employed introduced their sons into the works and brought them up under their own eye, watching over their conduct and mechanical training. Thus generation after generation followed each ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie

... important modifications. But even in Europe the Cavalry retain, thanks to their mobility, their power of opening fire in a manner calculated to create the greatest degree of surprise against the flanks and rear of the enemy as soon as they make up their minds to cut themselves adrift from their own Army, and get in rear of the enemy's troops. Such enterprises offer the best guarantee of producing a great moral result. The history of the Franco-German War demonstrated this possibility. What might not our Cavalry have achieved ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi

... several of the natives came off to us, each in a canoe, and bartered a few fishing implements for tobacco. One of them, a young man, overset his canoe, while along-side of one of our boats. Our people caught hold of him, but the canoe went adrift, and, being picked up by another, was carried ashore. The youth, by this accident, was obliged to come into the ship; and he went down into my cabin, upon the first invitation, without expressing the least reluctance ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr

... King!' Cicely laughed. 'Thou lovest the King.... Nay an thou lovest the King.... But to be enamoured of the King.... And the King enamoured of thee ... why, this pair of lovers cast adrift upon the land——' ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford

... atmosphere of perfect bliss, and I can remember that at that moment it was no longer the exterior world which seemed to me as if I were looking at it through the penumbra of an aquarium; it was I myself, an I composed of three, which was changing into something that was floating adrift in something, though what it was I did not know, composed of palpable fog and intangible water, and it ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... of our road carries us homeward and to safety. If we never find a drop of water on the road, our animals have enough to carry those who have to bear the whole journey to their goal, and as the animals succumb they will be shot or turned adrift.' The event showed Belt's sagacity. The unfortunate government expedition left Melbourne loaded with camp-followers and impedimenta, and by the time they reached a few stages beyond Cooper's Creek were well-nigh exhausted. Burke, the leader of the expedition, in desperation started ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt

... As neither Harry nor David could leave their vessels, a messenger was despatched to their homes, and in a short time Mr and Mrs Morton, Mrs Merryweather, and a considerable number of friends who formed the picnic party on that memorable day when Harry and David went adrift in a boat, were collected at the Green Bank Hotel. If Harry had been looked upon as a hero on the distant day of which we speak, much more so was ...
— Adrift in a Boat • W.H.G. Kingston

... Hellas, who dost cast (the pity!) Who worked thee all the good, Away from thee,—destroyest in a mood Of Madness him, to death whom pipings dance! There goes she, in her chariot,—groans, her brood And gives her team the goad, as though adrift For doom, Night's Gorgon, Madness, she whose glance Turns man to marble! with what hissings lift Their hundred heads the snakes, her head's inheritance! Quick has the God changed fortune: through their sire Quick will the children, that ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton

... Douglas had been discarded, Mr. Lincoln made a formal proposal for the hand of Miss Todd, but it appears that the young lady was not willing to capitulate at once. She believed that she could send her lover adrift to-day and ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley

... morning of the 22nd the wind was N., a strong gale with rain and a strong current setting westward, so that we were compelled to remain at anchor; towards the evening the wind went round to W.S.W., with dirty weather, so that we got adrift by our anchor getting loose, upon which we dropped our large anchor to avoid stranding; in the afternoon the storm subsided and we ...
— The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765 • J. E. Heeres

... a command of the English language is part of our inheritance, one can only reply that beauty is almost always dumb. Male beauty in association with female beauty breeds in the onlooker a sense of fear. Often have I seen them—Helen and Jimmy—and likened them to ships adrift, and feared for my own little craft. Or again, have you ever watched fine collie dogs couchant at twenty yards' distance? As she passed him his cup there was that quiver in her flanks. Bowley saw what was up-asked Jimmy to breakfast. Helen must have confided in Rose. ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... extraordinary that a writer already quoted, and who is not to be suspected of any pro-slavery tendencies, puts the question, "Is it enough that they [the Americans] simply loose their chain and turn them adrift lower," as he is pleased to say, "than they found them?"[21] It is not enough. They need to be prepared for freedom. "Immediate emancipation," as he says, "solves only the ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey

... long ceased to expect kindness or affection from any human creature, and would fain tear from my heart its treacherous sympathies. I am alone. The injustice, without alluding to hopes blasted in the bud, which I have endured, wounding my bosom, have set my thoughts adrift into an ocean of painful conjecture. I ask impatiently what and where is truth? I have been treated brutally, but I daily labor to remember that I still have the duty of ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... said that he had been at the Bay of Islands a short time before, and had seen several of the English missionaries. He also said that he had heard that the natives had lately taken a vessel at a place called Wangalore, which they had plundered and then turned adrift; but that the crew had escaped in their boats and put to sea. This is the same place where the crew of the ship 'Boyd' were murdered ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik

... into the punt, where the dog sat in the stern in her usual self-possessed manner. Perigal struggled with the rope by which the punt was moored to the stump of a tree. Very soon, they were all adrift on the stream. They made little progress at first, merely scraping along the overhanging branches of pollard willows; now and again, the punt would disturb long-forgotten night lines, which, more often than not, had hooked eels that had been dead for many ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte

... very strange sensation to inexperienced youth to feel itself quite alone in the world, cut adrift from every connection, uncertain whether the port to which it is bound can be reached, and prevented by many impediments from returning to that it has quitted. The charm of adventure sweetens that ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... humour; therefore Milo had to gather scandal as he could. There was very little difficulty about this. 'In the city of Tours,' he writes, 'in those middle days of Advent, it appears that rumour, still gadding, was adrift with names almost too high for the writing. There were many there who had no business; the Count of Blois, for instance, the Baron of Chateaudun, the fighting Bishop of Durham (I fear, a hireling shepherd), Geoffrey Talebot, Hugh of Saint-Circ. One reason of this was that ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett

... to assure myself that the Florina was still near me. That was the very thing, however, of which I could not assure myself. In fact she was not near me. I sprang to my feet, and felt that I had made a blunder, but such a one as Mr. Whippleton would not charge upon me. The Marian was adrift, and the breeze was carrying her farther up the lagoon, where she might get aground. My first care was to secure her from any such accident, which would indeed have been a catastrophe to me. All I had to do was to put the helm down, and bring ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic

... habitual solitude of his locality was now strangely invaded by drifting sheds, agricultural implements, and fence rails from unknown and remote neighbors, and he could faintly hear the far-off calling of some unhappy farmer adrift upon a spar of his wrecked and shattered house. When day broke he was cold ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte

... disclaimed "any disposition or intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control over said island except for the pacification thereof." In the settlement that followed the war, however, it was deemed undesirable to set the young republic adrift upon the stormy sea of international politics without a guiding hand. Before withdrawing American troops from the island, Congress, in March, 1901, enacted, and required Cuba to approve, a series of restrictions known as the Platt amendment, limiting her power to incur indebtedness, ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard

... use of talking about what followed? I hadn't the ghost of a show from the start. Do you think you know anything about London? Believe me, you don't until you have been cast adrift in it with empty pockets. It's a city of vampires and stony hearts, a seething inhuman hell where you can wander till you drop and die without anyone giving a pitying glance—much less a helping hand. Even a man's guardian angel deserts him. It doesn't take a man very ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees

... the articles will be well read, for there's a heap of the vitals of South Africa in them; and even if they are to cut us adrift altogether, it's as well 'The Destroyers' should know a little about us, and the country. Constance Grey's name and introductions will take her anywhere in London, or I would have asked ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... was making for home, aided by the busy feet of its master, while Stacy Brown, shading his eyes with one hand, was watching the progress of the guide, whom he had just sent adrift. ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in New Mexico • Frank Gee Patchin

... We sailed along the shore of the island of Pico, under a stately green pyramid that rose up with one unbroken sweep from our very feet to an altitude of 7,613 feet, and thrust its summit above the white clouds like an island adrift in a fog! ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... newcomers, adrift here and there in the straw. Their weariness was alleviated. They set about writing and card-playing. That evening I dated my letter to Marie "at the Front," with a flourish of pride. I understood that glory consists in doing what others have done, ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse

... pride, covetous of good food. Greedy I was of wealth, I never dedicated, with faith and reverence, any food to the deities and the Pitris although duty required me to dedicate food unto them. Those men that came to me, moved by fear, for seeking my protection, I sent adrift without giving them any protection. I did not extend my protection to those that came to me with prayers for dispelling their fear. I used to feel unreasonable envy at seeing other people's wealth, and corn, and spouses held dear by them, and articles of drink, and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... you don't know what will become of you since he's failed you, and you're turned adrift in a ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... Limestone Creek, at the spot where the city of Maysville now stands. They ascended this creek a short distance with their boat, and concealed their cargo at different places in the woods along its banks. They then turned their boat adrift, and directed their course to Harrodstown, intending to return with a sufficient escort to insure the safe transportation of the powder to its destination. This in a short time was successfully effected, and the colonists were thus abundantly supplied with the means of ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley

... that the earth was not large enough, and blowing upon it again its size was greatly increased, so that a loom which he then sent out never returned. The new earth being now of a sufficient size, he turned adrift all the animals that he had preserved. He is supposed still to have some intercourse with and power over them as well as over the Indians, who pray to him to protect them and keep them alive. Sir Alexander Mackenzie, in speaking of the Chipewyan or Northern Indians, who traverse an immense ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West

... Temple, and devoted his abundant leisure to writing his memoirs, and the pleasantest part of his life began. The Temple suited him perfectly, its Bohemianism was congenial to him, the library was convenient, and as no man likes to wholly cut himself adrift from his profession, the vicinity of the law courts, and a modicum of legal conversation in the evening, sufficed to maintain in his absent-minded head the illusion that he was practising at the bar. His chambers were bare and dreary, ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore

... aimlessly, until, foot-sore and exhausted, he sank down at the door of a wayside cottage and begged for food and shelter. These were given to him, and next day he was set to work in the fields. But his hands were not used to labor, and he was sent adrift, his fellow workers jeering at him. With a heavy heart, and his pride humbled, he set forth again to learn the mystery of ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa

... those who having seen it often seemed on each occasion to behold it for the first time. Of her, as of every beauty that has graced the world since Helen set fire to Troy, and Semiramis sent dead lovers adrift down the river of Assyria, and Cleopatra charmed Caesar and Antony and Heaven knows who besides, it might be said that she had the familiar features of womankind; but what it was that made those features so marvellous, ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... had never seen you at all," replied Philip, uncourteously, and restoring his money to his pocket; "your fraud upon Mr. Stubmore, and your assurance that you knew me, have sent me adrift upon ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... of the story could not be more different. Where the chance of fortune has hitherto brought about the happy ending, here magic and the supernatural in control of man are the means employed. Those who had plotted or connived at the expulsion of Prospero, Duke of Milan, and his being set adrift in an open boat, with his infant daughter and his books for company, are wrecked through his art upon the island of which he has become the master. Ariel, the spirit who serves Prospero, a mysterious, ever changing form, now fire, now a Nymph, now an ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken

... valley social and economic relations were simple and manifest. Instead of the limitless confusion of London's population, in which no man can trace any but the most slender correlation between rich and poor, in which everyone seems disconnected and adrift from everyone, you can see here the works, the potbank or the ironworks or what not, and here close at hand the congested, meanly-housed workers, and at a little distance a small middle-class quarter, and again remoter, the big house of the employer. ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... they were in the dinghy, and the dinghy was adrift. The yacht's screw chumed the water, and the beautiful vessel slipped away from them. As it receded a figure appeared at the stem. It ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett

... sense of being adrift was intensified by the appearance of Mrs. Ballinger's drawing-room. To a careless eye its aspect was unchanged; but those acquainted with Mrs. Ballinger's way of arranging her books would instantly have detected the marks of recent perturbation. Mrs. Ballinger's province, ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton

... for a hundred years." "But how did you get into the coffin?" asked Sila. "Listen, and I will tell you the whole story," replied Ivashka. "I was a great magician; my mother was told that I did great mischief to mankind by my arts, and therefore ordered me to be put into this coffin and set adrift on the open sea: for more than a hundred years I have been floating about, and no one has ever picked me up; but to you I owe my rescue, and I will therefore serve you, and render you all the help ...
— The Russian Garland - being Russian Falk Tales • Various



Words linked to "Adrift" :   directionless, aimless, planless, undirected, rudderless, be adrift, afloat, purposeless



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