"Adrift" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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. ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... your words were flame and your kisses fire, And who shall resist a strong desire? Not I, whose life is a broken boat On a sea of passions, adrift, afloat. And, whether I came in love or hate, That I came to you was written by Fate In every hue of the blood-red sky, In every tone of the ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... reduce corruption and other economic crimes; and (c) keep afloat the large state-owned enterprises many of which had been shielded from competition by subsides and had been losing the ability to pay full wages and pensions. From 80 to 120 million surplus rural workers are adrift between the villages and the cities, many subsisting through part-time low-paying jobs. Popular resistance, changes in central policy, and loss of authority by rural cadres have weakened China's population control program, which is ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... them. With some difficulty we rowed out to sea, and round the S.W. point of Anchor Isle. It happened very fortunately that chance directed me to take this course, in which we found the sportsmen's boat adrift, and laid hold of her the very moment she would have been dashed against the rocks. I was not long at a loss to guess how she came there, nor was I under any apprehensions for the gentlemen that had been in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... graziers and cattle-jobbers on a gigantic scale, the Government would be compelled to place the military power of the state at their disposal, to evict the whole population in the queen's name, to drive all the families away from their homes, to demolish their dwellings, and turn them adrift on the highway, without one shilling compensation. Villages, schools, churches would all disappear from the landscape; and, when the grouse season arrived, the noble owner might bring over a party of English friends to see his 'improvements!' The right of conquest so cruelly exercised ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... pity," whispered Basil, dispassionately, "to turn this man adrift, when he had a reasonable hope of being with us all day, and has been so civil ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Americans threw three of them into the sea. The others, hearing the noise, hurried upon deck. In a hand-to-hand fight which followed two more were killed with handspikes, and the remaining four were overpowered and sent adrift in a small boat. Sheffield made his way, rejoicing, to Naples. When the Dey heard how his subjects had been handled, he threatened to put Lear in irons and to declare war. It cost the United States sixteen thousand dollars to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... selfishly on in its old channels, unmindful of the young life set adrift again in a sea of doubt and discouragement, with no hand held out to draw it back from the peril of shipwreck. The despairing mood that had settled down on Alec during the summer seized him again. He would ...
— Flip's "Islands of Providence" • Annie Fellows Johnston
... like the one he had given John himself. This is the child who disappeared fourteen years ago. The King sent him away to be killed. But the servant to whom the task fell was less cruel. The child was set adrift on the ocean, and escaped as you have heard. Will you let him ...
— John of the Woods • Abbie Farwell Brown
... that the Louisiana, when abandoned and fired by my order, was not only not "turned adrift" or intended to injure the United States forces as charged by Commander Porter; but that she was actually left secured to the opposite bank of the river and distant quite three-fourths of a mile from the said forces, for the very reason that they ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... through his mind beneath (as I imagine) the place where the thick grizzled hair thins to the red forehead. His voice is a high tenor. I make accompaniment an octave below, whilst Mrs Widger—a little nasal in tone and not infrequently adrift in tune—supports ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... the first four years of the century. He ran through his maternal inheritance by silly dissipations, and then helped his friend Wilhelm Schwab to make away with the hundred thousand francs his parents had left him. Without resources and cast adrift by his father he went to Paris in 1835, where, upon the recommendation of Graff, the inn-keeper, he obtained a position with Keller at six hundred francs per annum. In 1843 he was only two thousand francs ahead; but Gedeon Brunner having ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... bewildered her senses. Proverbially there is no situation more lonely to the feeling than the midst of a strange crowd; and Diana, sitting at her window and looking down into the busy street, felt alone and cast adrift as she never had felt in her life before. Her life seemed done, finished, as far as regarded hope or joy; nothing left but weary and dragging existence; and the eager hurrying hither and thither of ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... Marquess of 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 few living Algerine mariners who were to navigate the vessel, and some Turkish soldiers, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... Numbers, for instance, in which the horrible truth is frequently too evident, and only equalled by the fact that after lust had played out its passion, unfortunate women, taken in captivity, could, by divine command, be turned adrift to rot or starve. In Christian Feudalism we find nothing much better. If I have read history correctly, and I may be wrong—the upper-grade women in mediaeval Europe, who were adored, not with love, but with lascivious and sensual worship, by Christian knights and troubadours, and who, like ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... the pitifulness of words before that love by which self goes wholly lost in the being of another, adrift yet cared ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... distress were from a Swedish barque, the Hedvig Sophia. She had parted her anchors in the Downs, and had come ashore in three fathoms of water, which was now angry surf; her masts were gone, but as the rigging was not cut adrift, they were still lying to leeward in wild confusion. She had heeled over to starboard, and her weather rail being well out of the water, afforded some shelter to the crew; but her sloping decks were washed and ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... of a house. The ship groaned and gasped. Many of the ivory inlayings of her bulwarks and cabins were started from their places, by the unnatural dislocation. In vain handspikes and crows were brought to bear upon the immovable fluke-chains, to pry them adrift from the timberheads; and so low had the whale now settled that the submerged ends could not be at all approached, while every moment whole tons of ponderosity seemed added to the sinking bulk, and the ship seemed on ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... the inmate who had been harboured. Fanny at once arose from her bed, careful not to disturb her companion. She had thought it all out, whether she would have Carry ready dressed for an escape, should it be that her father would demand imperiously that she should be sent adrift from the mill, or whether it might not be better that she should be able to plead at the first moment that her sister was in bed, tired, asleep,—at any rate undressed,—and that some little time must be allowed. Might it not be that even in that hour her father's heart ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... to work the gangs all night and clean up the river-bed. You'll take the east bank and work out to meet me in the middle. Get everything that floats below the bridge: we shall have quite enough river-craft coming down adrift anyhow, without letting the stone-boats ram the piers. What have you got on the east bank ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... full 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 ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... beggar, all but turned adrift For knocking at earth's gate, His mother, like an evil gift, Shunned him ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... Tompkins; and in 1815 he embarks again for Europe. He passes many years in England, in the course of which time the commercial firm, of which he is a member goes into bankruptcy. Upon this, he is of course thrown adrift. But through the influence of his friends at home he is offered the position of Chief Clerk of the Navy Department, with a salary of twenty-four hundred dollars a year. This, however, after some misgivings, he declines. He does not like the idea of being cramped by official routine ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... Adrift in the City Andy Grant's Pluck Ben's Nugget Bob Burton Bound to Rise Boy's Fortune, A Chester Rand Digging for Gold Do and Dare Facing the World Frank and Fearless Frank Hunter's Peril Frank's Campaign Helping Himself Herbert Carter's ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... country cottage. The tenants who had occupied it during the period of the war had just returned to Scotland, so, as it was vacant, it had seemed a convenient place in which to settle. It was near enough to Grovebury to allow him to attend his office, and far enough away to cut them adrift from old associations. After four and a half years of war work, Mrs. Saxon wanted a complete rest from committees, creches, canteens, and recreation huts, and would be glad to urge the excuse of distance to those who appealed for her help. Perhaps also she felt ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... officials, it came as a matter of course that the hard-handed merchant-skippers who in brigs and schooners hung round the coasts of the Islands thought little of carrying off men or women. They would turn their victims adrift in Australia or on some South Sea islet, as their humour moved them. With even more cruel callousness, they would sometimes put Maoris carried off from one tribe on shore amongst another and maybe hostile tribe. Slavery was the best fate such unfortunates ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... moving at all, but that the earth was dropping away under him. And the first time he went up alone he suddenly felt terribly homesick. He had never felt like that before; but all at once, he said, he felt as if he were adrift in space—and he had a wild desire to get back home to the old planet and the companionship of fellow creatures. He soon got over that feeling, but he says his first flight alone was a nightmare to him because of that ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... coming into New York Harbor, we lost a very promising young man overboard. The life-boat was launched, and the life-buoy was cut adrift. But through some delay, the young man perished. What a tremendous disappointment those parents experienced as they stepped on board the frigate at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and learned that their darling boy had found a ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... and studding sails out of the tops, and lessened the lumber and weight aloft in every way we could think of, but, nevertheless, we continued to roll gunwale under, dipping the main—yardarm into the water every now and then, and setting every thing adrift, below and on deck, that was not bolted ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... the man who hired me, found out about my doings down here at Stanley Junction, and he has set me adrift." ...
— Ralph on the Engine - The Young Fireman of the Limited Mail • Allen Chapman
... with a smile. "Last run we couldn't keep the water out of the stokehold. Had to cover and batten gratings, and then a boat fetched adrift and smashed the ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... and swaggering. She looked out of the window and saw a distant wood across the familiar, glassy yellow surface of the Mississippi. With a low whisper of dismay she started out to look around, and found that she was really adrift in mid-river. ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... piece of paste flaunting itself among gems. In a few words he told how the Fair Emily crashed on to a reef in the middle of the night, and how, owing to the darkness and confusion, the boat into which he had got with Stobell and Tredgold was cast adrift; how a voice raised to a shriek cried to them to pull away, and how a minute afterwards the schooner disappeared with ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... when I see her golden hair, adrift On sorrow's sea, like weeds rent from their reef, And know she breathes with her sublime belief, It crazes me that thou, when thou mightst lift Her saintly features, and dry them of grief, Wads't not, but waitest for the tide ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... some as gallant exploits as our history could show, and in which he had not spared to shed his blood, as well as for more recent services of great importance in time of peace—services of great difficulty and great delicacy—now to turn him adrift at his advanced age.... That he could not for a moment harbor in his heart the thought that General Scott, if he had received from the Government thousands of dollars more than he had, would have ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... the portrait of the Captain who must quail before the terrors of the tomb, and Castruccio Castracane is the strong man cut off in the blossom of his age. The prisons of the Visconti have disgorged their victims, cast adrift with maiming that makes life unendurable but does not hasten death.[132] The lazar houses and the charnels have been ransacked for forms of grisly decay. Thus the whole work is not merely "an hieroglyphical and shadowed lesson" of ascetic philosophy; it is also a realisation of mediaeval ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... was less than three hundred yards away. He recognized it as a life raft. Now his spin brought him around to face it, and he saw it was parallelling his course. The ejection of the life raft must have caused the thump he'd heard before he was cast adrift. ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey
... period by Fred Pemberton. The nerves of the latter were not remarkably steady, and as he stepped on board the schooner, he neglected to take the painter with him; and the consequence was, that the boat went adrift. It is good generalship to keep the line of retreat open; and Fred's neglect had deprived them of all means of retiring from the scene of action. The only alternative was to fight their way through, and ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... palace is a perpetual theme for small-talk. It usurps the place of the weather, which is turned adrift, or laid up in ordinary for future use. Nevertheless it (I mean the palace) is a remarkable achievement, after all; and I speak sincerely when I say, 'All honor and glory to Paxton!' If the strings of my poor little lyre were not rusty and overworn, I think I should try to ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... not acquired habits of making definite decisions will find themselves badly adrift when they reach the adolescent period, with its rapid changes of mood and the masses of frequently conflicting impulses. To be able to restrain each impulse to action as it arises, and to hold it in abeyance until all the alternatives have been canvassed, is a power that comes only after years of ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... only that to the world; and so you would be cut adrift from both sides, as all women are who move from where they rightfully belong to ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... are limits even to my forbearance. You are where you are at my suggestion, and I could as easily send you adrift. I do not say this as a threat, but I desire to be treated with common consideration. I appeal to your reason. Is it well to treat me like ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... whitened the stony strand without, driven before a wet and stormy south-wester. It was the merest routine to carry the painter ashore and twist the rotten rope round an exposed root of the great willow tree; for there was not the slightest chance of that ancient craft breaking adrift. All our strength and the leverage of the sculls could scarcely move her, so much had she settled. But we had determined to sail that lovely day to visit the island of Calypso, and had got all our arms and munitions of war aboard, besides being provisioned and carrying ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... inmate of the Lyceum for the duties and privations of the soldier's life. The transition was not unnatural; and the boy who breakfasted in the open air, in midwinter, on a piece of dry bread and as much water as he chose to pump for himself,—who was turned adrift, without cap or overcoat, from the study-room into the storm or sunshine of an open enclosure, to amuse himself in his recess as he best might,—whose continual talk with his comrades was of the bivouac or the battle-field,—and who considered the great object of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... Crathie's face grew red as the sun in a fog. He was an elder of the kirk, and had family worship every night as regularly as his toddy. So the word was as offensive and insolent as it was foolish and inapplicable. He would have turned Malcolm adrift on the spot, but that he remembered—not the favour of the late marquis for the lad—that was nothing to the factor now: his lord under the mould was to him as if he had never been above it—but the ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... and great was the wrath of her father when he had tidings of the birth. Did the gods in the high heavens laugh at him? The laugh should yet be on his side. Down to the seashore he hurried Danae and her newly-born babe, the little Perseus, put them in a great chest, and set them adrift to be a plaything for winds and waves and a prey for the ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... clear away. When they find you're gone, they'll light on that paper. I jest want 'em to come right along after us. Savee? It'll 'most surprise 'em when they come along." Then he turned to his men. "Now, boys, lash his hands, and cut his feet adrift. Then, into the buckboard with him. Guess his carcase is too bulky for any 'plug' to carry. Get a hustle on, lads. We've ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... while you rot there will be no safety for any of us, but that we shall all be turned into filth and corruption. Therefore, John Sharkey, we Rovers of The Happy Delivery, in council assembled, have decreed that while there be yet time, before the plague spreads, you shall be set adrift in a boat to find such a fate as Fortune may be pleased ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... our solicitude, for we knew very well that a large proportion of the men who get adrift in the fog are never found alive. Shortly before this experience we had spoken a Gloucester vessel and learned that her crew had picked up, a short time before, one of the boats of a Provincetown schooner ...
— Out of the Fog • C. K. Ober
... the passage of the Land Act of 1903, have, in the providence of things, the opportunity and the power for negotiating, in fair and friendly and conciliatory fashion, for the expropriation for evermore from all ownership in the land of the class who cast him and his people adrift in earlier years. ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... to study the conditions of modern industrialism at its sources, and my disablement did but a little accelerate a return already decided upon. I had got my conception of the East as a whole and of the shape of the historical process. I no longer felt adrift in a formless chaos of forces. I perceived now very clearly that human life is essentially a creative struggle out of the usage of immemorial years, that the synthesis of our contemporary civilization is this creative impulse rising ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... the town about one and a-half miles from my own house, witnessing some of the ceremonials connected with the Mohurrum festival, the otter entered the temporary shed, walked across the floor, and came and lay down at my feet!" It is to be hoped Dr. Jerdon did not turn him adrift again; such wonderful sagacity and attachment one could only expect ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... Don't chaff. Present company always excepted. I wasn't thinking about you. But I say, didn't he take it all in as innocent as could be about uncle setting him adrift out in the wilds?" ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... then in France—loved as a natural parent, a real mother. On hearing that she was turned adrift by fire, seeking woefully for a home, everyone grieved and wept; and that, not only in the country about Chartres; in the Orleans country, in Normandy, Brittany, the Ile de France, in the far north, whole populations stopped their regular work, left their homes to fly ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... Harbour. 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 ...
— Adrift in a Boat • W.H.G. Kingston
... seeing the miserable plight of the castaways, he invited them to his home. On arriving at the hut Scott and his lubras prepared for their guests a beautiful meal of kangaroo and potatoes. This was their only food as long as they remained on King's Island, for Scott's only boat had got adrift, and his flour, tea, and sugar had been all consumed. But kangaroo beef and potatoes seemed a most luxurious diet to the men and women who had been kept alive for three weeks on nothing ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... a man to the Station. He'll find the scooters lying gutted. Send another man over here to the Pallas. He'll find the scoopships gone. I also took a few photographs of the autopilots being installed and the ships being cast adrift. Go right ahead. However, may I remind you that the fewer people who have an inkling of this little intrigue, the better ...
— Industrial Revolution • Poul William Anderson
... that I do not cast anchor there so long, that you will find the best thing will be to cut the cables, send me adrift, and thus get rid of me," replied the old sailor, delighted at her addressing him in nautical phrase. "Your appearance here has belied half the stories I heard; so now that you have given me permission, I shall set sail to discover ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... have actually made up my mind to help you yet," he went on. "I am very much inclined to cast you adrift. It distresses me to put it to you so plainly, but you are ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... brought up to know nothing of his father, as if I had never lived. I gave him into her arms because he had no mother and his father's heart had gone out of him. I gave him into her arms, because I felt it was all I could do to let his mother have the comfort of knowing that he was not adrift with me—if they do know where she is. For her sake most of all and for the lad's sake ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... "hobo." In the first place, the road itself, with its accompanying humors and adventures, forms a mutual and efficacious bond. How little we know of the "Knights of the Road," or the compelling circumstances that turned them adrift upon the world! "All sorts and conditions of men" are represented, from the college professor to the ex-pugilist. I have "hit the ties" in company with a so-called "hobo" who quoted Milton and Shakespeare by the yard, interspersed with exclamations appreciative of his enjoyment of the country ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... 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. For my own ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... from Calcutta to Dundee with jute. Dismasted in a cyclone ten days ago west of the Andamans; been adrift ever since. Fire broke out in cargo in the fore hold; had as much as we could do to keep it under; no time to rig a jury mast. Afraid of ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... know one thing—if I stood in your place and was compelled to make one or the other unhappy, I know which it would be. In marrying Lady Marion you make yourself at once and you delight me, you gratify every one who knows and loves you. In marrying that tempestuous young person you cut yourself adrift ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... friend whose story had enthralled him—were people of quiet religious habit; the man deep down in him had never had a chance. He breathed hard as he tried to imagine the world opening to him, and almost dared to be glad for the doubt that had sent him adrift. ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... they must allow them to come aboard, and also secure the boat. Any premature action was bound to ruin the whole affair. If one of the men got away, or the boat was set adrift, it would avail the prisoners of the hulk nothing. They wanted a means for leaving the hostile land, and the mere capture of these two men, who evidently intended to take them by surprise, would not satisfy ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... who had brought the car to the house to fetch them, turned his head away and cleared his throat suspiciously, feeling, as he told his wife afterwards, like a veritable robber who had stolen their home, and turned these two helpless and innocent girls adrift in the wide world, of which ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin
... made a mistake," I ses; "or p'r'aps he thought you'd turn the dog adrift and he'd get it back for nothing. You know wot landlords are. ...
— Night Watches • W.W. Jacobs
... to him. He seemed desirous of getting the poor girl out of existence. He gave her away once to his sister; but, being a poor gift, she was not disposed to keep her. Finally, my benevolent master, to use his own words, "set her adrift to take care of herself." Here was a recently-converted man, holding on upon the mother, and at the same time turning out her helpless child, to starve and die! Master Thomas was one of the many pious slaveholders who hold slaves for the very ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... is this pilgrim star to the tethered constellations. It is far adrift. It goes singly to all the winds. It offers thistle plants (or whatever is the flower that makes such delicate ashes) to the tops of many thousand hills. Doubtless the farmer would rather have to meet it in battalions than in these invincible units astray. But if the farmer owes it ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... paddled across the Ganges, stepped out in the shallow water on the other side, turned the boat adrift to float down with the stream, and then struck ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... all a purposeless passing of dreary hours. Before, there was always an object ahead of me, a light to which I made my way; and all the pleasant incidents of life were things to guide me, and to beguile the plodding path. Now I am adrift; I need go neither forwards nor backwards; and the things which before were gentle and quiet occupations have become ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... drinks and is for ever standing on his dignity. Yet still our landowners keep taking to philanthropy, to converting themselves into philanthropic knights-errant, and spending millions upon senseless hospitals and institutions, and so ruining themselves and turning their families adrift. Yes, that is all that ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... when he set me to make a pudden, for because our cook was hurted. I done my uttermost, but she all fetched adrift like in the bag, an' the more I biled the bits of her, the less she favoured any fashion o' pudden. Moon he chawed and chammed his piece, and Frankie chawed and chammed his'n, and—no words to it—he took me by the ear an' walked me out over ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... himself to put these suspicions into words. But to put them upon paper with all the cumulative evidence needed to carry conviction,—if conviction could indeed be conveyed without the reiteration of words and the persuasiveness of the voice,—to do this and send the paper adrift, to fall into Archdale's hands or not as the fortunes of war should determine, perhaps to fall into other hands,—it was impossible, for Elizabeth's sake it was impossible. "I don't see how we can reach him," he said at last. "A ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... sense of security in my very ignorance. Dinner came, and in the course of it I found courage to ask the captain, at whose right hand I was placed, what time we should reach Cincinnati. "Not till after breakfast," was his welcome answer; for I had been haunted by a dread of being set adrift in a great city in the middle of the night, when I might perhaps fall into some den of thieves. I had read of such things in my books. This gave me still the afternoon before it would be necessary to think, some hours more in which to rest ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... fantastic vegetation that seemed to be writhing in the gloom. The river, free now from the gorges and shallows around the city, had ceased its roaring. It seethed and swirled along in absolute silence, effacing all trace of the land. The two men felt like a couple of shipwrecked sailors adrift on a shoreless, sunless ocean, alone save for the reddish flame flickering at the prow, and the submerged treetops that appeared and ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the very same tone with which they would have pealed for James's. Men were loose upon politics, and had to shift for themselves. They, as well as old beliefs and institutions, had lost their moorings and gone adrift in the storm. As in the South Sea Bubble almost everybody gambled; as in the Railway mania—not many centuries ago—almost every one took his unlucky share; a man of that time, of the vast talents ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... will one day induce me to turn you adrift. Return the boat to the place where you found it, and see it secured in ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... a time when the Delaware was filled with British shipping, that Bushnell set adrift upon its swift-flowing tide a number of small kegs, filled with gunpowder, and provided with percussion apparatus, so that contact with any object would explode them. The kegs were started on their voyage at night. But Bushnell ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... first saw Dame Melicent the sea was languid, as if outworn by vain endeavours to rival the purple of her eyes. Sea-birds were adrift in the air, very close to her and their movements were less graceful than hers. She was attired in a robe of white silk, and about her wrists were heavy bands of silver. A tiny wind played truant in order to caress her unplaited ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... She's a Tartar, if ever there was a Tartar. He committed a terrible act of folly when he married her; let him show his return to wisdom by sending her adrift. I don't pity her in the least. If he forgave her this time, she would simply despise him, and begin her machinations all ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... courtesy by a show of force. Then another difficulty arose. All but eight of the crew joined with the English prisoners in seizing the officers, and put Lieutenant Gamble, the commander, with four loyal seamen, adrift in a small boat, while the mutineers went to sea in ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... that final day of struggling he lay quite exhausted and weak. His mind was still adrift upon its sea of dreams, but he fought his fights no more. The fever was still in possession, but its method had been changed. It had pinned him down as a victim at last, for resistance had ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... between the discontented provinces and the mother country was interrupted. The Exchange of London was in dismay. Half the firms of Bristol and Liverpool were threatened with bankruptcy. In Leeds, Manchester, Nottingham it was said that three artisans out of every ten had been turned adrift. Civil war seemed to be at hand; and it could not be doubted that, if once the British nation were divided against itself, France and Spain would soon ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... definite steps. He took the captured officers and the recalcitrant whites, put them into a boat within sight of land, set them adrift, and stood out to sea again. He had none under his command then who were ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... likeness to you or your wife. In that case I should propose to finish the education of your boy, and then to provide for him by putting him into the army, or such other profession as he may choose; for it would be very unfair after bringing him up and educating him as my own to turn him adrift. Thus, you see, in any case my adoption of him would be greatly to his benefit. I can, of course, thoroughly understand that it will be very hard for you and Mrs. Humphreys to give up your child. Very hard. And I am quite ready to make any pecuniary arrangement with you and her that you may think ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... in exploring the rivers and steaming against currents. She left on the 6th of July, towed out of Hudson's Bay by the Sydney steamer. The weather became stormy, and the steamer was compelled to cut her adrift during the night. Left to herself and her gallant captain, with a crew of two men only, she made her way to Sydney. During this time the coast was visited by severe gales, and much anxiety was felt for the Sir Charles Hotham. The agents of the Sydney steamer regretted ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... Now the whole company rush towards the water, and the pater deposits the supposed devil on board the raft, on which the palongs row off with the greatest possible expedition, dragging the captive out to sea, to a considerable distance, when, having turned him and his vehicle adrift, they row back with the utmost speed to shore. For two days the enemy may survive this rough usage, and again land in safety, if driven on shore by the tide or wind, but on the third day he must die. Should he ...
— Letters on the Nicobar islands, their natural productions, and the manners, customs, and superstitions of the natives • John Gottfried Haensel
... and purity Mrs Bell had not as much to suffer in this way as some others. But, comparatively speaking, her life was wrecked. She had been humiliated and outraged in the cruellest way by the man whom she loved and trusted. He had turned her adrift, neither a wife, widow, nor maid, and here she was, one of the most estimably lovable and noble women I ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... the company. They took leave of their comrades and started off on their several courses with stout hearts and cheerful countenances; though these lonely cruisings into a wild and hostile wilderness seem to the uninitiated equivalent to being cast adrift in the ship's yawl in the midst of ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... 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 Duryodhana, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... exertion of all her powers, and strenuous resistance of the impulse to turn and escape. Why should Nettie escape?—it must be decided one way or other. She held on dimly with rapid trembling steps. To her own agitated mind, Nettie, herself, left adrift and companionless, seemed the suitor. The only remnants of her natural force that remained to her united in the one ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... on the platform and stood looking round her in a bewildered way. The place was totally strange, and she felt like a deserted vessel cast adrift from its usual moorings. There was no part of Liverpool where she would not know what to do and how to act; but here, standing on this lonely, deserted platform, with scarcely any money in her pocket, her head aching, her tired brain dull and confused, she scarcely knew where to turn. If her father ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 5, 1920 • Various
... here and there for the benefit of my companions. The arrival of the Baron d'Ezonville recalled our own with curious exactness, except that he came with one servant only. He had been taken to the inn, as I had, but he had never escaped from there, and had been turned adrift the morning after his arrival. I took more interest in Stefan, and followed eagerly the story of how the islanders had come to his house, and demanded that he should revoke the sale. Stefan, however, was obstinate; it lost the lives of four of his assailants ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... my uncle thought it good discipline to turn a young fellow like me adrift for a whole day in London to shift for myself, and wrestle single-handed with the crisis that was to ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... adrift, Against their will should rove; Some, steering forward, sure and swift, Should scarcely seem ...
— Vignettes in Verse • Matilda Betham
... 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
... and walked a little distance away. Santos and Pederson cast the landing boat adrift and shoved it away from the anchored boat. In a moment fire spurted from the bottom tube, spreading over the dull metal and licking at ...
— Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet • Harold Leland Goodwin
... an ancient church. Every one in turn laid his hand on the dead man's scalp, and vowed to defend the slayers. [219] The inhabitants of Eigg seized some Macleods, bound them hand and foot, and turned them adrift in a boat to be swallowed up by the waves or to perish of hunger. The Macleods retaliated by driving the population of Eigg into a cavern, lighting a fire at the entrance, and suffocating the whole race, men, women and children. [220] It is much less strange that the two great Earls ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... just like my old canoe," said he. "Somebody must have left it adrift up the river. I wonder how it floated down here without being picked up." He put out his hand and caught it, ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... Cottier, one of these, was paid a retaining fee of ten thousand crowns, besides great sums in lands and money. "He maintained over Louis unbounded influence, by using to him the most disrespectful harshness and insolence. 'I know,' he said to the suffering King, 'that one morning you will turn me adrift like so many others. But, by Heaven, you had better beware, for you will not live eight days after ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... they had too often disgraced and misused, vested the government of the Church in the presbyterate; and the national sentiment approved of the change. But there was no necessity for upsetting the whole cathedral system, and rooting out the whole cathedral staff, because the bishop was turned adrift. Had the Canonries been spared, an immense boon would have been secured for the Reformed Church. Had the stipends attached to them not been alienated, the Church would have possessed, at all its most important centres, a staff of clergymen chosen for their ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... floating by, some loaded with fruit and vegetables, others like haystacks gone adrift, and others of considerable size carrying cattle to the market at Rio. Several picturesque islets were passed, covered like the main land with rich vegetation and numberless flowers ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... resolved to force a passage. But the odds were terrific. It took half the men to keep the canoe moving against the current, while the rest fired at the enemy as they hurled stones and assegais upon their heads. At last the two steersmen were slain, and the canoe went adrift. In a desperate attempt to lighten it, they cast all the baggage into the river, but still could make no headway. Overpowered by numbers and fatigue, and with no chance of killing a whole army, they saw but one hope of escape—namely, to make for the shore ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... the dread feeling that I must go. Go whither? I had no home. I could not return to my uncle who had cast me adrift. The inquisitive glance of his grim housekeeper would annihilate me. But go I ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... "Well, sir, suttunly I think I must have shut one eye; but how the dinghy got loose is more than I can say, unless them spiteful niggers cut us adrift. But you get aboard. ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... Harry. We supposed it was all right. Last Saturday she went, sir. She was going to walk to the station, and the last seen of her she was trudging along the road, carrying the baby. It hasn't been thought of since. But, sir, d'ye suppose she set that innocent child adrift in that old leaky dory to send him to his death? I knew Maggie was no better than she should be, but I can't believe she was as ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... hastily threw away the label and cast his gloves after it. But on his return to the city he was able to give a reproduction of the writing to Professor Gehren which convinced that anxious scholar that Harvey Craig had been alive and able to write not long before the time when the houseboat was set adrift. ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... every description of rascality at their dictation, he can go along very smoothly; but if he should become troublesome at any time, or if he should show any conscientious scruples when called upon to execute the will of his masters, they would turn him adrift without an hour's warning, and crush him, with the evidence of his guilt in their possession, if he had the hardihood to whisper a word about the nefarious ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... rose quickly, and soon disappeared again. It was a desolate, disjointed, half-working and half-loitering life, without any other aim than to gain food and shelter from day to day. He served as pilot on a steamboat trip, then as clerk in a store and a mill; business failing, he was adrift for some time. Being compelled to measure his strength with the chief bully of the neighborhood, and overcoming him, he became a noted person in that muscular community, and won the esteem and friendship of the ruling gang of ruffians to such a degree that, when the Black Hawk ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... under the impulse of 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 ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Mississippi, it suddenly disappeared near Bogue Holauba, cargo and all. No trace of its fate was ever discovered. He haunted these banks then—whatever he may have done since—screaming out his woes for his losses, and his rage and curses on the miscreants who had set the craft adrift—for he fully believed it was done in malice—beating his breast and tearing his hair. The Civil War came on presently, and the man was lost sight of in the national commotions. No one thought of him again till suddenly ...
— The Phantom Of Bogue Holauba - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... granted; but they had no sooner left the shore than they drew their pistols, overpowered the crew, and made them go up eighteen miles to meet another government boat coming down loaded with stores, tied the boats together and burned them, setting the crew of each adrift in their own yawl, and nobody knew it till they reached Memphis, two hours later. Being able to hear nothing of the wounded, we pushed on to Helena, ninety miles below, and here dangers thickened. We saw the guerrillas burning ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... remained in Sainte Lesse and in Alincourt brought out their chairs and their knitting in the calm, fragrant evening air and remained silent, sadly enraptured while the unseen player at her keyboard aloft in the belfry above set her carillon music adrift under the summer stars—golden harmonies that seemed born in the heavens from which they floated; clear, exquisitely sweet miracles of melody filling the world of darkness with magic ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... The landlord did nothing for them. They built their own mud hovels, planted their hedges, dug their ditches. They were half naked, half starved, utterly destitute of all providence and of all education, liable at any time to be turned adrift from their holdings, ground to the dust by three great burdens—rack-rents, paid not to the landlord but to the middleman; tithes, paid to the clergy—often the absentee clergy—of the church to which they did not belong; and dues, paid to their own ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... when I stood in the pillory a maid one day brought the child to the foot of the platform, lifted it up in her arms and said: 'Your father put that villain there.' That woman was sister to one of the dogs we'd set adrift. The child stared at me hard, and I looked at her, though my eyes were a little the worse for wear, so that she cried out in great fright—the sweet innocent! and then the wench took her away. When she saw my face to-night—to-day—it sent her ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... get away, even last night, at the hour when we turned him adrift," Darrin contended. "A man might have gone a quarter of a mile, but he couldn't go ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... know it. "I believe you are right," she said, with the air of one convinced against her will; "Julia has voluntarily cut herself adrift from her own class; it would be unpleasant and embarrassing for her as well as for other people to force her into any connection with it again; I don't think any purpose can be served by reopening an acquaintance with Mr. Rawson-Clew, ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... this, for nobody loved him. This was how the world treated Anne Lisbeth's boy, and how could it be otherwise. It was his fate to be beloved by no one. Hitherto he had been a land crab; the land at last cast him adrift. He went to sea in a wretched vessel, and sat at the helm, while the skipper sat over the grog-can. He was dirty and ugly, half-frozen and half-starved; he always looked as if he never had enough to eat, ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... as best he could. It was early in May, and the river was swollen from recent thaws. Below the cataract where the lumbermen worked, the broad, brown current moved slowly along with sluggish whirls and eddies; but the raft was moored by chains to the shore, so that it was in no danger of getting adrift. It was capital fun to see the logs come rushing down the slide, plunging with a tremendous splash into the river, and then bob up like live things after having bumped against the bottom. Little Hans clapped his hands and yelled with delight when a string of three or four came ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... mystery; 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, health ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various |
