"Drift away" Quotes from Famous Books
... two together and took a chance on saying what I did. Now that you know the whole story you can easily see why I am anxious to have the 'Merry Maid' anchored as far from me as possible. If you will cut the rope of the houseboat and let the silly old craft drift away somewhere, the girls will be so busy with getting it back here that by the time they have done that their vacation will be over, and in the hurry of packing they won't have much chance to make a scene. I think my scheme ... — Madge Morton's Secret • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... clerk who half his life had spent Toiling at ledgers in a city grey, Thinking that so his days would drift away With no lance broken in life's tournament: Yet ever 'twixt the books and his bright eyes The gleaming eagles of the legions came, And horsemen, charging under phantom skies, Went thundering past ... — A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... Catholic gentry, and the growing ascendancy of O'Connell and the democratic and sacerdotal party in Irish popular politics. Grattan had long predicted that, if concession was not speedily and wisely made, population in Ireland would drift away from the guiding and moderating influence of property; that seditious and anarchical men would gain an ascendancy which would make the whole problem of Irish Government incalculably difficult; that a priesthood unconnected with ... — Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... bankrupt instead of wealthy. For a city's wealth consists, I imagine, in allies, confidence, loyalty—and of all these you are bankrupt. {67} And because you are indifferent to these advantages, and let them drift away from you, he has become prosperous and powerful, and formidable to all, Hellenes and foreigners alike; while you are deserted and humbled, with a splendid profusion of commodities in your market, and a contemptible lack of all those things with which you should ... — The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes
... on. I fenced, drilled, saw my companions drift away into war, and knew not how to escape. I can now look back on my dismissal from Meeting with more regret than it gave my youth. I have never seen my way to a return to Friends; yet I am still apt to be spoken of as ... — Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... to the 'Monkshaven,' had been cast away as soon as the men had disembarked from her, and there was something melancholy in seeing her slowly drift away to leeward, followed by her oars and various small articles, as if to rejoin the noble ship she had so lately quitted. The latter was now hove-to, under full sail, an occasional puff of smoke alone betraying the presence ... — A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... things from such an enormously different level that conversation on them was merely waste of time. It was as if a man upon a cliff started a dissertation with another in a boat lying on the sea beneath. Half the excellent arguments would drift away upon the wind, lost, rendered nil by the mere difference of level in the two planes. The two main chains that bound my whole psychological system—self-control and self-respect—were entirely absent in him. He looked at his every good action from the point of utility, ... — To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... and was found the next morning a couple of miles down the coast, floating idly about. But the painter was drifting astern, and it might easily have happened that it had been carelessly fastened, and the rope had slipped from the mooring ring and allowed the skiff to drift away. ... — Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... look as he reached forward and lighted his cigarette at the fire. "I was settin' on a crazy bronc', holdin' his head up so he couldn't go to buckin'—outside a little old adobe down in Yuma, Arizona, then," he explained, glancing at the girl. "Did you ever drift away complete, like that, jest from some little old trick ... — Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... Virginia in 1693, and King's College, now Columbia University, chartered by King George II in 1754, on an appeal from the New York Anglicans, alarmed at the growth of religious dissent and the "republican tendencies" of the age. Two colleges revealed a drift away from sectarianism. Brown, established in Rhode Island in 1764, and the Philadelphia Academy, forerunner of the University of Pennsylvania, organized by Benjamin Franklin, reflected the spirit of toleration by giving representation on the ... — History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... it till, on your right, a stir, and another cloud, and another—The caribou, quick, a score of them! But before your rifle is up and you have found the sights, the gray things melt into the gray woods and drift away; and the stalk ... — Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... Centuries drift away, and the giddy, old reprobate—earth, dying a hideous, ghastly death, with but one solitary human to shudder in unison with its last throes, to bask in the last pale rays of a cold sun, to inhale the last breath of a metallic atmosphere; totters, reels, falls into space, and is no more. ... — Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... of a riddle to him, and he let the subject drift away. "Shall we go and sit in the cathedral?" he asked, ... — Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... his stocking feet, he listened again. There were more voices murmuring on the veranda of the hotel now, but within a few moments forms began to drift away down the street, and finally there was silence. Evidently the widow had not secured backing as strong as she could have desired. And Terry went ... — Black Jack • Max Brand
... lads frequently looked at the sky. But the clouds, that had been gathering, appeared to drift away to ... — Dave Porter in the Gold Fields - The Search for the Landslide Mine • Edward Stratemeyer
... But I mustn't drift away from him. I remember so many things that tie us together, here in this strange, stormy city. What happy times we used to have! He'll understand better by and by, ... — The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... were scattered in all directions, with their heads in different ways, some looking homeward again, and some, as if by instinct, keeping still for the south. How it happens I do not know, but on occasions of perfect calm, or such as appear to be perfectly calm, the ships of a fleet generally drift away from one another; so that, at the end of a few hours, the whole circle bounded by the horizon is speckled over with these unmanageable hulks, as they may for the time be considered. It will occasionally happen, indeed, that ... — The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... shoutings from the audience, he became suddenly fearful before the ecstasies which he had touched to life, he faltered, and brought his discourse to an abrupt end. As the crowd slowly quieted and reluctantly began to drift away there flashed on him with blinding suddenness the realization that his excitement had been as great as their own; for a moment he wondered if such passion were godly. Only for a moment, however, of course it was godly, as any rapture informed by religion must be. He was sorry he had lost ... — O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... the loss of a boat may cause anger and, even if well disposed to the cause, they might not receive you well. However, I shall tie the boat up on the opposite bank when I leave it, so that it will not drift away down the river; and when they see it in the morning, they will only have to send another boat across ... — No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... time to come up with the head of the column. Nevertheless, an attempt is made to cross the torrent by means of a few bits of gravel projecting above the water; then, failing to find bottom, the more reckless of the Ants are swept off their feet and, without loosing hold of their prizes, drift away, land on some shoal, regain the bank and renew their search for a ford. A few straws borne on the waters stop and become so many shaky bridges on which the Ants climb. Dry olive-leaves are converted into rafts, each with its ... — The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... seem strange not to be on the team this year, Miriam?" asked Grace. "That is, when one stops to think about it. It never occurred to me until this moment how much I have missed basketball. Mabel Ashe said that we'd just simply drift away from it this year, and so we have. Now we are going to ... — Grace Harlowe's Third Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... they are a small percentage, and without conceit I regard myself as no bigger a fool than the average male. Not knowing what else to say, I tell her also that it is a warm evening. She smiles archly as though there were some hidden witticism in the remark, and I drift away, feeling ashamed of myself. To talk as an idiot when you ARE an idiot brings no discomfort; to behave as an idiot when you have sufficient sense to know it, is painful. I hide myself in the crowd, and perhaps I'll meet a woman I was introduced to three weeks ... — The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... his mates said nothing more at the time, however. They all made their way to the stables, kicked the drift away from the door, and got the horses into their stalls. They all went inside out of the storm and closed the doors against the driving snow. In five minutes, when the animals were made secure and fed, and they ... — Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson
... ascertaining, on a closer view, that their expected income of fifty thousand dollars a year is farther off than they anticipated, and that fifty thousand cents is about as much as they can expect for a good many years to come, drift away into other employments, and some of them, no doubt, will be much astonished to learn from the newspaper reporters what they ... — The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... downcast. They did not seem apprehensive that Folly Bay would get salmon for forty cents. MacRae had said he would still buy. For them that settled it. They would not have to sell their catch to Folly Bay for whatever price Gower cared to set. Presently they began to drift away to their boats, to bed, for their work began in that gray hour between dawn and sunrise when the schooling salmon best strike ... — Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... product.' 'Where do you teach?' said I. 'In the State prison' he said. A few years ago seventy-five per cent. of the inmates of the Minnesota State prison were boys who had once been in Sunday School and had been permitted to drift away. The later teen age, sixteen to twenty, is the criminal period. It is an appalling thing that 12,000 children were brought before the courts of New York in 1909, and in the same year more than 15,000 boys and girls suffered ... — The Personal Touch • J. Wilbur Chapman
... me"; and "Dixieland" ... Sing slowly ... now the chorus ... one by one We hear them, drink them; till the concert's done. Silent, I watch the shadowy mass of soldiers stand. Silent, they drift away, over the glimmering sand. ... — The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon
... responsibility. He answers with a paradox of conscious power, which commands a seeming impossibility, and therein prophesies endowment that will make it possible. Has not the Church ever since been but too often faithless enough to let the multitudes drift away to 'the cities and villages round about,' and there, amid human remedies for their sore needs, 'buy themselves,' with much expenditure, a scanty provision? Are we not all tempted to shuffle off responsibility for the world's hunger? Do we not often think that our resources ... — Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... in it—I never felt in better health. So I asked him to go up to New York, or visit somewhere for a while, and let me stay here until my baby is born. Does that seem so very unreasonable? It does not to me, but poor Aunt Varina is in agony about it—I am letting my husband drift away from ... — Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... started to high school in Fallon, making the long daily ride to and from town on horseback. He was a good pupil and the hours he spent with his lessons were precious; they made the farm drift away. To his mind, which was opening like a bud, it seemed that history was the recorded romance of men who were everything but farmers. School books told fascinating stories of conquerors, soldiers, inventors, writers, engineers, kings, statesmen and orators. He would sit ... — Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... large room, watching every movement, every figure intently until prevented by physical pain which produced a sense of utter isolation. His perceptions were now concentrated in his chest, the source of all his suffering. Gradually, very gradually, he began to drift away from life. When now he saw something, it seemed to him strange and meaningless. The last fight between life and death had begun; it filled his whole being; it created a new world, strange and lonely, ... — Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... obtaining food to sustain life till I could find them? All these were questions which I asked myself, but to which I could give no satisfactory answer. Scarcely had I reached the shore than my raft, which I had not secured to it, began to drift away. Onward it went down the stream. I could not recover it; so a very natural impulse made me follow its course along the banks. I ran on for two or three hundred yards, when I arrived at the edge of a roaring cataract, some forty feet deep at least. First, there was ... — Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... the children. The church spends its money for adults; it compasses sea and land to make one proselyte and coerce him back in old age, and allows the many that already as children are its own to drift away. It often fails to see that if it is to grow lives it must grow them in the growing period. There still remain many churches that must be converted from the selfishness of adult ministry and entertainment to self-giving service for the ... — Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... take a "specimen day." It is early morning, or to be more precise, about eight of the clock, and the white fog is just beginning to curl and drift away from the surface of the river. Sooner than this it would be idle to go out. The preternaturally early bird in his greedy haste may catch the worm; but the salmon never take the fly until the fog ... — Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... on the right track, Queenie?" he said, addressing his animal, as was his custom when they were alone. "It would be strange if we didn't drift away from our bearings. Hello! that can't be Dick Hawkridge's ranch; we haven't gone far enough for that; but what the mischief can it be, unless a fire that some one has started in ... — Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... whispered to me: 'We are not fastened; those men did not attach the rope; and we may drift away from him, perhaps across the river, and so lose him. Is it too far for ... — John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... were shaken in his struggle against the unseen foe, and he had spoken to her querulously, almost sharply. Yet in her tears there was no reproach for him, rather for herself—the fear that she might lose her influence over him, that she could not keep him close to her heart, that he might drift away from her in the commonplaces and monotony of work and domestic life. Everything so depended on her being to him not only the one woman for whom he cared, but the woman without whom he could ... — Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... the scanner screen on the control deck of the rocket cruiser Polaris, Captain Steve Strong replaced the microphone in its slot and watched a bulky figure in a space suit step out of the air lock and drift away from the side of the ship. Behind him, five boys, all dressed in the vivid blue uniforms of the Space Cadet Corps, strained forward to watch the lone figure adjust the nozzles of the jet unit on the back of his ... — The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... you learn, Dorothy.' 'Yes, Sir,' quoth I, when he stayed. He turned him around, and looked in my face with his dark eyes, that seemed to burn into me, and he saith, 'Learn this, Dorothy,—that 'tis the easiest thing in all the world for a man to drift away from God. Ay, or a woman either. You may do it, and never know that you have done it,—for a while, at least. David was two full years ere he found it out. Oh Dorothy, take warning! I was once as innocent as you are. I have drifted from God, oh my child, how far! The ... — The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... to drift away from mine. A touch of her new seriousness returned. She pointed to ... — The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... his company—for he did all the talking. We fell together, as modest people will, in the tail of the herd that was being shown through, and he at once began to say things which interested me. As he talked along, softly, pleasantly, flowingly, he seemed to drift away imperceptibly out of this world and time, and into some remote era and old forgotten country; and so he gradually wove such a spell about me that I seemed to move among the specters and shadows and dust and ... — Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... with yonder broken fragment of a flag-staff; its truck is still remaining, though the flag is gone, and every nation might claim it. As you stir, the burning brands evince a remembrance of their sea-lost life, the sparks drift away like foam-flakes, the flames wave and flap like sails, and the wail of the chimney sings a second shipwreck. As the tiny scintillations gleam and scatter and vanish in the soot of the chimney-wall, instead of "There goes the parson, and there goes ... — Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... the pity of it, Edith brushed away a tear or two. She was not at all sleepy, but drew the blanket closer around her, for the night grew chill as the earth swept farther and farther away from the sun. The clouds had begun to drift away, and faintly, through the shadow, glimmered one pale star. Gradually, others came out, then a white and ghostly moon, with a veil of cloud about it, ... — Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... plied me with foolish questions which I had better sense than to try to answer with the slightest degree of truth. But their power of sustained interest in such weighty matters was not great and soon the conversation would drift away, especially if Marguerite was about, when the talk would turn to ... — City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... days," said she to her venerable maid Hannah, who had helped her dress for her parties fifty years before. She had given up society little by little. Her friends had died, or she had allowed herself to drift away from them, while the acquaintances from whom she might have filled their places were only acquaintances still. She was the last of her own family, and, for years before her father died, he had lived mainly in his library, avoiding society and ... — An Arrow in a Sunbeam - and Other Tales • Various
... walls of black granite, and its river bright with the sheen of broken waters. Then a gust of wind sweeps down a side gulch and, making a rift in the clouds, reveals the blue heavens, and a stream of sunlight pours in. Then the clouds drift away into the distance, and hang around crags and peaks and pinnacles and towers and walls, and cover them with a mantle that lifts from time to time and sets them all in sharp relief. Then baby clouds creep ... — Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... to the landing-stage, putting on his red glasses as he went. His horror was complete when he found there was no craft of any kind about, not even a rowboat. Alas! I had idiotically allowed the dinghy to drift away. He ran along the shore, every now and then looking anxiously through his binoculars for any sign of any kind of boat that would get him over to Glasnabinnie in time to fulfil his promise of looking after "Ron's ... — The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... the Pacific coast. Settlers straggled in slowly until, in the late fifties, the discovery of rich placer gold on the Fraser and later in the Cariboo brought tens of thousands of miners from Australia and California, only to drift away again almost as quickly when ... — The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... awful process of "bearing on," the Talentless One shot out into the dark, as if pushed by a heavy hand. How long it was before she came back into the light she did not know—it seemed to be a point of light that pricked her eyes. She shut them against it, and longed to drift away again; the dark ... — Four Girls and a Compact • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... have I cursed thee, good friend, who staked thy life in the angry bore to snatch two spent bodies from its merciless tossing. It was not to be endured, said you, that the remains of the Lady of Savenaye should drift away unheeded, to be devoured by the beasts of the sea! They now repose in sacred ground, and I live on! Oh, hadst thou but reached us a minute later!—ah, God, or a ... — The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... on the Earth have labored. Yet of science you know less than a child. What should I do with Earth except to sit here in my own room, and, with the anarcostic ray, reduce its solid structure into stardust which will drift away into space like the smoke from one ... — The Winged Men of Orcon - A Complete Novelette • David R. Sparks
... to be if he is afraid of it," returned Bob in the same low tone. "You can be afraid of any fancy if you want to. It doesn't need to exist. I guess most fears are of things that don't really exist Come on, now. Let me shovel this drift away." ... — Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp • Alice B. Emerson
... They drift away. Ah, God! they drift for ever. I watch the stream sweep onward to the sea, Like some old battered buoy upon a roaring river, Round whom the tide-waifs hang—then ... — Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... right up to the land. Wild and Kennedy, walking several miles towards the land, estimated that it was about twenty-five miles distant. As the surface over which they travelled was traversed by cracks and liable to drift away to sea, all projects of landing there had to be abandoned; furthermore, it was discovered that the ice-tongue, alongside of which the ship lay, was a huge iceberg. A landing on it had been contemplated, but was now ... — The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... stress the importance of one thing to you, Kensington: you're too important for us to lose at this juncture, with your knowledge of the original work done. That house at the end of your exit will have a dozen or so of our men in it, waiting to drift away one by one, but you can't afford to worry about them. I want you to get in that groundcar, alone, and ... — Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... one price. The man who should fix a higher price on his portion of the supply would be passed by in favor of other sellers who were disposing of their final increments, and his business would quietly drift away from him. There cannot be two prices for one commodity in the same market at the same time. This fact is fundamental. Even the monopoly is able to get different prices for different parts of its output ... — Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... house, sit in his chair, drink from his glass. It wrought a change in all his nature; everything that went to make up his daily life—wife, business, the methodical prudence of the small bourgeois—seemed suddenly to become unstable and drift away from him. And he shut himself up in his house and barricaded it, he paced the empty apartments with the restless impatience of a caged wild beast, going from room to room to make sure that all the doors and windows were securely ... — The Downfall • Emile Zola
... toward the front of the room to stare at the man whom Jesus had healed. After a while, they began to drift away, talking excitedly. Philip did not push forward with the curious crowd but stood staring at Jesus. Even after the people had all gone, he continued to gaze wonderingly at Jesus. He could hardly believe his eyes: The man who had been so violent now ... — Men Called Him Master • Elwyn Allen Smith
... unless you rode a cow and shot at a goat," Flint answered, and was rather relieved to have the conversation drift away on to the comparative merits, as hunting-grounds, of the different sections of the country. The subject was not specially exciting to Flint; but it was at least impersonal, and he felt an unaccountable aversion to hearing any further ... — Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... see through't," murmured Junkie, after watching for some time. "See! he has hooked another. Ye see, Tonal', it must be lettin' the hook drift away down under the ledges that does ... — The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... long until the people began to drift away from God, to substitute outward form for inward experience, and penance for faith. Heresies sprang up. Men lost sight of the church of God, and began to form creeds, and to build up man-made institutions. The first creed was formed ... — Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole
... the evening, and for many a day, the picture remained in his mind. Even when he wrote the story that is told in these pages, he could never find words to express the utter loneliness of that life, as it seemed to drift away past the sun-touched ripples of water into that vast, ... — That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... edge, for it was evident the people did not care to go too near to the dangerous place. There was a row of thick bushes which concealed the gulf below, and as they approached these bushes the rain abruptly ceased, and the clouds began to break and drift away in the sky. "Two of you seize the girl and throw her over," said Tourmaline in a calm, matter-of-fact way, "and two others must throw the boy over. It may take four, perhaps, to lift the ... — Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum
... had reached the cigarette and coffee stage of the proceedings that she allowed a small, well-considered sigh to escape her and drift away into the silence that had fallen between them. Storran glanced across at her ... — The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... it were, to drift away from me. But I was more and more beset by the thought of the higher duties that laid their claims ... — Little Eyolf • Henrik Ibsen
... afraid that we should drift away into a discussion of realism in Art. So, to recall the conversation to the point at issue, I ... — The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... my Rose, good-bye; The wind is up; so; drift away. That songs from me as leaves from thee may fly, ... — Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... attend. I will. I will," she whispered to herself, a hand pressed to each temple to constrain her mind. And for five minutes she would attend, and then she would drift away on a sea of pleasant indolence, and time fluttered away from her like an escaping bird, and she knew herself for a light woman who would never excel. And Kay's brown head was bent over his book, and raised sometimes to chaff or talk, and bent over his books again, the thread of his attention unbroken ... — Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... room with the oak tree before the window, and father's picture upon the wall at the foot of the bed. I thought it was mother when she came in, and it was the touch of mother's hand that fell so soft and tender upon my temple, soothing the hot pain. Gradually the mists seemed to drift away, and I saw ... — Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... reflection, and it is an error to believe that idea is colourless. That countenance was evidently the surface of a strange inner state, the result of a composition of contradictions, some tending to drift away in good, others in evil, and to an observer it was the revelation of one who was less and more than human—capable of falling below the scale of the tiger, or of rising above that of man. Such chaotic souls exist. There was something inscrutable in that face. Its secret reached the ... — The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... brutes where we found them and allowed them to drift away with the current. Occasionally however we wanted a piece of hide, and then tried to retrieve them. One such occasion showed very vividly the tenacity of life and the primitive nervous systems ... — The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... graceful and golden than her sisters. The woods receded from it on every hand, leaving it lying in a pool of amber sunshine. The yellow trees were mirrored in the placid stream, with now and then a leaf falling on the water, mayhap to drift away and be used, as Uncle Blair suggested, by some adventurous wood sprite who had it in mind to fare forth to some far-off, legendary region where all the brooks ran into ... — The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... weeks of Maxime Valois' stay at Lagunitas drift away. Old "Kaintuck" has plead in vain to go. He yields to Valois' orders not to dream of going with him. His martial heart is fired, but some one must watch the home. Padre Francois Ribaut has all ... — The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... forgot himself. His eyes were half-closed, his thoughts seemed to have wandered into the strangest places. As his allegory proceeded, he seemed to drift away from all knowledge of his immediate surroundings. He chose his words always with the most exquisite and precise care. They listened, entranced. Then suddenly he stopped ... — A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... her own way she thought that maybe after awhile that the big, big violet might drift away, away, and great grown people might say, "No, Bessie Bell, there never was a violet in all the world ... — Somebody's Little Girl • Martha Young
... great plumes of rocket smoke, and bringing food and fuel to its crew. And presently one of those panting small ships would refill its fuel tanks to the bursting point from the fuel other ships had brought—and yet the ship would have no weight. So it would drift away from the greater floating thing in space, and suddenly its rockets would spout flame and fumes, and it would head triumphantly out and away from Earth. And it would be the first vessel ever to ... — Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... of the Stewart cark and moil! Pretender, Chevalier de St. George, or uncrowned king—let it drift away like ... — Foes • Mary Johnston
... he had been planning something like this, and then to have it taste like stale wine! Vaguely he knew that he had made a discovery. The girl! If he were poring over his chart, his glance would drift away; if he were reading, the printed page had a peculiar way of vanishing. Of course it was all nonsense. But that night in Shanghai something had drawn him irresistibly to young Cleigh's table. It might have been the colour of her hair. At any rate, he hadn't noticed the beads until he ... — The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... driven out—the village that used to come as one man to the reaping. Machinery has not altered the earth, but it has altered the conditions of men's lives, and as work decreases, so men decrease. Some go the cities, some emigrate; the young men drift away, and there is none of that home life that there used to be. They are going to try to re-settle our land by altering the laws. Most certainly the laws ought to be altered, and must be altered, still it is evident to any one of dispassionate thought, ... — Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies |