"Drifting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a landscape rose 470 More wild and waste and desolate than where The white bear, drifting on a field of ice, Howls to her sundered cubs with piteous rage And ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... she felt so weak and broken-down that she was obliged to go to bed and remain there for several days. On January 29th the unfortunate lady had risen, and was sitting near the window which overlooked the deserted rue des Menetriers, where clouds of snow were drifting before the wind. Who can guess the sad thoughts which may have possessed her?—all around dark, cold, and silent, tending to produce painful depression and involuntary dread. To escape the gloomy ideas which besieged her, her mind went back to the smiling times of her youth and ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... agree with the Protector. In 1657 Cromwell was given still higher powers, but in 1658 he died. His son, Richard Cromwell, was installed as Protector. The republican government had, however, been gradually drifting back toward the old royal form and spirit, so when the new Lord Protector proved to be unequal to the position, when the army became rebellious again, and the country threatened to fall into anarchy, Monk, an influential general, brought about the reassembling of the Long Parliament, ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... just what it was that aroused him; perhaps it was a premonition of danger, perhaps the rocking of the boat. At any rate he was suddenly broad awake to find himself drifting out into the middle of the stream. In some way the boat must have become unfastened and the rising breeze carried it away from shore. Not that it mattered very much now. The thing that was of consequence was that he was helplessly drifting ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... great chamber, keeping just a sufficiency of presence of mind to join a knot of idlers who were drifting leisurely towards the corridors. He followed in their wake and soon found himself in the long Galerie des Prisonniers, along the flagstones of which two days ago de Batz had followed his guide ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... nothing fretful about me any more; I feel harmonized, as if I were so much a part of the light and the air and the forest that I don't know now where they leave off and I begin. I sit and watch the fine-weather clouds drifting slowly across the tree-tops, and wonder if heaven is any better. I go down to the edge of the Haff, and lie on my face in the long grass, and push up my sleeves, and slowly stir the shallow golden water about among the rushes. I pick wild strawberries to eat with my ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... us, While lovely, and dispiteous! Ah, nights of flying scud and rout When scared the slim young moon rides out In her lagoon of open sky, Or older, marks your revelry As calm and large she oars above Your drifting lives of ruth or love. Boon were those nights of dusted gold And glint of fireflies! Boon the cold And witching frost! All's one, all's one To thee, whose nights and days go on Now in one span of changeless dusk On ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... found the conversation drifting round to botany, about which he knew little and cared less. Once more his hopes were raised only to be frustrated. He was sitting besides Mrs. Fane-Smith and Erica, and had managed to stem the tide of the botany. The ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... somewhat spiritually confused and physically broken young man that he gave up his studies and returned to his home at Randrup. His brothers were already well started upon their conspicuously successful careers, while he was still drifting, confused and uncertain, a failure, as some no doubt would call him. His good stepfather, nevertheless, received him with the utmost kindness. If he harbored any disappointment in him, he does not appear to have shown it. His stepson remained with him for about a year, assisting him with ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... difficult to avoid either of these two extremes, it will not do to refuse to choose at all, and leave things to chance. We drift into many of our connections with men, but the art of seamanship is tested by sailing not by drifting. The subject of the choice of friendship is not advanced much by just letting them choose us. That is to become the victim, not the master of our circumstances. And while it is true that we are acted on as much as we act, and are ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... palings, Leavitt's Malay servant maintained an aloof and mysterious existence. I sat down beside Miss Stanleigh on the veranda steps to find my hands sooty from the touch of the boards. A fine volcanic ash was evidently drifting in the air and now to my ear, attuned to the profound stillness, the wind bore a ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... abroad. He wrote a prose romance, The Pilgrims of the Great St. Bernard, and several books of poetry, including The New Pastoral, The House by the Sea, Sylvia, and A Summer Story. Some of the shorter pieces included in these, e.g., "Sheridan's Ride," "Drifting," and "The ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... worth considering. Always the chill winds shaved the barren land from the north, or veered unexpectedly, and blew dry warmth from the southwest; but never the snow for which the land yearned. Wind, and bright sunlight, and more wind, and hypocritical, drifting clouds, and more sun; lean cattle walking, walking, up-hill and down coulee, nose to the dry ground, snipping the stray tufts where should be a woolly carpet of sweet, ripened grasses, eating wildrose bushes level with the sod, and wishing there was only an abundance even of them; drifting ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... sad defection to Adonijah of such tried friends as Joab and Abiathar has its lesson. The reason for Joab's treachery is plain. He had been steadily drifting away from David for years. His fierce temper could not brook the king's displeasure on account of his murders of Abner and Amasa, and his slaying of Absalom had made the breach irreparable. No doubt, David had made him feel ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... that the Swedes are drifting away from old customs and are becoming modernized. The French influence seems to prevail, and modern Swedish life is becoming an imitation of that ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... gliding fog-bank as a snake is drawn from the hole, They bellow one to the other, the frighted ship-bells toll, For day is a drifting terror till I raise the shroud with my breath, And they see strange bows above them and the two ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... end to which the notes were drifting. Instead of answering his question, I entreated him to enter into the explanations that were still wanting to convince my own mind. He held up a warning forefinger, ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... weather-beaten, or ragged. Occasionally one was to be seen in heavy beery slumber under the hedgerow, or lying on the grass smoking lazily, or with painful thrift cobbling up a hole in a garment. Such as these were drifting in early that they might be on the ground when pickers were wanted. They were the forerunners of the ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... dullness, as also love of finery and joy in receiving presents, are the principal motives that lead girls into illegal relations. And what I want to make plain is this: a characterless girl, irresponsible, without care for the future, drifting, snatching at pleasure, taking the easiest course—this is the girl who bears a child illegitimately and this is the girl incapable of becoming ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... of Manhattan came to the rescue in battalions, and Geraldine was soon afoot, once more drifting ecstatically among the splendours of the shops, thrilling with the nearness of the day that should set her free among unnumbered ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... trimmer, or would seek a party in power simply for the spoils in sight, but because he had the breadth and liberality of enlightened opinions, the prophetic instinct, and the force of character to make things go his way, without drifting into success by a fortunate turn in tide and wind. He was not a mere day-dreamer, a theorist, a philosopher, a scholar, although he possessed the gifts of each. He was, rather, a man of action—self-willed, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... with callers, correspondence, and the routine details of the office, and have not therefore tried to keep abreast of the currents of opinion on any of the issues. My notion is that the true contest is to be between inflation and a sound currency. The Democrats are again drifting all to the wrong side. We need not divide on details, ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... thoughts were as they silently stood there. For some reason when they started to go down the hill they were not so jolly as when going up. Their course was directed to the east, but just why no one knew. It seemed as though they were simply drifting, each with his own thoughts; but ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... pyramid of roaring, blazing fire, sweeping upward in great fan-like rifts, then blowing outward, horizontally across the deep, as if greedy for the poor beings who had sprung in agony from its embrace. Millions of sparks were floating and drifting overhead and falling all around. The shrieks of the despairing passengers, as with their clothes all aflame they sprung blindly into the ocean, could be heard by our friends, and must indeed have ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis
... squadron, which had engaged the forts in a most brilliant fashion, was passing out the Bouvet was blown up by a drifting mine and sank in less than three minutes, carrying with her most of her crew. At 2.36 P.M. the relief battleships renewed the attack on the forts, which again opened fire. The Turks were now sending mines down with the current. ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... had become suddenly absorbed as his brother paused, his gaze once more drifting away beyond the river. Finally, Charlie turned back ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... oldest daughter would leave the other girls alone! Here she was planning a row with Deborah over whether poor young George should be allowed to play with rats! It was all so silly!... Yes, his three children were drifting apart, each one of them going her separate way. And he rather took comfort in the thought, for at least it would stop their wrangling. But again he pulled himself up with a jerk. No, certainly Judith would not have liked this. If she'd ever stood for anything, it was for keeping the family together. ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... poured in an awful fire that raked her fore and aft. In a few minutes, her bowsprit was cut to shivers; her foremast was splintered and tottering; her main-yard broken up; her mizen-mast entirely carried away, and drifting under her counter; her bows riddled with shot; and her upper decks strewn with dead and dying. Only about half a dozen of her guns could be brought to bear, and although the crew made every possible attempt to manoeuvre the ship, so as to recover ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 457 - Volume 18, New Series, October 2, 1852 • Various
... with their tangled elf-locks, still peer out of the drifting sand—the twisted bodies in their sea armour, lie half surrounded by the green waters; but the log hut, and Atven have vanished into the misty shadows of the past. They, and the good old priest, ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... completely, the boy felt a strange dread of the unknown. There was something appalling in the mighty force of the Arctic blizzard that had fallen full upon them. Something ghostly in the silent, motionless figure of the Woman, covered as with a pall, by the drifting snow, and in the shadowy string of dogs faintly seen, from time to time, when a rare lull cleared the air to a dim and misty grayness. Something terrifying in the cruel sting of the bitter wind that cut into the flesh like whip-lashes, ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... peculiar voice, and was so assured of its identity, that she ran out under the awning and looked up and down the platform in front of the station buildings. The rain had ceased, but drops still pattered from the tin roof, and a few stars peeped over the ragged ravelled edge of slowly drifting clouds. By the light of a gas lamp, she saw an old negro man limping away, who held a stick over his shoulder, on which was slung a bundle wrapped in a red handkerchief; and while she stood watching, he vanished in some cul de sac. With her basket in her hand, and her shawl ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... but the postman would not make a start until next morning. Dorian joined him then, and mounted beside him. The sky was not clear, the clouds only breaking and drifting about as if in doubt whether to go or to stay. The road was heavy, and it was all the two horses could do to draw the light wagon with its small load. Dorian wondered how Carlia had ever come that way. Of course, it had been ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... of that magnitude which Adams ascribes to the Mar Zarak, nor was it precisely in the neighbourhood of Timbuctoo, when I was a resident in South Barbary: rivers, however, which pass through sandy or desert districts, often change their courses in the space of twenty-four hours, by the drifting of the moving sands impelled by the wind; instances of which ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... forty days out from Palos, the ship ran into what is marked upon your maps as the Sargasso Sea. This is a vast meadow of floating seaweed and seagrass in the middle of the Atlantic; it is kept drifting about in the same place by the two great sea currents that flow past it but not ...
— The True Story of Christopher Columbus • Elbridge S. Brooks
... retired to his father's farm at Tantramar. There he devoted himself to Jamie and the farm, but to Jamie especially; and in the summer, partly for amusement, partly for profit, he was accustomed to spend a few weeks in drifting for shad on the wild tides of Chignecto Bay. Wherever he went, Jamie went. If the weather was too rough for Jamie, Captain Joe stayed at home. As for the child, petted without being spoiled, he was growing a tough and manly little soul, and daily more and more the delight ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... emphasising immaculate daintiness, rather than the ready-for-sport note. A sheer blouse and French heels on white pumps will transpose the plain linen skirt into the key of picturesque relaxation, the hall-mark of sun-rooms. More than any other room in the house, the sun-room is for drifting. One cannot imagine writing a cheque there, or going ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... shaft two hundred and ten miles out from New York; we are drifting helplessly in the fog. Send out a tug as soon as possible. We are whistling one long, followed at once by one ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... water, where I could hear the twin harmonies of the sucking of the water into the spout, and the washing of the surge on the foot of the rock. I never passed a more delightful afternoon. Clouds of pearl and amber were slowly drifting across the sky, or resting a while to dream, like me, near the water. Opposite me, at considerable distance, was a line of rock, along which the billows of the advancing tide chased one another, and leaped up exultingly ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... a huge log, and waited while Blake ran up-stream to give help to the coachman. While the two had been battling in the water, the priest had stayed with the coachman to cut the horses free, till at last all four got clear of the wreck, and swam ashore. Then the men followed them, drifting down the current and fighting their way to shore at about ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... about it?" I said, "I embarked on that ship at Tronheim the 27th day of April on a Sunday afternoon at four o'clock, of the year 1881, with 384 other young people who were sailing for England, on our way to America. At nine o'clock we got into an awful snowstorm and just lay drifting until one fifteen a.m., exactly the same time of night as we struck the rock this time. We went on the rock and turned over on the side just outside of the Agness lighthouse." Then the captain said, "What kind of a man are you?" "Just an ordinary ...
— Personal Experiences of S. O. Susag • S. O. Susag
... scarcely do. He'd been there so often recently.... No, that wouldn't do.... Besides it was becoming almost a habit with him. He'd been drifting there so frequently of late!... In fact, he'd scarcely been anywhere at all, recently, except—except where he certainly was not going that evening. And that settled it!... So he might as ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... touched the lower edge of the upper cloud-stratum. It consisted of fine diaphanous vapour drifting swiftly from the westwards. The wind had been steadily rising all this time and it was now blowing a sharp breeze—twenty-eight an hour by my gauge. Already it was very cold, though my altimeter only marked nine thousand. The engines were working ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... boy Who lived somewhere in Illinois, His father was a blacksmith, and His Ma made pies for all the land. The pies were all so very fine That folks who sought them stood in line Before the shop of Dike & Co., 'Mid passing rain, in drifting snow, For fear they'd lose the tasty prize Of "Dike's new patent home-made pies." One day, alas, poor Mrs. Dike, Who with her pies had made the strike, By overwork fell very ill, And all her orders could not fill. So ill was ...
— Andiron Tales • John Kendrick Bangs
... the old battlements. Do men defend them still as we defended them? They are worn a little, the battlements,' and drifting nearer they peered anxiously. 'It is not by the hand of man that they are worn, our battlements. Only the years have done it and indomitable Time. Thy battlements are like the girdle of a maiden, a girdle that is round about her. See now the dew upon them, they are ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... awakened. The number of deuced pretty girls that had been in his life, and in the lives of his pals, was legion. They came and went like feathers dancing on the wind. The mere report of them, therefore, casual and drifting, could not excite his permanent attention, or fix their names and the record of their charms in his somewhat treacherous memory. Lady Holme had not once mentioned the American to him. She was a woman who knew how to be silent, ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... chair slowly. Out of a thousand chances against her, might this one chance be for her,—the chance of her hearing, and being called back to the shores she was drifting from, by this stiff, conventional fellow's voice. There was no knowing the wondrousness of a loving human thing, even when its shackles were loosening themselves ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... could help her. She called upon it fiercely. He was the man whom she had deliberately believed to be guilty of her father's death, the man whom she had set herself to entrap. She brushed all those other thoughts away and banished firmly that dangerous kindness of manner into which she had been drifting. ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... midnight approached, one sound after another died away in the Chateau. Caroline, who had sat counting the hours and watching the spectral moon as it flickered among the drifting clouds, withdrew from the window with a trembling step, like one ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... was drifting close in. His canoe would soon be caught in the current that ran close to shore here and carried toward the river that emptied the waters of Jad-ben-lul into Jad-bal-lul. The under priests were ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... could do it without detection and punishment. And is he not, at this very moment, stealing away from you the life of body and soul? Don't be offended, pray, Mr Oldfield; but I say again, I can't bear to see you drifting on to the rocks, and not lend a helping hand to ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... The raft ripped on a rock in midstream and stuck there at an angle of forty-five degrees. Money, tools, food, and clothing slithered into the tow of the rapids, while the men clung in desperation to the upper railing of the wreck. One man let go and dropped into the water. Swimming and drifting and rolling over and over, he gained the shore, and hurried back to the pass with word of the accident. Friends, accompanied by Indians, came in canoes to the rescue, and, by means of ropes, every man was brought off the wrecked ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... short foliage of the sturdier Scotchman; and down each stem runs a long, fresh scar, and at the bottom (in spring at least), hangs a lip of tin, and a neat earthen pipkin, into which distils turpentine as clear as glass. The trees have mostly been planted within the last fifty years, to keep the drifting sands from being blown away. As timber they are about as valuable as those Jersey cow-cabbage stalks, of which the curious will at times make walking- sticks: but as producers of turpentine they have their use, and ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... turned homeward from the riverside. She heard through the night the sound of the blows, the faint moan and the splash. She ran to the spot, saw the trampled grass, and, looking across the water, saw a bloody face drifting away. She ran to launch a boat, and rowed with all ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... fleet appears to have found the passage very difficult, the dangers of the Channel being aggravated by the strength of the current and bad weather. The Captain, Vesuvius, and Royal William were aground for some time, but were ultimately got off again without much damage; and the Terrible, which was drifting and in great danger, was only brought up by means of an anchor constructed for the occasion by lashing one of the quarter-deck guns to two small anchors. When her large anchors were hauled up they were found to be broken; and so ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... there passes the shadow of a deadly thought. He rises from the fire; he takes the wood back to the boat. His iron strength is shaken, but it still holds out. They are drifting nearer and nearer to the open sea. He can launch the boat without help; he can take the food and the fuel with him. The sleeper on the iceberg is the man who has robbed him of Clara—who has wrecked the ...
— The Frozen Deep • Wilkie Collins
... on even a greater aspect than it had already possessed. I shall not discuss my life, but life with its probabilities and possibilities of power and achievement; life in its earnestness and life that is merely drifting with the tide, of no benefit ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... to the use of the word "drifting" in this connection. It is used absolutely without any intention of slurring the Towne-Halsey system or in the least detracting from ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... run your astonished eye down the damp, water-soaked wooden steps to the moist brick pavement below, and so on to the beds of crocuses blooming beneath the clustering palms and orange trees, before you could realize (in spite of the drifting snow heaped up on the door-steps of her house outside—some of it still on your shoes) that you were in Miss Felicia's tropical garden, attached to Miss Felicia's Geneseo house, and not in the back yard of some old home ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... cherished. Thou art a changed man—but for whose sake? For Argemone's. Is she to be thy god, then? Art thou to live for her, or for the sake of One greater than she? All thine idols are broken—swiftly the desert sands are drifting over them, and covering them in.—All but one—must that, too, be taken ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... her daily walk late in the afternoon. She read miladi to sleep about this time and was sure of an hour to herself. She was feeling the severe drain upon her quite sensibly, and though she longed to throw herself on a couch of moss and study the drifting clouds in the glory of the parting day, when the sun had gone behind the hills and the wake of splendor was paling to softer colors; lavender and pale green, that mingled in an indescribable tint, for which there could be no name. There ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... man they picture thee, Old winter, with a rugged beard as gray As the long moss upon the apple-tree; Blue-lipt, an ice-drop at thy sharp blue nose, Close muffled up, and on thy dreary way Plodding alone through sleet and drifting snows. They should have drawn thee by the high-heapt hearth, Old winter! seated in thy great armed-chair, Watching the children at their Christmas mirth; Or circled by them as thy lips declare Some merry jest, or tale of murder dire, Or troubled spirit ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... Curdie ate there came a change. Clouds had gathered over his head, and seemed drifting about in every direction, as if not 'shepherded by the slow, unwilling wind,' but hunted in all directions by wolfish flaws across the plains of the sky. The sun was going down in a storm of lurid crimson, ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... of reconciliation and the recognition of a common country and that communion of right and interest between all classes and creeds which was the evangel of Wolfe Tone and other northern Protestant patriots in sublimer days. Matters were drifting from bad to worse under the fatal weakness and irresolution of the Government. So little fear had Sir Edward Carson of any penal consequences to himself that he declared, ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... he said. "Under the cold, drifting gray rainclouds the whole semicircle of the horizon was edged by heights on which the German batteries were mounted, three ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... regret. Their appearance is a sign of attention aroused; and when discussion has become general and animated, we may hope to see the gradual emergence of a sound and operative public sentiment. What is to be deprecated and feared is indolent drifting, in wilful blindness to the approaching moment when action must be taken; careless delay to remove fetters, if such there be in the Constitution or in traditional prejudice, which may prevent our seizing ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... The drifting snow-shower fell like a veil between them, the wind whistled, and behind him he could hear the maiden laughing and singing, and the sound ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... Juliet Galt and Emma Carr, the prettiest women in the room, sat together upon a corn-coloured divan, and in front of them a file of men passed and repassed slowly on their way to and from the dining-room, pausing to exchange brief remarks and drifting on aimlessly. Near them a fair, pale gentleman, robust and slightly bald, with protruding eyes and anaemic lips, had flung himself upon a gilded chair, a glass of punch in his hand. He had danced incessantly for hours in the adjoining room, and at last, wearied, winded, with a palpitating ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... anarchists, speaking as trade unionists, fought throughout the congress against political action. A typical declaration was that of Tortellier, when he said: "If only those in favor of political action are admitted to congresses, the Latin races will abandon the congresses. The Italians are drifting away from the idea of political action. Properly organized, the workers can settle their affairs without any intervention on the part of the legislature."[2] Guerard, of the railway workers, holding much the same views, urged the congress to adopt the general ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... Chinatown, for the time was noon and the section was pursuing its midday habit of calm. The padding figures were becoming a trifle obscure, owing to a cold, pale fog that was drifting up from the bay. In a moment the woman reappeared, examined the street again with hostile eyes, held up a square of rice paper, and slowly ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... and lowing and browsing and multiplying over the open moorland beneath the blue sky. This is the prevailing impression of this day: and the symbol of it is the thin, quavering music of the pastoral pipe, following us wherever we go, drifting tremulously and plaintively down from some rock on the hillside, or floating up softly from some hidden valley, where a brown shepherd or goatherd is minding his ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... Every one was eager to get a glimpse of the unknown terrors without from the deck. This was out of the question, so people sat around the tables to listen eagerly to Experience and his wise saws on drifting ships and their prospects. ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... he seemed to be drifting upon literally, for a moment, nauseated John Wollaston. The sweat felt cold upon his forehead. And then, white hot, bracing him like brandy, ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... autumn was beginning, and over his thoughts, raised like a ghost from the ashes of the summer, stole a vague vision of the winter. He saw for a second the driving slant of the snow-storm over the old drifting road, he saw the white slant of Sylvia's house-roof through it. And at the same time a curious, pleasant desire, which might be primitive and coeval with the provident passion of the squirrels and honey-bees, thrilled him. Then he dismissed it bitterly. What need of winter-stores and provisions ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... tower, through the thick plate glass, the three people in the shore boat made out the carroty-topped head and freckled, good-humored, honest, homely face of Eph Somers. The boat lay on the water, under no headway, drifting slightly with the wind-driven ripples. Then Eph raised the man-hole cover of the top of the conning tower, thrusting out his head to ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies • Victor G. Durham
... wretched in the downpour, the scenery completely hidden by the clouds; but towards midday, as we climbed ever higher and higher, we plunged into pine forests where the rain began to thin to mist, veiling the trees with layers of drifting fog. Out of the forests we came—the rain having ceased—into a strange-looking landscape, whose japanesiness is equalled possibly only by Japan itself. There were the queer rounded hills, the gnarled and twisted little pines and dim fir-clad ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... our drills we lay under the young shade on the sweet young grass, with the odors of snowballs and horse-chestnut blooms drifting to us with every whiff of breeze, and amused ourselves with watching the evolutions of our friends of the Massachusetts Eighth, and other less experienced soldiers, as they appeared upon the field. They, too, like ourselves, were going through the transformations. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... my theory," Cameron went on, "that the range of mountains to the north holds gold in large quantities. It is a part of my theory, too, that the drifting ice brought tons of it down to the moraine. If I find any gold here at all, I'll find it in quantities sufficient to clog the ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman
... better luck?" The question burned dully in his brain. "Don't suppose so; there can't be anything alive in this God-awful wilderness." As he stumbled on he found no answer in an unbroken vista of wind-scored ice and drifting snow that, swirling high into the air, momentarily cut off the view of that black line of ice-capped mountains barely visible ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... said, the friends have departed, and the train is moving slowly out of the station; a profusion of flowers, tempting new books, and other gifts are visible proofs of the thoughtfulness of friends on the eve of a long journey in untried fields, and it seems as if I had lost my moorings and was drifting out on ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... a heavy sea and contrary winds was abandoned by her crew, who made for shore in boats. The other two Spanish ships were deserted in similar fashion, whereupon the French, observing this new turn of affairs, re-entered the bay and easily recovered the three drifting vessels. Two of the prizes they burnt, and arming the third sailed away to cruise in the Florida straits, in the route of ships returning from ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... was rolling somewhat heavily, and the splash of the drifting foam reached them occasionally where they stood. There were no other ladies in sight. Suddenly the clear, American voice broke through the man's ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... But it is a pleasure to be indulged in with caution; for one thing, you are certain to come across crocodiles. Now a crocodile drifting down in deep water, or lying asleep with its jaws open on a sand-bank in the sun, is a picturesque adornment to the landscape when you are on the deck of a steamer, and you can write home about it and frighten your relations ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... power, when the prelate presented his project anew; indifferent and debauched, a holder of seventy-six benefices, M. de Tressan dreamed of the cardinal's hat, and aspired to obtain it from the Court of Rome at the cost of a persecution. The government was at that time drifting about, without compass or steersman, from the hands of Madame de Prie to those of Paris-Duverney. Little cared they for the fate of the Reformers. "This castaway of the regency," says M. Lemontey, "was adopted without memorial, without examination, as an act of homage ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... are familiar with the events preceding the first Afghan War (1839-42) can now see that events were fast drifting into a position dangerously like that which led Dost Mohammed to throw himself into the arms of Russia. At that time also the Afghan ruler had sought to gain the best possible terms for himself and his dynasty from the two rivals; and, finding that the Russian promises were far more ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... over the port cat-head, hummed and drummed with an exhilarating note through the taut weather rigging and into the hollows of the straining canvas overhead. The weather was brilliantly fine, the clear, deep azure of the sky merely flecked here and there with a few solemnly drifting puff-balls of trade- cloud, and the ocean of deepest blue sweeping in long, regular, sparkling, snow-capped surges diagonally athwart our bows, from beneath which the flying-fish continually sprang into the air and went flashing away on ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... you follow me," I agreed. "Her coming seems to have steadied us up all round. The changes which we were obliged to make in our manner of living have all been for the better. I am afraid that we were drifting, Allan and I, at any rate into a somewhat objectless sort of existence, and our work was beginning to show the signs of it. The coming of Isobel seems to have changed all that. You, Allan, know that you have never done better work in your life than ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... heels of the reports, they heard a voice shouting: "Scowrers! A lot of them, coming from up the river!" A moment later, there was a light whip-crack of one of the long muzzle-loaders, from the top of the old Carnegie Library, and Altamont could see a wisp of gray-white smoke drifting away from where it had been fired. He jumped to his feet and raced for the radio, picking it up and bringing it to ...
— The Return • H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... and all its traditions to work upon and stores of natural history material. This falling feather began the book which in a few days she had definitely planned and in six months completely written. Her title for it was "The Falling Feather," that tangible thing which came drifting down from Nowhere, just as the boy came, and she has always regretted the change to "Freckles." John Murray publishes a British edition of this book which is even better liked in Ireland and Scotland than ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... a fine prospect was now at an end, but instead we had a compensating spectacle. For thick and fast the clouds came pouring into one chasm after another, drifting in all directions, here a mere transparent veil drawn across the violet hills, there a golden splendour as of some smaller sun shining on a green little world. At one moment the whole vast scene was blurred and blotted with chill winter mist; soon ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... a listless mass, helplessly digesting the product of the tragedy upon the spot of its occurrence, but crawled away slowly through the reeds, and instinctively to the water, into which it slid with scarce a splash, and then went drifting lazily away upon the current toward the sea. It had been years since one of these big water serpents had invaded the river at such a distance from its mouth and never came another up so far. There were causes promoting rapidly the extinction ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... A drifting, April, twilight sky, A wind which blew the puddles dry, And slapped the river into waves That ran and hid among the staves Of an old wharf. A watery light Touched bleak the granite bridge, and white Without the slightest tinge of gold, The city shivered in the ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... merged in the stoutly proven facts. Moreover, if we be adjudged to have succeeded, we have added nothing to Truth itself; no, nor to its outworks. That sacred temple stands complete, firm and glorious from corner-stone to top-stone. We do but sweep away the rubbish at its base; the drifting desert sands that choke its portals. We only serve that cause (a most high privilege), by enlisting a prejudgment in its favour. We propose herein an auxiliary to evidence, not evidence itself; a finger-post to point the way to faith; a little light of reason on its path. The risk is really ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... slowly sped the tiny boat; long gentle strokes touched the water; and presently the oars lay idle in their locks,—they were unconsciously drifting. The water dipped and lapped about the sides; the tender woman's voice across the water stole to them, singing of love; their eyes met—and Mrs. ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... past, sank with a profound echo into the deep recesses of the vast Egyptian tomb. Moonlight and the Hour wove their own mystery; the mystery of a Shadow and a Shape that flitted out like a thin vapor from the very portals of Death's ancient temple, and drifting forward a few paces resolved itself into the visionary fairness of a Woman's form—a Woman whose dark hair fell about her heavily, like the black remnants of a long- buried corpse's wrappings; a Woman whose eyes flashed with an ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... have a warning for thousands and tens of thousands of women who have not yet glimpsed the Gates of Despair, but are drifting towards them and will surely pass through them, as I did, unless they understand the perils that surround and beset ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... raced under the bridges, and at last shot out into the Pool, where a few belated barges were drifting down stream. A number of steamers lay at anchor, some working cargo, others idle. The majority were foreigners, odd-shaped vessels, with funnels like a steam threshing-machine, and gayly ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... gained in a practical school at Troy, George, with, his father, James Ingram, had made many experiments, mostly after business hours; each experiment was numbered and the various results had been carefully noted. Before leaving Harrisville his investigations were all drifting towards great possible changes in the production of iron and steel. He was glad to take this trip to Europe, as it might afford him opportunity to verify or change some of his conclusions. He resolved to use every moment for the ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... winds whistle shrill, And drifting snows each hollow fill, The source of pain and suffering great, So now it is in Wei's poor state, Let us join hands, and leave for aye, My friends and lovers all, 'Tis not a time will brook delay; Things for ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... Through the frayed and drifting edge of the smoke could be seen the frigate and the spars of the privateer; and sticking out of the water, a jagged mizzen—all that was ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... change from restraint to liberty, which is a difficult phase in every life. Will you make it a change from "the rich bounties of constraint" to self-restraint, which is better still; or will you let it be a change to the weak lawlessness of a drifting life? If you would respect yourselves, and be worthy to take part in the great battle between good and evil, make and keep some rules for yourselves. Have a rule about getting up in the morning and (almost equally important) ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... whistle, and to a mocking-bird echoing it; and to the fiddling of grasshoppers, the whispers of trees, the quiet, soft movement of the swamp water. The long thoughts that came to him in the open crossed his mind as clouds cross the sky, idly, moving slowly, breaking up and drifting with the wind. A bee buzzed about a spike of blue lobelia; ants moved up and down the trunk of the oak-tree; birds and butterflies came and went. With his hands under his head, Peter lay so motionless that a great brown water-snake glided upon a branch not ten feet distant, overhanging ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... chopped a space in the ice in which to lay the boat and carried the camp outfit hundreds of feet to shore. In the morning, they chopped the boat out through the new ice and caught the current. Shorty set up the sheet-iron stove in the boat, and over this Stine and Sprague hung through the long, drifting hours. They had surrendered, no longer gave orders, and their one desire was to gain Dawson. Shorty, pessimistic, indefatigable, and joyous, at frequent intervals roared out the three lines of the first four-line stanza of a song he had ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... possession of my office, I gained sufficient money to render me almost entirely independent of my mother. Occasionally I procured an old jacket or trowsers, or a pair of shoes, at the store of an old woman who dealt in everything that could be imagined; and, if ever I picked up oakum or drifting pieces of wood, I used to sell them to old Nanny,—for that was the only name she was known by. My mother, having lost her lodgers by her ill temper and continual quarrelling with her neighbours, had resorted to washing and getting ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat |
