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noun
Drift  n.  
1.
A driving; a violent movement. "The dragon drew him (self) away with drift of his wings."
2.
The act or motion of drifting; the force which impels or drives; an overpowering influence or impulse. "A bad man, being under the drift of any passion, will follow the impulse of it till something interpose."
3.
Course or direction along which anything is driven; setting. "Our drift was south."
4.
The tendency of an act, argument, course of conduct, or the like; object aimed at or intended; intention; hence, also, import or meaning of a sentence or discourse; aim. "He has made the drift of the whole poem a compliment on his country in general." "Now thou knowest my drift."
5.
That which is driven, forced, or urged along; as:
(a)
Anything driven at random. "Some log... a useless drift."
(b)
A mass of matter which has been driven or forced onward together in a body, or thrown together in a heap, etc., esp. by wind or water; as, a drift of snow, of ice, of sand, and the like. "Drifts of rising dust involve the sky." "We got the brig a good bed in the rushing drift (of ice)."
(c)
A drove or flock, as of cattle, sheep, birds. (Obs.) "Cattle coming over the bridge (with their great drift doing much damage to the high ways)."
6.
(Arch.) The horizontal thrust or pressure of an arch or vault upon the abutments. (R.)
7.
(Geol.) A collection of loose earth and rocks, or boulders, which have been distributed over large portions of the earth's surface, especially in latitudes north of forty degrees, by the agency of ice.
8.
In South Africa, a ford in a river.
9.
(Mech.) A slightly tapered tool of steel for enlarging or shaping a hole in metal, by being forced or driven into or through it; a broach.
10.
(Mil.)
(a)
A tool used in driving down compactly the composition contained in a rocket, or like firework.
(b)
A deviation from the line of fire, peculiar to oblong projectiles.
11.
(Mining) A passage driven or cut between shaft and shaft; a driftway; a small subterranean gallery; an adit or tunnel.
12.
(Naut.)
(a)
The distance through which a current flows in a given time.
(b)
The angle which the line of a ship's motion makes with the meridian, in drifting.
(c)
The distance to which a vessel is carried off from her desired course by the wind, currents, or other causes.
(d)
The place in a deep-waisted vessel where the sheer is raised and the rail is cut off, and usually terminated with a scroll, or driftpiece.
(e)
The distance between the two blocks of a tackle.
13.
The difference between the size of a bolt and the hole into which it is driven, or between the circumference of a hoop and that of the mast on which it is to be driven.
14.
(Phys. Geog.) One of the slower movements of oceanic circulation; a general tendency of the water, subject to occasional or frequent diversion or reversal by the wind; as, the easterly drift of the North Pacific.
15.
(Aeronautics) The horizontal component of the pressure of the air on the sustaining surfaces of a flying machine. The lift is the corresponding vertical component, which sustains the machine in the air. Note: Drift is used also either adjectively or as the first part of a compound. See Drift, a.
Drift of the forest (O. Eng. Law), an examination or view of the cattle in a forest, in order to see whose they are, whether they are commonable, and to determine whether or not the forest is surcharged.
continental drift (Geology), the very slow (ca. 1-5 cm per year) movement of the continents and parts of continents relative to each other and to the points of upwelling of magma in the viscous layers beneath the continents; causing, for example, the opening of the South Atlantic Ocean by the movement of Africa and South America away from each other. See also plate tectonics.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Drift" Quotes from Famous Books



... severe when the Selache arrived, but when Dampier went ashore next morning to pick a log from which they could hew a mast the temperature suddenly fell, and that night the drift ice from the river mouth closed in on them. When the late daylight broke the schooner was frozen fast, and they knew it would be several months before she moved again. It was before the gold rush, and in winter Alaska ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss

... illusiveness, and kept his thoughts from too harshly analyzing his situation, and solving the riddle in which he found himself involved. In his present weakness, his mind sympathizing with the sinking down of his physical powers, it was delightful to let all go; to relinquish all control, and let himself drift vaguely into whatever region of improbabilities there exists apart from the dull, common plane of life. Weak, stricken down, given over to influences which had taken possession of him during an interval of insensibility, ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... alone "To drift upon the moonless sea, "A lute, whose leading chord is gone, "A wounded bird that hath but one "Imperfect wing to soar upon, "Are like what ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... with bales of hay. A flock of pigeons sways and wheels in the sky, drops to the roofs, settles with a clatter, sails up into the sky again. Black-headed gulls, in their winter suits of dove-colour and white, walk about the muddy edge of the rising tide, drift on the stream like torn paper, soar and hang in the wind above the bridge, peering this way and that for the fish and bread the Londoners give them; or late in the afternoon wing quiet journeys into ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker

... error of the early, or laissez faire School of Political Economy. It was too much inclined to say to men: 'You are the puppets of certain natural laws. Your own freewill and choice, if they really exist, exist merely as a dangerous disease. All you can do is to submit to the laws, and drift whithersoever they may carry you, for good or evil.' But not less certainly was the same blame to be attached to the French Socialist School. It, though based on a revolt from the Philosophie du neant, philosophie de la misere, as it used to term the ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley

... wrongs I am struck to the quick, Yet with my nobler reason 'gainst my fury Do I take part: the rarer action is In virtue than in vengeance: they being penitent, The sole drift of my purpose doth extend Not ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris

... with none of his schemes, and Acadia was left to drift with the tide, as before. "I shall finish my troubleing your Grace upon the affairs of Nova Scotia with this letter," writes the persevering Shirley. And he proceeds to ask, "as a proper Scheme for better securing the Subjection of the French ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman

... steady, and Amos was so extravagantly encouraging, that we were always in buoyant expectation of rich ore. He would say, "You boys have a wonderful prospect. Keep right on with your work; it is getting richer with every stroke of your pick and you are likely to uncover a million dollar drift any day." ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds

... mental excitement by the criticisms on his Vienna performances that appeared in German papers. He does not weary of telling his friend about them, transcribing portions of them, and complaining of Polish papers which had misrepresented the drift and mistranslated the words of them. I do not wonder at the incorrectness of the Polish reports, for some of these criticisms are written in as uncouth, confused, and vague German as I ever had the misfortune to turn into English. One cannot help thinking, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... came they drift about in a throng, Like autumn leaves blown by the dreary winds. ...
— The Countess Cathleen • William Butler Yeats

... strange; but Life's currents drift us So surely and swiftly on, That we scarcely notice the changes, And how many ...
— Legends and Lyrics: Second Series • Adelaide Anne Procter

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

... four miles distant, now called New Lorette, or Indian Lorette. It was a wild spot, covered with the primitive forest, and seamed by a deep and tortuous ravine, where the St. Charles foams, white as a snow-drift, over the black ledges, and where the sunlight struggles through matted boughs of the pine and fir, to bask for brief moments on the mossy rocks or flash on the hurrying waters. On a plateau beside the torrent, another chapel was built to Our ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman

... into the town again, I came among the shops, and they were emphatically out of the season. The chemist had no boxes of ginger-beer powders, no beautifying sea-side soaps and washes, no attractive scents; nothing but his great goggle-eyed red bottles, looking as if the winds of winter and the drift of the salt-sea had inflamed them. The grocers' hot pickles, Harvey's Sauce, Doctor Kitchener's Zest, Anchovy Paste, Dundee Marmalade, and the whole stock of luxurious helps to appetite, were hybernating somewhere underground. The china-shop had no trifles ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens

... drift, a hundred feet down,' said he, 'that we're workin' on at present, we can hear the picks o' the Bloody Thunder drawin' nearer an' nearer; they'll break through to-morrer ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson

... the watchful Mahommed, who, if he did not understand all that had been said, was in no difficulty as to the drift and meaning ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... as the neighbouring Khor Baraka, periodically flushed by the discharge of the torrential downpours from Abyssinia. Though there is a periodical increase in the flow of the upper waters of the White Nile, yet the effect of this, lower down, is minimised by the dense quantities of vegetable drift, which, combining with the forest of aquatic growth, forms those vast barriers, known by the name of sudd, which not only arrest navigation but are able to dam up large ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport

... last, Mary Turner let herself drift. It seemed to her that she had abandoned herself to fate in that hour when she threw herself into the river. Afterward, without any volition on her part, she had been restored to life, and set within an environment ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana

... waters loose; it is a flood of bees which breaks upward into the air, and becomes a maze of whirling black lines to the eye, and a soft chorus of myriad musical sounds to the ear. This way and that way they drift, now contracting, now expanding, rising, sinking, growing thick about some branch or bush, then dispersing and massing at some other point, till finally they begin to alight in earnest, when in a few moments ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs

... a) are sharp and cutting, while the posterior or palatal teeth (b) are flat (Figure 260). But we meet with no bones of land-animals, nor any terrestrial or fluviatile shells, nor any plants, except sea-weeds, and here and there a piece of drift-wood. All the appearances concur in leading us to conclude that the white chalk was the product of an ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell

... great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving. To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it,—but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor. There is one very sad thing in old friendships, to every mind that is really moving onward. It is this: that one cannot help using his early friends as the seaman uses the log, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various

... interior of the rocks with the old surface of the country by means of vertical or oblique fissures, has been demonstrated in places where it would not otherwise have been suspected, so completely have the upper extremities of these fissures been concealed by superficial drift, while their lower ends, which extended into the roofs of the caves, are ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell

... often to wonder, while living in San Francisco, where the chilling fogs that toward night used to drift in over Lone Mountain and through the Golden Gate came from. I have discovered the laboratory. For the past two weeks we have been sailing continually in a dense, wet, grey cloud of mist, so thick at times as almost to hide the topgallant yards, and so penetrating as to find its ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan

... passage and has a brief skirmish in the kitchen with Wanda, who daily tries to pretend there hadn't been any pudding left over, and then treads heavily back again to her bedroom, and shuts herself in till four o'clock for her Mittagsruhe; and the other boarders drift away one by one, and I run out for a walk to get unstiffened after having practised all the morning, and as I walk I think over what they've been saying, and try to see things from their ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley

... the knoll and all the inside of the stockade had been cleared of timber to build the house, and we could see by the stumps what a fine and lofty grove had been destroyed. Most of the soil had been washed away or buried in drift after the removal of the trees; only where the streamlet ran down from the kettle a thick bed of moss and some ferns and little creeping bushes were still green among the sand. Very close around the stockade—too close ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... a lover, and an eagerness to accept subjection to his will. Such a tendency is certainly normal. To abandon herself to her lover, to be able to rely on his physical strength and mental resourcefulness, to be swept out of herself and beyond the control of her own will, to drift idly in delicious submission to another and stronger will—this is one of the commonest aspirations in a young woman's intimate love-dreams. In our own age these aspirations most often only find their expression in such dreams. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... it won't be any use; I shall drift about the streets, seeking to put heart into myself, but all the while my footsteps will be bearing me nearer and nearer to the recruiting office; and outside the door some girl in the crowd will smile approval or some old fool will pat me on the shoulder and I shall ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome

... be on the inflation side of the question. We must keep our face, our front, firmly in the other direction. "No steps backward," must be something more than unmeaning platform words. "The drift of sentiment among our friends in Ohio," which you inquire about, will depend on the conduct of our leading men. It is for them to see that the right sentiment is steadily upheld. We are in a condition such that firmness and adherence to principle ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard

... was being a little evasive, but she did not seem to notice it. As she took his drift, her relief and happiness were manifest. And he had never noticed before how clear and pretty her eyes were; they were the most honest eyes he had ever seen. She looked at him very steadily as he explained, ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells

... an improvised stew pan. Underneath was piled small bits of dry drift-wood, which a match soon set on fire. In a little while the water in the ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood

... nooks in Poesy's realm they choose, Or barks to drift the smooth, prosaic stream, There Phillis held communion with the Muse, And Chesnutt woke the "Colonel" from his dream! Max Barber, Thompson, Knox and Fortune beam; Great Braithwaite scales the classic mountain heights, And Cooper, like a beacon light, will gleam; While Dunbar, sun-like, ...
— The Sylvan Cabin - A Centenary Ode on the Birth of Lincoln and Other Verse • Edward Smyth Jones

... concentrated her efforts upon the sea, and have maintained a glorious struggle with England, on the sole condition of keeping peace on the Continent. The policy was simple, and the national interest palpable; King Louis XV. and some of his ministers understood this; but they allowed themselves to drift into forgetfulness ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... A fine light yellow drift sand covers hill and dale. It is only where rivers intersect the plain that oases of luxuriant vegetation are formed. The peril of traversing these plains is greatly increased by the movability of the sand and the Medanos. The strong winds raise immense clouds of dust and sand. The ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi

... might return, and return to discover—to own, perhaps, to himself and to her that he did love her, and that only mistaken pride, or her own coldness, or one of the hundred "mistakes" or "perhapses" by which men, so much more than women, allow to drift away from them the happiness they might grasp, had misled and withheld him! No; all was over. Henceforth she must live in her children alone—in the interests of others she must find ...
— Four Ghost Stories • Mrs. Molesworth

... was left to drift down the stream as it would, till it glided gently in among the waving rushes. And then the little sleeves were carefully rolled up, and the little arms were plunged in elbow-deep to get the rushes a good long way down ...
— Through the Looking-Glass • Charles Dodgson, AKA Lewis Carroll

... obvious, however, that the drift of his observations tended to the substitution of himself as the Head of the Government rather than to any change of Departments; and this he did not deny, when Lord Aberdeen pointed out the inference to be drawn ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria

... part of the Bosches and with a reason. We knew that they were ready for another gas attack, for our artillery had burst a tank in the German trenches and the yellow fumes of chlorine gas had been identified. A German gas bag used for getting the wind drift was also brought in to us for examination, showing that the enemy was ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith

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

... knowing why. She seemed grieved at having given me pain and at having in her excitement drawn a picture, the truth of which might be open to suspicion, since it was the work of a woman. I do not know how I answered; for without realizing the drift of all I heard, I set out with her on the high road of sentiment, and we mounted to such lofty heights of feeling that it was impossible to guess what would be the end of our journey. It was fortunate ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac

... of the above story learnt that a policeman had been lost in a snow-drift near this particular barrack. Whether this be the explanation we leave to others: the facts as stated are well vouched for. There is no evidence to support the theory of hallucination, for the apparition was so vivid that the idea of its being other than normal never ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour

... is drawn upward, in rain to descend, Your thoughts drift away and in destiny blend. You cannot escape them; or petty, or great, Or evil, or noble, ...
— Poems of Sentiment • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... Unfortunately the drift of parties was on sectional lines. The whole south had become Democratic, so that a united south, acting in concert with a few members from the north, could control the action of Congress. I believe that a feeling did then prevail with ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... orchids at last. It follows, indeed, almost of necessity that a man who has travelled much, an enthusiast in horticulture, should drift into that branch as years advance. Modesty would be out of place here. I have had successes, and if it please Heaven, I shall win more. But orchid culture is not to be dealt with at the end ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle

... undimmed, indicating that the air was pure, and then descended cautiously, testing each rung as they went. The shaft was not more than fifty feet deep, and they found themselves standing on the bottom and peering off into a drift which had been crudely timbered and had fallen in here and there as the ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton

... Pacific Coast not in connection with our schools, after giving a sketch of work accomplished which could not be tabulated, says: "Socially, intellectually, spiritually, the Chinese mission school does its beneficent work. But everything is made but the means to the spiritual end. The whole drift of the teaching, the songs, the pictures, the Scripture text, is to make known Christ. Every evening's lesson ends with worship. In no year, may I add, have there been so many conversions among the Chinese on this coast as in the ...
— American Missionary, Volume XLII. No. 11. November 1888 • Various

... from her lashing in the waist; and with much difficulty we saved her from being washed overboard. This gale lasted twelve hours, after which we had more moderate weather, intermixed with calms. We frequently hoisted out the boats to try the currents, and in general found a small drift to the W.S.W. We shot many birds; and had, upon the whole, good weather; but as we got near to the land, it came on thick and dirty for several days, till we made the coast of New Zealand in 40 deg. 30' S., having made twenty-four ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr

... The first shock, which her look of the wounded fawn had given him, was over. They had suffered, and made good resolutions, and parted, and now they had met again. And he could not, and would not, think where they might drift to. ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn

... mortal terror,—never going, if it can be avoided, nearer than half a mile, and then always on the leeward side. "They kill the wind," said these people, so that one in passing to windward is liable to be becalmed, and to drift down upon them,—to drift upon them, because there is always a tide setting in toward them. They chill the water, it descends, and other flows in to assume its place. These fears were not wholly groundless. Icebergs sometimes burst their hearts suddenly, with an awful explosion, going into a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various

... was pushed from the landing-place into the middle of the narrow inlet. The tide was ebbing, and with their oars raised out of the water, ready to give way if perceived, they allowed the boat to drift out of one of the narrow channels which formed the entrance of ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat

... resting on consciousness of His love to us, is the true armour. "There is no fear in love." The heart filled with it is strong to resist the pressure of outward disasters, while the empty heart is crushed like a deserted hulk by the grinding collision of the icebergs that drift rudderless on the wild wintry sea of life. Love, too, is the condition of hope. The patience and expectation of the latter must come from the present fruition of the sweetness of the former. Of these fair sisters, Love is the elder as the greater; it is she who bears in her hands ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren

... shot the frail boats. Oars were soon broken on rocks, and new ones had to be made from drift logs. The constant hammering of the boats made them leaky. To calk the seams, the men had to climb thousands of feet to get resin from some stunted pine tree. 20 More than once a boat filled with water in a turbulent passage, but ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell

... told me how to save the point. For weeks they came. Heavy drift-wood was placed in times of peace, so that the sand would be trapped in storm. No one failed me in advice, but the East wind made match-wood of all arrangements.... The high water would wash and weaken the base, and in the heaviness of the rains the bulk of earth above would ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort

... am going to leave this," Mr. Brumley resumed. "I am going up there to London for a time with my boy. Then perhaps we may travel-Germany, Italy, perhaps-in his holidays. It is beginning again, I feel with him. But then even we two must drift apart. I can't deny him a public school sooner or ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... forty sections per mile of track, but whether they had lands to sell or not they were vitally interested in the settlement of the regions through which they ran. Each encouraged immigration and colonization. Their literature, scattered over Europe, was one factor in the heavy drift of population that started after 1878. Six new Western States were created in the ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson

... hillside, I started a stone rolling, which as it went plunging into a hazel thicket, thrust out a deer, whose flight seemed fairly miraculous to me. He appeared to drift along the hillside like a bunch of thistle-down, and I took a singular delight in ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... released. With a loud rumble, for every sound was magnified within the confined space, the rest of the cable was allowed to take charge. It did so promptly, the end of the chain giving the hull a defiant smack as it did so. U75, no longer held by her anchor, began to drift with the tide, scraping dismally over the bed of ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman

... year as Henry Kingsley — 1853 — published a little book of verse in 1864 at Mt. Gambier, S.A., and began to contribute verses to a Melbourne sporting paper in 1866. These were printed anonymously, and attracted some attention; but a collection of his ballads — "Sea Spray and Smoke Drift" — brought very little praise and no profit. Marcus Clarke came to Melbourne in 1864, and soon afterwards began to write for 'The Argus' and other papers. About the same time the presence of R. H. Horne, ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens

... which present themselves to the sight under a multiplicity of shapes and hues, pour in upon him from the external world all at once, and are at first nothing else but lines and colours, without mutual connection, dependence, or contrast, without order or principle, without drift or meaning, and like the wrong side of a piece of tapestry or carpet. By degrees, by the sense of touch, by reaching out the hands, by walking into this maze of colours, by turning round in it, by accepting the principle of perspective, by the various slow teaching ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... hopelessly back to her seat—for she had started up. 'It isn't the father, it's herself. Now that I won't let her drift any longer, she can't bring herself to it. She's honest, anyway, my little Lucy. She won't fall ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... the ship; but after a few hours, when their wounds had been treated, Mr. Atkin insisted on taking the boat in again to learn the Bishop's fate. This time no attack was made upon them; but a canoe was towed out part of the way and then left to drift towards the boat. In it was the dead body of the Bishop tied up in a native mat. How he died no one ever knew, but his face was calm and no anguish seems to have troubled him in the hour of death. 'The placid smile was still on the face: there ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore

... through the Sultana, by Miss Ough and warmly endorsed by Aunt Belle and grunted upon by Uncle Pyke). "Oh, Rosalie, don't be one of us. Don't you see how we are just drifting, drifting? Don't do anything where you'll just drift, Rosalie." ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson

... that had been erected in the village. The tide of emigration was now setting strongly in the direction of Fond du Lac and vicinity, and new settlements were being rapidly formed. The charge, following the general drift of things, extended its boundaries, adding several ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller

... for a few moments, as if she could find no further words to say. Her father, observing her embarrassment, brought back the conversation to its original drift, by inquiring into the nature of the demand which she had intended ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance

... drift of their institution is contrary to that of the wise legislators of all countries, who aimed at improving instincts into morals, and at grafting the virtues on the stock of the natural affections. They, on the contrary, have omitted no pains to eradicate every benevolent and noble propensity ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... world, not only what the motor-bomb could do, but that the motor-bomb did what was done. Before leaving the English Channel the director of Repeller No. 11 had received telegraphic advices from both Europe and America, indicating the general drift of public opinion in regard to the recent sea-fight; and, besides these, many English and continental papers had been brought to him from the ...
— The Great War Syndicate • Frank Stockton

... up with a sort of half smile, as if she suspected some pleasantry of which she had not yet detected the drift. ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman

... commonly called 'morals.' In the summary paraphrase of Aristotle's Ethics which was translated into English from the Italian, and published in 1547, the passage to which both Shakespeare and Bacon refer is not rendered literally, but its general drift is given as a warning that moral philosophy is not a fit subject for study by youths who are naturally passionate and headstrong. Such an interpretation of Aristotle's language is common among sixteenth and seventeenth century writers. Erasmus, in the epistle at the close of his popular Colloquia ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee

... inch and a half diameter, where the ground is looser, though still no opening is perceptible. When we stopped for dinner the squaw (Sacajawea) went out, and after penetrating with a sharp stick the holes of the mice (gophers), near some drift-wood, brought to us a quantity of wild artichokes, which the mice collect and hoard in large numbers. The root is white, of an ovate form, from one to three inches long, and generally of the size of a man's finger, and two, four, and sometimes six roots are attached to a single stalk. Its ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks

... not only upon Milburgh's guilt, but upon Milburgh's willingness to confess his guilt. If the manager agreed to stand sponsor to this lie, he admitted his own peculations, and Tarling, to whom the turn of the conversation had at first been unintelligible, began dimly to see the drift it was taking. ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace

... gloomed, and waited its oncoming. The right of its mighty rain advanced over Katan's ridge; the left of its trailing skirt swept Yadhbul and as-Sitar: Then over Kutaifah's steep the flood of its onset drave, and headlong before its storm the tall trees were borne to ground; And the drift of its waters passed o'er the crags of al-Kanan, and drave forth the white-legged deer from the refuge they sought therein. And Taima—it left not there the stem of a palm aloft, nor ever a tower, save ours, firm built on the living rock. And when first its misty shroud bore down upon Mount ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... do not know what he, so good, so high-minded, saw in me; but certainly he loved me with a true affection. When he avowed it, a strange joy seized me; I felt that now I held in my hand the key of William's destiny. Now I should not lose my hold on him; we could not drift apart in the tide of life. As John's bride, John's wife, there must always be an intimate connection between us. So I yielded with well-feigned tenderness to my lover's suit,—only stipulating, that, as some time must elapse before ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various

... be rich, and we certainly cannot all be great, but we may all be true and faithful as parents, and when a child has such an inheritance he is well started in life. It is because children do not have this that many of them drift. Given a good ancestry it is comparatively easy to draw children to Christ, and even to draw them back when once they have wandered. It is the testimony of rescue mission workers that when they have the privilege of appealing to lost and ruined men in the name ...
— The Personal Touch • J. Wilbur Chapman

... light and heat abound, As though they ne'er had been. Relentless fate! This ruthless law the world's wide ways hath fringed With wreckage of a host of peerless lives; And Saul is numbered 'mongst the broken drift. Saul, though the Lord's anointed, saw not God: But—curse of life! ingratitude prevailed. His faith waxed weak as days of trial came: And when, deserted by his teeming hosts At Gilgal, he the Prophet's priestly ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning

... instruments. Gain in capital estimated per capita would cause relatively more of the labor and more of the fund of capital to betake itself to the group HH'''. The movement toward the upper subgroups which is actually going on is attended by a drift toward this general group. An increase of luxurious consumption and an enlargement of the permanent stock of capital goods ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark

... a bright morning, cold, but with no perceptible wind. The trees were outlined against the blue sky, where there was scarcely a drift of white floating about. The evergreen about the lawns made it look less like winter and here and there a conservatory showed brilliant bloom. How beautiful the town was even in ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... roof of the forest, you see a myriad transparent creatures coming and going in the shaft of light; and even between-whiles, even where there is no incursion of sun-rays into the dark arcade of the wood, you are conscious of a continual drift of insects, an ebb and flow of infinitesimal living things between the trees. Nor are insects the only evil creatures that haunt the forest. For you may plump into a cave among the rocks, and ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson

... they don't. They don't ever seem able to finish up their work. Sometimes I think the right is jest like a river flowin' on in its nateral channel, an' boun' to git to the sea after a while, no matter what happens. The wrong is all them dams, an' san' bars an' snags, and brush an' drift-wood that people an' chance pile up in the way. They do choke up the waters, an' send 'em around in other channels, an' make a heap uv trouble, but by and by them waters git to the sea jest ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler

... silent; for she began to see the drift of this cold examination, and it sent a chill ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various

... Moran, catching the drift of her mind, and feeling proud of the compliment concealed in the harmless query. "But I shall enjoy having him come to you once a week to show you that I have not ...
— Snow on the Headlight - A Story of the Great Burlington Strike • Cy Warman

... looked very near, and the sea, a plain of silvery blue, seemed solid and firm enough to afford me a road across to it. A white mist lay like a huge snow-drift in hazy, broad curves over the Havre Gosselin, with sharp ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton

... to say to that, though his pause gave her opportunity. A sudden surmise as to the drift of that last sentence, silenced her. And it was a surmise that leaped, in the next instant, to full conviction. He was pleading Graham's cause with her! Why? Was it something that had been as near his heart as that, all along? ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster

... increasing steadily, was now whipping the sea into angry breakers that dashed resoundingly against the rocky barrier of the island. To drift within reach of those frightful destroyers would mean the instant annihilation of the Halfmoon and all her company, yet this was precisely what the almost unmanageable hulk was doing at the wheel under the profane direction of Skipper Simms, ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... sprang for their own anchor, while Joe, as soon as he saw the big motor boats drift apart, dropped into the small boat of the "Restless" and rowed swiftly for shore. Hardly had he touched the beach when Powell Seaton, rifle in ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock

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

... come vpon the drift Ice into Island.] They are gulltie of the same crime also who haue found out rauens, pies [Footnote: Magpies.], hares and vultures, all white in Island for it is wel knowen that vultures come very seldome together with the Ise of the sea, vnto vs, as beares ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt

... dirty night, a wet mist blowing landward. There was no moon; only here and there a star pierced the cloud-drift. ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant

... by the way. Some were men whose lives in the past had not been free from the taint of those fierce kinds of crime into which the lawless spirits who dwell on the border-land between civilization and savagery so readily drift. A far larger number had served at different times in those bodies of armed men with which the growing civilization of the border finally puts ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt

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

... carried on in so purely empirical a way. We are deeply impressed with its necessity; we are eager in our efforts, but we are always in the condition of one "whom too great eagerness bewilders." We are ready to drift in any direction on the subject. We adopt every new idea that presents itself. We recognize our errors in one direction, and in our efforts to prevent those we fall into quite as dangerous ones on the other side. More than in any other ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett

... fell very often. It was fortunate for me that I never fell upon the shore ice beneath the cliff, for in many places it was very deep, and I could not see where I trod. When I commenced falling I never knew where I would alight, though I usually brought up in some friendly snow-drift. At last all the Inuits grew so impatient to reach the ships that they left Henry and me to find our way as best we could, and pushed on as rapidly as their better vision and greater familiarity with the country ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder

... of Wednesday the wind blew with extreme violence; drift-wood was frequently seen; the approach to the coast became more dangerous at a time when icebergs are numerous; hence the commander ordered sail to be shortened, and the Forward went on under merely ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... five, who dwell at home, Two wedded, and the rest of age to wed, Are all desirous, when they dance, to wear Raiment new bleach'd; all which is my concern. 80 So spake Nausicaa; for she dared not name Her own glad nuptials to her father's ear, Who, conscious yet of all her drift, replied. I grudge thee neither mules, my child, nor aught That thou canst ask beside. Go, and my train Shall furnish thee a sumpter-carriage forth High-built, strong-wheel'd, and of capacious size. So saying, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer

... expedition into the land of the Greeks and take their revenge for the death of King Omar ben Ennuman and his son Sherkan. So they set out with this intent and after adventures which it were tedious to set out, but the drift of which will appear from what follows, they fell into the hands of Rumzan, King of the Greeks. Next morning, King Rumzan caused Dendan and Kanmakan and their company to be brought before him and seating them at his side, bade spread the tables ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous

... Kalashnikov sternly, and he got on his horse; one half of the gate was opened, and by it lay a high snowdrift. "Well, get on!" shouted Kalashnikov. His little short-legged nag set off, and sank up to its stomach in the drift at once. Kalashnikov was white all over with the snow, and soon vanished from sight ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... leaves one might lie undiscovered a long time. He could hear roaring like that of water at every move of the finder, wallowing nearer and nearer possibly, in his search. Old Fred came generally rooting his way to us in the deep drift with unerring accuracy. ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller

... rounded the next bend in the river, we got the full force of the wind and, with but one engine running, it was a question for a while whether we were going to go on up the river or to drift back down stream. Fortunately, the James narrowed at this point, thus increasing the sweep of the tide that was helping us along, and slowly Gadabout pushed on, slapping down hard on the big ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins

... flashed out in heaven; So these brake bread, and slept till woke the Dawn. Then the Greeks donned their armour: flashed afar Its splendour up to the very firmament. Forth of their gates in one great throng they poured, Like snowflakes thick and fast, which drift adown Heavily from the clouds in winter's cold; So streamed they forth before the wall, and rose Their dread shout: groaned the deep earth ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus

... Gilbert never tried to be extravagant. The whole issue depends upon whether we realise the simple and essential fact that ruggedness is a mode of art like gloominess or extravagance. Some poems ought to be rugged, just as some poems ought to be smooth. When we see a drift of stormy and fantastic clouds at sunset, we do not say that the cloud is beautiful although it is ragged at the edges. When we see a gnarled and sprawling oak, we do not say that it is fine although ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton

... moment around the body of their slain comrade, and then, with hideous yells, resumed the pursuit. The stream was fringed with a dense growth of cotton-wood trees. Colter rushed through them, thus concealed from observation, and seeing near by a large raft of drift timber, he plunged into the water, dived under the raft and fortunately succeeded in getting his head above the water between the logs, where smaller wood covered him to ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott

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

... himself, too, during those first few years. Young and confident, conscious of his power. Drifting would not matter for a while. He could afford to drift. His genius would ripen, he told himself, and time was on his side. So he drifted, very happy and content, ripening. And being overlaid all the time, deeper and thicker, with this intangible, transparent, strong wall, hemming him in, shutting in the gold, just ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte

... Cheney, by a thousand flattering and caressing ways, and by a constant exhibition of sympathy, which to a weak and selfish nature is as pleasing as it is distasteful to the proud and strong. And by this inexhaustible flow of sympathetic feeling, she caused the wife to drift farther and farther away from her husband's influence, and to accuse him of all manner of shortcomings and faults which had not suggested themselves ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... and you tripped and fell down in the snow drift, and oh, grandfather, you ought to have seen him when he got up; he was a sight. But it all ...
— The Christmas Dinner • Shepherd Knapp

... this time Pretoria was so well guarded that it was almost impossible for the wiliest of spies to pass through the sentries unobserved, but, after much cautious inspection, one single unguarded spot had been found, the drift of the Aapies River, over which the S.E. railway bridge passed. This drift, which was about twenty feet wide, was so completely fenced in with a network of barbed wire that it was evidently not considered necessary to place sentinels there. By throwing over their parcels ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt

... had all been ingeniously planned, the minutest incidents and conditions of Hadria's life conspired towards the event that was to decide its drift for ever. ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... "It's a great deal," he answered slowly. "I seem to feel that we shall drift further and further apart if ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss

... in the mother tongue. In the footsteps of these poems, being as it were classic books of antiquity, I have trod; and keeping true step with them as I translated, in the endeavour to preserve their drift, I have taken care to render verses by verses; so that the chronicle of what I shall have to write, being founded upon these, may thus be known, not for a modern fabrication, but for the utterance of antiquity; since this present work promises not a trumpery dazzle of language, but faithful ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... the left!' bawled a Captain till he was hoarse. 'No good! Cease firing, and let it drift away a bit.' ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling



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