Draught

“ A bungler of a draughtsman might reproduce something which would resemble the Temeraire, and granting him the colour sense which the poetic Turner had, he would debauch the most critical into admiration of his failure, but only the most highly-educated of draughtsmen could have caught those graceful sweeps as she parted the waves, and left that creamy furrow behind her. ”

“ THE DOWNDRAUGHT. Side by side with victims, might be placed the kindred species downdraughts, who are only different from the accident of their having friends who will rather be weighed down by them to the very earth—to the grave itself—than permit them to sink by themselves. The downdraught is in reality a victim, and one of the darkest shade, being generally a person totally worthless in character, and abandoned in habits ”

“ Rough, red, and weather beaten, they, at the first glance, showed many a point equally available to a draughtsman or an enemy. Once considered almost impregnable, they are now chiefly valued as a dry and pleasant promenade for the citizens. ”

“ Presently a film of dark smoke appears above one of those remote 'points;' instantly a negro drayman, famous for his quick eye and prodigious voice, lifts up the cry, 'S-t-e- a-m-boat a-comin'!' and the scene changes! The town drunkard stirs, the clerks wake up, a furious clatter of drays follows, every house and store pours out a human contribution, and all in a twinkling the dead town is alive and moving. Drays, carts, men, boys, all go hurrying from many quarters to a common center, the wharf. ”

“ I can hardly think of any human position as worse, if not intended directly as a position of torture. I picture, too, a crowded wharf on a river in a great town, with ships lying alongside. There is a roar of passing drays, a cracking of draymen's whips, a howling of the draymen. There is hot sunshine; there are clouds of dust; and I see several poor fellows wheeling heavy casks in barrows up a narrow plank into a ship. Their faces are red and puffy with the exertion: their hair is dripping. Ah, the summer day is hard upon these poor fellows! ”

“ What fearful tales of hopeless misery, despair, and lingering but welcome death, could those damp, dripping walls tell if they had tongues. The damp sea-air collects in the the roofs of all of them, and falls, year after year, with a steady, unceasing drip, drip, drip, to the paved floor. ”

“ A dray, with eight, ten, or twelve bullocks in it, according, to load, will travel thirty miles a-day. When the folks travel, they take no shelter in a house or hut for the night. When night approaches, they alight, and tie their horses to a stump; they draw down some of the thick branches of the gum-tree, and peel off the bark of a large tree, kindle a fire with a match, or, for want of this, rubbing two sticks together, get up a blaze, and fall to sleep beside it. If the traveller be accompanied by a dray, the tarpauling, is drawn round, and he sleeps beneath it. ”

“ But seest thou not, however, that in this flimsy contrivance, the dear implacable, like a drowning man, catches at a straw to save herself!—A straw shall she find to be the refuge she has resorted to. ”

“ You've heard how when one man has drowned another an invisible stream follows the murderer wherever he goes, and he hears it, hour after hour, month after month, year after year, until suddenly one day it comes on him in a huge flood, and he is found, whether in the road, or in his bed, or at the table, or in the field, drowned, and dead? ”

“ Dredge, drej, n. an instrument for dragging: a drag-net for catching oysters, &c.: a machine for taking up mud or zoological specimens from the bottom of the sea: a floating machine for deepening a harbour or river by gathering up mud from the bottom by means of buckets on an endless chain—also Dredg′er, Dredg′ing-machine′.—v.t. Dredge, to gather with a dredge: to deepen with a dredge. [Conn. with drag.]
Dredge, drej, v.t. to sprinkle flour on meat while roasting.—ns. Dredg′er, Dredge′-box, Dredg′ing-box, a utensil for dredging. ”

“ In the wide moat, run dry with summer droughts Great scarlet poppies lay in drifts and heaps, Like bodies fall'n there in some vain assault. Within, decay and dolor had their court— Dolor, decay, and silence, lords of all. ”

“ If e'er again thou on this place art found, Full fifty years I'll chain thee under ground; The damps of earth shall be thy daily food, All swoln and bloated like a dungeon toad: And when thou shalt be freed, yet thou shalt lie Gasping upon the ground, too faint to fly, And lag below thy fellows in the sky. ”

“ Tarpaulined drays ground along in a long line, monotonously jingling the pots and pannikins slung beneath.
“MEN ON HORSEBACK, WITH SADDLE-BAGS AND PISTOLS.”
217
Here and there a dray had broken down, and the driver was fussing about as angry as a wasp, or smoking in sulky idleness, because he could not get any one to stop to help him right his cargo. Every public was crammed with rowdy-looking, bronzed, bearded fellows, shouting for nobblers, spiders, and stone-fences. ”

“ Don’t they have to have scows alongside?”
“In the first place, it is n’t mud, at least not much of it. It is mostly sand and gravel, What a suction dredge devours goes into bins in her own hold, then it is taken out to sea and dumped. Do you see how low she is in the water? I guess they have just been waiting for us before putting out to sea to dump their load. I see the other dredge is over at Rockaway Inlet. I ’ll put you aboard this dredge, and by the time I get back from Rockaway, your boat will have dumped its load and returned.” ”

“ When domesticity, for instance, is called drudgery, all the difficulty arises from a double meaning in the word. If drudgery only means dreadfully hard work, I admit the woman drudges in the home, as a man might drudge at the Cathedral of Amiens or drudge behind a gun at Trafalgar. ”

“ Its very power, indeed, gives fatal force to its aberrations; even as the waters of the calmest river, when dammed up or forced from their bed, flood and ruin the country: but the gentle flow and fertilizing influence of the stream are the fit emblems of the instinct, when suffered, undisturbed by force or passion, to follow its own quiet channel. ”

“ The deep river of speculative thought, with all its devious windings, with all its perilous shoals, whirlpools, and cataracts, will flow on for ever; and he must be a rustic, a barbarian indeed, who would loiter on its banks in the vain expectation of beholding the mighty flood at length run dry. ”

“ One can gaze with indifference upon a little stream that trickles through a wall, so long as it is thought to be merely a natural spring of water; but when one is informed that this is the trickling of water through a dike which dams out the raging sea, the sensations are changed to a realizing sense of imminent peril. ”

“ On the drab earth, beaten lifeless by carnage and corruption, drab bodies lay, oozing thin streams of pink blood, which formed dark, mysterious little pools by their sides. Jaws were slack—dark, objectionable caverns in pallid faces. Some men still moaned, or, in a tone into which discouragement had crept, called for help. ”

“ She had let the pressing flood through at last, and it was good to feel it flowing over her, possessing her, sweeping her along with a strength stronger than hers—drenching her, drowning her. It was good to drown in strong, deep waters. ”

“ For them misery stared out of the lightning and starvation rode upon the flood. The roar of water answering the thunder above it was to their ears Earth groaning against the rod, and right well they knew that the pale torrent was drowning those summer labors which represented money and food for the on-coming of the long winter months. ”

“ Especially tragical is the air they have of being forced backward, with averted faces, to their fate. Every pulse of the flood is like the grim stride of a giant, wading huge-kneed to his purpose, with the white teeth of a victim fastened in his neck. ”

“ I'm sorry.' Then came the drayman out of the mill—a nice, considerate, heart-warm, intelligent human being. Oh, yes! we humans know so much more than animals, don't we, fellows? And because the big, patient, kindly dray-horse had, in its restlessness, moved twenty feet from the spot the driver left him at, that creature that is supposed to have known better, just took his whip and licked and lashed that glorious animal, yelling in a frenzy of temper, 'I'll teach you to move, when I leave you! ”

“ The river boundary in summer flood,
The swirling waters as they rush and roar,
Mock at the wearied limbs that reach their banks,
And can no more, although the foe is on them!
Numbers die here; numbers plunge in—and drown. ”

“ Yet on the present occasion the knowledge that he was physically loathed roused in the man a feeling rather of that despair which may be experienced by the drowning at that precise moment when the straw so eagerly clutched has proved itself a straw, and he winced as beneath a shocking blow between the eyes. ”

“ We, doubtless, admit that in forsaking the raft, the minds of those who did so, were greatly agitated, and that the desire of withdrawing themselves from danger, made them forget that a hundred and fifty unfortunate men were going to be abandoned to the most cruel sufferings. We shall relate the facts as we observed them, and as they have been communicated to us, by some of our companions in misfortune. ”

“ Sometimes the danger seemed imminent, for to the loud words and cries of the men a sudden silence would succeed, while floods of water would pour over the sides, and threaten them with instant drowning. ”

“ And the serpent cast out of his mouth water as a flood after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away of the flood. And the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed up the flood which the dragon cast out of his mouth. ”

“ In one of these minor hells every one suffers from intolerable thirst. Through its gloomy confines flows a river whose waters are saturated with salt. The wretches, maddened by the thirst which none may relieve, fling themselves into the briny flood. ”

“ Drouk, Drook, drōōk, v.t. to drench: (Scot.) to duck.—p.adjs. Drouk′it, Drook′it. [Ice. drukna, to be drowned; cf. Dan. drukne.]
Drove, drōv, pa.t. of Drive.—n. a number of cattle, or other animals, driven.—n. Drov′er, one whose occupation is to drive cattle: (Spens.) a boat. [A.S. dráf—drífan, to drive.]
Drow, drow, n. a kind of elves supposed to belong to Shetland, inhabiting caves—also Trow, a variant of troll.
Drow, drow, n. (Scot.) a drizzling mist.
Drown, drown, v.t. to drench or sink in water: to kill by placing under water: to overpower: to extinguish.—v.t. to be suffocated in water. ”

“ And he'd go fetch her next the drake, drake, drake.
The drake had gone to sail,
With his nice curly tail,
The little man made it his mark, mark, mark.
But he let off his gun,
And he fired too soon,
So the drake flew away with a quack, quack, quack.
[83]
Three little kittens, they lost their mittens,
And they began to cry,
O mother dear,
We very much fear,
That we have lost our mittens.
Lost your mittens! ”

“ It oozes from field to drain, it trickles from drain to ditch, it falls from ditch to dyke, and then moves silently to the great seaward sluice; it is not a living thing in the landscape, bright and vivacious, but rather something secret and still, drawn almost reluctantly away, rather than hurrying off on business of its own. ”

“ Often too we find that this tranquil expanse of silent water follows quickly after some more rapid movement, comes close upon some spot where a dashing rapid has diversified the scene, or a cataract, in roar and confusion and sparkling terror, has broken the course of the stream. ”

“ These streamlets are like lost babes in the great world into which they are sent adrift, and that is why they leave stones, as they go forth, to mark their course, so as not to lose their way when they may be returning. ”

“ Till his o'ersatisfied existence drooped;
Like fruit-boughs heavily laden above a stream,
In which they gaze so closely on themselves,
That, touching, they grow drowsy, and submerge,
Losing all vision. ”

“ Men lie face down in the straw through which course streams of rain. Many of them fall asleep, and when they wake after their short siesta, the straw has left on their cheeks crimson furrows which look like scars. ”

“ The black draymen standing erect on their two-wheeled craft, like Roman chariot racers, would whirl their mules down the levee at a perilous gallop, scattering the gravel every which way, and our leisure class—boys and darkies—and a good many of the business men, would come down to the foot of Main Street to see her land and watch the rousters swarm off ahead of the bellowing mates and eat up the freight piles. ”

“ Our ship of state has been drifting down stream like a raft. The only reason the raft has not been wrecked lies in the fact that we have been fortunate enough to have a pretty clear stream to ourselves all the while, with no breakers and no cataracts in sight. ”

“ I reckon my licker's got into my head, and what with the flood, and havin' so many to feed and look out for—"
"So that's what's a-ranklin' in your heart, is it? You want us to leave do you? There's too many on us. You want us to pack up and swim. ”

“ Less than three fathoms! Again I tried, and touched the bottom in little more than two.
"'Bout ship!" shouted Drake, bearing down on the long tiller, and the galliot, her sails flapping in the wind like the wings of a wounded bird, came about slowly yet surely, the breeze filled her sails as she lay on the other tack, and once more she slipped into deep water.
But the result of this manoeuvre was bewildering. The blackness that precedes the dawn is always greatest ”