Had a wanderer bewildered in the melancholy forest heard their mirth and stolen a half-affrighted glance, he might have fancied them the crew of Comus, some already transformed to brutes, some midway between man and beast, and the others rioting in the flow of tipsy jollity that foreran the change; but a band of Puritans who watched the scene, invisible themselves, compared the masques to those devils and ruined souls with whom their superstition peopled the black wilderness.
— from Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne

120 In the early spring of 1780 a large company of emigrants under Colonel John Donelson descended the Holston and the Tennessee to the Ohio, whence they ascended the Cumberland, effected a junction with another party under Captain James Robertson, which had just arrived by a toilsome overland route, and made the first settlement on the present site of Nashville.
— from Myths of the Cherokee Extract from the Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology by James Mooney

It first had the name of Zancle given it by the Sicels, because the place is shaped like a sickle, which the Sicels call zanclon; but upon the original settlers being afterwards expelled by some Samians and other Ionians who landed in Sicily flying from the Medes, and the Samians in their turn not long afterwards by Anaxilas, tyrant of Rhegium, the town was by him colonized with a mixed population, and its name changed to Messina, after his old country.
— from The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides

The grandfather was at times unable to finish the handle of a broom and talked of returning to the forest—life in that house was unbearable.
— from The Reign of Greed by José Rizal

At certain times of the year this was held particularly dangerous, a wound received from a stag's horn being then deemed poisonous, and more dangerous than one from the tusks of a boar, as the old rhyme testifies: 'If thou be hurt with hart, it bring thee to thy bier, But barber's hand will boar's hurt heal, therefore thou need'st not fear.' At all times, however, the task was dangerous, and to be adventured upon wisely and warily, either by getting behind the stag while he was gazing on the hounds, or by watching an opportunity to gallop roundly in upon him, and kill him with the sword.
— from The Lady of the Lake by Walter Scott

Up, and when ready, to the office (my wife rising to send away Barker, according to our resolution last night, and she did do it with more clothes than have cost us L10, and 20s.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

At the height of divine inspiration, when the force of nature can no further go, by way of contrast to this extreme idealism, Alcibiades, accompanied by a troop of revellers and a flute-girl, staggers in, and being drunk is able to tell of things which he would have been ashamed to make known if he had been sober.
— from Symposium by Plato

For, and this of course refers to the olden days, if they had to go ashore, anywhere but in the district of a friendly tribe, the perils which met them were almost as bad as those of reefs and sharks.
— from Argonauts of the Western Pacific An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea by Bronislaw Malinowski

So they entered the large gloomy hail of the house, and towards the end of a long passage Gerard opened a door, and they all went into a spacious melancholy room, situate at the back of the house, and looking upon a small square plot of dank grass, in the midst of which rose a very weather-stained Cupid, with one arm broken, and the other raised in the air with a long shell to its mouth.
— from Sybil, Or, The Two Nations by Disraeli, Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield

This alone, besides a thousand other reasons, would suffice to prove that the former of these religions will never long predominate in a cultivated and democratic age, whilst the latter is destined to retain its sway at these as at all other periods.
— from Democracy in America — Volume 2 by Alexis de Tocqueville

Thyddir all the Troianys wardis, by and by, And Tyrrheyn ostis ruschis hastely, Bodyn full weill in nobill armour seir; Nane otherwys with wapynnys and with geir 20 Arrayt for the batale all at rycht, Than thocht the fury of Mars thame callit to fycht.
— from The Æneid of Virgil Translated Into Scottish Verse. Volumes 1 & 2 by Virgil

The most important figure in the Roman Academy was the man who, for want of a better, assumed the old Roman name Pomponius Laetus.
— from The Century of Columbus by James J. (James Joseph) Walsh

No agreement has yet been concluded with that government, but the form of agreement has been settled and its execution only awaits the Government of Austria securing the assent by all the other relief creditors of the terms offered.
— from State of the Union Addresses by Herbert Hoover

It is admitted by all the old residents of the place that they were honestly married, but precisely when or how no one can tell.
— from The Life of Abraham Lincoln, from His Birth to His Inauguration as President by Ward Hill Lamon

Had a wanderer, bewildered in the melancholy forest, heard their mirth, and stolen a half-affrighted glance, he might have fancied them the crew of Comus, some already transformed to brutes, some midway between man and beast, and the others rioting in the flow of tipsy jollity that foreran the change.
— from Twice-Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne

On the other hand their assumption of the imperial administration brought about their own ruin, their effacement, and almost their [Pg 280] very extinction as a separate nationality [624] .
— from Man, Past and Present by A. H. (Augustus Henry) Keane

The next morning when our hero waked he began to think of paying a visit to Miss Tishy Snap, a woman of great merit and of as great generosity; yet Mr. Wild found a present was ever most welcome to her, as being a token of respect in her lover.
— from The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great by Henry Fielding

The retained perspirable matter will irritate the skin, both mechanically and chemically ; and this membrane will be kept damp and cold, from attraction and detention of moisture; and foreign material, as before adverted to, once removed from the system, may be reconveyed into it by absorption.
— from A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) by Calvin Cutter

The following morning we returned to Funchal, accompanied by a troop of ragged and diseased natives, pertinaciously appealing to our charity.
— from Narrative of the Circumnavigation of the Globe by the Austrian Frigate Novara, Volume I (Commodore B. Von Wullerstorf-Urbair,) Undertaken by Order of the Imperial Government in the Years 1857, 1858, & 1859, Under the Immediate Auspices of His I. and R. Highness the Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian, Commander-In-Chief of the Austrian Navy. by Scherzer, Karl, Ritter von