If the feast were less magnificent than those same panelled walls had witnessed in a bygone century; if mine host presided with somewhat less of state than might have befitted a successor of the royal governors; if the guests made a less imposing show than the bewigged and powdered and embroidered dignitaries who erst banqueted at the gubernatorial table and now sleep within their armorial tombs on Copp's Hill or round King's Chapel,—yet never, I may boldly say, did a more comfortable little party assemble in the province-house from Queen Anne's days to the Revolution.
— from Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Some have voyaged to the East Indies or the Pacific, and most of them have sailed in Marblehead schooners to Newfoundland; a few have been no farther than the Middle Banks, and one or two have always fished along the shore; but, as Uncle Parker used to say, they have all been christened in salt water and know more than men ever learn in the bushes.
— from Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne

The spark in question was called Ruggieri da Jeroli, a man of noble birth, but of lewd life and blameworthy carriage, insomuch that he had left himself neither friend nor kinsman who wished him well or cared to see him and was defamed throughout all Salerno for thefts and other knaveries of the vilest; but of this the lady recked little, he pleasing her for otherwhat, and with the aid of a maid of hers, she wrought on such wise that they came together.
— from The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio by Giovanni Boccaccio

In which resolution riding on, and by chance in a pastoral lodge or shepherd’s cottage near to Coudray hitting upon the five pilgrims, they carried them way-bound and manacled, as if they had been spies, for all the exclamations, adjurations, and requests that they could make.
— from Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais

my lord, wisdom and blood combating in so tender a body, we have ten proofs to one that blood hath the victory.
— from Much Ado about Nothing by William Shakespeare

The surcingle enveloped my limbs and body close in all directions—save in the path of the destroying crescent.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven Edition Table Of Contents And Index Of The Five Volumes by Edgar Allan Poe

In June, 1863, apparently from such despairing motives, the Lamas of Tsodam, a Bonpo convent in the vicinity of the mission settlement of Bonga in E. Tibet, invited the Rev. Gabriel Durand to come and instruct them.
— from The Travels of Marco Polo — Volume 1 by Rustichello of Pisa

The works of Locke, Hume, Reid, Hartley, Stewart, Brown, the Mills, will always be classics in this line; and in Professor Bain's Treatises we have probably the last word of what this method taken mainly by itself can do—the last monument of the youth of our science, still untechnical and generally intelligible, like the Chemistry of Lavoisier, or Anatomy before the microscope was used.
— from The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2) by William James

Only, next morning he wakes, not to be in a bad temper until something piquant or something nasty turns up to revive him, but to dream of her he loves and build castles in the air for love to dwell in.
— from On Love by Stendhal

“Oh,” repeated the young girl, almost bewildered, “can I not leave the house?—can I not escape?” “Valentine, the hand which now threatens you will pursue you everywhere; your servants will be seduced with gold, and death will be offered to you disguised in every shape.
— from The Count of Monte Cristo, Illustrated by Alexandre Dumas

The paragraph in the constitution, which says that “new States may be admitted by Congress into this Union,” has been quoted to justify this treaty.
— from Abridgment of the Debates of Congress, from 1789 to 1856, Vol. 3 (of 16) by United States. Congress

After being collected in the classroom their final destination was the first waste-basket.
— from Báró Podmaniczky Pál és a norvég Biblia Elbeszélés a 18 nyelvü nagyapáról 77 nyelven és rovásírással by Ilona Kutas

The windmill on Mount Carmel was converted into a small battery, a number of light pieces also being collected in the square opposite the Jesuits' College, to serve as a reserve battery for any weak spot in the defences.
— from Old Quebec: The Fortress of New France by Claude Glennon Bryan

The hammer-beams are boldly carved into the shapes of bishops, cardinals, and pilgrims, while the bosses are worked into great faces that look down with a fat calm satisfaction that must be infinitely reassuring to the congregations.
— from The Hardy Country: Literary landmarks of the Wessex Novels by Charles G. (Charles George) Harper

" Over hill and holler and ford and creek, Jest like the hosses had wings, we tore; We got to Looney's, and Ben come in And laid down the baby and axed for his gin, And dropped in a heap on the floor.
— from Pike County Ballads and Other Poems by John Hay

The peter, simple in its inception, and ineffably stupid in execution, was already on the scene, and though among decent players it soon found its level, and became comparatively inoffensive, was the pioneer of the mass of wood-paving which has since been laid down; echoes, tampering with the discard, penultimates, antepenultimates, developments, extensions of principle, rules for exceptional play, with a few other matters quod nunc perscribere longum est , all equally inelastic, but differing from the signal in this, that while its mission is to supply your partner with brains and to dictate to him, regardless of the state of his hand, to play trumps when you think fit, theirs is to do away with all necessity for any brains whatever.
— from The Decline and Fall of Whist: An Old Fashioned View of New Fangled Play by John Petch Hewby

A brilliant city indeed it is.
— from The Kentuckian in New-York; or, The Adventures of Three Southerns. Volume 1 (of 2) by William Alexander Caruthers

[Pg 15] II CHILDHOOD I very well remember the sudden appearance of Hugh in the nursery world, and being conducted into a secluded dressing-room, adjacent to the nursery, where the tiny creature lay, lost in contented dreams, in a big, white-draped, white-hooded cradle.
— from Hugh: Memoirs of a Brother by Arthur Christopher Benson

I was janitor at Benedict College in Columbia for two years an' at Clafflin in Orangeburg for twelve.
— from Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves South Carolina Narratives, Part 2 by United States. Work Projects Administration