He was some time getting the ink the right colour (mixing it over and over again in pots and bottles of mine), and some time afterwards in practising the handwriting.
— from The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

in ale in the coach, at the door of the Bull Inn, with the innocent master of the house, a Yorkshireman, for his letting us go through his house, we away to Hercules Pillars, and there eat a bit of meat: and so, with all speed, back to the Duke of York’s house, where mighty full again; but we come time enough to have a good place in the pit, and did hear this new play again, where, though I better understood it than before, yet my sense of it and pleasure was just the same as yesterday, and no more, nor any body else’s about us.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

A friend of mine has had nineteen of 'em, ma'am, all by one mother, and she's still as fresh and rosy as the morning.
— from Bleak House by Charles Dickens

Served in the Mahratta War of 1817–18, and was present at battle of Maheidpore and siege of Asserghur.
— from The Waterloo Roll Call With Biographical Notes and Anecdotes by Charles Dalton

One morning at the end of the two years, as I was writing a letter to his dictation, he came and bent over me, and said—“Jane, have you a glittering ornament round your neck?”
— from Jane Eyre: An Autobiography by Charlotte Brontë

Hence it is necessary for good weight to use a blend of materials, and so supply many grades of liability to adsorption.
— from Animal Proteins by Hugh Garner Bennett

It was in a sense the last battle of the old régime of war, a battle of movement and surprise and quick decisions; it was fought and won not by the army as a military machine but by the human quality of the soldier.
— from Days to Remember: The British Empire in the Great War by John Buchan

There was a string of shells for the youngest child; a silver ring, a beaded belt, a knife and a cheap watch for the older children; a box of matches and some tobacco for the father, and some needles and bright colored thread for the mother.
— from Gerda in Sweden by Etta Blaisdell McDonald

Another bound and he was over the veranda railing into the garden, where he coiled himself round in the middle of a bed of mignonnette, and settled for sleep at last.
— from Alive in the Jungle: A Story for the Young by Eleanor Stredder

Every part of Booth’s scheme has been advocated by other men, and several parts are already reduced to practice, though not on the gigantic scale he contemplates.
— from Salvation Syrup; Or, Light On Darkest England by G. W. (George William) Foote

The naval profession proved to be, unfortunately, one for which Edward Drysdale was altogether unfitted by temperament and bent of mind, and sad consequences followed.
— from Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. V, No. XXV, June, 1852 by Various

An Attorney before a bench of magistrates, a short time ago, told the bench, with great gravity, "That he had two witnesses in court, in behalf of his client, and they would be sure to speak the truth; for he had had no opportunity to communicate with them!"
— from The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; containing a collection of over one thousand of the most laughable sayings and jokes of celebrated wits and humorists. by Various

[361] and beams, as if they had been a bundle of matches, and swallowed the whole in anticipation of his supper.
— from Myths of the Rhine by M. Xavier

A body of marines and seamen was then directed to cross the river higher up, and, if possible, to rush the enemyʼs position at the north corner.
— from With the Allies to Pekin: A Tale of the Relief of the Legations by G. A. (George Alfred) Henty