XL A Book of Revelation The Irvings came back to Echo Lodge for the summer, and Anne spent a happy three weeks there in July.
— from Anne of the Island by L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery

"What put it into your head? Did anyone tell you about Beth's giving away her things?" asked Laurie soberly, as Amy laid a bit of red tape, with sealing wax, a taper, and a standish before him.
— from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

“Hulloa, Jim Crow!” said Mr. Shelby, whistling, and snapping a bunch of raisins towards him, “pick that up, now!”
— from Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

That one ought not to plume oneself on the merits which belong to another, but ought rather to pass his life in his own proper guise, Æsop has given us this illustration:— A Jackdaw, swelling I.4 with empty pride, picked up some feathers which had fallen from a Peacock, and decked himself out therewith ; upon which, despising his own kind , he mingled with a beauteous flock of Peacocks.
— from The Fables of Phædrus Literally translated into English prose with notes by Phaedrus

To her the cares were sometimes almost beyond the happiness; for young and inexperienced, with small means of choice and no confidence in her own taste, the “how she should be dressed” was a point of painful solicitude; and the almost solitary ornament in her possession, a very pretty amber cross which William had brought her from Sicily, was the greatest distress of all, for she had nothing but a bit of ribbon to fasten it to; and though she had worn it in that manner once, would it be allowable at such a time in the midst of all the rich ornaments which she supposed all the other young ladies would appear in?
— from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

Seating himself on a block of rock, that lay under the peach trees in that quarter, he opened the Hui Chen Chi and began to read it carefully from the beginning.
— from Hung Lou Meng, or, the Dream of the Red Chamber, a Chinese Novel, Book I by Xueqin Cao

“Joe quickly his sand had sold, sir, And Bess got a basket of rags; Then up to St. Giles’s they roll’d, sir; To every bunter Bess brags.
— from The Slang Dictionary: Etymological, Historical and Andecdotal by John Camden Hotten

It was soon apparent that this was indeed the dinner: it was all on the table: it consisted of abundance of clear, fresh water, and a basin of raw turnips—nothing more.
— from The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today by Charles Dudley Warner

“That’s Cranford, sure enough, girls! We get off here, and begin our real tramp.”
— from A Campfire Girl's Test of Friendship by Jane L. Stewart

When it consists of fine powdery sand, the rain sometimes acquires a brownish or reddish tinge, staining objects on which it falls and constituting the “showers of blood” that have been regarded as prodigies from remote antiquity.
— from Meteorology: The Science of the Atmosphere by Charles Fitzhugh Talman

But you'll have to do quite a bit of riding to get there and back by nightfall."
— from Dave Porter at Star Ranch; Or, The Cowboy's Secret by Edward Stratemeyer

Amiens, Bp. of, refuses to burn witches, iii.
— from A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages; volume III by Henry Charles Lea

Some two miles out ran the little river called the Tchernaya, which runs through the valley of Inkerman into the head of the harbor of Sebastopol, and upon this a body of Russian troops had been for some time encamped.
— from Jack Archer: A Tale of the Crimea by G. A. (George Alfred) Henty

I consulted with Cecily, and we came to the conclusion that if we wanted to please Clarence there was nothing for it but to keep the buck, but after mixing it some condensed milk, which we gave it in a bottle with a bit of rubber tubing on the neck, we realised that to retain our little guest meant our going without milk in our tea for weeks.
— from Two Dianas in Somaliland: The Record of a Shooting Trip by Agnes Herbert

Then she said, as she drew Cob down to a slow walk, to enjoy a bit of road that lay under a group of tall pines,— "After all, I shall be sorry to have vacation come, for as soon as this term is over, we shall have to go home, and I don't want to, one bit."
— from Half a Dozen Girls by Anna Chapin Ray

We believe, that had the confidently anticipated deluge of blood followed the abolition of slavery in the British West Indies, the calamity would have been the consequence, not of abolition, but of resistance to it.
— from The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Part 2 of 4 by American Anti-Slavery Society