Not a fiddler throughout the length and breadth of Scandinavia played as he did.
— from The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux

In Briton street, which took that name of the dukes of Brittany lodging there, is one proper parish church of St. Buttolph, in which church was sometime a brotherhood of St. Fabian and Sebastian, founded in the year 1377, the 51st of Edward III., and confirmed by Henry IV., in the 6th of his reign.
— from The Survey of London by John Stow

San Francisco lay like a blur of smoke upon her heights.
— from Martin Eden by Jack London

And all but one steal away.
— from Tom Brown's School Days by Thomas Hughes

After dinner altered our design to go to Woolwich, and put it off to to-morrow morning, and so went all to Greenwich (Mrs. Waith excepted, who went thither, but not to the same house with us, but to her father’s, that lives there), to the musique-house, where we had paltry musique, till the master organist came, whom by discourse I afterwards knew, having employed him for my Lord Sandwich, to prick out something (his name Arundell), and he did give me a fine voluntary or two, and so home by water, and at home I find my girl that run away brought by a bedel of St. Bride’s Parish, and stripped her and sent her away, and a newe one come, of Griffin’s helping to, which I think will prove a pretty girl.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

There should always be one steady head to superintend so many young ones.
— from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

“Then why doesn’t tha read somethin’, or learn a bit o’ spellin’?
— from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Poor Traddles, who had passed the stage of lying with his head upon the desk, and was relieving himself as usual with a burst of skeletons, said he didn’t care.
— from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

A very heavy mat of sandy hair, in a decidedly tousled condition, and a beard of some days’ growth, gave the worthy man an appearance, to say the least, not particularly prepossessing.
— from Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

If we saw a large old tree with some scratches on its bark, we concluded that a bear or some raccoons must be living there.
— from Indian Child Life by Charles Alexander Eastman

To-day a basket of sweet potatoes formed one item, going to be roasted in the great fire-heap which would be left from the bonfire.
— from Pine Needles by Susan Warner

Yet deem not thence his breast a breast of steel: Ye, who have known what 'tis to dote upon A few dear objects, will in sadness feel Such partings break the heart they fondly hope to heal.
— from My Memoirs, Vol. III, 1826 to 1830 by Alexandre Dumas

For this must be carried the mile or more over the frontier, at which it is examined by a band of stupid and discourteous negroes, who seem to delight in putting as many obstacles as possible in the way of the well-to-do traveler.
— from Working North from Patagonia Being the Narrative of a Journey, Earned on the Way, Through Southern and Eastern South America by Harry Alverson Franck

A little old hunchbacked Israelite, who was cowering behind a block of stone, murmured with some malice: "Seems to me they'd rather go with the heathen than wait here for the grace of the Heavenly Father.
— from I.N.R.I.: A prisoner's Story of the Cross by Peter Rosegger

The Council resolved that it would not proceed upon any bill of supply, which should not have been applied for by the king's representative; the Council would not proceed upon any bill appropriating public money that should not have been recommended by the king's representative; the Council would not proceed upon any bill of appropriation, for money issued, in consequence of an address of the Assembly to the king's representative, unless upon some extraordinary emergency; the Council would not proceed upon any appropriation of public money for any salary or pension hereafter to be created, unless the quantum of such salary or pension had been recommended by the king's representative; and the Council would not proceed upon any bill of appropriation for the civil list, which should contain specifications therein, by chapters or items, nor unless the same should be granted during the life of the king.
— from The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation Volume 1 by Charles Roger

Napoleon's methods appeared to his contemporaries to have produced so strenuous a revolution in the conduct of land warfare that it assumed a wholly new aspect, and it was obvious that those conceptions which had sufficed previously had become inadequate as a basis of sound study.
— from Some Principles of Maritime Strategy by Julian Stafford Corbett

This monster Chess Contest between the North and the South of England, represented by 106 competitors on each side, which terminated in a victory for the South by 53 1/2 to 52 1/2, took place at Birmingham on Saturday, the 28th January last, and has occasioned considerable interest among the votaries of the game and reports pronounce it a great success.
— from Chess History and Reminiscences by H. E. (Henry Edward) Bird

He stood six feet in his stockings and weighed two hundred and ten pounds, and could toss a barrel of salt on the tailboard of a wagon without losing his happy smile.
— from Hidden Treasure: The Story of a Chore Boy Who Made the Old Farm Pay by John Thomas Simpson