As, lantern in hand, I scraped among the moss and beheld the ancient scars of bruises received in many a sullen fall among the marly mountains of the isle—scars strangely widened, swollen, half obliterate, and yet distorted like those sometimes found in the bark of very hoary trees, I seemed an antiquary of a geologist, studying the bird-tracks and ciphers upon the exhumed slates trod by incredible creatures whose very ghosts are now defunct.
— from The Piazza Tales by Herman Melville

This registry at first was solely to publish them; but it grew into a usage indispensable to their validity, and thus became a check upon the executive; so that the monarchy of the old régime was not quite an absolute one.
— from Historic Bubbles by Frederic Leake

They then received a suitable exhortation on the nature and design of marriage, and an injunction to live piously and chastily until that event should take place.
— from A History of Matrimonial Institutions, Vol. 1 of 3 by George Elliott Howard

"The heavy sea drifted up the sand and closed up the entrance so they could not get out into the gulf again.
— from The Boy Chums Cruising in Florida Waters or, The Perils and Dangers of the Fishing Fleet by Wilmer M. (Wilmer Mateo) Ely