she asked; “can you come with me?”
— from The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales With Condensed Novels, Spanish and American Legends, and Earlier Papers by Bret Harte

I am curious to know what kind of a case you could get up against me in the courts of law.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

Were I a Circle, you could discern my intestines, but I am a Being, composed as I told you before, of many Circles, the Many in the One, called in this country a Sphere.
— from Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) by Edwin Abbott Abbott

She sat down near the fire, said: "Nastasia will bring the tea presently," and signed to him to return to his armchair, adding: "I see you've already chosen your corner.
— from The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

Awake then, my dear, my deluded child, awake to the sense of your danger, and exert yourself to avoid the evils with which it threatens you:-evils which, to a mind like yours, are most to be dreaded; secret repining, and concealed, yet consuming regret!
— from Evelina, Or, the History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World by Fanny Burney

The attendant hastily changed to a coaxing “You can come back and try to-morrow.
— from Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis

Whenever a person proclaims to you 'In worldly matters I'm a child,' you consider that that person is only a-crying off from being held accountable and that you have got that person's number, and it's Number One.
— from Bleak House by Charles Dickens

Lei Kung in the Tree A certain Yeh Ch’ien-chao of Hsin Chou, when a youth, used to climb the mountain Chien-ch’ang Shan for the purpose of cutting firewood and collecting medicinal Page 201 herbs.
— from Myths and Legends of China by E. T. C. (Edward Theodore Chalmers) Werner

YELLOW PIGMENTS Aureolin, Cadmium Yellows, Chrome Yellows, Gamboge, Raw Sienna, Yellow Ochre, Naples Yellow.
— from Illumination and Its Development in the Present Day by Sidney Farnsworth

You know not what is in their power, said Leonora; they may make pretences for confining you here, which, as they are under no jurisdiction but the church, the church will allow justifiable:--indeed, Louisa, continued she, I should be loth to see you have recourse to force to get out of their hands which would only occasion you ill treatment:--to whom, alas, can you complain!--you are a stranger in this country, without any one friend to espouse your cause:--were even Du Plessis here in person, I know not, as they have taken it into their heads to keep you here, if all he could urge, either to the pope or confessory, would have any weight to oblige them to relinquish you.
— from The Fortunate Foundlings Being the Genuine History of Colonel M——Rs, and His Sister, Madam Du P——Y, the Issue of the Hon. Ch——Es M——Rs, Son of the Late Duke of R—— L——D. Containing Many Wonderful Accidents That Befel Them in Their Travels, and Interspersed with the Characters and Adventures of Several Persons of Condition, In the Most Polite Courts of Europe. the Whole Calculated for the Entertainment and Improvement of the Youth of Both Sexes. by Eliza Fowler Haywood

THE CRAFTY CRAB “THE CRAFTY CRAB” There once was a crafty young Crab Who always went round in a cab He wished no one to say That he walked the wrong way But his coachman the secret did blab [Pg 846] MORRA.
— from St. Nicholas Vol. XIII, September, 1886, No. 11 An Illustrated Magazine for Young Folks by Various

But whenever a Cove youth could be spared from hoeing 'taters and corn or pushing the plow, he rushed off to the Renaud place to work ten times harder.
— from Stand By: The Story of a Boy's Achievement in Radio by Hugh McAlister

“I notice,” said Sibyl, thoughtfully, “that all very, very old people say they’re not as young as they was, and so you wear spectacles ’cos you’re not as young as you was, and ’cos you can’t see as well as you did.”
— from Daddy's Girl by L. T. Meade

When once you have got it into the form of a curve, you can begin to think about it, for the curve gives you a mental picture of the facts that the long formula expresses in the abstract.
— from Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 by Various

“You are, of course, at liberty to make any comments you choose,” he said.
— from Peter by E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson

"Then," asked Christophe, "you consented?"
— from Jean-Christophe Journey's End by Romain Rolland

Pierre had diverted his mind from the woman who, at Fort O’Angel, was even now calling heaven and earth to witness that “Tim Macavoy was her Macavoy and no other, an’ she’d find him—the divil and darlin’, wid an arm like Broin Borhoime, an’ a chest you could build a house on—if she walked till Doomsday!”
— from A Romany of the Snows, Complete Being a Continuation of the Personal Histories of "Pierre and His People" and the Last Existing Records of Pretty Pierre by Gilbert Parker

The river is hardly the width of a canal, yet curves as no canal would ever curve, so that the captain in giving orders has to watch both ends of the vessel to see that neither runs aground.
— from Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 by Various