Mr. Bell was no great correspondent, but he wrote from time to time long or short letters, as the humour took him, and although Margaret was not conscious of any definite hope, on receiving them, yet she always put away his notes with a little feeling of disappointment.
— from North and South by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

The burden of my weary and distressed spirit had reached him; and without knowing of our sufferings and danger, his own responded to the call.
— from Roughing It in the Bush by Susanna Moodie

[ Sung in contralto voice, as before, by the Leader of Women.] Storm-shadowed, precipitous valley, And ye threatening towers of stone that hold back the mountains, Letting the dark stream pass; Storm King, and Donderberg, homes of reverberant thunder; Thou steep theatre, where his story trod its stage, And where the circling thought of it returns With ever profounder, ever accumulating echoes, Calling to Humanity, compelling attention, provoking the unexpected tear,— Open yet once again your treasured legend; Out of the encrusted box, the precious parchment, Out of the vestment-chambers, the hallowed rags.
— from The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold: A Play for a Greek Theatre by John Jay Chapman

The habits of royalty or tyranny I have never been able to perceive,—only a democratic habit of resistance to tyrants; but this bird always impresses me as a perfectly well-dressed and well-mannered person, who amid a very talkative society prefers to listen, and shows his character by action only.
— from The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 59, September, 1862 A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics by Various

He denied the constitutional right of secession, but he was also denied his own right to oppose such a course.
— from Abraham Lincoln and the Union: A Chronicle of the Embattled North by Nathaniel W. (Nathaniel Wright) Stephenson

Salient angles or places alongside of obstructions are most liable to scour, and deep hollows or recesses to silt.
— from River and Canal Engineering, the characteristics of open flowing streams, and the principles and methods to be followed in dealing with them. by E. S. (Edward Skelton) Bellasis

Someone says: Hence these tokens of a dead past open out vistas for one's imagination and drop hints of romance that would make thrilling reading in many volumes, but which shall never reach Mudie's.
— from Garden-Craft Old and New by John Dando Sedding

As the Indians near Buenos Ayres exceed these southern Indians in number, so they greatly surpass them in activity and spirit, and seem in their manners to be nearly allied to those gallant Chilian Indians who have long set the whole Spanish power at defiance, have often ravaged their country, and remain to this hour independent.
— from A Voyage Round the World in the Years MDCCXL, I, II, III, IV by Anson, George Anson, Baron

Alexander is said to have taken sides with his mother, not so much out of filial devotion, as because he was jealous of his father’s conquests, and desirous himself of reaping the glory which seemed to await the Grecian army in the coming campaign.
— from The Boys' Book of Famous Rulers by Lydia Hoyt Farmer

There was something almost cruelly frank in the clear look of them; and when her face was not lit up by some passing smile the pale and fine features seemed to borrow something of severity from her unflinching, calm and dispassionate habit of regarding those around her.
— from Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 12, No. 29, August, 1873 by Various

But on the instant I awakened Cameron and his brother Michael, and also David Hackstoun of Rathillet, that was a soldier most stern, but yet a just man according to his lights.
— from The Men of the Moss-Hags Being a history of adventure taken from the papers of William Gordon of Earlstoun in Galloway by S. R. (Samuel Rutherford) Crockett