Neither of us would have wondered had a hoop-petticoated phantom of Esther Dudley tottered into the chamber, walking her rounds in the hush of midnight as of yore, and motioned us to quench the fading embers of the fire and leave the historic precincts to herself and her kindred shades.
— from Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne

If, for the sake of easing his back, he brought the table lid at a sharp angle well up towards his chin, and wrote there like a man using the steep roof of a Dutch house for his desk:—then he declared that it stopped the circulation in his arms.
— from Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street by Herman Melville

“I am growing more and more unequal to the task I have set myself.
— from A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Besides, I will give you a mortgage upon the proceeds of my contract during the whole year, so that, should I fail to take up these bills, you could seize my cattle in Trieste, which is the only road through which they can come.”
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

The poor fellow had been disabled for the service, by a wound on his left knee by a musket-bullet, at the battle of Landen, which was two years before the affair of Namur;—and as the fellow was well-beloved in the regiment, and a handy fellow into the bargain, my uncle Toby took him for his servant; and of an excellent use was he, attending my uncle Toby in the camp and in his quarters as a valet, groom, barber, cook, sempster, and nurse; and indeed, from first to last, waited upon him and served him with great fidelity and affection.
— from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

He was conscious of having acted very fairly, and thought she ought to have considered this, and made up to him for it.
— from The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot

That’s as mamma used to do, whole afternoons together.
— from Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

As to pomp and magnificence, upon the account of which I engaged in this discourse, neither Greece, Rome, nor Egypt, whether for utility, difficulty, or state, can compare any of their works with the highway to be seen in Peru, made by the kings of the country, from the city of Quito to that of Cusco (three hundred leagues), straight, even, five-and-twenty paces wide, paved, and provided on both sides with high and beautiful walls; and close by them, and all along on the inside, two perennial streams, bordered with beautiful plants, which they call moly.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

St. Thomas had dropped behind them, and far ahead the cone of Santa Cruz, gray and misty under the darker clouds, was rising on the edge of the sea.
— from Under Rocking Skies by L. Frank (Lewis Frank) Tooker

[252] 1. Because we have appointed a larger stipend to these that shall be Superintendents than to the rest of the ministers, we have thought good to signify such reasons as moved us to make difference betwixt preachers at this time; as also how many Superintendents we think necessary, with their bounds, office, the manner of their election, and causes that may deserve deposition from that charge.
— from The History of the Reformation of Religion in Scotland With Which Are Included Knox's Confession and The Book of Discipline by John Knox

Miss Henrietta Coldbrooke was the daughter of an Englishman of good family, and some estate, who had emigrated to America and married, under the impulse of certain theories in politics which induced him to imagine that this was the promised land.
— from The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts by James Fenimore Cooper

Without entering into an argument upon the general question, which would be altogether misplaced upon the present occasion, it may not be improper to observe that the principle applies with redoubled force to Senators in Congress.
— from Life of James Buchanan, Fifteenth President of the United States. v. 1 (of 2) by George Ticknor Curtis

And my uncle, too, acts so strangely, he has never once given me a pleasant word or look."
— from The Shipwreck A Story for the Young by Joseph Spillman

He has too painfully convinced me that all these attempts to contribute towards his happiness were wholly useless, and most unwelcome to him.
— from Lady Byron Vindicated: A History of the Byron Controversy by Harriet Beecher Stowe

"It is a most unaccountable thing, Lawrence," said Mrs. Hildreth, "why the church should be so heavily encumbered.
— from A Beautiful Possibility by Edith Ferguson Black

After this I spent a deal of time and pains to make me an umbrella: I was indeed in great want of one, and had a great mind to make one: I had seen them made in the Brasils, where they are very useful in the great heats which are there; and I felt the heats every jot as great here, and greater too, being nearer the [page 138] equinox; besides, as I was obliged to be much abroad, it was a most useful thing to me, as well for the rains as the heats.
— from The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) by Daniel Defoe

The time was coming round when they would all move up to town, and there, in the crowd, with the added movement, the strain would be less and indifference easier.
— from A London Life, and Other Tales by Henry James

As in the case of Richard III , he added a first act to the Cid in 9 order that the audience might understand the situation of the various characters at the outset; a most important and necessary thing if the audience is not familiar with the story and the situation beforehand.
— from Humanistic Studies of the University of Kansas, Vol. 1 by Pearl Hogrefe