Our house is soon full of the little crouching women, with their tiny slit eyes vaguely smiling; their beautifully dressed hair shining like polished ebony; their fragile bodies lost in the many folds of the exaggerated, wide garments, that gape as if ready to drop from their little tapering backs and reveal the exquisite napes of their little necks.
— from Madame Chrysantheme — Volume 4 by Pierre Loti

"I remember a tale, my mother oft breathed in my infantine ears, of a bright star that once skirted the literary horizon, and ere long darkly disappeared; of a lofty, sensitive nature, that met a staggering blow, and reeled to earth, no more to soar aloft.
— from Eventide A Series of Tales and Poems by Effie Afton

Our house is soon full of the little crouching women, with their tiny slit eyes vaguely smiling; their beautifully dressed hair shining like polished ebony; Page 220 their fragile bodies lost in the many folds or the exaggerated wide garments, that gape as if ready to drop from their little tapering backs and reveal the exquisite napes of their little necks.
— from Madame Chrysanthème by Pierre Loti

[Pg 25] Low in a sandy valley spread, An ancient borough reared her head Still as in Scottish story read, She boasts a race, To every nobler virtue bred, And polished grace.
— from The Genius of Scotland; or, Sketches of Scottish Scenery, Literature and Religion by Robert Turnbull