The duke went down into his carpet-bag, and fetched up a lot of little printed bills and read them out loud.
— from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

It had been a royal time of luxury to him, with all its stings and contumelies, compared to the poverty that crept round and clipped the anticipation of the future down to sordid fact, and life without an atmosphere of either hope or fear.
— from North and South by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

When thirty rolling years have run their race, Thy son Ascanius, on this empty space, Shall build a royal town, of lasting fame, Which from this omen shall receive the name.
— from The Aeneid by Virgil

I left the body, and returned to our lodging, in a state of mental prostration and misery proportioned to the heat and excitement with which I had quitted it.
— from Frank Mildmay; Or, the Naval Officer by Frederick Marryat

"Away on urgent business affairs," replied the other lightly; "and what is the news?"
— from The Laughing Cavalier: The Story of the Ancestor of the Scarlet Pimpernel by Orczy, Emmuska Orczy, Baroness

[Pg 131] by all ranks, though of late years a few have disappeared under the pressure of progressive social reforms stimulated and often initiated by the king himself.
— from The Kingdom of the Yellow Robe Being Sketches of the Domestic and Religious Rites and Ceremonies of the Siamese by Ernest Young

The April shower should be as reviving to our life as to the garden and the grove, and the scenery in which we live reflect our own beauty, as the dewdrop the flower.
— from Journal 01, 1837-1846 The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, Volume 07 (of 20) by Henry David Thoreau

There was a jingle of bells deep down in the engine-room, followed by a responsive throb of life throughout the hitherto inert mass of the great vessel.
— from A Knight on Wheels by Ian Hay

Bellincioni's bitterest foe was a certain Bergamasque poet, Guidotto Prestinari, who wrote many odes and songs in honour of Beatrice, and represented the old Lombard school.
— from Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 by Julia Cartwright

What hope could there be for him, Lavirotte, buried thirty feet below a roaring thoroughfare of London, with no possible means of communication with the upper world, a feebleness so great that it did not allow him to do more than stand, and twelve clear feet in the perpendicular between him and deliverance? Under such circumstances how could anyone hope?
— from The Last Call: A Romance (Vol. 2 of 3) by Richard Dowling

Presently the fugitives crept back and resumed their old life among the ruins and died peacefully, and were followed by their children.
— from London by Walter Besant