Elizabeth Trengrove , who was taken a Passenger in the African Company’s Ship Onslow , strengthen’d the Evidence of the last Witness; for having heard a good Character of this Glasby , she enquired of the Quarter-Master, who was then on Board a robbing, whether or no she could see him?
— from A General History of the Pyrates: from their first rise and settlement in the island of Providence, to the present time by Daniel Defoe

But all restoratives were of no avail.
— from Barney Blake, the Boy Privateer; or, The Cruise of the Queer Fish by Herrick Johnstone

The teeth may be said by their figure and construction to bear a relation with our natural food.
— from Curiosities of Medical Experience by J. G. (John Gideon) Millingen

No, Tummas: but I have brought a rare wadget of news with me.
— from Speed the Plough A Comedy, In Five Acts; As Performed At The Theatre Royal, Covent Garden by Thomas Morton

Of course, people refused to put up with such cavalier treatment; but as remonstrance was of no avail, they often brought actions for damages, which they invariably gained, and were promptly settled by Boniface, who merely added them to Prince Paul's bill.
— from An Englishman in Paris: Notes and Recollections by Albert D. (Albert Dresden) Vandam

The second Tank struck a zigzag course for Héninel, and in that village swept down numbers of German soldiers, so that they fled from this black monster against which bombs and rifles were of no avail.
— from From Bapaume to Passchendaele, 1917 by Philip Gibbs

Just at this instant Clayton emerged to view, accompanied by another rider, who, on nearer view, turned out to be Frank Russel.
— from Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp by Harriet Beecher Stowe

These beds all round were occupied not by wounded soldiers, but by soundly-sleeping boys, worn out with sports or study.
— from The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch by Talbot Baines Reed

To such an extent does this evil occur, that we have examined samples of sainfoin seed in which there were at the rate of from twenty to forty thousand of burnet seed-pods per bushel; and when we consider that these pods have for the most part two ripened seeds, and those of a plant growing so much more rapidly than the sainfoin, we can form some notion how the desired crop is soon smothered and overpowered by the burnet, which at best is but a rank weed, of no agricultural value; for whatever of good there may be in our ordinary native salad burnet, which is a smaller and more succulent plant, this sticky foreign interloper cannot possibly have any claim to our regard.
— from Science and Practice in Farm Cultivation by James Buckman

Yet it is certain, likewise, that many of our miseries are merely comparative: we are often made unhappy, not by the presence of any real evil, but by the absence of some fictitious good; of something which is not required by any real want of nature, which has not in itself any power of gratification, and which neither reason nor fancy would have prompted us to wish, did we not see it in the possession of others.
— from The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes, Volume 04 The Adventurer; The Idler by Samuel Johnson