By experiment its one and fifty yarns will each suspend a weight of one hundred and twenty pounds; so that the whole rope will bear a strain nearly equal to three tons.
— from Moby Dick; Or, The Whale by Herman Melville

Three hundred of them were invited by him to an entertainment at a castle a few miles distant from Tripoli, and were despatched as they successively entered a dark hall or passage in the building; of the others, many were found murdered in the streets next morning, and but a small number escaped to tell the dreadful tale.
— from The Southern Literary Messenger, Vol. I., No. 4, December, 1834 by Various

101 CHAPTER V CONTRASTS Old England thinks our country Is a wilderness at best— And small New England thinks the same Of the large free-minded West.
— from The Crux: A Novel by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

" "Yet Parliament has declared them bastards and so never eligible to the crown," Richard objected.
— from Beatrix of Clare by John Reed Scott

But as she now explained to the head clerk, she had at that time been only a poor ignorant slip of a girl, with no more than eight pounds a year wages.
— from Orley Farm by Anthony Trollope

As this excessively interesting document will be translated for the public press as soon as the necessary consent of its present proprietor can be obtained, the writer of this pamphlet the less regrets the very limited use of it to which he is now restricted—which is but little more than that of making a mere abridgement and connexion of such incidents as may serve to explain the origin and possession of those sui generis specimens of humanity, the Aztec brother and sister, now exhibiting to the public, in the United States.
— from Memoir of an Eventful Expedition in Central America Resulting in the Discovery of the Idolatrous City of Iximaya, in an Unexplored Region; and the Possession of two Remarkable Aztec Children, Descendants and Specimens of the Sacerdotal Caste, (now nearly extinct,) of the Ancient Aztec Founders of the Ruined Temples of that Country, Described by John L. Stevens, Esq., and Other Travellers. by Pedro Velasquez

“He says, or he’s going to say, ‘Major, I have a nice bit of dinner waiting for me at home,—enough for two, will feed three; or, if there be a shortcoming, nothing easier than to eke out the deficiency by another bottle of Moulton.
— from Charles Lever, His Life in His Letters, Vol. II by Charles James Lever