That was the process going on in poor Rosamond, while she arranged all objects around her with the same nicety as ever, only with more slowness—or sat down to the piano, meaning to play, and then desisting, yet lingering on the music stool with her white fingers suspended on the wooden front, and looking before her in dreamy ennui.
— from Middlemarch by George Eliot

By that good lady the Houris are said to be held in deficient esteem.
— from The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce

Up, and all the morning at my Tangier accounts, which the chopping and changing of my tallys make mighty troublesome; but, however, I did end them with great satisfaction to myself.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

He would have died quite by himself if Donna Elisa had not come to ask help for the blind of the little image.
— from The Miracles of Antichrist: A Novel by Selma Lagerlöf

I stayed wid them all day and brought their books home in de evening.
— from Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves South Carolina Narratives, Part 2 by United States. Work Projects Administration

In these circumstances it was obvious that a failure to carry out what was at the same time a party doctrine and a campaign pledge would have serious consequences, and it must be reckoned to the credit of the leaders of the party that they put the material welfare of the state above party considerations and refused to let themselves be hurried into disastrous experiments along untried lines.
— from And the Kaiser abdicates: The German Revolution November 1918-August 1919 by S. Miles (Stephen Miles) Bouton

It may be well to remark in this place, that the Company’s trading projects had no other result than a single voyage of one ship in 1717, and that its prominence in British history is due entirely to its existence as a purely monetary corporation.
— from A History of Advertising from the Earliest Times. by Henry Sampson

So, bredren, hyear it dis ebenin'.
— from Diddie, Dumps, and Tot; Or, Plantation Child-Life by Louise Clarke Pyrnelle

This is no little gain, and they do not have so easy a time of it, in defending their libels, as they had in forging and uttering them, when Catholics had no organ through which they could speak, and were so borne down by public clamor that their voice could not have been heard in denial, even if they had raised it.
— from The Catholic World, Vol. 07, April 1868 to September, 1868 by Various

For these reasons I write to inform you that we wish to make an application to be received as members of—so it looks to us—your happy Association; and, "delays being dangerous," we would ask an answer soon to it, as, living on a farm, it is necessary to know whether we shall dispose of our crops, cattle, etc., in the market, or store them in barn and cellar for another lonely winter—so my husband expresses it; though I assure you it is not lonely for lack of numbers, but he is doubtless expressing the feeling many of us have experienced of solitude in the midst of a crowd of uncongenial spirits.
— from Brook Farm: Historic and Personal Memoirs by John Thomas Codman

We are not all so young as you.' Clara hid her alarm, but it was as though the ground had suddenly opened and swallowed her up, as though the London about which she had been hovering in delighted excitement had engulfed her.
— from Mummery: A Tale of Three Idealists by Gilbert Cannan