"billa" hidden in books

but it looked like ashes

His face was ruggedly formed, but it looked like ashes—like something from which all the warmth and light had died out.
— from My Antonia by Willa Cather

brushes immediately languidly looking at

He began trifling with the new set of coins and the little brushes immediately; languidly looking at them and admiring them all the time he was speaking to me.
— from The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

but it looked like a

What the knitting was, I don’t know, not being learned in that art; but it looked like a net; and as she worked away with those Chinese chopsticks of knitting-needles, she showed in the firelight like an ill-looking enchantress, baulked as yet by the radiant goodness opposite, but getting ready for a cast of her net by and by.
— from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

before I left London and

“Quite so; Lord de Mowbray informed me of the circumstances himself before I left London, and I came down here in consequence.”
— from Sybil, Or, The Two Nations by Disraeli, Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield

but I lived like a

Every instant I strove to reform, but I lived like a wild beast.
— from The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

burst into laughter long and

With that, he solemnly bowed and retired, and they all burst into laughter, long and merry.
— from Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens

By irregularly lugging Lets a

But I gave you just a gentle, If humiliating, shock, Much as any Occidental Castigates the erring jock, Who in place of freely plugging At a reasonable rate, By irregularly lugging Lets a rival take the plate.
— from Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 107, August 25, 1894 by Various

broke into loud laughter at

He was handsome and simple-looking, and he now broke into loud laughter at her jest.
— from Captain Ravenshaw; Or, The Maid of Cheapside. A Romance of Elizabethan London by Robert Neilson Stephens

but it looks like an

It is not only useless repining at our prolonged stay here, but it looks like an ungrateful doubting of the power of God to remove us.
— from The Little Savage by Frederick Marryat

burst into loud laughter and

The moment Bettina saw the exorcist, she burst into loud laughter, and addressed to him the most offensive insults, which fairly delighted everybody, as the devil alone could be bold enough to address a Capuchin in such a manner; but the holy man, hearing himself called an obtrusive ignoramus and a stinkard, went on striking Bettina with a heavy crucifix, saying that he was beating the devil.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Volume 01: Childhood by Giacomo Casanova

because it looked like a

The Massachusetts man had long coveted the Mississippian’s fine estate; not alone from its tempting contiguity, but also because it looked like a ripe pear that must soon fall from the tree.
— from The Death Shot: A Story Retold by Mayne Reid

but it looked like a

A great, mysterious brick tower climbed up through it,—it was the chimney, but it looked like a horrible cell to put criminals into.
— from Complete Project Gutenberg Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Works by Oliver Wendell Holmes

bathed in living light As

Each moment some high roof or tower, Some flush of the maple leaves, Grew fair to sight, the birdlings sang In nests on the sun-lit eaves; And Nature bathed in living light, As if she renewed her birth, The Universal Father smiled Through his sunbeam, on the earth.
— from Victor Roy, a Masonic Poem by Harriet Annie Wilkins

This tab, called Hiding in Plain Sight, shows you passages from notable books where your word is accidentally (or perhaps deliberately?) spelled out by the first letters of consecutive words. Why would you care to know such a thing? It's not entirely clear to us, either, but it's fun to explore! What's the longest hidden word you can find? Where is your name hiding?

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