The self-appointed historian, a drawler with ancestors in Trinity churchyard, went on: "Buckets of blue blood in 'em.
— from The Alternative by George Barr McCutcheon

As the use of money is scarcely known these are only to be obtained by barter in exchange for cotton cloths, brass wire, iron chopping knives, and coarse cutlery.
— from Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery in North-West and Western Australia, Volume 1 by Grey, George, Sir

The inkle was a favourite pedlar-sold tape of the day, probably more at hand and more to the purpose than packthread.—W. [181] Though boars are no longer bred, but only bred by, in Elizabethan days and before then the rearing of them for old English braun (not the modern substitute) was the chief feature of swine-herding; thus in “Cheape and Good Husbandry,” the author says: “Now, lastly, the best feeding of a swine for Lard or of a Boare for Braune, is to feed them the first week with Barley, sodden till it breake, and sod in such quantity that it may ever be given sweete: then after to feed them with raw Mault from the floore, before it be dried, till they be fat enough: and then for a weeke after, to give them drie Pease or Beanes to harden their flesh.
— from Elizabethan England From 'A Description of England,' by William Harrison by William Harrison

And, like children, they may enjoy the agony of a suffering beast or bird because it excites their curiosity.
— from The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas by Edward Westermarck