'You don't suppose the young lady will see such as her; do you?' This allusion to Nancy's doubtful character, raised a vast quantity of chaste wrath in the bosoms of four housemaids, who remarked, with great fervour, that the creature was a disgrace to her sex; and strongly advocated her being thrown, ruthlessly, into the kennel. 'Do what you like with me,' said the girl, turning to the men again; 'but do what I ask you first, and I ask you to give this message for God Almighty's sake.'
— from Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

IV Terror When David Hardy was a tall boy of fifteen, he, like his mother, had an adventure that changed the whole current of his life and sent him out of his quiet corner into the world.
— from Winesburg, Ohio: A Group of Tales of Ohio Small Town Life by Sherwood Anderson

The age of this gentleman of ours was bordering on fifty; he was of a hardy habit, spare, gaunt-featured, a very early riser and a great sportsman.
— from The History of Don Quixote, Volume 1, Complete by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Which blooming out from home did go To Cadiz, Cairo, Rome, Moscow, From Jemappes to Montmirail passed!
— from Poems by Victor Hugo

I find, if his conditions can be made profitable and safe as to money, he would go, but not else; but, however, will seem not averse to it, because of facilitating his other accounts now depending, which he finds hard to get through, but yet hath some hopes, the King, he says, speaking very kindly to him.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

Henri and, soon after, the Countess with Mademoiselle Bearn appeared, and the whole party seemed to acknowledge the influence of the scene; even the Countess was so much re-animated as to receive the civilities of her husband with complacency, and but once forgot her good-humour, which was when she asked whether they had any neighbours, who were likely to make THIS BARBAROUS SPOT more tolerable, and whether the Count believed it possible for her to exist here, without some amusement? Soon after breakfast the party dispersed; the Count, ordering his steward to attend him in the library, went to survey the condition of his premises, and to visit some of his tenants; Henri hastened with alacrity to the shore to examine a boat, that was to bear them on a little voyage in the evening and to superintend the adjustment of a silk awning; while the Countess, attended by Mademoiselle Bearn, retired to an apartment on the modern side of the chateau, which was fitted up with airy elegance; and, as the windows opened upon balconies, that fronted the sea, she was there saved from a view of the HORRID Pyrenees.
— from The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Ward Radcliffe

“Do not be anxious about him,” she said, however, as soon as Eugene began, “our father has really a strong constitution, but this morning we gave him a shock.
— from Father Goriot by Honoré de Balzac

2 body or form having irregularly shaped surfaces or sides.
— from A Dictionary of Cebuano Visayan by John U. Wolff

"You have been out for hours.
— from A Little Princess Being the whole story of Sara Crewe now told for the first time by Frances Hodgson Burnett

The stores consisted of three bags of flour, half a bag of sugar, and a quarter of a chest of tea.
— from The Squatter's Dream: A Story of Australian Life by Rolf Boldrewood

A grove of trees in early spring beginnings of foliage had impeded the view of it until they were almost at the entrance.
— from The Phantom Treasure by Harriet Pyne Grove

The evening brought us compensation for a day of heat, with its consequent languor, in the shape of a gorgeous sunset; a huge ball of fire hung in the west and radiated great streaks of red, yellow, and blue, these fading away into the softer tints, and then came the most wonderful afterglow, the heavens being suffused, and the whole scene making one breathless, as if under a spell.
— from Travels in the Far East by Ellen Mary Hayes Peck

There are seven watches in a day, reckoning from 12 M. round through the 24 hours, five of them being of four hours each, and the two others, called dog watches , of two hours each, viz., from 4 to 6, and from 6 to 8, P.M. (See Dog Watch .)
— from The Seaman's Friend Containing a treatise on practical seamanship, with plates, a dictionary of sea terms, customs and usages of the merchant service by Richard Henry Dana

To the assumption that the African Slaves were too utterly deficient and degraded, mentally and morally, to appreciate the blessings of Freedom, he opposed the eloquent fact that "wherever the flag of the United States, the symbol of human Liberty, now goes; under it, from their hereditary bondage, are to be found men and women and children assembling and craving its protection 'fleeing from' the iron of oppression that had pierced their souls, to the protection of that flag where they are 'gladdened by the light of Liberty.'"
— from The Great Conspiracy, Volume 6 by John Alexander Logan

The drama acted at Peking, in the summer of 1900, was, in the eyes of a student, the most serious that could be offered for his study, since it brought him suddenly to the inevitable struggle for the control of China, which, in his view, must decide the control of the world; yet, as a money-value, the fall of China was chiefly studied in Paris and London as a calamity to Chinese porcelain.
— from The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams

One afternoon in April, when Miss Winthrop was busy with school matters and Jean and Frieda were engaged in a game of basketball, Olive found herself compelled to go alone to see her grandmother.
— from The Ranch Girls at Boarding School by Margaret Vandercook

For the last week, his only opportunities of speaking to Regina had been obtained for him secretly by the well-rewarded devotion of her maid.
— from The Fallen Leaves by Wilkie Collins

What to him are our politics, our bewilderments, our fair humanities, our art and science, or schemes of social amelioration?
— from Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, April 1885 by Various