The end he had been born to serve yet did not see had led him to escape by an unseen path and now it beckoned to him once more and a new adventure was about to be opened to him.
— from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

Sleipnir is the best of them; he has eight legs, and belongs to Odin.
— from The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson by Snorri Sturluson

Having here listened to his departing steps, till their faint sound was lost in distance, she ventured to her apartment, and, securing it once again, retired to her bed, leaving the lamp burning on the hearth.
— from The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Ward Radcliffe

“That is first rate,” Rivet declared, carried away by the rhythm, and they shouted the refrain to every verse, while Rivet beat time on the shaft with his foot, and with the reins on the back of the horse, who, as if he himself were carried away by the rhythm, broke into a wild gallop, and threw all the women in a heap, one on top of the other, on the bottom of the conveyance.
— from Complete Original Short Stories of Guy De Maupassant by Guy de Maupassant

On the eastern bank of the Hyphasis, on the edge of the desert, the Macedonian hero halted and wept: the Mogul entered the desert, reduced the fortress of Batmir, and stood in arms before the gates of Delhi, a great and flourishing city, which had subsisted three centuries under the dominion of the Mahometan kings.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) by Edward Gibbon

The guards conduct their prisoner to the ancient building of the Holy Tribunal; pushing Him into a narrow, gloomy, vaulted prison-cell, they lock Him in and retire....
— from The Grand Inquisitor by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The highwayman or swell robber was in old days said to be on the high TOBY , from the high or main road, while those meaner fellows, the footpad and the cutpurse, were but “low TOBY-MEN ,” from their frequenting the by-ways.
— from The Slang Dictionary: Etymological, Historical and Andecdotal by John Camden Hotten

This horse consisted of two or more planks about eight feet long, fixed together so as to form a sharp ridge or angle, which answered to the body of the horse.
— from 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue by Francis Grose

From facts communicated to me by Mr. Blyth, on the habits, voice, constitution and structure of the humped Indian cattle, it is almost certain that they are descended from a different aboriginal stock from our European cattle; and some competent judges believe that these latter have had two or three wild progenitors, whether or not these deserve to be called species.
— from The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, 6th Edition by Charles Darwin

—We went only 2-1/2 miles to the village of Marenga, a very large one, situated at the eastern edge of the bottom of the heel of the Lake.
— from The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 by David Livingstone

“Calves should first be stunned by a blow on the head with a club”— i.e. , before being run up.
— from A Sheaf by John Galsworthy

If such a race, embarked upon what it conceived to be a struggle for national existence, was to be overcome, the hands of the conqueror must be clean as well as strong.
— from Lord Milner's Work in South Africa From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 by W. Basil (William Basil) Worsfold

Clench the right hand, holding it out straight in front of you, with the back of the hand downwards.
— from Daily Training by E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson

“It is now ten o’clock; I must bid you good-night,” said the abbe, lighting the wick of his lantern, the glass of which was clear and the metal shining, which testified to the care his housekeeper bestowed on the household property.
— from The Works of Balzac: A linked index to all Project Gutenberg editions by Honoré de Balzac

I have written in an earlier chapter of Evert’s retreat, of how in falling back on to his new line he accounted for between 20,000 and 30,000 of the German and Austrian troops.
— from The Russian Campaign, April to August, 1915 Being the Second Volume of "Field Notes from the Russian Front" by Stanley Washburn

Descending, therefore, by the same slope which he had previously mounted, he wound round the base of the hill much in the same path by which Callot had conducted the Norman and Louise.
— from Richelieu: A Tale of France, v. 3/3 by G. P. R. (George Payne Rainsford) James

[Pg 85] Mrs. Judith wore placed upon her head-top a cushion of linen or stuff, which she called her "system;" it was not dissimilar, save in its want of utility, to the roll or plait twisted cushion of hay used by milk-maids in carrying their pails; but with this difference, that it was not flat, but rose higher to the back of the head; it was fastened and attached by long pins, and over and around this under-structure she combed and attached her long hair, of which the Irish were always proud, even to absurdity, and which withal looked as stiff and formal as if it had been hewn out, the work of some primeval statuary, sternly staring in stone, certainly most Medusa-like, upon some ancient tomb!
— from The Eve of All-Hallows; Or, Adelaide of Tyrconnel, v. 1 of 3 by Matthew Weld Hartstonge