Uplifting his axe, he hit the horned gentleman such a blow on the head as not only demolished him, but the treasure-seeker also, and caused the whole scene to vanish like magic.
— from Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Such doings may be lined with religion, but outside they have a nasty, dog-in-the-manger look.
— from Middlemarch by George Eliot

'Then Frontenac looms upon our vision, delightful resort of jaded summer tourists; then progressive Red Wing; and Diamond Bluff, impressive and preponderous in its lone sublimity; then Prescott and the St. Croix; and anon we see bursting upon us the domes and steeples of St. Paul, giant young chief of the North, marching with seven-league stride in the van of progress, banner-bearer of the highest and newest civilization, carving his beneficent way with the tomahawk of commercial enterprise, sounding the warwhoop of Christian culture, tearing off the reeking scalp of sloth and superstition to plant there the steam-plow and the school-house—ever in his front stretch arid lawlessness, ignorance, crime, despair; ever in his wake bloom the jail, the gallows, and the pulpit; and ever—' 'Have you ever traveled with a panorama?'
— from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain

The fire gleamed brightly on the hearth, and, no longer resisting the prevailing influence, I silently watched the spirting flame, listening to the wind which continually shook the tenement.
— from The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales With Condensed Novels, Spanish and American Legends, and Earlier Papers by Bret Harte

What are your marriages except chains that bind only the hands and not the spirit?
— from Pan Tadeusz Or, the Last Foray in Lithuania; a Story of Life Among Polish Gentlefolk in the Years 1811 and 1812 by Adam Mickiewicz

One would have said they were horses, or at least donkeys, male and female, of a fine shape, dove-colored, the legs and tail white, striped with black on the head and neck.
— from The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne

At an awful distance they cast away their garments: seven times, with hasty steps, they encircled the Caaba, and kissed the black stone: seven times they visited and adored the adjacent mountains; seven times they threw stones into the valley of Mina; and the pilgrimage was achieved, as at the present hour, by a sacrifice of sheep and camels, and the burial of their hair and nails in the consecrated ground.
— 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

They did actually bring out to him a nickel clock of New England make, and out of sheer unbearable boredom he busied himself in trying to get the alarum to work.
— from Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad

Then the barbarians, though they perceived that their city was already in the hands of the enemy, nevertheless turned against Alexander and his men and made a desperate assault upon them, in which Alexander himself received a violent blow on the head and neck with a stone, and Craterus was wounded with an arrow, as were also many other officers.
— from The Anabasis of Alexander or, The History of the Wars and Conquests of Alexander the Great by Arrian

The readiest way of impregnating water with this virtue, in these circumstances, is to take two vessels, and to keep pouring the water from one into the other, when they are both of them held as near the yeast as possible; for by this means a great quantity of surface is exposed to the air, and the surface is also continually changing.
— from Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air by Joseph Priestley

For example, between Portland and Umatilla, although they are separated by the mountains of greatest actual elevation in the United States, there is a difference of less than two hundred and fifty feet, Umatilla, east of the Cascades, being only two hundred and ninety-four feet above tide.
— from The Guardians of the Columbia Mount Hood, Mount Adams and Mount St. Helens by John H. (John Harvey) Williams

There is just enough of the bustle of the harbour and no more; and the ships are close in, regarding us with stern-windows - the ships that bring deals from Norway and parrots from the Indies.
— from The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson — Volume 1 by Robert Louis Stevenson

If, in the vital system, the elasticity and freshness of the skin are the characteristics of health, and their absence warns us that the condition of woman is unfavorable to the plan of nature relatively to the maintenance of the species—or, if [Pg 16] the capacity of the pelvis, and the consequent breadth of the haunches, are necessary to all those functions which are most essentially feminine, impregnation, gestation, and parturition, without danger either to parent or to child—of what extreme importance must be the ability to determine this with certainty and ease!
— from Beauty: Illustrated Chiefly by an Analysis and Classificatin of Beauty in Woman by Alexander Walker

But of the hundred and ninety voters no more than fifteen were farmers, and though the main trade of the town sided with them, the two factories were in opposition; and cheap bread had its charms for the lesser fry.
— from The Great House by Stanley John Weyman

There was no buff on their heads and necks, but the purple and blue of the wild blood was apparent.
— from The Wild Turkey and Its Hunting by Charles L. Jordan

A German battery on the heights above Nanteint was attacked with great determination and captured by the Lincolns during this advance, the Germans sticking with great gallantry to their guns till every man of the battery had been killed or wounded.
— from The First Seven Divisions Being a Detailed Account of the Fighting from Mons to Ypres by Hamilton, Ernest, Lord

In summer, the brownish-black bands on the head and neck become deep black, the throat and frontal band white, and the upper parts light brownish-red.
— from A Synopsis of the Birds of North America by John James Audubon

Plumage rather compact and imbricated, blended on the head and neck.
— from Ornithological Biography, Volume 1 (of 5) An Account of the Habits of the Birds of the United States of America by John James Audubon

“Housewife,” said John M’Iver, blandly, “we’re a bit off our way here by no fault of our own, and we have been on the hillside all night, and——” “Come in,” she said, shortly, still scrutinising us very closely, till I felt myself flushing wildly.
— from John Splendid: The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn by Neil Munro