A wizard placed ten cats inside a magic circle as shown in our illustration, and hypnotized them so that they should remain stationary during his pleasure.
— from Amusements in Mathematics by Henry Ernest Dudeney

She was beginning to be afraid she couldn’t keep the tears back when Mrs. Spencer returned, flushed and beaming, quite capable of taking any and every difficulty, physical, mental or spiritual, into consideration and settling it out of hand.
— from Anne of Green Gables by L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery

Indeed Leonard ( Sant Lienard , G. T.) seems no likely name for an Armenian Saint; and the patroness of the convent (as she is of many others in that country) was perhaps Saint Nina , an eminent personage in the Armenian Church, whose tomb is still a place of pilgrimage; or possibly St. Helena , for I see that the Russian maps show a place called Elenovka on the shores of Lake Sevan, N.E. of Erivan.
— from The Travels of Marco Polo — Volume 1 by Rustichello of Pisa

Meantime the master looked to see that the table was properly laid, and took the great knife, wherewith he was going to carve the chickens, and sharpened it on the steps.
— from Grimms' Fairy Tales by Wilhelm Grimm

Up, and to Church; where Alderman Backewell’s wife, and mother, and boy, and another gentlewoman, did come, and sit in our pew; but no women of our own there, and so there was room enough.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

The girl promptly took the hood, made of deep red cloth, and shaking it out of its folds, she put it on Pao-yü's head.
— from Hung Lou Meng, or, the Dream of the Red Chamber, a Chinese Novel, Book I by Xueqin Cao

20 He is said to have “refused to acknowledge the distinctions of caste, and succeeded in obtaining a Vellāla woman as his wife, from whom a section of the Valluvans say it has its descent.
— from Castes and Tribes of Southern India. Vol. 7 of 7 by Edgar Thurston

And Arthur came, and labouring up the pass, All in a misty moonshine, unawares Had trodden that crowned skeleton, and the skull Brake from the nape, and from the skull the crown Rolled into light, and turning on its rims Fled like a glittering rivulet to the tarn: And down the shingly scaur he plunged, and caught, And set it on his head, and in his heart Heard murmurs, 'Lo, thou likewise shalt be King.'
— from Idylls of the King by Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson, Baron

We see then how easy it is, by the help of these principles, to explain those apparent contradictions, which are noticed in the conduct of many persons who are scrupulously honest in some respects, and cheats and scoundrels in others, who trample under foot the most sacred duties, and yet are faithful to the death to engagements that are often illegitimate.
— from The Social Contract & Discourses by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

by gar, now we shall begin our Bloody work again;’ and in the heavens is shown a genius, having a crown and sceptre in one hand, and a guillotine in the other, who says, ‘Rise, rise, thou favor’d son of Fate!
— from English Caricature and Satire on Napoleon I. Volume 2 (of 2) by John Ashton

We take it that the reference is to a cask of ale or wine, and that the phrase “to set cock-a-hoop” means to take the cock, or tap, out of the cask and set it on the hoop, thus letting all the contents escape.
— from The Ornithology of Shakespeare Critically examined, explained and illustrated by James Edmund Harting

“Ah!” exclaimed the Colonel, “a ship instead of a clock!
— from Christine: A Fife Fisher Girl by Amelia E. Barr

As soon as the girl was alone she made a figure and dressed it in her clothes and set it out on the balcony.
— from Fairy Tales from Many Lands by Katharine Pyle

The mixture of houses, trees, and ships, has a fine effect, and unites town, country, and sea, in one prospect.
— from Life and Correspondence of David Hume, Volume 1 (of 2) by John Hill Burton

Reyes, in his oft-quoted “Memoria” to the then Gov. General, Primo de Rivera, in a mad attempt to prove that the insurrection was owing to the “friars” and that they attempted to invent the Katipunan plot to cover up their treason, says: [ 220 ] “Above all, the friars committed the criminal and suicidal infamy of calumniously including in the Katipunan the millionaire and aristocratic element, and the middle classes, the fact being that they had nothing in common with the plebeian association which they not only despised for its low condition, but which the few who knew of its existence must have hated, if not for egotism, for the socialistic tendencies of the said group.”
— from The Katipunan; or, The Rise and Fall of the Filipino Commune by Francis St. Clair

Then come the recipes: 200 soups, 251 sauces, 133 garnishes, 191 side dishes, 101 shell fish, 218 fish, 165 beef, 165 veal, 75 mutton, 109 lamb, 48 pork, 224 poultry, 163 game, 198 miscellaneous entrees, 67 salads, 172 vegetables, 100 eggs, 37 farinaceous foods, 233 sweet entrees, 170 cakes, 17 breads, 189 ices and iced drinks, 90 confectionery, and several illustrations of centerpieces.
— from The Hotel St. Francis Cook Book by Victor Hirtzler

I will endeavor to see the Judge of the Orphans' Court to-night, take out a habeas corpus, ordering Le Noir to bring his ward into court, and serve it on him as he passes through Staunton on his way home.
— from Capitola the Madcap by Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

“He came hither,” she said, addressing her courtiers and slaves, “in order to feast his eyes upon what is forbidden, to discover that which for a hundred generations hath been hidden from the pagans of the other world.
— from The Eye of Istar: A Romance of the Land of No Return by William Le Queux