Having thus got honourably rid of the trouble of amusing myself in a way I cared not for, I turned my steps towards the sea, or rather the Solway Firth which here separates the two sister kingdoms, and which lay at about a mile’s distance, by a pleasant walk over sandy knells, covered with short herbage, which you call Links, and we English, Downs.
— from Redgauntlet: A Tale Of The Eighteenth Century by Walter Scott

The Vital Principle—or, in other words, the essence of that mysterious Something which we call Life, and which extends down from Man to the feeblest insect and the smallest plant—has been an unguessed riddle from the beginning of the world to the present time.
— from After Dark by Wilkie Collins

Neither the Chiefs who enjoyed the reputation of serving their country loyally and with exceptional devotion, like Alexeiev, and later the “Iron Chiefs,” such as Kornilov undoubtedly was and as Brussilov was supposed to be, nor all the Chameleons that fed from the hand of the Socialist reformers of the Army had any real power.
— from The Russian Turmoil; Memoirs: Military, Social, and Political by Anton Ivanovich Denikin

She is, in fact, though so young, a thoroughly accomplished singer—in the school, at any rate, toward which the music of M. Gounod consistently leans, and which essentially differs from the florid school of Rossini and the Italians before Verdi.
— from Memoirs of an American Prima Donna by Clara Louise Kellogg

Four of us had to fill a great chasm nine columns long and wide every day, and to do proof-reading as well.
— from War's Brighter Side The Story of The Friend Newspaper Edited by the Correspondents with Lord Roberts's Forces, March-April, 1900 by Julian Ralph

The young lady was wearing a coat with a storm collar, but the girl had a fur thing around her neck, and her stocky, chunky little arms were elbow deep in a big pillow muff to match, though the April night wasn't even half-way chilly.
— from The Wreckers by Francis Lynde

Favors are acknowledged from Belle R., Tennessee; Willie D. V., Indiana; Robbie B. H., St. John, New Brunswick; Alpha T. E., Pennsylvania; from Illinois—Mamie Ripley, Tommy C. H., Edith Patterson, Joseph K.; from Massachusetts—Kennie Norwood, L. Tyler P., Stanley K. H., Harry B., F. U. T.; from Ohio—Lulie H., Oscar B., Willie Gordon, Ralph M. F., Hattie Mitchell; from Michigan—Nellie M. C., L. A. Waldron, Edward D. E.; from New York—Fred L. Colwell, A. M. Tucker, D. C. Gilmore; Eddie R. Derwart, Toronto, Canada.
— from Harper's Young People, January 27, 1880 An Illustrated Weekly by Various