Christie read aloud, while the children revelled in sand, shells, and puddles; Miss Tudor spun endless webs of gay silk and wool; and Mr. Fletcher, with his hat over his eyes, lay sunning himself like a luxurious lizard, as he watched the face that grew daily fairer in his sight, and listened to the pleasant voice that went reading on till all his ills and ennui seemed lulled to sleep as by a spell.
— from Work: A Story of Experience by Louisa May Alcott

They determined on walking round Beechen Cliff, that noble hill whose beautiful verdure and hanging coppice render it so striking an object from almost every opening in Bath.
— from Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

He got the gun, but before he could raise it, she sprang at him from all fours like a cat, and clung to him with a passionate fury no man could have been capable of.
— from The Woman from Outside [On Swan River] by Hulbert Footner

"Come right in," she said as Puss, Junior, and Tom Thumb, both wet to the skin, rapped on the door.
— from Puss Junior and Robinson Crusoe by David Cory

In the Botanic Gardens of Ceylon the apple-tree 22 "sends out numerous runners under ground, which continually rise into small stems, and form a growth around the parent-tree.)
— from The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication by Charles Darwin

The professor was attired in new and dapper tweeds; the eye-glasses upon his aristocratic nose had dependent from them a rather broad black ribbon; and the shirtfront across which it dangled was of peppermint-striped silk, its dominant color repeated in silk socks appearing above patent-leather shoes.
— from Kildares of Storm by Eleanor Mercein Kelly

As the morning advances, cumulus clouds rise in stately squadrons above the horizon and move across the sky dropping drifting shadows; at noon over a fire of sage stumps you heat up your beans and brew your coffee in the grateful shade of your wagon; night finds you at some hospitable trader’s post, or enjoying your blankets at the sign of La belle étoile .
— from Finding the Worth While in the Southwest by Charles Francis Saunders

"Monseigneur," wrote the Bishop of Paris to the Grand Master, "quant à tenir la chose secrette comme vous le demandez, il est mal aisé; combien que ce Roy fust bien de cest advis, sinon qu'il le treuve impossible; car a cause de ces provisions et choses, qu'il fault faire en ce Royaulme, incontinent sera sceu a Londres, et de la par tout le monde.
— from The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) by James Anthony Froude

Durrant Cooper, Refugees in Sussex , Sussex Archaeological Collections, xiii., 1861).
— from The Teaching and Cultivation of the French Language in England during Tudor and Stuart Times With an Introductory Chapter on the Preceding Period by K. Rebillon (Kathleen Rebillon) Lambley

The small party journeyed on toward the village, and while Pierre, the Canadian, drove the wagon, and the woman and her child rode in silence, Smith and Garrard kept up a lively conversation.
— from Beyond the Old Frontier: Adventures of Indian-Fighters, Hunters, and Fur-Traders by George Bird Grinnell

"Only one thing," said John, in a low voice, "if I have judged your character rightly in so short a time."
— from Peter's Mother by De La Pasture, Henry, Mrs.