In 1900, Baltimore was a close rival of New Orleans and was far ahead of all other ports except New York; but a decline in her imports began about 1903, and was so swift, that five years later her imports were almost negligible.
— from All About Coffee by William H. (William Harrison) Ukers

The indolence of weakness gained the day, and I directed my steps toward the cottage, thinking now, so far as I can recollect, of none of the exciting events of the night nor even of what the future still held, but purely and wholly of the fact that in the cottage I should find a fire and a bed.
— from The Indiscretion of the Duchess Being a Story Concerning Two Ladies, a Nobleman, and a Necklace by Anthony Hope

She might no doubt have understood that God, always working out His purposes [150] in consistency with all that is most honourable and pure in human conduct, requires of no one to swerve a hair’s breadth from the highest ideal of what a human life should be, and that just in proportion as we seek the best gifts and the most upright and pure path to them does God find it easy to bless us.
— from The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Genesis by Marcus Dods

The number of correct reproductions of numbers of seven places increased during the teens, although this class of children remain about one digit behind normal children of corresponding age.
— from Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene by G. Stanley (Granville Stanley) Hall

This work, which is a kind of Natural History, explaining the uses and virtues of herbs, fowls, fish, quadrupeds, minerals, drugs, and spices, contains a number of wood-cuts, many of which are curious, as containing representations of natural objects, but none of which are remarkable for their execution as wood engravings.
— from A Treatise on Wood Engraving, Historical and Practical by Henry G. (Henry George) Bohn

I am glad our Continental brethren cannot read our newspapers of the present day, otherwise they must infer that our choice of rulers is made from a class more fitted for the state's prison than the state thrones, and elevation to a scaffold were more suited to the characters of the individual candidates than elevation to office.
— from Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals In Two Volumes, Volume II by Samuel Finley Breese Morse

He could spread a convenient report on necessary occasions, by any of those forms which do not assert, but which disseminate a slander quite as certainly as if they did.
— from Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Then there are what are familiarly called black-jacks,—a deciduous oak, which bears a large, sharply-cut, indented leaf, of a character resembling our Northern ones.
— from Palmetto-Leaves by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Worms sometimes abound in places where they can rarely or never obtain dead or living leaves; for instance, beneath the pavement in well-swept courtyards, into which leaves are only occasionally blown.
— from The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms With Observations on Their Habits by Charles Darwin