I reckon I can’t call that hand.
— from Roughing It by Mark Twain

Justina was persuaded, that a Roman emperor might claim, in his own dominions, the public exercise of his religion; and she proposed to the archbishop, as a moderate and reasonable concession, that he should resign the use of a single church, either in the city or the suburbs of Milan.
— 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

Thus guided, we may paraphrase the Apostle’s meaning as follows: ‘You dispute much about the successive grades of angels; you distinguish each grade by its special title; you can tell how each order was generated from the preceding; you assign to each its proper degree of worship.
— from St. Paul's Epistles to the Colossians and Philemon A revised text with introductions, notes and dissertations by J. B. (Joseph Barber) Lightfoot

I shouldn’t care to hear you say you did.
— from A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle

It was their clamor that had made the bringing back of Rizal possible, their demands for his death had been most prominent in his so-called trial, and now they were praising themselves for their “patriotism.”
— from Lineage, Life and Labors of José Rizal, Philippine Patriot by Austin Craig

Taddeo was buried by Agnolo and Giovanni, his sons, in the first cloister of S. Croce, in that tomb which he had made for Gaddo his father, and he was much honoured with verses by the men of culture of that time, as a man who had been greatly deserving for his ways of life and for having brought to completion with beautiful design, besides his pictures, many buildings of great convenience to his city, and besides what has been mentioned, for having carried out with solicitude and diligence the construction of the Campanile of S. Maria del Fiore, from the design left by Giotto his master; which campanile was built in such a manner that stones could not be put together with more diligence, nor could a more beautiful tower be made, with regard either to ornament, or cost, or design.
— from Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects, Vol. 01 (of 10) Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi by Giorgio Vasari

From the loss of Constantinople to his death, he consumed thirteen years, soliciting the Catholic powers to join in his restoration: the lesson had been familiar to his youth; nor was his last exile more indigent or shameful than his three former pilgrimages to the courts of Europe.
— 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

The money may be soon spent, the regret only remaining of having foolishly consumed it; but in the other case, he escapes the frequent vexation of waiting for barbers, and of their sometimes dirty fingers, offensive breaths, and dull razors; he shaves when most convenient to him, and enjoys daily the pleasure of its being done with a good instrument.
— from Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin

Mistress Wayne crept close to her protector.
— from Shameless Wayne: A Romance of the last Feud of Wayne and Ratcliffe by Halliwell Sutcliffe

He went up to London, and was measured for his dress clothes, and got his boots and gaiters, and then sought out and found the gun-shop, mentioned in the Field , and instead of pretending to be knowing about firearms, wisely told the shopman why he came to him, and that he trusted him entirely, being quite unable to judge for himself, which made the man take particular pains to select him a good one, and show him how to judge if the stock suited him; namely, by fixing his eyes on an object, and bringing the gun sharply up to his shoulder.
— from Dr. Jolliffe's Boys by Lewis Hough

Having succeeded, he put the conch to his lips, and after several trials brought from it a loud clear note like that of a bugle.
— from The Young Marooners on the Florida Coast by F. R. (Francis Robert) Goulding

Suddenly he laid it, still open, on his knee, and felt in all his pockets: clearly in vain, and clearly to his annoyance.
— from Ghost Stories of an Antiquary Part 2: More Ghost Stories by M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James

I’m equally certain that he knows the crew of the phantom motor boat, and the fellow who tried to drive us off Windmill Island.”
— from The Border Boys Along the St. Lawrence by John Henry Goldfrap

“Got to have someone around,” he muttered as he drank his coffee, “to help handle you women, even if it’s a young scalawag who spends all his time tracking down stories for your worthless newspaper.”
— from Nan Sherwood on the Mexican Border by Annie Roe Carr

From the cliff above starlings flew out to seek their feeding-haunts where the big game fed; and there was a familiar visitor near them in the black and drab stone-chat, whose scolding chirp they had so often heard in England among the gorse and bramble.
— from In Search of the Okapi A Story of Adventure in Central Africa by Ernest Glanville

The above records refer of course to horses galloping; but trotting, which is more or less an artificial mode of horse progression, has, with regard to speed, almost been reduced to an art.
— from Poachers and Poaching by Watson, John, F.L.S.

This deductive proof, it will have been seen, has the advantage of at once proving causation as well as co-existence; and it has the additional advantage that it also accounts for the exceptions to the occurrence of the phenomenon, the cases in which, although the body is colder than the air, yet no dew is deposited; by showing that this will necessarily be the case when the air is so under-supplied with aqueous vapor, comparatively to its temperature, that even when somewhat cooled by the contact of the colder body it can still continue to hold in suspension all the vapor which was previously suspended in it: thus in a very dry summer there are no dews, in a very dry winter no hoar-frost.
— from A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive by John Stuart Mill