Original Having nothing to do at home, and being arrived at that happy age when a man can be idle with impunity, he took his place once more on the bench, at the inn door, and was reverenced as one of the patriarchs of the village, and a chronicle of the old times “before the war.”
— from The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon by Washington Irving

The peddler said it was warranted to dye any hair a beautiful raven black and wouldn’t wash off.
— from Anne of Green Gables by L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery

Childless, she sat down among her dead sons and daughters and husband, and became hardened by her woes.
— from The Metamorphoses of Ovid, Books I-VII by Ovid

He and I to Sir G. Carteret to discourse about his account, but Mr. Waith not being there nothing could be done, and therefore I home again, and busy all day.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

Then Angad spake: “We Vánars well Have searched each valley, cave, and dell, And hill, and brook, and dark recess, And tangled wood, and wilderness.
— from The Rámáyan of Válmíki, translated into English verse by Valmiki

"Well, I'll just get down and have a bit o' talk with you in the garden," said Mr. Tulliver, thinking that he should be more likely to show a due spirit of resolve if his sister were not present.
— from The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot

Ask her if you might be driven over to our cottage some day and have a bit o' mother's hot oat cake, an' butter, an' a glass o' milk."
— from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Fanny gave a quick negative, and tried to hide her interest in the subject by an eager attention to her brother, who was driving as hard a bargain, and imposing on her as much as he could; but Crawford pursued with “No, no, you must not part with the queen.
— from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

The boy had been instructed to get over the playground wall (at a selected spot where the broken glass had been removed from the top, and niches made convenient in the brick); to run a quarter of a mile; to purchase a pint of rum-shrub on credit; to brave all the Doctor's outlying spies, and to clamber back into the playground again; during the performance of which feat, his foot had slipt, and the bottle was broken, and the shrub had been spilt, and his pantaloons had been damaged, and he appeared before his employer a perfectly guilty and trembling, though harmless, wretch.
— from Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

No; could Sophy’s virtues once be recognised by Darrell, and her alleged birth acknowledged by him—could the guardian, who, in fostering those virtues to bloom by Darrell’s hearth, had laid under the deepest obligations one who, if unforgiving to treachery, was grateful for the humblest service—could that guardian justify the belief in his innocence which George Morley had ever entertained, and, as it now proved, with reason—then where on all earth a man like Guy Darrell to vindicate William Losely’s attainted honour, or from whom William Losely might accept cherishing friendship and independent ease, with so indisputable a right to both!
— from What Will He Do with It? — Complete by Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron

Then dined at home, and by chance
— from Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete 1660 N.S. by Samuel Pepys

Luxuries, ornaments, furniture, and general domestic arrangements, have all been studied with the taste of an artist and the exactitude of an archæologist.
— from French and Oriental Love in a Harem by Mario Uchard

The sparking gears are driven by means of a gear formed on a sleeve which telescopes over the hub of the starboard drum, and has a bearing thereon, the end of the sleeve terminating in a ring which is fastened to the crank shaft.
— from Langley Memoir on Mechanical Flight, Parts I and II Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, Volume 27 Number 3, Publication 1948, 1911 by Charles M. (Charles Matthews) Manly

"When, however, she observed the sardonic disposition of Mr. Greville to stare around him at the whole company in curious silence, she felt a defiance against his aristocracy beat in every pulse; for, however grandly he might look back to the long ancestry of the Brookes and the Grevilles, she had a glowing consciousness that her own blood, rapid and fluent, flowed in her veins from Adam of Saltsberg; and, at length, provoked by the dullness of a taciturnity that, in the midst of such renowned interlocutors, produced as narcotic a torpor as could have been caused by a dearth the most barren of human faculties; she grew tired of the music, and yet more tired of remaining, what as little suited her inclinations as her abilities, a mere cipher in the company; and, holding such a position, and all its concomitants, to be ridiculous, her spirits rose rebelliously above her control; and, in a fit of utter recklessness of what might be thought of her by her fine new acquaintance, 150
— from Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) Edited with notes and Introductory Account of her life and writings by Hester Lynch Piozzi

Yet they represent signal steps in the evolution of a new dramatic style, designed, as has already been intimated, to give palpable form to emotional data descried in moments anterior not only to articulation but even to consciousness itself; and for this reason, the plane of the dramatic action lies deep below the surface of life, down in the inner tabernacle where the mystic looks for the hidden destinies.
— from Prophets of Dissent : Essays on Maeterlinck, Strindberg, Nietzsche and Tolstoy by Otto Heller

I intended in my last letter, to give you some account of an equestrian excursion along the banks of the river, and of a visit to the new Ursuline convent, two miles below the city; but a long digression about hotels and bachelors brought me to the end of my letter before I could even mention the subject.
— from The South-West, by a Yankee. In Two Volumes. Volume 1 by J. H. (Joseph Holt) Ingraham

When we see her again in the 22d Iliad , she is weaving, and her damsels are heating a bath against Hector's return from the fight.
— from Studies of the Greek Poets (Vol 1 of 2) by John Addington Symonds

One of the infants was dead, and Janie dug a hole and buried it.
— from The White Queen of Okoyong: A True Story of Adventure, Heroism and Faith by W. P. (William Pringle) Livingstone