The reindeer are very numerous, the ground is covered with deep and lasting snow, and the great river of St. Lawrence is regularly frozen, in a season when the waters of the Seine and the Thames are usually free from ice.
— 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 man, who had the appearance of being a butcher, descended a little steep and isolated street, looking on to the river, with two of his friends.
— from Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas

"But deeds and language such as men do use, And persons such as comedy would choose, When she would show an image of the times, And sport with human follies, not with crimes.
— from Middlemarch by George Eliot

The gentlewomen; nor roll'd bullet heard To say, it thunders; nor tempestuous drum Rumbles, to tell you when the storm doth come; But deeds, and language, such as men do use, And persons, such as comedy would choose, When she would shew an image of the times, And sport with human follies, not with crimes.
— from Every Man in His Humor by Ben Jonson

Athos approached and hung over the youth in an attitude full of tender melancholy; he looked long on this young man, whose smiling mouth and half closed eyes bespoke soft dreams and lightest slumber, as if his guardian angel watched over him with solicitude and affection.
— from Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas

In his corner of the first-class compartment filled with City men the smothered sobbing still haunted him, so he opened the Times with the rich crackle that drowns all lesser sounds, and, barricaded behind it, set himself steadily to con the news.
— from The Forsyte Saga, Volume I. The Man Of Property by John Galsworthy

They met in the wild desert and decide, After long sittings and conflicting chatter, To pay a tribute, pocketing their pride.
— from The Fables of La Fontaine Translated into English Verse by Walter Thornbury and Illustrated by Gustave Doré by Jean de La Fontaine

Rats and mice, and beetles; and creaky doors, and loose slates, and broken panes, and stiff drawer handles, that stay out when you pull them and then fall down in the middle of the night.
— from Dracula's Guest by Bram Stoker

While at dinner, a large ship appeared in the offing, and soon afterwards we saw a light whale-boat pulling into the harbor.
— from Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana

He turned the wick down a little, shading and dimming the room—and then, as he flirted a bead of moisture from his forehead, whimsically stretched out his hand to watch it in the lamplight.
— from The Adventures of Jimmie Dale by Frank L. (Frank Lucius) Packard

“My lady told you as you’d hear everything to-morrow,” said Colin’s attendant; “for goodness gracious sake take your draught, do, and lie still; and don’t go a-moidering and a-bothering, and take away a poor woman’s character, as was never known to fall asleep before, nor wouldn’t but for thinking you was better and didn’t want nothing.”
— from A Son of the Soil by Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

Five years later he was drawing a large salary, and at the age of thirty he had opened a retail drug store of his own.
— from Ancestors: A Novel by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

I never saw any one else make such a dainty, accurate little stitch as she could.”
— from The Harvester by Gene Stratton-Porter

We did a little shopping… and then went to the Museum;
— from Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. In Two Volumes. Volume II. by Henry Reeve

He did a little sculpture as well, and even that showed his eccentricities of thought.
— from Pictures Every Child Should Know A Selection of the World's Art Masterpieces for Young People by Mary Schell Hoke Bacon

She stood listening for a few moments, and, under the spell of the fresh, young voice, the homely, heart-searching words, and the intimate sweetness of the woods, the despairing apathy lifted slowly away.
— from Northern Lights, Volume 4. by Gilbert Parker

He was awake with earliest daylight, and lay staring at the thin dawn that lurked behind curtain-draped windows.
— from The Lost Wagon by Jim Kjelgaard