"Do you remember how I took you to the dance at the club?" he asked.
— from The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

I am impatient and querulous under culinary disappointments, as to come home at the dinner hour, for instance, expecting some savoury mess, and to find one quite tasteless and sapidless.
— from The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 2 Elia and The Last Essays of Elia by Charles Lamb

My father will be only too happy to give you a free passage, and though there is a heavy duty on spirits of every kind, there will be no difficulty about the Custom House, as the officers are all Democrats.
— from The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde

In his story, which we translate literally from the original, written in ancient French, the venerable traveller attributes the origin of this singular system of exercising power over the minds of persons to a prince who in reality did but keep up a tradition of his family; for the Alaodin herein mentioned is no other than a successor of the famous Hassan, son of Ali, who, in the middle of the eleventh century, took advantage of the wars which devastated Asia to create himself a kingdom, comprising the three provinces of Turkistan, Djebel, and Syria.
— from Manners, Customs, and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period by P. L. Jacob

It was verging on dusk, and the clock had already given warning of the hour to dress for dinner, when little Adèle, who knelt by me in the drawing-room window-seat, suddenly exclaimed— “Voilà, Monsieur Rochester, qui revient!”
— from Jane Eyre: An Autobiography by Charlotte Brontë

At night going home I went to my bookseller’s in Duck Lane, and find her weeping in the shop, so as ego could not have any discourse con her nor ask the reason, so departed and took coach home, and taking coach was set on by a wench that was naught, and would have gone along with me to her lodging in Shoe Lane, but ego did donner her a shilling... and left her, and home, where after supper, W. Batelier with us, we to bed.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

Thus a duke and a duchess amidst their court had all the things which were used at their table covered--hence the modern expression, mettre le couvert (to lay the cloth)--even the wash-hand basin and the cadenas , a kind of case in which the cups, knives, and other table articles were kept; but when they were entertaining a king all these marks of superiority were removed, as a matter of etiquette, from the table at which they sat, and were passed on as an act of respect to the sovereign present.
— from Manners, Customs, and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period by P. L. Jacob

The Duchess and the Countess, having an engagement at a meeting of the Committee of French Mothers, were to take Annette home before going to the meeting; but Bertin offered to take her for a walk, and then to the Boulevard Malesherbes; so both ladies left them.
— from Strong as Death by Guy de Maupassant

At one moment she was minded to turn to Dick and to call his attention to the likeness in the country they were travelling through to the country she had come from; had she been alone with him she might have asked him, but he was now busy talking of the comic songs and sketches in which they were to act.
— from A Mummer's Wife by George Moore

Its general course is not far from S.—it is due S. for many miles before it falls into the Mississippi; which latter, for a great distance above their confluence, has a general bearing S. E. Immediately at the mouth of the St. Croix, on the E., is Prescott, Pierce Co., Wis., the site of which was once recommended by Long for a military post; on the W. is Point Douglas, Washington Co., Minn.; and across the Mississippi, a very little higher up, is Hastings, seat of Dakota Co., Minn., at the mouth of Vermilion
— from The Expeditions of Zebulon Montgomery Pike, Volume 1 (of 3) To Headwaters of the Mississippi River Through Louisiana Territory, and in New Spain, During the Years 1805-6-7. by Zebulon Montgomery Pike

As a matter of fact, the band of elder students with whom Mary was connected in her latter days at the College had a generous enthusiasm for her beauty, taking it as in a sense a credit to themselves.
— from Mary Gray by Katharine Tynan

Three days after the conversation, however, a horseman from Plymouth rode into the little village, and inquired for the house of Master Hearne.
— from Under Drake's Flag: A Tale of the Spanish Main by G. A. (George Alfred) Henty

I caught glimpses of fields and copses as we were driven along, that could have afforded me amusement for hours, and orchards on gentle acclivities, beneath which I could have walked till evening.
— from Italy; with sketches of Spain and Portugal by William Beckford

The next moment the animal was down and the cowpuncher had a hind foot fast in the tie rope, Several seconds passed as the man fought for a fore foot—seconds which to the breathlessly watching girl seemed hours.
— from The Texan A Story of the Cattle Country by James B. (James Beardsley) Hendryx

Colonel Modiford, listening to this advice, purchased the half of an estate for 7000 l. , an immense sum at that day, and thus constituted himself a Barbados planter, instead of adhering to his first resolution, of becoming a settler of Antigua.
— from Antigua and the Antiguans, Volume 1 (of 2) A full account of the colony and its inhabitants from the time of the Caribs to the present day by Mrs. Lanaghan

Each, in token of friendship, did as the chief had already done.
— from The Pioneer Woodsman as He Is Related to Lumbering in the Northwest by George Henry Warren