As I am a woman and cannot marry your daughter, I beg that, in case I perform the cure, my son Phakir Chand may marry your daughter and take possession of half your kingdom.
— from Folk-Tales of Bengal by Lal Behari Day

Great actions, whether military or naval, have generally given celebrity to the scenes from whence they are denominated; and thus petty villages, and capes and bays known only to the coasting trader, become associated with mighty deeds, and their names are made conspicuous in the history of the world.
— from The Life of Horatio, Lord Nelson by Robert Southey

To us, of course, it looked as though the discovery and the proposition came from the same thinly-veiled sources.
— from Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil by W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt) Du Bois

By means of a supercargo's clerk, I got the account of the matter, which was, that the governments had had difficulty about the payment of a debt; that war had been threatened and prepared for, but not actually declared, although it was pretty generally anticipated.
— from Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana

Any shot directed at this person might hit the sash.
— from The Return of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

The villages and open towns had been abandoned on their approach by the inhabitants, the cattle was driven away, the provisions removed or destroyed, the bridges broken down, nor was any thing left which could afford either shelter or subsistence to an invader.
— 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

Any one who has lived in the country in winter and knows those long dreary, still evenings when even the dogs are too bored to bark and even the clocks seem weary of ticking, and any one who on such evenings has been troubled by awakening conscience and has moved restlessly about, trying now to smother his conscience, now to interpret it, will understand the distraction and the pleasure my wife’s voice gave me as it sounded in the snug little room, telling me I was a bad man.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

The 'Queen Anne' pressed very hard on me before I had done; and the press has rather too justly noticed a slovenliness about the conclusion.
— from The Book-Hunter A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author by John Hill Burton

As soon as Jed was safely in the corral Scott called up Dawson, but Mrs. Dawson answered the ’phone and said her husband had not come home yet.
— from Scott Burton on the Range by Edward G. (Edward Gheen) Cheyney

We had scarcely congratulated each other on the termination of our dilemma, and the partial dispersion of the vapours, when a jagged line of serpent-like lightning ran shimmering through the broad flash that lit up for a second the whole wild scene amid which we were moving; and at the same instant, the loudest and the longest peal broke from the sky to which I ever listened; rock after rock caught up the sound, and flung it back, until the wizard thunder rattled in fainter echoes down into the plain.
— from The City of the Sultan; and Domestic Manners of the Turks, in 1836, Vol. 2 (of 2) by Miss (Julia) Pardoe

Dick, entering at the door at the platform end of the building instead of passing straight up through the crowd as was his custom, was aware of a curious influence at work from the first moment—an influence adverse if not directly hostile that reached him he knew not how.
— from The Obstacle Race by Ethel M. (Ethel May) Dell

I will not go on to point out in detail at the present stage of our argument how Professor Sayce similarly finds ancestor-worship and Shamanism (a low form of ghost-propitiation) at the root of the religion of the ancient Ac-cadians; how other observers have performed the same task for the Egyptians and Japanese; and how like customs have been traced among Greeks and Amazulu, among Hebrews and Nicaraguans, among early English and Digger Indians, among our Aryan ancestors themselves and Andaman Islanders.
— from The Evolution of the Idea of God: An Inquiry Into the Origins of Religions by Grant Allen

They are beautiful dancers, and the performance of a body of Swazis in war costume is a thing to remember.
— from The African Colony: Studies in the Reconstruction by John Buchan

By the use of the pump, h , a stronger flow of the liquid into the pipe b , of the first chest, a , is effected than if it were taken directly from the washer of the chest, a 2 , which is desirable, as the pulp is delivered in the trough, m , with but little moisture.
— from Scientific American Supplement No. 822, October 3, 1891 by Various

[Pg 20] Several there were who vowed in loud and piteous cries, that if the Lord God would spare their lives, they would thenceforward dedicate all their powers to His service; and not a few were heard to exclaim, in the bitterness of remorse, that the judgments of the Most High were justly poured out upon them for their neglected Sabbaths, and their profligate or profane lives; but the number of those was extremely small who appeared to dwell either with lively hope or dread on the view of an opening eternity.
— from The Loss of the Kent, East Indiaman, in the Bay of Biscay Narrated in a Letter to a Friend by Duncan McGregor