We dined in a large old Gothic parlour, which was formerly the hall.
— from The Expedition of Humphry Clinker by T. (Tobias) Smollett

The desert is a land of geographic paradoxes.
— from Earth Features and Their Meaning An Introduction to Geology for the Student and the General Reader by William Herbert Hobbs

Doron's toothache was much better, thank you; yes, the stuff had done it a lot of good; she wouldn't want any more, she thought.
— from Head of the Lower School by Dorothea Moore

There were four down in a list of gifts at a fashionable marriage only last week.
— from Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 8, 1890 by Various

The sky overhead had become a vast lift of perishing yellow—a spent wave of daffodil by the north and by the south; westward, of lemon, deepening into a luminous orange glow shot with gold and crimson, and rising as an exhalation from hollow cloud-sepulchres of amethyst, straits of scarlet, and immeasurable spaces of dove-grey filled with shallows of the most pale sea-green.
— from Pharais; and, The Mountain Lovers by William Sharp

To appease the perturbations of the mind, to live a tranquil, upright, unremorseful life, to cultivate the [Pg 335] power of governing by the will the current of our thoughts, repressing unruly passions, exaggerated anxieties, and unhealthy desires, is at least one great recipe for banishing from our pillows those painful dreams that contribute not a little to the unhappiness of many lives.
— from The Map of Life Conduct and Character by William Edward Hartpole Lecky

“Water done it a lot o’ good.”
— from Fix Bay'nets: The Regiment in the Hills by George Manville Fenn

But the Coak is reckoned by most to exceed all others for making Drink of the finest Flavour and pale Colour, because it sends no smoak forth to hurt the Malt with any offensive tang, that Wood, Fern and Straw are apt to do in a lesser or greater degree; but there is a difference even in what is call'd Coak, the right sort being large Pit-coal chark'd or burnt in some measure to a Cinder, till all the Sulphur is consumed and evaporated away, which is called Coak, and this when it is truly made is the best of all other Fuels; but if there is but one Cinder as big as an Egg, that is not thoroughly cured, the smoak of this one is capable of doing a little damage, and this happens too often by the negligence or avarice of the Coak-maker: There is another sort by some wrongly called Coak, and rightly named Culme or Welch-coal, from Swanzey in Pembrokeshire , being of a hard stony substance in small bits resembling a shining Coal, and will burn without smoak, and by its sulphureous effluvia cast a most excellent whiteness on all the outward parts of the grainy body:
— from The London and Country Brewer by Anonymous

An open drain ran down it, and lines of gables and overhanging storeys nodded across at each other in grotesque infirmity.
— from Royal Winchester: Wanderings in and about the Ancient Capital of England by A. G. K. (Alfred Guy Kingan) L'Estrange