I insert here a letter of Jane Austen's written backwards, addressed to her niece "Cassy," daughter of Captain Charles Austen (afterwards Admiral) when a little girl.
— from The Letters of Jane Austen Selected from the compilation of her great nephew, Edward, Lord Bradbourne by Jane Austen

I heard a good deal of Colonel Campbell's taste at Weymouth; and the softness of the upper notes I am sure is exactly what he and all that party would particularly prize.
— from Emma by Jane Austen

Thus absorbed, and concentered in this unutterable delight, I had not attended to the sweet author of it being thoroughly wet, and in danger of catching cold; when, in good time, the landlady, whom the appearance of my equipage (which, bye the bye Charles knew nothing of) had gained me an interest in, for me and mine interrupted us by bringing in a decent shift of linen and clothes; which now, somewhat recovered into a calmer composure by the coming in of a third person, I pressed him to take the benefit of, with a tender con-cern and anxiety that made me tremble for his health.
— from Memoirs of Fanny Hill A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) by John Cleland

MYSIS-STAGE.—A stage in the development of certain crustaceans (prawns), in which they closely resemble the adults of a genus (Mysis) belonging to a slightly lower group.
— from The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, 6th Edition by Charles Darwin

Displaying our colors conspicuously at the head of our column, we succeeded in attracting the attention of our friends, and soon formed the brigade in rear of Colonel Porter's.
— from Memoirs of General William T. Sherman — Complete by William T. (William Tecumseh) Sherman

And being no stranger to the art of war, I gave him a description of cannons, culverins, muskets, carabines, pistols, bullets, powder, swords, bayonets, battles, sieges, retreats, attacks, undermines, countermines, bombardments, sea fights, ships sunk with a thousand men, twenty thousand killed on each side, dying groans, limbs flying in the air, smoke, noise, confusion, trampling to death under horses’ feet, flight, pursuit, victory; fields strewed with carcases, left for food to dogs and wolves and birds of prey; plundering, stripping, ravishing, burning, and destroying.
— from Gulliver's Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World by Jonathan Swift

The late Duke of Clarence charged the centre point of his label of Page 497 {497} three points with a cross couped gules.
— from A Complete Guide to Heraldry by Arthur Charles Fox-Davies

In addition there is a fourth mid-central vowel which occurs dialectally (Bohol, Southern Leyte, Southern Cebu, and other scattered areas) but is not found in the dialect of Cebu City and is not transcribed here.
— from A Dictionary of Cebuano Visayan by John U. Wolff

The wise Stagyrite speaks of no successive particles propagating motion like billiard balls, as Hobbes; nor of nervous or animal spirits, where inanimate and irrational solids are thawed down, and distilled, or filtrated by ascension, into living and intelligent fluids, that etch and re-etch engravings on the brain, as the followers of Des Cartes, and the humoral pathologists in general; nor of an oscillating ether which was to effect the same service for the nerves of the brain considered as solid fibres, as the animal spirits perform for them under the notion of hollow tubes, as Hartley teaches—nor finally, (with yet more recent dreamers) of chemical compositions by elective affinity, or of an electric light at once the immediate object and the ultimate organ of inward vision, which rises to the brain like an Aurora Borealis, and there, disporting in various shapes,—as the balance of plus and minus, or negative and positive, is destroyed or re-established,—images out both past and present.
— from Biographia Literaria by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Missy who talked about eating her way to the bar, I would doom to the perpetual duty of cooking chops for hungry lawyers' clerks.
— from The Cockaynes in Paris; Or, 'Gone abroad' by Blanchard Jerrold

The playground was really the only place where any display of character could be made; and as for three days I was a prisoner, Smith remained as much a mystery to me at the end of the week as he had been on the day of his arrival.
— from My Friend Smith: A Story of School and City Life by Talbot Baines Reed

" They do , of course," came the positive announcement.
— from The Bright Messenger by Algernon Blackwood

The British army retreated in the direction of Cross Creek, the Americans following closely in the rear.
— from An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America by J. P. (John Patterson) MacLean

Uganda Uganda has substantial natural resources, including fertile soils, regular rainfall, and sizable mineral deposits of copper, cobalt, gold, and other minerals.
— from The 2008 CIA World Factbook by United States. Central Intelligence Agency

[116] He soon dabbled his fingers in Igraine’s wounds that morning, dropped in oil, and balmed them with myrrh and unguents under a dressing of clean cloth.
— from Uther and Igraine by Warwick Deeping

It is the pleasurable interpretation of what is really unpleasant that gives the impression of queerness in the mood of these deteriorating or chronic cases.
— from Benign Stupors: A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type by August Hoch

On this point hear James Denny in his "The Death of Christ": "Christ died for sins once for all, and the man who believes in Christ and in His death has his relations to God once for all determined not by sin but by the Atonement.
— from God's Plan with Men by T. T. (Thomas Theodore) Martin

‘Accidental death, of course; couldn’t be otherwise; but censure on the delay and neglect of precaution, which the common opinion of the Court naturally concentrated on the absent; though, no doubt, the first omission was young Stebbing’s; but owing to the hurry of his start for Italy, that was easily excused.
— from Beechcroft at Rockstone by Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) Yonge