“Your fame,” said he, [5] “ Mr. Geoffrey Barbican , as a London Antiquary, is not unknown to me; and I have sometimes pleased myself with the thought, that you must be even a distant relation of my own, since tradition says, that the Barbicans and the Posterns originally received their names from having been gate-keepers in various parts of this fair city: but of that I will not positively speak.
— from Chronicles of London Bridge by Richard Thompson

"You are talking, monsieur," the duke replied, "of men of superior ideas like Mohamet-Ali, Ibrahim-Pacha; but I am speaking of the people, the Turks and Arabs and Fellahs; I ask you what all those folk think of General Bonaparte?
— from My Memoirs, Vol. VI, 1832 to 1833 by Alexandre Dumas

And we fancied that we could select the American skulls from the common mass, as they clearly belonged to two distinct races of men; one set of skulls being thin and firm, while the other was thick and porous.
— from Mexico and Its Religion With Incidents of Travel in That Country During Parts of the Years 1851-52-53-54, and Historical Notices of Events Connected With Places Visited by Robert Anderson Wilson

“Do you know, sir,” said he, “I haven't been at a wake—let us see—this two or three years, anyhow; and, if you'd have no objection, why, I'd slip up awhile to Denis Kelly's; he's a distant relation of my own, sir; and blood's thicker than wather you know.”
— from The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of William Carleton, Volume Three by William Carleton

The daily report of military operations states the movements of the enemy, and points out what should be done to meet and resist him most advantageously (12th, 13th, and 14th of April; 10th; 16th, and 20th of May).
— from Paris under the Commune The Seventy-Three Days of the Second Siege; with Numerous Illustrations, Sketches Taken on the Spot, and Portraits (from the Original Photographs) by John Leighton

Lady Jane was a distant relation of my own; she judged me, perhaps, harshly—and I have some painful associations with her name; but she was a woman of many virtues.
— from Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. XXIII.—April, 1852.—Vol. IV. None by Various

Mackenzie, Dr. R., on modification of Syme's amputation, 83 .
— from A Manual of the Operations of Surgery For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners by Joseph Bell

"Philura is, after all, a distant relative of my own," soliloquized Mrs. Van Deuser, "and as such is entitled to consideration."
— from The Transfiguration of Miss Philura by Florence Morse Kingsley

The pantheistic feeling into which the imaginative mind so readily falls, is thus sketched by a poet of our own times: 'I seated myself, after sunset, by the water's side; nothing was to be heard save the dash of the waves as they broke upon the lonely shore; and I gradually fell into that state so well known among solitary travellers:—no distinct remembrance of my own separate being remained to me: I seemed to be but a part of some great whole, to undulate with the lake, to vegetate with the trees, to sigh with the winds, to blossom with the flowers.'
— from The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 Devoted to Literature and National Policy by Various

Nor do rivers, or mountains, or seas resist the progress of industry and enterprise.
— from The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster With an Essay on Daniel Webster as a Master of English Style by Edwin Percy Whipple