I’ve had the will back only three months, and am already deep in debt again, and moving heaven and earth to save myself from exposure and destruction, with a reasonably fair show of getting the thing covered up if I’m let alone, and now this fiend has gone and found me out somehow or other.
— from The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain

So bodies that have died of putrid fevers decompose with a rapidity far surpassing those that have died of other diseases, because putrefaction had really commenced before death.
— from General Anatomy, Applied to Physiology and Medicine, Vol. 2 (of 3) by Xavier Bichat

He had come down with a relief from somewhere near Glencorse Wood and had lost himself and floundered all night in shell holes and mud through the awful rain and wind which seemed to have power to wash out the very gunfire of Manton’s battery.
— from Australia at War A Winter Record Made by Will Dyson on the Somme and at Ypres, During the Campaigns of 1916 and 1917 by Will Dyson

She was a stout old dame with a red face suggestive of drink, a most unfair thing to be said of her as she drank nothing stronger than gin and water, one tumbler a night before retiring.
— from The Mandarin's Fan by Fergus Hume

The other two refused to abdicate, so there were three popes; and as each was himself under double interdict by the anathemas launched at him by his own rivals, it was doubtful whether a rescript from such maimed authority would be canonical.
— from Historic Bubbles by Frederic Leake

Most unfortunately, and just at the critical moment, Greene was taken down with a raging fever, so that when Washington came over on the 24th he found much confusion in the camps, which he repressed as best he could, and then prepared for the attack.
— from George Washington, Volume I by Henry Cabot Lodge

If the allowance of six dollars per day was a reason for subjecting the members to the payment of postage, every public officer ought also, on the same principle, to pay for his letters, as they were all compensated with equal liberality.
— from Abridgment of the Debates of Congress, from 1789 to 1856, Vol. 1 (of 16) by United States. Congress

And with what a life-giving pencil the whole figure is put on its feet, what intelligent drawing, what a rich, free stroke!
— from Picture and Text 1893 by Henry James

The troops now at the Dardanelles which are required for Salonika would be two divisions, preferably the Xth and XIth.
— from Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 by Ian Hamilton

A whirling view of pallid dockside houses, the masts of a tall ship with her sails hanging in disorderly loops; he came down with a jar that shook every bone onto what appeared to be some structure projecting from the deck, where a red face surrounded by whisker looked into his own.
— from The Blue Star by Fletcher Pratt