But as soon as Pao-yü had reflected minutely over the sense and import of this sentence, he could not refrain from bursting forth into a loud fit of crying, and, turning himself round, he stood up, and, drawing near the table, he took up the pencil, and eagerly composed these enigmatical lines:
— from Hung Lou Meng, or, the Dream of the Red Chamber, a Chinese Novel, Book I by Xueqin Cao

The two younger of the trio (fine girls of sixteen and seventeen) had grey beaver hats, then in fashion, shaded with ostrich plumes, and from under the brim of this graceful head-dress fell a profusion of light tresses, elaborately curled; the elder lady was enveloped in a costly velvet shawl, trimmed with ermine, and she wore a false front of French curls.
— from Jane Eyre: An Autobiography by Charlotte Brontë

The improvement of storage batteries, steadily going on, will eventually cause the electrical launch to replace the steam launch.
— from Scientific American Supplement, No. 520, December 19, 1885 by Various

While it would seem that the light from oil-lamps or gaslight is unable to promote growth, except in very exceptional cases, the electric light, or other strong artificial light, seems to be capable of taking the place of sunlight.
— from Manures and the principles of manuring by Charles Morton Aikman

Page 252: 'embarassed' corrected to 'embarrassed'. "... lapsed into embarrassed silence;"
— from Punch, or the London Charivari, November 25, 1893 by Various

The latest concession of the Boers was that if the "people"—and by the "people" were meant the burghers of the Transvaal—approved, and the Government would try to get them to do so, a "retrospective five years' franchise" would be granted, and the amount of it was that of two-thirds of the white men of the Transvaal were to have one-fourth of the representation in the Volks Raad, but by no possibility, it was a little later explained, could the English language be permitted in that august body—the barbarous jargon of the Boers being the official language and the only tongue to be spoken.
— from South Africa and the Boer-British War, Volume I Comprising a History of South Africa and its people, including the war of 1899 and 1900 by J. Castell (John Castell) Hopkins

The pupils at this time were slightly contracted, the eyelids were almost entirely closed; the eyes, looking at nothing, were veiled from our view.
— from Fasting Girls: Their Physiology and Pathology by William A. (William Alexander) Hammond

It will be very long before she has any hair to cut off again, so I hope she may be older and wiser by that time, especially considering that every looking-glass she sees for six months will make her feel ashamed of herself.
— from Holiday House: A Series of Tales by Catherine Sinclair

My training for India had not been entirely confined to Eastern languages.
— from The Road to En-Dor Being an Account of How Two Prisoners of War at Yozgad in Turkey Won Their Way to Freedom by E. H. (Elias Henry) Jones

When in the eighth century the Emperor Leo, the Isaurian, 12 earned the nickname of ‘Iconoclast’, or ‘Image-breaker’, by a campaign of destruction amongst devotional pictures and images that he denounced as idolatrous, Rome definitely refused to accept this ruling on behalf of Western Christendom.
— from Europe in the Middle Ages by Ierne L. (Ierne Lifford) Plunket