The brisk fire of questioning to which he was exposed, elicited from him that he was thinking of an animal, a live animal, rather a disagreeable animal, a savage animal, an animal that growled and grunted sometimes, and talked sometimes, and lived in London, and walked about the streets, and wasn’t made a show of, and wasn’t led by anybody, and didn’t live in a menagerie, and was never killed in a market, and was not a horse, or an ass, or a cow, or a bull, or a tiger, or a dog, or a pig, or a cat, or a bear.
— from A Christmas Carol in Prose; Being a Ghost Story of Christmas by Charles Dickens

The fits grow successively more and more distinctive, and endure each for a longer term than the preceding.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven Edition Table Of Contents And Index Of The Five Volumes by Edgar Allan Poe

For one it was easy enough, for the other could lower him by the rope; but I could not discover how the second of us was to get down afterwards, as there was nothing to which the rope could be fastened.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

ELDHRIMNIR: eldr, elementary flre: brim, congealed vapour, rime, also soot; hence (a kettle) sooty from flre.
— from The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson by Snorri Sturluson

Damask is the old-fashioned but essentially conservative (and safely best style) tablecloth, especially, suitable in a high-ceilinged room that is either English, French, or of no special period, in decoration.
— from Etiquette by Emily Post

EXTRAORDINARY, employed for a special or temporary purpose.
— from Epicoene; Or, The Silent Woman by Ben Jonson

However, he charged them to kill every one they should take, and not to abstain from the slaughter of their enemies, either for weariness or for pity, and not to fall on the spoil, and be thereby diverted from pursuing their enemies as they ran away; but to destroy all the animals, and to take nothing for their own peculiar advantage.
— from Antiquities of the Jews by Flavius Josephus

It is well known that very many of the megalithic monuments of the New Grange type scattered over Europe, especially from the Carnac centre of Brittany to the Tara-Boyne centre of Ireland, have one thing in common, an astronomical arrangement like the Great Pyramid, and an entrance facing one of the points of the solstices, usually either the winter solstice, which is common, or the summer solstice.
— from The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries by W. Y. (Walter Yeeling) Evans-Wentz

She only alludes to his conduct in the most delicate terms, and makes every excuse for him that she can possibly think of; and as for her own misery, I rather feel it than see it expressed in her letters.’
— from The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë

she asked, and lent an eager ear; for Helen's word could make or mar things irretrievably.
— from Stories Worth Rereading by Various

He was a Bell Everett elector for that district in the late election for President.
— from Experience of a Confederate States Prisoner Being an Ephemeris Regularly Kept by an Officer of the Confederate States Army by Beckwith West

The moss covers everything under foot with a close, springy carpet six inches deep, and moss and lichens, ferns and grasses envelop every fallen log and twig, and convert them into things of beauty.
— from Alaska, Its Southern Coast and the Sitkan Archipelago by Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore

In short, we have no evidence, either from science or revelation, that the minutest atom of matter has ever been destroyed since the original creation; nor have we any more evidence that any of it ever will be reduced to the nothingness from which it sprang.
— from The Religion of Geology and Its Connected Sciences by Edward Hitchcock

He therefore ordered Lieutenant Mumford to be in readiness to move it forward as soon as the enemy emerged from the wood.
— from Tom Burnaby: A Story of Uganda and the Great Congo Forest by Herbert Strang

For generations and generations accordingly, the Hermit-crab has ceased to exercise itself upon questions of safety, and dwells in its little shell as proudly and securely as if its second-hand house were a fortress erected especially for its private use.
— from Natural Law in the Spiritual World by Henry Drummond

"Somebody must go on an exploring expedition for a mule," said Mr. Barrymore, "and as I'm the only one whose Italian is fairly fluent, I suppose I must be the somebody.
— from My Friend the Chauffeur by A. M. (Alice Muriel) Williamson

If the King still persisted—well, it was easy enough for him to pronounce sentence, but he would find it impossible to carry it out.
— from The Exiles of Faloo by Barry Pain