“She talked very collectedly, telling me that she had determined to mix her ashes with those of her departed husband, and should patiently wait my permission to do so, assured that God would enable her to sustain life till that was given, though she dared not eat or drink.
— from Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World by Mark Twain

It was still a danger to [ 244 ] name the very imperial gods who successively set themselves up to be worshipped at Rome, but the pointing of the phrases is unmistakable long before the last of the pagan emperors held the stirrup for the first christian Pontiff to mount his horse.
— from Demonology and Devil-lore by Moncure Daniel Conway

It was rumored that she was an object of almost paternal interest to one of the principal composers of the day, who excited her to spare no pains in the cultivation of her voice, which might hereafter prove a source of wealth and independence.
— from The Count of Monte Cristo, Illustrated by Alexandre Dumas

On two different occasions, before my daughter left my roof, I privately warned her that she was exposing herself to suspicion of the most unendurable and most degrading kind.
— from The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

Bellino, the impression you produce upon me, this sort of magnetism, your bosom worthy of Venus herself, which you have once abandoned to my eager hand, the sound of your voice, every movement of yours, assure me that you do not belong to my sex.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

The Enchanted Horse The Story of Two Sisters Who Were Jealous of Their Younger Sister Preface
— from The Arabian Nights Entertainments by Andrew Lang

Being come home, Will. told me that my Lord had a mind to speak with me to-night; so I returned by water, and, coming there, it was only to enquire how the ships were provided with victuals that are to go with him to fetch over the Queen, which I gave him a good account of.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

Anselmo was completely satisfied by the words of Lothario, and believed them as fully as if they had been spoken by an oracle; nevertheless he begged of him not to relinquish the undertaking, were it but for the sake of curiosity and amusement; though thenceforward he need not make use of the same earnest endeavours as before; all he wished him to do was to write some verses to her, praising her under the name of Chloris, for he himself would give her to understand that he was in love with a lady to whom he had given that name to enable him to sing her praises with the decorum due to her modesty; and if Lothario were unwilling to take the trouble of writing the verses he would compose them himself.
— from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

For he embarking himself, to set sail with a west-north-east wind, everyone in heaps did cast into the ship gold, silver, rings, jewels, spices, drugs, and aromatical perfumes, parrots, pelicans, monkeys, civet-cats, black-spotted weasels, porcupines, &c. He was accounted no good mother’s son that did not cast in all the rare and precious things he had.
— from Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais

And two generations later, in 1665, the Rev. Giles Moore, of Essex, had to send twenty-five miles for an ordinary medical man, who was paid 12 s. per visit, and the same distance for a physician, whose fee was £1—a second physician, who came and stayed two days, being paid £1 10 s. Of the country doctors of the middle and close of the last century, Dr. Slop is a fair specimen.
— from A Book About Doctors by John Cordy Jeaffreson

A chain without a staple, from which all the links derived their stability, or a series without a first, has been not inaptly allegorized, as a string of blind men, each holding the skirt of the man before him, reaching far out of sight, but all moving without the least deviation in one straight line.
— from Biographia Literaria by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

He had been very successful: her ladyship had expressed herself very well satisfied with his representations, and had empowered him to say that she should like an interview with Miss Watson on the first convenient opportunity.
— from The Younger Sister: A Novel, Volumes 1-3 by Mrs. (Catherine-Anne Austen) Hubback

On being informed of this result, Mat ordered the lawyer, after first deducting the amount of his bill from the forthcoming legacy, to draw him out such a legal form as might enable him to settle his property forthwith on another person.
— from Hide and Seek by Wilkie Collins

He then entreated her to spare her strength and spirits by returning to her own apartment, and the conversation was broken up.
— from Cecilia; Or, Memoirs of an Heiress — Volume 3 by Fanny Burney

John Eager Howard, the subject of this memoir, was born on the 4th of June, 1752, in Baltimore county, and state of Maryland.
— from Memoirs of the Generals, Commodores and other Commanders, who distinguished themselves in the American army and navy during the wars of the Revolution and 1812, and who were presented with medals by Congress for their gallant services by Thomas Wyatt

Fortunately, they both of them had a very good idea of the lay of the land; and, in addition to this, John possessed a small compass, fastened to his watch-chain, which would enable him to steer a fairly correct course across a veldt—a fact that rendered them independent of the waggon tracks.
— from Jess by H. Rider (Henry Rider) Haggard

There are two sakuranoki, [11] Japanese cherry-trees—those trees whose blossoms, as Professor Chamberlain so justly observes, are 'beyond comparison more lovely than anything Europe has to show.'
— from Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan: Second Series by Lafcadio Hearn

I had claims on Witbeck which justified me in exposing him to some hazard.
— from Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete by Aaron Burr

Agathe believed that the purely physical resemblance which Philippe bore to her carried with it a moral likeness; and she confidently expected him to show at a future day her own delicacy of feeling, heightened by the vigor of manhood.
— from The Two Brothers by Honoré de Balzac