He does not (so far at least) lead out, with timid steps, a shy talent for torture.
— from What's Wrong with the World by G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton

She loved both nature and animals with a fervor, a love like old wine fermented through age, with a sensuous love that she had never bestowed on men.
— from Complete Original Short Stories of Guy De Maupassant by Guy de Maupassant

That night I attempted to console myself in the following effusion; and as they are the first and last lines of which I was ever guilty, shall be here inserted; for though the versification is by no means faultless, they were true to my feelings at the time:—
— from Confessions of an Etonian by I. E. M.

Rebuses are a class of Enigma generally formed by the first, sometimes the first and last, letters of words, or of transpositions of letters, or additions to words.
— from Enquire Within Upon Everything The Great Victorian Domestic Standby by Robert Kemp Philp

There follows a long list of what he calls ‘the most noted artisans within my knowledge or acquaintance,’ in which is many a famous name, Bernini, Poussin, Mignard, Mansard, &c., and then he says, ‘My Lord Berkeley returns to England at Christmas, when I propose to take the opportunity of his company, and by that time to perfect what I have on the anvil—observations on the present state of architecture, arts, and manufactures in France.’
— from Sir Christopher Wren: His Family and His Times With Original Letters and a Discourse on Architecture Hitherto Unpublished. 1585-1723. by Lucy Phillimore

We find, then, that there are human beings in every outward form and lineament like ourselves, who, nevertheless, are not of our nature, nor, apparently, of our race; we feel, or we fancy, that monkeys might be princes amongst them.
— from The Convict: A Tale by G. P. R. (George Payne Rainsford) James

Presently a low sound was heard produced by the crackling of the leaves and twigs, when through a narrow opening in the forest, a long line of women in single file was exposed to view.
— from Two Years Among the Savages of New Guinea. With Introductory Notes on North Queensland. by W. D. Pitcairn

Men like Barlow and Bruce West may let you sing their souls to sleep for a little; look out when they wake up!"
— from Daughter of the Sun A Tale of Adventure by Jackson Gregory

These were valiant and haughty cavaliers of the old chivalrous lineages, who had inherited a deadly hatred to the Christians from a long line of warrior ancestors, and to whom the idea was worse than death that Granada—illustrious Granada, for ages the seat of Moorish grandeur and delight—should become the abode of unbelievers.
— from Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada, from the mss. of Fray Antonio Agapida by Washington Irving

Campbell has translated a few of Petrarch's sonnets, reducing the 14 lines to 12, composed of three similar quatrains, the first and last lines of which rhyme together.
— from A Book of Christian Sonnets by William Allen

Cupid's Understudy CUPID'S UNDERSTUDY by Edward Salisbury Field CHAPTER I CHAPTER II CHAPTER III CHAPTER IV CHAPTER V CHAPTER VI CHAPTER VII CHAPTER VIII CHAPTER IX CHAPTER X CHAPTER XI CHAPTER XII Chapter One If Dad had been a coal baron, like Mr. Tudor Carstairs, or a stock-watering captain of industry, like Mrs. Sanderson-Spear's husband, or descended from a long line of whisky distillers, like Mrs. Carmichael Porter, why, then his little Elizabeth would have been allowed the to sit in seat of the scornful with the rest of the Four Hundred, and this story would never have been written.
— from Cupid's Understudy by Salisbury Field

He had already searched among them, hoping against hope, for a letter, line, one word, from Esmeralda.
— from Just a Girl by Charles Garvice