I could not come before; I had something of importance to see about, and a long way to go, too; but now you shall just see!” said the man, and then he set the hand-mill on the table, and bade it first grind light, then a table-cloth, and then meat, and beer, and everything else that was good for a Christmas Eve’s supper; and the mill ground all that he ordered.
— from The Blue Fairy Book by Andrew Lang

It was anybody’s race then the rank outsider drew to the fore, got long lead, beating Lord Howard de Walden’s chestnut colt and Mr W. Bass’s bay filly Sceptre on a 2 1/2 mile course.
— from Ulysses by James Joyce

For example, in one corner of the apartment there stood a hazelwood bureau with a bulging body on four grotesque legs—the perfect image of a bear.
— from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol

Behind this figure glowed a vast fireplace alive with leaping flames; great logs of oak blazed and crackled on the polished brass andirons whose flicker shone upon the superb habiliments of the lonely tenant of the room, which was illumined grandly by twin candelabra rich with wax-lights.
— from Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas

Then I could speak a little; and with a down look, (and I felt my face glow like fire,) I said, Yes, sir, as poor and as honest too; and that is my pride.
— from Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded by Samuel Richardson

It is sad to have to say that the power to fly gradually left them.
— from Peter and Wendy by J. M. (James Matthew) Barrie

The incident that had preceded Isabel’s departure from Gardencourt left a painful trace in our young woman’s mind: when she felt again in her face, as from a recurrent wave, the cold breath of her last suitor’s surprise, she could only muffle her head till the air cleared.
— from The Portrait of a Lady — Volume 1 by Henry James

While making a sensible, energetic little speech in behalf of a criminal indicted for grand larceny, named Cunningham, he attracted the attention and won the commendation of Judge R. B. Warden, then president judge of the criminal court, who thereupon appointed the modest young attorney counsel for Nancy Farrer, whose case became the great criminal case of the term, if not of the times.
— from The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes by J. Q. (James Quay) Howard

Solemn faces of benefactors and famous graduates looked down disapprovingly from the walls; there had been no such lavish display of prizes in the simple old days when they were members of the school, reciting Latin and Greek by candlelight to austere, dignified gentlemen who revered Cicero as the model for all language and ignored French and German as the lingo of dancing-masters and fiddlers.
— from The Yale Cup by Albertus T. (Albertus True) Dudley

Oh adulterated and vnkindly pleasure, fraught with miserie, contayning such bitternesse, like honnie, and yet gall dropping from greene leaues.
— from Hypnerotomachia: The Strife of Loue in a Dreame by Francesco Colonna

The lieutenant's face grew livid and he whipped out his sword.
— from The Golden Hope: A Story of the Time of King Alexander the Great by Robert H. (Robert Higginson) Fuller

But it may be, and is very likely to be, a slowly growing conviction—first among the more intelligent members of the community and then by imitation and fashion among the less intelligent members—that our children, the future race, the torch-bearers of civilization for succeeding ages, are not the mere result of chance or Providence, but that, in a very real sense, [197] it is within our power to mould them, that the salvation or damnation of many future generations lies in our hands since it depends on our wise and sane choice of a mate.
— from The Task of Social Hygiene by Havelock Ellis

About two o'clock in the morning, a sick-nurse, having perceived the flames, gave loud cries and succeeded in making herself heard.
— from Court Memoirs of France Series — Complete by Various

Fourthly, They did not use the precaution to fee (graisser la patte) the several persons appointed to the superintendance of their affairs.
— from Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey through the Country from Pekin to Canton by Barrow, John, Sir

See Bergk, Poetae Lyrici Graeci (1882); also The Songs of Alcaeus, by J. Easby-Smith (Washington, 1901); Plehn, Lesbiacorum Liber (1826); Flach, Geschichte der griechischen Lyrik (1883-1884); Farnell, Greek Lyric Poets (1891).
— from The Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia Volume 1 of 28 by Project Gutenberg

No others appeared for half an hour, and the five gentlemen looked at one another aside, each divining his own diplomacy in his fellow's eye, and each laboriously explaining to the others his own mistake in regard to the hour designated upon Mr. Carewe's cards of invitation.
— from The Two Vanrevels by Booth Tarkington

I now understood that all foreign girls’ letters were pot into the post-box in the hall, and the Baroness looked them over before they were posted.
— from Dumps - A Plain Girl by L. T. Meade