At first it lay lightly on the surface of the fluid, appearing to imbibe none of its moisture.
— from Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Any one who imagines ten days too short a time—not for falling into leanness, lightness, or other measurable effects of passion, but—for the whole spiritual circuit of alarmed conjecture and disappointment, is ignorant of what can go on in the elegant leisure of a young lady's mind.
— from Middlemarch by George Eliot

In general, civilization's totality or real representative National Literature formates itself (like language, or "the weather") not from two or three influences, however important, nor from any learned syllabus, or criticism, or what ought to be, nor from any minds or advice of toploftical quarters—and indeed not at all from the influences and ways ostensibly supposed (though they too are adopted, after a sort)—but slowly, slowly, curiously, from many more and more, deeper mixings and siftings (especially in America) and generations and years and races, and what largely appears to be chance—but is not chance at all.
— from Complete Prose Works Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy by Walt Whitman

Seizing the huge blade, he swung it as lightly as a common sword and flashed it like lightning over the heads of the guests, recalling to their minds the tricks of the Polish school of fencing, the cross stroke , the mill , the crooked slash , the downright blow , the stolen slash , and the attitudes of counterpoint 212 and tierce , which he knew likewise, for he had been trained in the School of Cadets.
— from Pan Tadeusz Or, the Last Foray in Lithuania; a Story of Life Among Polish Gentlefolk in the Years 1811 and 1812 by Adam Mickiewicz

Perhaps it was chance that made the lightning flash in long lines of blinding light across the sky, and sent the thunder booming and crashing above the roofs of the houses, producing that indefinable feeling that needed companionship—that "huddling together" which even the terrible beasts of the East Indian jungles show in the midst of the fearful tornadoes of that region.
— from Shoulder-Straps: A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 by Henry Morford

Flowers in large loose open spreading panicles; leaves deeply pinnatifid Jerusalem Oak, Chenopodium botrys. 13b.
— from The Plants of Michigan Simple Keys for the Identification of the Native Seed Plants of the State by Henry A. (Henry Allan) Gleason