“At this moment, perhaps, Mr. Elton is shewing your picture to his mother and sisters, telling how much more beautiful is the original, and after being asked for it five or six times, allowing them to hear your name, your own dear name.”
— from Emma by Jane Austen

You lay five or six threads, according to the course the bars are to take; you overcast the branches up to the point of their junction with the principal line, thence you throw across the foundation threads for another branch, so that having reached a given point and coming back to finish the threads left uncovered in going, you will often have from six to eight short lengths of thread to overcast.
— from Encyclopedia of Needlework by Thérèse de Dillmont

Four or six threads are then drawn from one piece of work to another, with a needle and cotton, so as to attach them together, and the loose threads are then overcast like button-holes, so as to imitate the uniting threads of point lace.
— from The Ladies' Book of Etiquette, and Manual of Politeness A Complete Hand Book for the Use of the Lady in Polite Society by Florence Hartley

The peril of this position lay in the forest of Soignes, then adjoining the field of battle, and intersected by the ponds of Groenendael and Boitsfort.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

For the second three years, it was for deals, to be at the rate of 15s., and for other squared timber at the rate of 8s.
— from An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

“I have here in front of me these singular productions, at which one might smile, had they not proved themselves to be the forerunners of so terrible a tragedy.
— from The Return of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

When her aunt introduced me to her by name, she observed with true feminine tact that during her stay at Aix she had seen me five or six times at the fountain, but that I could not remember her features as she had always worn her veil.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

Do I not see and know with what persistence these Lacedaemonians prosecuted the war till finally they forced our State to acknowledge the leadership of Lacedaemon?
— from Anabasis by Xenophon

The swindler passes it on to confederates, and the latter employ a respectable firm of solicitors to ask the dupe if his signature is genuine.
— from Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World by Mark Twain

He walked along the meadow, dragging his feet, rustling the grass, and gazing at the dust that covered his boots; now he took big strides trying to keep to the footprints left on the meadow by the mowers, then he counted his steps, calculating how often he must walk from one strip to another to walk a mile, then he stripped the flowers from the wormwood that grew along a boundary rut, rubbed them in his palms, and smelled their pungent, sweetly bitter scent.
— from War and Peace by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

The facts of science, too, and the resources of sound philosophy, may all be turned to profitable account in unfolding and illustrating the truth of holy Scripture.
— from Notes on the Book of Deuteronomy, Volume II by Charles Henry Mackintosh

[2] If the Son of God had to sacrifice his life to absolve mankind from original sin, then, according to the law of retaliation, the return of like for like, this sin must have been an act of killing, a murder.
— from Reflections on War and Death by Sigmund Freud

But, surely, he was indeed all of these, and his individuality precisely the growth from one stage to another, the subtle intelligence being always there, working vividly, but in each period working in a different direction.
— from Figures of Several Centuries by Arthur Symons

We only toil, who are the first of things, And make perpetual moan, Still from one sorrow to another thrown: Nor ever fold our wings, And cease from wanderings, Nor steep our brows in slumber's holy balm; Nor hearken what the inner spirit sings,— 'There is no joy but calm!'
— from Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 65, No. 402, April, 1849 by Various

The periodical inundations, and still more the portages, by which boats are passed from one stream to another, the sources of which are in the same neighbourhood, have led to erroneous ideas of the bifurcations and branchings of rivers.
— from Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America, During the Year 1799-1804 — Volume 2 by Alexander von Humboldt

She showed me up three flights of stairs to a tiny room in which was a folding bed.
— from Marion: The Story of an Artist's Model by Winnifred Eaton

The finest of silken tapestries and the rarest of furs often hung close together.
— from The Hunters of the Hills by Joseph A. (Joseph Alexander) Altsheler

F OR some time after the events related in the last chapter the siege went on without any noticeable incidents.
— from Lords of the World: A story of the fall of Carthage and Corinth by Alfred John Church

An other reason (as after them selvs made know̅) was how aboute 3. years before , a French-ship was cast away at Cap-Codd , but y e men gott ashore, & saved their lives, and much of their victails, & other goods; but after y e Indeans heard of it, they geathered togeather from these parts, and never left watching & dogging them till they got advantage, and kild them all but 3. or 4. which they kept, & sent from one Sachem to another, to make sporte with, and used them worse then slaves; (of which y e foresaid M r .
— from Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' From the Original Manuscript. With a Report of the Proceedings Incident to the Return of the Manuscript to Massachusetts by William Bradford

Perhaps the easiest way of making such a joint is to use an outer tube of thin clean glass, and bore a narrow hole into it from one side to admit the mercury; if the mercury is to be heated in vacuo, it is better to seal on a side joint.
— from On Laboratory Arts by Richard Threlfall