Once it chanced that I stood in the very abutment of a rainbow's arch, which filled the lower stratum of the atmosphere, tinging the grass and leaves around, and dazzling me as if I looked through colored crystal.
— from Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau

He had a large pair of bellows, with a long slender muzzle of ivory: this he conveyed eight inches up the anus, and drawing in the wind, he affirmed he could make the guts as lank as a dried bladder.
— from Gulliver's Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World by Jonathan Swift

How completely they failed is manifest from the fact that with all his sanguine temperament and indomitable perseverance he was unable to maintain the struggle to gain a livelihood as a dramatist for more than three years; nor was the rising popularity of Lope the cause, as is often said, notwithstanding his own words to the contrary.
— from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Ambition is therefore always extremely great as long as a democratic revolution lasts, and it will remain so for some time after the revolution is consummated.
— from Democracy in America — Volume 2 by Alexis de Tocqueville

She made frequent trips to the gate and looked as anxiously down the lane as ever her namesake in the Bluebeard story peered from the tower casement.
— from Anne of Avonlea by L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery

She knew that Strobel had been kind to him, and helped him in more ways than mere patronage, and she knew that poor Litizki was as grateful and loyal as a dog.
— from The Mission of Poubalov by Frederick R. (Frederick Russell) Burton

And though his face was of an unwholesome olive tint, and he wore a tarbush, and a galabeah as long as a dressing-gown, under his short European coat, I was sure he was not of Arab or Egyptian blood.
— from It Happened in Egypt by A. M. (Alice Muriel) Williamson

There is no doubt he overlooked one of Miller Georgeon's draught oxen three years ago, so that it would not eat, and grew daily thinner and thinner, and had, at last, to be killed.—Go on, Peter; your ears will grow as long as a donkey's if you are always listening like that.—And they do say he can call up evil spirits, and storms, and thunder and lightning, and whirlwinds, when he wants them for his own vicious purposes.'
— from Little Peter: A Christmas Morality for Children of any Age by Lucas Malet

In these days, when so much has been attempted and done, in connection with expeditions to the Arctic regions, the following account by the late Captain Parry, R. N. in the Journal of his second voyage, may be interesting as giving a lively and accurate description of the manner in which Esquimaux Dogs are managed in the sleighing operations in those inclement climes.
— from All About Dogs: A Book for Doggy People by Charles Henry Lane

Before Wu came ostensibly upon the scene some progress had been made in the creation of difficulties, and the authorities having in the spring of 1849 granted a large and absurdly disproportionate tract to the French, over which the French consul claimed a territorial jurisdiction, the national susceptibilities of the Americans gave the opportunity of bringing French and Americans, and the latter and the English, into collision, and they were not slow to profit by it to set the land regulations practically aside while officially appearing to uphold them.
— from The Englishman in China During the Victorian Era, Vol. 1 (of 2) As Illustrated in the Career of Sir Rutherford Alcock, K.C.B., D.C.L., Many Years Consul and Minister in China and Japan by Alexander Michie

He gives at length also a description of the recent earthquake in the island of St. Vincent, West Indies, which shook all Martinique by the force of its explosion.
— from New Witnesses for God (Volume 2 of 3) by B. H. (Brigham Henry) Roberts

Should he, (contrary to all reasonable grounds for hope), get a little about again, do tell Mr. Williams
— from Hurrell Froude: Memoranda and Comments by Louise Imogen Guiney