Having taken off her gown and white kerchief, she drew a key from the large pocket that hung outside her petticoat, and, unlocking one of the lower drawers in the chest, reached from it two short bits of wax candle—secretly bought at Treddleston—and stuck them in the two brass sockets.
— from Adam Bede by George Eliot

They set to knocking at that door with the butts of their guns, and with kicks, shouting, calling, entreating, wringing their hands.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

He, who was so good and who knew so much, could convince the fellow with his reasoning, and make him swear that he would not do the women any harm,—that he would forget them.
— from The Last Lion, and Other Tales by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez

How shall the stern critic dispose of Gertrude Atherton, who knows so much about California, New York, and the international scene but who somehow fails to transmute her materials to any lasting metal and leaves the impression of a vexed aristocrat scolding the age without either convincing it or convicting it of very serious deficiencies?
— from Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) by Carl Van Doren

The late Mr. Grant Allen, who knew something of quite a number of subjects though perhaps not very much about any of them, devoted most of his time and energies (outside his stories, some of which are quite entertaining) to not always very accurate essays in natural history.
— from Science and Morals and Other Essays by Windle, Bertram Coghill Alan, Sir

The work of the Mound Builders in this country is generally and widely known, still it is perhaps not so generally known how common upon this continent was the general use of the serpent symbol.
— from The Evil Eye, Thanatology, and Other Essays by Roswell Park

Then said Signy to her father, “I pray thee, urge me not to go away with King Siggeir, for by my foreknowledge I am certain that no good will come of this marriage.”
— from Stories from Northern Myths by Emilie K. (Emilie Kip) Baker

One day she and I were out for a short walk, and we met a girl with two little kittens around her hat—not real live kittens, but the skins of two little gray and white kittens stuffed with cotton batting, and with glass eyes, arranged as if meeting and sparring around the crown of that girl's hat.
— from The Yellow Pearl: A Story of the East and the West by Adeline M. (Adeline Margaret) Teskey

The steamer loomed in the gloom and when Kit shouted there was a rattle of pulley blocks and a splash of oars.
— from The Buccaneer Farmer Published in England under the Title "Askew's Victory" by Harold Bindloss