As glass is much less expensive to work with than silica, the beginner will find it best to spend a few days working with the common gas blow-pipe and glass before he attempts to manipulate the new and more refractory material.
— from The Methods of Glass Blowing and of Working Silica in the Oxy-Gas Flame For the use of chemical and physical students by W. A. (William Ashwell) Shenstone

If you are foot-loose and still entertain a lingering regard for your old pal, get busy on this mining concession P. D. Q. Time is the essence of the contract, because I am holding on to the thin edge of nothing, and if we have a change of government I may lose even that.
— from Webster—Man's Man by Peter B. (Peter Bernard) Kyne

"Gerald informed me last evening that you had offered him employment.
— from Making His Mark by Alger, Horatio, Jr.

Yet rashness or high-handedness in the treatment of the great issue might lead even to this unlikely result.
— from The Expansion of Europe; The Culmination of Modern History by Ramsay Muir

[168] In a Treasury Minute of September the 8th, the head of the Commissariat is informed that, considering the limited mill-power in the neighbourhood of Westport, and how important it was that private merchants, who had ordered consignments of Indian corn to that port, should have ready means of grinding it, "My Lords" express their opinion, that the supplies intended for the Government depôt at Westport should, if possible, consist only of meal; and they promise to give directions that not only that depôt, but all the Government depôts in Ireland, should, as far as practicable, be replenished with that article.
— from The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) With Notices of Earlier Irish Famines by O'Rourke, John, Canon