On the other hand, should you have a light egg course, like "eggs surprise," you could have meat and vegetables, and plain salad; or an elaborate salad and no dessert.
— from Etiquette by Emily Post

Meanwhile, she was the gayest and most admired of Englishwomen: and had a little European congress on her reception-night.
— from Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

Says he: “I got hurt a little, en couldn’t swim fas’, so I wuz a considable ways behine you towards de las’; when you landed I reck’ned I could ketch up wid you on de lan’ ’dout havin’ to shout at you, but when I see dat house I begin to go slow.
— from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

He had, at least, equal cause to depreciate me in his opinion, and to mortify and sink me in my own; but far different was his conduct:-perplexed, indeed, he looked, and much
— from Evelina, Or, the History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World by Fanny Burney

As I did not care, however, to get to Highgate before one or two o’clock in the day, and as we had another little excommunication case in court that morning, which was called The office of the judge promoted by Tipkins against Bullock for his soul’s correction, I passed an hour or two in attendance on it with Mr. Spenlow very agreeably.
— from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

If a man's moral springtime is slow, says one of our social reformers, society fits up for him a little ethical conservatory, with steam heat and southern exposure, where the buds are given a little judicious stimulating and pushing.
— from A Man's Value to Society: Studies in Self Culture and Character by Newell Dwight Hillis

He had gone but a little way when some one rushed upon him, and little Ernst clasped him round the neck and fairly cried for joy.
— from Barriers Burned Away by Edward Payson Roe

“Come on girls, let's have a little excitement,” cried Laurie Shafton gaily, “How about some music?
— from The City of Fire by Grace Livingston Hill

Thus Osiris, Hercules, Perseus, Dionusus, displayed their benevolence sword in hand: and laid every country under an obligation to the limits of the earth.
— from A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) by Jacob Bryant

Her thoughts strayed back along the vista of her seven and twenty years: from the distance she saw the figure of a little girl, with bright hair and laughing eyes, come tripping onwards, inquisitive, observant, quick-witted, stout-hearted; fond of her own way, and ready to take her own part; but good-humored always and tolerant of others.
— from Dust: A Novel by Julian Hawthorne

"Neatly printed and to which the industry of all the Crokers has added little either curious or important."— Spectator.
— from Notes and Queries, Number 65, January 25, 1851 by Various

Spence, Beresford Hope, and Lord Eustace Cecil were made a committee to draft a plan and preliminary address.
— from Great Britain and the American Civil War by Ephraim Douglass Adams

Immense,—a land without a horizon, a land every characteristic of which inspires a sense of independence and freedom.
— from On the Heels of De Wet by Lionel James

It was not convenient to establish him as a tiller of the soil; and his father apparently regarded being a "down-the-river trader" as a disreputable occupation—probably as something akin to a Yankee pedler who sells wooden nutmegs; and the money it would cost to give him a liberal education could not readily be spared from the tannery, which, in former days, kept the larger portion of its capital soaking in the vats for months.
— from Our Standard-Bearer; Or, The Life of General Uysses S. Grant by Oliver Optic

Then its hills, vales, and woods can boast a special interest in having perhaps inspired more of our great poets than has any larger English county.
— from Middlesex Painted by John Fulleylove; described by A.R. Hope Moncrieff by A. R. Hope (Ascott Robert Hope) Moncrieff