He assured me that my plea had been laid before the sovereign, but during the three days I was in the house I heard no more about it.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova

My mother was a slave woman, and my father had always meant to set me free; but he had not done it, and so I was set down in the list.
— from Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

He was so far from relenting towards me, that he bid her speak no more of me, unless she had a mind to disturb him in his last Moments; for, Sir, you must know that he has the Reputation of an honest and religious Man, which makes my Misfortune so much the greater.
— from The Spectator, Volume 1 Eighteenth-Century Periodical Essays by Steele, Richard, Sir

Panic-stricken he set off running, for it seemed to him that the bald gentleman had turned back, was running after him, and meant to search him and take away all his salary, insisting upon the indisputable number seven, and resolutely denying any possible claim of any sort of sisters-in-law upon Semyon Ivanovitch.
— from White Nights and Other Stories The Novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Volume X by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

He assured me they lived still there; that they had been there about four years; that the savages left them alone, and gave them victuals to live on.
— from The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

And then the son bringeth home with him all his kin, and his friends, and all the others to his house, and maketh them a great feast.
— from The Travels of Sir John Mandeville by Mandeville, John, Sir

After that he sat up and gazed about him, as might the first man of the earth who landed upon Mars.
— from White Fang by Jack London

; since which time Sir John Gresham, mayor, purchased the lands, and gave part thereof to the maintenance of a free school which he had founded at Holt, a market town in Norfolk.
— from The Survey of London by John Stow

Some of the Whateleys and Bishops still send their eldest sons to Harvard and Miskatonic, though those sons seldom return to the moldering gambrel roofs under which they and their ancestors were born.
— from The Dunwich Horror by H. P. (Howard Phillips) Lovecraft

The gaunt, careworn features and dusty figures were made plain by this quaint light at the dawning, but it dressed the skin of the men in corpselike hues and made the tangled limbs appear pulseless and dead.
— from The Red Badge of Courage: An Episode of the American Civil War by Stephen Crane

Instead he has asked me to bring certain common products of our country, not as gifts, for they are too unworthy, but as samples of English workmanship that Your Majesty may examine personally the goods he offers your merchants in trade.
— from The Moghul by Thomas Hoover

[3] This is painting to the understanding, appealing to the heart, and making the pencil an advocate in the cause of morality.
— from Hogarth's Works, with life and anecdotal descriptions of his pictures. Volume 2 (of 3) by John Ireland

H2 anchor MESSAGE TO THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.
— from The Papers and Writings of Abraham Lincoln — Volume 5: 1858-1862 by Abraham Lincoln

"Well, it is very seducing to be pitied, after all; so here are my three grievances: In the first place, I am a girl, and not a young fellow, and would be shut up in a mad-house if I did half the things that I have a mind to;—and that, if I had your happy prerogative of acting as you list, would make all the world mad with imitating and applauding me.
— from Rob Roy — Volume 01 by Walter Scott

I have already mentioned the Coryndons of Bratton-Clovelly.
— from Old Country Life by S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould

‘The time is short,’ said Folk-might, ‘if we tell up the hours thereof; but in that short space have a many things betid.’
— from The Roots of the Mountains Wherein Is Told Somewhat of the Lives of the Men of Burgdale, Their Friends, Their Neighbours, Their Foemen, and Their Fellows in Arms by William Morris

Her beloved boy, dashing in and out in his restless manner, was never too absorbed with whatever took up his active mind, to be anything but gentle and thoughtful for her.
— from Tenting on the Plains; or, General Custer in Kansas and Texas by Elizabeth Bacon Custer