Or they all gathered together in one room and talked in the dusk of the mines, of the treasures that had once been buried in the steppes, of Saur’s Grave. . . .
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

Pedestrians had often been blown into the sea hereabout, and drowned, owing to a sudden breach in the bank; which, however, had something of a supernatural power in being able to close up and join itself together again after such disruption, like Satan’s form when, cut in two by the sword of Michael, ‘The ethereal substance closed, Not long divisible.’
— from The Well-Beloved: A Sketch of a Temperament by Thomas Hardy

Tommy lay in his own brass bed in the silken nest of his mother, a white-capped nurse by his side.
— from The Halo by Bettina Von Hutten

Sometime in 1853, or perhaps in 1854, the first building erected by the public in Los Angeles County was put together here of brick baked in the second kiln ever fired in the city.
— from Sixty Years in Southern California, 1853-1913 Containing the Reminiscences of Harris Newmark by Harris Newmark

However, he pressed her hand with the wonted friendly pressure, and slipped out of the room, unabashed by her assumed indifference and real change of manner, which he was at no great trouble to interpret; and he took a cab to his office—now a humming hive of busy bees improving the shining hours of the gaslit night—and walked back from the city through the shadowy gardens to his lodgings, singing a tuneless air to himself, which, if devoid of music, was a pleasant expression of his frame of mind.
— from The Three Miss Kings: An Australian Story by Ada Cambridge

A French critic—one far too great to have his dicta despised—has sneered at my making a poor ignorant peasant child find pleasure in the resonance of a Homeric verse; but I could tell him of barefooted boys in the South, running errands for a scanty subsistence, with a knowledge of classical literature which would puzzle many a grown student to cope with.
— from Charles Lever, His Life in His Letters, Vol. II by Charles James Lever

The village had a very strong smell, and a curious habit of building boats in the street between intervals of detached cottages; a helpless, muddy, fishy little place.
— from A Rogue's Life by Wilkie Collins

When hands are link’d that dread to part, And heart is met by throbbing heart; Oh! bitter, bitter is the smart Of them that bid farewell.
— from Holiday House: A Series of Tales by Catherine Sinclair