Here was the young lord dead, his companion abroad and beyond his reach, ten thousand pounds gone at one blow, his plot with Gride overset at the very moment of triumph, his after-schemes discovered, himself in danger, the object of his persecution and Nicholas’s love, his own wretched boy; everything crumbled and fallen upon him, and he beaten down beneath the ruins and grovelling in the dust.
— from Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens

I remained in San Francisco till July 3d, when, having collected and remitted every cent that I could raise, and got all the property in the best shape possible, hearing from St. Louis that business had revived, and that there was no need of further sacrifice; I put all the papers, with a full letter of instructions, and power of attorney, in the hands of William Blending, Esq., and took passage on the good steamer Golden Gate, Captain Whiting, for Panama and home.
— from Memoirs of General William T. Sherman — Complete by William T. (William Tecumseh) Sherman

[156] For, to use his own words, by excessive earthquakes the ground has burst asunder, and cities with their inhabitants have been clean destroyed: by sudden rains whole regions have been washed away; those also which formerly had been continents, have been insulated by strange and new-come waves, and others, by the subsiding of the sea, have been made passable by the foot of man: by winds and storms cities have been overthrown; fires have flashed forth from the clouds, by which regions in the East being burnt up have perished; and on the western coasts the like destructions have been caused by the bursting forth of waters and floods.
— from The City of God, Volume I by Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo

"Whereas," the advertisement runs, "the house of William Berczy, Esq., was broken open sometime during the night of the 14th instant, and the same ransacked from one end to the other; this is to give notice that whoever shall lodge an information, so that the offender or offenders may be brought to justice, shall upon conviction thereof receive Twenty Dollars.
— from Toronto of Old Collections and recollections illustrative of the early settlement and social life of the capital of Ontario by Henry Scadding

For two days he harassed himself to find somebody to do his office work; but every thing went wrong without William.
— from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself by Harriet A. (Harriet Ann) Jacobs

Like as not there would come a rush of cattle at the very end of the day, which the men would have to dispose of before they went home, often working by electric light till nine or ten, or even twelve or one o'clock, and without a single instant for a bite of supper.
— from The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

Master Bates backed this advice with sundry moral admonitions of his own: which, being exhausted, he and his friend Mr. Dawkins launched into a glowing description of the numerous pleasures incidental to the life they led, interspersed with a variety of hints to Oliver that the best thing he could do, would be to secure Fagin's favour without more delay, by the means which they themselves had employed to gain it.
— from Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

No one can, without forfeiting all 277 pretensions to have his own word believed, excuse his incomparable deceit and perjury; a masterpiece, no doubt, as it ought to be reckoned by those who set at nought the obligations of veracity in public transactions, of that wisdom which is not from above.
— from Constitutional History of England, Henry VII to George II. Volume 2 of 3 by Henry Hallam

that will not trouble us; the torpor into which he has fallen will last about two hours; in the meantime, he will be hardly capable of uttering a few words, and vaguely recalling what has happened to him; it is not, therefore, necessary for both of us to remain by him, one will be enough—say myself: you will go to the camp, state what has occurred, tell the Gambusinos in what condition their Chief is, ask for help, and bring it here as speedily as possible."
— from The Indian Scout: A Story of the Aztec City by Gustave Aimard

First, he flung his “Exhortation to Peace” on the field of battle—no mere figure of speech, as, at the time of writing, [198] the tumult had already broken out and the horrors of Weinsberg been enacted (April 16, 1525), though of
— from Luther, vol. 2 of 6 by Hartmann Grisar

The only gratitude which honour demanded of him was to let the lad pass by and escape in his own way; but even this was too much for Frangipani.
— from Naples, Past and Present by Arthur H. (Arthur Hamilton) Norway

I will not detail to you his offences against propriety’—(‘thank goodness for that,’ again interjected Captain Wilmore, ‘though I dare say some of his offences would be entertaining enough’)—‘I will not detail his offences—they would fill a volume.
— from Hair-Breadth Escapes: The Adventures of Three Boys in South Africa by H. C. (Henry Cadwallader) Adams

Already the food supply was running low, and his offspring was becoming enormous.
— from On the Fourth Planet by Jesse F. (Jesse Franklin) Bone

[79] It does not appear how the Devil-in-chief came by his Appointment; whether his Office was by Election, or in what Manner he attained his high Station.
— from The Witchcraft Delusion in New England: Its Rise, Progress, and Termination, (Vol. 1 of 3) by Robert Calef

The shots emanated from these men, who, of course, went about well armed, and brooked no interference when in the act of securing booty. Altercations of a serious nature had taken place between the Europeans and Sikh soldiers, ending sometimes in blows, and often in bloodshed, when the two parties met in a house or were busy employed in dividing the spoil.
— from A Narrative of the Siege of Delhi With an Account of the Mutiny at Ferozepore in 1857 by Charles John Griffiths

After all, I believe he has hit the right nail on the head;" and looking close, he perceived that though the partition wood had hitched firmly into a sort of spring-clasp, which defied Lenny's unaided struggles, still it was not locked (for, indeed, the padlock and key were snug in the justice-room of the Squire, who never dreamt that his orders would be executed so literally and summarily as to dispense with all formal appeal to himself).
— from Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. IX.—February, 1851.—Vol. II. by Various