Down on your knees, and strip that rag off your back!
— from Twelve Years a Slave Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New-York, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in 1853, from a Cotton Plantation near the Red River in Louisiana by Solomon Northup

Why should I care for them,—poor Kanakas and sailors, the refuse of civilization, the outlaws and beach-combers of the Pacific!
— from Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana

That instant the new horse kicked, and started to run once more.
— from Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete by Ulysses S. (Ulysses Simpson) Grant

I threw myself upon my knees and spent the rest of that long night in seeking for repentance; but then, as now, the lamentation of a sinner is also mingled with the joy of thinking that Alice was free at last, and by none other hand than mine.
— from For Faith and Freedom by Walter Besant

At the present time, more than 100,000 compounds of this element are known; and since they resemble one another, and at the same time differ in several important respects from the compounds of other elements, it is both natural and convenient that they should be classed together and studied separately.
— from Acids, Alkalis and Salts by George Henry Joseph Adlam

She put on a little air of vanity, the vanity of a woman who knows a secret the rest of the world, and man particularly, is itching to hear.
— from John Splendid: The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn by Neil Munro

BY W. P. S. The labor and ingenuity expended in one season by a boy who has any taste for the water in building rafts, and converting tubs and packing-boxes into sea-going vessels, would, if well directed, build a good-sized ship; but, from lack of knowledge and system, the results of such attempts are generally failures.
— from Harper's Young People, April 27, 1880 An Illustrated Weekly by Various

On the 3rd of August, the Prince; accompanied by Paul Buys, chief of the commission appointed to execute the enterprise, went in person along the Yssel; as far as Kappelle, and superintended the rupture of the dykes in sixteen places.
— from The Rise of the Dutch Republic — Volume 21: 1573-74 by John Lothrop Motley

[284] I went every day at a set hour to make my court to the king, and spent the rest of my time in viewing the city, and what was most worthy of notice.
— from The Arabian Nights Entertainments by Anonymous

Thus they marched steadily northward, Ross leading the way, and Shif'less Sol who was lazy at the settlement, but never in the woods where he was inferior in knowledge and skill to Ross only, covering the rear.
— from The Young Trailers: A Story of Early Kentucky by Joseph A. (Joseph Alexander) Altsheler