And when Robin, with tears thick in his eyes, flung the first handfuls of earth rattling down on the coffin lid, his heart ached to see the lovely fragrant blossoms crushed under the heavy scattered mould, for it seemed to his foreboding mind that they were like the delicate thoughts and fancies of the girl he loved being covered by the soiling mud of the world's cruelty and slander, and killed in the cold and darkness of a sunless solitude.
— from Innocent : her fancy and his fact by Marie Corelli

He whipped out his white handkerchief and with a single hand, an old conjuring trick, threw a knot in the centre and dangled it before Mrs. Barraclough's eyes.
— from Men of Affairs by Roland Pertwee

So he stuck his knife into the cow and drew blood.
— from The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats, Vol. 5 (of 8) The Celtic Twilight and Stories of Red Hanrahan by W. B. (William Butler) Yeats

In Titian's time, as today, gay gallants knelt in the churches, and dark, dreamy eyes peeked out from behind mantillas, and the fan spoke a language which all lovers knew.
— from Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 04 Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters by Elbert Hubbard

b ) A sempstress receives, in the country, in small places, from 4 to 6 kr. , in larger places and towns, from 12 to 15 kr. ; in the capital, a dress-maker, an ironer, a plaiter, from 24, 36 to 48 kr.
— from Statement of the Provision for the Poor, and of the Condition of the Labouring Classes in a Considerable Portion of America and Europe Being the preface to the foreign communications contained in the appendix to the Poor-Law Report by Nassau William Senior

In her hand she held a long switch, and her business was to watch the motions of a large flock of fowls, which, as is usual at harvest-time, had been kept in their coop all day, and only let out for an hour or two, just before sunset, to run about in the grassy yard, seeking bugs and worms, or other dainties, which they alone know how to find.
— from Memories A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War by Fannie A. Beers

I jumped up and pushed the knob in the chimney, and directly something creaked, and the whole of the left hand side of the fireplace swung open like a low door, about four feet high, and beyond it was a little flight of stone stairs.
— from A Search For A Secret: A Novel. Vol. 2 by G. A. (George Alfred) Henty

Day after day, week after week, I plodded on through the mire and dirt, for it was winter, the weeping winter of Paris, and the obscure and narrow streets (traversed by a filthy kennel in the center, and destitute of sidewalks) through which my researches led me, were in a dreadful condition.
— from The Continental Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, May, 1862 Devoted To Literature And National Policy by Various

The following, taken from a notebook he kept in the colony and destroyed, gives a glimpse of one side of his life there; he preserved the note because it recalled New Zealand so vividly.
— from The Humour of Homer and Other Essays by Samuel Butler