With regard to the possibility of forming a key by which writing in any language may be deciphered, we have the following curious anecdote, furnished by the late learned and ingenious Mr. Astle, keeper of His Majesty's Records: he states, on the authority of a noble Lord, deceased, that the late Earl Granville, while Secretary of State, told him, that when he came into office he had his doubts respecting the certainty of deciphering.
— from The Century of Inventions of the Marquis of Worcester from the Original MS., with Historical and Explanatory Notes and a Biographical Memoir by Worcester, Edward Somerset, Marquis of

Miss Myrtle could don a forty-dollar gown, parade it before a possible purchaser, and make it look like an imported model at one hundred and twenty-five.
— from Cheerful—By Request by Edna Ferber

A pudgy muskrat, swimming with head up, was moved to sidle off briskly as he met a cotton-mouth moccasin snake, so fat and swollen with summer poison that it looked almost like a legless lizard as it moved along the surface of the water in a series of slow torpid s's.
— from The Escape of Mr. Trimm His Plight and other Plights by Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury) Cobb

He repeated this to me himself, saying that he did not think I should lose much by staying a little longer, and invited me always to dine with him when I had no other engagement.
— from Letters of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy from Italy and Switzerland by Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy

I knew you the moment I heard your voice, when I was helping you up to-night, and, finding you did not recognise me, I could not resist the temptation of preserving my incognito a little longer, and introducing myself as a stranger.”
— from Frank Fairlegh: Scenes from the Life of a Private Pupil by Frank E. (Frank Edward) Smedley

Every mile, therefore, that the travelers progressed made the meeting less likely, and, I may as well say, it never took place.
— from Deerfoot on the Prairies by Edward Sylvester Ellis

The pharynx of Fishes, as being surrounded by the branchial arches, is at once pharynx and larynx, like as in many animals cloaca and urinary cyst are of one and the same kind.
— from Elements of Physiophilosophy by Lorenz Oken