Jean Blane said that 'acoustic' meant 'a religious squabble,' and Muriel Baker said that an 'agnostic' was 'a man who had indigestion,' and Jim Carter said that 'acerbity' meant that 'you ate nothing but vegetable food,' and so on all down the list.
— from Rilla of Ingleside by L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery

We might as reasonably select a man to ride our racers simply because he had studied and understood the anatomy of the horse.
— from Sporting Scenes amongst the Kaffirs of South Africa by Alfred W. (Alfred Wilks) Drayson

“Yes; I can tell you’ve made a random shot at me.
— from The White Squaw by Mayne Reid

All were modern, and relatively spacious, and much superior in plan to the old.
— from These Twain by Arnold Bennett

[Pg 116] he had no immediate intention of retreating from the position he then occupied, although he thought circumstances might afterwards render such a measure necessary.
— from Some Account of the Public Life of the Late Lieutenant-General Sir George Prevost, Bart. Particularly of His Services in the Canadas, Including a Reply to the Strictures on His Military Character, Contained in an Article in the Quarterly Review by E. B. Brenton

A spoonful of butter, lard, sugar, or flour means a rounding spoonful, as much rising above the spoon as is held in the bowl.
— from The Century Cook Book by Mary Ronald

T ULLY is rather a spare man—with drooping moustache and rather sanctimonious and miserable-looking.
— from A Little Bit of Fluff: A Farce in Three Acts by Walter Ellis

It is true the price of the rooms, which Melinda casually named, was enormous, but, then, Ethelyn's health and happiness were above any moneyed consideration; and so, while Mrs. Markham below made and molded the soda biscuit, and talked about dreading the hot weather if "Ethelyn was going to be weakly," Aunt Barbara, and Melinda, and Richard settled a matter which made her eyes open wide with astonishment when, after the exit of the Joneses and the doing up of her work, it was revealed to her.
— from Ethelyn's Mistake by Mary Jane Holmes

Mr. Hunter mentions a Richard Shakespeyre, at Mansfield, co. Notts, about 1509; a Peter, in 1545; and a John at Derby, 36 Henry VIII.
— from Shakespeare's Family by C. C. (Charlotte Carmichael) Stopes

Learned men gather in societies (there are many such societies, more than a hundred of them), congresses are called (lately such met at Paris and London, and one will soon meet at Rome), speeches are made, people dine, make toasts, publish periodicals, which are devoted to the cause, and in all of them it is proved that the tension of the nations, who are compelled to support millions of troops, [152] has reached the utmost limit, and that this armament contradicts all the aims, properties, and desires of all the nations, but that, if a lot of paper is covered with writing, and a lot of speeches are made, it is possible to make all people agree and to cause them not to have any opposing interests, and then there will be no war.
— from The Kingdom of God is Within You / Christianity and Patriotism / Miscellanies by Tolstoy, Leo, graf