And yet I shall continue writing it, and perhaps even more frankly now it will be read only by me; for while I write I seem to be talking to my dearest mother, and to be a little less solitary....
— from Penelope Brandling: A Tale of the Welsh coast in the Eighteenth Century by Vernon Lee

Lamb criticized and patronized every blessed thing he saw, advised Armour to beware of mannerisms and to be a little less liberal with his colour, and heard absolutely unmoved of the horses Armour had got into the Salon.
— from The Pool in the Desert by Sara Jeannette Duncan

The "policy of dispersion" was the law, for every man aspired to be a large land- owner, and, in the midst of his tract of half-cleared land, had small communication with any but his inferiors.
— from Anne Bradstreet and Her Time by Helen Campbell

The terminal point on the other side of the Atlantic is at Halifax, Nova Scotia, from whence the cable is continued to Rye Beach, New Hampshire, a distance of 536 miles, and thence by a land line of 500 miles to New York (17).
— from Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 by Various

You may at times be a little lacking in buoyancy and cheerfulness, and you do not unbend socially as easily as some persons can, or produce so much mirth, fun and jollity, although you can appreciate these when they come your way.
— from Manual of the Enumeration A Text Book on the Sciences of the Enumeration, Book one by C. J. (Casper James) Coffman

You may at times be a little lacking in buoyancy and cheerfulness, and you do not unbend socially so easily as some persons can, or produce so much mirth, fun and jollity, although you can appreciate these when they come your way.
— from Manual of the Enumeration A Text Book on the Sciences of the Enumeration, Book one by C. J. (Casper James) Coffman