While no militia organization went from Massachusetts, individuals from all regiments enlisted in the 1st Massachusetts Volunteers, the single regiment sent out by the state; and tales of American valor in the southwest served to arouse all to do better work.
— from The Old First Massachusetts Coast Artillery in War and Peace by Frederick Morse Cutler

From that day the little cloud began growing rapidly; for every vibration of the melodious instrument found a responsive echo in the old bachelor’s heart.
— from Nightmare Tales by H. P. (Helena Petrovna) Blavatsky

Weapons of war produce hatred, contempt, revenge, a thirst for blood; converting men into fiends, and rendering earth the counterpart of hell.
— from Old Wine and New: Occasional Discourses by Joseph Cross

gave orders to Pantoja to paint its likeness, which he did with such truthfulness that the royal bird, on seeing it, mistook it for a real eagle, and attacked the picture with such impetuosity that he tore it in pieces with his beak and talons before they could secure him.
— from Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) by Shearjashub Spooner

As it happened, however, another Henry Jackson was drowned in the Songo River, so Mr. Pickard says, more than twenty years before that, and it is quite possible that young Hawthorne overheard some talk about that catastrophe, and mistook it for a recent event; and that Symmes afterwards confounding the two Jacksons and the difference in time, amended Hawthorne’s statement as we now have it.
— from The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne by Frank Preston Stearns

But rather than suppose I gave to the words this ordinary meaning, the reviewer supposes me to believe, not simply that the longitudinal waves of air can pass, without discontinuity , into the transverse waves of ether, but he also debits me with the belief that the one order of waves, having lengths measurable in feet, and rates expressed in hundreds per second, can, by mere enfeeblement , pass into the other order of waves, having lengths of some fifty thousand to the inch, and rates expressed in many billions per second!
— from Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative; Vol. 2 of 3 Library Edition (1891), Containing Seven Essays not before Republished, and Various other Additions. by Herbert Spencer

In every opinion that I expressed in regard to the matter, I found a ready echo from the little man, pro and con.
— from My Cave Life in Vicksburg, with Letters of Trial and Travel by Mary Ann Webster Loughborough

Any one who will burn up a will , which would have secured to her a half million in funds and real estate, or, in case she did not burn the will, won't consent to set one aside, which the testator declared on his death-bed was null and void; who refused to come and keep house for a childless old man, who would have treated her in every respect as an honored guest; who flew off like a fussy little wren, when her affluent cousin offered to provide for her; and who, last of all, rejects one of nature's noblemen—the best match in the city—the deuce knows for what; I consider non compos mentis, and quite unable to take care of herself."
— from May Brooke by Anna Hanson Dorsey