As I walked over the long causeway made for the railroad through the meadows, I encountered many a blustering and nipping wind, for nowhere has it freer play; and when the frost had smitten me on one cheek, heathen as I was, I turned to it the other also.
— from Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau

In some villages of Austrian Silesia on the Saturday before Dead Sunday an effigy is made of old clothes, hay, and straw, for the purpose of driving Death out of the village.
— from The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion by James George Frazer

In the mean time, I shall tell you what I have had from one of the masters of our college here (a north country man both by birth and education, in his younger years) who made a journey in the harvest time into the shire of Ross, and at my desire, made some enquiry there, concerning the second-sight.
— from Miscellanies Upon Various Subjects by John Aubrey

Meantime our other canoe had approached unseen.
— from Little Rivers: A Book of Essays in Profitable Idleness by Henry Van Dyke

Later, Lady Morgan writes to friends in England from La Grange, "Ary Scheffer, a talented artist, is a member of our company here at the chateau.
— from Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 04 Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters by Elbert Hubbard

which, though fatal to many of our comrades, had as yet produced no military result; and we knew that whatever they might be at a distance, the enemy had no chance with us at a hand-to-hand fight, and therefore we hailed the prospect of an assault as a relief from trouble—a glorious termination to a fatiguing and harassing campaign, where, if we had got some credit by the Battle of the Falls, accounts from that date to the present had been pretty evenly balanced.
— from Recollections of the War of 1812 by William Dunlop

Duelling, that necessary evil to a certain point to make the soldier respect the cloth he wears, is forbidden under the severest penalties; and if you horsewhip a Mexican officer, or call him a coward or a scoundrel, the only risk you run is of being treacherously assassinated.
— from The Freebooters: A Story of the Texan War by Gustave Aimard

Jochen had already started up again, and the next instant Hinrich Scheel, in his turn, was lying on the sand, face downwards, and Jochen, kneeling on his shoulders, was in the act of tying his elbows behind him with a small rope, which, after the manner of old coachmen, he always carried about with him.
— from What the Swallow Sang: A Novel by Friedrich Spielhagen

I fancy, were you in her place, even the irreproachable bridegroom-elect would find he had a little more of our common humanity about him than he suspects," said De Burgh, his dark eyes seeking hers with a bold admiring glance.
— from A Crooked Path: A Novel by Mrs. Alexander

I can, however, hardly believe in the existence of as many banks (there having been no subsidence) as there are atolls in the great oceans, within a reasonable depth, on which minute oceanic organisms could have accumulated to the depth of many hundred feet."
— from Coral Reefs; Volcanic Islands; South American Geology — Complete by Charles Darwin