She lives here in this desperate loneliness with no one around her except these colourless shadows that go mooning about talking nonsense and knowing nothing except that they eat, drink, and sleep.
— from Uncle Vanya: Scenes from Country Life in Four Acts by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

“There's no end to this eternal drizzle,” he called down, as he tucked the waterproof robe about him and took up the reins.
— from The Battle Ground by Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

It had long been hoped that this difficulty of increasing cost in running ocean steamers might finally be overcome by another means; and the whole available engineering and ship-building talent of Great Britain and the United States has been directed not entirely to the engine department, but to the hulls and to the production of a large class of ships, which are admissibly cheaper in proportion to size and expense of running when compared with smaller vessels, if they are always employed and have full freights and passage.
— from Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post by Thomas Rainey

Whenever a witness fails to mention an event which, if it had occurred, would have been of such interest to him that he might reasonably have been expected to have mentioned it, his silence upon the matter becomes negative evidence that the event did not occur.
— from Practical Argumentation by George K. (George Kynett) Pattee

Abner Holden jumped to his feet in dire dismay, and, without stopping to reflect on the probable cause of this startling interruption, “struck a bee line” for the staircase, and descended quicker, probably, than he had ever done before, narrowly escaping tumbling the entire distance, in his headlong haste.
— from Try and Trust; Or, Abner Holden's Bound Boy by Alger, Horatio, Jr.

An examination of the writing shows that it is not earlier than the Eleventh Dynasty, and is probably of the Twelfth.
— from The Instruction of Ptah-Hotep and the Instruction of Ke'Gemni The Oldest Books in the World by Ptahhotep

But, though American women have those elevated principles and feelings, which enable them to meet such trials in so exemplary a manner, their physical energies are not equal to the exertions demanded.
— from A Treatise on Domestic Economy; For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School by Catharine Esther Beecher

The secretary went into number 12 on the floor below,—a larger room, at thirteen francs a day, and one not exposed to the early daylight...."
— from The Passionate Friends by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

While, as heretofore noted in this book, a number of scientists of the past few centuries are shown by their reflections to have had a measure of appreciation of its ultimate effect, and to have applied that effect in their scientific researches, there is no evidence that they ever dreamed of its establishment as a basic fact of science.
— from Perpetual Motion by Percy Verance

There can be little doubt that we annually pass through our systems a sensible amount of such metals, metallic compounds, and other substances that do not come under the denomination of food; but there is no evidence that they ever did or are ever likely to do harm or occasion us the slightest inconvenience.
— from Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 by Various