Leg of mutton and smash: a leg of mutton and mashed turnips.
— from 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue by Francis Grose

“However well disposed a person may be, why, you see we leave off after a time seeing persons who are in sorrow, they make one melancholy; and so at last old Dantès was left all to himself, and I only saw from time to time strangers go up to him and come down again with some bundle they tried to hide; but I guessed what these bundles were, and that he sold by degrees what he had to pay for his subsistence.
— from The Count of Monte Cristo, Illustrated by Alexandre Dumas

Consequently, the public schools are for training the mass of men as servants and laborers and mechanics to increase the land's industrial efficiency.
— from Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil by W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt) Du Bois

I see the dead strewn before my window as winnowed by the breath of God,—and see——" She dragged him through great, silken hangings to where, beneath the sheen of mahogany and silver, a little French maid lay stretched in quiet, everlasting sleep, and near her a butler
— from Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil by W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt) Du Bois

Lady Southdown made her up a packet of medicine and sent a letter by her to the Rev. Lawrence Grills, exhorting that gentleman to save the brand who "honoured" the letter from the burning.
— from Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

The original garum was no doubt akin to our modern anchovy sauce, at least the best quality of the ancient sauce.
— from Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome by Apicius

He was awfully fond of music and sang a little.
— from Dubliners by James Joyce

The Bontoks have hundreds of myths and stories about Lumáwig, who corresponds to the Ifugao Líddum, who is the good god who gave men fire, animals, plants, and all the useful and necessary articles of daily life.
— from Origin Myths among the Mountain Peoples of the Philippines by H. Otley (Henry Otley) Beyer

It did lap up to within a foot of us, but then spread out more and subsided a little.
— from Bert Wilson at Panama by J. W. Duffield

You owe me a sonata, at least, to pay for the stunning headlines I gave you, yesterday."
— from The Dominant Strain by Anna Chapin Ray

Who can help being miserable at the spectacle of such rich possibilities as human life is full of, mismanaged and spoiled and lost?"
— from The Brimming Cup by Dorothy Canfield Fisher

We may surmise, too, that a kind of bastard culture became popular when the Jewish mind had opened to it, for good and evil, a world of myth and song and legend which, if known before, had until now been barred from complete and triumphant entrance by faith in a living God.
— from The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Deuteronomy by Andrew Harper

There was a blank wrench of anguish within him, at the thought of leaving the familiar home; the mere difficulties of moving and settling again loomed mountain-high.
— from Mountain: A Novel by Clement Wood

It's what you've always wanted: miles of marsh, and such a lot of ducks, you can hear them quacking every night; and to-day a flock of widgeon passed over the house, within shot too.
— from Hector Graeme by Evelyn Brentwood

And each man must be his own mason, and select and lay his own bricks.
— from A Woman of the World: Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters by Ella Wheeler Wilcox