Her nephew, a merry boy, who was his aunt's darling, begged so long for these spectacles, that, at last, she lent him the treasure, after having informed him, with many exhortations, that in order to execute the interesting trick, he need only repair to some place where a great many persons were assembled; and then, from a higher position, whence he could overlook the crowd, pass the company in review before him through his spectacles.
— from Andersen's Fairy Tales by H. C. (Hans Christian) Andersen

Living not long after the Wars of the Roses, and in the dregs of the Catholic Church in England, he is indignant at the corruption of the clergy, at the luxury of the nobility and gentry, at the sufferings of the poor, at the calamities caused by war.
— from The Republic of Plato by Plato

[The Peasantry.] SIBILET, son of the court clerk, and police commissioner at Ville-aux Fayes.
— from Repertory of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z by Anatole Cerfberr

Some pine of the long leaf kind appear on the Creek hills.
— from The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806 by William Clark

Settlements on the Coast of Africa.--Consequences of the Discovery of America.
— from Manners, Customs, and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period by P. L. Jacob

“That is to say, excellency,” replied Pastrini, who was desirous of keeping up the dignity of the capital of the Christian world in the eyes of his guest, “that there are no carriages to be had from Sunday to Tuesday evening, but from now till Sunday you can have fifty if you please.”
— from The Count of Monte Cristo, Illustrated by Alexandre Dumas

Much of the conversation during dinner turned upon family topics, to which I was a stranger.
— from The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon by Washington Irving

But I live on broken wittles—and I sleep on the coals’—here the waiter burst into tears.
— from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

Then among them glided like a pure ray, like a Christian angel in the midst of Olympus, one of those chaste figures, those calm shadows, those soft visions, which seemed to veil its virgin brow before these marble wantons.
— from The Count of Monte Cristo, Illustrated by Alexandre Dumas

c. 6, &c.] Note 42 ( return ) [ Theophylact and Theophanes seem ignorant of the conspiracy and avarice of Maurice.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) by Edward Gibbon

You can command, without touching on that capital, three thousand dollars' worth of labor per annum.
— from Cannibals all! or, Slaves without masters by George Fitzhugh

Twenty-four hours—or even twelve hours—of strong wind, even in the depth of the coldest winter, will set the big floes grinding and twisting among themselves, crushing up into pressure ridges in one place, breaking into leads in another place.
— from The North Pole Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club by Robert E. (Robert Edwin) Peary

In some of these barns it was the practice to pile wheat, barley, or rye in the centre and in one of the side aisles; in others the central aisle was kept free for passage, and the grain was stored in the sides.
— from Gothic Architecture by Edouard Corroyer

Hence his works, like those of Linnæus, have been among the most valuable of the contributions to the botany of the century in which he lived.
— from The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 by Various

The staff seemed to get up from the ground of its own accord, and, spreading its little pair of wings, it half hopped, half flew, and leaned itself against the wall of the cottage.
— from A Wonder Book for Girls & Boys by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Ballad-singers trolled out their rimes to the crowd on "the cur-dog of Britain and spaniel of Spain."
— from History of the English People, Volume VII The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 by John Richard Green

The last six miles of the journey lay across a frozen lake on the farther shore of which was the village of the chieftainess.
— from On the Indian Trail Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians by Egerton Ryerson Young

With a quiet shrug of the shoulders, he dismissed all thought of the compromising lettercase, and went to the door.
— from I Will Repay by Orczy, Emmuska Orczy, Baroness

If he sealed a letter with a wafer, and sent it through the penny-post to a woman of rank, that proved his neglected education or a natural disregard of polite usage, and of course that he had been carried off in childhood by the Indians, and knew not where to look for father or mother, sister or brother,—while, on the contrary, if he used wax, and set the seal upon it which had been given to him by the Duke of Sussex, that showed, of course, the sagacity and readiness of adaptation which ought to characterize the hero of Hunter's narrative.
— from The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics by Various

[190] Apprised speedily of the slaughter of the polemarchs, from whom they had been accustomed to receive orders, they knew not whom to trust or to consult, while they were doubtless beset by affrighted fugitives of the now defeated party, who would hurry up the Kadmeia for safety.
— from History of Greece, Volume 10 (of 12) by George Grote