Then Gargantua mounted his great mare, accompanied as we have said before, and finding in his way a high and great tree, which commonly was called by the name of St. Martin’s tree, because heretofore St. Martin planted a pilgrim’s staff there, which in tract of time grew to that height and greatness, said, This is that which I lacked; this tree shall serve me both for a staff and lance.
— from Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais

Great numbers of Sea Otters, they are So cautious that I with dificuelty got a Shot at one to day, which I must have killed, but could not get him as he Sunk we got all our baggage over the Portage of 940 yards, after which we got the 4 large Canoes over by Slipping them over the rocks on poles placed across from one rock to another, and at Some places along partial Streams of the river.
— from The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806 by William Clark

As to what concerns my other reading, that mixes a little more profit with the pleasure, and whence I learn how to marshal my opinions and conditions, the books that serve me to this purpose are Plutarch, since he has been translated into French, and Seneca.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

Following her habit, my young lady descended early, and visited the kitchen: I watched her go to the door, on the arrival of a certain little boy; and, while the dairymaid filled his can, she tucked something into his jacket pocket, and plucked something out.
— from Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

[1] Ordinary pie or pastry dough, or perhaps a preparation similar to streusel, unsweetened.
— from Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome by Apicius

Acombren , v. to encumber, PP; acumbrid , pp. , S2.—OF. encombrer .
— from A Concise Dictionary of Middle English from A.D. 1150 to 1580 by A. L. (Anthony Lawson) Mayhew

Every night the gymnasium echoed as platoon after platoon swept over the floor and shuffled out the basket-ball markings.
— from This Side of Paradise by F. Scott (Francis Scott) Fitzgerald

That legislator had composed his Institutes, his Code, and his Pandects, in a language which he celebrates as the proper and public style of the Roman government, the consecrated idiom of the palace and senate of Constantinople, of the campus and tribunals of the East.
— 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

After a review of these anti-protestant proceedings, the British reader will not think of comparing them with the riots of London in 1780, or with those of Birmingham about 1793; as it is evident that where governments possess absolute power, such events could not have been prolonged for many months and even for years over a vast extent of country, had it not been for the [360] systematic and powerful support of the higher department of the state.
— from Fox's Book of Martyrs Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs by John Foxe

And I for my part, in place of a cuirass, was clad in a quilted silk breastplate that would stop any arrow, but could not keep out any bullet: moreover boots and spurs and a princely head-dress with a heron plume, and a sabre that would split a hair, mounted with pure gold and studded with precious stones, were given to me, and of the Czar's horses such an one was put between my legs as I had never seen the like of in my life, far less ridden; so I and my horses blazed with gold, silver, pearls and precious stones.
— from The Adventurous Simplicissimus being the description of the Life of a Strange vagabond named Melchior Sternfels von Fuchshaim by Hans Jakob Christoph von Grimmelshausen

We perceive a precisely similar change of tone on comparing the two great historians who have respectively recorded the struggle of Greece against Persia, and the struggle of imperial Athens against Sparta and her allies.
— from The Greek Philosophers, Vol. 1 (of 2) by Alfred William Benn

Clematis and white Everlasting Pea are planted so that they can be trained to cover the Gypsophila when its bloom is done and the seed-pods are turning brown.
— from Colour in the flower garden by Gertrude Jekyll

As Coleridge and Wordsworth both aptly said, prose is not the antithesis of poetry; science and poetry may stand over-against each other, as Keats implied by his famous toast: “Confusion to the man who took the poetry out of the moon,” but prose and poetry surely are or may be practically one.
— from Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti by Caine, Hall, Sir

The spacious and magnificent drawing rooms were thronged with the wealthy and the beautiful; all were attired in robes of silk and satin, and costumes of velvet, which glistened with pearls and precious stones.
— from Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants by James H. Head

Among these records are those of the City merchants whose purses and patriotism supplied the sinews of war to remind us that the great material resources of the Dominion are not inferior to the patriotism of its sons, and are no less a vital factor of national victory.
— from Canada in Flanders, Volume II by Beaverbrook, Max Aitken, Baron

Several of the cases are highly remarkable, because, firstly, the fruit thus produced has sometimes been in part a nectarine and in part a peach; secondly, because nectarines thus suddenly produced have reproduced themselves by seed; and thirdly, because nectarines are produced from peach-trees from seed as well as from buds.
— from The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication — Volume 1 by Charles Darwin

The minister explained in brief his slight occupancy of the parsonage; whereat the stranger shook his head: “That's wrong—all wrong,” he pronounced: “A parson should be married and have children—plenty of them.
— from An Alabaster Box by Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

Predictus Robertus de Canle tenet duas virgatas terre pro 5 solidis et omnes tenentes predicti secundum tenuras suas detinent predicto Abbati predictas sectas pro quibus dictus Robertus de Canle capit a predictis tenentibus secundum tenuras [ folio 22] suas, scilicet pro una uirgata 30 denarios et de maiori tenura plus et de minori minus.
— from Villainage in England: Essays in English Mediaeval History by Paul Vinogradoff

Transcriber’s Notes Variant spelling and hyphenation have been preserved as printed; simple typographical errors have been corrected.
— from Insect Adventures by Louise Hasbrouck Zimm