When Auntie Dasha was making jam with a very serious face as though she were performing a religious rite, and her short sleeves displayed her strong, little, despotic hands and arms, and when the servants ran about incessantly, bustling about the jam which they would never taste, there was always a feeling of martyrdom in the air. . . .
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

Love could not chill her low, soft bed With any sad memorial stone; He put a red rose at her head— A flame as fragrant as his own.
— from The Home Book of Verse — Volume 2 by Burton Egbert Stevenson

She was gowned in pink, a red rose at her bosom.
— from D'Ri and I: A Tale of Daring Deeds in the Second War with the British. Being the Memoirs of Colonel Ramon Bell, U.S.A. by Irving Bacheller

As that nation has taken the lead in modern times in passing through all the phases of political and religious revolution, and has seen, during fearful convulsions, the passions in all their nakedness, and crime in all its forms, she is better acquainted than all others with their causes.
— from Protestantism and Catholicity compared in their effects on the civilization of Europe by Jaime Luciano Balmes

In sight of his tent, the English had passed a rapid river, and had stormed a strong town.
— from The History of England, from the Accession of James II — Volume 4 by Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron

When the muster was completed, captains were appointed for hundreds and thousands; but in order that the whole mass of the people need not be called out on every campaign and every attack of the enemy,—in which hitherto, for the most part, only those who were eager for battle had engaged, while those who preferred peace and rest remained at home,—the whole number of the fighting men was divided into twelve portions, of which each, in number 24,000 men, was pledged to service for one month in the year.
— from The History of Antiquity, Vol. 2 (of 6) by Max Duncker

As a result of these peculiar historic developments, the Russian proletariat, recruited from the pauperized peasant and ruined rural artisans, has accumulated in the new cities in very great numbers, "and nothing stood between the workingmen and absolutism but a small class of capitalists, separated from the 'people' (i.e., the middle-class in the European sense of the word), half foreign in its derivation, devoid of historic traditions, animated solely by a hunger for profits."
— from Our Revolution: Essays on Working-Class and International Revolution, 1904-1917 by Leon Trotsky

Notwithstanding the enormous importation of shawls from Cashmere into the Punjaub, the difficulty of procuring a really rich and handsome shawl is greater than is commonly supposed.
— from Military Service and Adventures in the Far East: Vol. 1 (of 2) Including Sketches of the Campaigns Against the Afghans in 1839, and the Sikhs in 1845-6. by Daniel Henry MacKinnon

The Bab, however, differs from Mohammed in having been, so far as we can judge, primarily a religious reformer, and having done his best to make the movement as spiritual as possible.
— from Five Years in a Persian Town by Napier Malcolm

She had been designed for dependability rather than speed, yet she presented a rather rakish appearance, her upper planes jutting out over the lower ones by a full five feet.
— from White Fire by Roy J. (Roy Judson) Snell