While we should shun that narrow devotion to one idea which prevents the harmonious development of our powers, we should avoid on the other hand the extreme versatility of one of whom W. M. Praed says:— His talk is like a stream which runs With rapid change from rocks to roses, It slips from politics to puns, It glides from Mahomet to Moses: Beginning with the laws that keep The planets in their radiant courses, And ending with some precept deep For skinning eels or shoeing horses.
— from Pushing to the Front by Orison Swett Marden

Hence 'tis they grieve and fear, avoiding light, And shut themselves in prison dark from sight.
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

Their tea rooms are all places designed for small, quick meals; and are in no sense lounges.
— from All About Coffee by William H. (William Harrison) Ukers

368 Those of the Cherokee who did not return to Indian territory gradually drifted down into Mexico, where some hundreds of them are now permanently and prosperously domiciled far south in the neighborhood of Guadalajara and Lake Chapala, communication being still kept up through occasional visits from their kinsmen in the territory.
— from Myths of the Cherokee Extract from the Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology by James Mooney

During this period I afforded him no countenance; I even aided a person, who was highly recommended to me by an influential family of this province, to prosecute Delisle for some offence or other which it was alleged he had committed.
— from Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay

This is largely a result of the common, but erroneous, notion that the ordinary chess puzzle with which we are familiar in the press (dignified, for some reason, with the name "problem") has a vital connection with the game of chess itself.
— from Amusements in Mathematics by Henry Ernest Dudeney

I am apprehensive that the indians have Stolen our horses, and probably those who had made the Smoke a fiew days passed towards the S. W. I deturmined to have the ballance of the horses guarded and for that purpose sent out 3 men, on their approach near the horses were So alarmed that they ran away and entered the woods and the men returned- a Great number of Geese which raise their young on this river passed down frequently Since my arival at this place.
— from The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806 by William Clark

But the Divine Power departed from Saul, and removed to David; who, upon this removal of the Divine Spirit to him, began to prophesy.
— from Antiquities of the Jews by Flavius Josephus

Miss Quiney had used pious words; in Miss Quiney's talk everything—even to sitting upright at table—was mixed up with God and an all-seeing Eye; and his father—with a child's deadly penetration Dicky felt sure of it—was careless about God.
— from Lady Good-for-Nothing: A Man's Portrait of a Woman by Arthur Quiller-Couch

This "utterance of poetry" derived from Sanskrit, fell into disuse after the Mohammedan conquest, though a few Arabic words became incorporated into the two-fold language comprising Krama , the ceremonial speech, and Ngoko , the speech of "thee and thou," or colloquial form of address.
— from Through the Malay Archipelago by Emily Richings

President Davis fled south.
— from History of the United States, Volume 4 by Elisha Benjamin Andrews

With cool politeness he seated himself at the greatest possible distance from Stoss, drew a pouch of tobacco from his pocket, and filled a short Dutch pipe.
— from Atlantis by Gerhart Hauptmann

Thus we are paying dear for sightseeing, but it is impossible to set aside the vague curiosity which hates to [Pg 234] leave another chance unturned.
— from An Artist's Letters from Japan by John La Farge

At the commendable hour of one in the morning, as was hinted in my last letter, we safely arrived at our hotel, and roused the slumbering porter from his elysian dreams by the tinkling of a little bell pendant over the private door for "single gentlemen,— belated ;" and ascended through dark passages and darker stairways to our rooms, lighted by the glimmer of a solitary candle fluttering and flickering by his motion, in the fingers of the drowsy "guardian of doors," who preceded us.
— from The South-West, by a Yankee. In Two Volumes. Volume 1 by J. H. (Joseph Holt) Ingraham

44, so that the part d, f shall be nearly upright, whilst the whole is resting on the three bearing points p, e, f place these as in fig.
— from Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 by Michael Faraday

In the English tables of the cost of drainage by the Drainage Companies, an estimate of $1.25 per acre is usually put down for "superintendence," which includes the engineering and the supervision of the whole process of opening, laying and filling, securing outfalls, and every other process till the work is completed.
— from Farm drainage The Principles, Processes, and Effects of Draining Land with Stones, Wood, Plows, and Open Ditches, and Especially with Tiles by Henry F. (Henry Flagg) French

And knowledge of this sort is to be very sparingly gleaned from Parliamentary debates, from state papers, and from the works of grave historians.
— from Critical, Historical, and Miscellaneous Essays; Vol. 4 With a Memoir and Index by Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron