But the greatest part of the powder he used to hide in a secret place cut into the step of his chariot.
— from Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay

The priests held up their hands in horror; the women wagged their long tongues in the puddle of scandal; and the most fanatical shrieked out, execrating, vituperating, threatening even the respectable Shakib, who persists in befriending this muleteer’s son.
— from The Book of Khalid by Ameen Fares Rihani

But let her become reckless, and find solace in another man’s love, then she becomes a social pariah, against whom our canting hypocritical Pharisees hold up their hands in denunciatory horror, and from whom the husband speedily obtains a judicial separation, applauded by sympathising male humbugs, and consoled by the “damages,” valued at £5,000 or so, which the court has ordered the co-respondent to pay as a solatium for his wounded affections .
— from New Amazonia: A Foretaste of the Future by Corbett, George, Mrs.

The girl declared that sometimes—oh, very occasionally, under pressure and high living—Deborah could kick up her heels and light out with the best, and that when she did, people held up their hands in horror and said: "What ever in the world has got into Deborah Watts!"
— from Blue Bonnet in Boston; or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's by Lela Horn Richards

Children do not find the unusual piquant until they are firmly acquainted with the usual; they do not find the preposterous humorous until they have intimate knowledge of ordinary behavior; they do not get the point of alien environments until they are securely oriented in their own.
— from Here and Now Story Book Two- to seven-year-olds by Lucy Sprague Mitchell

You withdrew a little protection here, you tore down something there, time after time, and by your own deliberate acts the Indian was invited to pauperize himself until today he is a wanderer upon the earth.
— from The American Indian in the United States, Period 1850-1914 ... The Present Condition of the American Indian; His Political History and Other Topics; A Plea for Justice by Warren King Moorehead

This can must not be put in place, however, until the head is fastened to the framework, which is done by punching
— from The Boy Craftsman Practical and Profitable Ideas for a Boy's Leisure Hours by A. Neely (Albert Neely) Hall

But the princes held up their hands in sign of peace, and cried out that they had come to do him kindness, so he laid down his bow, and they came in and sat on the rocks, and promised that his wound should be healed, for the Greeks were very much ashamed of having deserted him.
— from Tales of Troy and Greece by Andrew Lang

When, at last, he was home again, his mother pulled him up to herself in the bed, embraced him passionately and sobbed as if it had been a farewell instead of a greeting.
— from The Soul of a Child by Edwin Björkman

Not that I admire the woman who is always at her husband's heels with a brush and a dust-pan; who puts him under the harrow if he does not place his boots under the scraper before entering the parlor; who has fits if his coat is not hung up on the left side of the door instead of the right; who when he has but ten minutes to spare after breakfast to enjoy the morning paper, drives him out of his comfortable corner by the fire, to brush up a spoonful of ashes on the hearth; who is always "righting," as she calls it, his own particular den, which I am convinced all husbands must be allowed to enjoy, neck deep in confusion unmolested, if their wives wish the roof to stay on.
— from Folly as It Flies; Hit at by Fanny Fern by Fanny Fern