They lay in this position until the twelfth, engaged every day, to a greater or less extent, in skirmishing and sharp shooting until the eleventh, when an agreement was made between the pickets that hostilities should cease in that part of the line, and the day was spent in conversation, games, etc., with the rebels.
— from Vermont riflemen in the war for the union, 1861 to 1865 A history of Company F, First United States sharp shooters by William Young Warren Ripley

"If we go back now, of course we can pick up their trail easily enough, but they have taken the precaution to send back word regarding us, and they surely have left some people to watch us if we attempt to follow them.
— from The Marines Have Landed by Giles Bishop

the chestnuts budded, budded and peeped up through the earth, each one looking for all the world like a Hindoo lady’s little finger, which isn’t a bit different, you know, from your little finger, only it is dark-brown, and yours is white.
— from Aileen Aroon, A Memoir With other Tales of Faithful Friends and Favourites by Gordon Stables

{298} It was really much better that time, and though Winnie could not pick up the tune, everybody else seemed quite pleased with themselves.
— from A Book of Nimble Beasts: Bunny Rabbit, Squirrel, Toad, and "Those Sort of People" by Douglas English

A monkey, which I left in the room with a cardboard sheep one entire day, proved unable to the end entirely to satisfy itself that the sheep was inanimate.
— from The Non-religion of the Future: A Sociological Study by Jean-Marie Guyau

It was chiefly for the lack of ability and lack of disposition to put paper to proper use that the earlier European knowledge of paper- making was so barren of results.
— from Forty Centuries of Ink Or, A chronological narrative concerning ink and its backgrounds, introducing incidental observations and deductions, parallels of time and color phenomena, bibliography, chemistry, poetical effusions, citations, anecdotes and curiosa together with some evidence respecting the evanescent character of most inks of to-day and an epitome of chemico-legal ink. by David Nunes Carvalho