But before he was half way across the water began to boil into white foam and a great wave rose and swept over the rock and carried him down, and he was never seen again.
— from Myths of the Cherokee Extract from the Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology by James Mooney

Why was she stumbling about amongst the rubble and catching her dress in brambles and burrs?
— from Howards End by E. M. (Edward Morgan) Forster

From the various facts just alluded to, and given in the course of this volume, it follows that, if the structure of our organs of respiration and circulation had differed in only a slight degree from the state in which they now exist, most of our expressions would have been wonderfully different.
— from The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin

So saying, she put a florin into his hand, which the holy father blithely received and confirming her devoutness with fair words and store of pious instances, gave her his benison and let her go.
— from The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio by Giovanni Boccaccio

Till ilka carlin swat and reekit, And coost her duddies to the wark, And linkit at it in her sark! Now Tam, O Tam!
— from Poems and Songs of Robert Burns by Robert Burns

“There was one—the old master, Mr. Ryder—who, I think, could soon have brought me round, and could have done anything with me; but he had given up all the hard part of the trade to his son and to another experienced man, and he only came at times to oversee.
— from Black Beauty by Anna Sewell

Not until the light porter announced that her nocturnal sweetbread was ready, did Mrs. Sparsit arouse herself from her reverie, and convey her dense black eyebrows—by that time creased with meditation, as if they needed ironing out-up-stairs.
— from Hard Times by Charles Dickens

Her mother was partly aware of her deficiencies, and gave me many a lecture as to how I should try to form her tastes, and endeavour to rouse and cherish her dormant vanity; and, by insinuating, skilful flattery, to win her attention to the desired objects—which I would not do; and how I should prepare and smooth the path of learning till she could glide along it without the least exertion to herself: which I could not, for nothing can be taught to any purpose without some little exertion on the part of the learner.
— from Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë

Then raising the cup to his lips, quite readily and cheerfully he drank off the poison.
— from Phaedo by Plato

And then the presents began to fly from the Tree, and Jack Loughead seemed to be all arms, for he was so tall he could reach down the hanging gifts from the higher branches, so that he was in great demand; and Pickering Dodge, one eye on all of Polly's movements, worked furiously, and Alexia Rhys and Cathie Harrison didn't give themselves hardly time to breathe; and there was quite enough for Mr. Alstyne and the Cabots and Hamilton Dyce to do, and everybody else, for that matter, to pass around the presents.
— from Five Little Peppers Grown Up by Margaret Sidney

[340] and Howard, who warned James of all things not to trust to them, Howard declaring that as for Raleigh and Cobham, "hell did never spew up such a couple when it cast up Cerberus and Phlegethon." ELIZABETH'S PROMENADE ON RICHMOND GREEN.
— from Cassell's History of England, Vol. 2 (of 8) From the Wars of the Roses to the Great Rebellion by Anonymous

Then holding the cup to his lips, quite readily and cheerfully, he drank off the poison.
— from Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 by Elbert Hubbard

Their simple, unproviding confidence has made Him in a sense responsible, and can He disappoint that confidence?
— from Expositor's Bible: The Gospel of St Luke by Henry Burton

Did he remember, and conceal his dreadful knowledge? or was the whole blotted from his mind?
— from The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 12 by Robert Louis Stevenson

Two minutes, perhaps, of silence, while from sheer force of habit he rolled a cigarette he did not want.
— from The Gringos A Story Of The Old California Days In 1849 by B. M. Bower

A parent may feel with him the desolation of heart he endured, as he listened to his daughter's unadvised and unwomanly railing, and comprehend his deeply-pained, disgusted feelings—but no pen can depict it.
— from The Manoeuvring Mother (vol. 2 of 3) by Bury, Charlotte Campbell, Lady

They picked a white fellow up and had him tied with a rope and carried him down to a creek and were tying him up by his thumbs.
— from Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 by United States. Work Projects Administration