The actual experience with levees upon the Mississippi River, with no attempt to hold the banks, has been favorable, and no one can doubt, upon the evidence furnished in the reports of the commission, that if the earliest levees had been accompanied by revetment of banks, and made complete, we should have to-day a river navigable at low water, and an adjacent country safe from inundation.
— from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain

A place on Hiwassee river, just above the junction of Peachtree creek, near Murphy, in Cherokee county, North Carolina; about 1755 the site of a village of refugee Natchez, and later of a Baptist mission.
— from Myths of the Cherokee Extract from the Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology by James Mooney

The sciential reason, the objects of which are purely theoretical, remains neutral, as long as its name and semblance are not usurped by the opponents of the doctrine.
— from Biographia Literaria by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

She shows you her rooms, now, and lets you take one—but she makes you pay in advance for it.
— from The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today by Charles Dudley Warner

Anyone who wants to know how love begins may read novels and long stories; I will put it shortly and in the words of the same silly song: “It was an evil hour When first I met you.”
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

“And now,” said she, “this also will they take, unless I find a champion by to-morrow.” Then said Sir Bors, “Be comforted; to-morrow I will fight for thee;” whereat she rejoiced not a little, and sent word to Sir Pridan that she was provided and ready.
— from The Legends of King Arthur and His Knights by Knowles, James, Sir

At noon they sat down by the roadside, near a little brook, and Dorothy opened her basket and got out some bread.
— from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum

To divert myself from a troublesome fancy, ‘tis but to run to my books; they presently fix me to them and drive the other out of my thoughts, and do not mutiny at seeing that I have only recourse to them for want of other more real, natural, and lively commodities; they always receive me with the same kindness.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne

On 31st Dec, 1754, when the navy debt was reduced nearly as low as it could be, it still amounted to 1,296,567 l.
— from The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 01 (of 12) by Edmund Burke

Here, on the Ayrshire coast, between Girvan and Ballantrae, a complex of several kinds of igneous rock and a region, not a little disturbed, of "greywackes" and other sedimentary deposits present the geologist with problems more than sufficiently perplexing.
— from Charles Lyell and Modern Geology by T. G. (Thomas George) Bonney

He had high, thick brows, and a red nose; a long, thick, grizzly beard covered the rest of his countenance.
— from Caught in the Net by Emile Gaboriau

The shore road wound along beneath me by the blue water that never receded nor advanced, lopping always the same stones.
— from Sacred and Profane Love: A Novel in Three Episodes by Arnold Bennett

“The public attention was first occupied with the letter of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, which was known here some hours before the message of the President of the United States; and if some journals of the Government have found this publication unseasonable, made by the legation of France according to the orders which it had received , nobody, at least, has been able to deny the talent, the moderation, and the force of reasoning which have presided at its preparation.”
— from Life of James Buchanan, Fifteenth President of the United States. v. 1 (of 2) by George Ticknor Curtis

it still is to be acknowledged of too many, who are in a measure, we may candidly believe, under the genuine efficacy of religion, that they have attained, through its influence, but so inferior a proportion of the improvement of intellect, that they can be well pleased with the great deal of absurdity of religious notions and language.
— from An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance by John Foster

In this family council, despite the vivid interest Armstrong felt in the result, neither Amy Lawrence nor himself took any part.
— from Found in the Philippines: The Story of a Woman's Letters by Charles King

The chapter on the Colonial Exhibition Manuscripts speaks for itself, and my readers will be struck by the fact that the condition of the British West Indian Colonies, at the close of the last century, resembled in many respects not a little that of Cuba at the end of ours.
— from Cuba Past and Present by Richard Davey