Bahama Bill reached over like lightning and grasped a Chinaman by the slack of his pigtail, jerking him in front of himself, and seizing him with his left hand, to keep him in place.
— from Bahama Bill, Mate of the Wrecking Sloop Sea-Horse by T. Jenkins (Thornton Jenkins) Hains

The glorious woodlands of Norbury Park—that old-time resort of literary ladies and gaping gentlemen, who stapped their vitals and protested monstrously that the productions of those blue-stockings were designed for immortality, long before the modern woman was thought possible—the woods of Norbury come in view, and the great swelling side of Box Hill rises in front, with the Burford Bridge Hotel beneath, shaded by lofty trees which take their nourishment from the Mole, bridged here by a substantial brick-and-stone structure that gives that hostelry its name.
— from The Portsmouth Road and Its Tributaries: To-Day and in Days of Old by Charles G. (Charles George) Harper

The regiment of lancers, like a great many other Mexican regiments, was only "regular" because it happened just then to be employed by the national government.
— from The Talking Leaves: An Indian Story by William O. Stoddard

The court, retiring with equal ceremony, gave a brilliant banquet to the officers of the battalion, to the chiefs of the provincial regiments of La Laguna and Guimar, and to all their illustrious compatriots who had taken part in the contest.
— from To The Gold Coast for Gold: A Personal Narrative. Vol. I by Burton, Richard Francis, Sir

But now he starts, for silently the door opens, and a tiny ray of light, like a golden finger, falls across his bed.
— from Florence Nightingale, the Angel of the Crimea: A Story for Young People by Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards