She was a spoilt, a sour, a suspicious, and a selfish spinster.
— from The Enchanted April by Elizabeth Von Arnim

Any penetrating eye, thought Scrap, any really penetrating eye, would see her for what she was—a spoilt, a sour, a suspicious and a selfish spinster.
— from The Enchanted April by Elizabeth Von Arnim

Pop was as slim and straight, as sprightly and spry, as a stripling.
— from You're on the Air by William Heyliger

But sometimes he'll say something as sharp and sensible as anything.” Soames, who had been staring at an old print by the hat-rack, thinking, 'That's got value!' murmured: “I'll go up and see him, Smither.”
— from The Forsyte Saga, Volume III. Awakening To Let by John Galsworthy

Mrs. Ashwood, surprized at seeing a stranger, and a stranger whose appearance had more fashion than the generality of her visitors, was introduced to Mr. Delamere; a ceremony he would willingly have dispensed with; and having made his bow, and muttered something about having taken the liberty to call on his relation, he sat down by Emmeline, and in a whisper told her he must and would speak to her alone before he went.
— from Emmeline, the Orphan of the Castle by Charlotte Smith

She had invented a modified snow-shoe, broad and short, with slightly curved-up ends, and with these strapped on to her lithe feet, her fur coat fastened up to her chin, and her fur cap drawn over her ears and to her brows, she defied the fall of the mercury, and skimmed over the snow as silently and swiftly as a shadow moving.
— from A Girl of the Klondike by Victoria Cross

Here we stopped but four days, when we set all sails and steered away a southwest course, for the Brazil Banks, where we arrived, after a sail of forty-two days.
— from Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Paul Cuffe, a Pequot Indian, During Thirty Years Spent at Sea, and in Travelling in Foreign Lands by Paul Cuffe

With regard to the flora of this part of the country, the small quantity found in flower, belongs, with few exceptions, to the family of the Leguminosae , amongst which the order of Mimoseae is the most extensive both in species and specimens; they are however all stunted and shrubby, and seldom attain any size.
— from The Highlands of Ethiopia by Harris, William Cornwallis, Sir