There's men of taste wou'd tak the Ducat stream,^4 Tho' they should cast the very sark and swim, E'er they would grate their feelings wi' the view O' sic an ugly, Gothic hulk as you.” Auld Brig “Conceited gowk!
— from Poems and Songs of Robert Burns by Robert Burns

There was silence, while the moody man sat, slowly and unconsciously gathering his mantle about him, as if it were a pall.
— from The Piazza Tales by Herman Melville

Kosinksi detested them most cordially, though, spite of himself, he was a tremendous favourite in their ranks, and the unwilling victim of the most affectionate demonstrations on their part: and when, with a shrug of his shoulders and uncompromising gait, he turned his back on his admirers, they would turn round to me, exclaiming fondly— "Comme il est drole, le pauvre diable!"
— from A Girl Among the Anarchists by Isabel Meredith

Our friend Larry Toole, who had patiently waited the egress of his quondam young master, no sooner beheld him than he hastened to accost him, but Pigwiggynne being, as we have said, in high spirits and unusual good humour, cut short poor Larry's address by jocularly knocking him on the head with a heavy walking-cane—a pleasantry which laid that person senseless upon the pavement.
— from The Cock and Anchor by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

[89] Also the Negroes in Senegambia and Upper Guinea have buffoons, who delight the people with their antics and acting in processions and public festivities.
— from Musical Myths and Facts, Volume 2 (of 2) by Carl Engel

Upon Phil asking where the wealth was to come from, the Peruvian replied that when the country fell into the hands of the Spaniards an enormous quantity of gold, silver, and uncut gems had been concealed in a secret chamber of the temple of which he had been a priest; that it was there still; and that he was quite prepared to reveal the hiding-place to his English friends, feeling assured that they would use it in the manner which had been intended when it was first concealed.
— from Two Gallant Sons of Devon: A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess by Harry Collingwood

Up and down along the margin he stumbled, straining his dim eyes, crawling sometimes and using groping hands in the search.
— from The Spinners' Book of Fiction by Spinners' Club

Thus without the loss of a single life, the Republic, guided by her consummate statesman and unrivalled general, had gained an immense victory, had installed the Protestant princes in the full possession of those splendid and important provinces, and had dictated her decrees on German soil to the Emperor of Germany, and had towed, as it were, Great Britain and France along in her wake, instead of humbly following those powers, and had accomplished all that she had ever proposed to do, even in alliance with them both.
— from PG Edition of Netherlands series — Complete by John Lothrop Motley

It rained when we came out of church, and was very dark, so I and Miss S—— stumbled on the best way we could over the steps and uneven ground, hardly knowing which way to take; it was such a novelty walking to church in India, and especially under an umbrella.
— from A Diary Kept by Mrs. R. C. Germon, at Lucknow, Between the Months of May and December, 1857 by Maria Germon