If the chaplain should succeed in getting me a soft job, where there was no danger, I could get along without my breast-plate, but there was no sure thing about the chaplain, so I asked the soldier where I could get a breastplate.
— from How Private George W. Peck Put Down the Rebellion or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 by George W. (George Wilbur) Peck

With these alleviations, we might almost be said to pass through an unbroken desert—sure, one of the most impoverished in Europe; and when I recalled to mind that we were yet but a few leagues from the chief city (where the law courts sat every day with a press of business, soldiers garrisoned the castle, and men of admitted parts were carrying on the practice of letters and the investigations of science), it gave me a singular view of that poor, barren, and yet illustrious country through which I travelled.
— from St. Ives: Being the Adventures of a French Prisoner in England by Robert Louis Stevenson

In addition to the Beethoven symphonies already mentioned he directed the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth; also the "Leonora" overture, No. 3, and the violin concerto, Mozart's symphonies in B flat and C, Mendelssohn's Scotch and Italian symphonies, Spohr's C minor symphony, Cipriani Potter's symphony in G minor, and some minor works.
— from Richard Wagner His Life and His Dramas A Biographical Study of the Man and an Explanation of His Work by W. J. (William James) Henderson

Disappointed again, Mark returned to his hotel and retired to his room to smoke in gloomy meditation and solitude.
— from Mark Gildersleeve: A Novel by John S. Sauzade

The act of 3 H. VII., c. 2, Statutes at Large (Ruffhead), II, 69, provides that if anyone take away against her will any woman, whether maid, widow, or wife, "having substances, some in Goods moveable, and some in Lands and Tenements, and some being Heirs apparent unto their ancestors," and marry her or cause her to be married or deflowered, or in any way aid or abet the same, he shall be guilty of felony; and the act of 39 Elizabeth, c. 9, Statutes at Large , II, 689, deprives such offenders of benefit of clergy.
— from A History of Matrimonial Institutions, Vol. 1 of 3 by George Elliott Howard

But the theology of early Canaan is still but little known, and its pantheon is still in great measure a sealed book.
— from Patriarchal Palestine by A. H. (Archibald Henry) Sayce

The sun sank; twilight spread its gray mantle, and soon black night enveloped the forest.
— from The Spirit of the Border: A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley by Zane Grey

So I grabbed me a side-door Pullman and took a trip out to the old beat.
— from Black Jack by Max Brand

Chance, the servant of those that patiently solicit it, grants me a sight of the acorn-beetle at work, in the earlier half of October.
— from Social Life in the Insect World by Jean-Henri Fabre