He endeavoured more than once to get up, and even to disentangle himself from her embrace, but she hung about his neck like a mill-stone (no bad emblem of matrimony), and if my man had not proved a stanch auxiliary, those two lovers would in all probability have gone hand in hand to the shades below—For my part, I was too much engaged to take any cognizance of their distress.—I snatched out my sister by the hair of the head, and, dragging her to the bank, recollected that my uncle had, not yet appeared—Rushing again into the stream, I met Clinker hauling ashore Mrs Jenkins, who looked like a mermaid with her hair dishevelled about her ears; but, when I asked if his master was safe, he forthwith shook her from him, and she must have gone to pot, if a miller had not seasonably come to her relief.—As for Humphry, he flew like lightning, to the coach, that was by this time filled with water, and, diving into it, brought up the poor ‘squire, to all appearance, deprived of life—It is not in my power to describe what I felt at this melancholy spectacle—it was such an agony as baffles all description!
— from The Expedition of Humphry Clinker by T. (Tobias) Smollett

After dinner half an hour at my viallin, and then all the afternoon sitting at the office late, and so home and to bed. This morning Mr. Cutler came and sat in my closet half an hour with me, his discourse very excellent, being a wise man, and I do perceive by him as well as many others that my diligence is taken notice of in the world, for which I bless God and hope to continue doing so.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

Aunt Esther—she says I may call her Aunt Esther—teaches me every day.
— from The Garies and Their Friends by Frank J. Webb

I sent in my card, however, and the servant returned immediately saying that the General wished to see me in his chamber.
— from Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals In Two Volumes, Volume I. by Samuel Finley Breese Morse

I have seldom, I must confess, heard a voice like it; it was slightly hoarse, and not perfectly true; there was even something morbid about it at first; but it had genuine depth of passion, and youth and sweetness, and a sort of fascinating careless, pathetic melancholy.
— from Turgenev: A Study by Edward Garnett

Death lurked behind ambuscades and fortifications over the river, but Sin, its mother, coquetted here , and as an American, I often went to bed, loathing the Capital, as but little better than Sodom, though its danger had called forth thousands of great hearts to throb out, in its defence.
— from Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, and His Romaunt Abroad During the War by George Alfred Townsend

27 SECTION IV MEDIAEVAL CHRISTIAN HYMNODY A. D. 600-1520
— from Hymnological Studies by Matthew Nathanael Lundquist

—Some sensation in moderately crowded House at Question Time, when report ran round Benches that Sir John Puleston , Knight, was approaching.
— from Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 93, August 20, 1887. by Various

As we were mounting to proceed on our journey, the Indian soothsayer (for so I may call him) approached my father, and whispered earnestly in his ear for some minutes.
— from Manco, the Peruvian Chief Or, An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas by William Henry Giles Kingston