If the house was mine, I would turn over a new leaf—I don’t see why the sarvants of Wales shouldn’t drink fair water, and eat hot cakes and barley cale, as they do in Scotland, without troubling the botcher above once a quarter—I hope you keep accunt of Roger’s purseeding in reverence to the buttermilk.
— from The Expedition of Humphry Clinker by T. (Tobias) Smollett

Now on the left hand or south side from Newgate lieth a street called the Old Bayly, or court of the chamberlain of this city; this stretcheth down by the wall of the city unto Ludgate, on the west side of which street breaketh out one other lane, called St. Georges lane, till ye come to the south end of Seacole lane, and then turning towards Fleet street it is called Fleet lane.
— from The Survey of London by John Stow

"Maggie is not the sort of woman Stephen admires, and she is irritated by something in him which she interprets as conceit," was the silent observation that accounted for everything to guileless Lucy.
— from The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot

Sometimes I have not been successful in my purpose, sometimes I have, supporting it upon the shoulders of the truth; which truth is so clear that I can almost say I have with my own eyes seen Amadis of Gaul, who was a man of lofty stature, fair complexion, with a handsome though black beard, of a countenance between gentle and stern in expression, sparing of words, slow to anger, and quick to put it away from him; and as I have depicted Amadis, so I could, I think, portray and describe all the knights-errant that are in all the histories in the world; for by the perception I have that they were what their histories describe, and by the deeds they did and the dispositions they displayed, it is possible, with the aid of sound philosophy, to deduce their features, complexion, and stature."
— from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

We set out without speaking and without appearing to know each other, he walking some steps before me.
— from The History of a Crime The Testimony of an Eye-Witness by Victor Hugo

The divine, surprised, looked at him from head to foot, and only replied, "Take care, Monsieur La Fontaine;--you have put one of your stockings on wrong side outwards"--which was the fact.
— from Fables of La Fontaine — a New Edition, with Notes by Jean de La Fontaine

Some one will say, If the writer of this history intended, in enumerating the generations from Adam through his son Seth, to descend through them to Noah, in whose time the [Pg 85] deluge occurred, and from him again to trace the connected generations down to Abraham, with whom Matthew begins the pedigree of Christ the eternal King of the city of God, what did he intend by enumerating the generations from Cain, and to what terminus did he mean to trace them?
— from The City of God, Volume II by Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo

I have seen many men strip, in gymnasium and training quarters, men of good blood and upbringing, but I have never seen one who stripped to better advantage than this young sot of two-and-twenty, this young god doomed to rack and ruin in four or five short years, and to pass hence without posterity to receive the splendid heritage it was his to bequeath.
— from The People of the Abyss by Jack London

To illustrate—A shovel, loading eight or nine thousand yards of rock per month, was inspected; and the first impression obtained was that the reason the shovel output was so small was because of the inefficient layout of the shovel work itself.
— from Cyclopedia of Commerce, Accountancy, Business Administration, v. 02 (of 10) by American School of Correspondence

She laughed and said: "To-morrow you try to put your stocking on wrong side out; that is a sure sign of winning."
— from Two Years in the Forbidden City by Princess Der Ling

Their symboled fire showed One Whose spirit on the altar of the world Burns ceaselessly,—where, if all vice be hurled, It shall be purged with fire that shall atone,— Christ's love the flame, man's sin th' alchemic stone.
— from Pan and Æolus: Poems by Charles Hamilton Musgrove

Three miles above its mouth the Severn widens into Round Bay, a sheet of water several miles in diameter.
— from An Annapolis First Classman by Edward L. (Edward Latimer) Beach

"It is nothing!" said Otmar, with sinking voice and failing senses.
— from Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 60, No. 370, August 1846 by Various

Six great ships of war, stretching out over a league of sea, stood blackly out against the red background, rolling and rising, and leaping forward, flinging back smoke and burning sparks up into the air behind them, and throbbing and panting like living creatures in their race for revenge.
— from Cinderella, and Other Stories by Richard Harding Davis

A savory odor was soon wafted in from the kitchen.
— from Bobby Blake on the School Nine; Or, The Champions of the Monatook Lake League by Frank A. Warner