He might be a very good patriarch of a church and preacher in its tabernacle, but something sterner than religion and moral suasion was needed to handle a hundred refractory, half-civilized sub-contractors.
— from Roughing It by Mark Twain

FEET AND LEGS—Feet should be strong, tolerably round, and moderately small; toes arched, and neither turned out nor in; black toe nails most desirable.
— from Dogs and All about Them by Robert Leighton

When Governor Winthrop, in a letter to Hooker, defended the restriction of the suffrage on the ground that “the best part is always the least, and of that best part the wiser part is always the lesser,” the learned and generous-hearted pastor replied: “In matters which concern the common good, a general council, chosen by all to transact business which concerns all, I conceive most suitable to rule, and most safe for the relief of the whole.”
— from Famous Men and Great Events of the Nineteenth Century by Charles Morris

"Twisted columns, for instance, are undoubtedly ornamental; but, as they have an appearance of weakness, they displease the eye, whenever they are used to support any massy part of a building, or what seems to require a more substantial prop."— Id. " In a vast number of inscriptions, some upon rocks, some upon stones of a defined shape, is found an Alphabet different from the Greeks', the Latins' , and the Hebrews' , and also unlike that of any modern nation."— W. C. Fowler cor.
— from The Grammar of English Grammars by Goold Brown

The proposition of Dennis met with the general assent of the Lincoln family, and especially suited the roving and migratory spirit of Thomas Lincoln.
— from The Papers and Writings of Abraham Lincoln, Complete by Abraham Lincoln

I had carefully compiled a list of these old gentlemen with a kind of history of the river, but I will spare the reader, and merely say that they believed it to be the entrance to the Infernal Regions, and that the Argonauts are said to have come here after they had annexed the Golden Fleece.
— from Wanderings through unknown Austria by Randolph Llewellyn Hodgson

Since the rugs are made solely to meet the requirements of Western buyers, the patterns are various.
— from Oriental Rugs, Antique and Modern by W. A. (Walter Augustus) Hawley

As I had reached it by swarming over the front of the stand and dropping a foot or so on to the earth, they naturally selected that route as most suitable for them.
— from Tom, Dick and Harry by Talbot Baines Reed