We stirred them up and redisposed them in such a way as to make our bed as level as possible.
— from Roughing It by Mark Twain

“And now,” said Gerard, “I rise with the lark, good neighbour Franklin; but before you go, Sybil will sing to us a requiem that I love: it stills the spirit before we sink into the slumber which may this night be death, and which one day must be.” H2 anchor Book 3 Chapter 6 A bloom was spread over the morning sky.
— from Sybil, Or, The Two Nations by Disraeli, Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield

The tenth is, by disposing all offices of honour, profit, or trust, only to the natives; or at least with very few exceptions, where strangers have long inhabited the country, and are supposed to understand and regard the interests of it as their own.
— from Ireland in the Days of Dean Swift (Irish Tracts, 1720 to 1734) by Jonathan Swift

Had it been the Sisters of the hospital, as M. le Curé thought, would they have let the opportunity pass of preaching a sermon to us, and recommending their doctrines?
— from A Beleaguered City Being a Narrative of Certain Recent Events in the City of Semur, in the Department of the Haute Bourgogne. A Story of the Seen and the Unseen by Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

The next day they stationed themselves some in one place and others in another, to block up the streets, and shut up the ways by which the townsmen might escape, the greater part of them stationing themselves upon and round the theatre, as they had been accustomed before also to be spectators of the assemblies.
— from The History of Rome, Books 09 to 26 by Livy

One of the greatest modern French statesmen, Talleyrand, understood and recommended this fact to his master.
— from Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 by Various

About the same time, upon a rumor that the Duke of Nemours, a faithful ally of the Guises, had plotted to carry off the young Duke of Orleans, the future Henry the Third, into Spain, with the view of affording his brother-in-law Philip a specious pretext for interfering in Trench affairs, [1220]
— from History of the Rise of the Huguenots Vol. 1 by Henry Martyn Baird

John started to utter a refusal, then paused.
— from Check and Checkmate by Walter M. Miller