They could not stand up, nor drink tea, nor take their medicines.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

Robert started to reassure her, asserting that he had known a lady who had subsisted upon nougat during the entire—but seeing the color mount into Mrs. Pontellier's face he checked himself and changed the subject.
— from The Awakening, and Selected Short Stories by Kate Chopin

For this is to be said of the people of London, that during the whole time of the pestilence the churches or meetings were never wholly shut up, nor did the people decline coming out to the public worship of God, except only in some parishes when the violence of the distemper was more particularly in that parish at that time, and even then no longer than it continued to be so.
— from A Journal of the Plague Year Written by a Citizen Who Continued All the While in London by Daniel Defoe

All afternoon I worked until half-past four, when I went out under an umbrella, and cruised about the empty, wet, glimmering streets until near dinner time.
— from The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 23 by Robert Louis Stevenson

Yet I observed that after people were possessed, as I have said, with the belief, or rather assurance, of the infection being thus carried on by persons apparently in health, the churches and meetinghouses were much 211 thinner of people than at other times, before that, they used to be; for this is to be said of the people of London, that, during the whole time of the pestilence, the churches or meetings were never wholly shut up, nor did the people decline coming out to the public worship of God, except only in some parishes, when the violence of the distemper was more particularly in that parish at that time, and even then 284 no longer than it 285 continued to be so.
— from History of the Plague in London by Daniel Defoe

If only Smith had been shut up next door to me I might have been able to shout to him so that he could hear, but what chance was there when three or four rooms at least divided us?
— from My Friend Smith: A Story of School and City Life by Talbot Baines Reed

And far below that sea spread forth its waveless, silent wonder to a horizon-line so distant that the eyes which looked upon it could scarcely distinguish sea from sky—a line which surely united not divided two shades of flawless blue, linking them in a brotherhood which should be everlasting.
— from The Call of the Blood by Robert Hichens

Hah, more Company; now dare not I stir up nor down, they may be Bravoes to cut my Throat.
— from The Works of Aphra Behn, Volume I by Aphra Behn