“When you find anything of the solicitor who is for the late Mrs. Westenra, seal all her papers, and write him to-night.
— from Dracula by Bram Stoker

It was “a robe of muslin of the finest kind; no ordinary weaving had produced it; it had been woven in a jar in the middle of the ocean by people with gills, relieved by others with beaks; no sooner was it finished than the maker was put to death, so that no one might be able to make one like it.
— from Malay Magic Being an introduction to the folklore and popular religion of the Malay Peninsula by Walter William Skeat

I went over there when I could, but the times when she was in from the fields were the times when I was busiest here.
— from My Antonia by Willa Cather

no more was heard; on, by a deep flume clove through snowy marble, vernal-tinted, where freshet eddies had, on each side, spun out empty chapels in the living rock; on, where Jacks-in-the-pulpit, like their Baptist namesake, preached but to the wilderness; on, where a huge, cross-grain block, fern-bedded, showed where, in forgotten times, man after man had tried to split it, but lost his wedges for his pains—which wedges yet rusted in their holes; on, where, ages past, in step-like ledges of a cascade, skull-hollow pots had been churned out by ceaseless whirling of a flintstone—ever wearing, but itself unworn; on, by wild rapids pouring into a secret pool, but [pg 016] soothed by circling there awhile, issued forth serenely; on, to less broken ground, and by a little ring, where, truly, fairies must have danced, or else some wheel-tire been heated—for all was bare; still on, and up, and out into a hanging orchard, where maidenly looked down upon me a crescent moon, from morning.
— from The Piazza Tales by Herman Melville

we found a great courants, two kinds of which were red, others yellow deep purple and black, also black goosburies and service buries now ripe and in full perfection, we feasted suptuously on our wild fruit particularly the yellow courant and the deep purple servicebury which I found to be excellent the courrant grows very much like the red currant common to the gardens in the atlantic states tho the leaf is somewhat different and the growth taller.
— from The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806 by William Clark

As leaps the stag when it feels the arrow at its heart, so leaped Little John when that distant sound met his ear.
— from The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle

at 4 oClock the wind Shifted about to the S. W imediately from the ocian and blew a Storm for about 2 hours, raised the tide verry high all wet & cold Labiech killed 4 Ducks very fat & R. Fields Saw Elk Sign.
— from The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806 by William Clark

Then, too, I one day got into the wars with Uncle Able’s son, “Ike,” and had got sadly worsted; in fact, the little rascal had struck me directly in the forehead with a sharp piece of cinder, fused with iron, from the old blacksmith’s forge, which made a cross in my forehead very plainly to be seen now.
— from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass

Anon, to sudden silence won, In fancy they pursue The dream-child moving through a land Of wonders wild and new, In friendly chat with bird or beast— And half believe it true.
— from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Illustrated by Arthur Rackham. With a Proem by Austin Dobson by Lewis Carroll

So spirited a creature would have certainly roused the soundest of sleepers when it felt the prick of the knife.
— from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

It overlooked Lafayette Square with its fine trees, shrubbery and statuary, which years ago had been the "old apple orch [116] ard" of David Burns.
— from Dorothy Payne, Quakeress: A Side-Light Upon the Career of 'Dolly' Madison by Ella K. (Ella Kent) Barnard

Fairly strong wire is fastened to the wheel by a nail with a broad head so that when the wire is looped round the nail it turns freely on the nail but does not come off.
— from Toy-Making in School and Home by M. I. R. (Mabel Irene Rutherford) Polkinghorne

It was an afternoon in March, the sun was shining brightly and the Southern springtime was in full tide, and Sylvia had had the old family carriage made ready, with two of the oldest and gentlest family horses, and took the girls upon a shopping expedition to town.
— from Sylvia's Marriage: A Novel by Upton Sinclair

They have scar'd away two of my best sheep, which I fear the wolf will sooner find than the master.
— from The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare

she was incontinently filled therewith, and swelled up like a sack of Bohemian hops, and pined away; and thus they cunningly learned who was innocent and who guilty.
— from The Knickerbocker, Vol. 10, No. 3, September 1837 by Various

August the Spiritually Weak is fled to Prag with his Bruhl.
— from History of Friedrich II of Prussia — Volume 15 by Thomas Carlyle

In the simplest way imaginable; for the author argues that, henceforth “we [the clergy] are enabled to leave scientific men to pursue their studies without attempting to coërce them by the fear of heresy.”
— from The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 of 4 by H. P. (Helena Petrovna) Blavatsky

Though she was in fact tired and morose, and beginning to feel again the ache of her affliction, Mary sensed that now or never would she learn the whole truth.
— from Highland Ballad by Christopher Leadem