126 The pronunciation of the word, being thus abandoned, became ultimately lost, as, by the peculiar construction of the Hebrew language, which is entirely without vowels, the letters, being all consonants, can give no possible indication, to one who has not heard it before, of the true pronunciation of any given word.
— from The Symbolism of Freemasonry Illustrating and Explaining Its Science and Philosophy, Its Legends, Myths and Symbols by Albert Gallatin Mackey

Two friars whose brown habits are tinted with mauve, one tree, a blue, uncertain landscape and some dozen birds, are all he thought necessary to explain the story, and yet the whole poetry of St. Francis' life is here, the keynote of his character, which has made him the most beloved among saints, and the man who though poor, unlettered and often reviled, was to herald the coming of a new age in religion, art and literature.
— from The Story of Assisi by Lina Duff Gordon

He had hitherto done nothing quite like these two later sonatas; they are based upon larger and more intricate plans than their predecessors, are more determined and confident in their expression of personality, riper in style and far freer in form: they are, in fact, MacDowell at his most salient and distinguished.
— from Edward MacDowell: A Study by Lawrence Gilman

But the gentlemen who write the report are bourgeois, and so they must contradict themselves and bring up later all sorts of bosh on the subject of the culpable temerity of the operatives.
— from The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 with a Preface written in 1892 by Friedrich Engels

The first thing which attracted my attention as my new home came in view, was the blended blue, red, and white of the American banner undulating like a many-colored snake amid the lofty verdure of the cedars which garland the brown brow of the hill behind our cabin.
— from The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 by Dame Shirley

To burn tobacco and blaze up like a star-shell and come down like a charred rocket-stick, that is not at all agreeable or praktisch .
— from That Which Hath Wings: A Novel of the Day by Richard Dehan

And then, all suddenly, we came to the end of the trees, and before us, like a great, heaving yellow sea, lay the Guas Ngishu Plateau that stretches northward one hundred miles and always above seven thousand feet in altitude.
— from In Africa: Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country by John T. (John Tinney) McCutcheon

Out of the flames, and even out of the smoke, the wind carries away large masses of fire, which, crackling and cracking, are borne on to the wood, and which fill the spectator with apprehension of their falling upon the nearest trees and burning up leaf and branch.
— from O. T., A Danish Romance by H. C. (Hans Christian) Andersen

Let us now read, for our improvement, a part of the Fifty-eighth Psalm: "The wicked are estranged from the womb, they goe astray as soon as ever they are borne, uttering lyes are they.
— from Anne Bradstreet and Her Time by Helen Campbell

They not only get as much for their labour as when the large farmers were making money, but they are buying up land at lower rates.
— from France and the Republic A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 by William Henry Hurlbert