Pausing before Methusaleh—the giant and patriarch of the garden—and leaning my brow against his knotty trunk, my foot rested on the stone sealing the small sepulchre at his root; and I recalled the passage of feeling therein buried; I recalled Dr. John; my warm affection for him; my faith in his excellence; my delight in his grace.
— from Villette by Charlotte Brontë

The girl is taken to bathe, and, after the bath, is richly dressed and ornamented, and brought in procession, with a canopy over her head, to the house, where she is conducted to the inner room.
— from Castes and Tribes of Southern India. Vol. 7 of 7 by Edgar Thurston

Passing my hand down behind the board, I readily discovered and pressed the spring, which was, as I had supposed, identical in character with its neighbor.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 1 by Edgar Allan Poe

The billows, in rolling depictured the skies, And mingled, in solemn and mystical strain, The all-mighteous chords of their luscious refrain With the sun-set's colours reflexed in mine eyes.
— from The Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire

“I wanted to keep them but I really didn’t see how I could afford to do it, especially when they grew older.
— from Anne of Avonlea by L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery

The ball is rolling down the hill.
— from The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) Including Public Addresses, Her Own Letters and Many From Her Contemporaries During Fifty Years by Ida Husted Harper

This man, before he was made bishop, had built two famous monasteries, the one for himself, and the other for his sister Ethelburg, 581 and established them both in regular discipline of the best kind.
— from Bede's Ecclesiastical History of England by Bede, the Venerable, Saint

It is courting failure to allow such plants as chrysanthemums, auriculas, geraniums, and many others, to be exposed to the influence of cold, frosty nights, as when the "fell destroyer" commences to exert its power all plants touched by it rapidly decay.
— from Little Folks (September 1884) A Magazine for the Young by Various

[Pg 14] "I beg your pardon, sir: I did not mean to be impudent," replied Dory meekly.
— from All Adrift; Or, The Goldwing Club by Oliver Optic

“Some o' the biggest I rolled down from that cliff above.”
— from Abner Daniel: A Novel by Will N. (Will Nathaniel) Harben

The long ecstatic kiss ended at last, the tumultuously beating feminine heart grew still, the living, throbbing being in Richard Dalrymple’s arms became a dead weight, and Gwendoline Beattison sank back insensible, a victim to her own uncontrollable emotion.
— from My Friend Pasquale, and Other Stories by James Selwin Tait

Yet there would be awkwardness in housing the whole family at the Manor; and besides— What the ‘besides’ implied Richard did not make formal even in his own thoughts.
— from Demos by George Gissing

There were five launches on duty at a time, and their crews had to be instantly ready day and night.
— from Submarine Warfare of To-day How the Submarine Menace Was Met and Vanquished, with Descriptions of the Inventions and Devices Used, Fast Boats, Mystery Ships, Nets, Aircraft, &c. &c., Also Describing the Selection and Training of the Enormous Personnel Used in This New Branch of the Navy by Charles W. (Charles William) Domville-Fife

Suppose a person to be in real danger, and by some means or other to have forgot it; any trifling accident, any sound might alarm him, recall the danger to his remembrance, and renew his fear; but it is almost too grossly ridiculous (though it is to show an absurdity) to speak of that sound or accident as an object of compassion; and yet, according to Mr. Hobbes, our greatest friend in distress is no more to us, no more the object of compassion, or of any affection in our heart: neither the one nor the other raises any emotion in one mind, but only the thoughts of our liableness to calamity, and the fear of it; and both equally do this.
— from Human Nature, and Other Sermons by Joseph Butler

As he got off he began describing his experiences, and wound up his story of triumphant progress—"And when I got to the Boulevards I ran down a blighter on a bicycle and the crowd gave me an ovation!"
— from A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium by Hugh Gibson