Once, indeed, the old man appeared to catch the sound, for he paused and listened; but Alice had dropped senseless on the earth, and Cora had sunk at her side, hovering in untiring tenderness over her lifeless form.
— from The Last of the Mohicans; A narrative of 1757 by James Fenimore Cooper

ay, before the flickering lamp of dawn Has scared the hooting owlet to its nest, And warned the bat to close its filmy vans, Some Mænad girl with vine-leaves on her breast Will filch their beech-nuts from the sleeping Pans So softly that the little nested thrush Will never wake, and then with shrilly laugh and leap will rush Down the green valley where the fallen dew Lies thick beneath the elm and count her store, Till the brown Satyrs in a jolly crew Trample the loosestrife down along the shore, And where their hornèd master sits in state Bring strawberries and bloomy plums upon a wicker crate!
— from Poems, with The Ballad of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde

“I dare say she is,” said Lord de Mowbray; “but believe me, my dear Lady Marney, in these times especially, a countess has something else to do than be amusing.”
— from Sybil, Or, The Two Nations by Disraeli, Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield

This was a piece and prelude of our base defection, and degeneration into blind blockish, and brutish stupidity; that after he had discovered so much perfidy, we not only at first tempted him to perjury, in admitting him to the crown, upon his mock-engagement in the covenant, whereby God was mocked, his Spirit was grieved, his covenant prostituted, the church cheated, and the state betrayed; but after the Lord had broken his yoke from off our necks, by sending him to exile ten years, where he was discovered to be imbibing all that venom and tyrannical violence, which he afterward vented in revenge upon the nation; and after we had long smarted for our first transaction with him; yet notwithstanding of all this, we believed him again, and Issachar-like couched under his burdens and were so far from withstanding, that we did not so much as witness against the re-admission and restoration of the head and tail of malignants, but let them come in peaceably to the throne, without any security to the covenanted cause, or for our civil or religious interests, and by meal, at their own ease, leisure and pleasure, to overturn all the work of God, and reintroduce the old antichristian yoke of absurd prelacy, and blasphemous sacreligious, supremacy, and absolute arbitrary tyranny with all their abominations: which he, and with him the generality of our nobility, gentry, clergy, and commonality by him corrupted, without regard to faith, or fear of God or man, did promote and propogate, the nation was involved in the greatest revolt from, and rebellion against God, that ever could be recorded in any age or generation; nay attended with greater and grosser aggravations, than ever any could be capable of before us, who have had the greatest privileges that ever any church had, since the national church of the Jews, the greatest light, the greatest effects of matchless magnified love, the greatest convictions of sin, the greatest resolutions and solemn engagements against it, and the greatest reformation from it, that ever any had to abuse and affront.
— from A Hind Let Loose Or, An Historical Representation of the Testimonies of the Church of Scotland for the Interest of Christ. With the True State Thereof in All Its Periods by Alexander Shields

In fact this big, nervous child, whose mind had been so grievously impressed by her accident, was unable to forget it; her attention remained fixed on the part where she suffered, and she could not divert it, so that, even after cure, her sufferings had continued—a neuropathic state, a consecutive nervous exhaustion, doubtless aggravated by accidents due to faulty nutrition as yet imperfectly understood.
— from The Three Cities Trilogy: Lourdes, Volume 4 by Émile Zola

He sat there a quarter of an hour, talking as if he might not soon see them again—unless indeed they should come to England, a course he strongly recommended.
— from The Portrait of a Lady — Volume 2 by Henry James

In the evening, in strolling about the camp, I came near his tent, and entered with the intention of employing his squaw in the soling of my moccasins; while she was engaged in this employment, a conversation had sprung up between the old chief and myself, in which he took occasion to ask me if I were a christian, as also whether there were many upon the road; to which questions I of course answered in the affirmative, supposing that he merely wished to know, whether I classed myself with the heathen or christians.
— from Palmer's Journal of Travels Over the Rocky Mountains, 1845-1846 by Joel Palmer

The shell gun would lose its superiority over the shot gun, and might indeed be reduced to absolute impotence if, in imitation of France, the enemy also cased his ships of war with iron.
— from The Evolution of Naval Armament by Frederick Leslie Robertson

“And Miss Dill, is she not in the house?” “No, sir; she has gone down to the 'Fisherman's Home' to look after the garden,—the family having left that place this morning.” After a few minutes' reflection, Conyers ordered his servant to put up the horse at the inn, and wait for him there; and then engaging a “cot,” he set out for the “Fisherman's Home.”
— from Barrington. Volume 1 (of 2) by Charles James Lever

[Pg 71] CHAPTER VI A Perilous Service Writing of these events afterward, Captain Hull said, "It was evident that the superior force of the British would soon give them possession of New York.
— from Nathan Hale by Jean Christie Root

With all the beautiful world from which to elect and choose, he sought out only those places where eating was studied and elevated to an art.
— from The Exiles and Other Stories by Richard Harding Davis

[182] A careful student of these early American customs has said of the obvious purpose of this yielding of one’s blood in worship, that it “might be regarded as an act of individual devotion, a gift made to the gods by the worshiper himself, out of his own very substance [of his very life, as in the blood-covenant]....
— from The Blood Covenant: A Primitive Rite and its Bearings on Scripture by H. Clay (Henry Clay) Trumbull

She can tell when God is going to shake the stars like apples upon the earth—” A current had set toward this corner.
— from The Wanderers by Mary Johnston