Zulora, whether she was in love with me or not, was bent on marrying me, and I gathered in talking with a young gentleman of my acquaintance who frequently visited the house and whom I greatly disliked, that it was considered a sacred and inviolable rule that whoever married into a family must marry the eldest daughter at that time unmarried.
— from Erewhon; Or, Over the Range by Samuel Butler

One day, Benedetto, who had been gone from the house since morning, to our great anxiety, did not return until late in the evening, dragging a monkey after him, which he said he had found chained to the foot of a tree.
— from The Count of Monte Cristo, Illustrated by Alexandre Dumas

Or, since the reality which religious thought expresses is society, the question can be stated in the following [Pg 432] terms, which make the entire difficulty appear even better: what has been able to make social life so important a source for the logical life?
— from The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life by Émile Durkheim

From all the calculations I can make on the subject, this must have been the slumber into which I fell just after my return from the trap with the watch, and which, consequently, must have lasted for more than three entire days and nights at the very least.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven Edition Table Of Contents And Index Of The Five Volumes by Edgar Allan Poe

She had probably heard some grown-up people talking her over in the early days, after her mother's death.
— from A Little Princess Being the whole story of Sara Crewe now told for the first time by Frances Hodgson Burnett

41 They enjoy also good things not a few, for they do not consume or spend anything of their own substance, but there is sacred bread baked for them and they have each great quantity of flesh of oxen and geese coming in to them each day, and also wine of grapes is given to them; but it is not permitted to them to taste of fish: beans moreover the Egyptians do not at all sow in their land, and those which grow they neither eat raw nor boil for food; nay the priests do not endure even to look upon them, thinking this to be an unclean kind of pulse: and there is not one priest only for each of the gods but many, and of them one is chief-priest, and whenever a priest dies his son is appointed to his place.
— from The History of Herodotus — Volume 1 by Herodotus

They talked about the excise duty; about business in the senate, about salaries, about promotions, about His Excellency, and the best means of pleasing him, and so on.
— from White Nights and Other Stories The Novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Volume X by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

With the earliest dawn a long shiver woke him, and as he put out his hand it touched something wet and cold.
— from The Battle Ground by Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

Considering the length of the voyage before us, our ship was in a very bad condition, as her sails and rigging were so old and rotten, that if any accident had befallen our masts or sails, we had been reduced to extreme distress and danger, having no change either of sails or ropes; but ours being a case of necessity, we had to run all hazards, and to endeavour, by the utmost attention, to guard against deficiencies which could not be supplied.
— from A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 Arranged in Systematic Order: Forming a Complete History of the Origin and Progress of Navigation, Discovery, and Commerce, by Sea and Land, from the Earliest Ages to the Present Time by Robert Kerr

He did not know; perhaps he would return for the early dinner and perhaps he would not.
— from The Awakening, and Selected Short Stories by Kate Chopin

The existing diversities and contradictions of State laws on the subject admirably illustrate the objects of this part of the Constitution, as stated by Mr. Madison; and they form that precise case for which the clause was inserted.
— from The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster With an Essay on Daniel Webster as a Master of English Style by Edwin Percy Whipple

His people are slain by thousands each day, and thousands must soon perish from want.
— from The Infidel; or, the Fall of Mexico. Vol. II. by Robert Montgomery Bird

The Council remained so sovereign that eight days after it overturned the Committee.
— from History of the Commune of 1871 by Lissagaray

I do not say that they must do the same, but that each one must write me and very often, for I feel great sorrow that all the world should have letters from there each day, and I have nothing, when I have so many people there.
— from Christopher Columbus and the New World of His Discovery — Complete by Filson Young

Then there was an influx of intellectual French people, largely overlooked in the histories of the early days; and this Latin leaven has had its influence.
— from The City That Was: A Requiem of Old San Francisco by Will Irwin

Upon this disavowal, Mr. Pickering remarks: Although the Envoys' despatches, and the facts and circumstances hereinbefore stated, cannot leave a doubt that X., as well as Y. and Z., was well known to Mr. Talleyrand, it will not be amiss to add, that on the 2d of December, X., Y., and Z., dined together at Mr. Talleyrand's, in company with Mr. Gerry; and that, after rising from the table, the money propositions, which had before been made, were repeated, in the room and in the presence, though, perhaps, not in the hearing, of Mr. Talleyrand.
— from Abridgment of the Debates of Congress, from 1789 to 1856, Vol. 2 (of 16) by United States. Congress

The early priggishness is French; the effusive domestic affection is French; the antipathy to dogmatic theology, combined with general recognition of the Supreme Being, is French; the talk (I had almost said the chatter) about virtue and sympathy, {120} and so forth, is French; the Whig recognition of the rights of man, joined to a kind of bureaucratical distrust and terror of the common people (a combination almost unknown in England), is French.
— from Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 by George Saintsbury