It was chiefly the introduction to this overture which at last led me to attempt, without ever having received any instruction on the piano, to play this piece in my own peculiar way, for, oddly enough, I was the only child in our family who had not been given music lessons.
— from My Life — Volume 1 by Richard Wagner

"And I thought Oz was a lovely Lady," said the Scarecrow.
— from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum

“Their welcome, while a warm one, is not much to their liking, I’ll warrant,” said the officer with a light laugh, and a quick glance at the pale faces of the maidens.
— from Peggy Owen and Liberty by Lucy Foster Madison

The other was a law limiting the duration of Parliaments to three years.
— from The History of England, from the Accession of James II — Volume 4 by Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron

Stevens's mortar battery at Sullivan's Island is ready to open, when a lean, long-haired old man, with eyes blazing in their deep fanatical sockets, totters hastily forward and ravenously seizing in his bony hands a lanyard, pulls the string, and, with a flash and roar, away speeds the shrieking shell on its mission of destruction; and, while shell after shell, and shot after shot, from battery after battery, screams a savage accompaniment to the boom and flash and bellow of the guns, that lean old man works his clutched fingers in an ecstasy of fiendish pleasure, and chuckles: "Aye, I told them at Columbia that night, that the defense of the South is only to be secured through the lead of South Carolina; and, old as I am, I had come here to join them in that lead—and I have done it."
— from Project Gutenberg Edition of The Memoirs of Four Civil War Generals by John Alexander Logan

So well is this understood, that on moonlight nights it is not thought necessary to tie up the oxen, which are left loose by the wagons, while on dark rainy nights it is deemed absolutely necessary to tether them, because if a lion chanced to be in the vicinity, he would be almost sure to attack, and perhaps kill, an ox, notwithstanding the vigilance of guards and the light of the camp-fires.
— from Hunting the Lions by R. M. (Robert Michael) Ballantyne

they opa wide and look like she is on fire inside and go to burn you too.
— from The Splendid Idle Forties: Stories of Old California by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

There were 2 other islands that lay to the north-east of it which secured the bay from north-east winds; one was but small, yet woody; the other was a league long, inhabited and full of coconut-trees.
— from A Continuation of a Voyage to New Holland, Etc. in the Year 1699 by William Dampier

The other was a larger log, but it came only partly across.
— from Wild Roses: A Tale of the Rockies by Howard R. (Howard Roscoe) Driggs

And now, when he was a little tired of wandering, a little lonely, a little anxious, these returned upon him with double force.
— from Dick's Desertion: A Boy's Adventures in Canadian Forests A Tale of the Early Settlement of Ontario by Marjorie L. C. (Marjorie Lowry Christie) Pickthall

The officers were a little less fortunate; knowing that there were bell tents coming on the limbers, they waited for them.
— from The Fifth Leicestershire A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. by John David Hills