Young men, dressed in red robes and crowned like the virgins with maize, then carried the idol in its litter to the foot of the great pyramid-shaped temple, up the steep and narrow steps of which it was drawn to the music of flutes, trumpets, cornets, and drums.
— from The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion by James George Frazer

A new actor was by this time upon the scene, and new schemes of policy were beginning to unfold themselves before the Ameer.
— from History of the War in Afghanistan, Vol. 1 (of 3) Third Edition by Kaye, John William, Sir

If this had not been so, it would have been proper to represent them by a succession of seals extending to thirteen in number, instead of representing six seals in succession, and then, under the seventh, a new series extending also to the number seven.
— from Notes on the New Testament, Explanatory and Practical: Revelation by Albert Barnes

In Chisholm vs. Georgia, ¹ which was decided in 1793, the Court ruled, in the face of an assurance in the Federalist to the contrary, that an individual might sue a State; and though this decision was speedily disallowed by resentful debtor States by the adoption of the Eleventh Amendment, its underlying premise that, “as to the purposes of the Union, the States are not sovereign” remained untouched; and three years later the Court affirmed the supremacy of national treaties over conflicting state laws and so established a precedent which has never been disturbed.
— from John Marshall and the Constitution, a Chronicle of the Supreme Court by Edward Samuel Corwin

The burly lexicographer would have little wind left for argument {295} after he had toiled up the steep and narrow spiral stairway leading to the room.
— from Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland by Daniel Turner Holmes