The painted birds flitted through the shades; the careless deer reposed unhurt upon the fern—the oxen and the horses strayed from their unguarded stables, and grazed among the wheat, for death fell on man alone.
— from The Last Man by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Martin and Tom, both of whom had irons on, tried it without success at first; the fir bark broke away where they stuck the irons in as soon as they leant any weight on their feet, and the grip of their arms wasn't enough to keep them up; so, after getting up three or four feet, down they came slithering to the ground, barking their arms and faces.
— from Tom Brown's School Days by Thomas Hughes

[intransitive] get underway, set about, get to work, set to work, set to; make a beginning, make a start.
— from Roget's Thesaurus by Peter Mark Roget

He assented to her expressions of devout feeling, and usually with an appropriate quotation; he allowed himself to say that he had gone through some spiritual conflicts in his youth; in short, Dorothea saw that here she might reckon on understanding, sympathy, and guidance.
— from Middlemarch by George Eliot

But as soon as I moved on again, it would shoot up suddenly and glide before.
— from British Goblins: Welsh Folk-lore, Fairy Mythology, Legends and Traditions by Wirt Sikes

[pg 411] for show, furnished in the old-fashioned merchant style, with long monotonous rows of clumsy mahogany chairs along the walls, with glass chandeliers under shades, and gloomy mirrors on the walls.
— from The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The annual report of the Philippine Commission for 1904, before it gets to the subject of hemp, draws a most gloomy picture of how we killed the markets for sugar and tobacco the Islands had under Spain, and gave them none instead.
— from The American Occupation of the Philippines 1898-1912 by James H. (James Henderson) Blount

Nadasti was to lead the attack, with fifteen thousand men; while the main army remained, a short distance behind, ready to move up should a general battle be brought on.
— from With Frederick the Great: A Story of the Seven Years' War by G. A. (George Alfred) Henty

Gradually I became reconciled to it, on account of its greater convenience, and I even came to like it when the vines and wisteria and golden nasturtiums hid the ugly bare walls, and the fragrance of mignonette and roses and petunias was wafted into the rooms looking over the garden, and that of wild thyme and honeysuckle into those which looked over the fields; when the tall acacias began to shoot upwards straight and graceful from their velvety green carpet, and scattered upon it their perfumed moth-like flowers; while we listened to the humming of the happy bees in the sweet-smelling lime trees and to the wondrous song of the rival nightingales challenging each other from bower to bower in the calm, warm nights of summer-time.
— from Philip Gilbert Hamerton An Autobiography, 1834-1858, and a Memoir by His Wife, 1858-1894 by Eugénie Hamerton

With a start she brought up short and glanced fearfully about her.
— from The Gun-Brand by James B. (James Beardsley) Hendryx

The labor problem in the United States and Great Britain.
— from U.S. Copyright Renewals, 1962 January - June by Library of Congress. Copyright Office

The question of peace or war between the United States and Great Britain is a question of the deepest interest, not only to themselves, but to the civilized world, since it is scarcely possible that a war could exist between them without endangering the peace of Christendom.
— from State of the Union Addresses (1790-2006) by United States. Presidents

But at the same moment Ulrich saw and grasped the situation, and, springing right out on the other side, was able to check them in their terrible fall.
— from True Tales of Mountain Adventures: For Non-Climbers Young and Old by Le Blond, Aubrey, Mrs.

To doubt whether they will obtain such grants as soon as the convention between the United States and Great Britain shall have ceased to exist would be to doubt the justice of Congress; but, pending the year's notice, it is worthy of consideration whether a stipulation to this effect may be made consistently with the spirit of that convention.
— from State of the Union Addresses (1790-2006) by United States. Presidents

He could no more outline the financial history of the United States as given in his text than he could outline the industrial or political history of the American people.
— from The Teaching of History by E. C. (Ernest Clark) Hartwell

By the treaty between the United States and Great Britain of July, 1815, it is provided that no higher duties shall be levied in either country on articles imported from the other than on the same articles imported from any other place.
— from State of the Union Addresses by John Tyler