We have had inquiries made as to any stranger seen on the country roads or at the railway station.
— from The Return of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

Adriana, Luciana, and a crowd remained outside, and the Abbess came out, and said, “People, why do you gather here?”
— from Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

But as he was old, his Covetousness was his strongest Passion, and poor I was soon left exposed to be the common Refuse of all the Rakes and Debauchees in Town.
— from The Spectator, Volume 1 Eighteenth-Century Periodical Essays by Steele, Richard, Sir

But if this is matter of plain manifest fact, and we cannot refer our actions to any other originations beside those in our own power, those things must be in our own power, and so voluntary, the originations of which are in ourselves.
— from The Ethics of Aristotle by Aristotle

The Cows is a knobbed root of an erregularly rounded form not unlike the Gensang in form and Consistence; this root they Collect, rub off a thin black rhind which Covers it and pounding it exposes it in cakes to the Sun.
— from The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806 by William Clark

Why the Jung Tribe have Heads of Dogs The wave of conquest which swept from north to south in the earliest periods of Chinese history 1 left on its way, like small islands in the ocean, certain remnants of aboriginal tribes which survived and continued to exist despite the sustained hostile attitude of the flood of alien settlers around them.
— from Myths and Legends of China by E. T. C. (Edward Theodore Chalmers) Werner

While the successors of Cyrus reigned over Asia, the province of Syria alone maintained, during a third part of the year, the luxurious plenty of the table and household of the Great King.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) by Edward Gibbon

There is one volume held so sacred for its magical contents, that it is suspended by a chain in the temple of Chintaman, at the last-named capital in the desert, and is only taken down to have its covering renewed, or at the inauguration of a pontiff.
— from Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, v. 1 of 3 or the Central and Western Rajput States of India by James Tod

In his immediate circle, in spite of the smoothness of his ways, he is said to be more respected than beloved; and his influence is the child rather of authority than popularity.
— from A Footnote to History: Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa by Robert Louis Stevenson

Documents such as those of Beust and Daru were a complete reversal of all that was right.
— from The Pope, the Kings and the People A History of the Movement to Make the Pope Governor of the World by a Universal Reconstruction of Society from the Issue of the Syllabus to the Close of the Vatican Council by William Arthur

In the present state of our knowledge it may seem an idle speculation to suggest that the Egyptian and Chinese are two fragments of one great primordial race, widely separated now by the irruption of other Turanian and Aryan races between them; but this at least is certain, that in manners and customs, in arts and polity, in religion and civilisation, these two peoples more closely resemble one another than any other two nations which have existed since, even when avowedly of similar race and living in proximity to one another.
— from A History of Architecture in all Countries, Volume 1, 3rd ed. From the Earliest Times to the Present Day by James Fergusson

At the same instant the man in the other car reached over and throttled the red car, then stopped his own.
— from Ted Strong's Motor Car Or, Fast and Furious by Edward C. Taylor

Should he desire to know something more of the craft, we keep a second batch of introductions by us, which are at his service; but to give him even the shortest notice, nay, merely to attempt the nomenclature , and furnish a " catalogue raisonné " of all that immense body, would be as wide of our purpose as it would wholly transcend our powers.
— from Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 by Various

He should be able to prepare a simple, effective illustration from complicated rough originals and to supply minor missing essential parts or features.
— from The Preparation of Illustrations for Reports of the United States Geological Survey With Brief Descriptions of Processes of Reproduction by John L. Ridgway

… a sort of shock ran through his nerves as he reflected that though preachers preached concerning these supernatural beings,—though the very birth of Christ rested on Angels' testimony,—though poets wrote of them, and painters strove to delineate them on their most famous canvases, each and all thus PRACTICALLY DEMONSTRATING THE SECRET INSTINCTIVE INTUITION OF HUMANITY that such celestial Forms ARE,—yet it was most absolutely certain that not a man in the prosaic nineteenth century would, if asked, admit, to any actual belief in their existence!
— from Ardath: The Story of a Dead Self by Marie Corelli

Meantime, however, the fire came rushing on across the prairie, the flames, as they caught the tall grass, growing brighter and brighter, every now and then rising and expanding, as they seized on shrubs and trees in their onward course.
— from The Frontier Fort Or, Stirring Times in the North West Territory of British America by William Henry Giles Kingston

The nature of his wound and the manner of his death were such as would have caused an instantaneous and complete relaxation of all the muscles.
— from The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales With Condensed Novels, Spanish and American Legends, and Earlier Papers by Bret Harte