enumerated the occasional appearance of the river in the drawing-room, and the contemporaneous disappearance of the lawn and shrubbery.—Dickens.
They might be better employed in composing their quarrels and preparing a policy than in following the rather lugubrious occupations indicated by Mr. Asquith.—Times.
Or perhaps, from a presentiment of calves' brains, you refrain from any lacteal addition, and rasp your tongue with unmitigated bohea.—Eliot.
The rooks were cawing with many-voiced monotony, apparently—by a remarkable approximation to human intelligence—finding great conversational resources in the change of weather.—Eliot.
I had been terribly shaken by my fall, and had subsequently, owing to the incision of the surgeon's lancet, been deprived of much of the vital fluid.—Borrow.
An elderly man stood near me, and a still more elderly female was holding a phial of very pungent salts to my olfactory organ.—Borrow.
The minister, honest man, was getting on his boots in the kitchen to see us home...Well, this preparation ministerial being finished, we stepped briskly out.—Crockett.
We have ourselves been reminded of the deficiencies of our femoral habiliments, and exhorted upon that score to fit ourselves more beseemingly.—Scott.
b. Playful repetition.
When she had banged out the tune slowly, she began a different manner of 'Gettin' up Stairs', and did so with a fury and swiftness quite incredible. She spun up stairs; she whirled up stairs; she galloped up stairs; she rattled up stairs...Then Miss Wirt played the 'Gettin' up Stairs' with the most pathetic and ravishing solemnity...Miss Wirt's hands seemed to faint and wail and die in variations: again, and she went up with a savage clang and rush of trumpets, as if Miss Wirt was storming a breach.—Thackeray.
My mind was, to a certain extent, occupied with the marks on the teapot; it is true that the mournful idea strove hard with the marks on the teapot for the mastery in my mind, and at last the painful idea drove the marks of the teapot out.—Borrow.
The pastrycook is hard at work in the funereal room in Brook Street, and the very tall young men are busy looking on. One of the very tall young men already smells of sherry, and his eyes have a tendency to become fixed in his head, and to stare at objects without seeing them. The very tall young man is conscious of this failing in himself; and informs his comrade that it's his 'exciseman'. The very tall young man would say excitement, but his speech is hazy.—Dickens.
