"I don't quite understand it even then, sir," Tom answered.
— from Harper's Round Table, August 6, 1895 by Various

Quid, inq u am, ext er i, q u id ex tr anei cont ra nos agere debeant, cu m nos affines et domestici n ost ri a p at ria
— from Beowulf: An Introduction to the Study of the Poem with a Discussion of the Stories of Offa and Finn by R. W. (Raymond Wilson) Chambers

At eight o'clock in the evening, on beholding the first flames arise, the inhabitants of the quarter united in endeavouring to extinguish the fire, notwithstanding that the projectiles fell thickly in the Boulevard Saint-Martin and in the Rue de Bondy.
— from Paris under the Commune The Seventy-Three Days of the Second Siege; with Numerous Illustrations, Sketches Taken on the Spot, and Portraits (from the Original Photographs) by John Leighton

[7] In this connection it is curious to note that, though the raccoon is an animal quite unknown in England, there was, until lately, a destroyer called the Raccoon in the British Navy.
— from The American Language A Preliminary Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States by H. L. (Henry Louis) Mencken

The lot of the southern serfs was bad enough before America was "discovered"; and quite unendurable in earlier times.
— from Old Calabria by Norman Douglas