ALMOST the first decided taste in my life was the love of hymns. Committing them to memory was as natural to me as breathing.
The communities must punish the oppressor, the murderer, the malefactor, so as to warn and restrain others from committing like crimes.
At last I came hard by the place, and peering stealthily to the right and left that none who knew might behold me, I entered hurriedly, in the manner of one committing an abomination. 'Fore God!
Black Donald is the chief of a band of ruthless desperadoes that infest these mountain roads, robbing mail coaches, stealing negroes, breaking into houses and committing every sort of depredation.
She received me with graceful ease, and, her husband having left us alone, she had the art to let me hope for every favour, yet without committing herself; when I took leave of her, she invited me to supper for the evening.
Providing themselves with necessaries, they returned to Jamaica, from whence they set forth again to sea, committing greater robberies and cruelties than before; but especially abusing the poor Spaniards, who fell into their hands, with all sorts of cruelty.
A man who is preparing for the murder of a beloved being, does not utter such phrases, still less after committing the murder would he speak about the necessity of an eclipse of sun and moon, and of the globe yawning; nor can he, negro tho he may be, address devils, inviting them to burn him in hot sulphur and so forth.
Young Robin's father, the Sheriff, suffered very sadly from the loss of his son and his goods, and Robin's aunt came to Nottingham and wept bitterly over the loss of the little boy she loved dearly. For David, the old servant in whose charge Robin had been placed when he was going home, had done what too many weak people do, tried to hide one fault by committing another.