The school children were still learning about Bismarck's birthday, the schoolmaster was still laboriously computing attendances and endeavouring to obey the difficult law which commanded him to cane the absent, the elders of the church were still refusing to repair the steeple in time, the confirmation class was still meeting explanations and exhortations with thick inattention, the ecclesiastical authorities were still demanding detailed reports of progress when there was not and could not be progress, couples were still forgetting marriage until the last hurried moment and then demanding it with insistent cries, infants were still being hastily christened before the same neglects that killed those other infants who else might have been their proud and happy grandparents carried them off, and peasants were still slinking away at the bare mention of intelligence and manure.
"The Pastor's Wife"
Elizabeth von Arnim
Without computing the individual strength of each detachment now arrived, I will venture to fix the aggregate at two thousand five hundred; and thus the whole, taken collectively, will amount to five thousand combatants.
"The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815"
G. R. Gleig
At last we were to ourselves, my extensive household and I. Late that night I sat in my study considering the best means of reducing my staff of servants and in computing, with dismay, the cost of being a princely host to people who had not the least notion what it meant to do sums in economic subtraction.
"A Fool and His Money"
George Barr McCutcheon