Sometimes he engaged Roman knights to act upon the stage, or to fight as gladiators; but only before the practice was prohibited by a decree of the senate.
— from The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Complete by Suetonius

And Marie Louise had only hysterical suspicion to account for her thoughts; and the victims of her first step would be the only father and mother she had ever really known.
— from The Cup of Fury: A Novel of Cities and Shipyards by Rupert Hughes

And a very odd ‘all’ it was, so far; but there was this difference between Bessie Duncombe and Cecil Charnock Poynsett, that the ‘gospel of progress’ was to the one the first she had ever really known, and became a reaching forward to a newly-perceived standard of benevolence and nobleness: to the other it was simply retrograding, and that less from conviction than from the spirit of rivalry and opposition.
— from The Three Brides by Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) Yonge

It was the first thing she had ever really known.
— from Gray youth: The story of a very modern courtship and a very modern marriage by Oliver Onions