Just doing some OCR on one of the books I'll be adding to the next release of the FF CD-ROM, George Griffith's "The World Peril of 1910", and came across this little passage:
He slept the sleep of a man physically and mentally tired, in spite of the load of unspeakable anxiety which was weighing upon his mind. For during his last night's work, he had learnt what no other man in the world knew. He had learnt that, unless a miracle happened, or some almost superhuman feat of ingenuity and daring was accomplished, that day thirteen months hence would see the annihilation of every living thing on earth, and the planet Terra converted into a dark and lifeless orb, a wilderness drifting through space, the blackened and desolated sepulchre of the countless millions of living beings which now inhabited it.
You don't come across literary craftsmanship like that any more, you just can't get the wood...