I'm intrigued by this random-sampling idea found at Gary Corby's blog. Of course, doing it by pagination is random as well - the same manuscript with different font, margin, or spacing choices will render a different page sixty-nine with every option; but there's no particular value in shifting that for, say, the 2500th-word test. The point is to randomize in some way. Corby's page sixty-nine sounds pretty good!
In the working draft for
The Ax and the Vase, page sixty-nine finds us about to go to war for the first time:
The last work of the celebration was done. The battle was ready to begin.
... (T)he King of Soissons—the Master of Soldiers—would not get to wait for spring.
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From "His Majesty's Confidential Agent".
James Burke wants to be invited to the court of the Spanish viceroy in Buenos Aires. So plans to join the congregation at the church where the court worships. A lapsed Catholic, he still cannot face taking mass without first confessing his sins.
"Fortunately, the priest had been no more anxious for the full details of Burke’s life than he had been to reveal them but, nevertheless, penance had meant that Burke had spent most of the night on his knees before he had felt that he could turn up to the service without putting his soul into immediate peril."
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