'In truth, madam,' replied the husband, 'I 339 am concerned for you, for that I see you lose your soul at this game; but, to do you service, I will well to take the pains of putting up my special orisons to God in your name, the which maybe shall profit you, and I will send you bytimes a little clerk of mine, to whom you shall say if they have profited you or not; and if they have profited you, we will proceed farther.'
— from The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio by Giovanni Boccaccio

But it may be asked, what ought we to do, if it could be proved that one species of kangaroo had been produced, by a long course of modification, from a bear?
— from On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life by Charles Darwin

The fore-limbs, for instance, which served as legs in the parent-species, may become, by a long course of modification, adapted in one descendant to act as hands, in another as paddles, in another as wings; and on the above two principles—namely of each successive modification supervening at a rather late age, and being inherited at a corresponding late age—the fore-limbs in the embryos of the several descendants of the parent-species will still resemble each other closely, for they will not have been modified.
— from On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life by Charles Darwin

Their diet and exercises were carefully inspected by the Roman emperor; and when Innocence had earned her discharge, by a long course of meritorious service, the faithful animal was again restored to the freedom of her native woods.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) by Edward Gibbon

On the way, I stopped at a food store, and bought a large container of milk, and some crackers, and some fruit—oranges and bananas and apples.
— from Exile from Space by Judith Merril

While we were at breakfast in the Jolly Bachelor, a loud chattering of many voices was heard, attended by a great beating of tom-toms; and suddenly a large prahu, crowded with savages, came sweeping round the bend of the river, rapidly nearing us with a strong flood-tide.
— from The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido For the Suppression of Piracy by Rajah of Sarawak James

The last hymn had been sung and the congregation had gone home, eagerly discussing their pastor’s new scheme; but a little company of men and women remained behind in the church to talk it over with the minister.
— from The Children of the Poor by Jacob A. (Jacob August) Riis

To the east of the city he beheld a lofty chain of mountains, towering to the sky, and crowned with shining snow.
— from Spanish Papers by Washington Irving

And Dolly was naïve , and fresh, and independent too, with a manner as fearless and much more frank than Lady Brierley's own, and yet with as simple a reserve of womanly dignity as any lady could have; and how a girl that painted likenesses for money, and made her own bread, and learned cookery of Mrs. Jersey, could talk to Lord Brierley with such sweet, quiet freedom, was a puzzle most puzzling to the great lady.
— from The End of a Coil by Susan Warner

After the absolution came a banquet, which must have been a little constrained, one might imagine, and even less amusing than the regulation dinner-party of the London season, where one sits between two half-naked and perspiring women eating half-raw meat and drinking fiery wines with the thermometer at eighty in the shade.
— from A Vanished Arcadia: Being Some Account of the Jesuits in Paraguay 1607-1767 by R. B. (Robert Bontine) Cunninghame Graham

Amongst the delicacies would be a little cake of my own making.
— from The Retrospect by Ada Cambridge