If beetles crawl backwards as you watch them it means death from fire or from great height such as flight of stairs, scaffolding, etc. “Spiders.
— from Bliss, and Other Stories by Katherine Mansfield

The Byzantine court was insulted by five or six successive embassies; and the ministers of Attila were uniformly instructed to press the tardy or imperfect execution of the last treaty; to produce the names of fugitives and deserters, who were still protected by the empire; and to declare, with seeming moderation, that, unless their sovereign obtained complete and immediate satisfaction, it would be impossible for him, were it even his wish, to check the resentment of his warlike tribes.
— 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

This noon I met at the Dog tavern Captain Philip Holland, with whom I advised how to make some advantage of my Lord’s going to sea, which he told me might be by having of five or six servants entered on board, and I to give them what wages I pleased, and so their pay to be mine; he was also very urgent to have me take the Secretary’s place, that my Lord did proffer me.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

dægweorc n. work of a day, fixed or stated service , Ex : day-time .
— from A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary For the Use of Students by J. R. Clark (John R. Clark) Hall

sēcum = sē + cum . sēsē , emphatic form of sē sum, esse, fuī, futūrus , irreg.
— from Latin for Beginners by Benjamin L. (Benjamin Leonard) D'Ooge

I expected at least to see smoke or fire, or some such evidence of its work.
— from The War of the Worlds by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

This catholic appetite, and their willingness to wander from place [Pg 292] to place in search of things seasonable, enable squirrels to find food of some sort every month of the year, yet most species have the forethought to lay up in more or less secret places a winter supply of provender; consequently no species of Sciurus hibernates, strictly speaking.
— from Zoölogy: The Science of Animal Life Popular Science Library, Volume XII (of 16), P. F. Collier & Son Company, 1922 by Ernest Ingersoll

She found herself facing a short flight of stone steps, ending in a door.
— from Jill the Reckless by P. G. (Pelham Grenville) Wodehouse

My little faults of conduct, too, assumed shapes of terrible importance, since they proceeded from one so signally enlightened.
— from Father and Son: A Study of Two Temperaments by Edmund Gosse

But the fact that a course of instruction is required, of even a low degree of costliness, or that the laborer must be maintained for a considerable time from other sources, suffices everywhere to exclude the great body of the laboring people from the possibility of any such competition.
— from Principles of Political Economy Abridged with Critical, Bibliographical, and Explanatory Notes, and a Sketch of the History of Political Economy by John Stuart Mill

There must, he thought, be food of some sort, even for a man with only Oak's knife in his possession!
— from The Story of Ab: A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man by Stanley Waterloo

This noon I met at the Dog tavern Captain Philip Holland, with whom I advised how to make some advantage of my Lord's going to sea, which he told me might be by having of five or six servants entered on board, and I to give them what wages I pleased, and so their pay to be mine; he was also very urgent to have me take the Secretary's place, that my Lord did proffer me.
— from Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete 1660 N.S. by Samuel Pepys