"Fourscore" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Fourscore-and-seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... the Bobbin, the big-bellied Ben, He ate more meat than fourscore men; He ate a cow, he ate a calf, He ate a butcher and a half; He ate a church, he ate a steeple, He ate the priest and ...
— Harry's Ladder to Learning - Horn-Book, Picture-Book, Nursery Songs, Nursery Tales, - Harry's Simple Stories, Country Walks • Anonymous
... knee I learnt love-lore that is not troublesome; Whose service is my special dignity, And she my loadstar while I go and come. And so because you love me, and because I love you, Mother, I have woven a wreath Of rhymes wherewith to crown your honored name: In you not fourscore years can dim the flame Of love, whose blessed glow transcends the laws Of time and change and ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... the captain, which precaution is necessary because of the great trade carried on at this place. The native language in this island is the Persian. I embarked at Ormuz for Goa in India, in a ship on board of which were fourscore horses. All merchants proceeding from Ormuz for Goa ought to go in ships carrying horses, because every ship carrying twenty horses or upwards is privileged from the payment of customs on all their other goods, whereas all ships having ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... all. Mark Twain's mother attended the Keokuk reading. Later, at home, when her children asked her if she could still dance (she had been a great dancer in her youth), she rose, and in spite of her fourscore, tripped as lightly as a girl. It was the last time that Mark Twain would see her in ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... account of your error with regard to the two species of herons, you incidentally gave me great entertainment in your description of the heronry at Cressi Hall, which is a curiosity I never could manage to see. Fourscore nests of such a bird on one tree is a rarity which I would ride half as many miles to have a sight of. Pray be sure to tell me in your next whose seat Cressi Hall is, and near what town it lies. I have often ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... and shoals of once familiar ports. And as the storms subsided men perceived that everywhere the days were hotter than of yore, and the sun larger, and the moon, shrunk to a third of its former size, took now fourscore days between ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... to the son. Dr. Johnson said, she could not conceal her resentment at him, for saying to Young, that 'an old man should not resign himself to the management of any body.' I asked him, if there was any improper connection between them. 'No, Sir, no more than between two statues. He was past fourscore, and she a very coarse woman. She read to him, and I suppose made his coffee, and frothed his chocolate, and did such things as an old man wishes to ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... his shrewd mind. First, it seemed that the pestilence had visited Gorumna in the absence of its mistress, and that the Dark Master had caught a score of the O'Malleys who had been wrecked in Bertraghboy Bay, promptly hanging them all. Between the plague and the hanging Nuala had a bare fourscore men left within the castle, and she counted Brian's offer as a ruse on the part of O'Donnell, for she ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... every city Sent up her tale[3-5] of men: The foot are fourscore thousand, The horse are thousand ten. Before the gates of Sutrium[3-6] Is met the great array. A proud man was Lars ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... English, and our lodging was to lie on the bare boards, with a very simple cape to cover us. We were also forcibly and most violently shaven, head and beard, and within three days after, I and five more of my fellows, together with fourscore Italians and Spaniards, were sent forth in a galiot to take a Greek carmosel, which came into Arabia to steal negroes, and went out of Tripolis unto that place which was two hundred and forty leagues thence; but we were chained three and ...
— Voyager's Tales • Richard Hakluyt
... about four and a half inches high, were employed to draw me towards the metropolis. The Emperor and all his Court came out to meet us. In the largest temple in the kingdom, disused because polluted by a murder some years before, I was to be lodged, secured by fourscore and eleven chains locked to my left leg. They were about two yards long and being fixed within four inches of the gate of the temple, allowed me to creep in and lie on the ground ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... whole world; and the Council, so far from giving any authority to them, bowing to theirs—both Arian and Orthodox with one consent acknowledging that the whole Christian world received them as the writings of the apostles of Christ. There were venerable men of fourscore and ten at that Council; if these books had been first introduced in their lifetime, they must have known it. There were men there whose parents had heard the Scriptures read in church from their childhood, and so could not be imposed upon with a new Bible. The New Testament could not be ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... and had, therefore, got a little of the truth in him, though unhappily not much, since his heart had not been opened to that of the Koran. Nathu could have told him that he also had a book, which he and some fourscore millions more thought as good as his or better; but he was afraid to descant upon the merits of his 'shastras', and the miracles of Kishan Ji [Krishna], among such fierce, cut-throat-looking people; he looked, however, as if he could have eaten the porter, Koran and ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... "Fourscore and seven years ago," he said, "our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... this silver dollar out from between my finger and thumb at fourscore yards, and I'll hold it out for a gold merk; what more would ye have of eye, hand, lead, and gunpowder?" "Oh, no more to be wished, certainly," said the Lord Keeper; "but we keep you from your sport, Norman. ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... story of the origin of Goodwin Sands, told by Bishop Latimer (in a sermon preached before Edward VI). An old man, being asked what he thought was the cause of the Sands, replied that he had lived near there, man and boy, fourscore years, and before the neighboring steeple was built there was no Sands, and therefore his opinion was that the steeple was ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... until on the 7th of July he anchored in the mouth of a fine river, intending to give the crews rest and recreation after their confinement of two months on board. He was here visited by the cacique and his venerable minister of fourscore years, who brought a string of beads, to which he attached a mystic value, and a calabash of a delicate kind of fruit. These he presented in ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... able to speak and be pleasant company for them. "A long time will you be on the road," he said. "In Harlech you will feast seven years, the birds of Rhiannon singing to you all the while. And at the Island of Gwales you will dwell for fourscore years, and you may remain there, bearing the head with you uncorrupted, until you open the door that looks towards the mainland; and after you have once opened that door you can stay no longer, but must set forth to London to bury the head, leaving it there ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... Ouranaquoy gained two advantages, for first he involved the English in a war with the people with whom they had entertained a friendship for twenty years, and in the next place gained time, while the English army were so employed, to enter twenty-five miles within their country, destroying fourscore whites and three hundred Indians and negroes. But this insult did not remain long unrevenged, for the troops in which Weaver served arriving immediately after from Europe, the army (who before they had done any considerable mischief to the people ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... Prince's Escape at St. Andero; a piece which justifies the observation, made by one of his editors, that he attained, by a felicity like instinct, a style which, perhaps, will never be obsolete; and that, "were we to judge only by the wording, we could not know what was wrote at twenty, and what at fourscore." His versification was, in his first essay, such as it appears in his last performance. By the perusal of Fairfax's translation of Tasso, to which, as Dryden relates[82], he confessed himself indebted for the smoothness of his numbers, ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... reversion above fifty thousand crowns yearly revenue, died necessitous and overwhelmed with debt at above fifty years of age; his mother in her extremest decrepitude being yet in possession of all his property by the will of his father, who had, for his part, lived till near fourscore years old. This appears to me by no means reasonable. And therefore I think it of very little advantage to a man, whose affairs are well enough, to seek a wife who encumbers his estate with a very great fortune; there is no sort of foreign debt that ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... who went in early manhood to Florence, where he remained until when nearly at the age of fourscore he returned to his native land, still continues, at the age of eighty-five, to pursue the art he loves. He has created works, as his equestrian statue of "Washington" in the Public Gardens and his "Lincoln Freeing ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... glance, I thought I had before me some Indian hieroglyphics; but bringing back from the place of its long obscurity the little knowledge of the French language that I held in possession, I deciphered, that, "fourscore years before, beside the froth of the Huron Water, Father Kino had performed the marriage-rite upon Luella, daughter of Uncas, of the Dacotahs, and Richard Monten, of Montreal." Below the certificate of the priest of the Church were strange characters ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... died and left me great wealth, and soon after his death I married one of the richest men of Baghdad. At the end of a year he too died and I inherited from him fourscore thousand dinars, being my lawful share of his property; so that I became passing rich and the report of my wealth spread abroad, for I got me half a score suits of clothes, each worth a thousand dinars. One day, ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... Aladdin's mother had retired, the sultan put an end to the audience; and rising from his throne ordered that the princess's attendants should come and carry the trays into their mistress's apartment, whither he went himself to examine them with her at his leisure. The fourscore slaves were conducted into the palace; and the sultan, telling the princess of their magnificent apparel, ordered them to be brought before her apartment, that she might see through the lattices he had not exaggerated in his account ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... France and Germany each sent out six expeditions; twenty-six stations were in Russian, twelve in English, eight in American, three in Italian, one in Dutch occupation. In all, at a cost of nearly a quarter of a million, some fourscore distinct posts of observation were provided; among them such inhospitable, and all but inaccessible rocks in the bleak Southern Ocean, as St. Paul's and Campbell Islands, swept by hurricanes, and ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... Walter Ewbank. He had as white a head and fresh a cheek As ever were produc'd by youth and age Engendering in the blood of hale fourscore. For five long generations had the heart Of Walter's forefathers o'erflow'd the bounds Of their inheritance, that single cottage, You see it yonder, and those few green fields. They toil'd and wrought, and still, from sire to son, Each struggled, and each yielded as ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... it will, We're sure all else is ours; Yet these divisions in our religions May chance abate our powers. Then let's agree on some one way, It skills not much how true; Take Pryn and his clubs; or Say and his tubs, (33) Or any sect old or new; The devil's i' th' pack, if choyce you can lack, We're fourscore religions strong; Take your choyce, the major voyce Shall carry it, right or wrong. "Then wee'le be of this," sayes Megg; "Nay, wee'le be of that," sayes Tibb; "Nay, wee'le be of all," sayes pitifull Paul; "Nay, wee'le be of none," ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... was the lad's own election which had led him to this first step in a career that might take him out of the world and end the race of [9] Latour altogether. Approaching their fourscore years, and realising almost suddenly the situation of the young Gaston, left there alone, out of what had been a large, much-promising, resonant household, they wished otherwise, but did not try to change his early-pronounced ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... forced to flee into the west parts of Scotland for refuge, and the land not able to sustain them. It was found expedient that ilk parish within the kingdom should receive a collection of ilk man's charity for their help and support, whereupon was collected of this poor parish fourscore pounds." (Spalding's "History of the Troubles in Scotland," vol. i. p. 34. Aberdeen, 1792.) "As a body, the presbyterians [in Ireland] suffered less by the ravages of the rebellion than any other class. ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... archers bent their bows,— Their hearts were good and true; At the first flight of arrows sent, Full fourscore Scots ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... of residence—his lodgings at Court, his house in the Strand, his family seat at Burleigh, and his own favourite seat of Theobalds, near Waltham Cross, to which he loved to retire from harness. At his house in London he supported a family of fourscore persons, without counting those who attended him ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... cause of discontent,' said Lorimer; 'the upstart ways of her kin were not to be borne. To hear Dick Woodville chaffer about the blazoning of his horse-gear when he was wedding the fourscore-year-old Duchess of Norfolk, one would have thought he was an emperor at the ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... able to give the least attention to this compliment. The moment he cast his eyes on the forty trays, full of the most precious and beautiful jewels he had ever seen, and the fourscore slaves, who appeared by the elegance of their persons, and the magnificence of their dress, like so many princes, he was overwhelmed. Instead of answering the compliment of Aladdin's mother, he addressed himself to the grand vizier, who could not any more than the sultan comprehend ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... reached Amiens he was too tired and hungry to think of 'receiving' people or making speeches. Count Leon de Chassepot had nothing, I believe, to do with the invention of the guns which bear his name. But he has a glance like a rifle-shot, and at fourscore years 'Spring still makes spring in the mind' of this vivacious veteran. I asked him how Amiens behaved when the news came there of the capture of Paris by the revolutionists of September 4, 1870. Was the new republic hailed with enthusiasm? 'Enthusiasm!' he said scornfully; ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... sing by our hob. Warm her old stomach with nut-brown ale and a toast laid in the fire. Be kind to the poor old school-girl of ninety, who has had leave to come out for a day of Christmas holiday. Shall there be many more Christmases for thee? Think of the ninety she has seen already; the fourscore and ten ...
— Some Roundabout Papers • W. M. Thackeray
... occasioned such a variety of effects in his bowels, that it was well he had such a strong constitution, or he must have died of it. His evacuations were so plentiful, that he not only drowned the tower of Babel, near which the apothecary's shop stood, but the current ran fourscore leagues till it came to the sea, and there poisoned so many whales and leviathans, that a pestilence ensued, and lasted three years, nine months and sixteen days. As the elephant was extremely weakened by what had happened, it was ...
— Hieroglyphic Tales • Horace Walpole
... less flushed by this uproarious sympathy so gallantly shown, and the very thunder of so many horses' feet, each carrying a friend, was very exciting and glorious. Why, before they got to the village they had fourscore horsemen at ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... people somptuously built with marble & square stone in forme all round, & were called Amphitheaters, wherof as yet appears one among the ancient ruines of Rome, built by Pompeius Magnus, for capasitie able to receiue at ease fourscore thousand persons as it is left written, & so curiously contriued as euery man might depart at his pleasure, without any annoyance to other. It is also to be knowne that in those great Amphitheaters, were exhibited all maner ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... farcy, a virulent and dangerous infirmity in horses, and which (like cancers) were reputed incurable by any other topic, than some actual, or potential cautery: But, what is more noble, a dear friend of mine assur'd me, that a countrey neighbour of his (at least fourscore years of age) who had lain sick of a bloody strangury (which by cruel torments reduc'd him to the very article of death) was, under God, recover'd to perfect, and almost miraculous health and strength (so as to be able to fall stoutly ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... archers bent their bowes, Their hearts were good and trew, At the first flight of arrowes sent, Full fourscore Scots they slew. ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... hummock of this range a fertile valley lies concealed; and near its centre, upon the smooth summit of a gently swelling ridge, which, extending north and south for miles, divides the valley lengthwise, stands Belfield, the shire town of the rural county of Hillsdale. Its fourscore white dwellings, scattered unevenly along the shady margins of a straight and ample street, are mostly large, substantial granges, each with its little suburb of dependencies making a hamlet by itself. But where the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... irresistibly touching, and suggestive of dependence on, humility toward, and entreaty for merciful consideration at the hands of a superior race. Perhaps, however, the old folks enjoyed the occasion most, particularly the negresses: one wrinkled crone, of at least fourscore years, her head bound in, the usual gaudy handkerchief, and her hands resting on a staff or crutch, went off into a downright chuckle of irrepressible exultation after the closing benediction, echoed ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the warm smell of blistering varnish brought to Governour's Lane the first tokens of returning summer, might have been seen sexagenarians and septuagenarians, and some so strong that they had come to fourscore years, standing paint-pot and paint-brush in hand, while they gave a new coat to ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... hobby-horse near, caught him and jumped on. He launched into a treatise upon the vitality of human beings, and proved that it is the mind which keeps the body of a man alive for so great a length of time as fourscore years; for that he had in the earlier part of his studies carefully dissected a multitude of animals,—frogs, rabbits, dogs, men, horses, sheep, squirrels, foxes, cats, etc.,—and discovered no peculiarity ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... Hunt with rigour hot Came bravely on the other side, Soon he drove down his fore-mast tree, And killed fourscore men beside. Now, out alas! Sir Andrew cried, What may a man now think, or say? Yonder merchant thief, that pierceth me, ...
— The Book of Brave Old Ballads • Unknown
... exposures to varying climates, it flashed upon Mr. Muller that his first wife, who had died in her seventy-third year, could never have undertaken these tours, and that the Lord had thus, in taking her, left him free to make these extensive journeys. She would have been over fourscore years old when these tours began, and, apart from age, could not have borne the exhaustion, because of her frail health; whereas the second Mrs. Muller, who, at the time, was not yet fifty-seven, was both by her age and strength fully equal to the ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... I was not thinking so much of myself, Pastor—I've had my life: I'm two-and-fourscore this day; and if I am called on to lay it down for the Lord, it will only be a few months at the furthest that I have to give Him. It wouldn't take so much to kill me, neither. An old man dies maybe easier than one in the full vigour ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... had. It would have been better than poisoning myself, as I did at Rome, because I found, upon the balance of my accounts, I had only the pitiful sum of fourscore thousand pounds left, which would not afford me a table ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... o'er the faem; Cospatrick brought his ladye hame; And fourscore ships have come her wi', The ladye by the ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... the old man, "is Abdurrahman, and fourscore and three years ago I was born in this city, not very far from the spot where I now dwell. My father, who was a merchant, and fairly prosperous, furnished me, when I was twenty years of age, with a stock of goods with which to commence to ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... rogue this is, to read a lecture to me—and mine own lesson too, which he knows I have made perfect to nine hundred fourscore and nineteen! A cheating rascal! will teach me!—I, that have made them, that have worn a spacious park, lodge, and all on their backs[363] this morning, been fain to pawn it afore night! And they that have stalked like a huge elephant, with a castle on their necks, and removed that to their own ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... gentleman, to found a family, and to pass the remainder of his days in rural ease and dignity, and all this he managed to accomplish; he disposed of his business, purchased a beautiful and extensive estate for fourscore thousand pounds, built upon it the mansion to which I had the honour of welcoming you to-day, married the daughter of a neighbouring squire, who brought him a fortune of five thousand pounds, became a ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... their lives on this singular occasion was fourscore and four persons, including fifteen children; and at this expense of blood was extinguished a flame that arose as suddenly, burned as fiercely, and decayed as rapidly, as any portent of the kind within the annals of superstition. The Commissioners returned to Court with the high ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... of a tree may be a hundred years or two hundred years and yet be long life. But the days of the age of a man are threescore and ten, and though some be so strong that they come to fourscore, yet the strong man may be stricken down in the flower of his strength, if it be the will of ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... at least fourscore, We rushed upon them, and a midnight pall Over the seething lake our pinions spread, 'Neath which our gleaming arrows thickly sped, As shooting stars that in the rice-moon fall. Rent by our beating wings the cloud-waves swung In eddies round us, and our leader's roar Smote peal ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... sentries paced to and fro. This window was pierced through a very thick wall and the embrasure barricaded by three iron bars, thus separating the prisoner from the sentries by a distance of over two fathoms. I found an officer of the Free Company in the fortress who was nigh on fourscore years old; he told me that his father, who had belonged to the same Company, had often related to him how a friar had seen something white floating on the water under the prisoner's window. On being fished out and carried to M. de Saint-Mars, it proved to be a shirt of very fine material, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... my eldest born, is gone, you say, little Anne, Ruddy and white, and strong on his legs, he looks like a man; He was only fourscore years, quite young, when he died; I ought to have gone before, but must wait ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... stout ship lay On the bright sand in Thursa bay; With fourscore men he had no fear, Nor thought the Norse king was so near, He who provides the eagle's meals In three small boats along-shore steals; And Maddad's son must ransom pay For his ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... glance into passing incidents before we follow the straight trail of our story. In the city of Montreal fourscore men are kneeling in a little church, as the mass is slowly chanted at the altar. All of them are armed. By the flare of the torches and the candles—for it is not daybreak yet—you can see the flash ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the expression of national qualities and in the representation of provincial peculiarities is to-day accompanied by an increasing cosmopolitanism which seems to be casting down the barriers of race and of language. More than fourscore years ago, Goethe said that even then national literature was "rather an unmeaning term" as "the epoch of world-literature was at hand." With all his wisdom Goethe failed to perceive that cosmopolitanism is a sorry thing when it is not the final expression of patriotism. An artist ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... afternoon fourscore of these youthful devotees swing out along the Rue St. Jean to the Ste. Foye road for recreation. They go in orderly rows, from the youngest and smallest back to the two priests, in black soutanes and broad-brimmed hats, who bring up the rear. Regimes have come and gone, but this perennial ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... HIS fourscore years have bent a back of oak, His earth-brown cheeks are full of hollow pits; His gnarled hands wander idly as he sits Bending above the hearthstone's feeble smoke. Threescore and ten slow years he tilled the land; He wrung his bread from out the stubborn soil; He saw his masters ...
— Silhouettes • Arthur Symons
... river, even by the King of Assyria, the head, and the hair of the feet, and it shall consume the beard" (Isaiah vii. 20.). Again, as a token of grief and humiliation: "Then Job arose and rent his mantle, and shaved his beard," &c.—"There came fourscore men, having their heads shaven, and their clothes rent, and having cut themselves," &c. (Jer. xli. 5.). Or, thirdly, the allusion may be to the consequence of becoming infected with some loathsome cutaneous disease. "So Satan smote Job ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 216, December 17, 1853 • Various
... Lord Archbishop of Paris to take care of his diocese in his absence, my first business was, by the Queen's express command, to visit the Nuns of the Conception, where, knowing that there were above fourscore virgins, many of whom were very pretty and some coquettes, I was very loth to go for fear, of exposing my virtue to temptation; but I could not be excused, so I went, and preserved my virtue, to my neighbour's edification, because for six weeks together I did not see the face of any one ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... of human intelligence. Another might well have said of him what he magnanimously said of his famous contemporary, Montesquieu, that humanity had lost its title-deeds, and he had recovered them. The fourscore volumes which he wrote are the monument, as they were in some sort the instrument, of a new renaissance. They are the fruit and representation of a spirit of encyclopaedic curiosity and productiveness. Hardly a page of all these countless ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... privilege, a few years ago, to make a visit to the residence of this distinguished female; a visit which I have ever since regarded as among the happiest incidents of my life. At that time, she numbered more than fourscore years, but the vigor of her intellect was scarcely impaired; and, from what she was, I could easily conceive what she had been when her sun was at its meridian. In her person, she was rather small, but was a specimen of admirable symmetry. In ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... at the waaste: theer warn't not fead for a cow: Nowt at all but bracken an' fuzz, an' looak at it now— Warn't worth nowt a haacre, an' now theer's lots o' fead, Fourscore yows upon it an' some on it doon ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... faithful Shepherd. He hath gone To yon blest Country where he long'd to be, To stand before the Great White Throne, and join That hymn of praise for which his course below Gave preparation. At one post he stood From youth till fourscore years, averse to change Though oft-times tempted. For he did not deem Restless ambition or desire of gold Fit counterpoise for that most sacred love Born in the inner chambers of the soul, And intertwining with a golden mesh Pastor and people. Like ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... on the east of the river are such as I have described; that is, the meadows are on those high grounds, whose slope is very gentle; we also find there tall forests, and thickets in the low bottoms. In the meadows we observe here and there groves of very tall and straight oaks, to the number of fourscore or an hundred at most: there are others of about forty or fifty, which seem to have been planted by men's hands in these meadows, for a retreat to the buffaloes, deer, and other animals, and a screen against storms, and the sting ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... of that trial; we do not know all that occurred there behind the closed doors of that Senate chamber, where for fourscore years laws based on another and more enlightened principle of justice had been discussed. Miss Cavell did not know, or knew only in the vaguest manner, the offense with which she was charged. She did not deny having received ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... at eighty; Sophocles Wrote his grand OEdipus, and Simonides Bore off the prize of verse from his compeers, When each had numbered more than fourscore years; And Theophrastus at fourscore and ten Had but begun his "Characters of Men;" Chaucer at Woodstock with his nightingales, At sixty wrote the Canterbury Tales; Goethe at Weimar, toiling to the last, Completed Faust when eighty years were past: These are indeed exceptions; ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... worshipped the sun and the fire, instead of the All-powerful Sire, the Glorious, the Victorious. Now this King was become a very old man, weakened and wasted with age and sickness and decrepitude; for he had lived an hundred and fourscore years and had no child, male or female, by reason whereof he was ever in cark and care from morning to night and from night to morn. It so happened that one day of the days, he was sitting on the throne of his Kingship, with his Emirs and Wazirs and Captains ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... copious and felicitous amplitude which are the characteristics of an original style. No poet of the last fifty years has done so much to stimulate endurance in the human soul and to clarify spiritual vision in the human mind. It does not signify that now, at more than fourscore, his hand sometimes trembles a little on the harp-strings, and his touch falters, and his music dies away. It is still the same harp and the same hand. This fanciful, kindly, visionary, drifting, and altogether romantic comedy of ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... of language could adequately characterise the scenes of agony—'the living martyrdom'—to which the fiendish ingratitude of his daughters condemns the abdicated king—'a very foolish, fond old man, fourscore and upward.' The elemental passions burst forth in his utterances with all the vehemence of the volcanic tempest which beats about his defenceless head in the scene on the heath. The brutal blinding of Gloucester by Cornwall exceeds in horror any other situation that Shakespeare created, ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... that were come out of the captivity offered sacrifice unto the Lord God of Israel, even twelve bullocks for all Israel, fourscore and sixteen rams, ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous
... belvedere hight the Palace of Pleasure and the Pavilion of Pictures, the whole belonging to the Caliph Harun al-Rashid who was wont, when his breast was straitened with care, to frequent garden and palace and there to sit. The palace had eighty latticed windows and fourscore lamps hanging round a great candelabrum of gold furnished with wax- candles; and, when the Caliph used to enter, he would order the handmaids to throw open the lattices and light up the rooms; and he would bid Ishak ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... say, the Sun is a most glorious sight, I've seen him rise full oft, indeed of late I have sat up on purpose all the night,[bn][153] Which hastens, as physicians say, one's fate; And so all ye, who would be in the right In health and purse, begin your day to date From daybreak, and when coffined at fourscore, Engrave upon the plate, you ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... propriety of old soldiers only going into battle, that you should have been absolutely predicting the unhappy course of events! Do you remember adding that "a premium should be offered for men of fourscore, as, with one foot in the grave, they would be less likely to run away"? I observe that the "Herald" advises that "the guillotine should be used in cropping the heads of a lot of the officers, beginning at ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... the fight lasted; it seemed short, we were so busy, and yet long, deadly long. It is no joke to have to defend one's life, and the lives of those one loves best, against fourscore bloodthirsty Spaniards, and that with only half a dozen rifles for arms, and a few palisades for shelter. When it was over we were so dog-tired that we fell down where we were, like overdriven oxen, and without minding the blood which lay like water on the ground. Seven Spaniards and two ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... though of little consequence to the public, would certainly be fatal to themselves. If I have room at the bottom of this paper, I will transcribe a petition to the present ministry, sent me by one of these authors, in behalf of himself and fourscore ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... ship in which he sailed was never more heard of. But such had been the force of his example, that his father, though bowed down with the weight of seventy years, resolved on assuming the office of the son whom he had lost, and till beyond the age of fourscore years and twelve, continued to instruct the natives, and with the happiest results. The Indians within his influence, though twenty times more numerous than the whites in their immediate neighborhood, preserved an immutable friendship with Massachusetts."—Bancroft's ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... the world. Some seer he seemed, that came not from the crimson Past or the gray To-come, but from the pulsing Now,—that mocking world which seemed to me at once so light and dark, so splendid and sordid. Fourscore years had he wandered in this same world ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... that in France as soon as a man of fashion marries, he takes an opera girl into keeping; and this he mentioned as a general custom. 'Pray, Sir, (said I,) how many opera girls may there be?' He answered, 'About fourscore.' Well then, Sir, (said I,) you see there can be no more than fourscore men of fashion who ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... that the 'ballad in print' is the broadside, the narrative ballad, sung of a usurer's wife brought to bed of twenty money-bags at a burden, or of a fish that appeared upon the coast on Wednesday the fourscore of April: in short, as Martin Mar-sixtus says (1592), 'scarce a cat can look out of a gutter but out starts a halfpenny chronicler, and presently a proper new ballet of a strange sight is indited.' Chief amongst these 'halfpenny chroniclers' ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... far he will go, and how much pain he will suffer, to lengthen out a time that may have been too long already. Many a dreary winter and scorching summer has gone by since I have turned, to the right hand or to the left, to add an hour to a life that has already stretched beyond fourscore years. I keep myself as ready to answer to my name as a soldier at evening roll-call. In my judgment, if your cases are left to Indian tempers, the policy of the Great Sioux will lead his people to sacrifice you all; nor do I put much ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... more years short of fourscore at the time of his death he was Lancaster's oldest inhabitant. His fellow pioneer, Lawrence Waters, who was the elder by perhaps a years, till survived, though blind and helpless; but he dwelt with a son ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II. No. 5, February, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... in Aunt Marcia's brain. Towns and villages were spreading up the river, and one day she was offered what seemed a fabulous sum for her old home of rocky woodlands. She was still shrewd, if she had come to fourscore, and offered them half, on her own terms, holding off with the most provoking indifference until they came to an agreement. Then she announced her intention of building a home for Floyd, who was to be ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... use of oil that came from the Greeks, and thereby transgress their own laws. Now this was said by John, not out of his regard to religion, but out of his most flagrant desire of gain; for he knew that two sextaries were sold with them of Caesarea for one drachma, but that at Gischala fourscore sextaxies were sold for four sextaries. So he gave order that all the oil which was there should be carried away, as having my permission for so doing; which yet I did not grant him voluntarily, but only out of fear of the multitude, ...
— The Life of Flavius Josephus • Flavius Josephus
... the foot of the hills the brigands came out singly, fourscore of them at least. Each man looked up at the plateau as he issued from the path, and the manner in which his eager steps gave way at once to an easier and more slouching gait showed plainly enough that the object ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... nothing sinful, or even radically objectionable in a second marriage; though I admit that, to my mind, a woman is worthier in remaining faithful to her first love; like Anna the prophetess, who had been a widow fourscore-and-four years. Who shall say that her exceptional gift of prophecy may not have been a reward for the purity ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... remaining son, in the forty-fourth year of his age, a man of much ability and reputation, worthy to have supported the honour of his name. Notwithstanding these repeated sorrows, and the weight of nearly fourscore years, Evelyn still enjoyed uninterrupted health, and unimpaired faculties; he enjoyed also the friendship of the wise and the good, and the general esteem beyond any other ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... sixteen spreaders of hay for one day's wages, whereof fourscore received each per day 1-1/2d, and each of the others 2d., ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various
... having withdrawn to Rome, Madame des Ursins attached herself to him and his fortunes; she did the honours of his house: and thus she remained until her death, which took place December 5th, 1722, at the age of fourscore and upwards. ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... occurrences which one might have thought would have beaten down all pride and self-esteem. The king of Assyria had come against him, and seemed prepared to overwhelm him with his hosts; and he had found his God a mighty Deliverer, cutting off in one night of the enemy an hundred fourscore and five thousand men. And again, he had been miraculously recovered from sickness, when the sun's shadow turned ten degrees back, to convince him of the certainty of the promised recovery. Yet when the king of Babylon sent ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... you mean?' replied the gardener: 'do you imagine I will take these riches as mine? They are yours: I have no right to them. For fourscore years, since my father's death, I have done nothing but dig in this garden, and could not discover this treasure, which is a sign that it was destined for you, since you have been permitted to find it. It suits a prince like you, rather than me: ...
— Fairy Tales From The Arabian Nights • E. Dixon
... judicii, ut sciant utra manus sit dextra aut sinistra") likewise loses sight of the moral sense. But good and evil are very decidedly used in a physical sense in 2 Sam. xix. 36 (35), where Barzillai says: "I am this day fourscore years old, can I discern between good and evil, or has thy servant a taste of what I eat or drink, or do I hear any more the voice of singing men or singing women?" The connection with the eating of cream and honey, by which ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... Clarissa, appeared in 1759. "Though he despairs of breaking through the frozen obstructions of age and care's incumbent cloud, into that flow of thought and brightness of expression, which subjects so polite require;" yet is it more like the production of untamed, unbridled youth, than of jaded fourscore. Some sevenfold volumes put him in mind of Ovid's sevenfold channels of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... his own press under the pseudonym of "R. B." (later expanded to "Richard Burton"), published as early as 1688 (not 1706, as says the Dict. Nat. Biog.) The Kingdom of Darkness: or The History of Daemons, Specters, Witches, ... Containing near Fourscore memorable Relations, ... Together with a Preface obviating the common Objections and Allegations of the Sadduces [sic] and Atheists of the Age, ... with Pictures. Edward Stephens, first lawyer, then clergyman, ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... memory corrects Old Holinshed our famous chronicler With moral rules, and policy collects Out of all actions done these fourscore year; Accounts the time of every odd[483] event, Not from Christ's birth, nor from the prince's reign, But from some other famous accident, Which in men's general notice doth remain,— The siege of Boulogne,[484] ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... battlefield. I have lived through stirring times and in the thick of events. In a vein colloquial and reminiscential, not ambitious, let me recall some impressions which these have left upon the mind of one who long ago reached and turned the corner of the Scriptural limitation; who, approaching fourscore, does not yet feel painfully the frost of age beneath the ravage of time's defacing waves. Assuredly they have not obliterated his sense either of vision or vista. Mindful of ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... age, when Mrs. Stanton prepared for future generations the Reminiscences of her life and work of fourscore years, she wrote to her old friend: "The current of our lives has run in the same channel so long it can not be separated, and my book is as much your story as, I doubt not, yours is mine;" and when it was ended she placed upon it the inscription, ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... had been all lost, for we promised to return before night; and sent the Lion's Whelp's ship's boat with Captain Whiddon to follow us up the river. But the next day, after we had rowed up and down some fourscore miles, we returned, and went on our way up the great river; and when we were even at the last cast for want of victuals, Captain Gifford being before the galley and the rest of the boats, seeking out some place to land upon the banks to make fire, espied ...
— The Discovery of Guiana • Sir Walter Raleigh
... into legend, and fourscore years had followed it, when the soldiers of another king of England marched down State Street, and fired on the people of Boston who were gathered below the old State House. Again it was said that the form of a tall, white-bearded man in antique garb ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... bedside, and croaking Jesuits to prepare him,* with heaven knows what wretched tricks and mummeries, for his appearance in that Great Republic that lies on the other side of the grave. In the course of his fourscore splendid miserable years, he never had but one friend, and he ruined and left her. Poor La Valliere, what a sad tale is yours! "Look at this Galerie des Glaces," cries Monsieur Vatout, staggering with surprise at the appearance of the room, two hundred and forty-two ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sack, and had always a tun glass of small beer standing by him, which he often stirred about with rosemary. He lived to be an hundred, and never lost his eyesight, nor used spectacles. He got on horseback without help, and rode to the death of the stag till he was past fourscore." Gilpin's Forest Scenery, vol. ii., pp. 23, 26. I should add, from the same authority, that Hastings was a neighbour of Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, with whom (as was likely enough) ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... Martin, "here are fourscore volumes of the 'Memoirs of the Academy of Sciences;' perhaps there may be something curious and valuable in this collection."—"Yes," answered Pococurante; "so there might, if any one of these compilers of this rubbish had only invented the art of pin-making. But ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... the jurists Of the land's Supreme Tribunal, Of the great judicial body, At the nation's seat of power. All along his pilgrim journey, Are the thickly-showered laurels. Now his days on earth are numbered, As the sands are gently dropping— —Fourscore years and four their telling— Now his mighty brain is resting, From the pressure of life's burdens, May his end be as the twilight Of a day replete with blessings; May he fall asleep in Jesus, With the Father's welcome plaudit, ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... public affairs forty years ago (if the intermediate space of time were expunged from his memory) would hardly credit his senses, when he should hear from the highest authority that an army of two hundred thousand men was kept up in this island, and that in the neighboring island there were at least fourscore thousand more. But when he had recovered from his surprise on being told of this army, which has not its parallel, what must be his astonishment to be told again that this mighty force was kept up for the mere purpose of an inert and passive defence, and that in its far greater ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... compose suitable words for the music. The hint sufficed; the friends met after a fortnight's interval, when the poet produced and read the song of "Yon burn side." It immediately became popular. Marshall used to relate this anecdote with much feeling. He died in March 1851, at the age of fourscore. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Shewing the line of life, and Venus mount, Nor yet no more would I of them account, Then what that tells me, since what that so ere Might promise man long life: of care and feare, By nature freed, a conscience cleare, and quiet, His health, his constitution, and his diet; 120 Counting a hundred, fourscore at the least, Propt vp by prayers, yet more to be encreast, All these should faile, and in his fiftieth yeare He should expire, henceforth let none be deare, To me at all, lest for my haplesse sake, Before their time heauen from the world them take, And leaue me wretched to ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... great lady, which was a person of the magnanimity of an ancient matron, and bore up in a manner surprising to behold in one who stood, as it were, with one hand upon her coffin, while her other stretched backward through the shadow of fourscore years to touch her cradle. And ever, from time to time, couriers came to the noble mansion, while others flew in various directions on swift horses at utmost speed; and looking up into that lofty atmosphere, we saw clouds and ominous signs of coming ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... book-print, Not to one scene its hero stint; But, in the distance, take occasion To draw him in some other station. Here this prepost'rous union seems A kind of meeting of extremes. Ye may not live together. Mean ye To pass that gulf that lies between ye Of fourscore years, as we skip ages In turning o'er historic pages? Thou dost not to this age belong: Thou art three generations wrong: Old Time has miss'd thee: there he tarries! Go on to thy contemporaries! Give ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... man, who had passed the limits of fourscore, once said to me, "My father was in the army during the whole eight years of the Revolutionary War, at first as a common soldier, afterwards as an officer. My mother had the sole charge of us four little ones. Our house was a poor one, and far from neighbors. I have a keen remembrance ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... the Spirit o' God, and love a lie, an' them that mak the same—them that think to bring about the reign o' love an' britherhood wi' pikes an' vitriol bottles, murther an' blasphemy—tell 'em that ane o' fourscore years and mair—ane that has grawn grey in the people's cause—that sat at the feet o' Cartwright, an' knelt by the death-bed o' Rabbie Burns—ane that cheerit Burdett as he went to the Touer, an' spent his wee earnings for ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... sent the Adelantado. That strong man chose fourscore Spaniards, armed them and departed. By boat and through thick forest he reached Quibian's village, descended upon it like a hurricane and seized Quibian, much as long ago—long, long ago it seemed to us—Alonso de Ojeda ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... distance of fourscore miles from the Persian Gulf, the Euphrates and Tigris unite in a broad and direct current. In the midway, between the junction and the mouth of these famous streams, the new settlement of Bussorah was planted ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... hardy self-denial of the camp. A mattress bed, constant horse exercise, rising with the lark, not unfrequently remaining up twenty hours out of the twenty-four, and the daily use of cold shower baths, winter and summer,—these contradictions to the usual habits of men, when their age approaches to fourscore, bespeak no ordinary carelessness of ease, and a singular determination of purpose. Well, indeed, has he been named ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington
... father did his best to smash the Bank of England by passing forged notes, and I did my best to assist him. We attended races and fairs in all kinds of disguises; my father was a first-rate hand at a disguise, and could appear of all ages from twenty to fourscore; he was, however, grabbed at last. He had said, as I have told you, that he should be my ruin, but I was the cause of his, and all owing to the misfortune of this here eye of mine. We came to this very place of Horncastle, where my father purchased two horses of a young ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... by which the balance of Nature is preserved. And his conversion was sudden enough to have pleased even Jonathan Edwards himself. Up to the ripe age of forty-two he had been joined to his idols. It is a proverb, that he who is a fool at forty will be a fool at fourscore; yet Mr. Cushing, who is certainly no fool, had been blind to the beauties of Original Democracy for a year or two beyond that alliterative era. The Whigs had just succeeded in electing their candidates, and it seemed as if nothing short of an almost Providential interposition could ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... mentioning, some months ago, the Marquis Moncada—a Spaniard of distinction and fourscore years, my summer neighbour at La Mira? Well, about six weeks ago, he fell in love with a Venetian girl of family, and no fortune or character; took her into his mansion; quarrelled with all his former friends for giving him advice (except ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... therefore was importuned to settle the disputes of his commentators himself, by declaring what he meant, how could he decline the honours of martyrdom with less offence, than by simply replying, "I meant what I said, and at the age of near fourscore, I have something else, and more important to do, than to write a commentary ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... their chambermaids. They receive all visits of women, and play at ombre in their chambers, with permission of their abbess, which is very easy to be obtained. I never saw an old woman so good-natured; she is near fourscore, and yet shews very little sign of decay, being still lively and cheerful. She caressed me as if I had been her daughter, giving me some pretty things of her own work, and sweetmeats in abundance. The grate is not of the most rigid; it is not very ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... sad and poor, To our shame, not to his—so he lived on, Till man's allotted fourscore years were gone, And scarcely then had leave ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... manly might, Slew Wat Tyler in King Richard's sight, And for which act done, and heere intent The king made him a knight incontinent, And gave him arms as here may see, To declare his fact and chivalrie. He left his life the year of our God, Thirteen hundred fourscore and three odd. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 384, Saturday, August 8, 1829. • Various
... for the ideals voiced in The Poet (1863), and we listen respectfully to The Flood of Years (1876), as the final utterance of a poet who has had the experience of fourscore years. ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... measures were taken to prevent their joining the disaffected party; an event the more to be feared because of the desperate war in which they had engaged the republic a few years before, under the command of the celebrated Spartacus. At a much later period, at the triumph of Probus, A.D. 281, about fourscore gladiators exhibited a similar courage. Disdaining to shed their blood for the amusement of a cruel people, they killed their keepers, broke out from the place of their confinement, and filled the streets of Rome with blood and confusion. ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... commission, and by force, to withstande a violence, and thei to be also betwen the Drumme and the Ansigne: this is thorder, with the whiche I would dispose a maine battaile, whiche should bee the disposyng of halfe the armie, and it should take in breadth three hundred fourscore and twoo yardes, and in length as moche as above is saied, not accomptyng the space, that thesame parte of the extraordinarie Pikes will take, whiche muste make a defence for the unarmed, whiche will bee aboute lxxv. yardes: the other maine battaile, ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... that in his gait, attitudes, and all his movements which indicated physical vigor, not to say the remains, at least, of great elasticity and sinewy activity. Aged as he was, and he must have long since passed his fourscore years, his form was erect as that of a youth. In stature he was of rather more than middle height, and in movements deliberate and dignified. His dress was quite plain, being black, and according to the customs of the day. The color of ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... three or four loggerheads amongst three or fourscore hogsheads. I have sounded the very base-string of humility. Sirrah, I am sworn brother to a leash of drawers; and can call them all by their Christian names, as, Tom, Dick, and Francis. They take it already upon their salvation, that though I be but Prince ...
— King Henry IV, The First Part • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... ship vibrated to the concussive voice of the minute-gun. No murmurs but those of wind and water were heard among the throng; they drove forward in awful, pallid silence. Suddenly the shriek of one voice, but from fourscore throats, rent the agonized quiet. A red light was running along the deck, a tongue of flame lapping round the forecastle, a spire shooting aloft. Marguerite hid her face in Mr. Raleigh's arm; a great sob seemed to go up from all the people. The captain's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... most amusing respect: and this lets us into the secret, that the venerable forms that so awed our childhood were just such impostors. Nature is full of freaks, and now puts an old head on young shoulders, and then a young heart beating under fourscore winters. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... best, and He has a reason for keeping us on earth," answered the dame. "He has kept me well-nigh fourscore years, and given me health and strength, and good courage to bear whatever I have had to bear, and He will give you strength, ...
— Michael Penguyne - Fisher Life on the Cornish Coast • William H. G. Kingston
... employed beyond the seas in state affairs divers years together, both by King James, and also by the late King Charles, in Germany, I did hear and understand, in all places, great bewailing and lamentation made, by reason of the destroying and burning of above fourscore thousand of Martin Luther's books, entitled His ...
— Selections from the Table Talk of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... our age are threescore years and ten; and though men be so strong that they come to fourscore years: yet is their strength then but labour and sorrow; so soon passeth it away, and ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... far and wide did the Greek hosts gather, until a hundred thousand men and eleven hundred fourscore and six ships were ready to cross the seas ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... referred to Mr. Wilder as: "The venerable and venerated friend who has outlived the fruits of fourscore seasons, and is still ripening as if his life ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. 1, Issue 1. - A Massachusetts Magazine of Literature, History, - Biography, And State Progress • Various
... The whole of it is low land, full of trees, but we saw not a single cocoa nut, nor any huts: We found, however, at the westermost end, all the canoes and people who had fled, at our approach, from Queen Charlotte's Island, and some more. We counted eight double canoes, and about fourscore people, women, and children. The canoes were drawn up on the beach, the women and children were placed near them, and the men advanced with their pikes and firebrands, making a great noise, and dancing in a strange manner. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... with courage stout and manly myght, Slew Jack Straw in Kyng Richard's sight. For which act done, and trew entent, The Kyng made him knyght incontinent And gave him armes, as here you see, To declare his fact and chivaldrie. He left this lyff the yere of our God Thirteen hundred fourscore ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... king, worn out with age and the fatigues of government, he being more than fourscore years old, determined to take no further part in state affairs, but to leave the management to younger strengths, that he might have time to prepare for death, which must at no long period ensue. With this intent he called his ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... such, that a wise or thoughtful man would choose or submit to. Again, fancy its enjoyments at the height imagination can propose or suggest (which yet rarely or never happens, or if it does, as a vapour soon vanishes); but let us grant it could, and last to fourscore years, is this more than the quickest thought to eternity? Oh, my child! fix on that word, eternity! Old Hobbes, with all his fancied strength of reason, could never endure to rest or stay upon that thought, but ran from it to some miserable amusement. I remember to have read of some man, ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... during a journey of many hundred miles; and in all that time I never heard him speak one improper word, nor saw him do an improper action. To conclude; many exemplary men have I known, holy in heart and life, within fourscore years, but one equal to him I have not known—one so inwardly and outwardly devoted to God. So unblamable a character in every respect I have not found either in Europe or America; and I scarce expect to find another such on this side of eternity.' Fletcher, ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... almost deserted to-day, on account of the Sarkee being absent. I passed the slave-stalls, and saw another poor old woman for sale, upwards of fourscore years of age. The slave-merchants offered her for four thousand wadas, about eight shillings. People purchase these poor old creatures that they may fetch wood and water, even until their strength fails them and ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... Rudge, looking with an eye somewhat of contempt at the small breed of sheep he saw before him. "At a pinch, I'd say fourscore, sir; but I don't think a man could do more than that properly, from what I know, and from what ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... sudden gust—no more, and these declared that some one was burning cedarwood there. Men had dreamed that there is a witch there, walking alone through the cold courts and corridors of marmorean palaces, fearfully beautiful and still for all her fourscore centuries, singing the second oldest song, which was taught her by the sea, shedding tears for loneliness from eyes that would madden armies, yet will she not call her dragons home—Carcassonne is terribly guarded. Sometimes she ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett] |
