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Fourscore

noun
1.
The cardinal number that is the product of ten and eight.  Synonyms: 80, eighty, LXXX.






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"Fourscore" Quotes from Famous Books



... 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 the Slave" in ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting

... delighted with the score of "The Creation," just completed. Several eminent violinists were in London at the time of Haydn's visit. The most distinguished of them was perhaps Felice de Giardini, who, at the age of fourscore, produced an oratorio at Ranelagh Gardens, and even played a concerto. He had a perfectly volcanic temper, and hated Haydn as the devil is said to hate holy water. "I don't wish to see the German dog," he remarked in the composer's hearing, ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden

... and Montdidier, and when he 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. ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... wrecks of precious virtues, which had been covered with the waves of prosperity, came up also. And all sorts of unexpected and unheard-of things, which had lain unseen during our national life of fourscore years, came up and are coming up daily, shaken from their bed by the concussions of the artillery ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... Counsellor about a hundred Years old, who, for thirty Years past, lived on nothing but Chocolate and Biscuit. He sometimes indeed had a little Soop at Dinner, but never any Fish, Flesh, or other Victuals: He was, nevertheless, so vigorous and nimble, that at fourscore and five, he could get on ...
— The Natural History of Chocolate • D. de Quelus

... secluded; but let him not hence infer that he is without influence. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, had their triumphs; but none more distinguished than that of a Massachusetts teacher, who, at the age of fourscore years, on a festive day, received from his former pupils—and among them were the most eminent of the land—sincere and affectionate assurances of esteem and gratitude. The pupil may be estranged from the master in opinion, for our system ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell

... of Thriving," 1697, p. 8, are directions for preparing fourscore noble and wholesome dishes, upon most of which a man may live excellently well for two-pence a day; the author's Obs. on water gruel is, that "essence of oatmeal makes a noble ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner

... 2. Fourscore and seven years ago our Fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton

... Boone, had preceded his father in his emigration to the Upper Louisiana, as it was then called, and had taken up his residence in the Femme Osage settlement. He became a man of influence and comparative wealth, and attained the advanced age of fourscore. Jesse, the fourth son, also emigrated to Upper Louisiana about the year 1806, where he died a few years after. The youngest son, Nathan, whose privilege it was to close his father's eyes in death, had found a home beyond ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott

... 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 had ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston

... memories going back as far as Mrs. Howe's, but I very much doubt if there is another as lively as hers on any question connected with social life in New York fourscore years ago. Italian opera was quite as aristocratic when it made its American bow as it is now, and decidedly more exclusive. It is natural that memories of it should linger in Mrs. Howe's mind for the reason that the family to which she belonged ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... of Therouenne, we were besieged in Hesdin. There was a clear stream of running water within shot of our cannon, and about it were fourscore or an hundred of the enemy's rabble, drawing water. I was on a rampart watching the enemy pitch their camp; and, seeing the crowd of idlers round the stream, I asked M. du Pont, commissary of the artillery, ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • 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 ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton

... 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, ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various

... stay execution on himself. The same train that brought her home to Lagonda Ledge, brought a letter to Professor Vincent Burgess, A.B. The letter heading bore as many of Dr. Joshua Wream's titles as space would permit, but the cramped, old-fashioned handwriting belonged to a man of more than fourscore years, and it was signed just ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter

... now, almost fourscore, Here lived I, but now live here no more. At seventeen years many their fortunes seek, But at fourscore it is too late a week. As ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... twilight of 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, "I dedicate this volume to Susan B. Anthony, ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various

... companies in the galley thought we 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 ...
— The Discovery of Guiana • Sir Walter Raleigh

... a real and substantial growth in the feeling for international responsibility and justice among the great civilized nations during the past threescore or fourscore years. There has been a real growth of recognition of the fact that moral turpitude is involved in the wronging of one nation by another, and that in most cases war is an evil method of settling international difficulties. But as yet there has ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... and there men could be seen struggling for life. As ready to save life as they had been to destroy it, the Americans lowered their boats and pulled about, picking up the survivors of the explosion. The boatswain of the ill-fated ship and seventeen of the crew were thus saved, but more than fourscore brave fellows went down with her. The American vessel herself was damaged not a little by the ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... favoring breezes deigned to blow The square sail of the gundalow, And idle lay the useless oars. Our mother, while she turned her wheel Or run the new-knit stocking-heel, Told how the Indian hordes came down At midnight on Cochecho town, And how her own great-uncle bore His cruel scalp-mark to fourscore. Recalling, in her fitting phrase, So rich and picturesque and free (The common unrhymed poetry Of simple life and country ways), The story of her early days,— She made us welcome to her home; Old hearths grew wide to give us room; We stole with her a frightened look At the gray wizard's ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck

... 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 against ...
— 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

... leisure to write fourscore books, some of which occasioned diversion enough in their time, and were thought worthy to be collected in a folio volume. Mr. Wood observes, that had he had learning equal to his natural genius, which was excellent, he might have equalled, if not excelled, many who claim a great ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber

... the Court ladies at their toilette: "Let me see that mirror; make my head-dress higher; let me show my mouth more; drop the pleat over the eyes;[74] alter my eyebrows," etc. etc. But beyond the washing of hands before the feast, this French book that Crapelet printed fourscore years ago goeth not. Perhaps it was a mere accident; perhaps the writer had a shrewd notion that whatever he wrote would seem but stale in its reminder of the night when Partenopeus lay awake, and seemingly alone, in the enchanted palace—now merely an ordinary ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... traveller and the opportunity for him increase as we learn more and more minutely the dry facts and figures of the most inaccessible corners of the earth's surface. There is no hope of another Ferdinand Mendez Pinto, with his statistics of Dreamland, who makes no difficulty of impressing "fourscore thousand rhinocerots" to draw the wagons of the King of Tartary's army, or of killing eight hundred and fifty thousand men with a flourish of his quill,—for what were a few ciphers to him, when ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various

... Natty, who alone stood with him by the side of the dying warrior; it is no burning that ails him, though his Indian feelings made him scorn to move, unless it be the burning of mans wicked thoughts for near fourscore years; but its natur giving out in a chasm thats run too long.Down with ye, Hector! down, I say! Flesh Isnt iron, that a man can live forever, and see his kith and kin driven to a far country, and he left to mourn, with ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper

... he was mincing, he called aloud to the company to observe him; "I here present you, my lords and gentlemen," said he, "with a sight that may henceforward serve you to talk of as something curious, namely, that you saw an Archbishop of Dublin, at fourscore and seven years of age, cut capers upon ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • 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 ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various

... 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 ...
— Silhouettes • Arthur Symons

... Norman lord, died in 1088, and was buried in the chapter-house of the Priory, where Dr. Stukely discovered the stone already named, to his memory. "By a general survey taken at the death of Robert, it appears that he was in possession of fourscore lordships: many of which, by uninterrupted succession, continue still to be the property of the Duke of Rutland. In Lincolnshire his domains were still more numerous. In Northamptonshire he had nine lordships; one of which, Stoke, acquired the additional name of Albini, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 564, September 1, 1832 • Various

... measures is thy debt Of corn? My friend, thou dost forget: Here, take thy bill, and write fourscore; Surely thou ...
— Mother Stories from the New Testament • Anonymous

... 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 and three odd. ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... the land will be to the good, Thady, you know; and take notice, it's my intention your lady should have a clear five hundred a year jointure off the estate afore any of my debts are paid." "Oh, please your honour," says I, "I can't expect to live to see that time, being now upwards of fourscore years of age, and you a young man, and likely to continue so, by the help of God." I was vexed to see my lady so insensible too, for all she said was, "This is very genteel of you, Sir Condy. You need not wait any longer, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... chosen. Behind the chancel of the parish church of Daylesford, in earth which already held the bones of many chiefs of the House of Hastings, was laid the coffin of the greatest man who has ever borne that ancient and widely extended name. On that very spot probably, fourscore years before, the little Warren, meanly clad and scantily fed, had played with the children of ploughmen. Even then his young mind had revolved plans which might be called romantic. Yet, however romantic, it is not likely that they had been so strange as the truth. Not only had the poor ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... near relations, a religious community, known as the "Arminian Nunnery," some account of which is given in Shorthouse's "John Inglesant"; it was broken up by the Puritans in 1647; he was the intimate friend of George Herbert; this community consisted of some "fourscore persons, devoted to a kind of Protestant monasticism; they followed celibacy and merely religious duties, employed themselves in binding prayer-books, &c., in alms-giving and what charitable work was possible to them in their desert retreat, kept up, night and day, a continual ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... expanded itself within me. Incalculable also was the knowledge I acquired in standing by the Old Men under the Linden-tree: the whole of Immensity was yet new to me; and had not these reverend seniors, talkative enough, been employed in partial surveys thereof for nigh fourscore years? With amazement I began to discover that Entepfuhl stood in the middle of a Country, of a World; that there was such a thing as History, as Biography to which I also, one day, by hand and tongue, ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... delicately formed, and many of them are very handsome, especially the Boroanes. They are generally long lived, and are not subject to the infirmities of age till a late period of life, seldom even beginning to grow grey till sixty or severity, or to be wrinkled till fourscore. They are intrepid, animated, ardent, patient of fatigue, enthusiastically attached to liberty, and ever ready to sacrifice their lives for their country, jealous of their honour, courteous, hospitable, faithful to their engagements, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr

... Proconsul had misunderstood him, but he pressed him hard and said 'Swear the oath, and I will release thee. Revile the Christ!' Polycarp looked him in the face, and gave him the answer which can never die. 'Fourscore and six years have I been His servant, and He hath done me no wrong. How then can I blaspheme my King Who saved me?' The words of pity changed into threats. 'I have wild beasts here,' said Statius, 'and I will throw thee to them except thou change thy mind.' 'Call ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various

... their faces, a 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 ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]

... Anna, a prophetess, daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was of great age, and had lived with a husband seven years from her virginity; (37)and she was a widow of about fourscore and four years, who departed not from the temple, serving day and night with fastings and prayers. (38)And she, coming up at that very time, likewise gave thanks to the Lord, and spoke of him to all that were looking for the redemption ...
— The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. • 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 broad avenue, at midway, spreads ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... largest horses, each 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.

... and after their noonday dinner they drove willingly, in a pause of the rain, out between yellowing harvests of wheat and oats to the field where Napoleon was beaten by the Russians, Austrians and Prussians (it always took at least three nations to beat the little wretch) fourscore years before. Yet even there Mrs. March was really more concerned for the sparsity of corn-flowers in the grain, which in their modern character of Kaiserblumen she found strangely absent from their loyal function; and March was more taken with ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... late! Ah, nothing is too late Till the tired heart shall cease to palpitate. Cato learned Greek 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 the nightingales, At sixty wrote the Canterbury Tales; Goethe at Weimar, toiling to the last, Completed Faust when ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth

... be," said Peder, "I have some knowledge of the people about us, having lived nearly fourscore years in the parish; and perhaps, sir, as you are young, and from a distance, you would allow me to say a word. ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau

... to be as lavish and magnificent as in the days of Queen Mary, when no reader was allowed to contribute less than fifteen bucks to the hall dinner, and many during their readings gave fourscore or a hundred. ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... presently distinguish him with a 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

... 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

... 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 magistrate, and only wanted a ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... sought to "magnify the law, and make it honorable." Faithfully did he accomplish the work given him of God, and glorious were the results which he was permitted to behold. At the close of his long life of more than fourscore years—above half a century spent in itinerant ministry—his avowed adherents numbered more than half a million souls. But the multitude that through his labors had been lifted from the ruin and degradation of sin to a higher and ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White

... duties that can be delegated to man, had made a quick journey to Fredericksburg, the residence of his mother, to bid her, what both of them considered, and what proved to be, a final adieu. She was then about fourscore years of age, and suffering from an acute and incurable malady. Their meeting was tender, and their parting peculiarly touching. "The people, madam," said Washington to his mother, "have been pleased, with the most flattering unanimity, to elect me to ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... came stunned and shattered and sounding their way cautiously through the new marks 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 its new ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells

... shall cheat at the twelvepenny ordinary, it knighthood, for its diet, all the term- time, and tell tales for it in the vacation to the hostess; or it knighthood shall do worse, take sanctuary in Cole-harbour, and fast. It shall fright all its friends with borrowing letters; and when one of the fourscore hath brought it knighthood ten shillings, it knighthood shall go to the Cranes, or the Bear at the Bridge-foot, and be drunk in fear: it shall not have money to discharge one tavern-reckoning, to invite the old creditors to forbear it knighthood, ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson

... to get out of the world before his eightieth year. It has been only in cases of "stated supply," or removal from the place, that early demise has been possible. And in each of these cases of decease at fourscore it was some unnecessary imprudence on their part, or who knows but that they might be living yet? That which is good for settled pastors being good for other people, you may judge the climate here is ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage

... not so with us,' continued Probus; 'he beareth long and patiently. We are not destroyed because in the first years of our life we do not rise to all virtue, but are spared to fourscore. Ought we not to manifest a like patience and forbearance? By waiting patiently we shall see our faults, and one by one correct them. There is still some reason and discernment left among us. We are not all fools and blind. ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware

... grew very feeble. He had lasted his fourscore and ten years, and prosperity had attended him through all, and children loved him; but, true to his first and only fondness, his heart was ever across the sea, where gentle Abraham, studiously intent amongst the Rabbis, communicated with his father by every ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend

... said, They commonly acted like mortals, till about thirty years old, after which, by degrees, they grew melancholy and dejected, increasing in both till they came to fourscore. This he learned from their own confession: for otherwise there not being above two or three of that species born in an age, they were too few to form a general observation by. When they came to fourscore years, which is reckoned ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... after dwelling and sleeping upon this form of doctrine; "a man knoweth his own trade the best, the very same way as the parson doth. And I never knew no good to come of any hurry. Our lives are given us by the Lord. And He never would 'a made 'em threescore and ten, or for men of any strength fourscore, if His will had been to jerk us over them. Never did I see no Frenchman as could be turned to an Englishman, not if he was to fast and pray all day, and cut himself with knives at the going down of the sun. My opinion is that Parson ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... 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

... 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 Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt

... sharing with them All sympathies of sorrow or of joy, Is seen the 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 some lofty tree Whose untransplanted roots ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney

... that bore him into a slow-forming curve that did not end for fourscore miles before the wild flight was checked. He swung it back, to guide the ship with shaking hands where a range of mountains rose in icy blackness, and where a gleaming cylinder rested upon a bank of snow whose white expanse showed a figure that came ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various

... applications were made to England, that we might have liberty to coin new ones, as in former times we did; but they did not succeed. At last one Mr. Wood,[13] a mean ordinary man, a hardware dealer, procured a patent[14]under his Majesty's broad seal to coin fourscore and ten thousand pounds[15] in copper for this kingdom, which patent however did not oblige any one here to take them, unless they pleased. Now you must know, that the halfpence and farthings in England pass for very little more ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift

... KNOW not, Time and Space so intervene, Whether, still waiting with a trust serene, Thou bearest up thy fourscore years and ten, Or, called at last, art now Heaven's citizen; But, here or there, a pleasant thought of thee, Like an old friend, all day has been with me. The shy, still boy, for whom thy kindly hand Smoothed his hard pathway to the wonder-land Of thought and fancy, in gray manhood yet Keeps ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... lower sort of serving Nuns, that wait on them as 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 hard to put a head ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague

... yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.... For all our days are passed away in thy wrath; we spend our years as a tale that is told. The days of our years are threescore and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years yet is their strength, labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off and we fly away.... So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.... Oh, satisfy us early with thy mercy; that we may rejoice and be ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... 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 Porsena Upon ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester

... 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, as I was sitting alone, there came in to me an old woman with sunken cheeks ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous

... 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 ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay

... looak 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 ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson

... 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; ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... irregular habits and the inherited disposition to rove over the world, became poor, and sometimes, when remote from his family and friends, in real want, yet he, the youngest of the four, lived past the traditional family fourscore years, dying poor (near Lawrenceville, Illinois), but leaving children and grandchildren in many States of the West, who had become, at his death, or since became, distinguished as soldiers and eminent citizens. He was a man of most cheerful disposition, and whatever his circumstances ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer

... most abandon'd Egyptian has never been as yet so impious as to gain-say it. Ay, Sir, an hundred thirty five thousand Years, say you, surely you must be out a little in your Calculation. 'Tis but about fourscore thousand Years, since India was first inhabited. Sure I am, we are a more antient People than you are, and our Brama prohibited the eating of Beef long before your Nation ever erected an Altar in Honour of the Ox, or ever put one upon a Spit. What a Racket you make about your Brama! Is ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire

... friend of all the friendless 'neath the sun; Whose hand had wiped away a thousand tears; Whose eloquent lips and clear, strong brain have done God's holy service through his fourscore years." ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks

... Lord Brooke who was slain in the Parliamentary War; and they have recently (that is to say, within a century) built a burial-vault on the other side of the church, calculated (as the sexton assured me, with a nod as if be were pleased) to afford suitable and respectful accommodation to as many as fourscore coffins. Thank Heaven, the old man did not call them "CASKETS"!—a vile modern phrase, which compels a person of sense and good taste to shrink more disgustfully than ever before from the idea of being buried at all. But as regards those eighty coffins, only sixteen have as yet been contributed; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various

... The phrase "a great public character," once common, seems to be going out of fashion, perhaps because there are fewer examples of the thing. It fits Josiah Quincy exactly. Active in civic and academic duties till beyond the ordinary period of man, at fourscore and ten his pen, voice, and venerable presence were still efficient in public affairs. A score of years after the energies of even vigorous men are declining or spent, his mind and character made themselves felt as in their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various

... sins. For whereas, before, I lay continually trembling at the mouth of hell, now, methought, I was got so far therefrom that I could not, when I looked back, scarce discern it. And oh! thought I, that I were fourscore years old now, that I might die quickly, that my soul might be gone ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte

... head is full of costs, damages, and ejectments: he plagued a couple of honest gentlemen so long for a trespass in breaking one of his hedges, till he was forced to sell the ground it inclosed to defray the charges of the prosecution: his father left him fourscore pounds a year; but he has cast and been cast[133] so often, that he is not now worth thirty. I suppose he is going upon the old business of ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others

... live apart from men. (100) A heavenly voice resounded: "O thou wicked man, son of a wicked man, and descendant of Nimrod the wicked, who incited the world to rebel against God! Behold, the days of the years of a man are threescore years and ten, or perhaps by reason of strength fourscore years. It takes five hundred years to traverse the distance of the earth from the first heaven, and as long a time to penetrate from the bottom to the top of the first heaven, and not less are the distances from one of the seven heavens to the next. How, then, canst thou ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... France, as soon as a man of fashion marries, he takes an opera girl into keeping, and he declared this to be the general custom. "Pray, sir," said Johnson, "how many opera girls may there be?" He answered, "About four score." "Well then, sir," replied Johnson, "you see there can be no more than fourscore men of fashion who ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey

... 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 ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade

... edifice it was determined I should lodge. The great gate fronting to the north was about four foot high, and about two foot wide, through which I could easily creep. On each side of the gate was a small window, not above six inches from the ground: into that on the left side the king's smiths conveyed fourscore and eleven chains, like those that hang to a lady's watch in Europe, and almost as large, which were locked to my left ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester

... castle grew 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 ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... 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, but always a pamphleteer, brought out in 1693 ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein

... till'd, Who with peculiar grace his station fill'd; By deeds of hospitality endear'd, Serv'd from affection, for his worth rever'd; A happy offspring blest his plenteous board, His fields were fruitful, and his harm well stor'd, And fourscore ewes he fed, a sturdy team, And lowing kine that grazed beside the stream: Unceasing industry he kept in view; And never lack'd a job ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield

... Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" After this time, though the writings of the Holy Book, either historical, doctrinal, or prophetic, at the lowest calculation embrace a period of fourscore years, no allusion is made to Joseph as a man still living, or to his memory as one already dead. And yet he is one of those for the benefit of whose intercession the Church of Rome teaches her members to pray ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler

... be a matter of remark, and point me out at once as being an Englishman, seeing that the French archers carry no bows of such length; so I have, even as you see, wrapped it round with straw, and fastened it to the saddle beneath my leg. I have also put fourscore arrows among the valises ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty

... with Charles: he has a fine estate in Leicestershire." "Mortgaged for half its value," said his lordship. "A large personal property!" "All gone in annuity bills," said the Exquisite. "A rich uncle upwards of fourscore!" "He'll cut him off with ...
— English Satires • Various

... say how long 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. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various

... edge of fourscore years, ended this long and industrious, this peaceful and beautiful life. In our land of busy and constant action there have been few like it,—surely none happier. Serene at the close as it was placid in its course, its lot had been cast ever between quiet shores, which it enriched on either ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various

... continued old Betty, caressing the child, and rather mourning over it than speaking to it, 'your old Granny Betty is nigher fourscore year than threescore and ten. She never begged nor had a penny of the Union money in all her life. She paid scot and she paid lot when she had money to pay; she worked when she could, and she starved when she must. ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... and wide did the Greek hosts gather, until a hundred thousand men and eleven hundred fourscore and six ships were ready to cross the ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various

... 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 ...
— Harry's Ladder to Learning - Horn-Book, Picture-Book, Nursery Songs, Nursery Tales, - Harry's Simple Stories, Country Walks • Anonymous

... bow down before, Thrice again one singer's note had cloven in sunder Night, who blows again not one blast now but four, And the fourfold heaven is kindled with his thunder, And the stars about his forehead are fourscore. ...
— Studies in Song, A Century of Roundels, Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets, The Heptalogia, Etc - From Swinburne's Poems Volume V. • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... 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 ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner

... the king's officer took them for merchants, paying with his life for the mistake.[198] A Welsh chronicle, known by the name of Brut y Tywysogion, or the Chronicle of the Chieftains, has a corresponding record under the year 790: "Ten years with fourscore and seven hundred was the age of Christ when the pagans went to Ireland." Three MSS. add, "and destroyed Rechren." Another chronicle mentions, that the black pagans, who were the first of their nation ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack

... water-poet, in his invective against coaches, 1623, dedicated to all grieved "with the world running on wheels," writes: "Within our memories our nobility and gentry could ride well mounted, and sometimes walk on foot, gallantly attended with fourscore brave fellows in blue coats, which was a glory to our nation, far greater than forty of these leathern tumbrels! Then, the name of coach was heathen Greek. Who ever saw, but upon extraordinary occasions, Sir Philip Sidney and Sir Francis Drake ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... 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. After an obstinate resistance ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... went ashore here, that same evening, to get provisions, "and anything else that we could purchase." They passed the night in the church, or "in a churchyard," and in the morning took "120 sheep and fourscore goats," about 200 bushels of corn "ready ground," some fowls, a fat hog, any quantity of fruit, peas, beans, etc., and a small stock of wine. These goods they conveyed aboard as being "fit for our Turn." The inhabitants ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield

... response to the old man's shout. We could but note the similarity and the disparity. One vaguely dreamed of those blessings which the other had fully realized, and for which he had struggled; and the same shout was lifted up by those two children—the one of four, and the other of fourscore—the one with the flaxen curls of childhood, and the other with the white locks of age—the one voice with the shrill treble of infancy, and the other with the high-keyed tones of decrepitude. Those people, who had seen the rebel army pass a few hours before, now felt ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens

... the reigning Elector of Baden, is now near fourscore years of age. At this period of life if any passions remain, avarice is more common than ambition; because treasures may be hoarded without bustle, while activity is absolutely necessary to push forward to the goal of distinction. Having bestowed a new ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... wonderfully did it move my admiration! I previously knew that in most countries, which are denominated civilized, law was voluminous: but I had never till then imagined that one man could himself compile a hundred and fourscore volumes! And, as it seems, could compile them at his leisure too: for his chief business was that of oratory! Beside which it lives on record that, being a firm patriot, he was a wise and indefatigable senator! But it appears that Sulpicius could devour law with greater ease than Milo, or perhaps ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... multitude of forms the consciousness at once of the power and the rights 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 leaves is common form. Hardly a sentence is there which did ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various

... taste, but swallowed life at once; And scarce had reached his prime ere he had bolted, With all its garnish, mixed of sweet and sour, Full fourscore years. For he, in truth, did wot not What most he craved, and so devoured all; Then, with his gases, followed Indigestion, Making it food for night-mares ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston

... 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 three daughters to him, to know ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... boon? If so? it must befal That Death, whene'er he call, Must call too soon. Though fourscore years he give, Yet one would pray to live Another moon! What kind of plaint have I, Who perish in July? I might have had ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert

... perused like Hebrew, In which they need not lose a bit Or of thy harmony or wit. To make a work completely fine, Number and weight and measure join; Then all must grant your lines are weighty Where thirty weigh as much as eighty; All must allow your numbers more, Where twenty lines exceed fourscore; Nor can we think your measure short, Where less than forty fill a quart, With Alexandrian in the close, Long, long, long, long, like Dan's ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... and was not simply a public guest house is to be found in the statements of contemporaries. One described it as a "retreat or guest house for sicke people, a high seat and wholesome air," while another wrote that "here they were building also an hospitall with fourscore lodgings (and beds alreadie sent to furnish them) for the sicke and lame, with keepers to attend them for their comfort and recoverie." The use of the word "hospital," which had then a general sense, does not indicate ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes

... house. There while we slew all those that yielded not, came Arnald with the others, bringing our horses with them; then all the enemy threw their arms down. And we counted our prisoners and found them over fourscore; therefore, not knowing what to do with them (for they were too many to guard, and it seemed unknightly to slay them all), we sent up some bowmen to the walls, and turning our prisoners out of gates, bid them run for ...
— The Hollow Land • William Morris

... much owest thou unto my lord? And he said, An hundred measures of oil. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and sit down quickly, and write fifty. Then said he to another, And how much owest thou? And he said, An hundred measures of wheat. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and write fourscore. And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely: for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light. And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... she said, she never was without a milk cow after that, and she was alive fourscore and fifteen years after the night ...
— Fians, Fairies and Picts • David MacRitchie

... 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 ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... where the tournament should be. And there were scaffolds and holds, that lords and ladies might look on, and give the prize. Then came into the field the king of North Wales, with eightscore helms, and King Badgemagus came with fourscore helms. And then they couched their spears, and came together with a great dash, and there were overthrown at the first encounter twelve of King Bagdemagus's party and six of the king of North Wales's party, and King Bagdemagus's party ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... persuasions of his councillors, sent to Charles for a letter of safe-conduct, and under its assurance sought the Duke of Burgundy in his fortified town of Peronne, having with him as escort only fourscore of his Scotch ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris

... plaintive November winds that note bore a great resemblance to the ruins of human song which remain to the throat of fourscore and ten. It was a worn whisper, dry and papery, and it brushed so distinctly across the ear that, by the accustomed, the material minutiae in which it originated could be realized as by touch. It was the united products ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... I know myself, and surely a man can hardly be supposed to have overpassed the limit of fourscore years without attaining to some proficiency in that most useful branch of learning, (e caelo descendit, says the pagan poet,) I have no great smack of that weakness which would press upon the publick attention any matter pertaining ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various

... perspective, in at a key-hole; and there we might see Sogliardo sit in a chair, holding his snout up like a sow under an apple-tree, while the other open'd his nostrils with a poking-stick, to give the smoke a more free delivery. They had spit some three or fourscore ounces between ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson

... 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 was strongly afraid ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones

... the old woman by her arms as she lay on her straw floor, and dragging her into a sitting position. If the old dame had been asleep, Patience had thoroughly aroused her. She greeted us with Gipsy courtesy, and told us she was 'fourscore and six years of age.' Her name, in answer to our query, she said was 'Sinfire Smith.' 'Why, that's the same as mine,' said Mr. Smith. 'O, likely,' said Sinfire, 'the Smiths is a long family.' ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith

... 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 ...
— King Henry IV, The First Part • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]

... fish, I need say nothing in this hot weather, but that it comes sixty, seventy, fourscore, and a hundred miles by land-carriage; a circumstance sufficient without any comment, to turn a Dutchman's stomach, even if his nose was not saluted in every alley with the sweet flavour of fresh mackarel, selling by retail. This is not the season for oysters; nevertheless, it may ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... head all mouth and eyes, with a great towzled mass of chestnut hair, which (off the stage) was as often as not half tumbled over her shoulder. But a quicker little baggage at mimicry (she would play any part, from an urchin of ten to a crone of fourscore), or a livelier at dancing of Brantles or the single Coranto never was, I do think, and as merry as a grig. Of Ned Herring I need only here say that he was the most tearing villain imaginable on the stage, and off it the most civil-spoken, honest-seeming ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett

... his offences as a licenser. Bachiler, he says, "hath been a man-midwife to bring forth more monsters begotten by the Devil and born of the Sectaries within the last three years than ever were brought into the light in England by all the former licensers, the Bishops and their Chaplains, for fourscore years." He was in the habit, Edwards adds, of not only licensing sectarian books, but also recommending them; and among the Toleration pamphlets he had licensed was the reprint of Leonard Busher's tract of 1614 called Religious ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... English 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

... 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 ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth

... 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 ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews

... 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

... 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

... razor that is hired, by them beyond the 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 ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 216, December 17, 1853 • Various

... being 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

... and Ejectments: He plagued a couple of honest Gentlemen so long for a Trespass in breaking one of his Hedges, till he was forced to sell the Ground it enclosed to defray the Charges of the Prosecution: His Father left him fourscore Pounds a Year; but he has cast and been cast so often, that he is not now worth thirty. I suppose he is going upon the old Business ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... sky, And all the wonders of the day and night; O born interpreter of Nature's might, Lord of the quiet heart and seeing eye, Vast is our debt to thee we'll ne'er deny, Though some may own it in their own despite. Now after fourscore teeming years and seven, Our hearts are jocund that we have thee still A refuge in this world of good and ill, When evil triumphs and our souls are riv'n; A friend to all the friendless under heav'n; A foe to fraud and ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant

... No, lad, it wean't do; buds is the cruellest things there is, pretty as they are— all except them as only eats seeds. Everything 'most is cruel; but if they wasn't the world would get so full that everything would starve. We've got say fourscore pie-wipes—not for fun, but for wittles—and what's fourscore when there's ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn

... broken up into countless minutely-traced lines, so close and fine as to seem a part of the texture of the skin, mere shadings, evenly distributed throughout, and no longer affecting the expression of the face as the deep wrinkles had done in former days; at threescore and ten, at fourscore, and even at ninety years. The century that had passed had taken with it its marks and scars, leaving the great features in their original purity of design, lean, smooth, and clearly defined. That last change in living man is rare enough, ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford

... the ancient clock-mender himself, however, huddled over a table upon which sputtered a candle. It touched up his face with grotesque lights. Here was age, mused the man outside the window; nothing less than fourscore years rested upon those rounded shoulders. The face was corrugated with wrinkles, like a frosted road; eyes heavily spectacled, a ragged thatch of hair on the head, a ragged beard on the chin. Aware of a shadow between him and the fading daylight, the clock-mender looked up from his work. ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath

... determined I should lodge. The great gate, fronting to the north, was about four feet high and almost two feet wide, through which I could easily creep. On each side of the gate was a small window, not above six inches from the ground; into that on the left side the king's smith conveyed fourscore and eleven chains, like those that hang to a lady's watch in Europe, and almost as large, which were locked to my left leg with six-and-thirty padlocks. Over against this temple, on the other side of the great highway, at twenty feet distance, there was a turret ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan

... process of time become fashionable vices, the number of women kept by the great became at last more an article of grandeur and state, than a mode of satisfying the animal appetite: Solomon had threescore queens, and fourscore concubines, and virgins without number. Maimon tells us, that among the Jews a man might have as many wives as he pleased, even to the number of a hundred, and that it was not in their power to prevent him, provided ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous

... thee this snowy lock, and say it was the last upon my head. Say that I plucked it on that night when ungrateful Genoa tore itself from my heart. For fourscore years it hung upon my temples, and now has left my bald head, chilled with the winter of age. The lock is weak, but 'twill suffice to fasten the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... reach'd the Ears of the Earl of Peterborow at Guadalaxara. When leaving my Lord Galways Camp, pursuant to the Resolutions of the Council of War, with a Party only of fourscore of Killigrew's Dragoons, he met General Windham's little Army within a League of Huette, the Place where his Baggage had been plunder'd. The Earl had strong Motives of Suspicion, that the Inhabitants had given Intelligence to the Enemy; and, as is very natural, giving way ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe

... 1827 are yet undetermined in 1886. None of the original claimants survive, but they have left heirs and legatees, executors and assignees, who have perennially presented their cases, and who are now indulging in high hopes of success. Government, after more than fourscore years of unjustifiable procrastination, is at last having the claims adjudicated, and in time the heirs of the long-suffering ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... I toss the "Last Leaf" on my probably over-large accumulation of printed pages. What I have set down is in no way an autobiography. It is simply the presentment of the panorama of nearly fourscore momentous years as unrolled before one pair of eyes. Whether the eyes have served their owner well or ill the gentle reader will judge. I hope I have not obtruded myself unduly, and that I may be pardoned as I close, if I am for a moment personal. My eyes have given me notice ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer

... 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 Hist ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton

... Shakespearean gift 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 ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee

... old and 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 to ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane

... spirit of this lamented nobleman seemed to destine him to a station second to none among the public characters of his time; and if, instead of being cut off by the hand of violence in the morning of life, he had been permitted to attain a length of days at all approaching to the fourscore years of his father, it is probable that the votary of letters would have been lost to us in the statesman or the soldier. Queen Mary, who sought by her favor and confidence to revive the almost extinguished energies of his father, and called forth into premature distinction ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin



Words linked to "Fourscore" :   cardinal, lxxx, 80, eighty, large integer



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