"Fourscore" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... consular corps in all the region round about followed the old man to his long home, all our public buildings hung their flags half-mast high, all our little world told queer stories of the dead old man. But our own hearts grew tender with thoughts of this life finished at fourscore years with its longing of almost half a century unfulfilled. "Philip Nolan" we often called the old man, who sometimes said to us, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... answered 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
... 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
... he was fourscore and five years old, Sir Isaac Newton died,—or rather he ceased to live on earth. We may be permitted to believe that he is still searching out the infinite wisdom and goodness of the Creator, as earnestly, ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a' my warnin', Death? I'm fourscore year an' four, Yet niver a drogue has crossed my lips Nor a doctor crossed ...
— The Auld Doctor and other Poems and Songs in Scots • David Rorie
... tell you the greatest curiosity of the story? The whole plan and execution of the second act was laid and adjusted by my Lady Suffolk herself and Will. Chetwynd, Master of the Mint, Lord Bolingbroke's Oroonoko-Chetwynd;[1] he fourscore, she past seventy-six; and, what is more, much worse than I was, for added to her deafness, she has been confined these three weeks with the gout in her eyes, and was actually then in misery, and had been without sleep. What spirits, and cleverness, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... 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 ...
— Selections from the Table Talk of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... came from his sick-bed to direct the work on the defenses, which were broken down in three or four places. Besides the four dog-boys, the cook, the brewer, an old cross-bow maker, and the old carpenter, there were two shoemakers, a musician, four valets, fourscore camp-followers who did not know the use of arms, and the crowd of women and children. The sole consolation that could be found in their plight was that in such a storm no enemy would be likely to attack them by ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... apostles who ran away so basely after they had well supped, and left their good master in the lurch. I hate that man worse than poison that offers to run away when he should fight and lay stoutly about him. Oh that I were but King of France for fourscore or a hundred years! By G—, I should whip like curtail-dogs these runaways of Pavia. A plague take them; why did they not choose rather to die there than to leave their good prince in that pinch and necessity? Is it not better and more honourable ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... I of life's toil and travail: he who like me has seen pass of years fourscore, well may he be sick of life! I know what To-day unfolds, what before it was Yesterday; but blind do I stand before the knowledge To-morrow brings. I have seen the Dooms trample men as a blind beast at random treads: whom they smote, he died; whom they missed, he lived on to strengthless ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... having in 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 he could maintain, and pay them all ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... founder is still kept solemnly by Cistercians. In their chapel, where assemble the boys of the school and the fourscore old men of the hospital, the founder's tomb stands, a huge edifice emblazoned with heraldic decorations and clumsy, carved allegories. There is an old hall, a beautiful specimen of the architecture of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • 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
... Adventure 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 ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... case 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 ...
— English Satires • Various
... "Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3 • Various
... others on the floor; and, about a quarter after one, a noise was heard, as of forty cannon discharged together, and again repeated at about eight minutes distance. This alarmed and raised all the neighbourhood; who, coming into their Honours' rooms, gathered up the great stones, fourscore in number, and laid them in the corner of a field, where, in Dr. Plot's time, who reported this story, they were to be seen. This noise, like the discharge of cannon, was heard through all the country for sixteen miles round. During these noises, which were heard in both rooms ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... The women are 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
... said Lord Crawford; "no tilting with sharp weapons, no jesting with keen scoffs—friends all. And for the lady, she is too wealthy to fall to a poor Scottish lord, or I would put in my own claim, fourscore years and all, or not very far from it. But here is her health, nevertheless, for they say she ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... of the sea and its miracles! I have but shown thee our own province and country, nothing more." The fisherman thus resumed, "O my brother, since this is the case, what I have seen sufficeth me, for I am a-weary of eating fish, and these fourscore days I have been in thy company, thou hast fed me, morning and night, upon nothing but raw fish, neither broiled nor boiled." "And what is broiled or boiled?" "We broil fish with fire and boil ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... 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 glad all our days.... And let the beauty of the Lord our God ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... stick'st a dagger in me: I shall never see my gold again: fourscore ducats at a sitting! ...
— The Merchant of Venice • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... Senators we have an annual crop. But Autocrats and Poets come but once in eighty years. The asteroids must not envy the Georgium Sides his orbit of fourscore years, but rather rejoice in his beneficent and cheerful light, and in the certainty that it will keep on shining so long as there is ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... carried with him no better authorities than reason and humanity. He neither could work miracles, nor damn you for disbelieving them. Had he lived fourscore years later, who knows but he might have been another Simon Peter, and have talked Hebrew as fluently as Latin, all at once! Who knows but we might have heard of his patrimony! who knows but our venerable popes might have claimed ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... 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 cold, cheerless, ...
— Some Roundabout Papers • W. M. Thackeray
... 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 was strongly afraid ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... received them, she pulled out a string of other rings, which she shewed the princes, and asked them if they knew what those jewels meant? "No," said they, "we hope you will be pleased to inform us." "These are," she replied, "the rings of all the men to whom I have granted my favours. There are fourscore and eighteen, which I keep as memorials of them; and I asked for yours to make up the hundred. So that I have had a hundred gallants already, notwithstanding the vigilance of this wicked genie, who never leaves me. He may lock me up in this glass box and hide me in the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... the estate and honours of that ancient House. After a most protracted and severe litigation, which forms one of the Causes Celebres in the law-books of Scotland, Sir James Norcliffe Innes was preferred. When approaching fourscore, he was installed Duke of Roxburghe, and put on a coronet at an age, long before which most part of mankind have put on their shrouds. He put it on—ay, and for many years wore it stout and stark—nobly, loftily, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... over the artillery is the armoury of small arms, of equal dimensions with that underneath, in which are placed, in admirable order, muskets and other small arms for fourscore thousand men, most of them of the newest make, having the best locks, barrels, and stocks, that can be contrived for service; neither the locks or barrels indeed are wrought, but I look upon them to be the more durable and serviceable, ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... prospectusing, puffing, and personal canvassing, the money leaked out five times as fast as it came in, then Mr Nogoe began to find his position peculiarly unpleasant, and anything but a bed of roses. With 'fourscore odd' of sick members yet upon the books—with five deaths and three half-deaths unpaid—and the epidemic yet in full force, he beheld an unwholesome December threatening a continuation of sickness and mortality, and a balance at the banker's hardly sufficient to pay his own quarter's salary. Again ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various
... Quincey, Andrew Combe. With a still higher pleasure, because to one of my own sex, whom I have honored almost above any, I went to pay my court to Joanna Baillie. I found on her brow, not indeed a coronal of gold, but a serenity and strength undimmed and unbroken by the weight of more than fourscore years, or by the scanty appreciation ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... 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 of a scabbard, the glint of a knife, and the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... gratefully recounts it now, as part of his plea with Joshua—'Now, behold, the Lord hath kept me alive as He spake, these forty and five years, even since the Lord spake this word unto Moses. And now, lo! I am this day fourscore ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... hideous, fit only to be huddled into its dishonorable grave. But the 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 ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... 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 whom ...
— 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
... 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 for ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... father and myself during two years. My 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 ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... just on the edge of the unpaved sidewalk, grew the Pyncheon-elm, which, in reference to such trees as one usually meets with, might well be termed gigantic. It had been planted by a great-grandson of the first Pyncheon, and, though now fourscore years of age, or perhaps nearer a hundred, was still in its strong and broad maturity, throwing its shadow from side to side of the street, overtopping the seven gables, and sweeping the whole black roof with its pendent foliage. ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... 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 at least five feet high. ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... gathered from the passing of fourscore years! On almost every page of her tracts, her letters, her account of her life, one finds quotations ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... was thirty thousand men. And he sent them to Lebanon, ten thousand a month by courses: a month they were in Lebanon, and two months at home: and Adoniram was over the levy. And Solomon had three score and ten thousand that bare burdens, and fourscore thousand hewers in the mountains beside the chief of Solomon's officers which were over the work, three thousand and three-hundred, which ruled over the people that wrought in the work. And the king commanded and they brought ...
— The Dore Gallery of Bible Illustrations, Complete • Anonymous
... Colonel, turnin' to Dan. 'At the age of seventeen, me an' eight or nine of my intimate brave comrades founds what we-all denom'nates as the "Chevy Chase Huntin' Club." Each of us maintains a passel of odds an' ends of dogs, an' at stated intervals we convenes on hosses, an' with these fourscore curs at our tails goes yellin' an' skally-hootin' up an' down the countryside allowin' we're shore ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... the Capital, but took the state turnpike over the ranges, where you can see for miles and miles and miles on a clear summer day across the trembling floors of the forest tops to lonely sentinel mountains fourscore miles away. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... our unapproachable language that the number can only be faintly conjectured. Some claim fivescore thousand different written symbols; the least exacting agree to fourscore thousand." ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... the great mass of those who took their rest in the tents of the Assyrians. The divine fiat had gone forth. In the night, as they slept, destruction fell upon them. "The angel of the Lord went out, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred fourscore and five thousand; and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses." A miracle, like the destruction of the first-born, had been wrought, but this time on the enemies of the Egyptians, who naturally ascribed their deliverance ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... 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 still wider, forming ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... negro—always, to my thinking, 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 more ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... other 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
... nose. The committee have tried all ways to soften him, and have offered to let him swear to only what part he pleased, or only with regard to money given to members of parliament. Pultney himself has tried to work on him; but the old gentleman is inflexible, and answered, "that he was fourscore years old, and did not care whether he spent the few months he had to live (622) in the Tower or not; that the last thing he would do should be to betray the King and next to him the Earl of Orford." It remains in suspense. The troops continue going to Flanders, but slowly enough. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... woman in New York who had aspired to the hand of Colonel Burr, and who, when she heard of his union with another, wrung her hands and shed tears! A feeling of that nature can seldom, since the creation of man, have been excited by the marriage of a man on the verge of fourscore. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... adherents of what was called "the New England way"; and a year later saw in London alone the rise of "fourscore congregations of several sectaries," as Bishop Hall scornfully tells us, "instructed by guides fit for them, cobblers, tailors, felt-makers, and such-like trash." But little religious weight however could be attributed as yet to the Congregational ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... volumes of his own compiling!' How 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 ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... of interment was not ill 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 ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... myself led the rest into that 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 their lives, which they did fast enough, not ...
— The Hollow Land • William Morris
... a grave face, trying to follow; but it is hard for eighteen to realize at all what even fourscore takes in ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... was honourably pensioned and retired, she used to boast, in her prim way, that she was not unacquainted with the airs and graces of the higher powers. She must at least have reached the age of fourscore when on one occasion she had lingered at my mother's house until darkness fell. The cottage she lived in was a mile away and was approached by a somewhat lonely road. My brother Tom, at that time a stalwart lad of eighteen, was suggested ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... by the great magnificence of the Romain princes and 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 of other shewes ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... how to execute a 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 ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... 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, since, if ...
— The Life of Flavius Josephus • Flavius Josephus
... bent their bows,— Their hearts were good and true; At the first flight of arrows sent, Full fourscore Scots they slew. ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... now hath 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
... troops held on grimly to the besieged city of Genoa, until twenty thousand of its innocent inhabitants had perished by that most awful and lingering of deaths, famine. It would be no extravagant estimate to believe that during the fourscore years and more which have since elapsed, the demon of play, enthroned along the whole of the Riviera, has caused as much misery to its hapless victims as the fatal siege of Genoa, which Dr. Arnold selected as exemplifying the direful horrors of which war ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... 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, and by his ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... having in 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; ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... measured by the space Not by the act? Or masked man, if valued by his face, Above his fact? Here's one outlived his peers, And told forth fourscore years; He vexed time, and busied the whole state; Troubled both foes and friends; But ever to no ends: What did this stirrer but die late? How well at twenty had he fallen or stood! For three of his fourscore ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... 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 so often, that he is not now worth thirty. I suppose he is going upon the ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... trade, the summit of his ambition was to be a country 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 son and heir to make him completely happy; ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... the Jew 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 mail and raised the old man's ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... the faem; Cospatrick brought his ladye hame; And fourscore ships have come her wi', The ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... most glorious sight, I 've seen him rise full oft, indeed of late I have sat up on purpose all the night, 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 coffin'd at fourscore, Engrave upon the plate, you rose ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... think man enjoys all the knowledge of the creatur's of God, will live to be disappointed, if they reach, as I have done, the age of fourscore years. I will not take upon myself to say what mischief is brewing, nor will I vouch that, even, the hound himself knows so much; but that evil is nigh, and that wisdom invites us to avoid it, I have heard from the mouth of one who never ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... 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 Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... Time and Space so intervene, Whether, still waiting with a trust serene, Thou bearest up thy fourscore years and ten, Or, called at ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... Fourscore and five times has the gradual year Risen and fulfilled its days of youth and eld Since first the child's eyes opening first beheld Light, who now leaves behind to help us here Light shed from song as starlight ...
— Poems and Ballads (Third Series) - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... "fourscore and upwards," like Lear, and like Lear, too, "mightily abused," about five feet seven, a little stooping, but still vigorous and alert; with a pleasant, fresh countenance, and the complexion of a middle-aged, plump, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... and ever in the worst confusion will emerge, cork-like, unsunk! Small care to him is Perfectibility, Progress of the Species, and Astraea Redux: good only, that a man of light wit, verging towards fourscore, can in the seat of authority feel himself important among men. Shall we call him, as haughty Chateauroux was wont of old, 'M. Faquinet (Diminutive of Scoundrel)'? In courtier dialect, he is now named 'the Nestor of France;' such ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... factions; and from a body spent with poxes ill cured, by trusting to bawds and surgeons, who, as it afterwards appeared, were professed enemies to me and the government, and revenged their party's quarrel upon my nose and shins. Fourscore and eleven pamphlets have I written under three reigns, and for the service of six and thirty factions. But finding the state has no farther occasion for me and my ink, I retire willingly to draw it out into ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... 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
... 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 ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... 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
... to heart. There is 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 and fidelity ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... their master was a man of the book, 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, ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... She goes to operas, plays, suppers, Versailles; gives supper twice a week; has everything new read to her; makes new songs and epigrams—aye, admirably—and remembers every one that has been made these fourscore years. She corresponds with Voltaire, dictates charming letters to him, contradicts him, is no bigot to him or anybody, and laughs both at the clergy and the philosophers. In a dispute, into which she easily falls, she is very warm, and yet scarce ever in the wrong; her judgment on every ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... terrace where the 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. ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... called Eraclius, and the Roman Emperor was called Frederick; in like manner when Jerusalem was taken from the Christians by the siege of Saladin, the Pope was called Urban; the Patriarch of Jerusalem, Eraclius; and the Emperor, Frederick: and it is remarkable, that fourscore and seven years passed between these two ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... first 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... songs of the temple, a more distinct type of ours in the church under the gospel. 1. The singers then were many, but the chief of them, in the days of David, were David himself, Asaph, Jeduthun, and Heman, and their sons. 2. In David's time the chief of these singers were two hundred fourscore and eight (1 Chron 25). These singers of old were to sing their songs over the burnt-offering, which were types of the sacrificed body of Christ; a memorial of which offering we have at the Lord's table, the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... wholly to the mercy of the reader. I will hope the best, that they will not be condemn'd; but if they should, I have the excuse of an old gentleman, who mounting on horseback before some ladies, when I was present, got up somewhat heavily, but desir'd of the fair spectators that they would count fourscore and eight before they judg'd him. By the mercy of God, I am already come within twenty years of his number, a cripple in my limbs; but what decays are in my mind, the reader must determine. I think myself as vigorous as ever in the faculties of my soul, excepting only my memory, ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... 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 preference for the ecclesiastical calling. ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... 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, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... these hopes Descartes returned to France; paid the fees of his patent, which was sold at that time, but no pension was settled upon him. Thus disappointed, he returned to his solitude in North Holland, where he again pursued the study of philosophy, whilst the great Galileo, at fourscore years of age, was groaning in the prisons of the Inquisition, only for ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... have heard, was backed," said the knight drily, "by a present to Hardicanute, who after the death of King Harold resolved to avenge the black butchery; a present, I say, of a gilt ship, manned by fourscore warriors with gold-hilted swords, and gilt helms.—But let ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... mouldy 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] and the plaguy sweat,[485] The going to Saint Quintin's[486] and New-Haven,[487] 10 ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... a full pail on her head, Thus mused on her prospects in life, it is said:— Let me see, I should think that this milk will procure One hundred good eggs or fourscore, to be sure. Well then, stop a bit, it must not be forgotten, Some of these may be broken, and some may be rotten; But if twenty for accident should be detached, It will leave me just sixty sounds eggs to be hatched. Well, sixty sound ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... well-belov'd, I have in thee The only blessing left on earth to me, The one sweet solace in my dreary life Of fourscore years of racial hate and strife; Dear Comforter, 'tis true, our feet now stand Within the limits of our people's land; Behind us are the obloquy and pain Endured in cruel, persecuting Spain, Yet feel I still more keenly here than ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... very gracious to him, and lengthened out this second youth to a green old age. These men of old Gaul had iron constitutions; they did not begin to think themselves old men until they had turned fourscore. It was thirty years after Helen's death when Tallisker one night sent this ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... generation in a 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 ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... carried dishes of silver and gold. After these was brought the gold coin, which was divided into vessels that weighed three talents each, similar to those that contained the silver; they were in number fourscore, wanting three. These were followed by those that brought the consecrated bowl which Emil'ius caused to be made, that weighed ten talents, and was adorned with precious stones. Then were exposed to view the cups of Antig'onus and Seleu'cus, ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... of the monument of Rachel unto this present day. Jacob went thence and came to Isaac his father into Mamre the city of Arbah, that is Hebron, in which dwelled Abraham and Isaac. And all the days of Isaac were complete, which were an hundred and fourscore years, and he consumed and died in good mind, and Esau and Jacob his ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... Walter Ewbank. [F] He had as white a head and fresh a cheek As ever were produced by youth and age 210 Engendering in the blood of hale fourscore. Through five [24] long generations had the heart Of Walter's forefathers o'erflowed the bounds Of their inheritance, that single cottage— You see it yonder! and those few green fields. 215 They ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... his 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 bad outlook that ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... 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 ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... 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 ...
— 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
... barbarian negro of Africa, for Cinque and Grabbo for their deeds comparing them to Harmodius and Aristogeiton, whose classic memory made each bosom thrill. That was worth all his honors—it was worth while to live fourscore years for that." ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... 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 fitted only for the habitation ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... and which suggested a doubt or a hindrance where Phil would have recognized none;—the best stuff in him, after all, of which a hale, hearty, contented man can be made,—the stuff that takes on age with dignity, that wastes no power, that conserves every element of manliness to fourscore. Too great keenness does not know the name of content; its only experience of joy is by spasms, when Idealism puts its prism to the eye and shows all things in those gorgeous hues, which to-morrow fade. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... 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
... strength, books also increase his manhood and multiply his brain forces. With them, a man of fourscore years ends his career wiser than, without them, he could have been, though he had lived and wrought through ten thousand summers and winters. This is what Emerson means when he says, "Give me a book, health and a June day, and I will ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... original of Paul Pry, (which Poole, however, strenuously denied,)—a belief easily entertained by those who knew the man. A little, round man he was, with straight and well-made-up figure, and rosy cheeks that might have graced a milkmaid, when his years numbered certainly fourscore.[F] But his age no one ever knew. The story is well known of James Smith asserting that it never could be ascertained, for that the register of his birth was lost in the fire of London, and Hook's comment,—"Oh, he's much older than that: he's one of the little Hills that skipped ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... no blast he died, But fell like autumn fruit that mellowed long: Even wondered at, because he dropt no sooner. Fate seemed to wind him up for fourscore years; Yet freshly ran he on ten winters more, Till like a clock worn out with eating time, The wheels of weary life at ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... for he was regarded as an exceptional person, whose claims on neighbourly help were not to be matched in Raveloe. Any superstition that remained concerning him had taken an entirely new colour; and Mr. Macey, now a very feeble old man of fourscore and six, never seen except in his chimney-corner or sitting in the sunshine at his door-sill, was of opinion that when a man had done what Silas had done by an orphan child, it was a sign that his money would come to light again, or leastwise that the robber would ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... Their arrival was sudden and so unexpected, that 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 to land in Ireland, ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... appease Hardicanute, (whose brother he had been instrumental in murdering,) made him a magnificent present of a galley with a gilt stern, rowed by fourscore men, who wore each of them a golden bracelet on his arm, weighing sixteen ounces, and were clothed and armed in the most sumptuous manner. Hardicanute pleased with the splendour of the spectacle, quickly forgot his brother's murder, and on Godwin's swearing that he was innocent of the crime, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 383, August 1, 1829 • Various
... 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 they faint ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... Prince James Stuart, called the Pretender, 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 ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... what makes Aunt Viney feel this way!" exclaimed Rose Mary with distress in her blue eyes that she raised to Uncle Tucker's, that were bent benignly upon her as she stood in the barn door beside him. "She says that as the Lord has granted her her fourscore years by reason of great strength, she oughtn't to remind Him that He has forgotten her by having an eighty-second birthday. Everybody in Sweetbriar has been looking forward to it for a week, and it was going to be such ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... though sunbeams variegated their ample sides, lived a sage, to whom nature had unlocked her most hidden secrets. His hollow eyes, sunk in their orbits, retired from the view of vulgar objects, and turned inwards, overleaped the boundary prescribed to human knowledge. Intense thinking during fourscore and ten years, had whitened the scattered locks on his head, which, like the summit of the distant mountain, appeared to be bound by an ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... my 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 ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... Berthold. "But 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 of life. But you, my dear Pastor!—and ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... and gone, 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, Thady;" ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... Thomas Hearne tells us that he left behind him "a valuable collection of musick mostly pricked by himself, which was sold upon his death for near an hundred pounds," "a considerable collection of musical instruments which was sold for fourscore pounds," "not to mention the excellent collection of printed books that he also left behind him, both of chemistry and musick. Besides these books that he left, he had some years before his death (1714) sold by auction a noble collection of books, most of them in the Rosicrucian faculty ...
— How to Form a Library, 2nd ed • H. B. Wheatley
... while the Chancellor stood up. From that we discoursed of the evil of putting out men of experience in business as the Chancellor, and of the condition of the King's party at present, who, as the Papists, though otherwise fine persons, yet being by law kept for these fourscore years out of employment, they are now wholly uncapable of business; and so the Cavaliers for twenty years, who, says he, for the most part have either given themselves over to look after country and family business, and those the best of them, and the ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... quickly mount, and ordered the bells to be rung, and the streets to be hung with tapestries and silken stuffs, that his son might be received with joy; then he himself got on his horse. Of clerks there were present fourscore, gentle and honourable men, clad in grey cloaks bordered with sable. Of knights there were full five hundred, mounted on bay, sorrel, or white-spotted steeds. There were so many burghers and dames ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... 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
... sometime throwing stones, and sometime making thundering noise for two hours space it ceast, and all was quiet till the morn. After their rising, and the maid come in to make the fire, they looked about the rooms; they found fourscore stones brought in that night, and going to lay them together in the corner where the glass (before mentioned) had been swept up, they found that every piece of glass had been carried away that night. ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... pass till the next day after the battle, was then mingled with blood. For it is said there fell more than twenty-five thousand of the enemy; of the Romans, as Posidonius relates, a hundred; as Nasica, only fourscore. This battle, though so great, was very quickly decided, it being three in the afternoon when they first engaged, and not four when the enemy was vanquished; the rest of the day was spent in the pursuit of the fugitives, whom they ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... came to pass, This sorrowful Story is thus: Of Guineas bright a glorious Sight, I had in a Cat-skin Purse: The Value of near Fourscore Pounds, As good as e'er I had told, Those Crafty Jades have learnt their Trades, And plunder'd me ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... 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
... now hath every city Sent up her tale of men; The foot are fourscore thousand, The horse are thousands ten. Before the gates of Sutrium Is met the great array. A proud man was ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... with his train without having first received permission of 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 no horses have to pay eight per ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... 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
... distemper, of no blast he died, But fell like autumn fruit that mellow'd long,— Even wonder'd at, because he dropp'd no sooner. Fate seem'd to wind him up for fourscore years, Yet freshly ran he on ten winters more; Till like a clock worn out with eating time, The wheels of weary life ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... All things, I must be speedy: at my hour Of twilight little light of life remains. Could I free Venice, and avenge my wrongs, I had lived too long, and willingly would sleep Next moment with my sires; and, wanting this, Better that sixty of my fourscore years Had been already where—how soon, I care not— 320 The whole must be extinguished;—better that They ne'er had been, than drag me on to be The thing these arch-oppressors fain would make me. Let me consider—of efficient troops There are ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... "Fourscore, and so hale and strong! I have known men half your age not half so vigorous and alert. Why, you may ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... for Teneriffe in the Canaries, off the west of Africa. There, to everybody's great 'amaze,' the Spaniards 'appeared levelling of bases [small portable cannon] and arquebuses, with divers others, to the number of fourscore, with halberds, pikes, swords, and targets.' But when it was found that Hawkins had been taken for a privateer, and when it is remembered that four hundred privateering vessels—English and Huguenot—had ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... over these localities. Time had cast it all far back that Pemigewasset, with its meadows and border trees; that little village whitening in the margin of its inter vale; and that one house which we could distinguish, where the mother that watched over and endured our wayward childhood totters at fourscore! ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... of devoted friends in Rome were very anxious about him during the winter of 1563-64. Although almost fourscore years and ten he would still walk abroad in all weathers, and took none of the precautions usual for a man of his age. Tiberio Calcagni, writing on February 14 to Lionardo, says in the letter published by Daelli:(182) "Walking through Rome to-day I heard from many persons that Messer ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... savant seeing a 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 in man's organs ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... 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 of Wales, yet I am ...
— King Henry IV, The First Part • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... 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 New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. • Various
... 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 ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... look at his watch. He had a glimpse of 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 ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... her toilet was, pulled out a string of other rings of all sorts, which she showed them, and asked them if they knew what those jewels meant? No, say they, we hope you will be pleased to tell us. They are, replies she, the rings of all the men to whom I have granted my favour; There are full fourscore and eighteen of them, which I keep in token to remember them; and asked yours for the same reason, to make up my hundred. So that, continues she, I have had a hundred gallants already, notwithstanding the vigilance of this wicked genie, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... terms. Now you understand the No Rent cry. Now you understand the No Landlord cry. The land was stolen from the people, and the people carefully remember the fact. You hear Nationalists speaking ill of the Irish members. The members have done well for us. They have done grandly. Fourscore Irishmen have conquered the British Empire, and without firing a shot. That after all beats the record of the Boers, but they got complete independence. We are not yet there; but it will come, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... 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 ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... of these 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
... 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
... thoughts of youth Came o'er his mind like consciousness of truth, Or like a sunbeam through a lowering sky, It gave him youth again, and ecstacy; He joy'd to see them in this favourite spot, Who of fourscore, or fifty score, would not? He wink'd, he nodded, and then raised his hand,— 'Twas seen and answer'd by the Oakly band. Forth leap'd the light of heart and light of heel, E'en stiff limb'd age the kindling joy could feel. They form'd, while ...
— May Day With The Muses • Robert Bloomfield
... to night, in any respect to be pitied? Is the solitary orphan, that sits all day sewing in a garret, while the old woman for whom she works is out washing, an object of compassion? or the widow of fourscore, hurkling over the embers, with the stump of a pipe in her toothless mouth? Is it so sad a thing indeed to be alone? or to have one's motions circumscribed within the narrowest imaginable ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... is the same tree I saw spring up then a little twig, which not even a moderate sceptic will deny; though he takes so much pains to persuade plain folks out of their own existence, by laughing us out of the dull notion that he who dies a withered old fellow at fourscore, should ever be considered as the same person whom his mother brought forth a pretty little plump baby eighty years before—when, says he cunningly, you are forced yourself to confess, that his mother, who died four months afterwards, would ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... present, 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 ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... 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 on the western bank; the first colony was composed of ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... every clerk offered a halfpenny. The Mass was sung by divers of the Queen's Chapel and children. And after Mass was done every clerk went their procession, two and two together, each having a surplice, a rich cope and a garland. After them fourscore standards, streamers and banners, and every one that bare had an albe, or else a surplice, and two and two together. Then came the waits playing, and then between, thirty Clarkes again singing Salva festa dies. So there were ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... the civilized world. In all lands it was hailed as the end of despotism and the triumph of democracy and freedom. The joy of the Russian people was unbounded. At last, after fourscore years of heroic struggle and sacrifice by countless heroes, named and nameless, the goal of freedom was attained. Men, women, and children sang in the streets to express their joy. Red flags were displayed everywhere and solemnly saluted by the officers and men of the Czar's ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo |
