"Fourscore" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... English archers bent their bowes, Their hearts were good and trew, At the first flight of arrowes sent, Full fourscore ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... planting at fourscore. Three striplings, who their satchels wore, 'In building,' cried, 'the sense were more; But then to plant young trees at that age! The man is surely in his dotage. Pray, in the name of common sense, What fruit can he expect to gather Of all this labour and ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... 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 having demonstrated the ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... now mature— Just as we see some old book-print, Not to one scene its hero stint; But, in the distance, take occasion To draw him in some other station. Here this prepost'rous union seems A kind of meeting of extremes. Ye may not live together. Mean ye To pass that gulf that lies between ye Of fourscore years, as we skip ages In turning o'er historic pages? Thou dost not to this age belong: Thou art three generations wrong: Old Time has miss'd thee: there he tarries! Go on to thy contemporaries! Give the child up. To see thee kiss him Is a compleat anachronism. Nay, keep him. It is good to see ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... "Fourscore, and so hale and strong! I have known men half your age not half so vigorous and alert. Why, you may live ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... 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 sea or land. Nevertheless Laudonniere ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... first year of the marriage, upon a bleak, forbidding March day—a day of bitter wind and icy sleet,—there rode one to the Overholt door who called upon Pap and Aunt Cornelia to hitch up and come with all possible haste to old Eph'm Blackshears, Cornelia's father—a man who had lived to fourscore, and who now lay at his last, asking for his daughter, his baby ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... their beds. From my own balcony, I am confident, I saw several thousands in the street, and counted at least seventeen, who were upon their knees, and seemed in actual devotion. Eleven of them, indeed, appeared to be old women of about fourscore; the six others were men in advanced life, but (as I could guess) two of them might be ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... lost their lives on this singular occasion was fourscore and four persons, including fifteen children; and at this expense of blood was extinguished a flame that arose as suddenly, burned as fiercely, and decayed as rapidly, as any portent of the kind within the annals of superstition. The Commissioners returned to Court with the ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... charm of homeliness into the forum. 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 prime. A true pillar ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... 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. Was the new republic hailed ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... less flushed by this uproarious sympathy so gallantly shown, and the very thunder of so many horses' feet, each carrying a friend, was very exciting and glorious. Why, before they got to the village they had fourscore horsemen ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... whence, on 23rd April, was dated the first official act of his reign. He confirmed in ampler form the general pardon granted a few days before by Henry VII.; but the ampler form was no bar to the exemption of fourscore offenders from the act of grace.[79] Foremost among them were the three brothers De la Pole, Sir Richard Empson and Edmund Dudley. The exclusion of Empson and Dudley from the pardon was more popular than the pardon itself. If anything could have enhanced Henry's favour ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... 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 ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... her: guess, O guess! what transport I felt at reading that. I did not know how to contain my elevation of spirits. I thought myself one of the greatest geniuses in Europe. I thought I could write all sorts of books, and work at all handicraft trades. I imagined that I had fourscore millions of money out at interest, and that I should actually be chosen Pope at the next election. I obtest you, my friend, in the warmest spirit of love to return to her Ladyship my most sincere thanks, and tell her that when the planets permit us to meet, she herself shall ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... 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
... 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 ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... 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 to account for his singular longevity, except ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... (Greeks, Europeans or Franks, er Roum), by name St. Athanasius, in Rome the Greatest [5] (or Greater, utsma, fem. of aatsem, qu re Constantinople?) on the seven-and-twentieth of the month Shubat (February) of the year one thousand seven hundred fourscore and seven, [he being] then teacher of the Arabic tongue in the Library of the Sultan, King of France, at ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... 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 ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... So these two-and-twenty knights drew them together, and by then they were armed on horseback, and promised Sir Launcelot to do what he would. Then there fell to them, what of North Wales and of Cornwall, for Sir Lamorak's sake and for Sir Tristram's sake, to the number of a fourscore knights. ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... family, he spent his time in the most abject trifling, and drew many heavy expences upon his father, who had no other means of supporting himself than what his congregation afforded, and a small estate of fourscore pounds a year ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... battle Into wrangle unheeded of clanging and rattle, And no man shall note then the gold on the sword When the runes have no meaning, the mouth-cry no word, When all mingled together, the war-sea of men Shall toss up the steel-spray round fourscore and ten. ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... 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. Here ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... made any offer to stir; when about two hours before night, they came down directly upon us; and, though we had not perceived it, we found they had been joined by some more of the same, so that they were near fourscore horse, whereof, however, we fancied some were women. They came in till they were within half a shot of our little wood, when we fired one musket without ball, and called to them in the Russian tongue, to know what they wanted, and bid them keep off; but, as if ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... with his eldest daughter as should be suitable to the occasion. The commons immediately resolved, that but of the monies arising from the sale of lands in the island of St. Christopher's, his majesty should be empowered to apply fourscore thousand pounds as a marriage dower for his daughter; and a clause for this purpose was inserted in the bill, for enabling his majesty to apply five hundred thousand pounds out of the sinking fund for the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... 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
... through 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 ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... 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 there The degradation which our people share; Each object here speaks ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... Sun is a most glorious sight, I've seen him rise full oft, indeed of late I have sat up on purpose all the night,[bn][153] Which hastens, as physicians say, one's fate; And so all ye, who would be in the right In health and purse, begin your day to date From daybreak, and when coffined at fourscore, Engrave upon the plate, you ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... 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 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 384, Saturday, August 8, 1829. • Various
... 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 ...
— The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. • Various
... said the other, very sharply, "you'd like to draw the land dry with potato crops, and have fourscore hogs snoring in the farmyard; that's your idea of a farm. Oh! I know you want to be elder brother. Well, I tell'ee what do; you kill me first, Bill Fielding, and then you will be ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... 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 ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... gilly-flowers into his sack, and had always a tun glass of small beer standing by him, which he often stirred about with rosemary. He lived to be an hundred, and never lost his eyesight, nor used spectacles. He got on horseback without help, and rode to the death of the stag till he was past fourscore." Gilpin's Forest Scenery, vol. ii., pp. 23, 26. I should add, from the same authority, that Hastings was a neighbour of Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, with whom (as was likely enough) he ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... and hoary-headed man, who had passed the limits of fourscore, once said to me, "My father was in the army during the whole eight years of the Revolutionary War, at first as a common soldier, afterwards as an officer. My mother had the sole charge of us four little ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... 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 ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... advantages of wealth and luxury. The image of a free constitution was preserved with decent reverence: the Roman senate appeared to possess the sovereign authority, and devolved on the emperors all the executive powers of government. During a happy period of more than fourscore years, the public administration was conducted by the virtue and abilities of Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the two Antonines. It is the design of this, and of the two succeeding chapters, to describe the prosperous condition of their empire; and ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... 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 ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... untiring effort has been the rule of his life. Man was made to be well, and he was made to work. It is only work—which is the constant effort to retain equilibrium—that makes life endurable. So we find Haeckel now, at near fourscore years, a model of manly vigor, with all the eager, curious, receptive qualities of youth—a happy man, but one who knows that happiness lies on the way to Heaven, and not in arriving there and sitting ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... hundred and four-score 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 ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... 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 ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... 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, ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... of "fourscore and upwards," like Lear, and who, like Lear, have been "mightily abused" in their day, are found, upon diligent inquiry, to have long outlived themselves, like the Archbishop of Granada; but here is a man, or was but the other day, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... 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 ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... to romance and adventure. He was reared in the traditions of the House of Dinevor. He heard the brilliant and pitiful stories of Rhys ap Tewdwr, who, after having lost and won South Wales, died on the stricken field fighting against the Normans, an old man of over fourscore years; and of his gallant son, Prince Rhys, who, after wrenching his patrimony from the invaders, died of a broken heart a few months after his wife, the Princess Gwenllian, had fallen in a skirmish at Kidwelly. No doubt he heard, though he makes but sparing ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... 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 horseback ...
— The Natural History of Chocolate • D. de Quelus
... advanced within less than a year, to about fourscore houses and cottages, such as they are, where merchants and handicrafts are following their vocations as fast as they can; while the countrymen are close at their farms. Some of them got a little winter corn in the ground last season; and the generality have had a handsome summer-crop, ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various
... authority, I could hardly have believed that your Lordship, upon a mere abstract of petitions, without further examination, or any consultation, even with the Bishop of Leon, should have decided upon sixty out of perhaps fourscore applications. But, as I am sure you always act with equity and discretion, I am perfectly satisfied in your having assumed this very delicate and critical of all trusts. I only wish that I had been apprised of your Lordship's having taken on ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... 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 openly by the crowd ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... "At the distance of fourscore miles from the Persian Gulf, the Euphrates and Tigris unite in a broad and direct current. In the midway, between the junction and the mouth of these famous streams, the new settlement of Bussorah ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... not a single cocoa nut, nor any huts: We found, however, at the westermost end, all the canoes and people who had fled, at our approach, from Queen Charlotte's Island, and some more. We counted eight double canoes, and about fourscore people, women, and children. The canoes were drawn up on the beach, the women and children were placed near them, and the men advanced with their pikes and firebrands, making a great noise, and dancing in a strange manner. We observed that this island was sandy, and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... now, almost fourscore, There lived he, but now lived there no more. At seventeen many their fortunes seek; But at fourscore it is too ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... away young; you may live to fourscore; you may die in your bed, or in the open field—but if Mary intercedes for you, that day will find you watching and ready. All things will be fixed to secure your salvation, all dangers will be foreseen, all obstacles removed, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... 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 ...
— The Hollow Land • William Morris
... take a cast, and say most likely to one another, as I heard them say once before a cast in a museum, "A good face, a fair brow, fine lines: strange that he should have been a murderer!" Well! so be it. Even though I lived for fourscore years and ten, the sun would nevermore rise for me as it ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... people off the premises when I began my notes referring to old age. I must be equally fair with old people now. They are earnestly requested to leave this paper to young persons from the age of twelve to that of fourscore years and ten, at which latter period of life I am sure that I shall have at least one youthful reader. You know well enough what I mean by youth and age;—something in the soul, which has no more ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... us an insight into our situation. The first were the Alps, as they call them, being as I suppose the French for apes, of which there are no doubt plenty in those regions; and the other were the highlands of Corsica, both being as white, in midsummer, as the hair of a man of fourscore. You see, Sir, we had only to set the two, by compass, to know, within a league or two, where we were. So we ran till midnight, and hove-to; and in the morning we took the light to feel ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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
... pride, began now, like a true orator, to rouse other passions to its assistance. "My lord," says she, in a graver voice, "you will be pleased to remember, you mentioned this matter to me first; for I would not appear to you in the light of one who is endeavouring to put off my cousin upon you. Fourscore thousand pounds do not stand in need of an advocate to recommend them." "Nor doth Miss Western," said he, "require any recommendation from her fortune; for, in my opinion, no woman ever had half her charms." "Yes, yes, my lord," replied the lady, looking in the glass, "there have ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... may be, fourscore years was laid upon him, (35) when it came under his observation that the king of Egypt, (36) with his hosts of foot and horse and stores of wealth, had set his heart on a war with Persia. Joyfully ...
— Agesilaus • Xenophon
... hob. Warm her old stomach with nut-brown ale and a toast laid in the fire. Be kind to the poor old school-girl of ninety, who has had leave to come out for a day of Christmas holiday. Shall there be many more Christmases for thee? Think of the ninety she has seen already; the fourscore and ten cold, ...
— Some Roundabout Papers • W. M. Thackeray
... other pull her home. I grant, quoth he, wealth is a great Provocative to am'rous heat. It is all philters, and high diet, 455 That makes love rampant, and to fly out: 'Tis beauty always in the flower, That buds and blossoms at fourscore: 'Tis that by which the sun and moon At their own weapons are out-done: 460 That makes Knights-Errant fall in trances, And lay about 'em in romances: 'Tis virtue, wit, and worth, and all That men divine and sacred call: For what is worth in ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... not conceal her resentment at him, for saying to Young, that 'an old man should not resign himself to the management of any body.' I asked him, if there was any improper connection between them. 'No, Sir, no more than between two statues. He was past fourscore, and she a very coarse woman. She read to him, and I suppose made his coffee, and frothed his chocolate, and did such things as an old man wishes ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... of nearly two hundred thousand men, was almost totally destroyed in one night. "The angel of the Lord went forth," says the contemporary writer, Isaiah, "and smote in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred and fourscore and five thousand; and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses" (Isa. xxxvii. 36). Whatever the agency employed in this remarkable destruction—whether it was caused ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... pestilence had visited Gorumna in the absence of its mistress, and that the Dark Master had caught a score of the O'Malleys who had been wrecked in Bertraghboy Bay, promptly hanging them all. Between the plague and the hanging Nuala had a bare fourscore men left within the castle, and she counted Brian's offer as a ruse on the part of O'Donnell, for she was strongly afraid ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... glance, I thought I had before me some Indian hieroglyphics; but bringing back from the place of its long obscurity the little knowledge of the French language that I held in possession, I deciphered, that, "fourscore years before, beside the froth of the Huron Water, Father Kino had performed the marriage-rite upon Luella, daughter of Uncas, of the Dacotahs, and Richard Monten, of Montreal." Below the certificate of the priest of the Church were strange characters ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... mental suffering on the brow of the great lady, which was a person of the magnanimity of an ancient matron, and bore up in a manner surprising to behold in one who stood, as it were, with one hand upon her coffin, while her other stretched backward through the shadow of fourscore years to touch her cradle. And ever, from time to time, couriers came to the noble mansion, while others flew in various directions on swift horses at utmost speed; and looking up into that lofty atmosphere, we saw clouds and ominous signs of coming storms, before we could hear the voice of the ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... withered old Maintenon to utter prayers at his bedside, and croaking Jesuits to prepare him,* with heaven knows what wretched tricks and mummeries, for his appearance in that Great Republic that lies on the other side of the grave. In the course of his fourscore splendid miserable years, he never had but one friend, and he ruined and left her. Poor La Valliere, what a sad tale is yours! "Look at this Galerie des Glaces," cries Monsieur Vatout, staggering with surprise at the appearance of the room, two hundred and forty-two ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... widow. His 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 ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... 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 by ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... English archers bent their bows— Their hearts were good and true,— At the first flight of arrows sent, Full fourscore Scots they slew. ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... a happy and contented people, and, if we except the portion of tyranny which we admit he really did exercise towards some few individuals who resisted his power, he was a wise and beneficent governor. This prince died in the midst of his power and fortune, leaving somewhere about fourscore children. Your Lordships know that the princes of the East have a great number of wives; and we know that these women, though reputed of a secondary rank, are yet of a very high degree, and honorably maintained according to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... 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 ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... 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
... Scotland for refuge, and the land not able to sustain them. It was found expedient that ilk parish within the kingdom should receive a collection of ilk man's charity for their help and support, whereupon was collected of this poor parish fourscore pounds." (Spalding's "History of the Troubles in Scotland," vol. i. p. 34. Aberdeen, 1792.) "As a body, the presbyterians [in Ireland] suffered less by the ravages of the rebellion than any other class. The more influential ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... to a Waterman of London, a Laborious Trade: and yet though it be said, that Ease is the Nurse of Poetry, yet did he not only follow his Calling, but also plyed his Writings, which in time produced above fourscore Books, which I have seen; besides several others unknown to me; some of which were dedicated to King James, and King Charles the First, and by them well accepted, considering the meanness of his Education to produce works ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... Spenser publishes his 'Faerie Queene.' "Now began the golden age of England's literature; and this age was to last for about fourscore years" ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... they that were come out of the captivity offered sacrifice unto the Lord God of Israel, even twelve bullocks for all Israel, fourscore ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous
... week ago to-day that the coach from New York set down at my door a stranger of fine and quaint appearance, whose white hair betokened him to be aged, but whose alert and energetic movements showed that, if he had passed the line of fourscore, he had still enough of the fire of youth remaining to make his presence welcome in whatever place he chose to enter. As had happened sixteen years before, I was looking out of the window when the coach drove up, and, being at once attracted by the ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... the 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
... 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, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... 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 ...
— Silhouettes • Arthur Symons
... had lied in this case, he had lied in all. So held the angry caliph, who turned upon him with bitter abuse, calling him thief and liar, and swearing by Allah that he would crucify him. In the end he ordered the old man, fourscore years of age, corpulent and asthmatic, to be exposed to the fierce sun of Syria for a whole summer's day, and bade his brother Omar to see that the cruel ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... the light and sound of things on earth Requickening, all within our green sea's girth; A time of passage or a time of birth Fourscore years since as ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... 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 ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... 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, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... Well, all is worthy of us, were it more, Who with our riots, pride, and civil hate, Have so provok'd the justice of the gods: We, that, within these fourscore years, were born Free, equal lords of the triumphed world, And knew no masters, but affections; To which betraying first our liberties, We since became the slaves to one man's lusts; And now to many: every minist'ring spy ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... cosmopolitan enterprise of the transit. France and Germany each sent out six expeditions; twenty-six stations were in Russian, twelve in English, eight in American, three in Italian, one in Dutch occupation. In all, at a cost of nearly a quarter of a million, some fourscore distinct posts of observation were provided; among them such inhospitable, and all but inaccessible rocks in the bleak Southern Ocean, as St. Paul's and Campbell Islands, swept by hurricanes, and fitted only for the habitation of seabirds, where ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... tragedy is capable reach their climax. Only one who has something of the 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 ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... serve any good purpose for you to send a shorthand writer to interview my mother, as she is approaching fourscore years, and her memory is rapidly failing. I believe I can get a very full account (barring minutiae) from a younger brother. But if the young man who was a fellow-passenger with my brother (when my brother died at sea off the Cape of Good ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... hundred and thirty five thousand Years, and the 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 ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... virulent and dangerous infirmity in horses, and which (like cancers) were reputed incurable by any other topic, than some actual, or potential cautery: But, what is more noble, a dear friend of mine assur'd me, that a countrey neighbour of his (at least fourscore years of age) who had lain sick of a bloody strangury (which by cruel torments reduc'd him to the very article of death) was, under God, recover'd to perfect, and almost miraculous health and strength (so as to be able to fall ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... that in his gait, attitudes, and all his movements which indicated physical vigor, not to say the remains, at least, of great elasticity and sinewy activity. Aged as he was, and he must have long since passed his fourscore years, his form was erect as that of a youth. In stature he was of rather more than middle height, and in movements deliberate and dignified. His dress was quite plain, being black, and according to the customs of the day. ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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 they marched, had learnt the stratagem ...
— 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
... pulse of each child, since now and then a person is born with a peculiarly slow or fast pulse, and the very case in hand may be of such peculiarity. An infant's pulse is 140, a child of seven about 80, and from 20 to 60 years it is 70 beats a minute, declining to 60 at fourscore. A healthful grown person beats 70 times in a minute, declining to 60 at fourscore. At 60, if the pulse always exceeds 70, there is a disease; the machine working itself out, there is a fever or inflammation somewhere, ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... mosse, 'mong frogs, and bogs, and fogs, 'Mongst craggy cliffs and thunder-battered hills, Hares, hinds, bucks, roes, are chased by men and dogs, Where two hours' hunting fourscore fat deer kills. Lowland, your sports are low as is your seat; The Highland games and ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... among the jurists Of the land's Supreme Tribunal, Of the great judicial body, At the nation's seat of power. All along his pilgrim journey, Are the thickly-showered laurels. Now his days on earth are numbered, As the sands are gently dropping— —Fourscore years and four their telling— Now his mighty brain is resting, From the pressure of life's burdens, May his end be as the twilight Of a day replete with blessings; May he fall asleep in Jesus, With the Father's ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... 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, it ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... 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 violence of ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... roughish-haired mixed Scotch-and-Irish terrier, not big enough yet to wrestle with a woodchuck, but able to shake our affections as he shakes a rat. And that is because I am more than half through with my fourscore years and this is my first dog! And the boys—this is their first dog, too, every stray and tramp dog that they have brought ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... been 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 been only ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... 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. Lady Vane ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... with the snow of age, learned to play on instruments of music. Cato, at fourscore, began his study of Greek, and the same age saw Plutarch beginning, with the enthusiasm of a boy, his first lessons in Latin. The Character of Man, Theophrastus' greatest work, was begun on his ninetieth birthday. Chaucer's Canterbury Tales was the work ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan
... for the ideals voiced in The Poet (1863), and we listen respectfully to The Flood of Years (1876), as the final utterance of a poet who has had the experience of fourscore years. ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... settled in this place 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
... 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 than they are worth. And if you should beat ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... and twenty-seven provinces. To proclaim his undisputed possession, and to display his glory, he appointed a feast, which may perhaps be deemed unrivalled in the majesty of its circumstances and the length of its continuance. At the expiration of a hundred and fourscore days the king gave another entertainment of seven days, for "all the people that were present in Shushan the palace, both unto great and small." It was held in the court of the garden, for the purpose of accommodation, and with great magnificence. Vashti also, his royal consort, in conformity ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... 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 and ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... integrity. Says Gibbon: "Among the Greek colonies and churches of Asia, Philadelphia is still erect, a column in a scene of ruins. At a distance from the sea, forgotten by the emperors, encompassed on all sides by the Turks, her valiant citizens defended their religion and their freedom above fourscore years, and at length capitulated with the proudest of the Ottomans." Philadelphia is still the seat of an archbishop, and contains from six hundred to seven hundred Greek houses, and several places of Christian worship. "The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... Henry Hunt with rigour hot Came bravely on the other side, Soon he drove down his fore-mast tree, And killed fourscore men beside. Now, out alas! Sir Andrew cried, What may a man now think, or say? Yonder merchant thief, that pierceth me, He was my ...
— The Book of Brave Old Ballads • Unknown
... 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 a star in ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... tolerably erect, with her head bent forward, apparently from her having for a long time been accustomed to carrying heavy burdens in a strap placed across her forehead. Her complexion is very white for a woman of her age, and although the wrinkles of fourscore years are deeply indented in her cheeks, yet the crimson of youth is distinctly visible. Her eyes are light blue, a little faded by age, and naturally brilliant and sparkling. Her sight is quite dim, though she is able to perform her necessary labor ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... them from falling into evil courses, which though of little consequence to the public, would certainly be fatal to themselves. If I have room at the bottom of this paper, I will transcribe a petition to the present ministry, sent me by one of these authors, in behalf of himself and fourscore others of ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... man, "is Abdurrahman, and fourscore and three years ago I was born in this city, not very far from the spot where I now dwell. My father, who was a merchant, and fairly prosperous, furnished me, when I was twenty years of age, with a stock of goods with which to commence ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... hair that even the fingers of love have caressed but with reverent half-touch,—and love, and hope, and life go out in one dread moment of horror and despair. Now, through the reverberations of more than fourscore years, through all the tempest-rage of a war more awful than that, and fraught, we hope, with a grander joy, a clear, young voice, made sharp with agony, rings through the shuddering woods, cleaves up through the summer sky, and wakens in every heart a thrill of speechless pain. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various |
