"Fourscore" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 violence of ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... distance of fourscore miles from the Persian Gulf, the Euphrates and Tigris unite in a broad and direct current. In the midway, between the junction and the mouth of these famous streams, the new settlement of Bussorah was planted on ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... could be distinguished, wildly painted; the athletic figures, gaudily clad and barbarically decorated; the ball-sticks, held aloft in a sort of rhythmic vibration as if quivering for a chance at the ball; and fourscore wild young voices howled defiance at loco Town, whose youth in return howled its municipal pride, failing only ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... yielding? The Proconsul had misunderstood him, but he pressed him hard and said 'Swear the oath, and I will release thee. Revile the Christ!' Polycarp looked him in the face, and gave him the answer which can never die. 'Fourscore and six years have I been His servant, and He hath done me no wrong. How then can I blaspheme my King Who saved me?' The words of pity changed into threats. 'I have wild beasts here,' said Statius, 'and I will throw thee to them except thou ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... desert moors, But where no bear nor lion roars, And naught can live but hogs; For all o'erturned by Noah's flood, Of fourscore miles scarce one foot's good, And hills are ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... not to confine herself to Books of Devotion alone; People are not born for themselves only; no, no, as ancient as she is, she must yet do some Service to the Society. Says an Author, what, Shall her Grace fancy herself as hail at Fourscore as she was at Forty? Accordingly, he lends her his Hand, and she is led very dangerously ill into his Paper. The next Morning he is obliged to retract it, and so the Publick are Gainers two ...
— The Tricks of the Town: or, Ways and Means of getting Money • John Thomson
... common service, as the normal type of the individual life? And this is precisely the temper and the spirit of Byron. Nowhere else do we see drawn in such traits that colossal figure, which has haunted Europe these fourscore years and more, with its new-born passion, its half-controlled will, its constant cry for a multitude of unknown blessings under the single name of Freedom, the one known and unadulterated word of blessing. ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley
... 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 Lars ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... 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 the daring votaries of science, in the wise ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... and other great men, Franklin was the Nestor, in wisdom as well as years. He was too feeble to take a conspicuous part in the discussions, but his opinions and counsel had great weight whenever he spoke, for his judgment was never clearer than when he had passed fourscore years. The battle of words had to be fought by younger and more vigorous men, of whom, perhaps, Madison was the most prominent. At no time of his life, however, was Franklin a great speaker, except in conversation, but his mind ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... the expression of national qualities and in the representation of provincial peculiarities is to-day accompanied by an increasing cosmopolitanism which seems to be casting down the barriers of race and of language. More than fourscore years ago, Goethe said that even then national literature was "rather an unmeaning term" as "the epoch of world-literature was at hand." With all his wisdom Goethe failed to perceive that cosmopolitanism is a sorry thing when ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... 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 ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... 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 been ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... account of your error with regard to the two species of herons, you incidentally gave me great entertainment in your description of the heronry at Cressi Hall, which is a curiosity I never could manage to see. Fourscore nests of such a bird on one tree is a rarity which I would ride half as many miles to have a sight of. Pray be sure to tell me in your next whose seat Cressi Hall is, and near what town it lies. I have often thought that ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... 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 a star ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... hastily aside.] Fash. What the devil's the matter? Lory. Sir, your fortune's ruined if you are not married. Yonder's your brother arrived, with two coaches and six horses, twenty footmen, and a coat worth fourscore pounds—so judge what will become of your lady's heart. Fash. Is he in the house yet? Lory. No, they are capitulating with him at the gate. Sir Tunbelly luckily takes him for an impostor; and I have told ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan
... all the term- time, and tell tales for it in the vacation to the hostess; or it knighthood shall do worse, take sanctuary in Cole-harbour, and fast. It shall fright all its friends with borrowing letters; and when one of the fourscore hath brought it knighthood ten shillings, it knighthood shall go to the Cranes, or the Bear at the Bridge-foot, and be drunk in fear: it shall not have money to discharge one tavern-reckoning, to invite the old creditors to forbear it knighthood, or the new, that should be, to trust it knighthood. ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... down the stream in it, and crossed the Avon some fourscore yards below where we were standing. They came back in it, and moored it to the sedges in which it had ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... front of the troop. He was well advanced in years—at least fourscore, as I afterwards learned—but he sat erect in his saddle, and his ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... commission, and by force, to withstande a violence, and thei to be also betwen the Drumme and the Ansigne: this is thorder, with the whiche I would dispose a maine battaile, whiche should bee the disposyng of halfe the armie, and it should take in breadth three hundred fourscore and twoo yardes, and in length as moche as above is saied, not accomptyng the space, that thesame parte of the extraordinarie Pikes will take, whiche muste make a defence for the unarmed, whiche will bee aboute lxxv. yardes: the other maine battaile, ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... poised 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 ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... yet to remember, yet to tell! let him not delay. His has been a life, one day of which is more crowded than is the fourscore-year vegetation of a squire or alderman. . . . Everything seems sealed on a memory, wax to receive and marble to retain. He is not subjective. He has the new fault of not talking about self. We vainly want to know what sort of person must be the pilgrim in whose wanderings ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... the nineteenth century the last of the real barons,—the powerful, land-owning, despotic barons, I mean,—came to the end of his fourscore years and ten, and was laid away with great pomp and glee by the people of the town across the river. He was the last of the Rothhoefens, for he left no male heir. His two daughters had married Austrian ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... to give the least attention to this compliment. The moment he cast his eyes on the forty trays, full of the most precious and beautiful jewels he had ever seen, and the fourscore slaves, who appeared by the elegance of their persons, and the magnificence of their dress, like so many princes, he was overwhelmed. Instead of answering the compliment of Aladdin's mother, he addressed himself to the grand vizier, who could not any more than ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... 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 events. Hoveden, ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... 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 ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... 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 by Cornwall exceeds in horror any ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... 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 Porsena ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... looak at the waaste: theer warn't not fead for a cow: Nowt at all but bracken an' fuzz, an' looak at it now— Warn't worth nowt a haacre, an' now theer's lots o' fead, Fourscore yows upon it an' some on it ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... became acquainted with James Watt, with whom he afterwards went into partnership to make steam engines of all kinds, sinking L47,000 before he had any return for his money. Mr. Boulton lived to the patriarchal age of fourscore and one, leaving this life on August 7, 1809. He was buried at Handsworth, 600 workmen, besides numberless friends, following his remains; all of whom were presented with hatbands and gloves and a silver medal, and regaled ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... seen, thus 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. Many ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... and ten! I wish it were all to live again. Doesn't the Scripture somewhere say, By reason of strength men oft-times may Even reach fourscore? Alack! who knows? Ten sweet, long years of life! I would paint Our Lady and many and many a saint, And thereby win my soul's repose. Yet, Fra Bernardo, you shake your head: Has the leech once said I must die? But he Is only a fallible man, you see: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Natural History of Chocolate • D. de Quelus
... with him morning, noon, and night without the least reserve, during a journey of many hundred miles; and in all that time I never heard him speak one improper word, nor saw him do an improper action. To conclude; many exemplary men have I known, holy in heart and life, within fourscore years, but one equal to him I have not known—one so inwardly and outwardly devoted to God. So unblamable a character in every respect I have not found either in Europe or America; and I scarce expect ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... Tanjore, the old daubiere was mentioned, and recommended to the Rajah as successor to his then dewan.—Being asked, Of what age was the daubiere at that time? he said, Of a very great age: upwards of fourscore.—Being asked, Whether a person called Kanonga Saba Pilla was not likewise named? he said, Yes, he was: he was recommended by Sir Thomas Rumbold; and one recommendation, as well as I can recollect, went through me.—Being ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... highest rank, with a view to constituting her a queen consort." And the Bangkok Recorder had said: "Now, considering that he is full threescore and three years of age, that he has already scores of concubines and about fourscore sons and daughters, with several Chowfas among them, and hence eligible to the highest posts of honor in the kingdom, this rumor seems too monstrous to be credited. But the truth is, there is scarcely anything too monstrous for the ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... on. What if an old Man of fourscore should dress himself like a Boy of fifteen; or if a young Man dress himself like an old Man, would not every one say he ought to be bang'd for it? Or if an old Woman should attire herself like a young Girl, ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... be burlesqued with his own doggrel rhymes; the painter shall himself vanish into an imaginary landscape; and the physician shall want food more than his patients do physic. In short, without self-love, instead of beautiful, you shall think yourself an old beldam of fourscore; instead of youthful, you shall seem just dropping into the grave; instead of eloquent, a mere stammerer; and in lieu of gende and complaisant, you shall appear like a downright country clown; it being so necessary that every one ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... HEROICI. 1556. Printed by H. Stephen. Folio. De Thou's own copy—and, upon the whole, perhaps MATCHLESS. The sight of this splendid volume would repay the toil of a pilgrimage of some fourscore miles, over Lapland snows. There is another fine copy of the same edition, which belonged to Diana and her royal slave; but it is much ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... 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 ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... their teeming wives with continuous baby-linen; to hear preachers daily bawling for hours, and listen untired on her knees after a long day's labour, while florid rhapsodists belaboured cushions above her with wearisome benedictions; all these things had this woman to do, and for near fourscore years she fought her fight womanfully: imperious but deserving to rule, hard but doing her duty, severe but charitable, and untiring in generosity as in labour; unforgiving in one instance—in that of her husband's eldest son, Thomas Newcome; the little boy who ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the year a thousand four hundred fourscore and ninth, having a business concerning the portion and inheritance of a younger brother depending in the court and chamber of the four high treasurers of France, whereinto as soon as ever I got leave to enter by a pecuniary permission of the usher thereof,—as your other ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... 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 ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Estimate of Buildings, they always deducted an 80th. part of what they judged the Building cost for every Year that the Wall had been standing, for they supposed that the Walls could not ordinarily endure more than Fourscore Years; but when they valued Buildings of Brick, they always valued them at what they cost at first, supposing them to be of an ...
— An Abridgment of the Architecture of Vitruvius - Containing a System of the Whole Works of that Author • Vitruvius
... 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 are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... 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 ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... 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, cheerless, nipping ...
— Some Roundabout Papers • W. M. Thackeray
... rogue this is, to read a lecture to me—and mine own lesson too, which he knows I have made perfect to nine hundred fourscore and nineteen! A cheating rascal! will teach me!—I, that have made them, that have worn a spacious park, lodge, and all on their backs[363] this morning, been fain to pawn it afore night! And they that ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... past, and as a watch in the night.... For all our days are passed away in thy wrath; we spend our years as a tale that is told. The days of our years are threescore and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years yet is their strength, labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off and we fly away.... So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.... Oh, satisfy us early with thy mercy; that we may rejoice ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... put an end to the audience; and rising from his throne ordered that the princess's attendants should come and carry the trays into their mistress's apartment, whither he went himself to examine them with her at his leisure. The fourscore slaves were conducted into the palace; and the sultan, telling the princess of their magnificent apparel, ordered them to be brought before her apartment, that she might see through the lattices he had not exaggerated in ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... Mother, on whose knee I learnt love-lore that is not troublesome; Whose service is my special dignity, And she my loadstar while I go and come. And so because you love me, and because I love you, Mother, I have woven a wreath Of rhymes wherewith to crown your honored name: In you not fourscore years can dim the flame Of love, whose blessed glow transcends the laws Of time and change and mortal life ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... sudden gust—no more, and these declared that some one was burning cedarwood there. Men had dreamed that there is a witch there, walking alone through the cold courts and corridors of marmorean palaces, fearfully beautiful and still for all her fourscore centuries, singing the second oldest song, which was taught her by the sea, shedding tears for loneliness from eyes that would madden armies, yet will she not call her dragons home—Carcassonne is terribly guarded. Sometimes she swims in a marble bath ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... Armenians. Philadelphia alone has been saved by prophecy or courage. At a distance from the sea, forgotten by the emperors, encompassed on all sides by the Turks, her valiant sons defended their religion and freedom above fourscore years, and at length capitulated with the proudest of the Ottomans. Among the Greek colonies of Asia, Philadelphia is still erect—a column in a scene of ruins—a pleasing example that the path of honor and ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... our religions May chance abate our powers. Then let's agree on some one way, It skills not much how true; Take Pryn and his clubs; or Say and his tubs, (33) Or any sect old or new; The devil's i' th' pack, if choyce you can lack, We're fourscore religions strong; Take your choyce, the major voyce Shall carry it, right or wrong. "Then wee'le be of this," sayes Megg; "Nay, wee'le be of that," sayes Tibb; "Nay, wee'le be of all," sayes pitifull Paul; "Nay, wee'le be ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... 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 ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Candour, "that will never be the 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 with ...
— English Satires • Various
... 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] ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... 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 ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... 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
... 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. Such ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... And for which act done, and heere intent The king made him a knight incontinent, And gave him arms as here may see, To declare his fact and chivalrie. He left his life the year of our God, Thirteen hundred fourscore and three odd. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 384, Saturday, August 8, 1829. • Various
... some hours, without perceiving they 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, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... dealeth not so with us,' continued Probus; 'he beareth long and patiently. We are not destroyed because in the first years of our life we do not rise to all virtue, but are spared to fourscore. Ought we not to manifest a like patience and forbearance? By waiting patiently we shall see our faults, and one by one correct them. There is still some reason and discernment left among us. We are not all fools and blind. And the faults which we correct ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... new marks and shoals of once familiar ports. And as the storms subsided men perceived that everywhere the days were hotter than of yore, and the sun larger, and the moon, shrunk to a third of its former size, took now fourscore days between its new ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... break for the front. Otherwise, all is to remain quiet. Back at the watch-fire under the bank Wayne is squatting, watch in one hand, pistol in the other. Near by lie the wounded, still as their comrades just beyond,—the dead. All around among the trees and in the sand-pits up- and down-stream, fourscore men are listening to the beating of their own hearts. In the distance, once in a while, is heard the yelp of coyote or the neigh of Indian pony. In the distance, too, are the gleams of Indian fires, but they are far beyond the positions occupied by the besieging warriors. ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... beyond the loftiest hummock of this range a fertile valley lies concealed; and near its centre, upon the smooth summit of a gently swelling ridge, which, extending north and south for miles, divides the valley lengthwise, stands Belfield, the shire town of the rural county of Hillsdale. Its fourscore white dwellings, scattered unevenly along the shady margins of a straight and ample street, are mostly large, substantial granges, each with its little suburb of dependencies making a hamlet by itself. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... 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 in the brain or organ of mind. ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... 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 ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... "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
... accompanied him as far as he desired. Then he bade the maiden to go on before him; and she did so, and went straight forward, and his host returned home. And he had only just reached his house, when, behold, the greatest tumult approached that was ever heard. And when he looked out he saw fourscore knights in complete armour around the house, with the Earl Dwrm at their head. "Where is the knight that was here?" said the Earl. "By thy hand," said he, "he went hence some time ago." "Wherefore, villain," said he, "didst ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 2 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... 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 ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... that were come out of the captivity offered sacrifice unto the Lord God of Israel, even twelve bullocks for all Israel, fourscore and ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous
... are threescore queens, and fourscore concubines, And maidens without number. My dove, My perfect one, is but one; She is the only one of her mother; She is the choice one of her that bare her. The daughters saw her, and called her blessed; Yea, the queens and the concubines, and they praised her, saying, ...
— Union And Communion - or Thoughts on the Song of Solomon • J. Hudson Taylor
... For fourscore years and ten did the same hard fortune pursue the owners of Bangletop. Additions to the property were made immediately upon request of possible lessees. The Greek chapel was constructed in 1868 at the mere suggestion of a Hellenic ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... (Lieutenant of the Tower), Mr. Kendall (Carver), Mr. Martyn (Ranger of the Forests), and Mr. Stradling (Sewer). Besides these eighteen Placemen, Pallaphilos had many other mock officers, whose names are not recorded, and he was attended by a body-guard of fourscore ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... 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
... do not mock me: I am a very foolish fond old man, Fourscore and upward; Not an hour more, nor less: and, to deal plainly, I fear, I am not in my perfect mind. Methinks, I shou'd know you, and know this man; Yet I am doubtful: for I am mainly ignorant What place this is; and all the skill I have Remembers ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... Late in the afternoon fourscore of these youthful devotees swing out along the Rue St. Jean to the Ste. Foye road for recreation. They go in orderly rows, from the youngest and smallest back to the two priests, in black soutanes and broad-brimmed hats, who bring up ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... judgment, passion, and agreeableness. 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 ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... Of more than fourscore national cemeteries in the United States, that which stands among the hills and trees, overlooking the river, at the northerly end of the military park, is one of the most beautiful, and is, with the single exception of ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... was made betweene the french & the Iroquoits, which was the reason I stayed not long in a place. The yeare before, the French began a new plantation [Footnote: "Began a new plantation," at Onondaga.] in the upper Country of the Iroquoits, which is distant from the Low Iroquois Country som fourscore leagues, where I was prisoner, & been in the warrs of that country. I tooke great notice of it, as I mentioned in my formest voyage, which made me have mind to goe thither againe, by the reason peace was ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... order to 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 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 383, August 1, 1829 • Various
... Daniel was at Brasenose, and my brother William gained a scholarship of Trinity. When at Christ Church I wore the same academical gown which my father had,—and have it still; a curious antiquity in the dress line, now some fourscore years old, and perfect for wear and appearance,—such as would have rejoiced the Sartor Resartus of Carlyle. At college I did not do much in the literary line, unless it is worth mention that translations from the Greek or Latin poets were always rendered by me in verse not prose, and that ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... 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 a rudimentary beginning of the development ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... Most men 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, in his eighty-second ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... 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
... have vast blessings; I have preserved my eyes, ears, and teeth; I have no pain left; and I would bet with any dormouse that it cannot outsleep me. And when one can afford to pay for every relief, comfort, or assistance that can be procured at fourscore, dares one complain? Must not one reflect on the thousands of old poor, who are suffering martyrdom, and have none of these alleviations? my good friend, I must consider myself as at my best; for if' I drag on a little longer, can I expect to remain even so tolerably. Nay, does ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... I were at Jerusalem at the passover. It was the year before my father died, seventeen years ago; it was the same week on which our Lord was crucified. My father was then an aged man—fourscore and five years old. Our tent was pitched on the slope of the Mount of Olives, near the Bethany road. While we sat there one morning, a great noise of shouting was heard, and presently we saw one riding on an ass, followed by a great company, crying 'Hosanna!' As we drew nearer, ...
— Christmas Stories And Legends • Various
... 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 ...
— The Dore Gallery of Bible Illustrations, Complete • Anonymous
... "Fourscore of them are siller-shod, Of thae ye may get three;" "But O and O for my bonny hyn, Beneath ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... 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 ...
— The Book of Brave Old Ballads • Unknown
... unearthly, his heavenly, and eternal origin. "How is it that ye sought me? Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" After this time, though the writings of the Holy Book, either historical, doctrinal, or prophetic, at the lowest calculation embrace a period of fourscore years, no allusion is made to Joseph as a man still living, or to his memory as one already dead. And yet he is one of those for the benefit of whose intercession the Church of Rome teaches her members to pray to God, and from whose merits they ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... Henry James, Ouida and Mr Thomas Hardy; Mr Hall Caine and Mr Anstey; Mrs Oliphant and Miss Edna Lyall. Not everybody can peruse all of these very diverse authors with pleasure. He began his poem on the Roman gladiatorial combats; indeed his years, fourscore and one, left his intellectual eagerness as unimpaired as that of Goethe. "A crooked share," he said to the Princess Louise, "may make a straight furrow." "One afternoon he had a long waltz with M- ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... well as to be unable to reproach thee more for the deed which thou hast confessed—so surely, Nisida, was Agnes my own granddaughter, and I—I, Fernand Wagner—young, strong, and healthy as thou beholdest me, am fourscore and fifteen years ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... four broad. The whole of it is low land, full of trees, but we saw not a single cocoa nut, nor any huts: We found, however, at the westermost end, all the canoes and people who had fled, at our approach, from Queen Charlotte's Island, and some more. We counted eight double canoes, and about fourscore people, women, and children. The canoes were drawn up on the beach, the women and children were placed near them, and the men advanced with their pikes and firebrands, making a great noise, and dancing ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... 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 ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... "stout, hale, cheery old man, perfectly erect, fond of company and children, and amusing himself with gardening work." But this was when the sands were running out. The good Doctor had passed fourscore years, and his share of history-making was over. Let us turn back some two hundred years ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... there's his choice, He would live, like a lamp, to the last wink, And crawl the utmost verge of life. O Hercules! Why should a man like this, Who dares not trust his fate for one great action, Be all the care of Heaven? Why should he lord it O'er fourscore thousand men, of whom each one Is braver ...
— All for Love • John Dryden
... into a great fire, and consumed to ashes. There were two or three executions soon after, but of a more moderate kind. Yet I hope I need not tell you, that I shall never attend another; and would feign have made my escape from this, but it was impossible.—Here, too, I saw upwards of fourscore criminals linked together, by one long chain, and so they were to continue till they arrived in the galleys at Marseilles. Now I am sure you will be, as I was, astonished to think, an old woman, the mother of the executioner, should willingly assist in ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... 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 ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... expression in his Grace Abounding. when he enjoyed a good hope, and bright anticipation of heavenly felicity, 'I should often long and desire that the last days were come. O! thought I, that I were fourscore years old now, that I might die quickly and be gone to rest.'[310] At that time he did not anticipate twelve years' imprisonment in a wretched jail, nor the consequent effects it must have upon his robust frame, well calculated to stand all weathers, but easily sapped ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... hardy self-denial of the camp. A mattress bed, constant horse exercise, rising with the lark, not unfrequently remaining up twenty hours out of the twenty-four, and the daily use of cold shower baths, winter and summer,—these contradictions to the usual habits of men, when their age approaches to fourscore, bespeak no ordinary carelessness of ease, and a singular determination of purpose. Well, indeed, has he been ...
— 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
... to those midnight revels, Without a sabbath's rest? (For in these times, All sanctity is scoff'd at by the great, And heaven's just wrath defy'd.) An honest master, Scarcely a month beyond his fiftieth year, (Heart-rent with trouble at these sad proceedings,) Wears to the eye a visage of fourscore: ...
— The Female Gamester • Gorges Edmond Howard
... Shone, and smote the face that men bow down before, Thrice again one singer's note had cloven in sunder Night, who blows again not one blast now but four, And the fourfold heaven is kindled with his thunder, And the stars about his forehead are fourscore. ...
— Studies in Song, A Century of Roundels, Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets, The Heptalogia, Etc - From Swinburne's Poems Volume V. • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... 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 captured seven hundred Spanish prizes during the previous summer ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... resounded: "O thou wicked man, son of a wicked man, and descendant of Nimrod the wicked, who incited the world to rebel against God! Behold, the days of the years of a man are threescore years and ten, or perhaps by reason of strength fourscore years. It takes five hundred years to traverse the distance of the earth from the first heaven, and as long a time to penetrate from the bottom to the top of the first heaven, and not less are the distances from one of the seven heavens ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... 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 ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... 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 ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... with his proboscis, which occasioned such a variety of effects in his bowels, that it was well he had such a strong constitution, or he must have died of it. His evacuations were so plentiful, that he not only drowned the tower of Babel, near which the apothecary's shop stood, but the current ran fourscore leagues till it came to the sea, and there poisoned so many whales and leviathans, that a pestilence ensued, and lasted three years, nine months and sixteen days. As the elephant was extremely weakened by what had happened, ...
— Hieroglyphic Tales • Horace Walpole
... company to observe him; "I here present you, my lords and gentlemen," said he, "with a sight that may henceforward serve you to talk of as something curious, namely, that you saw an Archbishop of Dublin, at fourscore and seven years of age, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... 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 of infinitesimal vegetable causes, and these were neither stems, ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... known as the "Arminian Nunnery," some account of which is given in Shorthouse's "John Inglesant"; it was broken up by the Puritans in 1647; he was the intimate friend of George Herbert; this community consisted of some "fourscore persons, devoted to a kind of Protestant monasticism; they followed celibacy and merely religious duties, employed themselves in binding prayer-books, &c., in alms-giving and what charitable work was ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... piece of perspective, in at a key-hole; and there we might see Sogliardo sit in a chair, holding his snout up like a sow under an apple-tree, while the other open'd his nostrils with a poking-stick, to give the smoke a more free delivery. They had spit some three or fourscore ounces between ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... us, how much we may owe, No angel will tell us, no mortal may know. At fivescore, at fourscore, at threescore and ten, He may close the account with a stroke ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... be upon the road. In Harlech you will be feasting seven years, the birds of Rhiannon singing unto you the while. And all that time the head will be to you as pleasant company as it ever was when on my body. And at Gwales in Penvro you will be fourscore years, and you may remain there, and the head with you uncorrupted, until you open the door that looks towards Aber Henvelen and towards Cornwall. And after you have opened that door, there you may no longer tarry; set forth then to London to bury ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... find $18, my donation to the work of the American Missionary Association. It is probably my last donation as my age (past fourscore) and poor health warn me my time is short in which to serve the Lord in ...
— American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 9, September, 1896 • Various
... notwithstanding her age, to an absolute repose. 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
... was Anna, a prophetess, daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was of great age, and had lived with a husband seven years from her virginity; (37)and she was a widow of about fourscore and four years, who departed not from the temple, serving day and night with fastings and prayers. (38)And she, coming up at that very time, likewise gave thanks to the Lord, and spoke of him to all that were looking for ...
— The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. • Various
... crowns; and that Rome produces not only the most learned men, but also the most refined politicians in the universe. To one of them talking in this strain, I replied, that instead of three hundred palaces, the number did not exceed fourscore; that I had been informed, on good authority, there were not six individuals in Rome who had so much as forty thousand crowns a year, about ten thousand pounds sterling; and that to say their princes were so rich, and their ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... answered Ailsie, with a bitter grin; "and Sir William Ashton promised me a bonny red gown to the boot o' that—a stake, and a chain, and a tar-barrel, lass! what think ye o' that for a propine?—for being up early and doun late for fourscore nights and mair wi' his dwining daughter. But he may keep it for his ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... three days at the foot of the rock; they were witnesses to the abject ceremony of the penance and pardon of Henry IV.; and in the triumph of the Church a patriot might foresee the deliverance of Italy from the German yoke. At the time of this event the Marquis of Este was above fourscore; but in the twenty following years he was still alive and active amidst the revolutions of peace and war. The last act which he subscribed is dated above a century after his birth; and in that the venerable chief possesses the command of his faculties, ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... his conversion was sudden enough to have pleased even Jonathan Edwards himself. Up to the ripe age of forty-two he had been joined to his idols. It is a proverb, that he who is a fool at forty will be a fool at fourscore; yet Mr. Cushing, who is certainly no fool, had been blind to the beauties of Original Democracy for a year or two beyond that alliterative era. The Whigs had just succeeded in electing their candidates, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... 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 ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... friend of all the friendless 'neath the sun; Whose hand had wiped away a thousand tears; Whose eloquent lips and clear, strong brain have done God's holy service through his fourscore years." ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... give him warning of the time, and he dared not now 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 of a shadow between him and the fading daylight, the clock-mender looked up from his work. The ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath |
