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NICE, January 15, 1764. DEAR SIR, I am at last settled at Nice, and have leisure to give you some account of this very remarkable place. The county of Nice extends about fourscore miles in length, and in some places it is thirty miles broad.
It was half a century, last October, since I succeeded my respected parent; but, it will not be another half century before some one will succeed me!" Sir Wycherly was a hale, hearty man for his years, but he had no unmanly dread of his end. Still he felt it could not be very distant, having already numbered fourscore and four years.
So he revived and moaned, as he thought of his beloved Cout el Culoub! and sorrows were sore upon him. Meanwhile, Cout el Culoub abode in duresse fourscore days, at the end of which time, the Khalif chancing one day to pass the place in which she was, heard her repeating verses and saying, 'O my beloved, O Ghanim, how great is thy goodness and how chaste is thy nature!
So Sir Hugh stepped to the edge of the platform and spoke in a loud clear voice, and thus he said: That each man should shoot seven arrows at the target that belonged to his band, and, of the fourscore yeomen of each band, the three that shot the best should be chosen. These three should shoot three arrows apiece, and the one that shot the best should again be chosen.
In one of Lowell's most striking poems he pictures the sad retrospect of one who, through fourscore years, had wasted on ignoble ends God's gift of life; his hands had "plucked the world's coarse gains As erst they plucked the flowers of May;" but what now, in life's last hours, are gains like these?
She must at least have reached the age of fourscore when on one occasion she had lingered at my mother's house until darkness fell. The cottage she lived in was a mile away and was approached by a somewhat lonely road. My brother Tom, at that time a stalwart lad of eighteen, was suggested to her as an escort. The little old lady drew herself up to the full height of her dignity.
'It's only a bit of a memorandum of what I think becomes me to do whenever I am able, says my master; 'you know my situation, tied hand and foot at the present time being, but that can't last always, and when I'm dead and gone the land will be to the good, Thady, you know; and take notice it's my intention your lady should have a clear five hundred a year jointure out the estate afore any of my debts are paid. 'Oh, please your honour, says I, 'I can't expect to live to see that time, being now upwards of fourscore years of age, and you a young man, and likely to continue so, by the help of God.
The Austrian army, assembled in Bohemia, amounted to upwards of fourscore thousand men, commanded by prince Charles of Lorraine and mareschal Brown.
Then he kissed the gardener's hand, saying, 'O my father, even as thou hast brought me glad tidings, so I also have great good news for thee, and told him of his discovery in the garden; whereat the gardener rejoiced and said, 'O my son, fourscore years have I dwelt in this garden and have never chanced on aught; whilst thou, who hast not sojourned with me a year, hast discovered this thing; wherefore it is God's gift to thee, for the cesser of thine ill fortune, and will aid thee to rejoin thy folk and foregather with her thou lovest. 'Not so, answered Kemerezzeman, 'it must be shared between us. Then he carried him to the underground chamber and showed him the gold, which was in twenty jars.
The truth is, we had been long prepared for seeing the Bucentoro; had heard and read every thing I fancy that could have been thought or said upon the subject, from the sullen Englishmen who rank it with a company's barge floating up the Thames upon my Lord Mayor's day, to the old writers who compare it with Theseus's ship; in imitation of which, it is said, this calls itself the very identical vessel wherein Pope Alexander performed the original ceremony in the year 1171; and though, perhaps, not a whole plank of that old galley can be now remaining in this, so often careened, repaired, and adorned since that time, I see nothing ridiculous in declaring that it is the same ship; any more than in saying the oak I planted an acorn thirty years ago, is the same tree I saw spring up then a little twig, which not even a moderate sceptic will deny; though he takes so much pains to persuade plain folks out of their own existence, by laughing us out of the dull notion that he who dies a withered old fellow at fourscore, should ever be considered as the same person whom his mother brought forth a pretty little plump baby eighty years before when, says he cunningly, you are forced yourself to confess, that his mother, who died four months afterwards, would not know him again now; though while she lived, he was never out of her arms.
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