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Then, seating myself again, I bade Tupac summon the Children of the Blood to take their places, and presently he ushered them in from the chambers that opened out of the great hall on either hand at the other end. There were threescore of them, the heads of the families of Ayllos, whose blood was the purest and whose descent was most direct from the old nobility of my own days.
"The town hold me a hot headed carle for a man of threescore; Sim Glover is the offended party; we all know that Harry Gow spoils more harness with his sword than he makes with his hammer and our neighbour Proudfute, who, take his own word, is at the beginning and end of every fray in Perth, is of course a man of action.
We give her iron and valerian, and get her on horseback, if we can, and so expect to make her will come all right again. By and by we are called in to see an old baby, threescore years and ten or more old. We find this old baby has never got rid of that first year's teaching which led him to fill his stomach with all he could pump into it, and his hands with everything he could grab.
In about threescore seconds from the time he was first seen pursuing them, the old sheik was up to the spot where our adventurers had awaited him. His first salute appeared to be some words of menace or command, rendered more emphatic by a series of gestures made with his long gun; which was successively pointed at the heads of the three.
The achievement of this hostess is the more notable because she was a New England housekeeper, and her standard of neatness was high. If she had attempted anything but the simplest manner of entertainment she would certainly have had nervous prostration. But her simplicity of living saved her, and she is still hale and hearty, though she has passed the limit of threescore and ten.
If you find in it no improprieties, it may be recommended to your father." She loved nothing better than to tease him. "I see not what harm there could be in travels," he returned. "Thou hast my leave. Gainor, what is this I hear? Thou wouldst have had me sell thee for a venture threescore hogsheads of tobacco from Annapolis.
"On such and such a day, benevolence, threescore and fifteen years ago, the imperishable founder of the existing dynasty ascended on a fiery dragon to be a guest on high," confessed the conscience-stricken scribe, after consulting his printed tablets. "Owing to the stress of a sudden journey significance of the date had previously escaped my weed-grown memory, tolerance."
In these memorable crusades, a fleet and army of French and Venetians were diverted from Syria to the Thracian Bosphorus: they assaulted the capital, they subverted the Greek monarchy: and a dynasty of Latin princes was seated near threescore years on the throne of Constantine.
I have forgotten what piece of John Hay's it was that he liked so much, but I remembered how he fiercely revelled in the vengefulness of William Morris's 'Sir Guy of the Dolorous Blast, and how he especially exalted in the lines which tell of the supposed speaker's joy in slaying the murderer of his brother: "I am threescore years and ten, And my hair is 'nigh turned gray, But I am glad to think of the moment when I took his life away."
To all noble minds fame is sweet and desirable, and threescore years and ten are all too few to carve the monument more durable than brass; but when such men as Winthrop die such death as his, we seize the tools that fall from their dying grasp, and complete the fragmentary structure, in shape more graceful, it may be, in height more majestic, in colors more lovely, than their own hands could have wrought.
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