In this
year of grace, 1860, I am close on eighty years of age, and though we have been a long-lived race, the span of life cannot be prolonged beyond reasonable bounds.
I will begin the story of my adventures with a certain morning early in the month of June, the
year of grace 1751, when I took the key for the last time out of the door of my father's house.
Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, I take up my pen in the
year of grace 17 and go back to the time when my father kept the Admiral Benbow inn and the brown old seaman with the sabre cut first took up his lodging under our roof.
Cornelius, notwithstanding all his modesty, had not been able to hide from his most intimate friends that he was all but certain to win, in the
year of grace 1673, the prize of a hundred thousand guilders offered by the Horticultural Society of Haarlem.
Then in the long, pointed windows, glass of a thousand hues; at the wide entrances to the hall, rich doors, finely sculptured; and all, the vaults, pillars, walls, jambs, panelling, doors, statues, covered from top to bottom with a splendid blue and gold illumination, which, a trifle tarnished at the epoch when we behold it, had almost entirely disappeared beneath dust and spiders in the
year of grace, 1549, when du Breul still admired it from tradition.
As brisk as bees, if not altogether as light as fairies, did the four Pickwickians assemble on the morning of the twenty-second day of December, in the
year of grace in which these, their faithfully-recorded adventures, were undertaken and accomplished.
And now, my long-suffering readers, I will ask you to come away with me for a time, far from the Sussex Manor House of Birlstone, and far also from the
year of grace in which we made our eventful journey which ended with the strange story of the man who had been known as John Douglas.
The plan stipulates the rescheduling of corporate debts with the National Social Security Fund (CNSS) over 6 years, with a
year of grace, the restructuring of the tax debts over 5 years, with a
year of grace and the acceleration of the extension of the Monastir-El Fejja competitiveness cluster.