"Beck" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... strangest of all, with a keen sense of humour—that such an one should voluntarily step down from high social position at the bidding of a vulgar, selfish, self-seeking, and, according to some hints dropped here and there, grossly immoral man, should, at beck of his fat forefinger, go forth to a strange land to live amid sordid circumstances, and with uncongenial company, to work as a common, farm-labourer, to peddle strawberries at a railway station, passes belief. With respect to Mr. HARRIS, one feels inclined to quote Betsy Prig's remark ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 20, 1891 • Various
... tears to check, The effort would but fail, The face, I hid at custom's beck, Would ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... now," replied his companion, "you go down the wind like a wild haggard, that minds neither lure nor beck—that is a question you should have asked in as low a tone as ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... that country, not far from Otterburn—between Otterburn and the Scottish border—a remote hamlet consisting of a few white cottages, farm buildings and a shingle-spired church. It is called Dryhope, and lies in a close valley, which is watered by a beck or burn, known as the Dryhope Burn. It is deeply buried in the hills. Spurs of the Cheviots as these are, they rise to a considerable elevation, but are pasturable nearly to the top. There, however, ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... Gordale Scar. It was interesting to note the difference in the names applied to the same objects of nature in the different parts of the country we passed through, and here we found a scar meant a rock, a beck a brook, and a tarn, from a Celtic word meaning a tear, a small lake. Gordale Scar was a much more formidable place than we had expected to find, as the rocks were about five yards higher than those at Malham Cove, and it is almost as difficult ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... brains an' net brass shall fit a man for a Taan Caancillor. But fowk mun get consolation aat o' summat, soa they try to fancy th' Taan Hall luks handsome. Its like th' chap 'at saw his horse fall into th' beck;—he tugg'd an' pool'd, and shaated an' bawl'd, but th' horse went flooatin' on, plungin' its legs abaat, makkin' th' watter fly i' all direckshuns but it wur noa use, for it wur draanded at th' last. When he went hooam he ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, First Series - To Which Is Added The Cream Of Wit And Humour From His Popular Writings • John Hartley
... been a promise of such sensation at the Old Bailey, and never, perhaps, was competition keener for the very few seats available in that antique theatre of justice. Nor, indeed, could the most enterprising of modern managers, with the star of all the stages at his beck for the shortest of seasons, have done more to spread the lady's fame, or to excite a passionate curiosity in the public mind, than was done for Rachel Minchin by her official enemies of the ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... after deliberating with herself, "that I shall sentence you to slavery. You are to be at my beck and call until you've attained a proper pitch of repentance and are ready to admit that I'm not as hopelessly homely as ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... monotonously on a black beach of volcanic sand strewn with driftwood, kelp, dead shells, and the squirming forms of blindworms tossed up from the bowels of a dead sea. It was there in the spell of solitude thirty years before that Robert Turold's soul had yielded to temptation at the beck of ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... birth to the hour of her escape she had worn the yoke under Mrs. C., as her most efficient and reliable maid-servant. She had been at her mistress' beck and call as seamstress, dressing-maid, nurse in the sickroom, etc., etc., under circumstances that might appear to the casual observer uncommonly favorable for a slave. Indeed, on his first interview with her, the Committee man was so forcibly impressed with the belief, ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... be found, in the wide Wilderness: The rest commit to me; I shall let pass No advantage, and his strength as oft assay." He ceased, and heard their grant in loud acclaim; Then forthwith to him takes a chosen band Of Spirits likest to himself in guile, To be at hand and at his beck appear, If cause were to unfold some active scene Of various persons, each to know his part; 240 Then to the desert takes with these his flight, Where still, from shade to shade, the Son of God, After forty days' fasting, had remained, Now ...
— Paradise Regained • John Milton
... getting deafer and deafer, and that I cannot hear what is said at the council table and in the Society's rooms half the time people are speaking? and 2nd, that so long as I am President, so long must I be at the beck and call of everything that turns up in relation to the interests of science. So long as I am in the chair, I cannot be a faineant or refuse to do anything and everything incidental to ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... their estates, their wives and children were kept in Yedo as hostages for their good behavior. When Iyemitsu died, the shoguns had cemented their power beyond dispute. The mikados, nominal emperors, were at their beck and call; the daimios were virtual prisoners of state; the whole military power and revenues of the empire were under their control; conspiracy and attempted rebellion could be crushed by a wave of their hands; peace ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... God is dead! At a drunken monarch's call, At a dancing-woman's beck, They have severed that stubborn neck And into the banquet-hall Are ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... a 'og man in Beck'n'am what was lost in London three days and three nights. 'E went up after whiskey to Cheapside, and lorst 'is way among the ruins and wandered. Three days and three nights 'e wandered about and the streets ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... corn and pulled weeds and the other work hands would let me ride behind them beck to the big house, and My! how hungry I wuz and how we did eat. We would have beans, cooked in a big kettle in the back yard, cabbage and potatoes, with corn pone bread, baked in a big oven In the yard and plenty of good ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Kentucky Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... I was the ship's drudge. At everybody's beck and call, I was employed from morning till night in all kinds of menial offices. It was a hard life, and the treatment meted out to me was rough; but having got the better of my first rage and indignation, I resolved to make the best of my situation and ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... self-mutilation by a soldier who was confined in the guard-house for drunkenness is related by Beck. The man borrowed a knife from a comrade and cut off the whole external genital apparatus, remarking as he flung the parts into a corner: "Any——fool can cut his throat, but it takes a soldier to cut his privates off!" ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... thread lies wafting in the air, Diana-like she looks, but yet more bold; Cruel in chase, more chaste and yet more fair. Whenas she smiles, the clouds for envy breaks; She Jove in pride encounters with a check; The sun doth shine for joy whenas she speaks; Thus heaven and earth do homage at her beck. Yet all these graces, blots, not graces are, If you, my love, of love do take ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... at least twenty centuries, and ought to have lived in the jovial age of fauns and satyrs, when groves were sacred for other reasons than the high price of wood,—when gods and goddesses were abundant as blackberries, and at the beck and call of every miserable wretch who chose to propitiate them by offering a flask of wine, a bunch of turnips, a litter of puppies, or a basket of olives. Hesiod and Homer understood human nature infinitely ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... more reason then that I should ride forth to right wrong and succour them that, of their loyalty, render true obedience to their lord." "Ye speak as a fool," said the sorceress; "why should one that may command be at the beck and call of every hind and slave within his realm? Nay, rest thee here with me, and I will make thee ruler of a richer land than Britain, and give thee to satisfy thy every desire." "Lady," said the King sternly, "I will hear and judge ...
— Stories from Le Morte D'Arthur and the Mabinogion • Beatrice Clay
... wasn't much,' said Sullivan, the blundering servant, who had been so frightened at Freny's approach, and was waiting on us at dinner. 'Didn't he return you the thirteenpence in copper, and the watch, saying it was only pinch-beck?' ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... little they are swayed by a care for the common weal? Are they likely to consult the public good who are the slaves of their private passions? Do they think forsooth that we, the governors of the provinces are, with our soldiers, to stand ready at the beck and call of an infamous lictor? Let them set bounds to their indulgences and free pardons which they so lavishly bestow on the very persons to whom we think it just and expedient to deny them. No one can remit the punishment ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... them; above them, to the steady and good hand by which they are ruled; and beyond them, to the sweet and beautiful end to which, by that hand, they will be brought." "The Great Counsellor," says Thomas Brooks, "puts clouds and darkness round about Him, bidding us follow at His beck through the cloud, promising an eternal and uninterrupted sunshine on the other side." On that "other side" we shall see how every apparent rough blast has been hastening our barks nearer the ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... afore sunrise. He stopped at a paltry ale-house, where we were admitted, and soon were busy with a much better supper than I had ever imagined they could have produced; but my new friend ordered right and left, with a tone of authority, and everybody in the house appeared at his beck and command. After a couple of glasses of grog, we retired to ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... yet when she sat down, and the management of distaff and thread threw her shoulders back, there was something in the poise of her small head and the gesture of her hand that forcibly recalled the Queen. Moreover, all the boys around were at her beck and call, not only Humfrey and poor Antony Babington, but Cavendishes, Pierrepoints, all the young pages and grandsons who dwelt at castle or lodge, and attended Master Sniggius's school. Nay, the dominie himself, though owning that Mistress Cicely promoted idleness and ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... except for an extreme local tenderness, felt all right again; but when he tested it the faint ticking sound was still there. His mind was now calm; his thoughts no longer went at a gallop, but they seemed—what was the word?—freer, more articulate, more at his beck and call; and in spirit he was far less harassed and anxious. Altogether he felt that he possessed himself more than he had ever done before: his mental views had ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... said he, nodding approvingly at her, "is something worth knowing. I doubt, after all, whether these Romans, with the world at their beck, really knew much of the elegant and refined pleasures of life. Setting aside their gladiatorial shows, and the custom of chaining the porter by the leg to the doorpost, that he might not be out of the way when friend or client called on his master, and ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... the case with much of the subject matter in city-made texts. It does not grow, but soon withers and falls away. It is, then, essential that the textbooks used in rural schools should have the rural bent and application, the rural flavor, the rural beck and welcome. ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... Then their comrades attacked and lost over two thousand more, and one hundred and sixty—two officers. All the ground below two knolls of earth called Hill 35 and Hill 37, which were defended by German pill-boxes called Pond Farm and Gallipoli, Beck House and Borry Farm, became an Irish shambles. In spite of their dreadful losses the survivors in the Irish battalion went forward to the assault with desperate valor on the morning of August 16th, surrounded the pill-boxes, stormed them through ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... Koil's cry With music filled the place, As 'twere some city in the sky; Which heavenly minstrels grace. With each voluptuous art they strove To win the tenant of the grove, And with their graceful forms inspire His modest soul with soft desire. With arch of brow, with beck and smile, With every passion-waking wile Of glance and lotus hand, With all enticements that excite The longing for unknown delight Which boys in vain withstand. Forth came the hermit's son to view The wondrous sight to him so new, And gazed in rapt surprise For from his natal ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... offered one short answer—the evidence of proved fact.[6] That such transformations as were ascribed to the witches were ridiculous, that contracts between the Devil and agents who were already under his control were absurd, that the Devil would never put himself at the nod and beck of miserable women, and that Providence would not permit His children to be thus buffeted by the evil one: these were the current objections;[7] and to them all Glanvill replied that one positive fact is worth ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... of Scherer, Hunn, Greenbaum & Beck, carefully placed his cigar where it would not char his Italian Renaissance desk and smoothed out the list which Mr. Elderberry, the secretary of The Horse's Neck Extension Copper Mining Company, handed to him. The list was typed on thin sheets; of ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... Beck, Bishop of Durham, bequeathed to his cathedral a Christmas candlestick of silver-gilt, on the base of which was an image of St. Mary with her Son ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... the social system, he lived for a while alone and unsought in a high room in Beck Hall—a slim dark boy of medium height with a shy sensitive mouth. His allowance was more than liberal. He laid the foundations for a library by purchasing from a wandering bibliophile first editions of Swinburne, Meredith, and Hardy, and a yellowed illegible autograph letter of ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... as was his influence—but to a host of showmen whose names and activities would fill more space than is possible here. E. F. Albee, Oscar Hammerstein, S. Z. Poli, William Morris, Mike Shea, James E. Moore, Percy G. Williams, Harry Davis, Morris Meyerfeld, Martin Beck, John J. Murdock, Daniel F. Hennessy, Sullivan and Considine, Alexander Pantages, Marcus Loew, Charles E. Kohl, Max Anderson, Henry Zeigler, and George Castle, are but a few of the many men living and dead who have helped to make vaudeville ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... magnanimous that, knowing this power, he should so often spare. Maids indeed might sigh at his indifference, but their solace lay in the eager offerings of other and less gifted men. Suffice it for him that at his beck the best of them would quit the shelter of other arms and come fluttering to his own. But now, of course, all this power of fascination must be sternly tempered, even suppressed. Henceforth he must be guarded. The winning of this pure young heart, the possession of this sweet ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... camera) to his Royal Highness the Duke of Modena'; and behind the waiter in walked Pantaleone himself. He had changed his clothes from top to toe. He had on a black frock coat, reddish with long wear, and a white pique waistcoat, upon which a pinch-beck chain meandered playfully; a heavy cornelian seal hung low down on to his narrow black trousers. In his right hand he carried a black beaver hat, in his left two stout chamois gloves; he had tied his cravat in a taller and broader bow than ever, and had stuck into his starched ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... addressing the keeper, whom by a beck he had brought to his side, 'you don't allow him, surely, to go ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... beings presumed, agreeably to a very old belief (Lev. xix. 31), to attend magicians or sorcerers, and to be at their beck and call on ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... eyes: "He's as widderful in his wizzent old skin as his own grandfather." Angus was not less severe on Wilson's sly smoothness of manner. "Yon sneaking old knave," he would say, "is as slape as an eel in the beck; he'd wammel himself into crookedest rabbit hole on the fell." Probably Angus entertained some of the antipathy to Scotchmen which was peculiar to his age. "I'll swear he's a taistrel," he said one day; "I dare not trust him with ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... side. She stood somehow for something more than merely a fellow-creature in danger. He took a quicker interest in her—an interest expressing itself now in a sense of infinite tenderness. He resented the fact that she was being led away from him into paths he could not follow—that she was at the beck of this lean, cold-eyed stranger and ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... your beck, madam." "O Puck my goblin! I have lost my belt, The strong thief, Robin ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... body of regulars, that figured in the blue books, almanacs and army-registers of America, as some six or seven thousand men, scattered along frontiers of a thousand leagues in extent, could, at the beck of the government, swell into legions of invaders, men able to carry war to the capitals of his own states, thousands of miles from their doors, and formidable alike for their energy, their bravery, their readiness in the use of arms, ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... Speed, Esq., of Louisville, Kentucky, an early and a life-long personal friend, gives a pleasant glimpse of his domestic arrangements at this time. "We are not keeping house," Mr. Lincoln says in this letter, "but boarding at the Globe Tavern, which is very well kept by a widow lady of the name of Beck. Our rooms are the same Dr. Wallace occupied there, and boarding only costs four dollars a week. * * * I most heartily wish you and your Fanny will not fail to come. Just let us know the time, a week in advance, and we will have a room ...
— A Cousin's Conspiracy - A Boy's Struggle for an Inheritance • Horatio Alger
... travellers generally. And last but not least is little Benessie, called "el wallad" (the boy), who does more work and takes more steps than all the rest of the crew together. Ah, these boys!—they're worth a dozen men sometimes. He makes the fires, waits on the crew, and is at everybody's beck and call, from the howadji to the sailor. He is a dark-eyed, shy little fellow, not particularly neat in his appearance, and always sucking sugar-cane, which probably is one of the attractions to the flies that gather continually on his face ...
— Harper's Young People, January 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... for it owns the Senate, Congress, the courts, and the state legislatures. And not only that. Behind law must be force to execute the law. To-day the Plutocracy makes the law, and to enforce the law it has at its beck and call the, police, the army, the navy, and, lastly, the militia, which is you, and me, ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... and Germany, every poem was set to music, and thus, simultaneously with the lyrical art, secular music was evolved. J.B. Beck, the greatest authority on the music of the troubadours,—the music of the minnesingers has been studied very little,—says, "The poetry of the troubadours and trouveres represents in its totality a collection of songs which in their frequently ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... fallen into the habit of walking up to Ford Bank for The Times every day, near twelve o'clock, and lounging about in the garden until one; not exactly with either Ellinor or Miss Monro, but certainly far more at the beck and call of the one than of ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... loneliness fell upon "Izzy" Schwab. Where were now those officers, who in the police courts were at his beck and call? Where the numbered houses, the passing surface cars, the sweating multitudes of Eighth Avenue? In all the world he was alone, alone on an empty country road, with a grim, ...
— The Scarlet Car • Richard Harding Davis
... yourself with a razor once when ma told you not to try to shave the back of your neck by yourself," said one of the girls. "She wanted you to let Mr. Beck shave it for you, but you wouldn't ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... indeed hate Charlotte Bronte in her later years. This is not unnatural when we remember how that unfortunate woman has been gibbeted for all time in the characters of Mlle. Zoraide Reuter and Madame Beck. But in justice to the creator of these scathing portraits, it may be mentioned that Charlotte Bronte took every precaution to prevent Villette from obtaining currency in the city which inspired it. She told Miss Wheelwright, with whom naturally, on her visits to London, she ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... his cell; Puts the cord around his neck; Now his feelings, who can tell? Still he careth not for Hell— But wait the Sheriff's beck. ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... decrees the destinies of millions! Music again, music in some other garb than we now sense it. Illowski groaned as he attacked this hermetic mystery. He had all the technique of contemporary art at his beck; but not that unique tone, the unique form, by which he might become master of the universe and gain spiritual dominion over mankind. Yet the secret, so fearfully guarded, had been transmitted through the ages. Certain favored ones must have known it, men who ruled the rulers ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... thirty blocks of its course Gertie Slayback followed that wave of men, half run and half walk. Down from the curb, and at the beck and call of this or that policeman up again, only to find opportunity for still another dive out from the invisible roping ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... hers—a sort of unreasonableness few of us can tolerate—must not take for granted that he was of great moment to her, or that because others speculated on him as a desirable match she held herself altogether at his beck. How Grandcourt had filled up the pauses ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... he noted idly how the sunshine was busied with the vapour filled air, building of it a triumphant arch, gloriously coloured. His mood was not for brightness and yet, albeit with but half consciousness, he watched. Did a man who has followed the beck of hope of gold ever see a rainbow without wondering what treasure lay at the far end of the radiant promise? So, idly, ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... abroad aimlessly from the Powhatan, trying not to tax either his judgment or his desire as to what streets he traveled. He would have been glad to lose his way if it were possible; but he had no hope of that. Adventure and Fortune move at your beck and call in the Greater City; but Chance is oriental. She is a veiled lady in a sedan chair, protected by a special traffic squad of dragonians. Crosstown, uptown, and downtown you ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... cast were some of the companies later assembled in this same room—Judge Story, Doctor Beck, President Felton, Professors Pierce, Lane, Child, and Lowell, with maybe Longfellow, listening to one of his own songs, or that strange figure, Professor Evangelinus Apostolides Sophocles, oddly ill at ease ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... inviting enough and a child wouldn't have feared to be there. Dean Burn came down from its cradle far away in the hills and threaded Dean Woods with ripple and flash and song. The beck lifted its voice in stickles and shouted over the mossy apron of many a little waterfall; and then under the dark of the woods it would go calm, nestle in a backwater here and there, then run on again. And of ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... the head of the victim, and inspecting him by the aid of matches struck by the smoker Sylvanus; "it's a good thing for him thet yore two gens were louded with deck shot end thet they sketter sow, else he'd a been a dead men. He's got a few pellets in the beck of his head, jest eneugh to sten the scoundrel for a few minutes. Ah, he's hed a creck owver the top of his head with a cleb, the ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... leave, however, until they had promised to come to her concert. She would send them tickets. And they must have tea with her soon. Would they chaperon her once in a while? Oliver eagerly promised to be at her beck and call. He followed her out into the hall, unmindful ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... friend or relative was spared in the long years I worked on this book, three colleagues especially bore with me through days of doubts and frustrations and shared my small triumphs: Alfred M. Beck, Ernest F. Fisher, Jr., and Paul J. Scheips. I also want particularly to thank Col. James W. Dunn. I only hope that some of their good sense and sunny ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... at the door; and the other, rising from her seat at her beck, came slowly, and with no ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... Wrigglesby beck cooms out by the 'ill! Feyther run oop to the farm, an' I runs oop to the mill; An' I'll run oop to the brig, an' that thou'll live to see; And if thou marries a good un I'll ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... beck grows wider, the hands must sever, On either margin our songs all done; We move apart, while she singeth ever, Taking the ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... patient," said Jacqueline often to Giselle. "You ought to answer him back—to defend yourself. I am sure if you did so you would have him, by-and-bye, at your beck and call." ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... American Comedy of 'Orme's Motor,' "which is to enrich us beyond the dreams of avarice.... We could have a lot of fun writing it, and you could go home with some of the good old Etruscan malaria in your bones, instead of the wretched pinch-beck Hartford article that you are suffering from now.... it's a great opportunity for you. Besides, nobody over there likes you half ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... in their crossed and cultivated descendant; and he would certainly observe many new and remarkable constitutional peculiarities. I will give a few instances, all relating to the Pelargonium, and taken chiefly from Mr. Beck (10/169. 'Gardener's Chronicle' 1845 page 623.) a famous cultivator of this plant: some varieties require more water than others; some are "very impatient of the knife if too greedily used in making cuttings;" some, when potted, scarcely "show a root at ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... exact degree of curvature or stiffness in the presence of a guest the stable-boys and housemaids knew whether his rank was great or small, and whether, to please their cantankerous master, they were to fly or walk at his beck, or in the case of a mere bourgeois, to drink his wine on the way to ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... year after year had come before the legislature urging the creation of a new institution, which he wished named after an eminent physician of Albany who had in his day done what was possible to remedy the evil—Dr. Beck. But year after year Dr. Willard's efforts, like those of Dr. Beck before him, had been in vain. Session after session the "Bill to establish the Beck Asylum for the Chronic Insane'' was rejected,— the legislature shrinking from the cost of it. But one day, as we were sitting ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... a certain goal—Chance, immense and universal, loves to bring such coincidences about—the flask of Hardquanonne came, driven from wave to wave, into Barkilphedro's hands. There is in the unknown an indescribable fealty which seems to be at the beck and call of evil. Barkilphedro, assisted by two chance witnesses, disinterested jurors of the Admiralty, uncorked the flask, found the parchment, unfolded, read it. What words could express his ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... several hours of that unhappy day, the Lady Eveline, pale, cold, silent, glided from chapel to refectory, from refectory to chapel again, at the slightest beck of the Abbess or her official sisters, and seemed to regard the various privations, penances, admonitions, and repreaches, of which she, in the course of that day, was subjected to an extraordinary share, no more than a marble statue minds the inclemency ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... March, Esther went to Saint John, New Brunswick, and while there was the guest of Captain James Beck, and remained at his house for three weeks under the protection of his wife. Her case was investigated by a party of gentlemen, well known in Saint John as men whose minds have a scientific turn. Doctor Alward, Mr. Amos Fales, Mr. ...
— The Haunted House - A True Ghost Story • Walter Hubbell
... about your having forty voters at your beck and call must have stuck in the honorable sheriff's crop, Dave," chuckled ...
— The Young Engineers in Colorado • H. Irving Hancock
... that wind in lanes and alleys into serpentine labyrinths, reeking with filthy odors and noxious vapors. Fill those narrow streets with a lazy, ill-clad people—men in short skirts and clogs, squatting on the steps of antiquated cafes, smoking canes steeped in opium, awaiting the beck of some political firebrand to tear each other to pieces—and in this description you place before the mind's eye the city some writers have painted as the Paris of two hundred ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... and the inhumanity of the Spaniards," he answered. "They made me a slave of the crew, at whose every beck and call I was from the beginning of the morning watch until four bells in the first watch; and when my day's work was over they used to lock me into a cell under the forecastle. So that when the ship struck I was unable to ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... the Member for Barnard Castle has important functions to perform in the War Cabinet and is rarely in the House he usually deputes some other Member of the Government to answer Questions addressed to him. To-day the lot fell upon Mr. BECK, who good-temperedly explained, when a shower of "supplementaries" rained down upon him, that he really knew nothing about the Department he was temporarily representing. This led to a tragedy, for Mr. SWIFT MACNEILL worked himself ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 28, 1917 • Various
... but I could not be angry with such a perfect little poet, and that monster should have known with whom he had to deal. He knows it now, I believe. He knows that a Gualandi of Siena is not at the beck and call of a pig of Padua. When he comes here, he will come in his right senses, ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... Scotland's cities, still the rarest Is ancient Edinburgh town; And of her ladies, still the fairest There you see walk up and down: Be they gay, or be they gayless, There they beck and there they bow, From the Castle to the Palace, In farthingale ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... (back), screamed our drovers, as they galloped after escaped beasts, flopping and wobbling and gurgling in their saddles like half-filled water-bags; galloping invariably after the beasts, and thereby inciting there to further galloping. And "Beck! beck!" shouted our boys on duty with perfect mimicry of tone and yells of delight at the impotency of the drovers, galloping always outside the runaways and bending them back into the mob, flopping and wobbling and gurgling in their saddles until, in the ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... indice^, indicator; point, pointer; exponent, note, token, symptom; dollar sign, dollar mark. type, figure, emblem, cipher, device; representation &c 554; epigraph, motto, posy. gesture, gesticulation; pantomime; wink, glance, leer; nod, shrug, beck; touch, nudge; dactylology^, dactylonomy^; freemasonry, telegraphy, chirology [Med.], byplay, dumb show; cue; hint &c 527; clue, clew, key, scent. signal, signal post; rocket, blue light; watch fire, watch tower; telegraph, semaphore, flagstaff; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... this individual had scarce turned a glance aside, or changed a limb in weariness. His attitude was that of patient, practised, and obedient waiting on another's pleasure. With folded arms, a body poised on one leg, and a vacant though good-humored eye, he appeared to attend some beck of authority ere he quitted the spot. A silken jacket, in whose tissue flowers of the gayest colors were interwoven, the falling collar of scarlet, the bright velvet cap with armorial bearings embroidered on its front, proclaimed ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... I'll be elected next Thursday," Creed assented, busying himself over the lengthening of Beck's bridle, that she might lead the mule the more handily. "And if I am I'll be in the Turkey Tracks along in April and find me a place to set up an office. ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... replied the Abbot, irascibly. "A man that favours the poor priests of whom you spake, and swears by the Rector of Ludgarshall, this Wycliffe, that maketh all this bruit. Prithee, who is the Rector of Ludgarshall, that we must all be at his beck and ordering? Was there no truth in the whole Church Catholic, these thirteen hundred years, that this Dan John must claim for to have discovered it ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... Mr. Beck, (Dem. of Ky.) The single question upon which the decision of this House is now to be made is that the President has attempted to test the constitutionality of a law which he believes to be unconstitutional. All the testimony heretofore ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... know, my dear San Reve, that the very name of Harley bores me. No, I shall no more go to those Harleys. They send, they beg; I do not go. Why should I so honor them? Bah! let them come to me! Is a Russian—is a nobleman to be at the beck of such vile little people? No, they must come to me, your Storri, my San Reve; and when they arrive, bah! I shall not see them. I shall tell them they must come again!" And Storri lifted his hand grandly, as though the Harleys were now ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... or soils, have different species of lowly plants as companions; the companion plants of high beech forests depend, for instance, upon climate and upon the nature of the forest soil; Pinus nigra, according to von Beck, can maintain under it in the different parts of Europe a Pontic, a central European, or a ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... unbodied troop; Or if in sports, or on the festive green, Their [destined] glance some fated youth descry, Who, now perhaps in lusty vigour seen And rosy health, shall soon lamented die. For them the viewless forms of air obey, Their bidding heed, and at their beck repair. They know what spirit brews the stormful day, And, heartless, oft like moody madness stare To see the phantom train their ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... they ill could spare, I have seen them praying, yes, praying, to be rid of their passion, as though it were any other malady, and yet unable to shake it off; they were bound hand and foot by a chain of something stronger than iron. There they stood at the beck and call of their idols, and that without rhyme or reason; and yet, poor slaves, they make no attempt to run away, in spite of all they suffer; on the contrary, they mount guard over their tyrants, for fear these ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... upon the farm where once he had abundance of labour, abundance to eat, and abundance of lowly friendship. Nimrod was making for his old stable. He was weary now, and breathing heavily, though not at all spent. Was he dreaming of a golden age, in which Clare should be ever at his beck and call? ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... Countess Steinbock, desperately in love with her husband cursed the War Minister. She went to see him; she told him that great works of art were not to be manufactured like cannon; and that the State—like Louis XIV., Francis I., and Leo X.—ought to be at the beck and call of genius. Poor Hortense, believing she held a Phidias in her embrace, had the sort of motherly cowardice for her Wenceslas that is in every wife who carries her love ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... to which a respectable canine can descend. A blind man's dog, or the companion of a knife-grinder, is comparatively elevated. He at least owes allegiance to but one master. But the Boys' Dog is the thrall of an entire juvenile community, obedient to the beck and call of the smallest imp in the neighborhood, attached to and serving not the individual boy so much as the boy element and principle. In their active sports, in small thefts, raids into back-yards, window-breaking, ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... furnishes some opportunities for one's critical faculties, and so is a good exercise for them, if one wanted such! First however I must tell you how much ill poor Crabbe has been: a sort of Paralysis, I suppose, in two little fits, which made him think he was sure to die: but Dr. Beck at present says he may live many years with care. Of this also I shall be able to tell you more before I wind up. The brave old Fellow! he was quite content to depart, and had his Daughter up to give her his Keys, and tell her where the different wines were ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... hardly more than crossed your doorstep?"—"Oh, say no more!" pleads the girl, torn by the sight of his sorrow, and her necessity to refuse the only possible comfort, "Be silent! I must! I must!..."—"Oh, that docility, blind as your act!" he raves; "You were glad, at a beck from your father, to follow. With a blow you crush the life out of my heart!"—"No more! No more!" she tries to stop him; "I must not see you again, must not think of you. High duty commands it!"—"What high duty? Is it not a higher duty still to observe that which you once swore to me,—eternal ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... has been turned by the troubles of his family, except for his going without dinner, which no lunatic ever does, according to her knowledge. And he seems to have got 'Butter Cheeseman,' as they call him, entirely at his beck and call. He leaves his black horse there every morning, and rides home at night to his ancestral ruins. There, now, you know as much as ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... inland; but in what direction, Alan had no means of ascertaining. They passed at first over heaths and sandy downs; they crossed more than one brook, or beck, as they are called in that country—some of them of considerable depth—and at length reached a cultivated country, divided, according to the English fashion of agriculture, into very small fields or closes, by high banks, overgrown with underwood, and surmounted ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... youth of great spirit, whose own, and standing at his beck, all Norway now was, immediately smote home on Denmark; desirous naturally of vengeance for what it had done to Norway, and the sacred kindred of Magnus. Denmark, its great Knut gone, and nothing but a drunken Harda-Knut, fugitive Svein and Co., there in his ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... and now his sole representative among these people. He was a dark-faced, snaky-eyed young man, with a mop of coarse black hair that hung ominously low over his high, receding forehead. This man was the chosen villain among all the henchmen who came at the beck and call ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... and national importance. His next source of information has been from personal acquaintance and correspondence with many intelligent citizens of the states and territories he describes. Reference has also been had to the works of Hall, Flint, Darby, Breckenridge, Beck, Long, Schoolcraft, Lewis and Clarke, Mitchell's and Tanner's maps, Farmer's map of Michigan, Turnbull's map of Ohio, The Ohio Gazetteer, The Indiana Gazetteer, Dr. Drake's writings, Mr. Coy's Annual Register of Indian affairs, Ellicott's surveys, ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... see why I should," I said, not too civilly. "Why should I be at her beck and call? If she had been in any trouble, any serious trouble, such as she anticipated when talking to me at the buffet, and a prey to imaginary alarms since become real, I should have been ready to serve her or any woman in distress, ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... knew MacNair. For ten years, day and night, they had stood at his beck and call; had followed him through all the vast wilderness that lies between the railways and the frozen sea. They had slept with him, had feasted and starved with him, at his shoulder faced death in a hundred guises, and they loved him ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... adducing as evidence, if evidence were needed, the patent fact, that every one in need of help invariably turned to the Arcadians. (21) Never in old days had the Lacedaemonians yet invaded Athens without the Arcadians. "If then," he added, "you are wise, you will be somewhat chary of following at the beck and call of anybody, or it will be the old story again. As when you marched in the train of Sparta you only enhanced her power, so to-day, if you follow Theban guidance without thought or purpose instead of claiming a division of the headship, you will speedily find, perhaps, ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... that can in any sense be said to know the meaning of "human" Freedom. "We call free," said Spinoza, "that which exists in virtue of the necessities of its own nature, and which is determined by itself alone." Liberty is not absolute, for then we ourselves would be at the beck and call of every external excitation, desire, passion, or temptation. Our salvation consists in self-determination, so we shall avoid licence but preserve Freedom. We can only repeat the Socratic ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... boxes every minute, and running up to talk to the girls they knew, just as calmly as if they were in evening dress. My eyes almost came out of my head for an instant. Then I just swallowed hard, and leaped over about five centuries of prejudice as if I were jumping across a tiny beck. ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... for man. A word or a thought can wound him as acutely as a knife of steel. If he thinks he is loved, he will rise up and glory to himself, although he be in a distant land and short of necessary bread. Does he think he is not loved?—he may have the woman at his beck, and there is not a joy for him in all the world. Indeed, if we are to make any account of this figment of reason, the distinction between material and immaterial, we shall conclude that the life of each man as an individual is immaterial, although ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... which beset the returning traveler—and the lady distinctly was of the readily irritated type—were smoothed away by the magic personality of her companion. Porters came at the beck of his gloved hand; guards, catching his eye, saluted and were completely his servants; ticket inspectors yielded to him the deference ordinarily reserved for directors of ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... for himself; it was always others first. I never made an appeal to him for any case of need in vain. With regard to local matters, he seemed at the beck and call of nearly everyone. Nothing was too small or too large for him to undertake to assist any constituent, and oftentimes an avowed and lifelong political opponent. In a multitude of ways he did us service ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... dear young lady? No, no; I shall have my hands full vidout attempting dat. But you shall have a full orchestra at your beck und call to t'under at you vun minute und to help you lull de ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond
... His illness was of the most complicated: he suffered from aneurism, rheumatism and three or four minor affections. He was nearly sixty, and since he had been five years old had been accustomed to having everybody at his beck and call. That he was surly one could well forgive; but he was also very malicious. He took pleasure in the grief and the humiliation of others. At the end of three months I was tired of putting up with him and had resolved to leave; only ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... not hear, I shall understand that my letter is superfluous. Smith and Beck were so pleased with the simple microscope they made for me, that they have made another as a model. If you are consulted by any young naturalists, do recommend them to look at this. I really feel quite a personal gratitude to this form of microscope, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... the translation. Yet, though he had neglected his mother tongue in order to bestow all his attention on French, his French was, after all, the French of a foreigner. It was necessary for him to have always at his beck some men of letters from Paris to point out the solecisms and false rhymes of which, to the last, he was frequently guilty. Even had he possessed the poetic faculty, of which, as far as we can judge, he was utterly destitute, the want ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... waves slapping all about: in vain the crags and boulders hiss round it in foam, and the seaweed on its side is flung up and sucked away. But when he may in nowise overbear their blind counsel, and all goes at fierce Juno's beck, with many an appeal to gods and void sky, 'Alas!' he cries, 'we are broken of fate and driven helpless in the [595-626]storm. With your very blood will you pay the price of this, O wretched men! Thee, O Turnus, thy crime, thee thine awful ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... government by the monarch cabinet: Cabinet elected by the Parliament, confirmed by the monarch head of government: Head of Government Otmar HASLER (since 5 April 2001) and Deputy Head of Government Rita KIEBER-BECK (since 5 April 2001) ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... us are Judge Noel and Judge Beck, making the first circuit of justice through this country. Although they had come all the way from Edmonton looking for trouble, so splendid has been the surveillance of the Mounted Police here that no one could scrape up one case for the judges ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... Alice married a country doctor whom I came to know as "Uncle Beck." My Uncle Joe, who inherited my grandfather's business-sense, with none of his crookedness, started out as a newsboy, worked his way up to half-proprietorship in a Mornington paper ... the last I heard of him he had money invested in nearly every enterprise in town, and had become ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... kept for her, just as she had used it, all through her girlhood, and Mom Beck put fresh flowers in it every day. Lloyd always darted in for a quick look around, even when she came for only a short while. There was a glass bowl of pink hyacinths on her desk this morning, and she sat down to make a list of several things which she wanted to suggest for the coming event. ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... she was well enough into the graces of the bureaucrat to barge into his office during working hours. Surprising in itself, since, although she was an Upper born, still governmental servants can't be at the beck of every ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... Sugar Company, the Inland Crystal Salt Company, the Salt Lake Knitting Company, and the Salt Lake Dramatic Association; and that he was a director of the Union Pacific Railway Company, vice-president of the Bullion-Beck and Champion Mining Company, and editor of the Improvement Era and ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... The accounts from there are very contradictory." On March 22nd the news seems better. "Troops are assembling in defence of France and the traitor does not seem to have any adherents, so we would fain hope all may go well." The writer, a Miss Beck, sends, for the amusement of Murray Bay, the book "Guy Mannering," which is "in very high repute ... the author unknown, but very generally thought to be Walter ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... Servants, as they call themselves, have imposed upon Tradesmen who serve the Families that entertain them, are very far from being thought sufficient and satisfactory. For besides a Butcher, Poulterer, or Fishmonger's being at the constant beck of the Clerk to a Kitchin, or the Groom of a Chamber, to follow him to a Tavern in the Morning, and bring something that's pretty, to compose a Breakfast for two or three hungry Fellows out of Business, as he shall have in his Company, they must, I say, moreover learn the Art ...
— The Tricks of the Town: or, Ways and Means of getting Money • John Thomson
... whom were well known to Madeline. Edith Wayne was a patrician brunette, a serious, soft-voiced woman, sweet and kindly, despite a rather bitter experience that had left her worldly wise. Mrs. Carrollton Beck, a plain, lively person, had chaperoned the party. The fourth and last of the feminine contingent was Miss Dorothy Coombs—Dot, as they called her—a young woman ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... doing what I ask and watching me pitch it into the beck. I'm a rather determined person. It would be a pity to throw the thing away, particularly as the rain hasn't ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... 15.—"The Compensation | |of Employes for Injuries Received While | |at Work" was taken by J. D. Beck, | |commissioner of labor of Wisconsin, as | |the theme of his address before the | |National Civic Federation here | ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... If the meanest and most dirty boy in the neighbourhood was in want of a companion, or rather a tool, to assist him in his mischievous pranks, he had nothing to do but to make his application to Jack Idle; for foolish Jack (as they truly called him) was at the beck of every mischievous rogue; and when the mischief was done, he was always left, like a stupid ass as he was, to bear the burden of it. His father had money; and Jack's great pride was to be complimented by his raggamuffin companions as the cook of ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... Obviously, then, so far as the power of the father was concerned, a woman had practically the management of her suit. II.—The husband had no power. If he tried to browbeat her as to what to do, she could send him a divorce, a privilege which she had at her beck and call, as we have seen; and then she could force him to give her any guardian she wanted.[136] III.—That the authority of other guardians was in practice a mere formality, I have already proved (pp. ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... Trilogy given in America for the first time beginning on this date with a performance of "Das Rheingold," at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York City, with Emil Fischer as Wotan, Max Alvary as Loge, Grienaur as Donner, Mittelhauer as Froh, Beck as Alberich, Sedlmayer as Mime, Weiss as Fafner, Modlinger as Fasolt, Madame Moran-Olden as Fricka, Bettaque as Freia, and Traubmann, Koschoska, and Reil as the ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee
... having; it does not belong to him, has no root in him and merely lies there because no revolution or no robber takes it away. But that which a man is, does always by necessity acquire, and what the man acquires is living property, which does not wait the beck of rulers, or mobs, or revolutions, or fire, or storm, or bankruptcies, but perpetually renews itself wherever the man breathes. "Thy lot or portion of life," said the Caliph Ali, "is seeking after thee; therefore be at rest from seeking after it." ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the note again. "We"—who were "we"?—and "love from both." Surely Flora must be with her! I kept wishing—and I could not tell myself why—that Ephraim had less to do with it. I did not like his seeming to be thus at the beck and call of Annas; and I did not know why it vexed me. I must be growing selfish. That would never do! Why should Ephraim not do things for Annas? I was an older friend, it is true, but that was all. I had no more claim ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... lawyer. There were likely to be many of what he termed "minor details" connected with the transfer of the Colfax estate to him and the purchases which he meant to make later on, and an attorney at his beck and call would be a great convenience. Not this only; he had actually offered his young cousin the position, had offered to engage him and to pay him several hundred ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... M. Beck, ex-Assistant Attorney-General of the United States, then and now chief attorney for Henry H. Rogers, the Standard Oil Company, the "System," and the Mutual Life Insurance Company, to ridicule my utterances and asperse my honor in ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... am very proud, revengeful, ambitious; with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... Harry stood in the doorway, listening with an aching and a fearful heart. He dared not enter the chamber. It was the Chamber of Death. What was his own part in calling the Destroying Angel who is at the beck and summons of every man—even the meanest? Call him and he comes. Order him to strike—and he obeys. ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... the mastiff with his chain, the soldier was no sooner outside the door of the Dragon court before he began to express his wonder how a lad of mettle could put up with a flat cap, a blue gown, and the being at the beck and call of a greasy burgher, when a bold, handsome young knave like him might have the world before ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the tyke not e'en as kind, Though fast she beck'd to pat him; He louped up and slaked her cheek, Afore she could win at him. But save us, sirs, when I gaed in, To lean me on the settle, Atween my Bawtie and the cat There rose an ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... waggons and tents being packed. Advancing at last? Oh, dear, no. Only Lord Kitchener at the other end of the wire playing with us again. We were to retire on Boshof, but Lord Methuen decided, instead of going into the town, to encamp at Beck's Farm about five miles out, where the grazing was better. The lay mind found it hard to understand the purpose of these movements. Lord Methuen had been humbugged and baffled by Headquarters in what seemed at the time a most unbusinesslike way. First he was ordered out ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... embassy from England, which had first touched at Lochmaben, overtook him at the Tower of Lammington. The ambassadors were Edmund, Earl of Arundel (a nobleman who had married the only sister of De Warenne), and Anthony Beck, Bishop of Durham. ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... with them she seemed like a bright child among old, sleeping men, almost like a living body among the withered tenants of the tombs. And before we had been upon our voyage above a fortnight the commander and both lieutenants of the Thetis were at her beck and call, while as for the little midshipmen, down to one youngster of twelve, they swore by her as if she were a goddess, and fought duels about her in the cockpit with ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... majority of our readers. Even when we announced the publication of this work a few weeks since, we were led to anticipate the delight it would afford many of our esteemed correspondents, especially our friend W.H.H., who has "caught about forty trout in two or three hours" in the rocky basins of Pot-beck, &c.[5] ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII., No. 324, July 26, 1828 • Various
... say. Or, yes, I will say. If that woman, who seems to have you at her beck and call, had not intermeddled, I might have made you a very different answer. But now my eyes are opened, and I see what I should have to expect, and—no, thank ...
— Five O'Clock Tea - Farce • W. D. Howells
... strenuous exertion to surmount. They cannot stride from one to the other as on a flight of stairs. One man is exhausted and gives up half-way, and a cheerful Cockney voice comes down from above telling him to "put his beck into it!" He'll need it. Standing thus and looking up we get some idea of the enormous size of the Pyramid, which makes its blocks look small by contrast. It is bigger, far bigger than one expected. This is the largest of all, built anything between ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... despairing of encouragement, ceased to attend on hers. And they went on in silence through Kirton hamlet, where an old man followed them with his eyes, and perhaps envied them their youth and love; and across the Ivy beck where the mill was splashing and grumbling low thunder to itself in the chequered shadow of the dell, and the miller before the door was beating flour from his hands as he whistled a modulation; and up by the high spinney, whence they saw the ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... before he can fold it. Shall repent him before he haue sold it. No man loueth his fetters thowgh they be of gold. The nearer the church the furder from God. All is not gold that glisters. Beggers should be no chuzers. A beck is as good as a dieu vous gard. The rowling stone neuer gathereth mosse. Better ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence
... February 19 Senator Beck at Washington referred to an extract from a late speech of Count von Moltke before the German Reichstag, to show that war ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 - Volume 1, Number 3 • Various
... for one of those Prussians to tell, whose hosts were everywhere all-powerful, who had the city at their beck and call, could have requisitioned a hundred carriages and brought a thousand horses from their stables. And he denied her prayer with the haughty air of a victor who has made it a law to himself ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... me to go to him; and so I went: for how can I help being at his beck? which grieves me not a little, though he is my master, as I may say; for I am so wholly in his power, that it would do me no good to incense him; and if I refused to obey him in little matters, my refusal in greater would have the less weight. So ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... to learn city fashions! When you are a little older, instead of speaking unpleasant truths to a fine lady with a cross on her forehead, you will be ready to run to the Pillars of Hercules at her beck and nod, for the sake of her disinterested help towards a fashionable pulpit, or perhaps a bishopric. The ladies settle that ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... possible! He had at his beck and call a whole host of functionaries and servitors! He it was who had the power to make the whole machine of government move—he, the lawyer from Grenoble—who ten years ago would have thought it a great honor ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... stupefaction of the Austrians—who had believed that they had either Saxony or Silesia at their mercy, whenever they could make up their mind which ought first to be gobbled up—so rapidly did the Prussian cavalry push forward that Generals Beck and Nadasti were both so taken by surprise that they had to ride for their lives, leaving baggage coaches, horses, and all their belongings ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... of history has been opened. As everything which has good at the heart evolves toward the good, so we of the Double-Four have lifted our great enterprise onto a higher plane. The world of criminals is still at our beck and call, we still claim the right to draw the line between moral theft and immoral honesty, but to-day the Double-Four is concerned with greater things. Within the four walls of this room, within the hearing of these my brothers, whose fidelity is as sure as the stones of Paris, I tell you a ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... his famous bandana handkerchief. The immortal Ben Hill, the idol of the South, and Lamar, the gifted orator and highest type of Southern chivalry were there. Garland, and Morgan, and Harris, and Coke, were there; and Beck with his sledge-hammer intellect. It was an arena of opposing gladiators more magnificent and majestic than was ever witnessed in the palmiest days of the Roman Empire. There were giants in the Senate in those days, and when they clashed shields and measured swords in debate, ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... ready smile and facile tear, Improvised hopes, despairs at nod and beck, And language—ah, the gift of eloquence! Language that goes as easy as a glove O'er good and evil, ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... your father's favour; but I regret to say, the proofs of the offences of which he stands charged have been too strong to be controverted. Still," added he, "I have it in my power to save him; I have influence, I have means at my beck; it may involve me, it is true, in difficulties, perhaps in disgrace; but what would I not do, in the hope of being rewarded by your favour? Speak, beautiful Inez," said he, his eyes kindling with sudden eagerness; "it is with you to say the word that ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... "my view of spiritualism is, that it's an intensely humiliating idea after you've done with this world to be at the beck and call of any other human being who can make you go through a variety of tricks, as if you were a performing dog, in order to convince people still in the body that there is another life. If that other life permits us to come back here and play tambourines, and knock ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... that Teispes was the immediate successor of Achaemenes, indicated by Herodotus, is affirmed by Darius himself in the Behistun inscription. According to Billet- beck, the Anzan (Anshan) of the early Achaemenidae was merely a very small part of the ancient Anzan (Anshan), viz. the district on the east and south-east of Kuh-i-Dena, which includes the modern towns of Yezdeshast, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... while to remark that letters are sometimes added as well as dropped by the peasantry. Thus the Cockley, a little tributary of Wordsworth's Duddon, is by the natives of Donnerdale invariably called Cocklety beck; whether for the sake of euphony, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 19, Saturday, March 9, 1850 • Various
... Jim Halloween. With three good able-bodied lovers at yo' beck an' call, it's a downright shame to die an old maid just from pure contrariness. It's better arter all, to eat dough that don't rise than to ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... man and not a mouse. Because I don't want to be at the beck and call of every dog and devil that has a bit more money than I have—a man has got to be a man ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... time to take back his speech advocating the government ownership of railroads, a gesture against "the interests," made at the bidding of Hearst, at the beck of whose agents he ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... sufficient unto one's self," Mrs. Havel told them. "A girl cannot always expect to find a boy at her beck and call. It is nice to be waited on by the male sex—and it is good for boys to learn to attend properly upon their girl friends; it is better, however, to know how to accept favors gracefully from our boy friends, and yet not ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... The bad government kills out the good government as surely as slave-labour destroys free-labour, or as a debased currency drives out a sound currency. The existence of proconsuls in the provinces, with great armies at their beck and call, brought about such results as might have been predicted, as soon as the growing anarchy at home furnished a valid excuse for armed interference. In the case of the Roman world, however, the result is not to be deplored, for it simply substituted a government ...
— American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History • John Fiske
... thing happened. He worked for a Mr. Beck, builder, and lived in one of his master's houses in Trundley Road. Mr. Beck was thrown from his trap and killed. The thing was an unruly horse, and, as I say, it happened. Cavilla had to seek fresh ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... offense she threw afresh in her face. But Letty could not help being pleased to find that her aunt's storm no longer swamped her boat. When she began, however, to abuse Mary, calling her a low creature, who actually gave up an independent position to put herself at the beck and call of a fine ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... and nod it. We have to round November. I could strangle the world till that month's past. You'll own,' he added mildly after his thunder, 'I'm not much of the despot Nevil calls me. She has not a wish I don't supply. I'm at her beck, and everything that's mine. She's a brave good woman. I don't complain. I run my chance. But if we lose the child—good night! ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith |
