"Beck" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shall not 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, ...
— Five O'Clock Tea - Farce • W. D. Howells
... 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[obs3], dactylonomy[obs3]; 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, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... 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, ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... prodigies of satire was a tender episode or any symptom connected with the dawn of love. Florence herself had suffered at intervals throughout her eleventh summer because Wallie discovered that Georgie Beck had sent her a valentine; and the humorist's many, many squealings of that valentine's affectionate quatrain finally left her unable to decide which she hated the more, Wallie or Georgie. That was the worst of Wallie: he never ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... invites the boy with a beck of his head to follow him (feeling it hopeless to drag him, or coax him), and crosses to the iron railing where the Stony (and stoned) One is ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... 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, where the heather begins, peat-hags and morasses make dangerous provision, from ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... twenty alguazils at your beck and call, and have of course the power, and so had your predecessor, who nearly lost his situation by imprisoning me; but you know full well that you have not the right, as I am not under your jurisdiction, but that of the captain-general. If I have obeyed ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... Was there ever a man, I pray you, more skilled in history and philology, more ready to assist the student, more endowed with wit and wealth and worth, the equipment of any man who, like Peiresc, is to hold the world of letters at his beck and call.' ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... on this wyse, Sayand, That we are heretikes, And fals, loud, liand, mastif tykes; Cumerars and quellars of Christes kirk, Sueir swongeouris[178] that will not wirk, But ydlelie our living wynnes, Devouring woulves into sheip skynnes, Hurkland with huides into our neck, Wyth Judas mynd to jouck and beck, Seikand Christes peple to devoir, The down thringars of God his[179] glore, Professouris of hipocrisie, And doctouris in idolatrie, Stout fyschares with the Feindis nett, The upclosars of Heavins yett, Cankcarit corruptars of the Creid, Homlok ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... the tip, From the blight of the warrant, From the watchmen who skip On the Harman Beck's errand; From the bailiffs cramp speech, That makes man a thrall, I charm thee from each, And I charm thee from all. Thy freedom's complete As a Blade of the Huff, To be cheated and cheat, To be ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... flow, profluence^; effluence &c (egress) 295; defluxion^; flowing &c v.; current, tide, race, coulee. spring, artesian well, fount, fountain; rill, rivulet, gill, gullet, rillet^; streamlet, brooklet; branch [U.S.]; runnel, sike^, burn, beck, creek, brook, bayou, stream, river; reach, tributary. geyser, spout, waterspout. body of water, torrent, rapids, flush, flood, swash; spring tide, high tide, full tide; bore, tidal bore, eagre^, hygre^; fresh, freshet; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... 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
... the green gentleness of the fields. In the silence, all the voices of nature spoke; the rising wind, which flung itself against the hill-slopes at their feet; the insistent flow of the river, descending from the reservoirs far away; and the sharp chatter of the little beck leaping at their side from stone to stone. Passionately, in Meynell's heart the "buried life" awoke, which only love can free from the cavern where it lies, and bring into ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... knees and elbows, and "The Kiss" by Moller. In spite of the fact that Golushkin had no family, there were a great many menials and hangers-on collected under his roof. He did not receive them from any feeling of generosity, but simply from a desire to be popular and to have someone at his beck and call. "My clients," he used to say when he wished to throw dust in one's eyes. He read very little, but had an excellent memory for ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... again at the elm tree, and, with a scheme in him for seeing Rebekah, heaped the barrow with refuse, pushed it between a beck and the wood, till, wearying of this, he was about to get the meteorite into the barrow, when he had the mad thought that Frankl must be made to see and touch it, so set off to seek him: and a few yards brought him ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... of an oratory did not contemplate any parochial work, but you could not contemplate so many souls in want of pastors without being prompt and ready at the beck of authority to strain all your efforts in coming to their help. And this brings me to the third and the most continuous of those labours to which I have alluded. The mission in Alcester Street, its church and schools, were the first work of the Birmingham Oratory. After several years of close ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... it, and it would cost me a pretty penny. But here you are miles from a settlement with your own private physician in attendance. Were you a young prince you could not be more royally cared for. Think of having one of the best New York surgeons at your beck and call here in this wilderness. ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett
... Sergeant Bibot at the barrier of Menilmontant, ask General Santerre and his guards. They all have a tale to tell. Did I believe in God or the devil, I should also believe that this man has supernatural powers and a host of demons at his beck ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... The discovery of his designs brought about the Decree of Spires, which gave Protestantism a legal recognition in the empire, and also the capture and sack of Rome by Frundsberg's soldiery. Charles's ascendancy in Italy and over the papacy was secured. Clement, now almost at his beck, would have persuaded him to apply coercion to the German Protestants; but this did not suit the emperor, whose solution for existing difficulties was the summoning of a general council, which Clement was quite determined to evade. Moreover, matters ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... driven, Be it good or bad, I must account it heaven:[379] Though married, I am reputed no wife, Neglected of my husband, scorn'd, despis'd: And though my love and true obedience Lies prostrate to his beck, his heedless eye Receives my services unworthily. I know no cause, nor will be cause of none, But hope for better days, when bad be gone. You are my ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... generality of electors are not sufficiently interested in their own government to give their vote, or, if they vote at all, do not bestow their suffrages on public grounds, but sell them for money, or vote at the beck of some one who has control over them, or whom for private reasons they desire to propitiate. Popular election thus practiced, instead of a security against misgovernment, is but an ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... must again move—in what direction? "Go to Villette," said an inward voice; prompted doubtless by the recollection of this slight sentence uttered carelessly and at random by Miss Fanshawe, as she bid me good-by: "I wish you would come to Madame Beck's; she has some marmots whom you might look after; she wants an English gouvernante, or was wanting ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... his handiwork fell together in the middle, faded like shadows from bronze to hoary pallor; its longevity was a protracted death. In short, his arbors broke under the weight of a purpose, as poems become doggerel in the service of a theorist. Truly, Alcott was completely at the beck of illusion; and he was always safer alone with it than near the hard uses of adverse reality. I well remember my astonishment when I was told that he had set forth to go into the jaws of the Rebellion after Louisa, his daughter, who had succumbed to typhus fever while nursing the soldiers. ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... Grace rescued," she said, as Betty and Tom Beck retired; "the one from woe, the other from cruel wickedness. He had betrayed the poor child and deserted her, and 'twas her Grace who touched his heart and woke manhood in it, and made them ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... 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 optimism show ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... been asked of me who were the great players of my time. I can only say, judging from their work, that they were all great, but if I were compelled to particularize, I should mention the names of Tompkins, Peters, Hull, Beck, Twombly, Richards; in fact, I would have to mention each team year by year. To them I attribute the success of Yale's football in my time, and for many years after that to the unfailing zeal ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... is precise upon this point: and as I believe no British statesman ever lived, so I hope none ever will live, unwise enough to bind his country by so preposterous an obligation, as that she should go to war, not merely in defence of an ally, but at the will and beck of that ally, whenever ambition, or false policy, or a predominant faction, may plunge that ally into wars of her own ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... coming to. I don't indeed. It's the Board Schools as does it. When I was a gal, if a decent young man came a-courtin', we gave him a 'Yes' or a 'No.' We didn't keep him hanging on like a half-clipped sheep. Now, here are you with two of them at your beck, and you can't give an answer to ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the bosses. Why, man, if the workingmen only knew it, they are ten times worse slaves to the union bosses than ever they were to corporations. They have to pay over their wages to let those fellows live like nabobs; they have to come and go at their beck and call, and throw up good positions and live in enforced idleness because of some other fellows' grievances; they don't dare express an opinion or say their souls are their ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... sunshine that they looked as if they might have grown like the apple-trees and willows and elms. There were great white clouds in the blue sky; the air was delicious. Betty could make out at last that old Mr. Plunkett was the skipper's father, that Captain Beck was an old shipmaster and a former acquaintance of her own, and that the flour and some heavy boxes belonged to one store-keeping passenger with a long sandy beard, and the mowing-machine to the other, who was called ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... than Ruth, was free! There was no dissociating the two facts. They shouted their message together. He was rid of his incubus—why mince the word now!—rid of her gadfly vulgarity, her shallow emotions, her pinch-beck ideals, her hideous selfishness. By her own rash act she had freed him to marry the woman he loved with all his rugged strength—the woman who that memorable September day had proved loved him. What was the transient ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... change of matrimony and adaptation to city life, that her judgment was in suspension. Yet though she smiled and sewed demurely, she was thinking. The yellow clapboarded house and metal stag, and a maid-of-all-work at her beck and call, were gratifying at the outset and made demands upon her energies. Selma's position in her father's house had been chiefly ornamental and social. She had been his companion and nurse, had read to him and argued with him, but the mere household work had been performed ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... to the sufferings of those who bear pain with the fortitude of the angels. Our women-folk! How many here are hiding that dreadful malady, cancer? Hiding it, when help and cure are at their beck and call. Lady," he bent swiftly to the slattern under the torch and his accents were a healing effluence, "with my soothing, balmy oils, you can cure yourself in three weeks, ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... life. If you keep house as a lady should, you need not fear to entertain anyone who is worthy to be your friend. It is no disgrace if your circumstances are such that you cannot afford to keep a staff of servants at your beck and call. ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... came of some remark Mr Forest had made concerning the difference between the streams of Switzerland and England—those in the former country being emptiest, those in the latter fullest in the Winter. It was—when the frost should have bound up the sources of the beck which ran almost by our door, and it was no longer a stream, but a rope of ice—to take that rope for our guide, and follow it as far as we could towards the secret recesses of its ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... 25th, brought together a great assembly, great for the remoteness of the place and the inclemency of the weather. The country folk have a saying "Happy is the dead that the rain rains on;" and the fells were darkly clouded and the beck roared by, swollen to a torrent. The church was far too small to hold the congregation, which included most of his personal friends and the representatives of many public bodies. A crowd stood outside in the storm while the service ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... it was the cure who was ever at the beck and call of the two strangers, divining their desires, making quite easy a situation which otherwise might have been difficult enough. Not only the cure, but the whole village soon became quite reconciled to the ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... too well My heart was to the rudder tied by the strings, And thou should'st tow me after. O'er my spirit Thy full supremacy thou know'st; and that Thy beck might from the bidding ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... kind-hearted, honest, God-fearing people who seldom locked their doors at night and who believed in and lived by the Golden Rule. The selfish and distrustful life of a great city, with its arrogance and wealth and vanity of display, was not akin to him, and to put himself at the beck and call of a mercenary and utterly unscrupulous old villain, as he believed Frye to be, was gall and bitterness. For two weeks he worked patiently, hoping each day that the one and only friend the city held for him would call, passing his evenings, as he wrote Alice, "in reading, ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... while 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 ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... but a priestly trick. What sensible man believes that the Holy Ghost, if such a being exist, is at the beck and call of every Catholic or Protestant bishop? Can the "universal spirit" dwell exclusively in certain places? Can the third person of the Trinity have sunk into such an abject state as to dodge in and out of buildings, according as he is wanted ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... sometimes the butt of a playmate's gibes because of a drunken father or a slatternly mother, required to study subjects that make no appeal to the child and in a language that is not native, and then back to the street, perhaps to sell papers until far into the night, or to run at the beck and call of the public as a messenger boy. Many a child, in spite of the public opposition to child labor, is put to work to help support the family, and department store and bootblack parlor are conspicuous among their places of ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... efforts to keep up an appearance of cheerfulness, and to be at Madam Lambert's beck and call, was a ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... who was seen carried about in his chair, and, in spite of his infirmities, showing that a warrior's soul is mistress of the body it animates. But yield they must: in vain through the woods, with his cavalry all fresh, does Beck rush down to fall upon our exhausted men the prince has been beforehand with him; the broken battalions cry for quarter, but the victory is to be more terrible than the fight for the Duke of Enghien. Whilst with easy mien he advances ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... wheedling Politician, and the lack-beard Dervish, are feasted by the personages and functionaries of Damascus. The Vali, the Mufti, Abdallah Pasha,—he who owns more than two score villages and has more than five thousand braves at his beck and call,—these, and others of less standing, vie with each other in honouring the distinguished visitors. And after the banqueting, while Ahmed Bey retires to a private room with his host to discuss the political situation, Khalid, to escape the torturing ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... the Shaugh. [Sidenote: Cozamomet a noble man that fauoured our nation.] He hath here and in other places of these parts set a good stay in things since the kings death: he is well knowen to M. Ienkinson, his name is Cozamomet. Also another Duke named Ameddin-beck is our great friend. And his sister is the Shaughes wife. These two haue promised your Agent by their lawe, not onely to procure to get the Shaughes priuiledge but also that I shall haue the debts paied ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt
... man-of-war?" replied Spicer; "you'd soon be sick enough of that. Why, who would be at the beck and nod of others, ordered here, called there, by boy midshipmen; bullied by lieutenants, flogged by captains; have all the work and little of the pay, all the fighting and less of the prize-money; and, after having worn out your life in hard service, be sent here as ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... now a kitchen-maid, and had to be at the cook's beck and call, and do the dirtiest work. In both her pockets she fastened a little jar, in which she took home her share of the leavings, and upon this ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... 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 rush on deck with the rest of ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... did 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 ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... said, "I am not accustomed to run at the beck and call of my—er—acquaintances, but, even though we have disagreed of late, even though to me your conduct seems quite unjustifiable, still, for the sake of our boyhood friendship, and, because you ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... consequence, with very definite notions about the dignity of labour. We have employers who tremble at our frown; we have Trades Union officials who are at constant pains to impress upon us our own omnipotence in the industrial world in which we live. We have at our beck and call a Radical M.P. who, in return for our vote and suffrage, informs us that we are the backbone of the nation, and that we must on no account permit ourselves to be trampled upon by the effete ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... Michaelmas festivities at Halvergate that night, burst a mud-splattered fellow in search of Sir Hugh Vernon. Roger Darke brought him to the knight. The fellow then related that he came from Simeon de Beck, the master of Castle Rising, with tidings that a strange boat, French-rigged, was hovering about the north coast. Let Sir Hugh have a ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... 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
... hearers, to carry you indeed a little out of yourself by its variety of intonation, its fire and fervour, its languishing modulations, broken pauses, yearning melancholy of effect. The part of the neurotic hero of the—then—Laureate's poem, that somewhat pinch-beck Victorian Hamlet, suited our young friend, moreover, down to the ground. It offered sympathetic expression to his own nature and temperament; so that he wooed, scoffed, blasphemed, orated, drowned in salt seas of envy and self-pity, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... counsellor. "If I be condemned to evil acts," he said, "there is still one door of freedom open: I can cease from action. If my life be an ill thing, I can lay it down. Though I be, as you say truly, at the beck of every small temptation, I can yet, by one decisive gesture, place myself beyond the reach of all. My love of good is damned to barrenness; it may, and let it be! But I have still my hatred of evil; and from that, to your galling disappointment, ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... assignment. But the clerical mind with its passion for monotonous repetition of petty mental processes seems to correlate with the most exquisite and refined feminine features. Those scintillating beauties on the Free Level who have ever at their beck our wisest men are from our clerical strain,—but of course they are only the rejects. It is unfortunate that you cannot see the more privileged specimens in the clerical ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... highest educated around him—those to whom he looks for example and instruction—must be true. He resists doubt as inspired by the Evil One seeking his soul, and sure to get it unless faith comes to the rescue. Unfortunately he soon finds that faith is not exactly at his beck and call. Original sin he thinks must be at the root of this inability to see as he wishes to see, to believe as he wishes to believe. It seems clear to him that already he is little better than one of the lost. Of the elect ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... seem women in work and at play; Ye, who do blindly as women may say; Ye, who kill life in the smug cabarets; Ye, all, at the beck of the little tea-tray; Ye, all, of the measure of daughters ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... silently, the angel came, With upraised eye, and beck'ning hand, And gently folding in his arms, Bore me to the ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... 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, but nothing of ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... of mound building by northern Indians may be found in the works of comparatively modern writers. Lewis C. Beck [Footnote: Gazetteer of the States of Ill. and Mo., p. 308.] affirms that "one of the largest mounds in this country has been thrown upon this stream [the Osage] within the last thirty or forty years by the Osages, near the great Osage village, in honor of one of their deceased chiefs." ...
— The Problem of Ohio Mounds • Cyrus Thomas
... Quaker City, as a rule, do not give salaries to their doctors; and the vilest of the poor prefer a "pay doctor" to one of these disinterested gentlemen, who cannot be expected to give their best brains for nothing, when at everybody's beck and call. I am told, indeed I know, that most young doctors do a large amount of poor practice, as it is called; but, for my own part, I think it better for both parties when the doctor insists upon some compensation being made to him. This has ...
— The Autobiography of a Quack And The Case Of George Dedlow • S. Weir Mitchell
... order so that it would be obeyed. Not one bit did the president like to do it, but something had to be done to obtain the necessary order, for the soldiers who so willingly and promptly obeyed her beck and call were now edging away for a look at the newcomers, and Mrs. Frank Garrison, perched on the carriage step and chatting most vivaciously with its occupants and no longer concerning herself, apparently, about the ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... Iroquois of Caughnawaga and La Presentation, and the Iroquois and Algonkins at the Two Mountains on the Ottawa. Besides these, all the warriors of the west and north, from Lake Superior to the Ohio, and from the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, were now at the beck of France. As to the Iroquois or Five Nations who still remained in their ancient seats within the present limits of New York, their power and pride had greatly fallen; and crowded as they were between the French and the English, they were in a state ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... "Mr. Beck," said the presiding judge, "take the prisoner into that room at the rear of the court, hear his story, and give him the best advice ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... faced the woman fairly. "But now I think of it, I am not sure that he is beyond the influence of one woman at least; the one over there—Madame de S—, you know. Formerly the dead were allowed to rest, but now it seems they are at the beck and call of a crazy old harridan. We revolutionists make wonderful discoveries. It is true that they are not exactly our own. We have nothing of our own. But couldn't the friend of Peter Ivanovitch satisfy your feminine curiosity? ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... himself in his especial fashion, Daring the worst to earn a lover's boon, But I, no less than he a prey to passion, Faced risks as great this very afternoon, When at the Tube a long half-hour I waited (In fond obedience to your written beck) Where loiterers, it practically stated, Would get ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, October 6, 1920 • Various
... Jan passed him without speaking, and walked down to the place of explosions. He was looking at the marks of fire on the rocks, when it seemed to him he heard a shout, and he saw, as he turned his head, that the Irishman was standing up. But he made no beck, and Jan walked along. When he looked again the young man had both hands to his head. Jan shaded his eyes ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... time By-ends and his companions were come again within sight, and they, at the first beck, went over to Demas. Now, whether they fell into the pit by looking over the brink thereof, or whether they went down to dig, or whether they were smothered in the bottom by the damps that commonly arise, of these things I am not certain; ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress - From this world to that which is to come. • John Bunyan
... weak and faint With the soft burthen of intensest bliss. It was its work to bear to many a saint 165 Whose heart adores the shrine which holiest is, Even Love's:—and others white, green, gray, and black, And of all shapes—and each was at her beck. ...
— The Witch of Atlas • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... around so, meantime. Of course there were some few pilots that could judge of alligator water nearly as well as they could of any other kind, but they had to have natural talent for it; it wasn't a thing a body could learn, you had to be born with it. Let me see: there was Ben Thornburg, and Beck Jolly, and Squire Bell, and Horace Bixby, and Major Downing, and John Stevenson, and Billy Gordon, and Jim Brady, and George Ealer, and Billy Youngblood—all A 1 alligator pilots. THEY could tell alligator water as far as another Christian could tell whiskey. Read it?—Ah, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... 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 Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... in with a vengeance, and the gangs paddled about in coal-slush at the pit-banks. Then the big mine-pumps were made ready, and the Manager of the Colliery ploughed through the wet towards the Tarachunda River swelling between its soppy banks. 'Lord send that this beastly beck doesn't misbehave,' said the Manager piously, and he went to take counsel with his ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... an' tole her dat he would give her a puppy; dat dey was plenty of houn's on de plantation. Den he snapped de chains on dey wris' an' led dem off. Lissa an' Cleve never seed dat baby no more. Aunt Beck Lawson took an' raised her an' when she got grown she was ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... are not to be forgotten—up at five o'clock every morning, scouring, washing, cooking, dressing those infamous children; seventeen hours at least out of the twenty-four at the beck and call of landlady, lodgers, and quarrelling children; seventeen hours at least out of the twenty-four drudging in that horrible kitchen, running up stairs with coals and breakfasts and cans of hot water; down on your knees before ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... a soft, restful murmur of running water from the little beck by the rose garden, but far above it rose the voice of a man in strong urgent prayer. It came from the summer-house among the rose-trees, and as I listened, I knew it was your father's voice. Then I was frightened. Perhaps God ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... Side company's securing additional franchises for unoccupied streets, or even the use of the La Salle Street tunnel, had ended. Kaffrath did not know this. Neither did the directors or officers of the company, but it was true. In addition, McKenty, through the aldermen, who were at his beck and call on the North Side, was beginning to stir up additional murmurs and complaints in order to discredit the present management. There was a great to-do in council over a motion on the part of somebody to compel the North Side company to throw out its old ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... own that, even with such help, he could not understand 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 ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Throp nor o' Throp's wife, nor o' Throp's wife's chintz-cat that shoo called Nimrod, nor yet o' Throp's parrot that he'd taught to whistle Pop goes t' Weazel. They lated 'em ower t' moors an' along t' beck boddom, but 'twere all for nowt, an' nobody i' Cohen-eead iver set ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... to genius and beyond a reader's hope is the tempestuous purity of those passions. This wild quality of purity has a counterpart in the brief passages of nature that make the summers, the waters, the woods, and the windy heights of that murderous story seem so sweet. The "beck" that was audible beyond the hills after rain, the "heath on the top of Wuthering Heights" whereon, in her dream of Heaven, Catherine, flung out by angry angels, awoke sobbing for joy; the bird whose feathers she—delirious creature—plucks from ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... too, gazed on the heart-cheering sight, And Earl Hildebrand Harpy, so famous in fight; While the figure that walk'd so erect, I suppose, Was Sir Peregrine Penguin,—I judge by his nose. Viscount Stork, as he strutted about, gave a beck To Earl Vulture, who wears no cravat round his neck; And the Bishop was there, though he stood rather back, Array'd in his robes of red, orange, and black, Sir Archibald Ostrich moved on rather chary, And lean'd on his cousin the Count Cassowary, Discoursing of ...
— The Peacock 'At Home' AND The Butterfly's Ball AND The Fancy Fair • Catherine Ann Dorset
... kings, and all their laws before. What safety could their public acts afford? Those he can break; but cannot break his word. So great a trust to him alone was due; Well have they trusted whom so well they knew. The saint, who walked on waves, securely trod, While he believed the beck'ning of his God; But when his faith no longer bore him out, Began to sink, as he began to doubt. Let us our native character maintain; 'Tis of our growth, to be sincerely plain. To excel in truth we loyally ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... my young caller, settling her ribbons with a pretty air of importance, and looking at me out of the most innocent eyes in the world, "my sister Grace married Brian Beck because he had such a lot of money. But you know he is dissipated, and at first Grace almost went distracted. Then she made up her mind to let him go his own gait, and she has as good a time as she can on his money. His Irish name Brian is her thorn in the ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... citizens of Prague, finding that no satisfactory terms could be made with the emperor, recalled Ziska, and entered into alliance with him. The one-eyed patriot was now lord of the land, all Bohemia being at his beck and call. ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... certain intervals of leisure may conduce to the benefit of men whose tastes have been cultivated and refined, and who from education have many resources of literature and reflection at all times at their beck, yet that leisure might prove rather pernicious than otherwise to the uneducated and the ignorant. Let us enquire then how these persons would be likely to employ the remainder of their time, if they had a greater portion of leisure than they at present ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... not the Citie fauours them, And they haue troupes of Souldiers at their beck? Westm. But when the Duke ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... by Thomas de Hatfield, created Bishop of Durham in 1345. Pennant,[5] however, but upon what authority does not appear, traces its foundation to a period prior to the abovementioned, that of Edward I., when he says it was erected by Anthony de Beck, patriarch of Jerusalem and Bishop of Durham, but was afterwards rebuilt by Bishop Hatfield. In 1534, Tonstal, the then bishop, exchanged Durham House with Henry VIII. for a mansion in Thames Street, called "Cold Harborough," when it ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 384, Saturday, August 8, 1829. • Various
... its author and Erasmus as a mere jest? There is a place where the Laus seems to touch both More and Rabelais; the place where Stultitia speaks of her father, Plutus, the god of wealth, at whose beck all things are turned topsy-turvy, according to whose will all human affairs are regulated—war and peace, government and counsel, justice and treaties. He has begotten her on the nymph Youth, not a senile, purblind ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... or beck, Far sleeker than a juvenile, He barely tops the giant smile That wreathes his forehead and ...
— The Broadway Anthology • Edward L. Bernays, Samuel Hoffenstein, Walter J. Kingsley, Murdock Pemberton
... think so must want it themselves," said Seymour, in a low voice; then, obedient to the beck of one of the presiding nymphs, he hastened to take his ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... her milk-pail, or a girl of the Roman Campagna her sheaf of grass and wild flowers. "It is a shame," she reflected indignantly; "it is very likely nothing of any consequence, just one of those inconsiderate people who think that a professional man ought to be always at their beck and call." ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... to sign the paper, and let me know the night before you are going to do it. That will answer. Maxence shall not be your proxy unless he first kills me. If I kill him, you must agree to take me in his place, and I'll undertake to break in that handsome girl and keep her at your beck and call. Yes, Flore shall love you, and if she doesn't satisfy you—thunder! ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... process was next introduced into England, whence it returned with the following modifications; in place of olive-oil or oleic acid, castor oil was used, as cheaper, and the number of operations was reduced. Castor oil, modified by sulphuric acid, can be introduced at once into the dye-beck, so that the fixation of the coloring matter as the lake of a fatty acid is effected in a single operation. The dyeing was then followed by ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... so there! The girls may do it, and if she isn't satisfied let her give notice. I'm sure I shan't be sorry. She's given me more trouble in a day than poor Mrs. Brown did all the months she was here. I won't be at her beck ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... being paid at the rate of a hundred and fifty pounds a year,' he said to his sister in a burst of thankfulness, 'and you shall never, Cytherea, be at any tyrannous lady's beck and call again as long as I live. Never pine or think about what has happened, dear; it's no disgrace to you. Cheer up; you'll ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... Grammont served again under his brother and the Prince de Conde in Spain: and in 1648 he was present with them at the battle of Lens on the 20th Aug., where the Archduke Leopold and General Beck were totally defeated ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 233, April 15, 1854 • Various
... yet 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 ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... escape. Then another with a long pole drives the trouts from the mouth of the "hold," when they immediately dart into the net, and nothing remains but to draw the net quickly up. This is a famous method of fishing. I have been with parties when we have completely cleared the beck. We went to "Carmony" in the spring of 1825, and caught an immense quantity by fishing with the hand and pod. This brings to my recollection an amusing circumstance, which I intend troubling you with, though you may think it unworthy of notice. It was reported in that ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 331, September 13, 1828 • Various
... The officials of the Home Office believed the London Corresponding Society to be guilty; and on 16th June one of them, J. K[ing], issued a secret order to two of his agents at Sheerness to discover whether two members of that society, named Beck and Galloway, had had dealings with the rebel crews. The agents, A. Graham and D. Williams, on 24th June sent to the Duke of Portland the following report, which merits quotation almost ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... drive some She-Elephants, which they bring with them for the purpose; which when once the males have got a sight of, they will never leave, but follow them wheresoever they go; and the females are so used to it, that they will do whatsoever either by a word or a beck their Keepers bid them; and so they delude them along thro Towns and Countreys, thro the Streets of the City, even to the very Gates of the Kings Palace; Where sometimes they seize upon them by snares, and sometimes by driving them into a kind of Pound, they catch them. ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... 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
... case like this brings small comfort. He felt that he had been juggled with, but he neither knew by whose hand nor in what cause. If the hand was that of Providence, why he had only to go on following the beck of the moment, while if it was that of Fate, the very uselessness of struggling with it was apparent at once. Poor reasoning, perhaps, but no other offered, and satisfied that whatever came his intentions were above question, he settled himself at last for a nap, of which he certainly stood ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... measures, as he thought, to crush his new rival. He called the priests into his counsel and demanded to know where the Christ should be born. Too often has the priest been subject to the beck and call of the king. Bad men will use the church for their own evil purposes when they can, and will then grow condescending and complaisant towards the minister and liberal in their gifts. We must be ready to receive and help any man, but we must beware of ...
— A Wonderful Night; An Interpretation Of Christmas • James H. Snowden
... 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, your readers ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 19, Saturday, March 9, 1850 • Various
... golden flesh of Eve, half hidden among laurels, as she stretches forth the fruit of the Fall to shrinking Adam. No one but Tintoretto, till we come to Blake, could have imagined yonder Jonah, summoned by the beck of God from the whale's belly. The monstrous fish rolls over in the ocean, blowing portentous vapour from his trump-shaped nostril. The prophet's beard descends upon his naked breast in hoary ringlets to the girdle. He has forgotten the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... feeling on the men's part that they were being constantly watched on the sly, and to an inability to concentrate. This brought about an inability to feel really honest, for being constantly under suspicion is enough to poison even one's own opinion of one's integrity. Again, being at the beck and call of a prejudiced foreman who was all-powerful, and having no assured protection from the whims of such a man, the worker was obliged, practically for self-protection, to try to conciliate the foremen by methods ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... that Major Merryon's wife was plainly more at home with men than women. Captain Silvester was so openly out of temper over her absence that it was evident she had been "leading him on with utter heartlessness," and now, it seemed, she meant to have the whole mess at her beck and call. ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... Texas, he gave my mother and father to Mrs. Beck. Mrs. Beck was Battle's daughter and Mrs. Beck bought my father from Moss and that kept them together. He was that good. Moss sold out and went to Texas and all his slaves went walking while he went on the train. He had about a hundred of them. When he got there, he couldn't hear from ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... utility of the State. 'Now the education of the Jesuits consists in stripping the pupil of every obligation to his father, to his country, and to his natural prince; in diverting all his love and fear toward a spiritual superior, on whose nod, beck and word he is dependent. This system of training is useful for the supremacy of ecclesiastics and for such secular governments as they are ready to submit to; and none can deny that the Jesuits are without equals in their employment ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... lady's face And hopeless of her grace, Fashion a ghostly sweetness in its place, Fondly adore Some stealth-won cast attire she wore, A kerchief or a glove: And at the lover's beck Into the glove there fleets the hand, Or at impetuous command Up from the kerchief floats the virgin neck: So I, in very lowlihead of love, - Too shyly reverencing To let one thought's light footfall smooth Tread near the living, ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... henpecked, but the wife holds the purse-strings and only doles out money to him when she wants groceries or he needs clothes. It was New Year's eve, the eve of 1739, when Vrouw Van Wempel gave to her lord ten English shillings and bade him hasten to Dr. Beck's for the fat goose that had been bespoken. "And mind you do not stop at the tavern," she screamed after him in her shrillest tone. But poor Nicholas! As he went waddling down the road, snapping through an ice-crust at every step, a roguish wind—or perhaps it was one of the bugaboos ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... got free, His hants vos died behint his beck yet," replied Fritz. "Me and Dim vos sittin' oud here, vaitin' tet hear yer sicknal. Puddy soon ve hear somepody behint dot stages, und see Vood Hite had got oud der beck door. He vas runnin' avay. Ve runt afder him. ...
— Jack Wright and His Electric Stage; - or, Leagued Against the James Boys • "Noname"
... never track wiv 'er no more; I'll never look on 'er side o' the street— Unless she comes an' begs me pardin for Them things she said to me in angry 'eat. She can't ixpeck fer me to smooge an' crawl. I ain't at ANY woman's beck an' call. ...
— The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke • C. J. Dennis
... height of his vision, can deem Of God, of the world, of the soul, With a plainness as near, As flashing as Moses felt When he lay in the night by his flock On the starlit Arabian waste? Can rise and obey The beck of the ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... the design of arc search-lights was achieved in recent years by Beck, who developed an intensive flame carbon-arc. His chief object was to send a much greater current through the arc than had been done previously without increasing the size of the carbons and the unsteadiness of the arc. In the ordinary ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... minimum wage, which, I think, will want increasing; but we want good rural housing on an economically sound basis, an enlivened village life, and all that can be done to give the worker on the land a feeling that he can rise, the sense that he is not a mere herd, at the beck and call of what has been dubbed the "tyranny of the countryside." The land gives work which is varied, alive, and interesting beyond all town industries, save those, perhaps, of art and the highly-skilled crafts and professions. If we can once get land-life ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... 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, ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... "but I hate the thought of yer bein' at the beck an' call of people who ain't fit to clean yer boots. Ye're like a kid 'oldin' its finger in the fire an' yellin' with pain. There's no need fer yer to do it. I've offered ter make yer cashier in the shop at two pounds ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... Herr Beck, the clergyman at Thingvalla, offered me the shelter of his hut for the night; as the building, however, did not look much more promising than the peasants' cottages by which it was surrounded, I preferred quartering myself ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... small; I bear in appearance without much concern the King's engagement with the Duchess of Valentinois, but it is insupportable to me; she governs the King, she imposes upon him, she slights me, all my people are at her beck. The Queen, my daughter-in-law, proud of her beauty, and the authority of her uncles, pays me no respect. The Constable Montmorency is master of the King and kingdom; he hates me, and has given proofs of his hatred, which I shall never forget. ...
— The Princess of Cleves • Madame de La Fayette
... Miss Clay whose sorrow and continued illness had made possible the fruition of her own eager hopes. Tony was sadly lonely without Alan, thought of him far more often and with deeper affection even than she had while she had him at her beck and call in the city, loved him with a new kind of love for his generous kindness to Dick. She made up her mind that he had cleared the shield forever by this splendid act and saw no reason why she should keep him any longer ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... to choose between 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 got ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... 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
... sand, Spirits of earth, spirits of air; Spirits foul and spirits fair, My power obey! I break the rainbow's arched line; That herald of approaching calm. Thunder I send by cold moonshine,— Mine is the bane and mine the balm. My beck upwhirls the hurricane: The sun and moon and stars in vain Their wonted course would keep; Honey from out the rock doth weep When I command. My potent wand, Stretched on the mighty northern wave, Or seas that farther ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... 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
... play. There is home, with mother enraptured to have me at her beck and call again; and, of course, there are musical and social 'does'. They are going to be such fun that I do not know if I shall have room to tuck in a little study. But I suppose you must have a ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... reason why he does not and cannot care. If Cornelius had begun at any time, without other compulsion than the urging within him, to do something he knew he ought to do, he would not now have been the poor slave of circumstances he was—at the call and beck of the weather—such, in fact, as the weather willed. When men face a duty, not merely will that duty become at once less unpleasant to them, but life itself will immediately begin to gather interest; for in duty, and in duty only, does the individual ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... too cautious to take an immediate, personal part in the gold-dust sale. There was a certain underling, Mr. Escrocevitch by name, at Sergei Kovroff's beck and call—a shady person, rather dirty in aspect, and who was, therefore, only admitted to Sergei's presence by the back door and through the kitchen, and even then only at times when ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... {11a} Such roads are locally called “rampers,” i.e., ramparts. The road to “Kirkstead Wharf,” or ferry, where now a fine bridge spans the river Witham, was also in fairly good condition. {11b} The road which now runs from St. Andrew’s Church by the blacksmith’s shop and Reed’s Beck to Old Woodhall and Langton was just passable with difficulty. A small steam packet plied on the river Witham, between Boston and Lincoln, calling at Kirkstead twice a day, going and returning, and a carrier’s cart from Horncastle struggled through the sand once a day, each way, in connection ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... made such a reformation in thy honest man's way of thinking as well as acting. But now we are upon this topic, and only friends about us, I am resolved to be even with thee, brother—Jackey, if you are not for another dish, I wish you'd withdraw. Polly Barlow, we don't want you. Beck, you may stay." Mr. H. obeyed; and Polly went out; for you must know, Miss, that my Lady Davers will have none of the men-fellows, as she calls them, to attend upon us at tea. And I cannot say but I think her entirely in the right, for several ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... men were drawing near a creek, about eight miles from Monkshaven. The creek was formed by a beck (or small stream) that came flowing down from the moors, and took its way to the sea between the widening rocks. The melting of the snows and running of the flooded water-springs above made this beck ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... local race-meetings, Gyp grew up knowing hardly any of her own sex. This dearth developed her reserve, kept her backward in sex-perception, gave her a faint, unconscious contempt for men—creatures always at the beck and call of her smile, and so easily disquieted by a little frown—gave her also a secret yearning for companions of her own gender. Any girl or woman that she did chance to meet always took a fancy to her, because she was so nice to them, which made the transitory nature of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... They chattered nonsense, sucked the heads of their canes, gave themselves affected airs, appropriated the fairest women, and laid, or pretended that they had laid their heads on every pillow. Pleasure, seemingly, was at their beck and call; they looked on the most virtuous and prudish as an easy prey, ready to surrender at a word, at the slightest impudent gesture or insolent look. I declare, on my soul and conscience, that the attainment of power, or of a great name in literature, seemed ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... Renton Moor. Not up the schoolhouse lane, or on the Garthdale Road, or along the fields by the beck. Not up Greffington Edge or Karva. Because of Lindley Vickers and Maurice Jourdain; and ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... cross this during the night, and morning dawns upon us in a level prairie among the network of brooks which form the extreme sources of the Missouri. Here, more than sixty years ago, Lewis and Clarke followed the river up to the "tiny bright beck," so narrow that "one of the party in a fit of enthusiasm, with a foot on each side, thanked God that he had lived to bestride the Missouri." It is called Horse Prairie, from the circumstance that they here bartered for horses with the Shoshonee Indians. They had often ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... vexed, (her woman and nephew smiling by,) your ladyship has no very important commands for me; and I beg leave to withdraw. Beck, said she to her woman, shut the door, my young lady and I must ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... Are free: there sleeps the vessel on the tide, Her languid canvas drooping for the wind; Give us but that, and what need we to fear 90 This Order of the Council? The free waves Will not say No to please a wayward king, Nor will the winds turn traitors at his beck: All things are fitly cared for, and the Lord Will watch us kindly o'er the exodus Of us his servants now, as in old time. We have no cloud or fire, and haply we May not pass dry-shod through the ocean-stream; ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... Many a beck and many a bow welcomed these noble guests to as good entertainment as persons of such rank could set before such visitors; and the old dame, who had formerly lived in Ravenswood Castle, and knew, as she said, ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... come to the same thing in the end—she married I. Ye see, though I were allus at 'er beck an' call, I could never pluck the courage to up an' ax 'er right out. So things went on for a year or so, maybe, till one day—she were makin' apple dumplings, Peter—'Martin,' says she, lookin' at me sideways out of 'er black ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... is my dunce of a classmate has found his way into Congress, and is living amid the perpetual excitement of intellectual minds, while I am cooped up in an ignorant country parish, obliged to be at the beck and call of every old woman, who happens to feel uneasy in ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... of my life that she is not sending for me—expecting me to be at her beck and call?" he said. "I am going out into the conservatory to get some flowers for Miss Vincent. I guess it won't hurt Dorothy to wait a ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... all the thoughts of years! A moment pregnant with a life-time's fears That rise to jeer and laugh, and mock awhile The vaunted courage of the human frame, Till Duty calls, till Love and beck'ning Fame Lead forth the heroes to that frenzied line. The creeping death that, searching, never stays; To brave the rattling, hissing streams of lead, The bursting shrapnel and the million ways That war entices death; when dying, dead And living, ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd
... loss of brethren, numerous and brave, By hostile hands laid prostrate in the dust, So deeply wring my heart as thoughts of thee, Thy days of freedom lost, and led away A weeping captive by some brass-clad Greek; Haply in Argos, at a mistress' beck, Condemn'd to ply the loom, or water draw From Hypereia's or Messeis' fount, Heart-wrung, by stern necessity constrain'd. Then they who see thy tears perchance may say, 'Lo! this was Hector's wife, who, when they fought On plains of Troy, was Ilium's bravest chief.' ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... muscle to the ax and plow, His calm eye to the rifle sight, Or at his country's beck and bow, Setting the fiery cross alight, Or, in the city's pageantry, Serving the Cause in secrecy,— Behold him now, haranguing kings While through the shallow court there rings The light laugh of the courtezan; This the New Yorker, ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... the sword gleams mightier than the pen in Europe, you'll notice, at the Bolshies' beck; Confess now that the case of Mr. LENIN Gets you right ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 1st, 1920 • Various
... great Vatican prison-palace, and guarded from intrusion by armed soldiery and hosts of watchful ecclesiastics of all grades, sat the Infallible Council, the Vicar-General of the humble Nazarene, the aged leader at whose beck a hundred million faithful followers bent in lowly genuflection. Near him stood the Papal Secretary of State and two Cardinal-Bishops of the ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... very cross. If Marjorie took to giving herself airs, the world might as well stop at once. What use was Marjorie except to be at everybody's beck and call; and more especially at his—Eric's—beck and call. He kicked his heels into the gravel, thrust his hands into his trousers pockets, and put on all the airs ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... protest to neglect and ill-treatment. Happily we are not particularly in need of that admonition on our side of the ocean. The wife of the pilot, Salve Christensen, had once broken her engagement with him, having become enamored of the handsome naval lieutenant, Beck; but she recovers her senses and marries Christensen, whom she really loves. After her marriage she tries to do penance for the wrong she has done him by being, as she fancies, a model wife. But by ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... the wolf twitting 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 him ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... [Footnote: Lord Hardwicke married in 1782 Elizabeth, daughter of James, fifth Earl of Balcarres, the sister of Lady Anne Barnard, the authoress of Auld Robin Gray.] and had the misfortune to lose the only son who survived infancy in a storm at sea off Lbeck in 1808 at the age of twenty-four. The succession to the peerage was thus opened up to his half-brothers, the sons of Charles Yorke's second wife, Agneta, daughter of Henry Johnston of Great Berkhampsted: Charles Philip (1764- 1834) who left no heir, and Joseph Sydney (1768-1831), ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... silence he heard the voice of the beck, as it hurried down the ghyll. Twelve years since he had heard it last; and the eternal water 'at its priestlike task' still murmured with the rocks, still drank the rain, and fed the river. No rebellion there, ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... with everything so simplified that the rough artillery-men from the Central American fort had few difficulties with which to contend. He saw little of Poole in the darkness, but knew that he was busy over something with a couple of men at his beck, while a third had had a duty of his own where a bright light had gleamed out and a little chimney had roared in a way which made Poole anxiously consult his father, who was superintending the landing of cases, when in their brief conversation something was said about sparks, and then a ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... the baroness; "do you know so little what a woman is as to suppose that I could ever brook seeing this upstart come to Beaujardin as Isidore's wife, to lord it over me, after I have had every one there at my beck and call for a score of years past? Think you I could live to be tolerated by that child when she came to be mistress of Beaujardin? Never! Listen to me," said she. "You have played your part well ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... calling to him. The wild free life was his by right. He was no dog to be led about upon a chain, and to go and come at the beck of man. He was a wild beast whose home was the wilderness, and this cruel creature, who tyrannized over him, and prodded him, for whom he did tricks day after day, had stolen ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... quickness and daring, he stoood absolutely the Superman among pygmies. He knew his aim, and could make or wait for it; and it was big and real. Other men crowed or fumbled after petty and pinch-beck ends; impossible rhetorical republicanisms; vain senatorial prestiges; —or pleasure pure and simple—say rather, very complex and impure. Let them clack, let them fumble! Caesar would do things and get things done. He wore the whole armor of his greatness, and could see no chink ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... our skilful coxswain could do was to prevent the cutter from shipping a sea, no matter how the wind took us, or whether we ran with the billows or athwart them, as sometimes happened from the sudden shift of the gale, at whose beck and call we were; for, one moment going north or west into the open sea, the next recklessly careering eastwards, right in upon the rocks of the mainland, or dashing south amongst the mazy little islands and islets ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson |
