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More "Obsequious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was to his last day as unspoiled by his unaccustomed grandeur as his brother Alexis. Each was ready at any moment to turn from the obsequious homage of nobles to hobnob with a peasant friend or relative. How utterly devoid of false pride Alexis was is proved by the following anecdote. One day when, in company with the Empress, he was paying a visit to Count Loewenwolde, he ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... me send you in a few dozen." He offered Mr. Punch an elaborate price-list as he concluded his self-condemnatory verse with an obsequious bow. ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various
... Hindoo merchant, Mul Chan Dilaram, entered the room, and with obsequious salaams to the company, assured me that he had brought this camel man to me, and that when he had got over his first fears I should find him an excellent man. While we were all listening to the Hindoo's assurances the camel ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... blow fell on man, woman, and child,—nothing that had a white skin was spared. From every house they took arms and ammunition, and from a few, money; on every plantation they found recruits: those dusky slaves, so obsequious to their master the day before, so prompt to sing and dance before his Northern visitors, were all swift to transform themselves into fiends of retribution now; show them sword or musket and they grasped it, though it were an heirloom from Washington himself. The troop ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... of Pincot the lady's-maid, and little Miss scolding Martha, who waits up five pair of stairs in the nursery. Little Miss, Tommy, papa, mamma, you all expect from Martha, from Pincot, from Jenkins, from Jeames, obsequious civility and willing service. My dear, good people, you can't have truth too. Suppose you ask for your newspaper, and Jeames says, "I'm reading it, and jest beg not to be disturbed;" or suppose you ask for a can of water, and he remarks, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... New Holland. Look at him now pouring the thundering strains of his eloquence, upon crowded audiences in Great Britain, and see in this a triumphant vindication of his character. And have the slaveholder, and his obsequious apologist, gained any thing by all their violence and falsehood? No! for the stone which struck Goliath of Gath, had already been thrown from the sling. The giant of slavery who had so proudly defied the armies of the living God, had received his death-blow before ...
— An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South • Angelina Emily Grimke
... glance one would have taken him for an art-worker, a wood engraver or a glider of saints' images, but on looking at him more closely, observing the eyes, round and grey, set close to the nose, almost crossed, and studying his solemn voice and obsequious manners, one asked oneself from what quite special kind of sacristy the ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... only the envy, but the trifling ambition of Madame Cheron, who, since she could not rival the splendour of her festivities, was desirous of being ranked in the number of her most intimate friends. For this purpose she paid her the most obsequious attention, and made a point of being disengaged, whenever she received an invitation from Madame Clairval, of whom she talked, wherever she went, and derived much self-consequence from impressing a belief on her general acquaintance, that they were ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... Count Eglamore, very softly, for he was familiar with the look which had now come into Duke Alessandro's face. Indeed, all persons about court were quick to notice this odd pinched look, like that of a traveler nipped at by frosts, and people at court became obsequious within the instant in dealing with the fortunate woman who had aroused this look, ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... along the road. He used to pass you with a jaunty, gallant, curious look as if you were seventeen and he were saying, "There's a girl who ought to be married. Why isn't she?" He had just sidled past them, abashed and obsequious, a little afraid of the big man. Even Mrs. Belk ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... very long wait, Ina went down and sung her principal song, with the usual bravas and thunders of applause. She was called on twice, and as she retired, Severne stepped forward, and, with a low, obsequious bow, handed her a beautiful bouquet. She took it with a stately courtesy, ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... by beggarly borrowing, that it may be ennobled by calm independence. Our national architecture never will improve until our population are generally convinced that in this art, as in all others, they cannot seem what they cannot be. The scarlet coat or the turned-down collar, which the obsequious portrait-painter puts on the shoulders and off the necks of his savage or insane customers, never can make the 'prentice look military, or the idiot poetical; and the architectural appurtenances of Norman embrasure or Veronaic balcony must be equally ineffective, ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... poor pleasure for Arabella, this witnessing the purchases made, seeing the pleasant draperies, and handling the real linens and admiring the fine cambrics spread out before them on the shop counters by obsequious attendants. And the questions asked of her by her sister, whether this was good enough for so august an occasion, or that sufficiently handsome, must have been harassing. She could not have failed to remember that it ought all to have been done ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... gentleman presented Clerambault to him with cheerful alacrity: "Mr. Agenor Clerambault—Mr. Hyacinth Moncheri," and asked the Honourable Under-Secretary of State to what he owed the honour of his visit. The Honourable Under-Secretary, not in the least surprised by the obsequious welcome of the old scholar, settled himself in his armchair with the lofty air of familiarity suitable to the superior position he held over the two representatives of French letters. He represented ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... consequences of an union between the heroic Don John and the lovely Queen of Scotland. "Money, more money, and Escovedo," became at length, in his perplexity and anguish, the importunate clamour of the governor of the Netherlands. Then it was, as Perez tells us, that Philip and his obsequious counsellors meditated on the course best fitted for what was evidently a serious conjecture. Then it was, we learn from the same authority, that the king determined ON THE DEATH ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... girl of 20, from the Conservatoire, teacher of music. Wears a fringe, and is super-fashionably dressed. Obsequious, and ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... to an elderly gentleman and his wife, from the country, who had asked some friends into their balcony to see the carriages go to the levee. Nothing daunted, Mr. Streatfield questioned and questioned again. What was the old gentleman's name?—Dimsdale.—Could he see Mr. Dimsdale's servant?—The obsequious shopkeeper had no doubt that he could: Mr. Dimsdale's servant should be ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... to conquer the wilderness—qualities of daring, bravery, reckless abandon, heavy self-assertiveness. A lot of them were hell-raisers, for they had a lust for life and were maddened by tame respectability. Nobody but obsequious politicians and priggish "Daughters" wants to make them out as models of virtue and conformity. A smooth and settled society—a society shockingly tame—may accept Cardinal Newman's definition, "A gentleman is one who never gives offense." ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... Lovel. Hey! that was best of all. For her sake, and by her means, he would be Capitano del Popolo. What else? That would do for a beginning. If Molly could turn his head, she could turn other heads, he supposed. A turned head meant a disponable body, a bending back, an obsequious knee, even a carcase at a quick hand's discretion; votes in Council, delirium in the Piazza, Te Deum in the Church. Amilcare knew his countrymen: he that knows them half as well will have no trouble in conceiving ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... luggage to the steward of the boat, Flora found that important functionary, pacing to and fro the now empty scene of all her trouble in high disdain. She had paid very little attention to Mrs. Lyndsay during the voyage. She had waited with the most obsequious politeness on Mrs. Major F. and Mrs. Dalton, because she fancied they were rich people, who would amply reward her for her services. They had given her all the trouble they possibly could, while she had received few commands from Flora, and ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... superciliously at the modest attire of the poor widow, and mentally deciding that she was not entitled to much consideration. Had she been richly dressed, he would have been very obsequious, and insisted on sending home the smallest parcel. But there are many who have two rules of conduct, one for the rich, and quite a different one for the poor, and among these was the clerk who was attending ...
— Paul the Peddler - The Fortunes of a Young Street Merchant • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... reason of his high complexion, abnormal waist measurement, expensive clothes, and domineering manner, which proclaimed him really a lord of creation, naturally commanded the first and most obsequious attention, and giving his address as "Clay's," engaged the nearest man, who ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... a day since I've seen your honor at The Jolly Grig," murmured Marmaduke, with a certain obsequious familiarity that he reserved for old and ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... in the office. The gentleman in the big top-coat, with his eyeglasses, his gold-handled umbrella, and his consequential air, was leaving. He was bowing in a patronizing sort of way, and Mr. Metcalf was bowing also, smiling almost obsequious. He was rubbing his hair upward from his forehead, in a way Amy had already observed to be habitual when he was pleased. Evidently he was pleased now, and greatly so, for even after the stranger had passed out and entered the cab in waiting, the superintendent ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... profusion of bows, our old friend, who had been so obsequious to Admiral Bell, entered the room, and begged to know what orders the ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... Countess Margaret, looking dark and pale and queenly. A proud man was dandy Silas as he helped her to her place, and going to the other side, got in and took the ribbands. Many were the glances that shot from the two edges of the road at the unknown beauty whom Silas drove by his side, and obsequious were the bows of Silas's friends as they passed. Even the groggy old man who drives the water-cart on Bellevue Avenue could scarce forbear to cheer as ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... of her eyes, her hair, she emerged to a grand orchestral flare. The same obsequious hands that applauded her helped her from the gold coping. Waiters dared to smile behind their trays. Up to her knees her dark-cloth skirt clung dankly. Water glistened on her shoulders, spotted her blouse. ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... rains. From Yakutsk to Irkutsk the greater part of the travel was by water in any case, and after that the land was flat for the most part and bridges were more numerous. The governor of every town in Siberia would be his obsequious servant, the entire resources of the country would be at his disposal. He was sound in health again, as resistant against hardships as when he had sailed from Kronstadt. And God knew, he thought with a sigh, his will and purpose had ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... conversation very agreeably interrupted by the entrance of Mr. Lovel. Indeed I am heartily sorry he is now at the Hot Wells. He made his compliments with the most obsequious respect to Mrs. Beaumont, but took no sort of notice ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... men less obsequious than privy-councillors, who could not endure to stand by in silence and behold the great public interests here at stake surrendered in slavish deference to the fond fancy of a romantic woman, caught by the image of a passion which she was no longer of an age to inspire, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... into the darkness and deadly breaches). Since other gentlemen are not more obsequious in gallantry, I hereby tender myself for honour of accompanyist and ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... difficulty, and the crowd from America too was deterred by the danger. Instead of the throngs at the great points of interest, the visitors counted by twos and threes. The guides and landlords were obsequious. We few strangers had the Alps to ourselves and they were as lavish of their splendours to the handful as to the multitude. At Geneva at last I found letters from home which caused me anxiety; I was referred for later news to letters which ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... round his bald pate and over his ears, like a barocco apostle. I had an idea that he had had a lurid past and had seen some fighting in his youth. The admirers of the two girls stood in great awe of him, from instinct no doubt, because his behaviour to them was friendly and even somewhat obsequious, yet always with a certain truculent glint in his eye that made them pause in everything but their generosity—which was encouraged. I sometimes wondered whether those two careless, merry hard-working creatures understood the secret moral beauty of ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... received from two noblemen invitations to visit them on Sunday morning. The first, whom he waited upon, welcomed him with the most obsequious condescension, treated him with all the attention in the world, professed that he was so desirous of seeing him, that he had mentioned Sunday as the time for his visit, supposing him to be too much engaged during the week, to spare time ...
— The Laws of Etiquette • A Gentleman
... coming," whispered their priestly guide; and the instant after an old man crossed the threshold, followed by a troop of pastophori, as obsequious as the courtiers at the heels of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... recovering. He is sitting up in his cot, languidly permitting himself to be adored, waited upon by obsequious attendants, and fed upon the fat of the land. This is the period when outsiders cry gushingly to an invalid's relations, "How happy you must be!" But as a cold matter of fact they usually feel very depressed and snappy and bored. This sounds thankless, but it is nothing ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... suddenly. From the impatient, slightly pompous official, conscious of her position, she became obsequious and even affectionate. Possibly she remembered that the girl was to become the wife of the most powerful man in Moscow, whose word was amply sufficient to send even Gregory Prodol to the execution yard, and ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... of possible ways and means of finding out more about the antecedents of the Quicks. Half an hour passed in this—fruitlessly; then the door was quietly opened and behind the somewhat pompous figure of the butler I saw the bland, obsequious ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... the strange coincidence that should bring him into the one shop in all New York in which she happened to be sitting, she started up, thinking to surprise him. Then the surprise was hers, for she saw that he was in search of her. With a word to the obsequious salesman who met him, he came directly towards her hiding-place behind the dummy in sealskin. His face lighted with a merry smile that was good to see as he crossed over to her ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... favour of others. I know how it is by my own experience, and by that of several amongst you, as well as by many who are now no more, and with whom I was acquainted. Believe me, gentlemen! to pretend to the favours of fortune it is only necessary to render one's self useful, and to be supple and obsequious to those who are in possession of credit and authority; to be handsome in one's person; to adulate the powerful; to smile, while you suffer from them every kind of ridicule and contempt whenever they shall do you the honour to amuse themselves with you; never to be frightened ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... as the ministrations won from loveless hearts (12) are felt to be devoid of grace, and embraces forcibly procured are sweet no longer, so the obsequious cringings of alarm are hardly honours. Since how shall we assert that people who are forced to rise from their seats do really rise to honour those whom they regard as malefactors? or that these others who step aside to let their betters pass them in the ...
— Hiero • Xenophon
... had not taken the wife long to persuade the husband. Blangin's heavy steps were heard in the passage; and almost immediately, he entered, cap in hand, looking obsequious and restless. ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... with all hearts, Which I by lacking have supposed dead; And there reigns Love, and all Love's loving parts, And all those friends which I thought buried. How many a holy and obsequious tear Hath dear religious love stol'n from mine eye, As interest of the dead, which now appear But things remov'd that hidden in thee lie! Thou art the grave where buried love doth live, Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone, Who ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare
... Police. Massive entrance, heavily guarded, a great lobby, halls with swinging doors, many obsequious schwitzars on the lookout for tips, many poor creatures sitting against the walls on dirty benches, desks and clerks, brilliant boots and epaulets of gay young officers who are telling tales of the ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... obsequious homage, nor Lord and Lady Stafford's apologies could regain the goodwill of the queen. Seeing her state of mind Lord Stafford advised that Francis should retain her chamber during the rest ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... my boy, we are having a jolly cruise of it," observed McAllister one afternoon, as we walked the deck together, having just partaken of an especially good dinner, dressed by our most polite and obsequious prisoner, Lieutenant Preville. "If we could but fall in with two or three more fat prizes we should be able to set up as independent gentlemen when we get back home again, and I should be able to regain the lands of the McAllisters ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... Cap had never even smelled before. How immensely she enjoyed it, with all its surroundings—the comfortable room, the glowing fire, the clean table, the rich food, the obsequious attendance, her own genteel and becoming dress, the company of a highly respectable guardian—all, all so different from anything she had ever been accustomed to, and so ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... various branches of art, the slight blunder to which we refer could not have occurred. The Spitz-dog noses, instead of smelling Rat, would have smelt its anagram, Art. Its influence would at once have been acknowledged by them, and they would have backed out from the August Presence with obsequious genuflexions. It becomes a question of moment, then, whether a course of lectures upon art should not henceforth be considered an indispensable branch of the education of our excellent detectives. We would ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 27, October 1, 1870 • Various
... of his letters to Platt, written at a time when the young journalist and the reformers of his stripe shed tears at the thought that Theodore Roosevelt was the obsequious ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... are trifles. Downward flies my Lord, Nodding beside my Lady in his carriage. Away! away! "Fresh horses!" are the word, And changed as quickly as hearts after marriage; The obsequious landlord hath the change restored; The postboys have no reason to disparage Their fee; but ere the watered wheels may hiss hence, The ostler pleads ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... the restless dove Of coy repulse, and mild reluctance talks. Mantled in woven gold, with gems inchas'd, With emerald hillocks graced, From whose fresh laps, in young fantastic mazes, Soft crystal bounds and blazes, Bathing the lithe convolvulus that winds Obsequious, and each flaunting arbour binds.—SIR ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman
... idea. You sent for me." Fairchild produced the telegram, and the greasy person who had taken a position on the other side of a worn, walnut table became immediately obsequious. ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... for example, this was said to be the universal practice; while in the mines of Chihuahua it would have been as dangerous as to do the same thing to a stick of dynamite. Here the peon's manner was little short of obsequious outwardly, yet one had the feeling that in crowds they were capable of making trouble and those who had fallen upon "gringoes" in the region had despatched their victims thoroughly, leaving them mutilated and robbed even of their clothing. ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... bragging, yet with all freedom and liberty: so that as he did freely enjoy them without any anxiety or affectation when they were present; so when absent, he found no want of them. Moreover, that he was never commended by any man, as either a learned acute man, or an obsequious officious man, or a fine orator; but as a ripe mature man, a perfect sound man; one that could not endure to be flattered; able to govern both himself and others. Moreover, how much he did honour all true philosophers, without upbraiding those that were not so; his sociableness, his gracious and ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... governed the country by procurators. Claudius filled the imperial throne while St. Paul was at Caesarea. This emperor had received a servile education from his grandmother Lucia, and from his mother Antonia; and having been brought up in obsequious meanness, evinced, on his elevation to the empire, marks of the inadequate care which had been bestowed on his infancy. He had neither courage nor dignity of mind. He who was raised to sway the Roman scepter, and ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... his capital, overwhelmed with the blows of fate, his misfortunes had only augmented his popularity; the more he suffered, the more he was loved. But for Napoleon, who was so adored in the day of triumph, how was he treated in adversity? What was the language of the Senate, lately so obsequious and servile? The men on whom the Emperor had literally showered favors, called him contemptuously Monsieur de Bonaparte. What did they do to save the crown of the King of Rome, whose cradle they had saluted with such noisy acclamations? Were not the Cossacks who went to Blois after the Empress ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... stretched in mortal slumber along the horizon, and between them he caught a glimpse of the sunken Lake of Death, darkly gleaming in its deep bed. There was no movement, no sound, on the plain where he walked, except the soft-padding feet of his dumb, obsequious flock. ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... and wonder how you made her: Reign, reign, ye monarchs that divide the world, Busy rebellion ne'er will let you know Tranquillity and happiness like mine! Like gaudy ships th' obsequious billows fall, And rise again to lift you in your pride; They wait but for a storm, and then devour you; I, in my private bark already wreck'd, Like a poor merchant driven to unknown land, That had by chance pack'd up his choicest treasure ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy • Thomas Otway
... noiselessly after him in the shadow of the gallery, lest you should see me; for I knew you would prevent my going with the man. We descended the stairs, but it was not until we reached the bottom that I saw we had not come down by the way I had ascended. Selim was most obsequious, and seemed ready to do everything for my comfort. As we walked down a narrow street, he presented me with a new fez, and made signs to me to put it on instead of my hat, which he then carefully wrapped in a handkerchief and carried in his hand. ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... grew weaker or stronger according to the turnings of a course established for eternity; they were deities who saw and heard, who were glad or sad, who had a voice and sex, who were prolific or sterile, gentle or savage, obsequious or arrogant.[55] Their anger could therefore be soothed and their favor obtained through rites and offerings; even the adverse stars were not unrelenting and could be persuaded through sacrifices and supplications. The narrow and pedantic Firmicus ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... soon have thought of angling for gold fish in my aunt's glass globe—and there he sat fishing with great complacency. However, he seemed a little put out when we came up. "Ah, Tom, how do you do?—Miss, your most obsequious—no rain mullet deucedly shy, Tom— ah! what a glorious nibble—there—there again—I have him;" and sure enough, he had hooked a fine mountain mullet, weighing about a pound and a half, and in the ecstasy of the moment, and his hurry to land him handsomely, he regularly capsized in his chair, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... sequence, consequence, subsequent, consecutive, execute, prosecute, persecute, sue, ensue, suitor, suitable, pursuit, rescue, second; (2) obsequies, obsequious, sequester, inconsequential, non sequitur, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... James!" cried Edith, trembling, and shocked at this affront. But Guy rose like a tower. "I've noticed this trait in all tradespeople," said he grimly. "They are obsequious to a gentleman so long as they hope to get the better of him; but, the moment they find it is impossible to overreach him, they insult him." And with this he stalked ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... won a place in the doctor's affections, which, I like to think, I never really lost in the many changes the future brought me. My obsequious respect for dead tongues redeemed, to a great measure, the appalling ignorance I immediately displayed of the merest rudiments of geography and history; and when the time came, I believe it even reconciled him to my bodily stature, which always appeared to him to be too large to conform to ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... a well-lined couch. The obsequious demeanour of message-bearers, charioteers, and the club-armed keepers of peace. The explosion of innumerable fire-crackers round the convivial shines, The gathering together of relations who at all other times shun each other markedly. The obtrusive recollection of a great ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... wardrobe. Mrs. Mountstuart signified that the leg was to be seen because it was a burning leg. There it is, and it will shine through! He has the leg of Rochester, Buckingham, Dorset, Suckling; the leg that smiles, that winks, is obsequious to you, yet perforce of beauty self-satisfied; that twinkles to a tender midway between imperiousness and seductiveness, audacity and discretion; between "You shall worship me", and "I am devoted to you;" is your lord, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Chinaman"—is perfectly decorous, and, as our author was assured, would never "dream of violating the laws of decency and good temper." For the Hindu, on the other hand, as an entirely conventional and artificial creature, obsequious, hypocritical, inhospitable, disdainful of the race on whom he fawns and before whom he trembles as "unclean," Mr. Hornaday has no other feeling than aversion and contempt. He gives an amusing account ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... desires her present company did greatly inforce mee, which I esteemed to yeelde mee more comfort, then the North starre in a tempestuous night to the troubled Marriner: more acceptable then that of Melicta to Adonis, or to Phrodites, the obsequious Nymph Peristera: and more delightfull then Dittander to the daughter of Dydo, with the Purple flowre for the wounde of Pius [Ae]neas: And finding my heart strooken and inwardly pricking, secretly filled and compressiuely stuft; recording and gathering together into it, varyable ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna
... entered his master's palace neither saluted nor welcomed by the once obsequious slaves in the outer lodge. Neither harps nor singing-boys, neither woman's ringing laughter nor man's bacchanalian glee, now woke the echoes in the lonely halls. The pulse of pleasure seemed to have throbbed its last in the joyless being of ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... order of the White Feather, with its proud motto, "J'y suis, j'y reste." In the eighteenth century it had adopted by compulsion from Germany an alteration in its law of regal inheritance, and had marked its adhesion to the new formula by the institution of the order of the Dachshund, with the obsequious motto, "Das ist mir ganz Wurst," popularly mistranslated by the wags of the day into, "That is the worst for me." Beaten by the infidel in the Crusades it had joined thenceforth to its regalia the holy crown of Jerusalem; and having thrown over the Papacy ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... therefore voted themselves an Assembly, and assumed the power of appointing all public officers. In place of Nicholas Trott, they made Richard Allein Chief Justice. Another person was appointed Provincial Secretary, in the room of Charles Hart. But William Rhett and Francis Yonge, by becoming obsequious to the humours of the revolutioners, secured to themselves the same offices they held from the Proprietors. Colonel Barnwell was chosen agent for the province, and embarked for England, with instructions and orders to apply only to the King, to lay a slate of their public proceedings before him, ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... sternsheets of the approaching boat was a plainly dressed man, whose appearance so bespoke the mercantile class that it hardly needed the doffing of the captain's cap and his obsequious "your servant, Mr. Cauldwell, and good health to you," as the man clambered on board, to announce the owner of the ship. To the emigrants this sudden deference was a revelation concerning the cruel and oath-using tyrant at whose mercy they had been during the ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... deal. The captain made us comfortable in a snug corner on the officers' private deck, where, under the shelter of the bridge, we could enjoy the view. One amusement was to watch the officer of the deck eat his dinner seated on a hatchway just in front of the wheel, and waited on by a most obsequious seaman. The sailor, cap under his arm, would present a plate of something: if the officer ate it the man would retire behind him, and with the man at the wheel watch the disappearance of the contents. If the officer left any or refused a dish, the sailor would ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... afforded no protection to the subject against the civil and ecclesiastical tyranny of that period. The judges of the common law, holding their situations during the pleasure of the King, were scandalously obsequious. Yet, obsequious as they were, they were less ready and less efficient instruments of arbitrary power than a class of courts, the memory of which is still, after the lapse of more than two centuries, held in deep abhorrence by the nation. Foremost among these courts ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... opened by an obsequious colored servant, Craig handed him the scrap of paper signed by the password, ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... point of starting, and I had almost given up looking out for my fellow passengers when they came hurrying up along the platform. I saw them glancing into the windows of every carriage in the hope of finding a seat. Two porters carried their small baggage. An obsequious guard followed in the rear. Just as they were opposite to the carriage in which I ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... lives. I felt more and more happy to think I had met her first in this unconventional way, for as the castle loomed up closer and we passed gardeners and keepers and jockeys with a string of race-horses out for exercise, I felt that my pretty companion was constrained by the sight of these obsequious faces and changing by gradations into what she really was, the daughter of the castle and by right of blood one of the ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... fatten on, dance attendance on, pin oneself upon, hang on the sleeve of, avaler les couleuvres[Fr], keep time to, fetch and carry, do the dirty work of. go with the stream, worship the rising sun, hold with the hare and run with the hounds. Adj. servile, obsequious; supple,supple as a glove; soapy, oily, pliant, cringing, abased, dough-faced, fawning, slavish, groveling, sniveling, mealy-mouthed; beggarly, sycophantic, parasitical; abject, prostrate, down on ones marrowbones; base, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Tiffany's for the purpose of selecting a string of pearls. He made it quite clear that she was to go alone with him, playfully mentioning his desire to be the only witness to her confusion when confronted by the "obsequious salesman and his baubles from the sea." If quite agreeable to her he would make an appointment with the jeweller for 3.30 and would call for her in person. After that, he continued, the signing of a contract for life would ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... Aminadab, who kissed his foot, and brought papers to sign. "How is the house in Grosvenor Square, Aminadab; and is your son tired of his yacht yet?" Mendoza asked. "That is my twenty-fourth cashier," said Rafael to Codlingsby, when the obsequious clerk went away. "He is fond of display, and all my people may ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... need no flourish of trumpets to announce their coming,—no band of martial music upon their steps,—no obsequious nobles in their train. They are the true kings, the theocratic kings, the judges in Israel. The hearts of men make music at their approach; the mind of the age is the historian of their passage; and only men of destiny like themselves shall be permitted to write their ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... exclaimed one day to the large boys assembled in solemn conclave in the school-room, "that takes all the boorishness and brutishness out of the English character? What is it that prevents the Britishers from being servile and obsequious—traits, I tell you, boys, unknown in England—but this splendid system of fagging? Did you ever hear of an insolent Englishman, a despotic Englishman, a surly Englishman, a selfish Englishman, an obstinate Englishman, a domineering ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... before, the Marquis de Courtornieu and the Duc de Sairmeuse had been overwhelmed with the most obsequious homage and adulation. ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... the heads of the group, seen that the young miscreant was not seriously injured, and requested him to take that for meddling with a helpless innocent, the object of her solicitude, whom she supposed standing behind her, was nowhere to be seen. Twenty voices, now obsequious, were lifted to acquaint her with the direction in which he had gone; but it was vain to attempt following him, and she pursued her way, somewhat sore at his want of faith in her, to the house of a certain relative, a dressmaker, whom she visited ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... character of The Rehearsal, a farce by George Villiers, duke of Buckingham (1671). Bayes is represented as greedy of applause, impatient of censure, meanly obsequious, regardless of plot, and only anxious for claptrap. The character is meant ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... Dumont, I am extremely happy to serve you," replied Dalhousie, whose obsequious manners were ample ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... sweet and commendable In your Nature Hamlet, To giue these mourning duties to your Father:[11] But you must know, your Father lost a Father, That Father lost, lost his, and the Suruiuer bound In filiall Obligation, for some terme To do obsequious[12] Sorrow. But to perseuer In obstinate Condolement, is ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... ordinary world which she could not bridge. At one point the door opened, and Helen came in with a little dark man who had—it was the chief thing she noticed about him—very hairy hands. She was drowsy and intolerably hot, and as he seemed shy and obsequious she scarcely troubled to answer him, although she understood that he was a doctor. At another point the door opened and Terence came in very gently, smiling too steadily, as she realised, for it to be natural. He sat down and ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... envied his eminence, and to the people, because he desired the prosperity of France more than the gratification of their pleasures. He was succeeded by Louvois, who long retained a great ascendency by obsequious attention to ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... civilisation together was reverence for Law. He visited perhaps some of the courts of law; he may have seen the Illustrious Praetorian Prefect, clothed in Imperial purple, move majestically to the judgment-seat, amid the obsequious salutations of the dignified officials,[25] who in their various ranks and orders surrounded the hall. The costly golden reed-case, the massive silver inkstand, the silver bowl for the petitions of ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... good deal older and graver, but almost as handsome as ever; only somewhat changed in mind. He had become a zealous clergyman, and his soul appeared to be in his work. He was distant and very respectful to Lady Bassett; I might say obsequious. Seemed almost afraid of her ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... for prey, 160 And grow so grosse that mastifes, curs, and mungrils Have spirit to cow them: so our soft French Nobles Chain'd up in ease and numbd securitie (Their spirits shrunke up like their covetous fists, And never opened but Domitian-like, 165 And all his base, obsequious minions When they were catching though it were but flyes), Besotted with their pezzants love of gaine, Rusting at home, and on each other preying, Are for their greatnesse but the greater slaves, 170 And none is noble ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... at their parents' houses; the portion they brought being more in virtue than money, she being a richer match than any one who could bring a million, and nothing else to commend her. The virgins and young ladies of that golden age put their hands to the spindle, nor disdained the needle; were obsequious and helpful to their parents, instructed in the management of the family, and gave presage of making excellent wives. Their retirements were devout and religious books, their recreations in the distillery and knowledge of plants and their virtues for the comfort of their ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... second term with new courage and invigorated authority. Twice certified, who should dare doubt his competency? Even Joshua was civil, and lesser louts of course obsequious; though the girls took more liberties, for they feel even at that early age, that ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... of old wine from the Hispaniola. Never, I am sure, were people gayer or happier. And there was Silver, sitting back almost out of the firelight, but eating heartily, prompt to spring forward when anything was wanted, even joining quietly in our laughter—the same bland, polite, obsequious seaman of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... has been cultivated in England since 1570. It is a Composite plant, and bears the name Calendula from the Latin calendoe, the first days of each month, because it flowers all the year round. Whittier styles it "the grateful and [327] obsequious Marigold." The leaves are somewhat thick and sapid; when chewed, they communicate straightway a viscid sweetness, which is followed by a sharp, penetrating taste, very persistent in the mouth, and not of the warm, aromatic ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... and obsequious obedience. The Fighting MacDonalds individually must ever be treated with respect, but the Fighting MacDonalds in a body! Surely not the most vivid Orangeman could blame him in his extremity. Perhaps the distracted landlord felt that, after all, here was a providential means of escape ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... Leander and Andreas, rose from prayer, he was led by the obsequious clerics to a hall illumined by several lamps, where two brasiers gave forth a grateful glow in the chill of the autumn morning. Round about the walls, in niches, stood busts carved or cast of the ancestors of him who lay dead. Here, whilst voices of lamentation ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... edge upon his speech, Pithily Saxon in unwilling talk. Him I entrap with my long-suffering knife, And, while its poor blade hums away in sparks, 240 Sharpen my wit upon his gritty mind, In motion set obsequious to his wheel, And in its ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... That thus, with such a melancholy grace, Thou dost pursue thy solitary course? Has thy Endymion, smooth-faced boy, forsook Thy widow'd breast—on which the spoiler oft Has nestled fondly, while the silver clouds Fantastic pillow'd thee, and the dim night, Obsequious to thy will, encurtain'd round With its thick fringe thy couch? Wan traveller, How like thy fate to mine!—Yet I have still One heavenly hope remaining, which thou lack'st; My woes will soon be buried in the grave Of kind forgetfulness—my ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... Becomingly obsequious to his superiors, he is with the rest of the world properly majestic, and has obtained no small success by his admirable and undeviating respectability. Respectability has been his great card through life; ladies can ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... from hand to hand—tipping was still in style. The obsequious steward gave him further directions for finding the games and recreational rooms, and ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... young to the old in the one, as the young to the old in the other—with head to body, as head to body; and nose to knee, as nose to knee, &c. &c., (and the critics have done a great deal)—then is the work oracularly pronounced one of 'High Art;' and the obsequious artist is pleased to consider ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... oblique satire on servility and selfishness. It is in that case Diamond cut Diamond—a trial of skill between the legacy-hunter and the legacy-maker, which shall fool the other. The cringing toad-eater, the officious tale-bearer, is perhaps well paid for years of obsequious attendance with a bare mention and a mourning-ring; nor can I think that Gil Blas' library was not quite as much as the coxcombry of his pretensions deserved. There are some admirable scenes in Ben Jonson's Volpone, showing the ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... in many colors. From these emerged processions of parties returning from pleasure trips up the Nile. They came with much pomp and following, asserting themselves and proceeding through paths made ready for them by the obsequious laboring classes. ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... desire, even for a moment, by a perverse door-catch. Not that she really respected Thomas Batchgrew! She did not, but he was a member of the sacred governing class. The chauffeur—not John's Ernest, but a professional—flashed round the front of the car and opened the door with obsequious haste. For Thomas Batchgrew had to be appeased. Already a delay of twenty minutes—due to a defective tire and to the inexcusable absence of the spanner with which the spare wheel was ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... prayers as if he had been a god, and he marvelled at the voices of a great multitude who cried that the Star of Salvation had dawned upon them in the East. This may doubtless have been no more than a fulsome compliment paid by an obsequious Oriental crowd to the Roman emperor. But it is also possible that the rising of a bright star regularly gave the signal for the festival, and that as chance would have it the star emerged above the rim of the eastern horizon at the very moment of the emperor's approach. The coincidence, ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... an attentive ear, Clearly points out, not in one part alone, How imitative nature takes her course From the celestial mind and from its art: And where her laws the Stagyrite unfolds, Not many leaves scann'd o'er, observing well Thou shalt discover, that your art on her Obsequious follows, as the learner treads In his instructor's step, so that your art Deserves the name of second in descent From God. These two, if thou recall to mind Creation's holy book, from the beginning ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... whose prosperity is too deeply rooted to be overturned by the malignant fury of vengeful despots. It must be evident that the power of the governor of this colony is sufficiently leviathan, uncontrolled as he is by a council, and possessed as he is of an incontrovertible right to nominate the most obsequious of his creatures as jurymen on all trials, whether of a civil or criminal nature, to endanger the property and life of every individual under his government. Nor should it here be forgotten that there has been a governor who, if the colonists had not arrested ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... in silence, an occasional vehement gesture alone giving evidence of the agitation or fear that was raging within him. Finally, he stopped and stood before the obsequious Basilivitch. ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... of all the faculties rather than in the exercise of the pure intelligence; for to you the pure intelligence will be part of the person and will share in the person's universal imperfection. In fact it will not be pure intelligence at all, but rather a faculty that may be obsequious to all the lower passions. Nothing will free you from them, except the respect for persons, except, in fact, loving your neighbour as yourself. There is no way to consistency but through that, and no way to the exercise of the pure intelligence. Never sacrifice a person to a process and you ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... him to stand or sit behind his counter with regularity, but people would not come to buy of him, because he never seemed to consider their buying as any favour conferred on him; and thus he became gradually displaced by his more energetic or more obsequious rivals. In the end he was obliged to put up his shutters. Unhappily for him, he had never been a very ardent attendant at any of the places of religious worship in the town, and he had therefore no organisation to help him. ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... the future; least of all, dreads it. Weber and Campan (Ib. i. 100-151. Weber, i. 11-50.) have pictured her, there within the royal tapestries, in bright boudoirs, baths, peignoirs, and the Grand and Little Toilette; with a whole brilliant world waiting obsequious on her glance: fair young daughter of Time, what things has Time in store for thee! Like Earth's brightest Appearance, she moves gracefully, environed with the grandeur of Earth: a reality, and yet a magic ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... resist the pleasure of rounding off his sentence with the grand word "Gentleman," and he was gratified by the waiter's meekly obsequious reception of the word. ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... world, by the fine air and the high humanities that should fill it. Everything beautiful in his actual, his material view seemed to proclaim its value as never before; the house rose over his head as a museum of exquisite rewards, and the image of poor George Dallow hovered there obsequious, expressing that he had only been the modest, tasteful organiser, or even upholsterer, appointed to set it all in order and punctually retire. Lady Agnes's tone in fine penetrated further than it had done yet ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... use or the abuse It matters not. Let them all go together, As empty phrases and frivolities, And common as gold-lace upon the collar Of an obsequious lackey. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... matter seem worse, if possible, was that when rich persons came in their chariots, or riding on beautiful horses, with their servants in rich liveries attending on them, nobody could be more civil and obsequious than the inhabitants of the village. They would take off their hats, and make the humblest bows you ever saw. If the children were rude, they were pretty certain to get their ears boxed; and as for the dogs, if a single cur in the pack presumed to ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... commit a violence upon myself, and conclude with assuring your lordship, that I am, my lord, your lordship's most obedient, most devoted, most obsequious, ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... cross-eyed fellow named Thoba-sing, who, with the exception of Tchebu Lama, was the only Bhoteea about the Durbar who could speak Hindostanee, and who did it very imperfectly: he was our attendant and spy, the most barefaced liar I ever met with, even in the east; and as cringing and obsequious when alone with us, as he was to his masters on other occasions, when he never failed to show off his authority over us in an offensive manner. Though he was the most disagreeable fellow we were ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... colonnade, Sweeping against its pillared balustrade, Adown a porch, and through a portal wide, And I am in my Castle, Lord of all; My faithful groom is standing in the hall To doff my shining robe, while servitors, And cringing chamberlains beside the doors Waving their gilded wands, obsequious wait, And bow me on my way in royal ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... down-stairs to the hot supper and rattling English Hazard. For one or two seasons St Stephen's Green lent one of its lordly mansions, formerly the residence of a cruel and witty Lord Chief Justice, to the votaries of fortune; here everything was done in grand style, with gilded saloons, obsequious waiters, and champagne suppers. All this has long since become matter of the past, and it would now puzzle the keenest detective to find the trace even of a silver hell in the Irish capital. No one will be hardy enough to defend the vice of gambling, but some have argued, ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... treasure-ships on the high seas, without a previous declaration of war against Spain, though not without a previous notice that hostilities might be opened at any moment unless Spain ceased to give underhand assistance to France. The excuse was that Spain had long been the obsequious ally of France, and, as the alliance now became open, Pitt's act was sanctioned by a large majority in both houses of parliament in January, 1805. The parliamentary session which opened in this month found Pitt's ministry apparently stronger than it had been at the beginning of the ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... party of men, there was an obsequious element that encouraged Joe with flattery. Among the sturdier spirits, however, Big Jack, Mahooley, Coulson, ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... Bishop David of Burgundy was now firmly re-established; and on his death, Philip of Baden, an obsequious adherent of the house of Austria, was elected. These results of the pacification carried out so successfully by Duke Albert had, however, left Maximilian and Philip deeply in debt to the Saxon; and there was no money wherewith to meet the claim, ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... proclaimed his Gallic nationality. His smooth shaven face showed a firm mouth with bloodless lips so thin as to be hardly perceptible. His eyes, when they could be seen at all, were greenish in color, and small and restless as those of a ferret. He advanced into the room with the obsequious deferential manner which in all well-trained servants becomes second nature, moving across the thickly carpeted floor with the rapidity and noiselessness ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... technique, and turns it to his own profit. Lowering his moral notions, he soon—so one of them expressed it to me—"walks round them without getting off his chair" and, on the strength of his undeserved reputation for simplicity and fair dealing, keeps them dangling a lifetime in a tremble of obsequious amiability, cheered on by the hope of ultimately over-reaching him. Idle dream, where a pliant and sanguine southerner is pitted against the unswerving Saxon or Teuton! This accounts for the success of foreign trading houses in the south. Business is business, ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... of course! All over the place. Here," he said, clapping his hands, which brought an obsequious slave instantly to his side; "just bring coffee ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... but not this my marvel: not that we Should master with desire the sundering world, We who bore in our hearts such destiny, There was no force knew to be dangerous Against it, but must turn its malice clean Into obsequious favour worshipping us. Rather hath this astonisht me, that we Have not for ever lived in this high hour. Only to be twin elements of joy In this extravagance of Being, Love, Were our divided natures shaped in twain; And to this hour the whole ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... chaise was opened by the obsequious Timothy, who pushed away the ostlers and waiters, as if unworthy to approach his master, and the Great Aristodemus made his appearance. As he ascended the steps of the door, his passage was for a moment ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... rigid character. I, for one, never believed there was any foundation for these silly reports, but, if any special formalities were prescribed, Mr. Chamberlain brushed them aside, and simply conducted himself with quiet, easy grace, always calm and self-possessed, and never fussy or needlessly obsequious. ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... prices in mart or exchange. And, because of these things I did, I demanded homage. Nor was it refused. I moved through wind-swept groves of limber backs; across sunny glades, lighted by the beaming rays from a thousand obsequious eyes; and when I tired of this, basked on the greensward of popular approval. Money was very good, I thought, and for the time was content. But there rushed upon me the words of Erasmus, "When I get some money I shall buy me some Greek books, and afterwards ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... wild fowl, at the distant green of waving corn, the flower-embowered great house, the white quarters from which arose many little spirals of savory smoke, and a bland and childlike content took possession of their souls. With eager and obsequious "Yes, Mas'rs" they obeyed the overseer's objurgatory indications ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... came on, the citizen's wife strutting, and the maid gliding after, holding her mistress's train devoutly in both hands, and bending and winding her lithe body prettily enough to do it. Imagine (if not pressed for time) a bantam, with a guineahen stepping obsequious at its stately heel. ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... better governed than by Cromwell," he continued. "She was tranquil at home and victorious abroad, admired and feared. Mazarin, while pretending to be the faithful friend of Charles, was the obsequious courtier of Oliver. The finest form of government is a limited despotism. See how France prospered under the sagacious tyrant, Louis the Eleventh, under the soldier-statesman, Sully, under pure reason incarnate in Richelieu. ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... guarded by a negro, squalid and filthy. He evidently reveled in his new citizenship; his chair was tilted back against the wall, his feet were high in the air, and he was making everything nauseous about him with tobacco; but he soon became obsequious and admitted us to one of the most singular deliberative bodies ever known—a body composed of former landed proprietors and slave-owners mixed up pell-mell with their former slaves and with Northern adventurers then known as "carpet-baggers.'' ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... has been with the newspapers, which have ever been the obsequious reflex of distempered public opinion, siding always with the strong and powerful; so that in 1831, when the "Liberator" (published in Boston by the intrepid and patriotic Garrison) made its appearance, it was a lone David among a swarm of Goliaths, any one of which was willing ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... ring, sir?" he asked, poking his head through the curtains obsequiously. McKnight objects that nobody can poke his head through a curtain and be obsequious. But Pullman ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... been the great object of his policy. He had placed himself above the control of the law. By the grant of a subsidy for life he was relieved from the necessity of meeting his parliament; with the aid of his committee, the members of which proved the obsequious ministers of his will, he could issue what new ordinances he pleased; and a former declaration by the two houses, that he was as free as any of his predecessors, was conveniently interpreted to release him from the obligations of those statutes which he deemed hostile ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... incidents of rather a suspicious kind. Gifford, the manager of Goodman's Fields Theatre, professing to have received from some anonymous writer a play of singular scurrility, carried the work to the prime minister. The obsequious manager was rewarded with one thousand pounds for his patriotic conduct, and the libellous nature of the play he had surrendered was made the excuse for the legislation that ensued. It was freely observed at the time, however, that Gifford had profited ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... drawing-rooms, and by the tradesmen who supply them. Men give them dinners and women smile upon them. The best of coats and boots are supplied to them. They never lack cigars nor champagne. They have horses to ride, and servants to wait upon them more obsequious than the servants of other people. And men will lend them money too,—well knowing that there is no chance of repayment. Now and then one hears a horrid tale of some young girl who surrenders herself ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... Denis, whose eye was instantly lit up with delight—"accept my most obsequious thanks to the very furthest extent ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... sitting-room and thence the two passed to their respective dressing-rooms. An obsequious valet offered Alban a cigarette while he made his bath, and served a glass of an American cocktail. The superb luxury of these apartments did not surprise the young English boy as much as they might have done, for he had ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... The man became obsequious directly; the horses were led to a rough kind of stable; barley was found for them, a sturdy fellow removed bridles and saddles, and carried them into a good-sized very bare-looking room in the house, which he informed ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... patronized it. Alison was missed to-day, having a very valuable head for business. Shaw, the owner of the shop; was standing near the doorway. He felt cross and dispirited. He did not recognize Mrs. Reed when she came in. He thought she was a customer, and bowed in an obsequious way. ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... umbrella, precisely as Gautama Buddha left his father's mansion to sow the religion worshiped by nearly a third of the people of the earth. A group of lascars, on leave from a P. & O. liner, look depreciatingly on nautical brethren from colder climes. There are Malays, as well, obsequious Moormen merchants, and haughty Afghans from beyond the "Roof of the World," as scholars call the Himalayas. Here and there are broad-chested Arabs from Aden way and the Persian Gulf, taking chances on the announcement of a pearl "fishery" by the government—divers, who may secure a gem of ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... the room and the boy trailed after her with the organ. Both had been brought in from the street. Svidrigailov had not been a week in Petersburg, but everything about him was already, so to speak, on a patriarchal footing; the waiter, Philip, was by now an old friend and very obsequious. ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... to know who I was, where I came from and what was my business here. Towards the Russians, whether strangers or natives of Siberia, the Yakuts are always on their guard and excessively obsequious. Every Russian, however poorly dressed, is always the 'tojan', the master. Their behaviour towards the Poles, on the other hand, is very friendly. No Yakut ever took the information that I was not a Russian but ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... have been the great object of his policy. He had placed himself above the control of the law. By the grant of a subsidy for life he was relieved from the necessity of meeting his parliament; with the aid of his committee, the members of which proved the obsequious ministers of his will, he could issue what new ordinances he pleased; and a former declaration by the two houses, that he was as free as any of his predecessors, was conveniently interpreted to release him from the obligations ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... of that bath and the subsequent putting on of a clean, whole suit of clothes placed upon the bed by the so obsequious man servant, who said his master had sent these clothes with his compliments and the hope that they would fit. The clothes I accepted thankfully enough, for I had decided to ask M. Cartier the address of a shop in the city ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... like it ever so much better! I can not endure the public rooms," said Mary Grey, as she took the seat the obsequious waiter placed for her. ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... heavy fines those whom he endeavoured to serve. As this took place so frequently that it could not be attributed to chance, but to a systematic purpose, Lysander was forced to warn his partizans that his intervention was an injury and not a benefit to them, and that they must desist from their obsequious attentions to him, and address themselves directly to ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... our old friend, who had been so obsequious to Admiral Bell, entered the room, and begged to know what orders ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... you please," she said. This time Dan detected just a trace of the sharpness with which she had dismissed the obsequious Jean. It gave him courage and a sense of protection from the fascination he knew that this strange woman was successfully ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... endeared with all hearts Which I by lacking have supposed dead: And there reigns Love, and all Love's loving parts, And all those friends which I thought buried. How many a holy and obsequious tear Hath dear religious love stolen from mine eye As interest of the dead!—which now appear But things removed, that hidden in thee lie. Thou art the grave where buried love doth live, Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone, Who all their parts of me to thee did give; ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... consequence, subsequent, consecutive, execute, prosecute, persecute, sue, ensue, suitor, suitable, pursuit, rescue, second; (2) obsequies, obsequious, sequester, inconsequential, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... put her feet into Cousin Kitty's bandbox, to the demolition of her bonnet; but that both bonnet and cap survived to grace the heads of their respective proprietors. The only mishap that occurred, dear reader, befell your obsequious servitor, who went to bed with a sick headache, caused really by her acute sympathy with the misfortunes of the hero and heroine of our aunt's story, but which Miss Christine grossly attributed to a hearty supper of oysters and soft crabs, eaten at twelve o'clock ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... The obsequious Mr Pecksniff proffered his arm. The old man took it. Turning at the door, he said to Martin, waving him off with ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... pomp. Sid Waters, as president, was sitting in the go-cart, his head ornamented with a huge smothering three-cornered hat, made out of a New York daily. Rick Grimes, as governor, was walking behind the go-cart, now and then giving the "chariot" an obsequious push, but impatiently awaiting his turn for a ride. Billy Grimes and Pip Peckham were serving as horses, and soldiers also, pulling along the president and sharing the broom-handle between them. Whether that handle might be a "musket" or a "spear," no ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand
... jumps by the other riders; but the stones they had kicked down were almost as agitating to Pilot's ruffled nerves as those that still remained in position. She found it the last straw that she should have to wait for the obsequious runners to tear these out of her way, while the galloping backs in front of her grew smaller and smaller, and the adulatory condolences of her assistants became more and more hard to endure. She literally hurled the shilling at ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... the smile of beauty, and the array of titled distinction and circumstance, act like a charm upon the feelings and sentiments of many well-meaning parents and children. But it is not all gold that glitters. We must not think that those are happy in their marriage union, because they are obsequious in their attentions to each other, and live together in splendor, overloaded with fashionable congratulations. We cannot determine the character of a marriage from its pomp and pageantry. We rather determine the many unhappy matches from the false principles upon which the ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... Haste, haste, obsequious minions, bear the tidings to your lord! Go, tell him there are some who dare to disobey his word; Men of the captive, Hebrew race, men high in place and power, Who scorn to bow their haughty necks at his command ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... the adepts in the science to visit him at Champtoce. The messengers he despatched on this mission were two of his most needy and unprincipled dependants, Gilles de Sille and Roger de Bricqueville. The latter, the obsequious panderer to his most secret and abominable pleasures, he had entrusted with the education of his motherless daughter, a child but five years of age, with permission that he might marry her at the proper time to any person he chose, or to himself if he liked it better. This man ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... all-grasping western world. The shores of the Straits of Sunda are unsupplied with those domineering fortresses which guard the entrances to the Mediterranean, the Baltic, and the Propontis. Unlike the Danes, these Orientals do not demand the obsequious homage of lowered top-sails from the endless procession of ships .. before the wind, which for centuries past, by night and by day, have passed between the islands of Sumatra and Java, freighted with ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... face a scene which her heart recoiled from. A single glance showed her Bonthron, sunk in total and drunken insensibility; Ramorny, stripped of his armour, endeavouring in vain to conceal fear, while he spoke with a priest, whose good offices he had solicited; and Dwining, the same humble, obsequious looking, crouching individual she had always known him. He held in his hand a little silver pen, with which he had been writing on a scrap ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... but fawn'd around him. At that sight, And at the sound of feet which now approach'd, Ulysses in wing'd accents thus remark'd. Eumaeus! certain, either friend of thine Is nigh at hand, or one whom well thou know'st; 10 Thy dogs bark not, but fawn on his approach Obsequious, and the sound of feet I hear. Scarce had he ceased, when his own son himself Stood in the vestibule. Upsprang at once Eumaeus wonder-struck, and from his hand Let fall the cups with which he was employ'd Mingling rich wine; to his young Lord he ran, His forehead ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... prison life in general, modify it ever so much by special chambers, obsequious turnkeys, a general tendency to make one as comfortable as possible, a jail is a jail, and there is no getting away from that. Cowperwood, in a room which was not in any way inferior to that of the ordinary boarding-house, was nevertheless ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... one day to the large boys assembled in solemn conclave in the school-room, "that takes all the boorishness and brutishness out of the English character? What is it that prevents the Britishers from being servile and obsequious—traits, I tell you, boys, unknown in England—but this splendid system of fagging? Did you ever hear of an insolent Englishman, a despotic Englishman, a surly Englishman, a selfish Englishman, an obstinate Englishman, a domineering ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... had arrived at the Hague, in the spring of 1613. Aubery du Maurier, a son of an obscure country squire, a Protestant, of moderate opinions, of a sincere but rather obsequious character, painstaking, diligent, and honest, had been at an earlier day in the service of the turbulent and intriguing Due de Bouillon. He had also been employed by Sully as an agent in financial affairs between Holland ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... "The White Plume of Savoy." But now, in the light of Spencer's open scorn, I saw it was impudently false, childish, sentimental. My head ached, the humidity sapped my strength, at heart I felt sick, sore, discouraged. I was down and out. And seeing this, Temptation, like an obsequious floorwalker, ...
— The Log of The "Jolly Polly" • Richard Harding Davis
... court just beyond the row of palms and oleanders that fringed the rail against which his Herald rested, that he might read as he ran, so to speak. He was the only person having dejeuner on the "terrace," as he named it to the obsequious waiter who always attended him. Charles was the magnet that drew Brock to the Chatham (that excellent French hotel with the excellent English name). It is beside the question to remark that one is obliged to reverse the English when directing ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... It was such a person as Cole of Milton, his correspondent of forty years, who lived at a distance, and obsequious to his wishes, always looking up to him, though never with a parallel glance—with whom he did not quarrel, though if Walpole could have read the private notes Cole made in his MSS. at the time he was often writing the civilest letters of admiration,—even Cole would have been cashiered from ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... deep tragedy of kings led in chains and pining in dungeons; they were the iron necessity of all other nations; universal destroyers for the sake of raising at last, out of the ruins, the mausoleum of their own dignity and freedom, in the midst of the monotonous solitude of an obsequious world. To them, it was not given to excite emotion by the tempered accents of mental suffering, and to touch with a light and delicate hand every note in the scale of feeling. They naturally sought also in Tragedy, by overleaping all intervening gradations, to reach at once the extreme, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... be done? The court was obsequious to the Proconsul, afraid of Rome; jealous that the mob should have been more forward than the magistracy. Had the city moved sooner, as soon as the edict came, there would have been no rising, no riot. Already ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... a Protestant without any enthusiasm for the religion she intended to restore in England, and prayed to the Virgin in her own private Chapel, while she was undoing the work of her Catholic sister Mary. The obsequious apologies to the Pope were withdrawn, but the Reformation she was going to espouse, was not the fiery one being fought for in Germany and France. It was mild, moderate, and like her father's, more political than religious. The point she made ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... coincidence that should bring him into the one shop in all New York in which she happened to be sitting, she started up, thinking to surprise him. Then the surprise was hers, for she saw that he was in search of her. With a word to the obsequious salesman who met him, he came directly towards her hiding-place behind the dummy in sealskin. His face lighted with a merry smile that was good to see as he crossed over to her ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... receive at the different tables. In this important branch, she has the assistance of a lady, somewhat younger than herself, who, seated by her side, in stately silence, has every appearance of a maid of honour. A person in waiting near the throne, from his vacant look and obsequious carriage, might, at first sight, be taken for a chamberlain; whereas his real office, by no means an unimportant one, is to distribute into deserts the fruit and other et ceteras, piled up within his reach ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... perplexed history it had been, with many a bitter sorrow, and many a yet bitterer sin. Passionate grief and despairing murmurs he had felt and flung out, while it slowly unfolded itself. When the Pharaoh had asked, 'How old art thou?' he had answered in words which owe their sombreness partly to obsequious assumption of insignificance in such a presence, but have a strong tinge of genuine sadness in them too: 'Few and evil have the days of the years of my life been.' But lying dying there, with it all well behind him, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... the workmen, common in some mines, was never permitted in "Pingueico." In Pachuca, for example, this was said to be the universal practice; while in the mines of Chihuahua it would have been as dangerous as to do the same thing to a stick of dynamite. Here the peon's manner was little short of obsequious outwardly, yet one had the feeling that in crowds they were capable of making trouble and those who had fallen upon "gringoes" in the region had despatched their victims thoroughly, leaving them mutilated and robbed even of their clothing. The charming ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... expenditure forthwith, though, indeed, that would have been difficult to effect. He had already two packs of hounds, with which he hunted on alternate days, and he had even endeavored to do so on the Sunday; but the obsequious "county" had declined to go with him to that extent, and this anomaly of the nineteenth century had been compelled to confine himself on the seventh day to cock-fighting in the library. He kept a bear to bait (as ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... was conducting the proprietor of the chateau, he repented having treated him so cavalierly the day before; he became obsequious, and endeavored to gain the good-will of his fare by showing himself as loquacious as he had before been cross and sulky. But Julien de Buxieres, too much occupied in observing the details of the country, ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... came ashore Captain Johannes Maartens was all interest, for here were silks again. One strapping Korean, all in pale-tinted silks of various colours, was surrounded by half a dozen obsequious attendants, also clad in silk. Kwan Yung-jin, as I came to know his name, was a yang-ban, or noble; also he was what might be called magistrate or governor of the district or province. This means that his office was appointive, and that he was a ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... sudden extremes, at one while on a tone of easy but not undignified familiarity with his visitors, as if their equal in position, their superior in years; then abruptly, humble, deprecating, almost obsequious, almost servile; and then again, jerked as it were into pride and stiffness, falling back, as if the effort were impossible, into meek dejection. Still the prevalent character of the man's mood and talk ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... two large books with him in his gig, and a considerable roll of papers. As soon as the obsequious Mr. Pugnose saw him at the door, he assisted him to alight, ushered him into the "best room," and desired the constable to attend "the Squire." The crowd immediately entered, and the Constable opened the court in due form, ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... room in silence, an occasional vehement gesture alone giving evidence of the agitation or fear that was raging within him. Finally, he stopped and stood before the obsequious Basilivitch. ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... certain streets and squares be darkened—or whitened—at the appointed hour by the shower of pasteboard transmitted from dainty kid-gloved hands to the cotton-gloved hands of "John," and destined through him to reach the possibly gloveless hands of some other John, who stands obsequious in the doorway. Now will every lady, after John has slammed the door, drive happily on to some other door, rearranging, as she goes, her display of cards, laid as if for a game on the opposite seat of her carriage, and ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... of solid bells; it has a few bits of good brass-work, a chandelier and some candlesticks, and it has a fine eighteenth-century tomb in a corner, with a huge slab of black basalt on the top, and a heraldic shield and a very obsequious inscription, which might apply to anyone, and yet could be true of nobody. Why the particular old gentleman should want to sleep there, or who was willing to spend so much on his lying in state, no one knows, and I fear that no one ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... hasn't brought his pony round—or what you will. There is mamma rapping the knuckles of Pincot the lady's-maid, and little Miss scolding Martha, who waits up five pair of stairs in the nursery. Little Miss, Tommy, papa, mamma, you all expect from Martha, from Pincot, from Jenkins, from Jeames, obsequious civility and willing service. My dear, good people, you can't have truth too. Suppose you ask for your newspaper, and Jeames says, "I'm reading it, and jest beg not to be disturbed;" or suppose you ask for a can of water, and he remarks, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the organ. Both had been brought in from the street. Svidrigailov had not been a week in Petersburg, but everything about him was already, so to speak, on a patriarchal footing; the waiter, Philip, was by now an old friend and very obsequious. ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... might have guessed," replied the farmer, bowing with an aged, obsequious dignity. "You have made an old man very happy; and I may say, indeed, that I have entertained an angel unawares. Sir, the great people of this world—and by that I mean those who are great in station—if they had only hearts like yours, how they would ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I said, "that religion was like a noble and generous boy with the lyrical heart of a poet, made by some sad chance into a king, surrounded by obsequious respect and pomp and etiquette, bound by a hundred ceremonious rules, forbidden to do this and that, taught to think that his one duty was to be magnificently attired, to acquire graceful arts of posture and courtesy, subtly and gently prevented from obeying natural ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Uniformity, imposing the use of the Prayer-book on the clergy, resulted in resignations which according to the records did not exceed two hundred. To account for so small a number, we must suppose that the regulations were to a considerable extent evaded; if not, the clergy must have been singularly obsequious. ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... an echoing colonnade, Sweeping against its pillared balustrade, Adown a porch, and through a portal wide, And I am in my Castle, Lord of all; My faithful groom is standing in the hall To doff my shining robe, while servitors, And cringing chamberlains beside the doors Waving their gilded wands, obsequious wait, And bow me on my way in royal pomp ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... soft peal of laughter—a woman's laughter, which came from the arched entrance to the inn. I looked up quickly. A too familiar figure was standing there watching me,—Lady Delahaye, trim, elegant, a trifle supercilious. By her side stood the innkeeper, white-aproned and obsequious. ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... poor bhearer who had never before been taken by a Sahib in the very bosom of his family. There was something at once pitiful and comical in the subdued "fidget" with which, applying his joined palms to his forehead, and lowly louting, he made his most obsequious salaam ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... passers by in thickest confluence flow'd: To whom with loud and passionate laments From morn to eve his dark estate he wail'd. Nor wail'd to all in vain: some here and there, The well-disposed and good, their pennies gave. I meantime at his feet obsequious slept; Not all-asleep in sleep, but heart and ear Prick'd up at his least motion; to receive At his kind hand ray customary crums, And common portion in his feast of scraps; Or when night warn'd us homeward, tired and spent With our long ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... satire on servility and selfishness. It is in that case Diamond cut Diamond—a trial of skill between the legacy-hunter and the legacy-maker, which shall fool the other. The cringing toad-eater, the officious tale-bearer, is perhaps well paid for years of obsequious attendance with a bare mention and a mourning-ring; nor can I think that Gil Blas' library was not quite as much as the coxcombry of his pretensions deserved. There are some admirable scenes in Ben Jonson's Volpone, showing the humours of a legacy-hunter, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... more humane, and she seemed of a superior race to the inhabitants of the surrounding valleys. My savage treated her with peculiar deference. She had just given him some bread, with which he retired to a respectful distance, bowing to the earth. I caught the mode, and was very obsequious, thinking myself on the point of experiencing a witch's influence, and gaining, perhaps, some insight into the volume of futurity. She smiled at my agitation, and kept beckoning me into ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... course; but a bishop in England was one who could do little good and, fortunately, not much harm. With an irony too subtle to be seen by but very few, Pitt when twenty-seven years of age made his old tutor Bishop of Winchester. Tomline proved an excellent and praiseworthy bishop; and his obsequious loyalty to Pitt led to the promise that if the Primacy should become vacant, Tomline was to be made Archbishop ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... a morose solitude after all. "Money," he was fond of saying, "is freedom," but he never learned that self-denial is freedom with the addition of self-respect. With a hearty contempt for the ordinary objects of human ambition, he could yet bring himself for the sake of them to be the obsequious courtier of three royal strumpets. How should he be happy who had defined happiness to be "the perpetual possession of being well deceived," and who could never be deceived himself? It may well be doubted whether ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... arrival. Very soon a jemadar came in and informed us that "if the sahib log, who were the protectors of the poor, would deign to be led by him," we should be shown into the royal presence. So we rose and followed the obsequious official into ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... could not help noticing an increased and even exaggerated respect paid him by the hotel attendants. He was asked if his EXCELLENCY would be served with breakfast in a private room, and his condescension in selecting the public coffee-room struck the obsequious chamberlain, but did not prevent him from preceding Paul backwards to the table, and summoning a waiter to attend specially upon "milor." Surmising that George and the colonel might be in some way connected with this ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... unmarried lady to choose, from among the young gentlemen of her acquaintance, one to be her guardian or gallant; who, in return for the honor of this appointment, presents to her some nosegays, or other trifles, and thereby obliges himself to attend her in the most obsequious manner in all her parties of pleasure, and to all her public amusements, for the space of one year, when he may retire, and the lady may choose another in his place. But in the course of this connection it ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... told her they would go North from Reno and travel eastward by the Canadian Pacific, stopping at points of interest along the road. He imagined his courtship progressing in grandiose suites of rooms wherein were served delicate meals, his generous largesse to obsequious hirelings adding to her dazzled approval. He had to have that money; he couldn't go without it; he had set it aside to deck with fitting ceremonial ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... had pouted sufficiently (and who whenever a stranger appeared began, from infancy almost, to play off little graces to catch his attention), her brother being now gone to bed, was for taking her place upon Esmond's knee: for, though the doctor was very obsequious to her, she did not like him, because he had thick boots and dirty hands (the pert young miss said), and because she hated ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... only be crossed with difficulty, and the crowd from America too was deterred by the danger. Instead of the throngs at the great points of interest, the visitors counted by twos and threes. The guides and landlords were obsequious. We few strangers had the Alps to ourselves and they were as lavish of their splendours to the handful as to the multitude. At Geneva at last I found letters from home which caused me anxiety; I was referred ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... required of it, and wishing to make a display of liberalism, accords large concessions in the direction of local autonomy; and when it discovers that the new institutions do not accomplish all that was expected of them, and are not quite so subservient and obsequious as is considered desirable, it returns in a certain measure to the old principles of ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... was opened by an obsequious colored servant, Craig handed him the scrap of paper signed by the ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... complaining of the distance I keep him at; and thinks himself entitled now to call in question my value for him; strengthening his doubts by my former declared readiness to give him up to a reconciliation with my friends; and yet has himself fallen off from that obsequious tenderness, if I may couple the words, which drew from me the concessions ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... was to send three meals per diem to Sarah's hall room by a waiter—an obsequious one if possible—and furnish her each afternoon with a pencil draft of what Fate had in store for Schulenberg's customers on ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... than no Christian at all; but at the best, such a man is a possessor of the truth only by accident: he ought to have, and, if he be a sincere disciple of truth, will seek, some more solid grounds for holding it. But it is but too obvious, we fear, that the disposition to enjoin this obsequious mood of mind is prompted by a strong desire to revive the ancient empire of priestcraft and the pretensions of ecclesiastical despotism; to secure readmission to the human mind of extravagant and preposterous ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... her seat, however, than there was the dog close to the car, timid, obsequious, winning, with his wisp of a head cocked on one side. We drove on, and he followed pertinaciously. Mildly adjured by the Countess to "go home, little dog," he came on the faster. Many adventures he had, such as a fall over a heap of ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... note changed from hand to hand—tipping was still in style. The obsequious steward gave him further directions for finding the games and recreational rooms, and other points ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... new addresses fitted them to conquer the wilderness—qualities of daring, bravery, reckless abandon, heavy self-assertiveness. A lot of them were hell-raisers, for they had a lust for life and were maddened by tame respectability. Nobody but obsequious politicians and priggish "Daughters" wants to make them out as models of virtue and conformity. A smooth and settled society—a society shockingly tame—may accept Cardinal Newman's definition, "A gentleman is one who never gives offense." ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... this which one may call the preventing Aspect, and throw their Attention another Way, lest they should confer a Bow or a Curtsie upon a Person who might not appear to deserve that Dignity. Others you shall find so obsequious, and so very courteous, as there is no escaping their Favours of this Kind. Of this Sort may be a Man who is in the fifth or sixth Degree of Favour with a Minister; this good Creature is resolved to shew the World, that great Honours cannot at all change his Manners; he ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... only world to which all else in the firmament were obsequious attendants, but a mere insignificant speck among the host of heaven! Man no longer the centre and cynosure of creation, but, as it were, an insect crawling on the surface of this little speck! All this not set down in crabbed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... with sheets of iron. In his mansion, above the entrance of which is written "L'Entree de Sidi Laid," are clocks innumerable, musical boxes, tables, chairs, sofas, and even framed photographs. Negro servants bow before him, wives, brothers, children, and obsequious hangers-on of various nationalities, black, bronze, and cafe au lait in colour, offer him perpetual incense. Rich worshippers of the Prophet and the Prophet's priests send him presents from afar; camels laden with barley, ...
— Halima And The Scorpions - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... restoration; and that frightful mother of all mischief, the money maker (U.S. Bank). Every morning (the morning begins here at twelve, meridian) the Senate chamber is thronged with ladies and feathers, and their obsequious satellites, to hear the sparring. Every morning a speech is made upon presentation of some petition representing that the country is overwhelmed with ruin and disasters, and that the fact is notorious and palpable; or, that the country is highly ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... Eh! Is it what?" it droned. And a figure with bloodshot eyes, disordered beard, and rich clothes awry, forced its way through the obsequious circle. It was Marshal Tavannes. "Eh, what? You'd beard the King, would you?" he hiccoughed truculently, his eyes on Father Pezelay, his hand on his sword. "Were ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... the most tender confidence, and of a respect which ended not with her life. In his Meditations, he thanks the gods, who had bestowed on him a wife so faithful, so gentle, and of such a wonderful simplicity of manners. [4] The obsequious senate, at his earnest request, declared her a goddess. She was represented in her temples, with the attributes of Juno, Venus, and Ceres; and it was decreed, that, on the day of their nuptials, the youth of either sex should pay ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... have grown up and are habituated to it, and do not realize the oppression; because in childhood circumstance and the black art of education alike conspire to make the worker humble in heart and to take the crown and sceptre from his spirit, and his elders are already tamed and obsequious. ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell
... the presence of the two other men in the car. She sensed that it was only their being there that kept Dean from making a scene. There was nothing in his manner toward her now of the obsequious chauffeur. While she admitted to herself that there was no longer the necessity for his continuing in his fictitious character she strongly resented his loverlike jealousy for her welfare and welcomed the chief's return, for she saw from his face, ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... the black figures round him stood side-by-side with a dejected air, and there was something in the carriage of their shoulders that suggested to his experienced eye hands that were bound together. Two! In a flash he rose to his position. He emptied the little flask and staggered—obsequious hands assisting him—to his feet. There was a ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... insouciance tempered the habitual military smartness of the man who had known several different services in the fifteen years of his wasted young manhood. As he swung into the glare of the hospitable doorway of the Grand Rational, the obsequious head porter ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... woodwork until the gong should gather them; and my aunt is there, very marvelously wrapped about in a dust cloak and a cage-like veil, and there are hotel porters and under-porters very alert, and an obsequious manager; and the tall young lady in black from the office is surprised into admiration, and in the middle of the picture is my uncle, making his first appearance in that Esquimaux costume I have already mentioned, ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... won from loveless hearts (12) are felt to be devoid of grace, and embraces forcibly procured are sweet no longer, so the obsequious cringings of alarm are hardly honours. Since how shall we assert that people who are forced to rise from their seats do really rise to honour those whom they regard as malefactors? or that these others who step aside to let their betters pass them in the street, desire thus to show ...
— Hiero • Xenophon
... remarkable—such moments in especial determined in Kate a perception of the high happiness of her companion's liberty. Milly's range was thus immense; she had to ask nobody for anything, to refer nothing to any one; her freedom, her fortune and her fancy were her law; an obsequious world surrounded her, she could sniff up at every step its fumes. And Kate, in these days, was altogether in the phase of forgiving her so much bliss; in the phase moreover of believing that, should they continue to go on together, she would abide in that ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... my account, as I had been on his—who had watched my commands, and (pardon me, Madam) ever changeable motion of your pen, all hours, in all weathers, and with a cheerfulness and ardour, that nothing but the most faithful and obsequious passion could inspire.' ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... passion, I felt it rise up like a snake in my breast when I saw that feeble woman. She was splendidly dressed—wrapped in furs of the most costly kind, trailing behind; her velvets and lace worth a countess's dowry. She was attended by obsequious menials; surrounded by luxuries; her compartment of the carriage was a perfect palace in all the accessories which it was possible to collect in so small a space; and it seemed as though 'Cleopatra's cup' ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
... stainless portrait which Mr. Forster, at the conclusion of his remarks, would fain have drawn. Mr. Macaulay may have painted his story a little too highly. His faults are less in his verbs and substantives than in his adjectives and his adverbs. Penn never in all probability became such an obsequious and pliant-principled courtier as he is represented in this history, but the simple facts which are authentically recorded of his court-life preclude any notion of the high-souled and spotless character which Mr. Forster would ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... in it except by force and bribery. He must coerce and corrupt. Moreover, to rule without a rival, he must surround himself with men vastly inferior to him both in talent and in virtue: men who, in return for their obsequious servility, must be humoured and satisfied. Whenever such a usurpation occurs, all the maxims upon which the welfare and freedom of a community normally rest are annihilated, and the reign of profligacy and of tyranny inevitably supervenes: ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... of Toomey's character had come with his misfortunes. So long as he had money to spend and could ride, arrogant and high-handed, over the obsequious shopkeepers who benefited by his prodigality, and the poor ranchers who had not the means, or often the spirit, to oppose him, he continued to appear to her in the light in which she had first seen him. She adored his ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... probable chances of life, in a manner utterly revolting to me. I caught many a glance of disgust bent upon them by the poor fellows who were thus treated as if they were stocks or stones. These women were, while under the eye of the surgeon, obsequious and eager to please, but I thought I saw the "lurking devil in their eyes," and felt sure ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... her arrival at Kingdon, Bettina, having breakfasted in her room, went for a ramble over the house. It seemed solemnly vast and empty, and she would have lost herself many times had she not encountered now and then a courtesying house-maid or an obsequious footman, who answered her inquiries and told her into ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... passed in Roberval's mind. His vigilant eye took notice of the slightest signs which revealed the nobleman's attitude towards him; but no change in his own manner and bearing could have been observed, except that he was, if possible, more servile and obsequious than ever. ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... virtue than money, she being a richer match than any one who could bring a million, and nothing else to commend her. The virgins and young ladies of that golden age put their hands to the spindle, nor disdained the needle; were obsequious and helpful to their parents, instructed in the management of the family, and gave presage of making excellent wives. Their retirements were devout and religious books, their recreations in the distillery and knowledge of plants and their virtues for the comfort of their poor neighbours, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... that souls of grace Own sweet repulsion, and that 'tis The quality of their embrace To be like the majestic reach Of coupled suns, that, from afar, Mingle their mutual spheres, while each Circles the twin obsequious star; And, in the warmth of hand to hand, Of heart to heart, he'll vow to note And reverently understand How the two spirits shine remote; And ne'er to numb fine honour's nerve, Nor let sweet awe in passion ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... walking where one chooses. When he was magnificently weary of walking down that particular passage he would wheel round and pace back past the office; in the shadow of the arch just beyond he was altered as by a blast of magic, and went hurrying forward again among the Twelve Fishermen, an obsequious attendant. Why should the gentlemen look at a chance waiter? Why should the waiters suspect a first-rate walking gentleman? Once or twice he played the coolest tricks. In the proprietor's private quarters he called out breezily for a syphon of soda ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... casual than was customary. Some of them went so far as to smile encouragingly, and others waved their hands in the most cordial fashion. Three or four very young members looked upon him with admiration and envy, and even the porters seemed more obsequious. There was something strangely oppressive in all ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... wave only obsequious to the wind Leaps to the lifting breeze that bids it leap, Large-hearted, and its thickening mane be thinned By the strong god's breath moving on the deep From utmost Atlas even to extremest Ind That shakes the plain ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... and his paper. He was, however, a smart man, quite capable of grasping a situation when it was demonstrated to him. In a few weeks' time the clever division began to read the accounts of their acts of brigandage with fear and trembling; obsequious stewards became more alert, and less timid in dealing with glaring acts of fraud, while threats were openly indulged in, and actions for libel suggested. But Denis Quirk and his paper went on their prescribed course, regardless of threats, ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... gathered up by the clerk, Dennis Quigg handed over McGaw's. The ease with which Dan had raised the money on his notes had invested that gentleman with some of the dignity and attributes of a capitalist; the hired buggy and the obsequious Quigg indicated this. His new position was strengthened by the liberal way in which he had portioned out his possessions to the workingman. It was further sustained by the hope that he might perhaps repeat his generosities in ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... 'em,—this Grandeur, Cozen, which those o' Quality assume above the Populace, to have obsequious Mechanicks wait our Levee in a Morning, is not disagreeable; then they are as constant as our Menials, and the less Mony one pays 'em, the ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... laughter and kisses. The whole atmosphere of the place suggested romance to the eager American girl. Downstairs were the royal guards; in the halls were attendants; all about were maidservants and obsequious lackeys, crowding the home of the kindly countess. At last, comfortable and free from the dust of travel, the two friends sat down to a ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... evils of our economic system are too plain to be ignored; too many people have harsh personal experience of the wastefulness of its production, the injustice of its distribution; of its sweating, its unemployment and slums. And when the attempt is made to plaster over evils, such as these with obsequious rhetoric about the majesty of economic law, it is not surprising that the spirit of many men should revolt and that they should retort by denying the existence of order in the business world, by declaring that the spectacle which they see is one of discord, confusion and chaos. ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... been cultivated in England since 1570. It is a Composite plant, and bears the name Calendula from the Latin calendoe, the first days of each month, because it flowers all the year round. Whittier styles it "the grateful and [327] obsequious Marigold." The leaves are somewhat thick and sapid; when chewed, they communicate straightway a viscid sweetness, which is followed by a sharp, penetrating taste, very persistent in the mouth, and not of the warm, aromatic kind, but of an acrid, ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... hidden; but one day he went to the Recogidas and asked to see Sister Chucha. He was obsequious, but impassioned, full of cajolery, but not for a moment did he try to impose upon his countrywoman by any assumption of omniscience. That was reserved for his master, and was indeed a kind of compliment to his needs. Sister Chucha heard ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... halberdiers in the ear of the bigger of the two prisoners. I could hear the command distinctly where I sat, well back in the court, and so no doubt could Gillesbeg Gruamach, but he was used to such obsequious foolishness and he made ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... Ford, your sorrow hath eaten up my sufferance. I see you are obsequious in your love, and I profess requital to a hair's breadth; not only, Mistress Ford, in the simple office of love, but in all the accoutrement, complement, and ceremony of it. But are you sure 5 ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... Rajah rose hastily without replying and went to his office state-room, followed, shadow-like, by the obsequious Jastrow. ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde
... exchanging stolen greetings; silent salutations were passing between wealthy patrons and their hangers-on; lovers, whose mistresses were absent, sighed their woes into the ears of confidants; officers tossed curt nods to their creditors, and high officials were receiving obsequious bows from their subordinates, anxiously hoping for the time when death would give them a chance of promotion. And then—before the young ladies had had time to exhibit their latest Paris gowns in the course of one ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... once the fellow, a dark-skinned, obsequious Lydian, returned looking scared and yet on the verge of laughter. He could barely control his merriment, yet was plainly afraid to utter what he had to say. His ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... of Doctor Todd to which he led me, in the presence of the great man, he did not venture any airy presentation. Boller of '89 inside of the study door was quite a different person from the Boller without it. The bold manner fled. He was suppressed, obsequious; even his clothes seemed to shrink and grow humbly dun. We entered so quietly that the doctor, bending over his desk, did not hear us, and we had to cough apologetically to apprise ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... of looking after others was not the only thing that urged the chemist to such obsequious cordiality; there was a ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... Delaney, seeing me bettered and able to sit up a little, told me this strange story. While I was ill and unconscious, an officer had come to inspect the prison. Cunningham was very obsequious to this gentleman, and on Delaney's seizing the chance to complain, said it was a pack of lies, and how could he help the dysentery and typhus? All jails had them, even in England, ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... had sold them some chocolates in the most smiling, obsequious manner; now he sat huddled up on a wooden case, eating something out of a grimy, but gaudy cotton handkerchief. At his feet were two thin, miserable-looking children, both dressed as acrobats. Out of the grimy handkerchief ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... are always civil, or rather obsequious; and in dress they are remarkably neat and clean, to whatever rank of life they belong.[156] I shall not attempt a description either of their persons or habits, for the better kind of China paper, which is ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... afterwards came into most of these measures. After endeavouring in vain to unite, these two interests, the Duke of Bedford found, or fancied himself compelled, in order to secure a parliamentary majority, to listen to the overtures of the, obsequious Primate, to restore him to the Council, and to leave him, together with his old enemy, Lord Shannon, in the situation of joint administrators, during his journey to England, in 1758. The Earl of Kildare, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... preference in order of narrative, as well as in memory, to guides who proved competent, willing, and true, who, if they seasoned the intercourse between us with a little encouragement to my self-esteem, had nothing in them obsequious or timeserving, and who set me a wholesome example of clear convictions and firmness in the maintenance of right. But not only are the virtues of the race whom I have chosen for a theme subjects of congratulation; even ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... gentleman of the bedchamber, so as to have him constantly about his person. Such was his favour that every one pressed around him to obtain their suits with the King. He received rich presents; the ladies courted his attention; the greatest lords did him the most obsequious and disgusting homage."[61] He afterwards formed that connection with Frances Howard, Countess of Essex, which resulted in her divorce from her husband, and, subsequently, on his marrying Lady Essex, ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... With an obsequious bow the Jap withdrew; but if they could have seen his face as he turned into his small pantry, a cubby-hole for dishes and glasses, they would have noticed that it bore a most ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... disagreeably prepared for his august arrival. Obsequious waiters took his dressing-bag and overcoat, the landlord himself welcomed him at the door. Two naval gentlemen came out of the coffee-room to stare at him. "Have you any more luggage, Mr. Devine?" asked the landlord, as he flung open the door of the best drawing-room. It was awkwardly evident ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... is that ass Brogard? La! man," he added as Citizen Brogard, obsequious and fussy, and with pockets stuffed with English gold, came shuffling along, "where do you hide your engaging countenance? Here! another length of rope for the gallant soldiers. Bring them in here, then give them that potion down their throats, as I have prescribed. ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Let me send you in a few dozen." He offered Mr. Punch an elaborate price-list as he concluded his self-condemnatory verse with an obsequious bow. ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various
... Somewhere with her was associated the idea of punishment, vindictiveness, revenge. I remembered again suddenly my odd notion that she sought to keep her present mistress here, a prisoner in this bleak and comfortless house, and that really, in spite of her obsequious silence, she was intensely opposed to the change of thought that had reclaimed Mabel to a happier view ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... for an obsequious Japanese butler entered with a tray of cooling drinks. The tray would be gleaming silver, but he was uncertain about the drinks; something with long straws in them, probably. But as to anything alcoholic, now—While he was trying to determine ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... the road through which the Imperial procession was to pass. The terraces of the Tuileries, the Place de la Concorde, the quais were thronged. Numberless spectators covered the slopes of the Champ de Mars. The ever obsequious Moniteur, in its official account of the ceremony, said; "If the spectators were uncomfortable, there was not one who was not consoled by the feeling that held him there, and by the expression of his wishes which the ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... Jack Lawless[8] called on Arbuthnot to ask him some question about the Deccan prize money, in which a brother of his has an interest. He entered upon politics, was very obsequious in his manner, extravagant in praise of the Duke, quite shocked that he should have fought a duel, and said, 'Sir, we are twelve of us here, and not one but what would fight for him any day in the week.' He said that ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... laughing, as he said, fit to break his jaws. And he was no longer the timid little unctuous and obsequious provincial usher, but a well-set-up fellow, who, after reciting and mimicking the whole scene with impressive ardour, was now laughing with a shrill laughter the sound of ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... my way through the doors, I captured a salesman, and from a state bordering on nervous collapse he became galvanized into an intense alertness and respect when he understood my desires. He didn't know the price of the objects in question. He brought the proprietor, an obsequious little German who, on learning my name, repeated it in every sentence. For Biddy I chose a doll that was all but human; when held by a young woman for my inspection, it elicited murmurs of admiration from the women shoppers by whom we were surrounded. The proprietor promised to make a special ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... of selection as I guessed it. "He forced his way into the F.O. and in an obsequious tone, which you and I, Geraldine, would be ashamed to adopt, begged for the favour of a bag to carry with him. If the KING had known about it he would rather have sent his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 7th, 1920 • Various
... devil; all things to all men; God-fearing patriots; come what may; all things are fair in love or war; the silken bowstring; the unwary voter; bait to catch gudgeons; to live by or to die by; these obsequious courtiers; Guttenburg; rubber stamp; at all hazards; the most unkindest ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... sense of equality is noticeable. Shopkeepers and their assistants are not the cringing, obsequious slaves that we know so well in England. There is none of that bowing and smirking, superfluous "sir"-ing and "ma'am"-ing, and elaborate deference to customers that prevails at home. Here we are all freemen and equals; and the Auckland shopman meets his customer with a shake ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... and gets up, Inger sleeping fine and sound after her long tramp, and out he goes to the cowshed. Now it must not be thought that he talked to Cow in any obsequious and disgustful flattery; no, he patted her decently, and looked her over once more in every part, to see if there should, by chance, be any sign, any mark of her belonging to strange owners. No mark, no sign, and Isak steals ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... accordingly to bring forward such laws as were in reality neither honorable nor advantageous for the public; his whole design being to outdo Caius in pleasing and cajoling the populace (as if it had been in some comedy), with obsequious flattery and every kind of gratifications; the senate thus letting it be seen plainly, that they were not angry with Caius's public measures, but only desirous to ruin him utterly, or at least to lessen his reputation. For when Caius proposed the settlement of only two colonies, and mentioned ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... foliage, give character and interest to the city, where the life of the past lingers in a series of street pictures remaining from bygone days of pomp and show. Ministers of State walk beneath many-coloured official umbrellas, held by obsequious attendants; graceful bedayas, in glittering robes, execute intricate dances, and gamelon players discourse weird music on pipe and drum. Court ballet-girls, known as Serimpi, are borne swiftly through the crowd in gilded litters, and masked actors give ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... crowd of rich men who occupy box and pit bestow a thought on the domestic life of these young girls? Do their wives and daughters, lolling on cushioned seats, clothed in purple and fine linen, and waited on by a host of obsequious fops, ever think whether the dancing-girls have a domestic life of any kind or not? They came to the theatre to be amused,—not to meditate; why should they permit their amusement to be clouded by a single thought as to whether any ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... answer. And Lord Almeric, an excessively pale, excessively thin young man, handed his hat with a gesture of exhaustion to the obsequious tutor. 'Fan me; that is a good soul. Positively I am suffocated with the smell of those creatures! Worse than horses, I assure you. There, again! What a pother about a common fellow! 'Pon honour, I don't know what ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... excellently. He shook himself free from the obsequious native, who showed very clearly that he would have preferred to have kept on a watchful attendance, and began a languid, indifferent examination of the labyrinth-like passages and deserted halls. But the languidness and indifference were only masks which he chose to assume ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... was a thick-set, healthy peasant, of middle height, with a rather fat face. His expression was severe and uncompromising, especially with the peasants of Mokroe, but he had the power of assuming the most obsequious countenance, when he had an inkling that it was to his interest. He dressed in Russian style, with a shirt buttoning down on one side, and a full-skirted coat. He had saved a good sum of money, but was for ever dreaming of improving ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... bell-ringer, and the gaoler of Alice Benden. He obeyed the summons of the pompous voice with obsequious celerity, for it belonged to no less a person than the Lord Bishop of Dover. His Lordship, having caught sight of the bell-ringer as he crossed the precincts, had called him, and Perkins came up, his hat in one hand, and pulling ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... indicated, the characters are those with which the author loves to surround himself. A tuft-hunting county baronet's widow, an inane captain of dragoons, a graceless young baronet, a lady with groundless pretensions to feeble health and poesy, an obsequious nonentity her husband, and a flimsy and artificial young lady, are the personages in whom we are expected to find amusement. Two individuals alone form an exception to the above category, and are offered to the respectful admiration ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... dirt, their vermin, their beggars, their priests, and their prejudices, how often have I looked at them with contempt! The uncleanliness that results from heat and indolence, the obsequious slavishness of the common people, contrasted with their loquacious impertinence, the sensuality of their hosts of monks, nay the gluttony even of their begging friars, their ignorant adoration of the rags and rotten ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... footman in livery and the major-domo. Your average Carioca servant is either fawning or covertly insolent. These two were obsequious. The footman carried a tray with a bottle, glass, ice, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... the drum-beater, drummed in homage to him, and the four Kings were they that were loudest in their revilings of the spouse of Kadza, and most obsequious in praises of the Master. The King of the City was fain to propitiate his people by a voluntary resignation of his throne to Shibli Bagarag, and that King took well to heart the wisdom of the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... lover's impatience, Barstein had made the mistake of seeking Sir Asher in his counting-house, where the municipal magnate sat among his solidities. The mahogany furniture, the iron safes, the ledgers, the silent obsequious clerks and attendants through whom Barstein had had to penetrate, the factory buildings stretching around, with their sense of throbbing machinery and disciplined workers, all gave the burly Briton a background against ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... even obsequious at first, ready to condescend and accommodate, he is equally prompt when matters require that peculiar turn which southerners frequently find themselves turned into,—no more tick and a turn out of doors. At times, Mr. O'Brodereque's customers have the very unenviable ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... most objectionable, because it is the most demoralizing of all. Where such discrimination obtains, every shipper is in the power of the railroad corporation. It makes of independent citizens of a free country fawning parasites and obsequious sycophants who accept favors from railroad managers and in return do their bidding, however humiliating this may be. The shipper, realizing that the manager's displeasure or good will toward him finds ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
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