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Beck  n.  A vat. See Back.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Beck" Quotes from Famous Books



... ordered and efficient organizations, all at the beck and nod of the hierarchy and ready to do what the church authorities tell them to do. With these bodies of loyal Catholics ready to step into the breach at any time and present an unbroken front to the ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair

... Von Beck was a lady intimately connected with the chiefs of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, and appears to have been employed by them in various patriotic services. In 1851 she visited Birmingham and was a welcome guest until "someone blundered" ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell

... your eloquence in black and white, which people will buy, if it is good (and has a broad margin), for fifty guineas a copy—in the year 2000; to sell it all, as Ananias his land, "yea, for so much," and hold yourselves at every fool's beck, with your ready points, polished and sharp, hasting to scratch what he wills! To bite permanent mischief in with acid; to spread an inked infection of evil all your days, and pass away at last from ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... grant you that there's some dignity in a woman who's a mother; but by forty she becomes old, and then she must be a plaguey nuisance. No, Scarlett, I never married, thank God. Fancy being at the beck and call of a crotchety old beldame, at my time of life. No, sir; I never knew what it was to be questioned and badgered when I came home at night, no matter if it was two in the morning. I can do as I like, sir: I need not go home at all. I'm a free man. Now, take my ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace

... reflected, 1st, that I am getting deafer and deafer, and that I cannot hear what is said at the council table and in the Society's rooms half the time people are speaking? and 2nd, that so long as I am President, so long must I be at the beck and call of everything that turns up in relation to the interests of science. So long as I am in the chair, I cannot be a faineant or refuse to do anything and ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley

... girl, do you think I am going to let you stay here and be at the beck and call of everyone? Let me claim you at once; that will be the best way to settle the difficulty, and your father would say the same if ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth

... God himself to serve him. How so? When the priest approaches the altar, in order to bring there the holy mass-offering, there, at that moment, lifts himself up Jesus Christ, who sits at the right hand of the Father, upon his throne, in order to be ready for the beck of his priests upon earth. And scarcely does the priest begin the words of consecration, than there Christ already hovers, surrounded by the heavenly host, come down from heaven to earth, and to the altar of sacrifice, and changes, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... it, it must not be forgotten how much also depends on the time when it is undertaken, the way in which it is performed, and the associates in the labour. In all these matters the true workman will wait for the Master's beck, glance, or signal, before a ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson

... Scherer, Hunn, Greenbaum & Beck, carefully placed his cigar where it would not char his Italian Renaissance desk and smoothed out the list which Mr. Elderberry, the secretary of The Horse's Neck Extension Copper Mining Company, handed to him. The list was typed on ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train

... like any man of sensibility, he was bound by the chains that deeper impulses forge, but he had never been hampered by any restraints directed at his ordinary uprisings and downsittings. In short, he had answered the beck and nod of no man, much less a woman, and he was not finding Lily Condor's growing presumptions ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie

... married Neigh, even had she loved him, so horrid did his belongings appear to be. But for many other reasons she had been gradually feeling within this hour that she would not go out of her way at a beck from a man ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy

... decisively. He himself strode over to them, lifted one chubby youngster after another into the huge swing, and sent them flying into the tree-tops. It was a form of pastime that he detested; but he was not going to have Wanda at the beck and call of "those little ruffians." At last, with the sympathetic assurance that if they wanted any more swinging they were at liberty to get it from each other, he left them, and rejoined the ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam

... and our portion apart, and our godhead, Ours, ours only for ever, Darkness, robes of darkness, a robe of terror for ever! Ruin is ours, ruin and wreck; When to the home Murder hath come, Making to cease Innocent peace; Then at his beck Follow we in, Follow the sin; And ah! we hold to the end when we begin!" [Footnote: Aeschyl. Eum. 297.—Translated by Dr. ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

... of princely culture, symbolised for Mrs. Hicks in what she called "the court of the Renaissance." Eldorada, of course, was their chief prophetess; but even the intensely "bright" and modern young secretaries, Mr. Beck and Mr. Buttles, showed a touching tendency to share her view, and spoke of Mr. Hicks as "promoting art," in the spirit of Pandolfino celebrating ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton

... reader's hope is the tempestuous purity of those passions. This wild quality of purity has a counterpart in the brief passages of nature that make the summers, the waters, the woods, and the windy heights of that murderous story seem so sweet. The "beck" that was audible beyond the hills after rain, the "heath on the top of Wuthering Heights" whereon, in her dream of Heaven, Catherine, flung out by angry angels, awoke sobbing for joy; the bird whose feathers she—delirious creature—plucks from the pillow ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell

... heartily. "You'd better go down to the store after supper, Abner, and tell the boys, for they've just heard that Paul Beck can't come." ...
— The Young Musician - or, Fighting His Way • Horatio Alger

... theolog. Einleitung (Jena, 1733); Mosheim, Ecclesiastical History; Gerbert, Gesch. d. Strassb. Sektenbewegung (Strassburg, 1889); W. Moeller, History of the Christian Church, tr. by Freese, 1900; Jos. v. Beck, Die Geschichtsbucher der Wiedertaufer in Osterr.-Ung. (Wien, 1883), (Fontes rerum Austr. II. xliii., a valuable history of the sect from their own early documents); Ritschl, Geschichte des Pietismus, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... Countess Steinbock, desperately in love with her husband cursed the War Minister. She went to see him; she told him that great works of art were not to be manufactured like cannon; and that the State—like Louis XIV., Francis I., and Leo X.—ought to be at the beck and call of genius. Poor Hortense, believing she held a Phidias in her embrace, had the sort of motherly cowardice for her Wenceslas that is in every wife who carries her love ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac

... view of spiritualism is, that it's an intensely humiliating idea after you've done with this world to be at the beck and call of any other human being who can make you go through a variety of tricks, as if you were a performing dog, in order to convince people still in the body that there is another life. If that other life permits us to come back here and play tambourines, and ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)

... names and activities would fill more space than is possible here. E. F. Albee, Oscar Hammerstein, S. Z. Poli, William Morris, Mike Shea, James E. Moore, Percy G. Williams, Harry Davis, Morris Meyerfeld, Martin Beck, John J. Murdock, Daniel F. Hennessy, Sullivan and Considine, Alexander Pantages, Marcus Loew, Charles E. Kohl, Max Anderson, Henry Zeigler, and George Castle, are but a few of the many men living and dead who have helped to make vaudeville ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page

... youth of great spirit, whose own, and standing at his beck, all Norway now was, immediately smote home on Denmark; desirous naturally of vengeance for what it had done to Norway, and the sacred kindred of Magnus. Denmark, its great Knut gone, and nothing but ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle

... ken. So needs must I send thee to him; haply he may direct thee to the Castle of Jewels; and, if he cannot do this, none can; for all things obey him, birds and beasts and the very mountains and come at his beck and call, by reason of his skill in magic. Moreover, by the might of his egromancy he hath made a staff, in three pieces, and this he planteth in the earth and conjureth over it; whereupon flesh and blood issue from the first piece, sweet milk from the second ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... picture stamp upon his mind That he may fluent be when he presents Each sev'ral person as he shall proceed To pass before thee and his greeting voice, And when the proper waiting hath an end, I will speed forth and beck the conclave in. Francos: 'Tis well! And in the intervining time 'Twere wise important matters to discuss. (Enter Carpen) Ha! Carpen, thou hast long experience had In dealings intricate with this proud race, And thee alone from out the anchored ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)

... learn any thing. Every man had to do that which he knew how to do. In entering the shipyard, my orders from Mr. Gardner were, to do whatever the carpenters commanded me to do. This was placing me at the beck and call of about seventy-five men. I was to regard all these as masters. Their word was to be my law. My situation was a most trying one. At times I needed a dozen pair of hands. I was called a dozen ways in the space of a single minute. Three or ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass

... stage. I overheard that he began to ask the drivers of coaches and other vehicles coming towards us what passengers they had seen in other coaches and vehicles that were in advance. Their replies did not encourage him. He always gave me a reassuring beck of his finger and lift of his eyelid as he got upon the box again, but he seemed perplexed now when he ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... spirit wildly sweeps, With each hasty impulse veering Down to passion's troubled deeps. And his heart, contented never, Greeds to grapple with the far, Chasing his own dream forever, On through many a distant star! But woman with looks that can charm and enchain, Lureth back at her beck the wild truant again, By the spell of her presence beguiled— In the home of the mother her modest abode, And modest the manners by Nature bestowed On ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... door-bell ring. At the sound his face set as though it were mortar. He wanted no patients this night; but from the peremptory sound of the bell he was sure some one had come who needed medicine or the knife, and he could refuse neither; for was he not at everybody's beck and call, the Medicine Man whose ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... seeming languid, lean'd against A cypress pillar by the builder's art Polish'd long since, and planted at the door. Then took Telemachus a loaf entire 410 Forth from the elegant basket, and of flesh A portion large as his two hands contained, And, beck'ning close the swine-herd, charged him thus. These to the stranger; whom advise to ask Some dole from ev'ry suitor; bashful fear Ill suits the mendicant by want oppress'd. He spake; Eumaeus went, and where he sat Arriving, in wing'd accents thus ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer

... Noteworthy among the latter is one by the Italian priest Locatelli, entitled Exorcisms most Powerful and Efficacious for the Dispelling of Aerial Tempests, whether raised by Demons at their own Instance or at the Beck of some Servant of ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... somewhat startling, to learn how little gratification he professed to feel in what appeared so great a triumph. While his rivals looked with envy on his exaltation, and mobs deemed it little enough that he should be entirely at their beck in requital for the support they gave him, Mr Jeffrey was sighing for the quiet of private life, groaning at his banishment from a happy country-home, and not a little disturbed by the troubled aspect of public affairs. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various

... upon the stage." He expresses no surprise at the introduction of the animals, and this may not have been their first appearance on the scene. He is content to note that "Hide Park" is "a very moderate play, only an excellent epilogue spoken by Beck Marshall." The scene of the third and fourth acts of the comedy lies in the Park, and foot and horse races are represented. The horses probably were only required to cross the stage ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... publication of this work a few weeks since, we were led to anticipate the delight it would afford many of our esteemed correspondents, especially our friend W.H.H., who has "caught about forty trout in two or three hours" in the rocky basins of Pot-beck, &c.[5] ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII., No. 324, July 26, 1828 • Various

... one's race is a serious thing. I can't think of anything that would make that worth while. Here comes Mr. DeWitt. It must be dinner time. John, come up and see a little desert owl at close range. Kut-le has all the desert at his beck and call!" ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow

... enable that House to discharge its functions as the highest court of appeal; and it would manifestly be both inconvenient and derogatory to our dignity that members of our body should be at the beck and call of the peers. I see no special reason for excluding the Master of the Rolls; and I would, therefore, leave our door open to him. I would open it to the Judge of the Admiralty, who has been most unwisely excluded. I would open it to other great judicial officers ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... course, she had no need of a special committee. It was vigorously opposed also by Senator Beck, of Kentucky, who said "the colored women's votes could be bought for fifty cents apiece;" and by Senator Morgan, of Alabama, who made a stump speech on "dissevered homes, disbanded families, pot-house politicians seated at the fireside with ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... when Tacitus saw it applaud the crimes of the emperors the vile populace has not changed. These barbarians who swarm at the bottom of societies are always ready to stain the people with every crime, at the beck of every power, and to the dishonour ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon

... his ardent and variable genius infused itself entirely into all his desires, the least as well as the greatest: whatever he willed, all his energies and all his faculties united to effect: they appeared at his beck; they hastened forward; and, obedient to his dictation, simultaneously assumed the ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur

... almost grown up at seventeen, and she had been only fourteen, Mary's age, when she made that never to be forgotten visit to the Wigwam. And she would see Betty and Betty's godmother and Papa Jack and the old Colonel and Mom Beck. The very names, as she repeated them in a whisper, sounded interesting to her. And the two little knights of Kentucky, and Miss Allison and the Waltons—they were all mythical people in one sense, like Alice in Wonderland and Bo-peep, ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston

... appropriate "our college"—those old walls, under the shadow of which all her future life must pass. As she entered the narrow gateway of Saint Beck's, and walked round its chilly cloisters, to the Lodge door, she tried not to remember that she had ever thought of life as any thing different from this, or had ever planned an existence of boundless enjoyment, freedom, and beauty, travel in foreign countries, seeing of mountains, cities, pictures, ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... say no more!" pleads the girl, torn by the sight of his sorrow, and her necessity to refuse the only possible comfort, "Be silent! I must! I must!..."—"Oh, that docility, blind as your act!" he raves; "You were glad, at a beck from your father, to follow. With a blow you crush the life out of my heart!"—"No more! No more!" she tries to stop him; "I must not see you again, must not think of you. High duty commands it!"—"What ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall

... have to hire some one in to see it, and it would cost me a pretty penny. But here you are miles from a settlement with your own private physician in attendance. Were you a young prince you could not be more royally cared for. Think of having one of the best New York surgeons at your beck and call here in this wilderness. You are ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett

... a woman. All he cared for was to lose his time in his books; and that's the way this man'll do, and leave you to take the brunt of everything. Your time'll go in cookin' and mendin' and washin' up; and you'll have to be at everybody's beck and call at the end o' that. If there's anything I hate, it's to be in the kitchen and parlour both at the ...
— Diana • Susan Warner

... pleased to find that her aunt's storm no longer swamped her boat. When she began, however, to abuse Mary, calling her a low creature, who actually gave up an independent position to put herself at the beck and call of a fine ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald

... Professor Beck examined thirty-three different samples from various parts of the United States and Europe, and he gives the preference to the Kobanga variety from the south of Russia. There would probably be a prejudice against it in this country, from the natural yellowish hue of ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... my first visit to Ceram at three o'clock in the morning of October 29th, after having been delayed several days by the boat's crew, who could not be got together. Captain Van der Beck, who gave me a passage in his boat, had been running after them all day, and at midnight we had to search for two of my men who had disappeared at the last moment. One we found at supper in his own house, and rather tipsy with his parting libations of arrack, but ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... the utility of the State. 'Now the education of the Jesuits consists in stripping the pupil of every obligation to his father, to his country, and to his natural prince; in diverting all his love and fear toward a spiritual superior, on whose nod, beck and word he is dependent. This system of training is useful for the supremacy of ecclesiastics and for such secular governments as they are ready to submit to; and none can deny that the Jesuits are ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... of volcanic sand strewn with driftwood, kelp, dead shells, and the squirming forms of blindworms tossed up from the bowels of a dead sea. It was there in the spell of solitude thirty years before that Robert Turold's soul had yielded to temptation at the beck ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees

... company were, it may be, most unwelcome to him. He would have preferred sitting alone; for he liked a silent, sombre, unsafe solitude. His watchman's musket would have been company enough for him; the full-flowing beck in the den would have delivered continuously the discourse most ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... of Audoenus, Wood mentions, in 1619, Joh. Vicars, usher of Christ's Hospital school, as having rendered some select epigrams, and Thomas Beck six hundred of Owen's, with other epigrams from Martial and More, under the title of Parnassi Puerperium, 8vo., Lond. 1659. In addition to these I find, in a catalogue of Lilly, King Street, Covent ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 212, November 19, 1853 • Various

... deceived. Steps were immediately taken by the Castle to deplete the House of its majority, and to supply their places before another session with forty or fifty new members, who would be entirely at the beck of the Chief Secretary. With this view, thirty-two new county judgeships were created; a great number of additional inspectorships and commissioners were also placed at the Minister's disposal; thirteen members had peerages for themselves or for their wives, with remainder to their children, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... his own importance more than he did hers—a sort of unreasonableness few of us can tolerate—must not take for granted that he was of great moment to her, or that because others speculated on him as a desirable match she held herself altogether at his beck. How Grandcourt had filled up the pauses will be ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... have seven minutes to wait," he growled, as if time and tide were much in fault at not being at his beck ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... the governor of Antwerp, several officials were in readiness to escort the visitors through the city; and at their beck the doors of public buildings and churches, and the gates of palaces and gardens, were thrown open. The party entered the Hotel de Ville, and in one of its large rooms an opportunity was afforded for Mr. Mapps to expatiate a little on the ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic

... returned, with ten-fold force, the dreadful consciousness of his crime. He looked suspiciously about him, for the men were conversing in groups, and he feared to be the subject of their talk. The dog obeyed the significant beck of his finger, and they drew off, stealthily, together. He passed near an engine where some men were seated, and they called to him to share in their refreshment. He took some bread and meat; and as he drank a draught of beer, heard the firemen, who were from ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... Teispes was the immediate successor of Achaemenes, indicated by Herodotus, is affirmed by Darius himself in the Behistun inscription. According to Billet- beck, the Anzan (Anshan) of the early Achaemenidae was merely a very small part of the ancient Anzan (Anshan), viz. the district on the east and south-east of Kuh-i-Dena, which includes the modern towns of Yezdeshast, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... against in your assignment. But the clerical mind with its passion for monotonous repetition of petty mental processes seems to correlate with the most exquisite and refined feminine features. Those scintillating beauties on the Free Level who have ever at their beck our wisest men are from our clerical strain,—but of course they are only the rejects. It is unfortunate that you cannot see the more privileged specimens ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings

... trumpet call summons its worshipers. Among matters discussed was the charge that Negro delegations were a marketable commodity, with no convictions as to national policy, no regard for manly probity, and were ever at the beck of the highest purchaser in the political market. Such a sweeping charge is most unjust; but, if granted, the admission cuts deeply in the opposite direction, requiring no analysis to discover the preponderance of venality. It may happen between ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs

... forenoon that we steamed into the harbour, saluting the fort with nine shots of our little cannon, and saluted in turn by as many. While the Vega was sailing into the harbour, and after she had anchored, there came on board the Swedish Minister, Baron BECK-FRIIS, the Swedish consul-general EVERLOeF, the representatives of the University, of the merchants, and of the Geographical Society under the presidency of the former President of the Council, Count HOLSTEIN-HOLSTEINBORG, to bring us a welcome ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold

... from home. What do you want?' Then says he, as bold as brass, 'I've come to put the light-en-ing rods upon the house. Open the gate.' 'What rods?' says I. 'The rods as was ordered,' says he, 'open the gate.' I stood and gaz-ed at him. Full well I saw through his pinch-beck mask. I knew his tricks. In the ab-sence of my em-ployer, he would put up rods, and ever so many more than was wanted, and likely, too, some miser-able trash that would attrack the light-ening, instead of keep-ing it off. Then, as it would spoil the house to take them ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton

... at the compass for him, or what not. Of course. Too much trouble to step over and see for himself. Sterne's scorn for that bodily indolence which overtakes white men in the East increased on reflection. Some of them would be utterly lost if they hadn't all these natives at their beck and call; they grew perfectly shameless about it too. He was not of that sort, thank God! It wasn't in him to make himself dependent for his work on any shriveled-up little Malay like that. As if one could ever trust a silly native for anything in the world! But that fine old man thought ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad

... promise me, W'en he died, he'd set me free. But ole Mosser go an' make his Will Fer to leave me a-plowin' ole Beck still. ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley

... matrimony and adaptation to city life, that her judgment was in suspension. Yet though she smiled and sewed demurely, she was thinking. The yellow clapboarded house and metal stag, and a maid-of-all-work at her beck and call, were gratifying at the outset and made demands upon her energies. Selma's position in her father's house had been chiefly ornamental and social. She had been his companion and nurse, had read to him and argued with him, but the mere ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant

... binding as those that rendered Gulliver helpless in the hands of the Lilliputians. The common people, heavily taxed and poorly paid, yearned for peace and an opportunity to better their material lot. The Parliament was at the beck and call of a dictator who was moved by party interests to co-operate with the Teutons, while the Senate, which favoured neutrality on independent grounds, had made it a rule to second every resolution of the Chamber. In a word, although Italy might wax querulous and importunate, ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon

... that old organ! Reverenced, then, be all street organs; more melody is at the beck of my Italian boy, than lurks in squadrons ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... view of the banquet, the trencher cuts, foh! nankeen displays: as intersticed with many a brilliant drop to friendly beck and clubbish hail, to moisten the viands or cool the incipient cayenne. No unfamished livery-man would desire better dishes, or high-tasted courtier better wines. With men that meet to commune, that can converse, ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... revealed as a long body with wings, an E-shaped house. Here are the carriage-drive and carriage-sweep; then there's a belt of trees, and beyond that, shaped by the valley, which gradually narrows to the incline of the hills, kitchen-gardens, glass-houses, a pond (fed by a beck), water meadows, and hanging woods. Above those again heather-clad slopes climb to piled rocks and a ragged sky-line. It is a fine property with 5,000 acres of shooting, a good many farms, and a hill village to its account. The lodge ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett

... to Renton Moor. Not up the schoolhouse lane, or on the Garthdale Road, or along the fields by the beck. Not up Greffington Edge or Karva. Because of Lindley Vickers and Maurice Jourdain; ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair

... cross. If Marjorie took to giving herself airs, the world might as well stop at once. What use was Marjorie except to be at everybody's beck and call; and more especially at his—Eric's—beck and call. He kicked his heels into the gravel, thrust his hands into his trousers pockets, and put on all the ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade

... was compelled to be at the beck and call of all upon the place, including Ham, the captain's only son, and miserably spoiled at that. Before I had been a year in my new home, I was dissatisfied, for the cloven heels of the three members ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic

... time or 2/4 time is a later modification. So much being admitted, the problem of transposing a tune written in Gregorian notation without bars, time signature, marks of expression or other modern devices is obviously a difficult matter. J. Beck, who has written most recently upon the subject, formulates the following rules; the musical accent falls upon the tonic syllables of the words; should the accent fall upon an atonic syllable, the duration of the note ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor

... Count and now his sole representative among these people. He was a dark-faced, snaky-eyed young man, with a mop of coarse black hair that hung ominously low over his high, receding forehead. This man was the chosen villain among all the henchmen who came at the beck and call of the ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... capacity for love, had they died when Peter, with the ugly haste of the man without a nice sense of the time that should elapse between the old and the new love, had spurred away cheerfully at the beck of another woman? And now the desert, this earth-mother as she called it, in the Indian way, had given him back to her, thrown them together as driftwood in the still ocean of space. She drew a long breath, the breath of one waking from ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning

... 4, about 1 a.m., the watchman, Beck, came and called me with the news that a vessel was coming in. I guessed at once, of course, that it was the Terra Nova; but I must confess that I did not feel inclined to turn out and look at her. We hoisted the ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen

... they won't turn out afore sunrise. He stopped at a paltry ale-house, where we were admitted, and soon were busy with a much better supper than I had ever imagined they could have produced; but my new friend ordered right and left, with a tone of authority, and everybody in the house appeared at his beck and command. After a couple of glasses of grog, ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat

... butcher's meat! Forbid it, O ye heavens! Of course if ideals could be realised, which they never are, I can see myself wedded for pure love, without a care, painting my pictures at ease, with a sweet woman worshipping me, ever at my beck and call, and shielding me from trouble with all the tender force of her passionate little soul!—but commonplace life will net fit itself into these sort of beatific visions! Babies, and the necessary provision of food and ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli

... Meantime whoever wishes to become acquainted with such as have been made known in the United States alone, must consult a host of writers who have described a few, such as Soto, Charlevoix, Barton, Belknap, Lewis, Crevecoeur,[TN-18] Clinton, Atwater, Brekenridge, Nuttal, McCulloh, Bartram, Priest, Beck, Madison, James, Schoolcraft, Keating, &c.; and in the appendix to the Ancient History of Kentucky will be found my catalogue made in 1824. Such study in[TN-19] then a task, and requires the amending hand of a careful compiler at least, before we can even obtain ...
— The Ancient Monuments of North and South America, 2nd ed. • C. S. Rafinesque

... from the Duke—to see a prisoner! Come to-morrow then, and, meanwhile, depart to Gehenna. Must a man be forever at the beck and call of every sleepless sot? 'Urgent'—is the Duke's mandate. Shove it through the lattice then, that a ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... if ever, coveted by the ministers of to-day, to attempt the building of a church edifice, though wealth, art, and all modern facilities await their beck. ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams

... nation's nerve whenas swift crises come? What of the brawn that should heave the guns on the beck of ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis

... be vainly proffers, lengthening thus By vice its punishment." "But who are these," The Maid exclaim'd, "that robed in flowing lawn, And mitred, or in scarlet, and in caps Like Cardinals, I see in every ward, Performing menial service at the beck Of all who bid them?" Theodore replied, These men are they who in the name of CHRIST Did heap up wealth, and arrogating power, Did make men bow the knee, and call themselves Most Reverend Graces and Right Reverend Lords. They dwelt in palaces, in purple clothed, And in fine linen: therefore ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey

... call of vernal breeze, And beck'ning bough of budding trees, Hast left thy sullen fire; And stretch'd thee in some mossy dell. And heard the browsing wether's bell, Blythe echoes rousing from their cell To swell the ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston

... Beck, of Kentucky, arraigned me for consenting to the issue of bonds running thirty years, but I was able to show by the public records that I resisted this long duration of the four per cent. bonds, that the House ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... becomes aware of this project on his flank, and sends orders to throw back his right to face the attack. The order is not obeyed. Almost at the same moment the French rush is made, the Spanish and Portuguese allies of the English are beaten beck, and the hill is won. But two English divisions bear from the centre of their front, and plod desperately up the hill to ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... Cippatola of Varese, court singer (cantante di camera) to his Royal Highness the Duke of Modena'; and behind the waiter in walked Pantaleone himself. He had changed his clothes from top to toe. He had on a black frock coat, reddish with long wear, and a white pique waistcoat, upon which a pinch-beck chain meandered playfully; a heavy cornelian seal hung low down on to his narrow black trousers. In his right hand he carried a black beaver hat, in his left two stout chamois gloves; he had tied his cravat in a taller and broader bow than ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev

... of its course Gertie Slayback followed that wave of men, half run and half walk. Down from the curb, and at the beck and call of this or that policeman up again, only to find opportunity for still another dive out from the invisible roping off of the ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various

... her with two or three teachers to worry the life out of her. They went away two days ago; and Madame was in full feather and glory, with her son at her beck and call, and all her grand airs and manners about her. Sophy says she watched them away from her bedroom window, and then she cried her heart out. And she couldn't learn her lessons, and so sent the man teacher and the woman teacher about their business. She says she will not try the weary ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr

... one day, in the distant future, be tried with reasonable success, but hardly at the beck of a Spanish king sitting in his easy chair a thousand miles off, nor indeed by the servants ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... our drovers, as they galloped after escaped beasts, flopping and wobbling and gurgling in their saddles like half-filled water-bags; galloping invariably after the beasts, and thereby inciting there to further galloping. And "Beck! beck!" shouted our boys on duty with perfect mimicry of tone and yells of delight at the impotency of the drovers, galloping always outside the runaways and bending them back into the mob, flopping and wobbling and gurgling in their saddles until, in the half light, it was difficult ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn

... He that will sell lawne before he can fold it. Shall repent him before he haue sold it. No man loueth his fetters thowgh they be of gold. The nearer the church the furder from God. All is not gold that glisters. Beggers should be no chuzers. A beck is as good as a dieu vous gard. The rowling stone neuer gathereth mosse. Better ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence

... about: in vain the crags and boulders hiss round it in foam, and the seaweed on its side is flung up and sucked away. But when he may in nowise overbear their blind counsel, and all goes at fierce Juno's beck, with many an appeal to gods and void sky, 'Alas!' he cries, 'we are broken of fate and driven helpless in the [595-626]storm. With your very blood will you pay the price of this, O wretched men! Thee, O Turnus, thy crime, thee thine awful punishment ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil

... large, as would go quite contrary to their own interest, they being as free and as fully estated in their liberty as any other, or so narrow that they could do no hurt, while the people being in arms, and at the beck of the strategus, every tribe would at any time make a better army than such a party; and there being no parties at home, fears from abroad would vanish. But seeing it was otherwise determined by the Senate and the people, the best ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington

... her beck there presently appeared three or four besotted-looking specimens in the coarse undress uniform of the day, poor devils, absent without leave from their post below and hoping only to be able to beg ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King

... groaned Mr. Baron. "My ward virtually says that she will do as she pleases. The slaves have been told that they are free and so can do as they please. Henceforth I suppose I am to speak to my niece with bated breath, and be at the beck and call of every ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe

... Anglo-Indian society. For in that land of the Household of Three, the Eternal Triangle, it is almost a recognised principle that every married woman who is at all attractive is entitled to have one particular bachelor always in close attendance on her, to be constantly at her beck and call, to ride with her, to drive her every afternoon to tennis or golf or watch polo, then on to the Club and sit with her there. His duty, a pleasant one, no doubt, is to cheer up her otherwise ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly

... disposed to wish for his success, for they required it for their own security. "To read all that was spread abroad hither and thither," says William du Bellay, "it seemed that the said lord the emperor was born into this world to have fortune at his beck and call." Two brothers, Mussulman pirates, known under the name of Barbarossa, had become masters, one of Algiers and the other of Tunis, and were destroying, in the Mediterranean, the commerce and navigation of Christian states. It was Charles V. who ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... No man owns them; and no man can claim to control them. But this I am warranted in asserting—for I know long, well, and intimately, the gallant men of Oregon—that they will not be found ready or inclined, at the Senator's and his masters beck, to imbrue their hands, in a ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden

... they expounded to the simple Eskimo folk the whole scheme of dogmatic theology, from the fall of man to the glorification of the saint. The result was dismal failure. At last the Brethren struck the golden trail. The story is a classic in the history of missions. As John Beck, one balmy evening in June, was discoursing on things Divine to a group of Eskimos, it suddenly flashed upon his mind that, instead of preaching dogmatic theology he would read them an extract from the translation of the Gospels he was now preparing. He seized ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton

... the mighty mountains, power. Girded with power, with strength abounding. The roaring dam of watery fountains the "dam of fountains" Thy beck doth make surcease her sounding. [is the ocean. When stormy uproars toss the people's brain, That civil sea to calm thou bring'st again. political, as ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald

... gae up by yon hillside, Speir in for bonie Bessy; She'll gie ye a beck, and bid ye ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... During the night the Company lost one killed and twenty-eight wounded, five of whom stayed at duty; two others were badly wounded during the counter-attack, were subsequently captured, and died as prisoners in Germany—Privates A. Beck and R. Collins. At the time, the withdrawal from the slag-heap seemed like a defeat, but, had we stayed, our casualties would have been far worse and the result the same; for with daylight, nothing could have lived on the heap, so ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills

... not e'en as kind, Though fast she beck'd to pat him; He louped up and slaked her cheek, Afore she could win at him. But save us, sirs, when I gaed in, To lean me on the settle, Atween my Bawtie and the cat There rose ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... precipitous sides rising to a height of 300 or even 400 feet, must have assumed its present proportions principally during the glacial period when it formed an overflow valley from a lake held up by ice in the neighbourhood of Fen Bogs and Eller Beck. This great gorge is tenanted at the present time by Pickering Beck, an exceedingly small stream, which now carries off all the surface drainage and must therefore be only remotely related to its great precursor that carved this enormous trench out of the limestone tableland. Compared ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home

... a certain goal—Chance, immense and universal, loves to bring such coincidences about—the flask of Hardquanonne came, driven from wave to wave, into Barkilphedro's hands. There is in the unknown an indescribable fealty which seems to be at the beck and call of evil. Barkilphedro, assisted by two chance witnesses, disinterested jurors of the Admiralty, uncorked the flask, found the parchment, unfolded, read it. What words could express ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... the Mongols was not confined to thieves and such like. It was the punishment also of military and state offences, and even princes were liable to it without fatal disgrace. "If they give any offence," says Carpini, "or omit to obey the slightest beck, the Tartars themselves are beaten like donkeys." The number of blows administered was, according to Wassaf, always odd, 3, 5, and so forth, up to 77. (Carp. 712; ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... to prepare her plan of campaign for the ensuing term: to interview her different masters and mistresses, to consult with her resident English governess (a charming girl of the name of Talbot), to talk over matters with Fraeulein Beck, and to reassure Mademoiselle Laplage, who was very lively, very conscientious, but at the same time very nervous with regard to her own powers. "Les jeunes filles Anglaises sont bien capables et bien distinguees mais—ma foi! comme elles ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade

... life. With the guilelessness of the Oriental he considered himself responsible for his master in all future times. Instead of paying off a debt he had acquired one. Treated as he was, kindly but always firmly, he would have surrendered his life cheerfully at the beck of ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath

... Neer-Landen, on the left, was secured by six battalions of English, Danes, and Dutch. The remaining infantry was drawn up in one line behind the intrenchment. The dragoons upon the left guarded the village of Donnai upon the brook of Beck, and from thence the left wing of horse extended to Neer-Landen, where it was ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... married in 1782 Elizabeth, daughter of James, fifth Earl of Balcarres, the sister of Lady Anne Barnard, the authoress of Auld Robin Gray.] and had the misfortune to lose the only son who survived infancy in a storm at sea off Lbeck in 1808 at the age of twenty-four. The succession to the peerage was thus opened up to his half-brothers, the sons of Charles Yorke's second wife, Agneta, daughter of Henry Johnston of Great Berkhampsted: ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury

... bard, At the height of his vision, can deem Of God, of the world, of the soul, With a plainness as near, As flashing as Moses felt When he lay in the night by his flock On the starlit Arabian waste? Can rise and obey The beck ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... should have brought them to my own beck, very probably, and my uncle Harlowe too, as also my aunt Hervey, had I not been forbidden from their sight, and thereby hindered from playing ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... Goruckpoor, and its place there supplied for a season by a wing from the corps at Legolee. There is little occasion for the services of cavalry at either of these places at present. Without any cavalry of our own here, and with this corps of African assassins at Lucknow at the beck of the singers, eunuchs, and their creature, the minister, neither the Resident nor any of the Regency would be safe. The treasury and crown jewels would be open to any one who would make away with them. If, therefore, your Lordship should determine upon offering ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman

... woman fairly. "But now I think of it, I am not sure that he is beyond the influence of one woman at least; the one over there—Madame de S—, you know. Formerly the dead were allowed to rest, but now it seems they are at the beck and call of a crazy old harridan. We revolutionists make wonderful discoveries. It is true that they are not exactly our own. We have nothing of our own. But couldn't the friend of Peter Ivanovitch satisfy your feminine curiosity? Couldn't she conjure him up for you?"—he jested like ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad

... difficult to find, even for any one who had come with that purpose. The eunuch rubbed his jeweled hands, smiling the while as was his custom, and murmured: "It can't fail to succeed now; the girl is caught, her lover is at my beck and call, the old secret flight of steps is in good order, Nitetis has been weeping bitterly on a day of universal rejoicing, and the blue lily opens to-morrow night. Ah, ha! my little plan can't possibly fail now. And to-morrow, my pretty Egyptian kitten, your little velvet paw ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... almost a mother, and untiring in her devotion. She cherished a profound affection for her cousin, was ever ready to excuse or pardon, was a good and frank friend to him, capable of understanding many things, always at his beck and call, always cheerful, always bright and witty. Although she had overstepped the thirties by a year, she had lost nothing of her youth, vivacity and great personal charm, for she possessed the secret of Madame de Pompadour's fascination, that 'beaute ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio

... wiped his glasses and told me that he was a Churchman, although an unworthy one, and had been for fifty-four years, come Michaelmas. Yes, he had always lived here, was born only across the beck away—his father was gamekeeper for Lord Cardigan, and afterwards agent. He had been to Haworth many times, although not for ten years. He knew the Reverend Patrick Bronte well, for the Incumbent from Haworth used to preach at Keighley ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard

... putting through their schemes. Moreover, in order to protect themselves and their property against popular outbreaks, it was highly needful that they should have the police, the courts, and the soldiers devoted to their interests, and the President, Governors, and mayors at their beck." ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy

... peaceful autumn day. The gilding of the Indian summer mellowed the pastures far and wide. The russet woods stood ripe to be stripped, but were yet full of leaf. The purple of heath-bloom, faded but not withered, tinged the hills. The beck wandered down to the Hollow, through a silent district; no wind followed its course or haunted its woody borders. Fieldhead gardens bore the seal of gentle decay. On the walks, swept that morning, yellow leaves had fluttered down again. Its time ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... his counsellor. 'If I be condemned to evil acts,' he said, 'there is still one door of freedom open—I can cease from action. If my life be an ill thing, I can lay it down. Though I be, as you say truly, at the beck of every small temptation, I can yet, by one decisive gesture, place myself beyond the reach of all. My love of good is damned to barrenness; it may, and let it be! But I have still my hatred of evil; and from that, to your galling disappointment, you ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson

... When they kept up a series of disorderly shouts, Agrippa, one of the envoys, begged them to hearken to a fable and having obtained their consent spoke as follows. Once all the Members of Man began a contention against the Belly, saying that they worked and toiled without food or drink, being at the beck and call of the Belly in everything, whereas it endured no labor and alone got its fill of nourishment. And finally they voted that the Hands should no longer convey aught to the Mouth nor the latter receive anything, to the ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio

... after all, nothing but a priestly trick. What sensible man believes that the Holy Ghost, if such a being exist, is at the beck and call of every Catholic or Protestant bishop? Can the "universal spirit" dwell exclusively in certain places? Can the third person of the Trinity have sunk into such an abject state as to dodge in and out of ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote

... can't describe what good it does one to meet him. The other day I met a cousin of his, a prosperous man of business. "Yes," he said, "poor Harry goes on in his feckless way. I gave him a bit of my mind the other day. I said, 'Oh, it's all very well to be always at everyone's beck and call, and ready to give up your time to anyone who asks you—it is very pleasant, of course, and everyone speaks well of you—but it doesn't pay, my dear fellow; and you really ought to be thinking about making a position for yourself, though ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson

... warrior, who seemed to be always at somebody's beck and call, quickly appeared and surveyed the situation. His first steps seemed to indicate that he proposed to continue the siege, the troops being formed into a besieging army of about forty thousand men, while the Russian fleet was ordered ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... in the beck, With a white counterpane round his neck, Forty doctors and forty wrights, Cannot put ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter

... except for an extreme local tenderness, felt all right again; but when he tested it the faint ticking sound was still there. His mind was now calm; his thoughts no longer went at a gallop, but they seemed—what was the word?—freer, more articulate, more at his beck and call; and in spirit he was far less harassed and anxious. Altogether he felt that he possessed himself more than he had ever done before: his mental ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman

... having no occupation. Facing, in this waiting-time of quiet, certain responsibilities, it was impressed upon him that the collecting of bric-a-brac was scarcely an occupation, and that idling in clubs and studios and dangling about at the beck of society women was scarcely a career that could save him from ultimate ennui. To be sure, he had plenty of comrades, young fellows of fortune, who never intended to do anything except to use it for their personal satisfaction; but they did ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... to me that to put one's self at the beck and call of another man is essentially degrading. In the long perspective of eternity, was his soul any more majestic than mine? In this luminous new vision of my importance as a fragment of immortal mind, could I, should I, bow to the ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley

... there were a smell o' burnin' wool. They went all ower t' house, but they could see nowt o' Throp nor o' Throp's wife, nor o' Throp's wife's chintz-cat that shoo called Nimrod, nor yet o' Throp's parrot that he'd taught to whistle Pop goes t' Weazel. They lated 'em ower t' moors an' along t' beck boddom, but 'twere all for nowt, an' nobody i' Cohen-eead iver set een ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman

... small; I bear in appearance without much concern the King's engagement with the Duchess of Valentinois, but it is insupportable to me; she governs the King, she imposes upon him, she slights me, all my people are at her beck. The Queen, my daughter-in-law, proud of her beauty, and the authority of her uncles, pays me no respect. The Constable Montmorency is master of the King and kingdom; he hates me, and has given proofs of his ...
— The Princess of Cleves • Madame de La Fayette

... was free! There was no dissociating the two facts. They shouted their message together. He was rid of his incubus—why mince the word now!—rid of her gadfly vulgarity, her shallow emotions, her pinch-beck ideals, her hideous selfishness. By her own rash act she had freed him to marry the woman he loved with all his rugged strength—the woman who that memorable September day had proved loved him. ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther



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