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verb
Beck  v. i.  (past & past part. becked; pres. part. becking)  To nod, or make a sign with the head or hand. (Archaic)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Beck" Quotes from Famous Books



... gaol; I fear them not. I have no land to glut Thy dirty appetite, and make thee strut Nimrod of acres; I'll no speech prepare To court the hopeful cormorant, thine heir. For there's a kingdom at thy beck if thou But kick this dross: Parnassus' flow'ry brow I'll give thee with my Tempe, and to boot That horse which struck a fountain with his foot. A bed of roses I'll provide for thee, And crystal springs shall drop thee melody. The breathing shades we'll haunt, where ev'ry leaf Shall whisper us ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan

... past state 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 munificence ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton

... Orchard Street, and went down the hill to the Beck, a broad, clear, shallow rivulet, that came round a sharp green curve between high banks, well wooded with old trees, all in their heavy, dark-green, summer foliage. As they crossed the rustic wooden bridge Beth paused a little to look up at the trees and love them, and down into ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... chapel-members. But it's hard for a young chap o' my build to cut traces from the world, th' flesh, an' the devil all uv a heap. Yet I stuck to it for a long time, while th' lads as used to stand about th' town-end an' lean ower th' bridge, spittin' into th' beck o' a Sunday, would call after me, "Sitha, Learoyd, when's ta bean to preach, 'cause we're comin' to hear tha."— "Ho'd tha jaw. He hasn't getten th' white choaker on ta morn," another lad would say, and I had to double my fists hard i' th' bottom of my Sunday ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling

... between Mr. Beck and myself, during this session, upon the question of the sinking fund, which he seemed to regard as a part of the public debt. It is, in fact, only a treasury statement of the debt to be paid each year, and the ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... 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 ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... 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 to which the tonic syllable is sung may be increased, to avoid ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor

... Dockerill and Hank Odell liked so much, and many others, all dead, like Moisant. I don't think I take any undue risks, but it makes me stop and think. And Hank Odell with a busted shoulder. Captain Paul Beck once told me he believed it was mostly carelessness, these accidents, and he certainly is a good observer, but when I think of ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis

... strong loam is most suitable, but good crops can be obtained from any garden soil. The first sowing should be made in February or March, and in succession to May. A sowing of Beck's Green Gem or Dwarf Fan may even be made in November in rows 2 ft. apart. Other varieties should be planted in rows 3 ft. apart, sowing the seed 3 in. deep and at intervals of 6 in. When the plants have done flowering pinch off the tops, to ensure a better crop; and if the ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink

... never worked for a salary. A man must necessarily occupy a narrow field who is at the beck and call of others. Even if he becomes president of a great corporation he is hardly his own master, unless he holds control of the stock. The ablest presidents are hampered by boards of directors and shareholders, ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie

... 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 end that the Belly might ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio

... that deprived White-Jacket, for one, of a luxury to which he had long been attached. For how can the mystical motives, the capricious impulses of a luxurious smoker go and come at the beck of a Commodore's command? No! when I smoke, be it because of my sovereign good pleasure I choose so to do, though at so unseasonable an hour that I send round the town for a brasier of coals. What! smoke by a sun-dial? Smoke on compulsion? Make a trade, a business, ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... that it is not having; it does not belong to him, has no root in him and merely lies there because no revolution or no robber takes it away. But that which a man is, does always by necessity acquire, and what the man acquires is living property, which does not wait the beck of rulers, or mobs, or revolutions, or fire, or storm, or bankruptcies, but perpetually renews itself wherever the man breathes. "Thy lot or portion of life," said the Caliph Ali, "is seeking after ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... of magnetic influence; for 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 forms which ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur

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

... avenue, had changed their character quite. Ethelberta fancied at that moment that she could not have 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

... person who noticed the omission. Soames had failed so piteously as all that! Nor is there a counterpoise in the thought that if he had had some measure of success he might have passed, like those others, out of my mind, to return only at the historian's beck. It is true that had his gifts, such as they were, been acknowledged in his life-time, he would never have made the bargain I saw him make—that strange bargain whose results have kept him always in the foreground of my memory. But it is from those very results that the full piteousness ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm

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

... Judge Noel and Judge Beck, making the first circuit of justice through this country. Although they had come all the way from Edmonton looking for trouble, so splendid has been the surveillance of the Mounted Police here that no one could scrape ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron

... was the other day standing in my Bookseller's Shop, a pretty young Thing about Eighteen Years of Age, stept out of her Coach, and brushing by me, beck'ned the Man of the Shop to the further end of his Counter, where she whispered something to him with an attentive Look, and at the same time presented him with a Letter: After which, pressing the End of her Fan upon his Hand, she delivered the remaining ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... take her motor-cycling, or to play tennis or golf with her; and although Iris was as free from vanity as any girl could possibly be, it was not unpleasing to her youthful self-esteem to find a man like Cheniston over ready at her beck and call. ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes

... 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 ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... not a man I should care to cross myself," he said, determined to secure Mrs. Vansittart's full attention. "He has the whole of the malgamiters at his beck and call, and is pretty powerful, I can tell you. They are a desperate set of fellows; men engaged in a dangerous industry do ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman

... of her own youth, who spent the rest of their lives in France, England, Switzerland, or the United States. We Americans owe to this "success" some of the most admirable types of our citizenship—expatriated Germans like Karl Follen, Karl Beck, Franz Lieber, the brothers Wesselhoeft, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... Hardwicke married in 1782 Elizabeth, daughter of James, fifth Earl of Balcarres, the sister of Lady Anne Barnard, the authoress of Auld Robin Gray.] and had the misfortune to lose the only son who survived infancy in a storm at sea off Lbeck in 1808 at the age of twenty-four. The succession to the peerage was thus opened up to his half-brothers, the sons of Charles Yorke's second wife, Agneta, daughter of Henry Johnston of Great Berkhampsted: Charles Philip (1764- 1834) who left no heir, and ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury

... looking for something great, for adventure and excitement and battle against odds, we can find it much better than in brutally slashing at our fellows, or running amuck at the beck of our impulses, by putting our valor at the service of some really great human endeavor. If we want to get into the big game, the great adventure, we must pit ourselves, with the leaders of mankind, against the hostile universe. The men and women who set ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... asunder, falling sheer into the green gentleness of the fields. In the silence, all the voices of nature spoke; the rising wind, which flung itself against the hill-slopes at their feet; the insistent flow of the river, descending from the reservoirs far away; and the sharp chatter of the little beck leaping at their side from stone to stone. Passionately, in Meynell's heart the "buried life" awoke, which only love can free from the cavern where it lies, and bring into the full ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... proceeded as much from his malady as from his temperament. His illness was of the most complicated: he suffered from aneurism, rheumatism and three or four minor affections. He was nearly sixty, and since he had been five years old had been accustomed to having everybody at his beck and call. That he was surly one could well forgive; but he was also very malicious. He took pleasure in the grief and the humiliation of others. At the end of three months I was tired of putting up with him and had ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

... but that of opening the shell a little way: whence Professor Beckman observes, that their offspring is probably produced without maternal organs; and that those, who speak of male and female oysters, must be mistaken: Phil. Magaz. March 1800. It is also observed by H. I. le Beck, that on nice inspection of the Pearl oysters in the gulf of Manar, he could observe no distinction of ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin

... "You'd better go down to the store after supper, Abner, and tell the boys, for they've just heard that Paul Beck ...
— The Young Musician - or, Fighting His Way • Horatio Alger

... or Wince Dye Beck.—This dyeing machine is very largely used, particularly in the dyeing of woollen cloths. It is made by many makers, and varies somewhat in form accordingly. Figures 18 to 21 show three forms by different makers. In ...
— The Dyeing of Woollen Fabrics • Franklin Beech

... ask than to get. The Cid had grown too great to be at any king's beck and call. He would fight for Alfonso, but in his own way, holding himself free to attack whom he pleased and when he pleased, and to capture the cities of the Moslems and rule them as their lord. He had become a free lance, fighting for his own hand, while armies sprang, ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris

... have sent it. This act, Pauline by Mrs. Elmira Baldwin and Madam Deschappells by Mrs. Fannie Baldwin, was well played and at once centered the attention of the audience. Colonel Dumas by I.C. Wilson was far in advance of his former attempts, and Beauseant by Thomas Beck added laurels to his already established reputation as a first-class amateur. Glavis by Master Asa Rawson was rendered in his usual facetious style, creating a universal twitter all around the hall. Mons. Deschappells by Albert Brown was laughable in the extreme, ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson

... 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, ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold

... know, but no man does, unless it was that Crooked Nan of Strait Glen overlooked the poor child," returned the esquire. "Ever since he fell into the red beck he hath done nought but peak and pine, and be twisted with cramps and aches, with sores breaking out on him; though there's a honeycomb-stone from Roker over his bed. My lord took out all the retainers to lay hold on Crooked Nan, but she got scent of it no doubt, for Jack of Burhill took his oath ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the 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 door ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

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

... out a billeting officer, Lieut. Dansereau, ahead of us, and when we got within a mile of the town I was joined by General Alderson, who rode Sir Adam Beck's prize winning horse, "Sir James." We rode along for a while and he told me a little about our future programme, just as much as he dared speak about. I rode into the village ahead to find out why we were ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie

... the king we have,' quoth Richard Nevil 'to be at the beck of any misproud priest, and bewail with tears a moment's following of his ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Jesuits consists in stripping the pupil of every obligation to his father, to his country, and to his natural prince; in diverting all his love and fear toward a spiritual superior, on whose nod, beck and word he is dependent. This system of training is useful for the supremacy of ecclesiastics and for such secular governments as they are ready to submit to; and none can deny that the Jesuits are without equals ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... (1764-1848), English statesman, was born in the village of Dragley Beck in the parish of Ulverston in Lancashire, on the 19th of June 1764. He started in life as superintending clerk of an iron foundry at Liverpool and afterwards taught mathematics at a school in Greenwich. Through the interest of Sir George Staunton, to whose son he taught ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... Mr. Beck, (Dem. of Ky.) The single question upon which the decision of this House is now to be made is that the President has attempted to test the constitutionality of a law which he believes to be unconstitutional. All the testimony ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross

... rocks in fire: Autumn with windy robe and ruinous feet On your wide forests wreaks his fell desire, Heaping in barbarous wreck The treasure of your sweet and prosperous days; And lastly the grim tyrant, at whose beck Channels are turned to stone and tempests wheel, On brow and breast and shining shoulder lays His ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman

... officials of the Home Office believed the London Corresponding Society to be guilty; and on 16th June one of them, J. K[ing], issued a secret order to two of his agents at Sheerness to discover whether two members of that society, named Beck and Galloway, had had dealings with the rebel crews. The agents, A. Graham and D. Williams, on 24th June sent to the Duke of Portland the following report, which merits quotation ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... procession at walk'd in his pride, Wor Joey o' Willie's 'at lives at t'Beck Side; An' along wi' Bill Earby wor marchin' his friend, Wun Jemmy o' Roses fra t'Branshaw Moor End. As we pass'd dahn t'tahn the foaks did declare 'At t'best lukin' men wor ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright

... change effect? No extension of municipal reform can possibly make the corporations more revolutionary than they are—with one solitary exception (Belfast), his influence and his principles prevail in all. They are all at his beck, "good men and true." What more would he have? What more could any alteration in the law effect for him? And as to the increase in the Irish representation, what benefit could that be to the country, when, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various

... nunnery: Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest; but yet I could accuse me of such things, that it were better my mother had not borne me: I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious; with more offences at my beck[28] than I have thoughts to put them in,[29] imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do, crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves, all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare

... was propagated for the college by the Michigan Nut Nursery and some of these trees were planted at the Kellogg Farm in 1933. Unfortunately the past winter killed all the young trees and so severely injured the parent tree that its recovery is doubtful. Beck is another good variety of English origin that grows near Allegan on the Monterey road. The original tree of this variety was very severely injured and much greater injury was noted on seven-year-old grafts of this variety which had been set on a black walnut. At Vassar there is a tree ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... and who understood its people. Little had he imagined that the small, widely-spread body of regulars, that figured in the blue books, almanacs and army-registers of America, as some six or seven thousand men, scattered along frontiers of a thousand leagues in extent, could, at the beck of the government, swell into legions of invaders, men able to carry war to the capitals of his own states, thousands of miles from their doors, and formidable alike for their energy, their bravery, their readiness in the use of arms, and their numbers. He saw what is ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper

... that they have nothing left for mouths without food, and limbs without raiment! How far does it throw back into the shade those men of prosperous enterprise and gilded state who, in the hope of some additional lucre, have thousands and ten thousands at their beck; but who, when asked for decent contributions to what they themselves acknowledge to be all-important, turn away with this hollow excuse, 'I cannot afford it.' Above all, how should her example redden the faces ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham

... J.T. Pinfold, D.D., representing | Wellington Ministers' Association. | Canon T. Feilden Taylor, appointed by the | Bishop of Wellington. Wellington, 15th September | Major Winton, Salvation Army. | Mr. W. Beck, Officer in Charge Special | Schools Branch, Education Department. | Dr. D.E. Platts-Mills, representing Young | Women's Christian Association. | Mrs. Morpeth, representing Young Women's | Christian Association. | Miss Dunlop, representing Young Women's | Christian Association. | Mrs. Glover, ...
— Venereal Diseases in New Zealand (1922) • Committee Of The Board Of Health

... a precious piece of tapestry, sixty miles square, on which he flew through the air so swiftly that he could eat breakfast in Damascus and supper in Media. To carry out his orders he had at his beck and call Asaph ben Berechiah (77) among men, Ramirat among demons, the lion among beasts, and the eagle among birds. Once it happened that pride possessed Solomon while he was sailing through the air on his carpet, and he said: ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... yet seen at church: that was Catherine Weir. I thought, at first, it could hardly be that she shrunk from being seen; for how then could she have taken to keeping a shop, where she must be at the beck of every one? I had several times gone and bought tobacco of her since that first occasion; and I had told my housekeeper to buy whatever she could from her, instead of going to the larger shop in the place; at which Mrs Pearson had grumbled a good deal, saying how could ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald

... our good ship The sea's rough field shall plough,— Where'er her tossing spars shall drip With salt-spray caught below— That ship must heed her master's beck, Her helm obey his hand, And seamen tread her reeling deck As if they trod ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck

... beaten mob. Another army marched against him, and was similarly defeated; and the citizens of Prague, finding that no satisfactory terms could be made with the emperor, recalled Ziska, and entered into alliance with him. The one-eyed patriot was now lord of the land, all Bohemia being at his beck and call. ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris

... unworldly a man as any in the county, considered himself unusually shrewd in business matters; and Aunt Charlotte, like many middle-aged ladies in her position, found it a great comfort to have a gentleman at her beck and call with whom she could talk confidentially about her investments, and who could be relied upon to give her much disinterested advice that he often acted on himself. On this particular afternoon the vicar hinted that he had something of special ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour

... so must want it themselves," said Seymour, in a low voice; then, obedient to the beck of one of the presiding nymphs, he hastened to take his ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper

... mother was colder than usual in her manner this morning. I hope that the luxuries of this palatial mansion are powerless to corrupt your heart. I cannot lead you to a castle and place crowds of liveried servants at your beck and call; but I can make you mistress of an honorable English home, independent of the bounty of strangers. You can never be more than ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

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

... unseen feathery bodies among the spruce, while, when this ceased, he heard a water-hen flutter with feet splashing across a hidden pool. Then heavy stillness followed, intensified by the clamor of a beck which came foaming down the side of a fell until, clattering loudly, wood-pigeons, neither asleep nor wholly awake, drove out against the sky, wheeled and fell clumsily into the wood again. All this was a plain warning, ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss

... nearly as well as they could of any other kind, but they had to have natural talent for it; it wasn't a thing a body could learn, you had to be born with it. Let me see: there was Ben Thornburg, and Beck Jolly, and Squire Bell, and Horace Bixby, and Major Downing, and John Stevenson, and Billy Gordon, and Jim Brady, and George Ealer, and Billy Youngblood—all A 1 alligator pilots. THEY could tell alligator water as far as another Christian ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... rocks, and gather their shells and anemones vicariously at the expense of your tendon achilles. We know it, for we have suffered. We calculate, and are prepared to prove, that the successful collection of a single ribbon of ruffled seaweed, procured in a slimy haystack of red dulse at the beck of one inconsiderate girl, who is keeping her brass heels dry on a safe and sunny ledge of the Purgatory at Newport, may require more mental calculation, involve more anguish of equilibrium, and encourage more heartfelt secret profanity than the making of a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various

... she said next day, "that I want to be a duchess, with many servants at my beck and call, and a splendid carriage ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten

... of ready smile and facile tear, Improvised hopes, despairs at nod and beck, And language—ah, the gift of eloquence! Language that goes as easy as a glove O'er good and evil, smoothens ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons

... brought together a great assembly, great for the remoteness of the place and the inclemency of the weather. The country folk have a saying "Happy is the dead that the rain rains on;" and the fells were darkly clouded and the beck roared by, swollen to a torrent. The church was far too small to hold the congregation, which included most of his personal friends and the representatives of many public bodies. A crowd stood outside in the storm while the service ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood

... in the opposite direction," Beatrice told him wickedly. She wondered if he thought she would run at his beck. ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower

... the cloud, that is charged to bursting with the electric fluid. He however disdained to speak, or to give any other evidence of his intentions than by calling to his side the distant band, who sprang forward at his beck, with ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper

... books and read them. He began to dream of patronage and responsive devotion. What a thing it would be for him, in after years, with the cares of property and parliament combining to curtail his leisure, to have such a man at his beck, able to gather the information he desired, and to reduce, tabulate, and embody it so as to render his chief the best-informed man in the House! while at other times he would manage for him his troublesome tenants, and upon occasion ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald

... were the first words he caught. "Little enough, heaven knows! Little enough! What have I ever asked except to be allowed to serve? To gratify your least caprice. To be at your beck and call. To fetch and carry while another basked in your smiles. That is all I asked in the old days and I ask no more now. I am content to serve and wait and hope. But I will have—no stranger come between us. Not ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman

... figure of imperfection; in nature an ape, in quality a wagtail, in countenance a witch, and in condition a kind of devil. Her beck is a net, her word a charm, her look an illusion, and her company a confusion. Her life is the play of idleness, her diet the excess of dainties, her love the change of vanities, and her exercise the invention of follies. ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... not, far away, a wretch of a brother, whose actual existence, to say nothing of his present abode, is absolutely unknown? What an admirable instrument of murder he should find in this infamous, depraved, and needy brother, whom he holds at his beck and call by the aid in money that he sends him! And the temptation grows and grows. An hour comes when it is stronger than all besides, and the man, resolved to play this desperate game, summons his brother to ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne

... first beck the dwarf pressed forward with a smile, alternately stretching up to make the most of his diminutive proportions, and then bowing low to crave the good will of the spectators. His appearance brought him instant commendation; and more particularly ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various

... yourself with a razor once when ma told you not to try to shave the back of your neck by yourself," said one of the girls. "She wanted you to let Mr. Beck shave it for you, but you wouldn't have ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon

... sky; Which heavenly minstrels grace. With each voluptuous art they strove To win the tenant of the grove, And with their graceful forms inspire His modest soul with soft desire. With arch of brow, with beck and smile, With every passion-waking wile Of glance and lotus hand, With all enticements that excite The longing for unknown delight Which boys in vain withstand. Forth came the hermit's son to view The wondrous ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson

... could not understand the translation. Yet, though he had neglected his mother tongue in order to bestow all his attention on French, his French was, after all, the French of a foreigner. It was necessary for him to have always at his beck some men of letters from Paris to point out the solecisms and false rhymes of which, to the last, he was frequently guilty. Even had he possessed the poetic faculty, of which, as far as we can judge, he was utterly destitute, the want of a language ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... how little they are swayed by a care for the common weal? Are they likely to consult the public good who are the slaves of their private passions? Do they think forsooth that we, the governors of the provinces are, with our soldiers, to stand ready at the beck and call of an infamous lictor? Let them set bounds to their indulgences and free pardons which they so lavishly bestow on the very persons to whom we think it just and expedient to deny them. No one can ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... say. Or, yes, I will say. If that woman, who seems to have you at her beck and call, had not intermeddled, I might have made you a very different answer. But now my eyes are opened, and I see what I should have to ...
— Five O'Clock Tea - Farce • W. D. Howells

... for the people she lived. Mr. Ovens states that she was at their beck and call day and night; she taught in the schools, preached in the church, and, as he puts it, "washed the wee bairnies herself," and dressed the most loathsome diseases, all with tenderness and gay humour. "I never saw a frown on her face," he says. She was always ready for anything and equal to ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone

... or the mates found employment for me from morning till night. I was indeed, as the youngest on board, at every one's beck and call; but I did not complain. I had come to sea to do my duty, and I knew that that was to obey those over me in all things lawful. One of my tasks was to keep the captain's cabin in order. I was one day engaged in sweeping it when I heard outside a voice I knew. It was my father's. ...
— The Two Whalers - Adventures in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston

... lady would have greatly preferred her father's neighbor, but that was an irretrievable step. He had retired, disgusted with her haughty dismissal of his hopes, and was a man who, although he greatly admired her fortune, was not to be recalled by any beck or smile which might grow out ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper

... labyrinths, reeking with filthy odors and noxious vapors. Fill those narrow streets with a lazy, ill-clad people—men in short skirts and clogs, squatting on the steps of antiquated cafes, smoking canes steeped in opium, awaiting the beck of some political firebrand to tear each other to pieces—and in this description you place before the mind's eye the city some writers have painted as the Paris of two ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly

... twenty alguazils at your beck and call, and have of course the power, and so had your predecessor, who nearly lost his situation by imprisoning me; but you know full well that you have not the right, as I am not under your jurisdiction, but that of the captain-general. If I have obeyed your summons, it was simply because I ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... returned with the following modifications; in place of olive-oil or oleic acid, castor oil was used, as cheaper, and the number of operations was reduced. Castor oil, modified by sulphuric acid, can be introduced at once into the dye-beck, so that the fixation of the coloring matter as the lake of a fatty acid is effected in a single operation. The dyeing was then ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various

... man, thou just and loving God! Should stand before thee with a tyrant's rod, O'er creatures like himself, with souls from Thee, Yet dare to boast of perfect liberty! Away! away! I'd rather hold my neck By doubtful tenure from a Sultan's beck, In climes where liberty has scarce been nam'd, Nor any right but that of ruling claim'd, Than thus to live where boasted Freedom waves Her fustian ...
— No Compromise with Slavery - An Address Delivered to the Broadway Tabernacle, New York • William Lloyd Garrison

... punctuation, oral English, letter writing, and business practice. Duncan, Beck and Graves's Prose Specimens 1.16 Selections illustrating description, narration, exposition, and argumentation. Gerrish and Cunningham's Practical English Composition 1.24 Modern, progressive, teaching by example as well as by precept. ...
— A Handbook for Latin Clubs • Various

... Senator. But the truth is quite the opposite. It's we fellows who are honored to put ourselves at your beck and call. After all, you're the ones the people elect ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman

... considerable; to have made the victory far more costly to him, and far less complete. No doubt he had his reasons for making haste: Daun, advancing Prag-ward with 30,000, was within three marches of him; General Beck, Daun's vanguard, with a 10,000 of irregulars, did a kind of feat at Brandeis, on the Prussian post there (our Saxons deserting to him, in the heat of action), this very day, May 6th; and might, if lucky, have taken part at Ziscaberg next day. And besides these solid reasons, there was perhaps ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle

... how benign She looks on pious pray'rs: then fasten'd they On th' everlasting light, wherein no eye Of creature, as may well be thought, so far Can travel inward. I, meanwhile, who drew Near to the limit, where all wishes end, The ardour of my wish (for so behooved), Ended within me. Beck'ning smil'd the sage, That I should look aloft: but, ere he bade, Already of myself aloft I look'd; For visual strength, refining more and more, Bare me into the ray authentical Of sovran light. Thenceforward, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... for 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, ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... an introduction which precludes my criticising his friends or his connections, however strange they may be, but it is very certain that you ought not to be left here alone to rely upon the advice of a head-waiter, to be practically at the beck and call of men of whose existence you should be unconscious. I want you to make up your mind and ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... night-wind, funereal plumes of the tree-tops swaying— Writhing and nodding anon at the beck of the unseen breeze! Yet its voice ever a murmur resumes, as of multitudes praying: Liturgies lost in a moan like the mourning of far-away seas. May then those spirits, set free, a celestial council obeying, Move in this rustling whisper here thro' the dark, shaken trees?— Souls that are voices ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop

... 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 ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various

... vessel was in the blue water; if possible, not till she was over on the other side. And Moggy determined to go on board, see the corporal, and make the arrangements with him and the crew, who were now unanimous, for the six marines were at the beck of the corporal, so that Mr Vanslyperken should be frightened out of his wits. Desiring Smallbones to lie down on her bed, and take the rest he so much needed, she put on her bonnet and cloak, and taking a boat, pulled ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat

... 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 he ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth

... 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

... or otherwise. In this last-named duty a surgeon often assisted him, usually a local practitioner, who received a shilling a head for his pains. One or more lieutenants, each of whom had one or more midshipmen at his beck and call, served under the Regulating Captain. They "kept" the headquarters and led the gang, or contingents of the gang, on pressing forays, thus coming in for much of the hard work, and many of the harder knocks, that unpopular body was liable to. Sometimes, as in the case of Dover, Deal ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson

... us to tea. Her jam and her gossip are wonderful. Aunt Tucker might ask us too, with housekeeper Beck's permission. I like tea fights with the old Hindoos. They like us too, Ben; we are the children of Hindoos also—superior to the rest of the world. There will be a party or two for ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard

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

... two English ships near Dublin, and returned to Orkney laden with broadcloth, wine, and English mead.[3] Sweyn's life is thus described in c. 114 of the Orkneyinga Saga. "He sat through the winter at home in Gairsay, and there he kept always about him eighty men at his beck. He had so great a drinking-hall that there was not another as great in all the Orkneys. Sweyn had in the spring hard work, and made them lay down very much seed, and looked much after it himself. But when that toil was ended, he fared away every ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray

... Begin to throng into my memory, Of calling shapes, and beck'ning shadows dire, And airy tongues that syllable men's names On sands and shores ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... saw a ship upon the sands Careened upon beam ends, her tilted deck Swept clear of rubbish of her long-past wreck; Her colors struck, but not by human hands; Her masts the driftwood of what distant strands! Her frowning ports, where, at the Admiral's beck, Grim-visaged cannon held the foe in check, Gaped for the frolic of the minnow bands. The seaweed banners in her fo'ks'le waved, A turtle basked upon her capstan head; Her cabin's pomp the clownish sculpin braved, And, on her prow, where the lost figure-head ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston

... peep of a green garden; a bird hung by a neighbour's window and made the morning beautiful; and I, who was sick, might lie in bed and rest myself: I, who was in full revolt against the principles that I had served, was now no longer at the beck of the council, and was no longer charged with shameful and revolting tasks. Oh! what an interval of peace was that! I still dream, at times, that I can hear the note ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... nation, an island nation, and great numbers of her people have had to follow the sea as a matter of course. Hence England has always had a vast quantity of well-trained seamen at her beck and call. For this reason she has been more successful upon the ocean than many of her neighbors. Will she continue ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston

... herring to-day too, but he no longer found it amusing. He was longing already to be out in the open with his cattle; and here he had to be at everybody's beck and call. As often as he dared, he made some pretext for going outside the farm, for that helped ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... platform throughout Illinois, in a celebrated series of debates. As the senator was in a high position, and expected to reap yet more important honors, the Central Railroad corporation extended to him all graces. A special car, the Pullman in embryo in reality, was at his beck, and a train for his numerous friends if he spoke. On the other hand, his rival, becoming more and more democratic in his leaning to the grotesque, gloried in traveling even in the caboose of a freight-train. He had no brass ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams

... were too cautious to take an immediate, personal part in the gold-dust sale. There was a certain underling, Mr. Escrocevitch by name, at Sergei Kovroff's beck and call—a shady person, rather dirty in aspect, and who was, therefore, only admitted to Sergei's presence by the back door and through the kitchen, and even then only at times when there were no ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various

... the Republican landslide of 1872, in 1874 the Democrats swept the Empire State. They carried the popular branch of Congress by an overwhelming majority. In the Senate they had a respectable minority, with Thurman and Bayard to lead it. In the House Randall and Kerr and Cox, Lamar, Beck and Knott were about to be reenforced by Hill and Tucker and Mills and Gibson. The logic of events was at length subduing the rodomontade of soap-box oratory. Empty rant was to yield to reason. For all its mischances and melancholy ending the Greeley campaign had shortened ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson



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