For 14 months Ms. Beck, executive vice president of the Real Estate Board of New York, a powerful trade group, had been spearheading a campaign on behalf of the great buildings of New York -- places like the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building -- as well as scores of huge but less-distinguished buildings.
She, a striking creature with a large beak and black-speckled tail; he, smaller but no less distinguished, with sprinkles of white interspersed on his right shoulder.
The same, he had noticed years earlier, seemed to be true in the case of "eminence": the children of J. S. Bach, for example, may have been more musically distinguished than average, but they were less distinguished than their father.
The phenomenon of the mayor of a town not being able to afford living in the town she represents may be atypical of mayors, but not of less distinguished persons.
Regular orchestra members were repeatedly missing dates to accept less distinguished but more lucrative work elsewhere.
While on holiday at Tullynally Castle, the Pakenhams' ancestral home in Ireland, Mr Mount meets Sir Oswald Mosley; over a pint in a bar the old fascist reminisces loudly about the good old days, to nobody's great embarrassment.The background of Mr Mount's father, Robin, is less distinguished but just as colourful.
Ought I not to practice what I preach?" The recruits of one New Hampshire regiment may have been less distinguished, but they were "full of patriotic fervor," according to an officer, "and a service for so short a time as nine months did not seem such a hardship to their youthful imaginations".
He succeeded his father as director of the Paris Observatory in 1771, but his achievements as an astronomer were less distinguished then those as a geodesist and cartographer.
But in this realm her record is less distinguished, and Wednesday's program, one of two that alternate through the two-week season, represented that mixed legacy.
That is also why I went to a rehearsal for a production of the 1951 musical "Flahooley," a less distinguished achievement than "Finian" but one in which Harburg was also verbal master of ceremonies.
