"Perfunctory" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which comes of being out of the rut, and imagines it to be the prick of conscience, the still, small voice that is urging him ever to righteousness. If the digression is unusual enough, the drag of habit will be heavy enough to cause the unreasoning victim to return and perform the perfunctory thing. "Now, bless me," says such a mind, "I have done my duty," when, as a matter of fact, it has merely done its old, unbreakable ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... having greeted Isobel in a perfunctory fashion which I assumed to be accounted for by my unwelcome presence. "The men of your Fleet Street tribe have conspired ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... was diagonally opposite the path. The familiar sign of the bell indicated that a telephone was to be had inside. But the place was still closed. Professor Brierly jotted down the name on the sign. The three men returned to the wrecked house. After a perfunctory look about the scene, Professor Brierly indicated that he was ready to go. On their way to the station he asked Jimmy if he would take him up to see his city editor, Hite. Jimmy, carefully ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... works its tiny jaws and tongue. Suddenly the comforter slips from the little mouth and baby begins to cry, attracting the attention of the mother, or nurse, or little sister, who promptly, recognizing the trouble, pounces on the offending comforter, which has fallen to the floor, and with a perfunctory wipe replaces it in baby's mouth. It is done just as we have written it, many thousand times, and yet the problem of infant mortality is represented as a vexatious mystery. The newspapers solicit charitable aid, and write eloquent appeals regarding the necessity of sending a few babies to the ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... good-byes at this, with perfunctory words, and then she left me to join Lady Johnson and ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... service must go on; but the changes should be real and genuine, not perfunctory, or prompted by a zeal in behalf of any party simply because it happens to be in power. As a member of Congress I voted and spoke in favor of the present law, and I shall attempt its enforcement in the spirit in which it was enacted. The purpose in view was to secure the most ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... at Villaviciosa in Asturias on September 13, 1517. Among his first acts was the dispatch of a letter to the Cardinal, in which the latter was dismissed to his diocese with a few perfunctory expressions of regard and recognition for his services. Cardinal Ximenez breathed his last a few hours after reading this heartless communication and Las Casas was left to begin anew his life as a courtier and to cultivate ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... such a farce? The senate had voted that the elections should not be held till the law was passed: that, in case of a tribunician veto, the whole question should be referred to them afresh. The law is introduced in a perfunctory manner: is vetoed, to the great relief of the proposers: the matter is referred to the senate. Upon that the senate voted that it was for the interest of the state that the elections should be held at the ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... your father say about all this?" she finally asked in a perfunctory way. "Would he be willing for you to be a painter?" It bored her to listen to Oliver's enthusiastic talk about light and shade, and color and perspective, and what Mr. Crocker had said and what Mr. Crocker was doing, and what Mr. Crocker's last ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... our Sundays as we might do. There is a medium between the rigid Sabbatarianism of our ancestors and the absolute waste of the day of rest in mere pleasure and frivolity. All the world is deploring the secularizing of Sunday. Not only is churchgoing perfunctory or absent, but in all ranks of life there is a disposition to make it a day of rest and amusement—sometimes the amusement rather than the rest. Sunday, the Sabbath, as Alex McLaren pointed out to me, is not a ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... cried in consternation and emotion, for under another name the murderer had been tried and sentenced, nor had his identity been established—the case was so clear, the defence had been perfunctory, and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... other patients during his entire stay here! All of them were male, and all of them—apparently—were recovering from a condition somewhat similar to his own. At least, he'd recognized the same reticence and diffidence when it came to exchanging more than a perfunctory greeting in an encounter in an outer corridor. At the time, he'd accepted their unwillingness to communicate; welcomed and understood it because of his condition. And that in itself wasn't ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch
... Wash, the gorge is practically one with a total length of 283 miles. I have not tried to give geological data for these are easily obtainable in the reports of Powell, Dutton, Gilbert, Walcott, and others, and I lacked space to introduce them properly. In fact I have endeavored to avoid a mere perfunctory record, full of data well stated elsewhere. While trying to give our daily experiences and actual camp life in a readable way, I have adhered to accuracy of statement. I believe that any one who wishes to do so can use this book as a guide for navigating the river as far as Kanab Canyon. ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... the talk between these two girls, of about the same age and blood but, it seemed, almost without a point of contact, was considerably perfunctory. Then, by an odd chance and in the wink of an eye, it took on a very distinct interest. Carlisle inquired if Hen had ever heard of a man named V. Vivian, said to be a nephew of Mr. Beirne; and Hen, with a little exclamation, and a certain quickening of countenance, ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... otherwise the room was in shadow. John dropped the 'Signal,' which slid to the hearthrug with a rustle, and turned his head so that he could just see the left side of his wife's face and her left hand as it moved over the keys of the piano. She played with gentle monotony, and her playing seemed perfunctory, yet agreeable. John watched the glinting of the four rings on her left hand, and the slow undulations of the drooping lace at her wrist. He moved twice, and she knew ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... of resolutions giving an outline of their intended movements. They were at once excommunicated, and the only elder, Eli B. Kelsey, who voted against this action was immediately punished in the same way. Kelsey was not granted even the perfunctory hearing that was customarily allowed in such cases, and he was "turned over to the devil," instead of being consigned by the usual formula "to the ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... being unfolded, proved to have all the air of permits, laissez-passers, and police cards. Two nondescript photographs, which might have represented almost any one, adorned them, and of these our sergeant made a perfunctory survey. ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... that he should "not be cramped with lessons in drawing; let his genius," he said, "follow its own bent, and he will astonish the world." This advice was so far followed, that we believe we are justified in saying that beyond the ordinary perfunctory drawing lessons obtained at school, he received no other artistic education during the rest of his life. His father, the "profound Shakesperian scholar" and "perfect gentleman," so little encouraged the bent of ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... where it suits his purpose, glitters, to use Dunbar's expression, as with fresh enamel, and its hues are variegated like those of a Flemish tapestry. Even where his descriptive enumerations seem at first sight monotonous or perfunctory, they are in truth graphic and true in their details, as in the list of birds in the "Assembly of Fowls," quoted in part on an earlier page of this essay, and in the shorter list of trees in the same poem, which is, however, ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... toward the waiting lawyer, who, however, shook his head in refusal, and continued to move about the room rather restlessly. Demarest paid no attention to the other's invitation to a seat, but the courtesy was perfunctory on Gilder's part, and he hardly perceived the perturbation of his caller, for he was occupied in selecting and lighting a cigar with the care of a connoisseur. Finally, he spoke again, and now there was an infinite contentment in ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... slowly, and never allowed his surprise to be visible on his face. Why, to him, a job like that, entailing loss of time in personal supervision, was hardly worth three. The plans were perfunctory, and as far as there was anything in them, could be used again elsewhere. He could employ his precious days meanwhile to better purpose in some more showy and profitable work than this half-hatched viaduct. ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... living his own tragedy those days, what with poverty and other things, sat on the doorstep while Sidney talked, and swore a quiet oath to be no further weight on the girl's buoyant spirit. And, since determining on a virtue is halfway to gaining it, his voice lost its perfunctory note. He had no intention of letting the Street encroach on him. He had built up a wall between himself and the rest of the world, and he would not scale it. But he held no grudge against it. Let others get what they could ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... "May He do so!" This new, polite formula for leave-taking originated among the officers and men in the field, but you hear it on all sides now, uttered with a sincerity and earnestness that is peculiarly impressive. The new style of saying "good-bye" has at least the merit of being no longer a perfunctory piece of rhetoric. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... The sister who has directed this school for thirty-five years has seen sons and daughters succeed fathers and mothers. More than nineteen hundred children have passed through her hands. With what pride she showed us the copy-books, and pointed out some particularly good compositions. Hers was no perfunctory task; a mother could not have displayed greater interest in her children. The number of pupils varies from one hundred and ten to one hundred and thirty, a little less than half of them being Catholics. All kinds of primary instruction are given, including gymnastics, singing, and ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... short thighs, so that I sat backless above and dangling below. What had I to do with those grown-up sermons? Men's talk is babble to a child, as much as children's to a man. The wind that blew past my ears meant as much, and sounded better. Or what were the prayers to me, or the singing? This perfunctory, formal early piety of mine had much influence, long afterward, by natural reaction. Nothing can better shadow forth the weariness of those weekly jornadas del muerto than the fact that I found now and then an oasis of delight in pious stories for children, out of the Sabbath-school ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... he was sorry if Miss Bella was disappointed, but the tone was no less perfunctory than before. After stooping and looking sharply for a moment into the picture—which was a strong, ugly thing, with some passages of remarkable technique—he put it aside, saving that he would send for it in the evening. Then, having ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... never thought of trying to manage her in the only way possible, by reasoning with her and appealing to her better nature. There was, therefore, but one thing for her mother to do in order to preserve her own dignity, and that was to ignore Beth. Accordingly, when the perfunctory lessons were over in the morning, Beth had her day to herself. She began it generally by practising for at least an hour by the church-clock, and after that she had a variety of pursuits which she preferred to follow alone if Sammy were at school, because then there ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... evening that Ian expected her to go to bed at once; but she followed him into the study, where the lamp was shedding its circle of light on the heaped books and papers of his writing-table. Making some perfunctory remarks which she barely answered, he sat down to work at an address which he was to deliver at the meeting of ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... prosaic fashion by an attempt to estimate the pecuniary and social advantages of the different courses open to him. These are in reality the Church and the Bar; although, by way of exhibiting the openness of his mind, he adds a more perfunctory discussion of the merits of the medical profession. Upon this his uncle, Henry Venn, had made a sufficient comment. 'There is a providential obstacle,' he said, 'to your becoming a doctor—you have not humbug enough.' The ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... indeed the case, Mrs. Merston certainly concealed any excess of pleasure very effectually. She greeted her with a perfunctory smile, and told her it was very good of her to come but she would soon wish she hadn't. She was looking very worn and tired, but she assured Sylvia somewhat sardonically that she was not feeling any worse than usual. ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... he felt satisfied that he was on the right track and had succeeded in eluding the police. Curtis and Private Stanton were men of fixed ideas; believing Jernyngham to be dead, they had, no doubt, merely made a few perfunctory inquiries at the nearest railroad camps. Moreover, as they had reason for concluding that Prescott would seek refuge across the American boundary, they would concentrate their efforts on looking for him there. Accordingly, ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... A hearse, its long box filled with somebody, crawled down the block. A dainty Sedan with a woman's idle face at its window wafted by. From a Greek Temple came the sound of Interpretative Dancing, and the applause of perfunctory hands. ...
— Ptomaine Street • Carolyn Wells
... contagion of their perfunctory gaiety Annie began to scream and laugh too, as she followed them to the door, and stood talking to them while they got into Mrs. Wilmington's extension-top carry-all. She answered with deafening promises, when they put their bonnets out of the carry-all and called back to ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... was chilly and perfunctory. "I also hope you will get well quickly, Dinah," she said, "as I believe Mr. Studley and his sister are staying on mainly on your account. Sir Eustace, I understand, is returning very shortly, and I have asked him to join ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... hardly decisive, for although a tolerable modus vivendi was reached and a truce declared, it is evident that Hawthorne regarded the entire scheme of the story as a mistake, and it is concluded in a perfunctory and ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... genuinely surprised; for, in his experience, this bird was remarkable, if at all, for an obese lethargy. It could talk, to be sure. Now and again it would ejaculate "Scratch Polly," or "Polly wants a kiss," in a perfunctory way; but on the whole he had never known a more comfortable or ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... scientific and dutiful soldier; there was at bottom of Moltke's nature a fine sense of proportion, an artistic vein, and, not the least element, a Christian philosophy of life just as far removed from mere perfunctory indifferentism as from cocksure dogmatic bigotry and self-sufficiency. We have striking evidence of this in the Trostgedanken, the Consolatory Thoughts on the Earthly Life and a Future Existence, which he laid down as the last literary utterance of his full and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... that night as they walked home together, something made Dan feel that his friend was pleased. The encounter with the blunt young farmer had been so refreshing that he was not so depressed in spirit as he commonly was after the perfunctory, meaningless, formal compliments, and handshaking that usually closed his services. Perhaps because of this he—for the first time—sought an expression from his ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... chiefly taken up with descriptions of the regular sights and "objects of interest," which we often feel to be rather perfunctory and a little in the style of the traditional tourist's diary. They abound in charming touches, and every reader of Transformation will remember the delightful colouring of the numerous pages in that novel, which are devoted to the pictorial ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... noticeable, too, as his senses returned and the panic glare left his eyes, that his expression changed from one of abject fear to a lowering look of suspicious uncertainty. He peered at Steingall and the hotel clerk many times, but gave Curtis and Devar only a perfunctory glance. Oddly enough, the fact that the two latter were in evening dress seemed to reassure him, and it became evident later that the presence of the clerk led him to regard these strangers as guests ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... private history, her little weaknesses. Perhaps she is a little in their power, and she is shy with them. She is afraid of beginning a good work with them, because, if she does, she will be forced to carry it out; and it cannot be cold, dry, perfunctory, official: it must be hearty, living, loving, personal. She must make them her friends; and perhaps she is afraid of doing that, for fear they should take liberties, as it is called—which they very probably will do, unless she keeps up a very high standard of self- restraint and earnestness ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... a period approaching the close of the fifteenth century as the probable date of collection, though some of the tales are, he believes, rather later" (p. 189). Mr. Lane's studies upon the subject were painfully perfunctory. He distinctly states (Preface, p. xii.) that "the work was commenced and completed by one man," or at least that "one man completed what another commenced." With a marvellous want of critical acumen he could not distinguish the vast difference of style ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... fault of the fat oily priest, I know not. But the sposalizio struck me as tame and cheerless, the mass as irreverent and vulgarly conducted. At the same time there is something too impressive in the mass for any perfunctory performance to divest its symbolism of sublimity. A Protestant Communion Service lends itself more easily to degradation by unworthiness ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... he said, in a perfunctory sort of way; and then, without waiting for any reply, went on—"I've no engagement to-night, so I thought I would look in here first, and ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... prodigious, and prodigiously affecting. Mankind was unpleasantly stunned by the report of his decease. He forgot that Mrs. Challice, for instance, had perfectly succeeded in hiding her grief for the irreparable loss, and that her questions about Priam Farll had been almost perfunctory. He forgot that he had witnessed absolutely no sign of overwhelming sorrow, or of any degree of sorrow, in the thoroughfares of the teeming capital, and that the hotels did not resound to sobbing. He knew only that all Europe was ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... over the downfall of Jerusalem. "For the majesty that is departed," cries the leader, and the others answer: "We sit in solitude and mourn." "We pray Thee have mercy on Zion," cries the leader, and the others answer: "Gather the children of Jerusalem." With most of them it seems a perfunctory mourning; but there are two or three old men with the tears running down their faces as they kiss the ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... the figures portrayed? What are their histories? What the style and cut of their coats, breeches, and beards? How much will it fetch at Christie's? All these are questions to moot; and mooted they will be, by the hour. But in expert conclaves who has ever heard more than a perfunctory and silly comment on the ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... Colonel's visit of the previous day, the Mother had seemed strangely preoccupied and sad.... Her good-night kiss, invariably so warm and tender, had been the merest brush of lips against the girl's soft cheek; her good-morning had been even more perfunctory; her eyes, those great maternal radiances, turned their light elsewhere. Unloved and neglected, the Convent's spoiled darling hugged her abandonment, weaving a very pretty, ineffably silly romance, in which a noble and beautiful young Hussar lover, suddenly appearing over the corrugated-iron fence ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... The dowager awoke, and there was a perfunctory clapping of hands when Mr. Fenwick laid down his volume, and people were assured that there was no mistake about his being really quite through. A few murmurs of admiration were heard, and then there was an awful pause, while the president, ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... FASHION—and that fashion has not yet passed away —with skimming readers and perfunctory critics to charge Mr. Browning with being "wilfully obscure, ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... full of the sort of people who demand excellence. Perhaps it would be unfair to judge the opera by a performance of "Parsifal," that heavily over-dressed story of sentimental religiosity and pedestrian symbolism, but it was done in the most slatternly perfunctory style. The theatre was crowded. But it was a strangely mixed crowd. In lonely grandeur in one of the boxes were three Englishmen in evening dress. In the fifth row of the stalls was a servant-girl who kept asking her neighbours ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... treatise, an intimate knowledge of the text of the canonical books, Hebrew and Greek, there is an absence of that average acquaintance with Christian antiquity which formed at that day the professional outfit of the episcopal divine. Milton's references to the fathers are perfunctory and second-hand. The only citation of Chrysostom, for instance, which I have noticed is in these words: "the same is said to be the opinion of Chrysostom, Luther, and other moderns." He did not esteem the judgment of the fathers sufficiently, to deem them worth studying. ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... not finish for her tears; the third dried her eyes with the fires of fierce resentment. It was not so much what they said; it was what they were obviously afraid to say. It was their circumlocution, their innuendo, their mild surprise, their perfunctory congratulations, their assumption of chivalry and their lack of its essence, that wounded and stung the subject of these effusions. As she raised her flushed face from the last of them, Mr. Steel stood before her once more, the incarnation of all ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... moment to consider, and then laughed. It was not the spontaneous laugh of a person overwhelmed by the irresistible humour of a good joke, it could not well have been that, assuming that he had told her the true answer; nor was it the perfunctory laugh of a person pretending to be amused. It was a ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... that he would never acquire the small social facilities. He was fond of exercise, but it bored him to talk of it. The men's smoking-room anecdotes did not amuse him, he was unmoved by the fluctuations of the stock-market, he could not tell one card from another, and his perfunctory attempts at billiards had once caused Mr. Langhope to murmur, in his daughter's hearing: "Ah, that's the test—I always ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... the tall figure of her fellow voyager near the steps and leaned forward to wave a perfunctory farewell to him. The car was creeping out toward the packed thoroughfare. It is possible that she expected him to dash among the chortling machines, at risk of life or limb, for a word or two at parting. If so, she was disappointed. He remained perfectly still, with uplifted hat, a faint smile ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... Things?—But who will teach these new sciences or open the eyes of the child to the beauties around him? Not everyone can do it. It will require a master. Teaching "at" these things in a dull, perfunctory way will do no good. It would be better to leave them untaught. We have, everywhere, too much "attempting" to teach and not enough teaching, too much seeming and not enough being, too much appearance and ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... and three-quarters in length, and reaches over to Port Ibrahim, conveying there a conduit from the fresh-water canal," said the pilot in a perfunctory manner, as though he had had considerable experience as a guide. "It is forty-eight feet wide, and is built of artificial stone, like the great piers at Fort Said. It is erected on a sand-bank, which curves around in the shape ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... dreamed they would have held on till now!" said Arthur, in reply to a perfunctory remark from James. Coryston looked up from ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... worth trying, and for three-quarters of an hour the two boys were busy with the lower branches of various trees in the yard. Thus they managed to supply Whitey with a fair quantity of wet leaves, which he ate in a perfunctory way, displaying little of his earlier enthusiasm. And the work of his purveyors might have been more tedious if it had been less damp, for a boy is seldom bored by anything that involves his staying-out in the rain without protection. The drizzle had thickened; ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... all these matters seemed perfunctory compared with the delight he took in farming; for when I noticed from the window some sleek cows munching in a small enclosure, he brightened up and told me they were recent purchases. He talked about his poultry and his sheep and goats, all ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... persons you have to cater to their whims. I rid myself of the pump—I'd never dreamed I'd be reluctant to part with the monster—while she made perfunctory and unconvincing motions to fit herself for the street. Of course she neither washed nor madeup, but she peered in the glass argumentatively, pulled her jacket down decisively, threw her shoulders back to raise it askew again and gave the ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... recognized as a sally of humor, and contrived a fleeting perfunctory smile. Her grandfather turned once more to the pears. "See the buds on those Ashton Towns," he commented. Laurel gazed critically: the varnished red buds were bursting with white blossom, the new leaves unrolling, tender green and sticky. "But the jargonelles—" ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... satisfaction to him when the St. Louis Convention nominated his candidate, William McKinley, of Ohio, on the first ballot by a vote of 661 as against 84 votes for Thomas B. Reed, of Maine, the next highest candidate. He had it all organized so perfectly that the St. Louis convention was perfunctory so far as Mr. McKinley's nomination was concerned. The Convention recognized that it was Mr. Hanna had achieved this great triumph; and after Senator Lodge, Governor Hastings, and Senators Platt and Depew had moved that ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... a tempting inducement to skippers who were sufficiently bold to take risks, to ship goods for Chili and Peru, and run them in at some place along the immense coast-line, evading the lazy eyes of perfunctory Spanish officials, or securing their corrupt connivance by bribes. Contraband trade was, in fact, extensively practised, and plenty of people in the Spanish colonies throve on it. As a modern historian writes: "The ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... loam along the shores parched and crumbled, and borrowed the look of the great desert; the feathers of darkness fell later and later, until they began to appear with the dawn, and yet the river failed to rise; the priests went through their perfunctory rites to placate the god of the Overflow, and made their impotent sacrifices to tempt him to bless the harvest; but Hotep saw the Snowless Month, which should have ripened his grain, dawn upon fields that were dried to seas of drifting dust and void of ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... table. After the simple repast was over, she led the still reluctant (constitutionally reluctant) twins up the staircase and put them, shrieking, on a bed; left the room, locking the door behind her in a perfunctory sort of way as if it were an everyday occurrence, crouched down on the rug outside, and, leaning her head back against the wall, took her doll from under her skirt, for this was her ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... in a perfunctory manner. For himself he would have eaten nothing, but he made an effort to do so in order to keep his guest company. When ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... hard to define how much Gillian's satisfaction was owing to the sense of benevolence, or to the pleasure of eluding Aunt Jane, when, after going through her chapter of Katharine Ashton, in a somewhat perfunctory manner, she hastened away to Miss White's office. This, being connected with the showroom, could be entered without passing through the gate with the inscription—-'No admittance except on business.' Indeed, the office had a private door, ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the figure of a strange man walking over the road; Lemuel knew that he was strange by the formality of the clothes. He wore a hard straw hat, collar and diamond-pinned tie, and a suit with a waistcoat. At first Doret's interest was perfunctory, but as the other drew nearer his inspection changed to a painful absorption. Suddenly his attitude grew tense; he had the appearance of a man gazing at an enthralling but dangerous spectacle, such—for example—as a wall that might ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... performed with a formal, perfunctory style calculated to impress the audience with the importance of the preacher rather than the words he was speaking. The audience was very quiet, having the air of reserving ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... was conducted upon an entirely different principle than any previous review; by restricting its attention to the most important works of each quarter, it gave extensive critiques of only a few books in each number and thus avoided the multitude of perfunctory notices that had made previous reviews ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... the promenade to the evening party, with an account of which The Night is mainly occupied, so far as it goes. There are many lively pictures in it, with light sketches of expression and attitude; but on the whole it has not so many distinctly quotable passages as the other parts of the poem. The perfunctory devotion of the cavalier and the lady continues throughout, and the same ironical reverence depicts them alighting from their carriage, arriving in the presence of the hostess, sharing in the gossip ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... on the East Coast," Almayer informed me, in a perfunctory mutter without a spark of faith, hope, or pride. Thereupon, with the same absence of any sort of sustaining spirit, he declared his intention to select a fat bird and send him on board for us ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... Street, where everything that brains and pity could suggest was being done to trace the 'missing'; where sat also that kind, tired woman, at the table which Nelly by now knew so well, with her pitying eyes, and her soft voice, which never grew perfunctory or careless. 'I'm so sorry!—but there's no fresh news.' That had been the evening message; and now the day's hope was over, and the long night had to ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... had returned home that night, fatigued and almost disgusted with the perfunctory performances of the evening, did she discover it, and then not until she was about to remove the garment within whose folds it lay concealed. It fell to the ground; she ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... to the parents, in order to insure by a fivefold promise the future guardianship of the infant soul, she yet permits parents to stand as sponsors in order to accommodate every variety of circumstance and need, and to save the office of sponsor from ever being merely a formal or perfunctory thing." ...
— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester
... woman. He had no further inclination for make-believe, and he saw Naraini with eyes that nothing illuded. Quite as casually as though she had been no more to him than a chance acquaintance, he reached up, took her hand, and gave it a perfunctory shake. ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... into the restaurant. Gabe offered him the choice of various tables; he selected one which commanded a view of the entrances and ordered a perfunctory "Scotch." Nervous and anxious, he was more troubled than he cared to admit even to himself. Fortunately, there were not many people in the cafe; and his gaze, wandering about the place, soon halted before ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... of the pupils for training in composition is not a new one; its value has been proved. Modern Prose and Poetry aims to make the most of such correlation, at the same time drawing upon the personal experience of the students, to the elimination of all that is perfunctory and formal. Typical outlines (suggestions for theme writing) are provided; these, however, cannot serve in all cases, and the teacher must help the pupils in planning their themes, or give them such training as will enable them ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... glanced up and recognised the inevitable, rose to her feet, and, holding the hideous rag-doll she had been nursing, head down and dangling in one hand, she stood waiting till Dicky, after a few last perfunctory bellows, suddenly dried his eyes and held up a tear-wet face for his father to kiss. Then she presented her brow solemnly to her uncle, received a kiss, and vanished, led by the hand into a cabin on the port side of ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... it be to relate the events of one sad day which culminated in her declaiming at night, with far more than perfunctory warmth, and in a voice scarce ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... The circumstance that, waking from a deep sleep at night in the midst of a forest, he had spoken aloud a name that he had not in memory and hardly had in mind did not arouse an enlightened curiosity to investigate the phenomenon. He thought it odd, and with a little perfunctory shiver, as if in deference to a seasonal presumption that the night was chill, he lay down again and went to sleep. But his sleep was no ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... in a perfunctory manner, points out the kind of 1st class carriage we have to travel in. It is not inviting, and we get back to the river, and make a jotting of our steamer and the shore against the evening sky, and the bullock-carts slowly stirring the dust ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... cannot tell, but I think any kind of emotion lightens labour. And I think the labour lightened his pain; and I know he was not so absorbed in his unhappiness, though at times the flashes of a keen agony broke from the dull cloud of his misery, as to perform the duties he had undertaken in a perfunctory manner. The catalogue made slow but steady progress. And so ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... down again, and the footman went and stood by the girl, looking down at her curiously. Then he stooped, took off his glove, and put the points of the four fingers of his right hand on her chest, like an amateur doctor afraid of soiling his hands, a perfunctory way of ascertaining if she ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... in the neck on Kemmel." Two men passing by were regarding the performance with perfunctory interest, while the purple bulldog still rose and fell, and the dissolute old warrior did not cease ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... in the same perfunctory way: "You have been very kind; uncle has depended on you so much. Your advice and help have been ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... was taking too much upon himself, that he was, in fact, instructing the judge in his duties, which was a piece of presumption on his part. The other was quick to make a humble apology and to bring his perfunctory address to a conclusion. The judge, in addressing the prisoner, said he had been unable to discover any extenuating circumstances in the case. The fact that he had a wife and family dependent on him only added to his turpitude, since it proved that no consideration could serve to deter him ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson
... put on his specs, and begun to focus his fowl, than he suddenly started up, rang for the cook, and after having vociferated at her carelessness, and lectured her for being so extremely perfunctory and disorderly in not keeping the cat out of the cupboard, till his appetite for scolding was pretty well satisfied, he paused for her apology: the guardian genius of the pantry, to his extreme astonishment, ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... gentleman inside was saying with a sound of effort in his voice. The lady was not even at the pains to notice the perfunctory civility. ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... with a yellowed crest and a rasping voice. "New man, eh?" He gave Bart's straps perfunctory tugs at shoulders and waist, tightened a buckle. "Karol ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... than the leader of a court; but her influence was healthy, ennobling, and religious. Louis XVIII. was not what would be called a religious man; he performed his religious duties regularly, but in a perfunctory manner. He was not, however, a hypocrite or a pharisee, but was simply indifferent to religious dogmas, and secretly averse to the society of priests. When he was dying, it was with great difficulty that he could be made to receive extreme ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... there are insupportable; the atmosphere is pestilential. People sit with their elbows in your sides; they squeeze past you every half-hour. It was one of my bad moments; I have a great many in Europe. The conventional perfunctory play, all in falsetto, which I seemed to have seen a thousand times; the horrible faces of the people; the pushing, bullying ouvreuse, with her false politeness, and her real rapacity, drove me out of the place at ...
— The Point of View • Henry James
... before; if he had any earnestness of belief in the power that was communicated, and any eagerness of desire to realise the promises that had been given of complete victory, what would he have done? What would Elisha have done if he had had the quiver in his hand? This king smites three perfunctory taps on the floor, and having done what will satisfy the old man's whim, and what in decency he had to do, he stops, as if weary of the whole performance. So the prophet bursts out in indignation on his dying bed—'Thou ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... that the men whose business it is to teach religious truth would see this and ask themselves the reason why. To an extent they do see it, but they never seem to think of blaming themselves for it except in a perfunctory kind of way. They talk about religious indifference, the need for better and more effective methods, and so on. The professional theologian rarely does even as much as this. He takes himself very seriously; sniffs and ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... and John Steele saw nothing further, although he heard often, of Miss Jocelyn Wray. His business to the continent, whatever its nature, had seemed sufficiently important to authorize from him to her, in due process of time, a short perfunctory message regretting his inability to present himself at the appointed hour at Strathorn House. Whether the young girl found in the letter a vagueness warranting a suspicion that John Steele preferred the heavy duties of the city to ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... much about Chinatown, except the authorities, and their interference is but perfunctory. The yellow men, after all, are, as Prologue to "Pagliacci" observes, but men like you, for joy or sorrow, the same broad heaven above them, the same wide world before them. They are but men like you, though the sanitary officials may doubt it. They will ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... experiment, so that a clear conception may be gained of the relationship between the laboratory work and that of the class room. The student should endeavor to cultivate the power of observation and to grasp the principle involved in the work, rather than do it in a merely mechanical and perfunctory way. Neatness is one of the essentials for success in laboratory practice, and too much emphasis cannot be laid upon this requisite to good work. The student should learn to use his time in the laboratory profitably and ...
— Human Foods and Their Nutritive Value • Harry Snyder
... and proud to come back again after such a moving and beautiful compliment as this from comrades whom I have loved so long. I hope you can poll the necessary vote; I know you will try, at any rate. It will be many months before I can foregather with you, for this black border is not perfunctory, not a convention; it symbolizes the loss of one whose memory is ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... soon as he could get some coal; though he feared it would be difficult coaling up that night. He did not need a great deal, he said—which was, indeed, the case—but he did need some, and for the Hornet's safety he must have it. After this, with cheerful compliments, and the perfunctory declaration on his part that there was nothing dutiable on board, the officers left him, greatly pleased with his courtesy, saluted by the sailors standing at the gangway as they left the ship's side. The officers did not notice that one ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... giantess, flings a single bundle of ropes at her and, without further precautions, grips her with her legs, tries to subdue her and then digs her fangs into the Dragon-fly's back. The bite is prolonged in such a way as to astonish me. This is not the perfunctory kiss with which I am already familiar; it is a deep, determined wound. After striking her blow, the Spider retires to a certain distance and waits for her poison to ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... eating a perfunctory dinner in the dining-room, Mrs. Gorman and Dan wrangled in the kitchen, but Molly sat in the playground of the school, with Tim O'Neill, the culprit, facing her, and a circle of grinning children's faces ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... guiltily. He had been dimly aware that some one was sitting there, but, being occupied with other things, had not given a thought to the sitter, or a glance. Now he did both while he said good afternoon with perfunctory politeness. ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... breaking down that scheme of the Constitution to which his life had bound him. He was by no means inclined to flatter the House of Lords, or to exempt them from blame for much that he thought mischievous. They had neglected their business, their discharge of their functions had been careless and perfunctory, their meetings had been short, and their intervention in public affairs scanty, "while the other House sat, and drew the eyes of the kingdom upon them, as the only vigilant people for their good." Clarendon's constitutional ideals might be mistaken; but ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... practitioners have been artists rather than poets, have possessed, that is to say, the constructive rather than the creative, the organizing rather than the imaginative temperament, but they have rarely been perfunctory and never common. French painting in its preference of truth to beauty, of intelligence to the beatific vision, of form to color, in a word, has nevertheless, and perhaps a fortiori, always been the expression of ideas. These ideas almost invariably ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... there, the horse, which had been cropping in a perfunctory manner at the short grass by the roadside, raised its head, and neighed impatiently. There was something so human about the performance that Jimmy and the girl laughed simultaneously. The utter materialism of the ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... He had often been shocked at the callousness with which so many of the heroes of romance dash blithely into the next adventure—though those whom they have seriously injured lie on all sides of them as thick as autumn leaves—with only the most perfunctory consideration of these victims; sometimes, indeed, with no thought of ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... an ornamental garden, but which was now torn to pieces by gun carriages, convoy waggons, and every description of vehicle. From the top of the house stretched many wires. A sentry stood at the iron gates and passed Major Thomson after a perfunctory challenge. An office with mud-stained boots and wind-tossed hair, who looked as though he had been out all night, stood on the steps of the house ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... watched them as far as Fifth Avenue, then rapidly drawing on their shoes and stockings, scrambled down to the shrubbery and raced for the house. Through it they passed like a double whirlwind; feeble and perfunctory resistance was offered by ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... diverge into strange paths, from which it is obvious that the discovery of true scientific method was a very subordinate object in his mind. Instead of telling us by what means truth is to be attained, his few perfunctory remarks on logic are lost in an historical narrative given with infinite zest, of the earliest recorded blunders. The period of history in which he most delighted was the antediluvian—probably because it afforded the widest field for speculation. His books are full of references ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... somewhat disconcerting, rather like the manner of an elder sister to her young brother than of a girl to a man whom she had known only two or three hours. When he rose to leave, she again offered him her hand with perfect coolness. Harley, in a perfunctory manner, expressed his regret that he was not likely to see her again, as he was to leave the next day with Mr. Grayson. The provoking twinkle appeared again in the corner ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... attention between that Department and another, still less that the First Minister of the Crown, who has to look into the affairs of all departments and who is ultimately responsible for the whole policy of the Cabinet, should give, as he could only give perfunctory attention to the affairs of our Army in a great war. I am very glad to say that a very distinguished soldier and administrator, in the person of Lord Kitchener, with that great public spirit and patriotism that every ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... which lay down at my feet, raising its head sometimes to whine, and sometimes darting off a little way and coming back to tug at the lower edge of my overcoat. But my mind was too much occupied for me to take any but a perfunctory interest in its manoeuvres. My eight years of thankless drudgery as a clerk, following on a brief adventurous period after I ran away to sea from my English home, had terminated three days before, upon receipt of a legacy, and I had at ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... pure and airy; lives in an element so wholesome, and perfectly adapted to the uses of soul and body as this same, which is provided here for the Devil's regiments of the line? No Duke that I have ever known. Dukes are waited on by deleterious French cooks, by perfunctory grooms of the chambers, and expensive crowds of eye-servants, more imaginary than real: while here, Science, Human Intellect and Beneficence have searched and sat studious, eager to do their very best; they have chosen a real Artist in Governing to see their ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... before the time the tenor died. Instead, "Martha" was performed, in a manner wholly commonplace in all respects except as to the titular rle, in which Mme. Patti appeared, as a matter of course. There was only a little perfunctory applause, but Colonel Mapleson had resolved that the scene should be enacted, of which we have often read, in which the devotees of the prima donna unhitch the horses from her carriage, and themselves ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... is the man who finds winds that will wail with him, and skies that love him enough to weep in sympathy. It saves his friends and next of kin a great deal of perfunctory weeping. ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... Sark is a cottage, or the part of a cottage, turned from private to public use. In former times the service was of a very perfunctory character, Providence largely taking the place of post-master while that official attended first to his fishing and then to his duties, and any who had good and valid reason to expect a letter came down to the mail-bag where it lay on ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... her, and did what he could to show himself responsive. With the portrait began the period of a less perfunctory relation between them. They had talks sometimes that Aurora declared, without trace of envy, were ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... evokes interest, but not everybody's; each of them rouses enthusiasm, but not everybody's; in each case a part of the attention, interest, and enthusiasm is a matter of habit and custom, and another part of it is official and perfunctory. Cup Day, and Cup Day only, commands an attention, an interest, and an enthusiasm which are universal—and spontaneous, not perfunctory. Cup Day is supreme it has no rival. I can call to mind no specialized ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... acknowledgments of her kindness, so perfunctory did they seem, so unlike the man she had known; and her own protestations that she had done nothing to merit his thanks were to her quite as unreal. She introduced him to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... slowly gliding away in the direction of Rockabie, their examination having been of the most perfunctory kind. ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... stranger before her, Miss Huckins looked her over carefully from head to foot, while Josie smiled a vacuous, inconsequent smile and said in a perfunctory way: ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... was superstitious, and repeated to himself the cabalistic formula: "Losin's seekin's, findin's keepin's"—presumed to be of great efficacy in such cases—with religious fervor. He had laboriously reached the end of the veranda when he noticed the open window of Louise's room, and stopped as a perfunctory duty to look in. And then Richelieu Sharpe stood for an instant utterly confounded and aghast at this crowning proof of the absolute infamy and ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... most extraordinary. Of course, there is such a thing as combining business and pleasure; but, as I told Mr. Tuchman when he insisted on taking me up to the Heatherbloom Inn, the Board of Trustees control the placing of the orders. I have only a perfunctory duty to perform when ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... approached a long-faced young lady with a red and shiny nose, a mouth that stood awkwardly open, as though it had come unbuttoned, and a scraggy neck that recalled the handle of a bass-viol. I went up to her, and, with a perfunctory scrape of my heels, invited her to the dance. She was wearing a dress of faded rosebud pink, not full-blown rose colour; on her head quivered a striped and dejected beetle of some sort on a thick bronze pin; and altogether this lady was, ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... assent to her explanation: "How's Van Horn?" he asked casually. "And Stone?" he added, with undiminished interest. "All well," was his echo to her perfunctory answers. "Say, Belle, was Jim Laramie ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... I found that a general in war time goes to bed in his underclothes, like an ordinary private. The General got up and went outside and put the spy through a series of questions, but he did so in a very sleepy voice, and with a perfunctory manner which seemed to me to indicate that he was more concerned about getting back to bed than he was in saving the army from danger. He told the officer that it was too late then to carry on the business for which he had come, but that he would see about it in the morning. The ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... has amused many of their guests, but their house is still standing and the fire insurance inspector performs his annual duties in a perfunctory ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... into a chair, seeming not loath to tell those things she had, while Nancy leaned back and listened duteously for a perfunctory ten minutes. Her thoughts ran ahead to Allan—and to Bernal—as children will run little journeys ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... herself, "I were a specimen poked at him on the end of a pin," it stirred in her a vague resentment; and involuntarily she held him up to Harry. The comparison showed him a little worn, a little battered, a little too perfunctory in manner; but his genial eyes, deep under threatening brows, made Harry's eyes seem to stare rather coldly; and the fine form of his long, plain face, and the sensitive line of his long thin lips made Harry's beauty look,—well, how did it look? ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... practiced fingers ran swiftly over the unresisting form, feeling beneath the arms, down the flanks, about the belt line and even at the back of the neck for a suspicious hard bulge inside the garments, finally giving the side coat pockets a perfunctory slap. ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... speaking, for the first time beyond perfunctory salutations, with the captain, a taciturn recluse of a man, furious just now at some unexpected litigation connected with his cargo and horribly inconvenienced by the loss of his stewardess. Two ladies waiting, literally, on the wharf, have been promised accommodation ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... her slim hands into both of his, and showered upon him all proper surprise and the greetings due to her father's oldest friend. Voice, gesture, words—all were equally amiable, well trained, and perfunctory—Sir Wilfrid was well aware of it. He was possessed of a fine, straw-colored mustache, and long eyelashes of the same color. Both eyelashes and mustache made a screen behind which, as was well known, their owner observed ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... she said, with the real sympathy in the words made most obviously perfunctory by the tone. "What a world of possibilities there is masquerading behind that little word 'arrange.' Tell me more about it, Mr. Jastrow. How ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde
... with content and superscription, it was all glaringly conspicuous. The initials seemed to stand out like headlines, but Farquaharson was without suspicion and he saw only one more paper in which his interest was most perfunctory. The whole issue had narrowed now, Eben realized with a tension of fear which brought out sweat beads on the pasty white of his face, to the hairbreadth narrowness of one question. Would Stuart see the initials or would ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... work hard themselves, and to allow all others to work hard. There must be no more holding up of essential parts of guns, no more writing and talking sedition. Our country needs the whole-hearted service of us all. If you here and now give me your promise that you will use every effort—no perfunctory, but real effort—to stop at once all these threats of a strike, I will let you go now and wish you God-speed. If you fail, then Martial Law will be proclaimed forthwith. Make this very clear to the men. ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... against the wiles of a designing widow, and established, at great cost, with his niece in the noble and ancient mansion of her desire. There were subsidiary love-episodes, of course, but these, though novel in some particulars, were relatively perfunctory. The character of James Ollerenshaw was the real ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 25, 1914 • Various
... question was no perfunctory expression of interest. Anything relating to Tess was ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... which seemed to afford no one any particular satisfaction, was carried out in perfunctory fashion. Burton, secretly wiping his ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... own opportunity came and departed unnoted, it would not waken him from his dreams of some untold wealth that would fall into his lap. So he grows discouraged and envies those whom he should emulate, and he bandages his arm and chloroforms his energies, and performs his duties in a perfunctory way, or he passes through life, just ever ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan
... took their places side by side in the chair she was saying something perfunctory concerning the fete and Mrs. Ascott. And as he offered no comment: "Don't you think her very charming and sincere.... Are you listening ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... pall upon him. He soon found, too, that many of his brethren believed as little as he did; that others were too indolent to reflect and believed as a matter of course. The thousand ceremonials, the carelessly recited prayers, the perfunctory invocations, the prescribed signs, crosses and genuflections before the rudely painted icons, appeared to him as hollow mockeries, and soon the place seemed redolent ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... family as that of the development of the lives of religious persons, the place and value of the Bible will be evident. It will be used as a means of developing and directing lives. This will be quite different from a perfunctory use because our fathers used it or a use under the compulsion of the fear lest some strange evil should befall us, some visitation of an ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... since the day before; and beside the stove, visible and unashamed, was a large wooden box partly full of coal. While Larcher was noticing these things, and Mr. Bud was offering chairs, Davenport made directly for the window and looked out with an interest limited to the task in hand, and perfunctory even so. ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... Poets, his greatest work, was composed with pain and difficulty when he was seventy years old; even it is but a quarry from which a reader may dig the ore of a sound critical judgment summing up a life's reflection, out of the grit and dust of perfunctory biographical compilations. There was hardly one of the literary coterie over which he presided that was not doing better and more lasting work. Nothing that Johnson wrote is to be compared, for excellence in its own manner, with Tom Jones ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... terrible thing to have him tell you there was no longer any kick in your kisses. So I remain on my dignity. I am companionable, and nothing more. When we were saying good-by, the last time he went off to the city, and he looked up at my perfunctory and quite meaningless peck on his cheek, I felt myself blushing before his quiet and half-quizzical stare. Then he laughed a little as he turned away and pulled on his gauntlets. "The sweeter the champagne, I suppose, the colder it should be served!" he rather ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... her head under the clothes, and was sobbing quietly to herself. No mention was made of the Christmas tree in her prayers that morning, and the prayers themselves were very perfunctory indeed—said more from the force of habit than because she had any faith in their efficacy. True, the rain had ceased now, but what was the good of that now the flood had come? And the worst of it was that she could not talk this matter out to daddy; ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... the Romance in verse; while not a few of Mr Williams' readers have neglected his Second Portion under the impression that there could be nothing of any special importance in an adjunct referred to by the Editor in so perfunctory a manner. In very truth, however, the Story of the Holy Graal here told is not only the most coherent and poetic of all the many versions of the Legend, but is also ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... on the lawn in her front yard, knitting a pair of booties for the PTA bazaar. Occasionally she glanced at her son in the play pen, who was getting his daily dose of sunshine. He was gurgling happily, examining a ball, a cheese grater and a linen baby book, all with perfunctory interest. ...
— The Ultroom Error • Gerald Allan Sohl
... evening, fit for October, and I was watching (with regret) a lot of little black pigs being turned out of my garden, when the postman handed to me, with a perfunctory haste which doubtless masked his emotion, the Declaration of Futurism. If you ask me what Futurism is, I cannot tell you; even the Futurists themselves seem a little doubtful; perhaps they are waiting for the future to find out. But if you ask me what its Declaration is, I answer ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... which an Indian had used this product of modern science with murderous effect. The excitement was intense. The majority of the Bengalee papers, it is true, were fain to reprobate or at least to deprecate this particular form of propaganda, but such comments were perfunctory, whilst they generally agreed to cast the whole responsibility upon an alien Government whose resistance to their "national" aspirations goaded impatient patriotism to these extremes. Even amongst many who did not actually sympathize with the murderer there seems to have been a lurking sense of ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... staring eyes and as if hypnotized, cutting a piece of fruit with the end of his fork into strips as thin as cigarette papers. The Governor, on the contrary, went through a pantomime expressive of perfunctory admiration, with exclamations of horror and compassion; while, in striking contrast to him, and not far away, Brahim Bey, the thunderbolt of war, in whom the reading of the article, followed by discussion after a substantial repast, had induced a refreshing nap, was sleeping soundly, with his mouth ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... seen her before until that moment, and agreed that she did look shy, one might almost say frightened to death. Mrs. West rushed through the second verse of the song, bowed breathlessly, and ran down the steps of the stage and back to the refuge of the balcony, while the audience applauded with perfunctory politeness and called clamorously to the ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... searched me for contraband letters when our cart stopped on the Belgian side of a barricade at Maastricht, with Dutch soldiers on the other side. His examination was a little perfunctory, almost apologetic, and he did want to be friendly. You guessed that he was thinking he would like to go around the corner and have "ein Glas Bier" rather than search me. What a hearty "Auf wiedersehen!" he gave me when he saw that I was inclined to ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... puppy, dropped it incontinently, and made an onslaught on Tyr, the old wolf-hound, who basked dozing, whimpering and twitching in his hunting dreams. Prone went Rol beside Tyr, his young arms round the shaggy neck, his curls against the black jowl. Tyr gave a perfunctory lick, and stretched with a sleepy sigh. Rol growled and rolled and shoved invitingly, but could only gain from the old dog placid toleration and a half-observant blink. "Take that then!" said Rol, indignant at this ignoring of his advances, ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... of the Park as a public institution, {p.075} give especial emphasis to the recommendation made by Secretary Ballinger on his last annual report. Owing to the great number and extent of the National Parks, and the inefficiency of the present "perfunctory policy" in their administration, Mr. Ballinger asked Congress to put the management of these institutions under a Bureau of National Parks, conducted by a competent commissioner, and organized for efficient field ...
— The Mountain that was 'God' • John H. Williams
... insurmountable difficulties that would lie in his path in case he exercised his leadership in the matter of Martine's selection to the United States Senate. They suggested that the vote for Martine had no binding force; that it was a mere perfunctory expression of preference in the matter of the United States senatorship which the Legislature was free to ignore. The only man, therefore, who could make the vote effective was the Governor-elect himself. ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... accompany his guest outside to the car; but Paula evidenced her intention of remaining in the house. Graham started over to her to murmur perfunctory regrets and good-by. ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... handled by the teacher, is turned over to the local truant officer. In many cases the truant officer is appointed because of his availability for such work rather than his special competency, and the enforcement of the truancy law is handled in a most perfunctory manner, whereas an intelligent investigation of home conditions and an effort to gain the cooperation of the parents and the confidence and interest of the child are the only means of securing any real ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson |
