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More "Perfunctory" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nor very good. He didn't seem to be dissipated, or mixed up in any scandal, or to be recklessly extravagant, like so many rich men. On the other hand, I couldn't find that he'd done any particular good in the world. Some charities were mentioned, but they were perfunctory, apparently, and I don't believe, from the accounts, that he ever really INTERESTED himself in any one—that he ever really cared for— ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... Josiah Hilbrook himself began to be lost in the name he had given the place; and except for the perfunctory mention of its founder in the ceremonies of Commencement Day, the university hardly remembered him as a man, but rather regarded him as a locality. He had, in fact, never been an important man in West Mallow, up to the time he had left ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... church cantatas, Also hat Gott die Welt geliebt and Man singet mit Freuden vom Sieg. The fine bass aria, "Ein Fuerst ist seines Landes Pan," was obviously ill-proportioned, with its breakneck return to the tonic and its perfunctory close; and Bach's chief concern in adapting it for its place as the aria, "Du bist geboren mir zu Gute," in Also hat Gott, was to remedy this defect. On the other hand, the use of the delightful ritornello for violoncello from the little aria, "Weil die wollenreichen Heerden," in the birthday ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... Anderson and Elizabeth were seated together in the Red Drawing Room. Mrs. Gaddesden, after a little perfunctory conversation with the new-comer, had disappeared on the plea of letters to write. The girl in white, the centre of a large party in the hall, was flirting to her heart's content. Philip would have dearly liked to stay and flirt with her himself; but his mother, ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... thrust it 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 ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... a warm golden 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 ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... 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
... is always the danger that actors will be content with a rather slurred and perfunctory recitation of lines that have no bearing on the action but are just inserted for joy as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 22, 1914 • Various
... had talked so much about their frost protection plans that several of the farmers decided to get some oil-burning fire-pots for use that spring, in the event of a freeze. Jed Tighe, however, one of the few people of the neighborhood who had shown but a perfunctory interest in the League, laughed to scorn the idea of buying the fire-pots, as Fred had suggested in a recent issue of the Review. Even Jed Tighe read the little sheet every week, in ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... thought he saw 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 topple over, crushing ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... be nothing at all original in the methods pursued by the great criminologist when confronted with this tableau of death and robbery. His remarks to the Inspector were few and perfunctory. He asked only a few languid questions of Macdougal and Lenora, who were summoned to ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... buzzing of the gossip bees the person most acutely concerned heard little or nothing. Griswold's intimation to Raymer that he wished only to be a silent partner had been made in good faith; and beyond a few purely perfunctory visits to the plant across the railroad tracks, made because Raymer had insisted that he go over the books and learn for himself the exact condition of the business into which he had put his money, Griswold took no more than an advisory part in ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... Harriet's voice was pleasantly commonplace. But the moment had its thrill for her. This lean, tall, tired man, with his abstract manner, his perfunctory courtesies, his nervous, clever hands, loomed in oddly heroic proportions in Harriet's life. His face was keen and somewhat lined under a smooth crest of slightly graying hair; he smiled very rarely, but there was a certain kindliness ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... journey—from Si-an in 1900—she had conceived a great liking for travel and enjoyed seeing strange sights. Then she wished him a happy voyage and concluded by remarking: "We have chosen to give you some little keepsakes," using the word meaning a "personal souvenir" rather than a formal and perfunctory "present." It was a moment of natural excitement, and the I.G., dumb with emotion, received the intimation in unflattering silence. "Thank," said the Minister who presented him, in agonized tones; and ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... "The question was perfunctory; Lee Fu knew well enough that my decision was in his hands. I stood up—for until now I had been chained to my chair by the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... lips moved but made no sound. Constance after a moment's hesitation came nearer still, and bending forward kissed her cheek, not in a perfunctory way, but with a lingering, loving kiss; and after the kiss she still lingered close, so that the breath from her lips came warm and fragrant on the other's cold pale cheek. But her mother spoke no word, and remained cold and motionless as a statue, until with a slight ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... made some perfunctory remark, attributing the situation to a lack of efficiency, while Matt Peasley went back to his office and grieved as he reflected on the corrosive action of salt water on ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... 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 ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... coldly indifferent to many things commonly counted chief matters of life. One of these was religion; another was woman. His punctuality at church at the head of Rosemont's cadets was so obviously perfunctory as to be without a stain of hypocrisy. Yet he never vaunted his scepticism, but only let it exhale from him in interrogative insinuations that the premises and maxims of religion were refuted by the ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... shoulders and the drop at their snuffy nose—I thought I would rather claim kinship with the dogs than with the men! My sympathy was unreturned; in their eyes I was a creature light as air; and they would scarce spare me the time for a perfunctory caress or perhaps a hasty lap of the wet tongue, ere they were back again in sedulous attendance on those dingy deities, their masters—and their masters, as like ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the Public School. Four of the six—the dramatic, the artistic, the musical, and the constructive—are entirely or almost entirely neglected. Music and Handwork[27] are "extras" (a fatally significant word); the teaching of Drawing is, as a rule, quite perfunctory; and Acting is not a recognised part of the school curriculum. The truth is that marks are not given for these "subjects"—for in the eyes of the schoolmaster they are all "subjects"—in any entrance or scholarship examination, and that therefore ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... just as we were about to resume our journey, we saw two Manu Mea appear. Keeping perfectly quiet, we watched them moving about, scratching up the leaves, and picking at the ground in an aimless, perfunctory sort of manner with their heavy, thick bills. The natives told me that they were searching, not for yams, but for a sweet berry called masa'oi, upon which the wild ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... be checked. Haughtily ignoring the rest of the company, he paced to the head of the table, where he made perfunctory obeisance. ...
— Millennium • Everett B. Cole
... 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 ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... 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 ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... room after his guests, muttering an unintelligible apology. He shook hands with them with an abstracted air and failed to recall Wargrave's name. At table he asked Frank a few perfunctory questions and then wandered off into his inevitable subject, entomology, but finding him ignorant of and uninterested in it he engaged in a desultory conversation with Raymond. He soon tired of this and for the most part ate his dinner in silence. He never addressed his wife; ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... 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. What he would do in these circumstances was for days after ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... men to be freed at once. To her dismay, the judge announced that both would be held for trial, without bail, following perfunctory statements from Plenty Buffalo, Walter Lowell, and Sheriff Tom Redmond, relating to later events in the tragedy. As in a dream Helen saw some of the spectators starting to leave and Redmond's deputy beckon to his prisoners, when Walter Lowell rose and asked permission to address the court ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... 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 ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... thought that, as I was to go to Oxford, it would be better that I should study under an Oxford man. I never had the slightest natural bent for mathematics, though I did the tasks that were imposed upon me in a perfunctory manner, and with sufficient accuracy just to satisfy ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... confirmation paper called Purity the Guard of Manhood, a paper which an Eton master pronounced the best thing he had met with of the kind, and which has been widely used. Do not rest content with merely giving the paper in a perfunctory way, but follow it up with a few living, earnest ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... hopeless of the permanence of our Government if this is to be the example set by one of the Houses of Congress, that which claims to be more sedate and deliberate, if it proposes in this light and perfunctory way to deal with questions of this grave nature and import. Sir, there is no time at present for that preparation which such a subject demands at the hands of any sensible man, mindful of his responsibilities, who ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... French sat together; the Russians were apart; and the Americans in still another section. There was no real intermingling, no real camaraderie, except among the individual groups. There was much hand-shaking of course, and greetings and perfunctory politeness, but no genuine friendliness. The various ministers, for instance, did not sit together as ministers, off on a holiday. On the contrary, each one sat at the table with his countrymen. Over all there was a ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... and this defection of youth was a thing which the Priests bitterly contested. Ramon was perfectly willing to make a polite compromise with them. If Father Lugaria had been satisfied with an occasional appearance at early mass, a perfunctory confession now and then, the two might have been friends. But the Priest made Ramon a special object of his attention. He continually went to the Dona Delcasar with complaints and that devout woman incessantly nagged her son, holding before him always pictures of the damnation ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... had he 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
... Jack, rising, "and, sir, I wish a word with you." Here, however, remembering myself and Bentley, he introduced us—though in a very perfunctory fashion, ...
— The Honourable Mr. Tawnish • Jeffery Farnol
... thoughtfulness, by words of sympathy in my hard battle of life when I am present, or by genial letters when absent? I have spent three hot days in the city seeking chiefly your interest, and a more mechanical, perfunctory thing never existed than your kiss of greeting to-night. There was as much feeling in it as in the quarter that I handed to the stage-driver. I have spent thousands on your education, but you don't sing for me, you don't read to me, you never think ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... attorney's argument was cool, dispassionate, perfunctory. He showed no interest in securing a conviction for the very simple reason that he felt none. Brisbane was a further, deeper disappointment. He failed to live up to the reputation that had preceded him. He constantly studied ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... a part of his gift. Adriance always said not only the right thing, but the opportune, graceful, exquisite thing. His phrases took the color of the moment and the then-present condition, so that they never savored of perfunctory compliment or frequent usage. He always caught the lyric essence of the moment, the poetic suggestion of every situation. Moreover, he usually did the right thing, the opportune, graceful, exquisite thing—except, when he ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... be that He find.' That is an awful if, when we think of what lies below it. The thing seems an absurdity when it is spoken, and yet it is a grim fact in many a life—viz. that Christ's effort can fail and be thwarted. Not that His search is perfunctory or careless, but that we shroud ourselves in darkness through which that love can find no way. It is we, not He, that are at fault when He fails to find that which He seeks. There is nothing more certain than that God, and Christ the image of God, desire the rescue ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... Nymphidius and other prominent Imperialists have, of course, defended their master; but their apologies, it is felt, were somewhat perfunctory and half-hearted. In allusion to the lamented demise of the Dowager Empress, it was pointed out that pity and loyalty alike should forbid trampling on a Ruler bowed down by repeated domestic bereavements; and attempts were made to enlist sympathy for the Imperial Orphan. These, however, ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... stiffly and gave her hostess a perfunctory peck on her cheek. "We left Cousin Betty Throckmorton's this morning," she said with a toss of ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... feu de joie that never ceased, and listening to it we knew that we ought to feel happy and elated. The driver of our fiacre was fat and rubicund, he wore a green coat, brass buttons, and a shiny top hat, and looked as if he drank constantly. His jollity was perfunctory, I know, and covered a grasping nature, but it was very well imitated, like everything in Paris. As he whirled us, with a whip-report like a pistol-shot, into the train of traffic in the middle of the street, we felt that we were indeed in the ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... bread eaten in secret is pleasant'; and it would be 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, which, at Gillian's signal, was always opened to ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... well enough, pa, you know!" she said, slightly disengaging his arm, but adding a perfunctory little squeeze to his elbow to soften the separation. "I always had an idea SOMETHING would happen. I suppose I'm looking like a fright," she added; "but ma made me hurry to get ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... expensiveness that the principle of waste invades the domain of the canons of ritual serviceability. It touches the ways as well as the means, and draws on vicarious leisure as well as on vicarious consumption. Priestly demeanor at its best is aloof, leisurely, perfunctory, and uncontaminated with suggestions of sensuous pleasure. This holds true, in different degrees of course, for the different cults and denominations; but in the priestly life of all anthropomorphic cults the marks of a vicarious consumption ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... was perfunctory. Well he knew that telephone or special messenger would speedily have advised him if news of the Andromeda had arrived since he left the office on Saturday afternoon. But it is said that drowning men clutch at straws, and the metaphor might be applied to Verity ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... reunion became less probable. It was as if a sickness long smouldering in him had broken out and become acute, enveloping him in the Nessus-shirt of his memories. There were moments when, to his memory, their actual embraces seemed perfunctory, accidental, compared with this deep deliberate imprint ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... success, but justice compels me to say that Thackeray was not a good editor. As he would have been an indifferent civil servant, an indifferent member of Parliament, so was he perfunctory as an editor. It has sometimes been thought well to select a popular literary man as an editor; first, because his name will attract, and then with an idea that he who can write well himself will be a competent judge of the writings of others. The first may sell a magazine, but will hardly ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... life of mediaerval Egypt, and he selects 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 ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... brought about by the ingenious Dare. Dare's timely suggestion of tendering assistance had the practical result of relieving the other of all necessity for occupying his time with the proceeding, further than to bestow a perfunctory superintendence now and then, to give a colour to his regular presence in the fortress, the actual work of taking copies being carried on ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... tell, Miss F'raishy—sho'," Mingo assented, with great heartiness. But Mrs. Bivins's volubility would hardly wait for this perfunctory indorsement. She talked as she arranged the dishes, and occasionally she would hold a piece of crockery suspended in the air as she emphasised her words. She dropped into a mortuary strain—"Poor pa! I don't never have nuthin' ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... luck in a rather perfunctory tone, considering his vehemence of a moment earlier. All the fire seemed suddenly to ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... a proper immigration law ought to be to secure by a careful and not merely perfunctory educational test some intelligent capacity to appreciate American institutions and act sanely as American citizens. This would not keep out all anarchists, for many of them belong to the intelligent criminal ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... to her lips, the clasp of the strong arms reassuring. Yet, in her present state of depression, she was inclined to distrust even that which consoled, and there seemed a lack in the fervour of this embrace. Was it not just a trifle perfunctory, as of one who pays toll, rather than of one who claims ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... important details in relation to the lives and works of the Old Masters whose handicraft greeted us murally on every side, I soon dispensed with his services and took over his task. Whereas he had been content to dismiss this or that artist with but a perfunctory line, I preferred to give dates, ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... With a perfunctory good-bye, he swung into the saddle, leaving McCrae, a sombre figure, leaning against the slip bars of the corral. He had anticipated this outcome; but, nevertheless, he was disappointed, vaguely apprehensive. In vain ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... his marriage the career of the Prince of Wales was one of initiation into the responsibilities of home life and the duties of public life. It was a period of moulding influences and a round of functions—some perfunctory, some pleasant. It was a time of trial for a very young man placed in a very high position, and with temptations which might easily have led him into temporary and even permanent forgetfulness of the responsibilities of the future. Several causes, ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... 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
... 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 ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... recalled in the past dozen years by either party to the transaction. But it was true that Nelson Richards had always had a warm spot in his affections for his first sweetheart, and the cordiality of his greeting was by no means perfunctory. ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... 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
... stiff as those that pass between a visiting statesman and the local yeomanry at a rural reception. Lawrence, Paul, and Alec undoubtedly hated this perfunctory annual tribute to the head of the house of Montgomery, but Amzi liked the perpetuation of his father's house as a family center. It did not matter that greed and sentimentalism were back of his sisters' ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... female protection 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 matter ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 25, 1914 • Various
... than this 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 ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... and instead there had been abrupt pauses and awkward silences, and then, at what should have been the supreme moment, the lady in white had asked for a cigarette. And the two hasty little kisses that had a sort of perfunctory air, and the queer, jerky "good-byes," and the last stop near the door of the hotel—it all had an air of being very badly done. It could not have been a success ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... And with a perfunctory attempt at a more lover-like attitude, he turned to Elsa, who already had jumped to her feet, and with a pleasant smile was holding up her sweet face to her ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... himself, a yearning for virtue is not always obvious, for he seems at times to take an unholy delight in contemplating his own failings, as witness the Epistle to Lapraik, and his repentance seems merely perfunctory, as in the lines, ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... refined taste, a foe to all emotional scenes, sat with 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, ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... own name correctly given was only equaled by the admiration I also felt for my companion's complete and absolute assurance. Mr. Cullen and I exchanged a perfunctory handshake, which left me without any change in my ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a middle-aged man who wore a velvet skull-cap and who was smoking a Pittsburg stogie, met the farmer at the counter and the two exchanged perfunctory greetings. ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... looked grave. But he duly noted down the testimony, after some perfunctory cross-examination, and, it being read over to the witness, the judge added "Lecture faite," and the persisting witness signed the deposition with his own hand. The prosecutor having retired, two other witnesses, whom he had vouched to warranty, came forward and testified ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... inevitable—in his case. He returned at once to his original intention of taking Orders, as if the intervening military and banking career had been nothing more than an interruption of his normal course. Nor was it merely perfunctory performance of clerical duties to which he looked forward: he was in earnest, and began by making use of his former classical knowledge to take up a serious study of the New Testament in the original language. He seems to have been in advance of his age in this respect; for when he ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... 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 ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... usual ceremony, announcing that he was most happy, etc., in the perfunctory style that a million other men follow every day. Then he took the chair that was offered him, and gave an order for his breakfast to ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... day she repaired to the puppies and fed them, but came away when this perfunctory ceremony was accomplished; and she was glad enough to have a governess bring them up. She made no quarrel with Em'ly, and the two understood each other perfectly. I have never seen among animals any arrangement so civilized and so perverted. It made ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... boiling; the second she could 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 ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... may have sufficed during the past score of years to change the public mind in this matter, I am not ready to say; but, surely, it has not been the general thought that sculpture is anything more than an expensive and perfunctory way of doing one's duty to a great occasion or a great man. This, however, is temporary. The good sculpture exists and will be recognized. So much ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... mother an "Oriental," or Uruguayan. No priest had visited the village for three years, and the children were respectively one and two years of age. The sponsors included the local commandante and a married couple from Austria. In answer to what was supposed to be the perfunctory question whether they were Catholics, the parents returned the unexpected answer that they were not. Further questioning elicited the fact that the father called himself a "free- thinking Catholic," and the mother said she was a "Protestant ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... and spavined piano, despondent growling of a broken-winded 'cello, nervous giggling and moaning of an excoriated violin—the three wringing from the score of O You Beautiful Doll an entirely adequate accompaniment to the perfunctory performance ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... Although Lord John was sixty, and burdened with the cares of State, if not with the cares of office, he cheerfully accepted the task. Though it must be admitted that he performed some parts of it in rather a perfunctory manner, the eight volumes which appeared between 1853 and 1856 of the 'Memoirs, Journal, and Correspondence of Thomas Moore' represent a severe tax upon friendship, as well as no ordinary labour on the part of a man who was always more or less ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... from a severe illness or shock. They greeted one another with a covert smile, an unobtrusive movement of head or hand; only when under direct observation of an official would they pass without a sign. The usual words were, "How're you feeling?" or, "How're they comin'?" not in the perfunctory tone of greetings in the outer world, but with an accent of real interest and solicitude. The answer would be, "Good!" "Fine!" with as much heartiness as could be thrown into it—though it might be obvious enough that the truth was far from ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... the Ambroses was, however, somewhat perfunctory, and contained little but the fact that Mr. Ambrose was ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... Leon shouldered the jewelcase and carried it to the touring car, where Liane superintended its disposal in the luggage-jammed tonneau. A second trip, less laborious, brought them the hamper. Liane uttered perfunctory thanks and called to Jules, who was still tinkering at the limousine engine with the aid of ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... several more or less perfunctory appearances in a local police court, known as the Central Court, where when arraigned he pleaded not guilty, and finally his appearance before the November grand jury, where, owing to the complicated nature of the charge drawn up against him by Pettie, he ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... popularity, seasons his doctrine high, and practises every art for the purpose of obtaining an ascendency over his hearers. But when the Government pays the minister of religion, he has no pressing motive to inflame the zeal of his congregation. He will probably go through his duties in a somewhat perfunctory manner. His power will not be very formidable; and, such as it is, it will be employed in support of that order of things under which he finds himself so comfortable. Now, Sir, it is not necessary to inquire ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... very 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 ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... 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 the beach ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... to him) Moore's father sold cheese and whisky, le whisky d'Irlande was no doubt his staple commodity in the one branch, but scarcely le fromage de Stilton in the other. An English lawyer's studies are not even now, except at the universities and for purposes of perfunctory examination, very much in "Justinian," and in Moore's time they were still less so. And if Bromham Church is near Sloperton, then it will follow as the night the day that it is not dans le Bedfordshire. But these things matter very little. They are found, in their different kinds, in all ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... name's Irene Beverley," volunteered Elsie Craig, in a perfunctory voice, as if she were performing an obvious duty ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... setting itself so feebly, so pitifully, to amend it; the shaping of communities, the social moralities, so distinct from, so adverse to the morality of nature—reflecting, as I say, on these things, Hugh became aware, with a growing astonishment, that though mankind attributed, in an easy and perfunctory way, all these phenomena to the creative hand of God, yet instead of trying to form a conception of Him and His dark thoughts from this legible and gigantic handwriting, which revealed so impenetrable, so imperturbable ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Good-by—bon voyage, Geordie," she cried, blowing a kiss to the lieutenant at the head of the second troop, a youth who blushed and looked confused at the attention thereby centered upon him, and who would fain have shaken his fist, rather than waved the one unoccupied hand in perfunctory reply. "When I go I'll choose a ship with a band and broad decks, not any such cramped old canal boat ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... go to the jury as the evidence was all in, and the final arguments of the attorneys, which had started the preceding day, would be concluded during the morning session. It had been conceded that the judge's charge would be brief and perfunctory, and there was even hope that the jury might return a verdict before the close of the afternoon session, but when Bince and his bride entered the court-room they found Torrance's attorney making a motion for the admission of new evidence on the strength of the recent discovery ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... be so. Fyne caught sight of an approaching tram-car and stepped out on the road to meet it. "Have you a more compassionate scheme ready?" I called after him. He made no answer, clambered on to the rear platform, and only then looked back. We exchanged a perfunctory wave of the hand. We also looked at each other, he rather angrily, I fancy, and I with wonder. I may also mention that it was for the last time. From that day I never set eyes on the Fynes. As usual the unexpected happened to me. It had nothing to do with Flora de Barral. The fact is ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... in discovering what he looked like and how he was dressed. 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 ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... all his faults he cannot be charged with the stupidity of his class, he must have known that he was talking nonsense. The truth is that as the official mouthpiece of the nation he was merely trying to excuse, in an official perfunctory way, the inexcusable behaviour of the ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... last half mile by Mihul who had fancied the looks of some shrub-cluttered ravines ahead. Trigger opened the door on her side. The gun-pup leaped lightly across the seat and came out behind her. He turned to look over his huntresses and gave them a wag, a polite but perfunctory one. Then he stood ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... been a man of more robust fiber, he would have returned his portfolio to Mr. Wilson as early as 1916, for the President was writing notes to the belligerents and did not, even as a perfunctory courtesy, consult his Secretary of State; he made it only too patent he did not consider his advice worth asking. Mr. Lansing was too fond of his official prominence to surrender it easily, and that is another curious thing about the man. Somewhat vain, holding himself in much higher estimation ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... nevertheless, was there ever 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 Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... light at her shoulder was reflected in the cut steel buckles of her slippers; she had slight but graceful ankles. He recognized this, drawing a sheaf of reports from his brief- case; but, after a perfunctory glance, he dropped them beside him ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... away toward dimness dimmer than that of the great hall, in the direction of that wing where rooms had been assigned him. A little rustle of pleased anticipation ran through the petticoats of the room. Interest ceased to be perfunctory and became genuine. This was more fun than doctrine, after all. Who wouldn't be gratified at the chance of meeting an astral body—at least in a crowd? Alone, in a dark room, at midnight, it ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... talk while he rested a few minutes, under his burden, propped against a rock. Lydia asked him after a sick grand-daughter. Her question showed knowledge—no perfunctory kindness. ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... behind the desk we approached grinned amiably and kept it up till, in answer to his perfunctory question, "Sign off and on again?" my Captain answered, "No! Signing off for good." And then his grin vanished in sudden solemnity. He did not look at me again till he handed me my papers with a sorrowful expression, as if they had been my passports ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... does not open; but there appears through it the indistinct figure of an elderly gentleman with a weak chin and a shifting eye. He stands irresolute and apprehensive; clearly his presence there is perfunctory. Wearing his hat and carrying a hand-bag, he seems merely to have looked in ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... bayonets begin flashing south of the Danube these heliographs of liberty will light a flame of revolt which second-rate German divisions will be unable to stamp out. With the ground burning under their feet the Teutons will probably evacuate Rumania with only the most perfunctory ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... twins, intensely excited, 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
... was distinctly less amicable than even on the last occasion of their meeting. They shook hands in rather a perfunctory way. ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... "and, as like as not, be slain by them for my pains. I tell you, brother, that I like it not. No, they are not here," he concluded, as he ran his hand along the tapestry in an exceedingly perfunctory manner without discovering any sign of the missing prisoners. "I am beginning to think, with you, Brother Jose, ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... first, he found it out of the question to think it over carefully. How could he, when, within himself, he knew that his feeling for the profession laid down before him by ancestral tradition and by his mother's constant urgings: that his feeling for the ministry was a perfunctory affection, a wholly different matter from the passionate desire that throbbed within him at the thought of giving up his life to scientific study. To preach ancient beliefs that no human power could verify, or to work on steadily, helping to broaden the field of truth, and proving ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... an interest begotten of pity. The girls whispered and prinked, and exchanged confidences with self-conscious airs. They paid but a perfunctory attention to the drill. It was clear they despised their instructress. Yet they seemed happy ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... was so, he, Wesley Thompson, twenty-five years of age and a minister of the gospel, was deeply in debt—unless he denied the justice of giving value for value received. He had received much; he had returned nothing except perfunctory thanks. And what had he to give? Even to him, transcendent as was his faith that the glory of man was but the reflected glory of God, that faith was not ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... majority of our fellow-citizens care as much about literature as they care about aeroplanes or the programme of the Legislature. They do not ignore it; they are not quite indifferent to it. But their interest in it is faint and perfunctory; or, if their interest happens to be violent, it is spasmodic. Ask the two hundred thousand persons whose enthusiasm made the vogue of a popular novel ten years ago what they think of that novel now, and you will gather that they have utterly forgotten it, and ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett
... A perfunctory glance into his pages will suffice to prove that he lacked what is called the ecclesiastical bent of mind. Reading between the lines, one soon discovers that his is not so much a priest as a statesman and philosopher, a student curious in the lore of mankind and of nature—alert, ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... and mischievous Grace Mainwaring appeared bent on being very friendly towards him—even while she looked curiously at him, as if there were something in her mind. Moreover, she seemed in excellent spirits; there was no perfunctory "drag" in her give-and-take speeches with the adventurous young gentleman whom fate had thrown in her way. He was very well pleased to find the scene going so well; he sang his share in the parting duet with unusual verve; she responded with equal animation; the crowded house ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... addressed the audience were eloquent enough, they were unprepared, and moreover, were conscious that their listeners were keeping one eye upon the door; in short, everybody present desired only to hear the two appointed speakers; so that the affair was most perfunctory. The minutes grew into hours, and these did not arrive. Mrs. Mason, Mrs. Bateman, even Mary Snow, were sent out to the platform to represent the woman's side, and although they were well received, the meeting broke up at eleven o'clock with a distinct sense of disappointment, not to say failure. ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow
... confinement in very close quarters during many months of darkness, extreme cold, inaction, ennui, constant peril, and the haunting uncertainty as to the future, been sufficiently taken into account? Perfunctory duties and occupations do not avert the effects of these conditions; they hardly mitigate them, and have been known to aggravate them. I do not consider the attainment of Dr. Nansen's object by the means ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... matter to determine the presence of increased venous pressure, although there are tolerably accurate instrumental technics, and yet, as Henderson points out, it is just this increased general venous pressure which is often detrimental. Therefore the perfunctory use of such drugs as nitrite of amyl and the other nitrites may not be in the least indicated when, for example, the venous pressure depends upon inability of the right heart to perform its functions, and the drug needed may, for example, ...
— Glaucoma - A Symposium Presented at a Meeting of the Chicago - Ophthalmological Society, November 17, 1913 • Various
... made by those very pastors who profess to be the warmest friends of and the most zealous insisters on the catechisation of every lamb in the flock. Thus we find not a few pastors who catechise their classes after the schoolmaster fashion. They go through the exercise in a perfunctory, formal manner. They insist on the letter of the text, and are satisfied if their pupils know the lessons well by rote! To urge on the dull and lazy pupil they will scold and rage, and even use the ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding
... Bill seen anything in that line which answered his expectations. Now, however, as he stood before the young gentleman, the fire-light fell on such a distinct growth of hair, that Bill's interest became absorbed to the exclusion of all but the most perfunctory attention to the lesson on hand. Would Master Arthur grow a beard? Would his mustache be short like the pictures of Prince Albert, or long and pointed like that of some other great man whose portrait he had seen ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... of the failure of men to realise their obligations to society or to large social aggregates are to be found in the careless and perfunctory manner in which persons employed by government, or by corporations, or large companies, often perform their duties. If they were in the service of a private employer, they would at all events realise, even if they did not ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... wide which has since taken place. Some of us would willingly have made shift to get on without a League of Nations could we have been saved from the disastrous consequence of action on the part of civilization in Siberia in 1918 having been so unjustifiably delayed, and its having taken so perfunctory a form. ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... who wore a velvet skull-cap and who was smoking a Pittsburg stogie, met the farmer at the counter and the two exchanged perfunctory greetings. ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... always been coldly indifferent to many things commonly counted chief matters of life. One of these was religion; another was woman. His punctuality at church at the head of Rosemont's cadets was so obviously perfunctory as to be without a stain of hypocrisy. Yet he never vaunted his scepticism, but only let it exhale from him in interrogative insinuations that the premises and maxims of religion were refuted by the outcome of the war. To woman his heart was as hard, cold, ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... consequently, 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 Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... days, a boundless sky, tinged with the hues of dawn, against which, upon the family tomb of the Moras, four allegorical figures stood forth, imploring, contemplative, pensive, the dying day exaggerating the sublimity of their attitudes. Naught remained of the orations, the perfunctory official condolences. The trampled grass all around, masons occupied in washing the spots of plaster from the threshold, were all ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... fancy his doing enough to amount to anything. He oughtn't to! But if it would make him any happier he should have his make-believe—yes, and without knowing it was make-believe. Doing things that were of no value to any one was so disheartening. She knew. Like perfunctory exercise for your health. ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... muttered the colonel, and, breathing heavily, he cursed his procrastination heartily to himself, threw discretion to the winds and hurried down to the Boyden box just as Gresham returned. His greeting to the other occupants was but perfunctory, and then he turned to Gresham with: "You haven't sold your property adjoining my factory, have ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... opened it and thrust it 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 the ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... her, for more than once she had talked about them; but the Terror, in a tone of somewhat perfunctory politeness, said: ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... 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 Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... occurrence during my first talk with Tars Tarkas, convinced me that we had at least something in common; the ability to smile, therefore to laugh; denoting a sense of humor. But I was to learn that the Martian smile is merely perfunctory, and that the Martian laugh is a thing to cause strong men to blanch ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... in front of the lumber pile and ignoring Purdy entirely, raised his Stetson to the girl. The direct cutting of Purdy had been obviously rude and Alice Marcum felt an increasing dislike for the man. She returned his greeting with a perfunctory nod and instantly felt her face grow hot with anger. The Texan was laughing at her—was regarding her ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... Recrutement, and there Max was received by a lieutenant, older than most of the men of that rank in the English or American armies. Something in his manner made Max wonder if the officer had been told of him and his intention by Colonel DeLisle. At first he put only the perfunctory questions which a man entering the wide-open gate of the Legion may answer as he chooses. But when in its turn came an inquiry as to the recruit's profession, the officer looked at Max sharply yet ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... will find at every turn allusions calling for explanation, philosophical doctrines to be traced to their sources, judgements on contemporary persons and events to be verified. On every page they will meet with problems the solution of which has not yet been attempted, or attempted only in the most perfunctory way. For generation after generation readers have gone on accepting received interpretations which only tell them what their own wits could divine without any other assistance than the text itself gives. No commentator seems yet to have realised that, in order to understand Dante thoroughly, ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... the air more or less of an habitue of the house; and when the conversation began again, the Elsmeres found it very hard, in spite of certain perfunctory efforts on the part of Madame de Netteville, to ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... seasons of the year, and in some waters, to the fisherman's surprise and confusion, the fish will sometimes take his bare hook; a bit of a red rag is a deadly bait. And Madam Bubble's poorest and most perfunctory busking is quite enough for the foolish fish she angles for. And not in our salad days only, when we are still green in judgment, but even to grey hairs, this wicked witch continues to entrap us to our ruin. Love, in all its phases and in all its mixtures, ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... of a nation as of an individual to discharge its debts depends of course upon its resources. No man possessing even a perfunctory knowledge of the resources of Japan would surely venture to express alarm at the increase in her debt and scepticism as to her being able to meet the annual interest on that debt as well as the constantly increasing ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... if hating to seem preoccupied, took up the evening paper to help himself to seem indifferent. As he glanced over it he threw off some perfunctory allusion to the crisis—the political—which enabled Longmore to reply with perfect veracity that, with other things to think about, he had had no attention to spare for it. And yet our hero was in truth far from secure against rueful reflexion. The Count's ruffled state ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... performed the introduction, she put down her beer from which she had been somewhat thirstily drinking and received Hanson with a perfunctory bow and a brief mechanical smile. "Think of settling here?" ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... but if now they received orders, they would not carry them out with the prompt, alert movements to which they had been trained during the last two years. They took things more leisurely now. The drill which had been thrashed into them already began to be forgotten; only a perfunctory obedience remained. ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... to Olga; it was her only love letter. She had never written to Karl before, except in the conventional boy and girl fashion, when she did not know how to express love. Her correspondence with Herman had always been of the most perfunctory sort. Never before had she poured out her soul as she did in this letter. Now she wanted to see what she had written; to read it over with the man ...
— The Devil - A Tragedy of the Heart and Conscience • Joseph O'Brien
... tell me her name and address?" whispered the banker. He was much given to charity, but it had been perfunctory, it was extended on the advice of his secretary. In helping here, he felt a genial glow of personal pleasure. It was much more satisfactory than giving an Old ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... tones, as though the habit of perfunctory utterance had robbed her voice of more spontaneous accents; but her smile was charming. They sat down on a stone bench under the ilexes, and she told him how much pleasure his essay had given her. She ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... [with a perfunctory glance at the scene] Yes, dear; but take care you don't catch your death of ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... perfunctory way, climbing the crooked, narrow stairs, dismissing Andrews—looking over the rooms—dismissing them, so to speak, and then remaining after the rest had gone to reveal to her a new abnormal mood—that, ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... apparently was to happen as she had taken for granted it would. There was an inviolable hush over the whole affair, but no tragedy, no publicity, nothing ugly. The tragedy had been in town—the faces of the two men spoke of it in spite of their other perfunctory aspects; and at present there was only a family dinner, with Beatrice and Muriel and the governess—with almost a company tone too, the result of the desire to avoid publicity. Adela admired her father; she knew ...
— The Marriages • Henry James
... hardly restrain myself. But, nevertheless, was there ever 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 earliest ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... 13th of November. Gallagher was on the witness stand. He testified with the listlessness of many repetitions to the sordid facts of San Francisco's betrayal by venal public servants. It was all more or less perfunctory. Everyone had heard the tale from one to half a ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... he had offered his hand almost unconsciously, and the greeting was embarrassed and perfunctory; but his two companions, each in turn, gravely followed his lead, and Joe's set face flushed a little. It was the first time in many years that men of their kind in Canaan had ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... and puffy, with a heavy look about the eyes, and a general appearance of senility. He wore a wig. The remarks he made have gone from my memory. They were not of such a character as to leave much of an impression, and consisted mostly of a sort of perfunctory exhortation to the troops to do ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... to say, in all three respects—by Spenser. His verse, 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, in its general features imitated from Boccaccio. ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... has fallen. The theatres are all full, but not 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 the time in the midst of Parsifal's mystical moments. ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... that the beautiful system of Berkeley should have appeared in an unspiritual age, when religion was mundane and perfunctory, and the free spirit, where it stirred, was romantic and wilful. For that system was essentially religious: it put the spirit face to face with God, everywhere, always, and in everything it turned experience into a divine language for the monition ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... he scratched his chin with the other. 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
... three references to Borrow in Stevenson's writings, all of them perfunctory. These are in Memories and Portraits ('A Gossip on a novel of Dumas''), in Familiar Studies of Men and Books ('Some aspects of Robert Burns'), ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... Apparently all or most of the guards got off at the checkpoint. Did that mean that another detachment of guards got on? Probably. And a checkpoint implied that the ship was searched for escaped prisoners. It was probably only a perfunctory search, since no prisoner had escaped in the history of Omega. Still, he would have to figure out ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... dedicated to him by King Bhadravarman. Thus the practice of combining the names of a king and his patron deity in one appellation existed in Champa at this early date.[350] It is also recorded from southern India, Camboja and Java. Besides Siva one of the inscriptions venerates, though in a rather perfunctory manner, Uma, Brahma, Vishnu and the five elements. Several inscriptions[351] give details of Sivaite theology which agree with what we know of it in Camboja. The world animate and inanimate is an emanation ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... 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 musicians ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... that they should pause near Mona, who stood talking with Lora Sayre and Jack Pennington. Patty's quick eyes saw that Mona was ill at ease, and that the others were including her in their conversation merely through a perfunctory politeness. ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... remunerative practice for the education of young men in his profession. His interests extended beyond his legal labors, for he was well known through his scholarly investigations in the early history of the State. His courses, which might so easily have been perfunctory, were on a par with those of his distinguished confreres, stimulating and profound and sometimes punctuated with a dry wit, well illustrated by his epigram that "some men live by their practice and some ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... vitch you?" he called out from the parlor, in English, with a perfunctory snarl. Presently he came into the living-room. "Well, are you satisfied with your new palace?" he addressed me in Yiddish. And for the hundredth time he proceeded to make jokes at the various modern "improvements," ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... would jump upon it at once with that strange access of apparently personal animosity with seems in some mysterious way a characteristic of all hunting carnivorous animals. She would then carelessly wind a thread or two about it, in a perfunctory way, bury her jaws in its body, and in less than half a minute suck out its juices to the last drop, leaving the empty shell unhurt, like a dry skeleton or the slough of a dragon-fly larva. But when wasps ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... only in the bankrupt himself, but in those around him, and naturally unfolding itself through a series of those lesser crises, which we call interesting and moving scenes. The play is scarcely a great one, partly because its ending is perfunctory, partly because Bjoernson, poet though he was, had not Ibsen's art of "throwing in a little poetry" into his modern dramas. I have summarized it up to its culminating point, because it happened to illustrate the difference between a bankruptcy, dramatic in its nature and treatment, and those ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... as stiff as those that pass between a visiting statesman and the local yeomanry at a rural reception. Lawrence, Paul, and Alec undoubtedly hated this perfunctory annual tribute to the head of the house of Montgomery, but Amzi liked the perpetuation of his father's house as a family center. It did not matter that greed and sentimentalism were back of his sisters' stubborn devotion to the ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... said Peter, "like the 'thank you' of a servant dissatisfied with his tip. It's the very least he can do. It's perfunctory—I 'm not sure ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... fairly. I smooth his back of little vegetable bits that cling there, shake out the saddle blanket and tenderly adjust it. Whistling carelessly I swing up the saddle. Dandy Jim flinches pitifully when it rests upon him and reaches swiftly round to bite my arm off. I think this is quite perfunctory on his part. He must have learned long since that he will never really bite any one's arm off. His neck is ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... remained, but the embarrassment eventually passed away. He spoke in his natural voice and retained his actual manner. When the action required him to laugh, he did so, exhibiting his characteristic perfunctory smile. ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... and by numberless institutions. It seems to be regarded by the best judges as, on the whole, the best school history of the United States yet published. It was written and not simply compiled. The author did not take it for granted that a history of our country must be a perfunctory work made up from previous histories and merely iterating an old set of facts, ideas, and stories. The book is a panorama of the leading events of our history, with their causes and results clearly traced. Attention has been given to all ...
— The Beginner's American History • D. H. Montgomery
... for a moment suggested it. I admit that I had not hitherto seen an Assyrian officer making love on the edge of his grave and so had no exact precedent to go by, but this officer, with his face far too well groomed for the conclusion of a heavy banquet, and those rather anaemic and perfunctory gestures of endearment, which had nothing to do with the sombre forces of elemental passion, gave no hint of the sinister workings ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 14, 1919 • Various
... from the Negro—to transport him to Africa, to the West, to the North! The cry is, "the white man's supremacy" at any price. Now, again, is the time for Lincoln's motto, "keep pegging away," and that not merely in a perfunctory way, but by pushing more and more vigorously. In this moral warfare, volunteers must be encouraged. There is no need of special bounties, nor of drafting; only furnish the means to meet the meagre salaries, and the recruits will crowd to the field in abundance, but their numbers must be ...
— The American Missionary - Vol. 44, No. 3, March, 1890 • Various
... prepared young men for Cambridge, it was thought that, as I was to go to Oxford, it would be better that I should study under an Oxford man. I never had the slightest natural bent for mathematics, though I did the tasks that were imposed upon me in a perfunctory manner, and with sufficient accuracy just to ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... 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 ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... In making her perfunctory reply, Caroline never imagined for one moment that her own healthy appetite was often satisfied at Miss Ethel's expense. She had bargained for food, and food was there; and there was an end of it. But the front-door ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... often enter the streams at concentrated points, that the streams can no longer digest them without help. Too often, in the face of uncontrolled human increase and expansion, that help has either been denied them or has been weak and perfunctory. The result is plain enough now in the sorry mess of sick or dead or dying waters that we Americans have on our hands, the heritage of having kept on taking them for granted long after we had bred ourselves out of ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... shortly she must control herself because the dinner-bell would ring and she must go. To stay and send the conventional excuse of a headache would bring her husband up to her, and although he was so full of his own affairs that the questions that he would ask her would be perfunctory and absent-minded, she felt that she could not endure, just now, to be alone ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... what seemed to me a rather perfunctory physical examination, which included a very minute inspection of my eyes. Then he put me through a series of psychological test queries. When he had finished he sighed deeply and said: "I am sorry to find that you ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... Eleanor presented a perfunctory cheek over the banisters, taking care that it was not the one that had been kissed a few ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... made no sound. Constance after a moment's hesitation came nearer still, and bending forward kissed her cheek, not in a perfunctory way, but with a lingering, loving kiss; and after the kiss she still lingered close, so that the breath from her lips came warm and fragrant on the other's cold pale cheek. But her mother spoke no word, and remained cold and motionless as a statue, until with a slight sigh and ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... golden 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
... come in?" 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 see whether ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... a little shock of pain, that her mother had never been very near to her and that Miss Stearne might well perform such perfunctory duties as the girl had been accustomed to expect. But no one could ever take the ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... together into the waiting-room, and there at the farther end of it, beyond the vulgar, perfunctory chairs and tables, under the flaring gas, he saw Mrs. Tarrant sitting upright on a sofa, with immense rigidity, and a large flushed visage, full of suppressed distortion, and beside her prostrate, fallen over, her head buried ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... rank-worshipping Bostonians thought it would be indispensable to have Mr. Lowell's co-operation, and waited his return from Europe. When Mr. Lowell was appealed to be had nothing to say,—he wanted rest! And Boston had nothing to say on that grand occasion, though Boston has a perfunctory Peace Society! ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... Good-byes were perfunctory in the morning, and nobody seemed heartbroken at parting from the Turnour family. The big luggage, packed early and in haste, was sent on to Paris; and when the chauffeur had disposed of Bertie's additions to the Aigle's load, ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... 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 ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... London he saw what he could of her, sacrificing many a Sunday's outing with the theatre folk. Jane, instinctively aware of this, and finding in his demeanour, after examining it with femininely jealous, microscopic eyes, nothing perfunctory, was duly grateful, and gave him of her girlish best. She developed very quickly after her entrance into the world of struggle. Very soon it was the woman and not the child who listened to the marvellous ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... the folio on Weald, of course, but as the ship swam onward through emptiness he went through it again. The last medical inspection had been only perfunctory. Twelve years earlier—instead of three—a Med Ship had landed on Weald. There had been official conferences with health officials. There was a report on the birth rate, the death rate, the anomaly rate, and a breakdown of all reported communicable diseases. But that was ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... stint &c. (begrudge) 819; put on short allowance. do insufficiently &c. adv.; scotch the snake. Adj. insufficient, inadequate; too little &c. 32; not enough &c. 639; unequal to; incompetent &c. (impotent) 158; " weighed in the balance and found wanting "; perfunctory &c. (neglect) 460; deficient &c. (incomplete) 53; wanting, &c. v.; imperfect &c. 651; ill-furnished, ill-provided, ill- stored, ill-off. slack, at a low ebb; empty, vacant, bare; short of, out of, destitute of, devoid of , bereft of &c. 789; denuded of; dry, drained. unprovided, unsupplied[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... came through the hall. All there was dark and still, though he doubted much that Graham's sedatives had yet prevailed. He had left the two men opposite the doorway. He found them at the south end of the piazza, their heads together. They straightened up to perfunctory talk about the Medical Director, his drastic methods and inflammable ways; but the mirth was forced, the humor far too dry. Then silence fell. Then Plume ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... less amicable than even on the last occasion of their meeting. They shook hands in rather a perfunctory way. ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... associates were the Noakeses, the contortionist and two or three rather engaging acrobats. As for the women of the company, he had but little to do with them, except in the most perfunctory way. He was always polite, gallant and agreeable, and they made much over him when the opportunity presented itself. They were warm-hearted and demonstrative, sometimes to such an exaggerated degree that he was embarrassed. He was some time in getting accustomed ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... returning their salutes with a perfunctory bow, but recollect little else, for now that my time was so near, a numbness seemed to cloud my brain and I could think only that this little copse, full of the grey mist of dawn, was perhaps the last object my ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... another. The barrier slowly rising between them was not yet cemented by lack of affection on either side, but rather by lack of belief in the other's affection. Helen imagined Thorpe's interest in her becoming daily more perfunctory. Thorpe fancied his sister cold, unreasoning, and ungrateful. As yet this was but the vague dust of a cloud. They could not forget that, but for each other, they were alone in the world. Thorpe delayed his ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... below that, are all a glorious indigo flushed with rose colour from "the death of the night," as Kiva used to call the dawn. No one stirring till six, when people come out of the huts, and stretch themselves and proceed to begin the day, in the African's usual perfunctory, listless way. ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... Carrissima up-stairs, blowing out his red cheeks and beating his cold hands together with considerable energy. Going to the fire, he stood on the hearthrug warming his palms and making perfunctory inquiries after Lawrence and Phoebe and ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... once ablaze with zeal for the civil and political rights of the southern negro, heard the march of this exultant southern crusade with equanimity, with indifference, almost with sympathy. Perfunctory efforts were made in Congress to secure investigation of negro disfranchisement, but they evoked ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... journalism, and to show that women have failed in the treatment of them to reach even a moderate standard of competence. Look, for another instance, at the reports of weddings and society entertainments, all done after one execrable model, dull and perfunctory. ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett
... summer of 1771 he returned to Frankfurt once more, this time with the title of licentiate in law, and began to practise in a perfunctory way, with his heart in his literary projects. By the end of the year he had written out the first draft of a play which he afterwards revised and published anonymously (in 1773) under the title of Goetz von Berlichingen. By its exuberant fulness of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... chops and baked potatoes. Every woman in the neighborhood, every policeman, knew Jim and Derry Gregory; their morning walks were so many separate little adventures in popularity. But Warren, beyond paternal greetings at breakfast, and an occasional perfunctory query as to their health, made no attempt to enter into their lives. They were still too small to interest their father except as good ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... advanced in worldly affairs, and lost in spiritual life, a superficial piety, proceeding from them and from their movement, crept into society, both in town and country—a sort of perfunctory formalism, which seemed ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... d'tat. Removal to Yale. New energy in study and reading. Influence of Emerson, Carlyle, and Ruskin. Yale in 1850. My disappointment at the instruction; character of president and professors; perfunctory methods in lower-class rooms; "gerund-grinding'' vs. literature; James Hadley—his abilities and influence, other professors; influence of President Woolsey, Professors Porter, Silliman, and Dana; absence of literary instruction; ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... was brief and perfunctory, for the case seemed too easy to warrant his exertion. Still stimulated by the emotion aroused by her own speech and the sense of the righteousness of her cause, Katherine watched the jury go out with a fluttering hope. She still clung to hope when, after a short absence, the jury filed ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... his son. In the childish maladies with which the boy was troubled, he would make daily inquiries and daily pay him a visit, entering the sick-room with a facetious and appalling countenance, letting off a few perfunctory jests, and going again swiftly, to the patient's relief. Once, a court holiday falling opportunely, my lord had his carriage, and drove the child himself to Hermiston, the customary place of convalescence. It is ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with 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 of which he would be pleased to show ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... a duty as well as a pleasure for me to keep up my acquaintance with persons worth knowing; and, while many of the visits thus made were perfunctory and tedious, some were especially gratifying. My rule was, after office hours in the afternoon, to get into the open sledge; to make my visits; and as a result, of course, to see and hear a vast deal ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... the roaring of his own laughter and the echoes of his own vociferous voice. He was telling a story—a funny story, about what Rosella, with her thoughts on "Patroclus," could not for the life of her have said, and she must needs listen in patience and with perfunctory merriment while the narrative was conducted to its close with all the accompaniment of stamped ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... of the question to think it over carefully. How could he, when, within himself, he knew that his feeling for the profession laid down before him by ancestral tradition and by his mother's constant urgings: that his feeling for the ministry was a perfunctory affection, a wholly different matter from the passionate desire that throbbed within him at the thought of giving up his life to scientific study. To preach ancient beliefs that no human power could verify, or to work on steadily, helping to broaden the field of truth, and proving all ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... unornamentally plodding in the rear with the plaids about their bowed shoulders and the drop at their snuffy nose—I thought I would rather claim kinship with the dogs than with the men! My sympathy was unreturned; in their eyes I was a creature light as air; and they would scarce spare me the time for a perfunctory caress or perhaps a hasty lap of the wet tongue, ere they were back again in sedulous attendance on those dingy deities, their masters—and their masters, as like ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... insisted, at the risk of seeming repetitious, on the need of considering the audience whose minds are to be won over; for what persuasiveness can mean apart from specific persons to persuade I cannot conceive. Much of the perfunctory emptiness of the textbooks when they get to this part of the subject comes from neglecting this very practical and obvious side of making an argument. The difficulty it raises for arguments written in class ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... Earl's Court of a different genre, her career, sentimental, financial and matrimonial, is told with amazing vivacity but a rather conspicuous lack of emotional appeal. It is perhaps an unequal book; in parts as good as the author's best, in others hurried and perfunctory. One of our more superior Reviews was lately debating Mr. MACKENZIE'S command of the "memorable phrase." There are a score here that I should delight to quote, even if the setting is not ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various
... between Serafino and me. He was not a perfunctory guide. He never grew tired. When five o'clock would come and the day was really ended I would say: "Well I must be back now. Little Reverdy is coming over for an early dinner." "Ah, but just this one picture," he would say, "it will only take a few minutes. I want you to see this. It is a great ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... Constable of Zenda. Sapt was covered with dust and mud, and James, who entered close on his heels, was in no better plight. Evidently they had ridden hard and furiously; indeed they were still panting. Sapt, with a most perfunctory bow to the queen, came straight ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... Turner, nothing loath, deserted his comfortable seat by the side of Miss Josephine Stevens, and strode forth to the mound, leaving the unfortunate Princeman to take his place by the side of Miss Stevens and give her an opportunity to sympathize with his poor maimed pitching hand, which, after a perfunctory moment of interest, she was too busy to do; for Jack Turner and Sam Turner, smiling across at each other in mutual confidence and esteem, proceeded to strike out the next three batters in succession, leaving men cemented to first and second bases, where they had been wildly ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... and eyes to his. He leaned forward and imprinted the perfunctory cousinly kiss of the ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... the mist into rose vapour; the mirror became a greenish black, shining like polished metal. She looked out upon this scene with a sense of restful fascination. It was the first sunrise of its kind this woman—to whom morning meant the perfunctory drawing of her bedroom curtains—had seen for years. It was as if she had been transported to a new world, shutting out the other world she had known so well—the world in which she had fluttered so successfully, spending ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... hurried down the steps, across the muddy sidewalk, and into the waiting vehicle which had been driven up before the house. Once inside, Neil was safe from detection, for the hack, the shades drawn up before the windows, was as dark as Egypt. Neil sighed his relief, muttered a few perfunctory threats from behind the uncomfortable folds of the ill-smelling robe, and, with one fellow sitting on his chest and three others holding his legs, felt ...
— Behind the Line • Ralph Henry Barbour
... heavens is but a poor perfunctory conception, for all that the highest and cleverest among us have done their very utmost to decorate and embellish it, and make life there seem worth living. So impossible it is to imagine or invent beyond ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... truth. The restored Church contended indeed against the prevailing immorality, but contended feebly, and with half a heart. It was necessary to the decorum of her character that she should admonish her erring children: but her admonitions were given in a somewhat perfunctory manner. Her attention was elsewhere engaged. Her whole soul was in the work of crushing the Puritans, and of teaching her disciples to give unto Caesar the things which were Caesar's. She had been pillaged and oppressed by the party which preached an austere morality. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... sorrow-stricken; to strengthen the weak, and edify believers An advocate in a criminal trial puts his grip on every juryman's ear So must every herald of Gospel-truth demand and command a hearing, cost what it may: but that hearing he never will secure while he addresses an audience in a cold, formal, perfunctory manner. Certainly the great apostle at Ephesus aimed at the emotions and the conscience as well as the reason of his hearers when he "ceased not to warn them night and day with tears." I cannot impress it too strongly on every young minister that the delivery of his sermon is half the ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... him off to church, giving Horrocleave a perfunctory good-bye. And as, shoulder to shoulder, they descended towards St. Luke's, she looked sideways at Louis and fed her passion stealthily with the sight. True, even in those moments, she had heart enough left to think ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... reflection of the things described. Even hand-books, the way-clearing lictors of travel, prove, as to the Pyrenees region, first scarce and then scanty. The few we unearth in the stores are armed only with the usual perfunctory fasces of facts,—cording information into stiff, labeled bunches, marshaling details into cramped and characterless order, scrutinizing the ground with a microscope, never surveying it in bird's-eye view. Two recent novels we eagerly buy, hearing that their scenes are laid in that vicinity; but ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... produced two neat little packets that, on 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
... place (vol. vi. 134) we read of "Taban-jatayn," a pair of pistols; the word, which is still popular, being a corruption of the Persian "Tabancheh" a slap or blow, even as the French call a derringer coup de poing. The characteristic of this Recueil is its want of finish. The stories are told after perfunctory fashion as though the writer had not taken the trouble to work out the details. There are no names or titles to the tales, so that every translator must give his own; and the endings are equally unsatisfactory, they usually content themselves, after "native" fashion, with "Intiha" finis, and ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... in her thoughts that the stir and rustle of the congregation issuing from their seats at the conclusion of the service came upon her in the light of a surprise; she had not realised that the service—in which she had been taking a reprehensible perfunctory part—had drawn to its close, and she almost jumped when Joan nudged her unobtrusively ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... brought very low, for his once manly voice was weak and his tones were desponding. Never before, perhaps, was prayer offered in a more familiar or less perfunctory manner. ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... sent the ticket for Nancy's fare to Clintondale. Her modest trunk was packed. Miss Prentice bade her a perfunctory good-bye. It was a cold farewell, indeed, to the only home the girl could remember and in which she had lived for at least three-quarters of ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... characteristic of them was the fact that no one did so. The awful reverence for death which would have impelled an Englishman of almost any social position to feel indignation and instantly put a stop to what he would consider a profanation, was absolutely unknown to all those engaged in that perfunctory rite. A certain amount of trouble and disturbance would have been caused by dislodging the culprit, and each man there felt only this; that it didn't matter a straw, and that there was no reason for him to take the trouble of noticing it. As ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... in a rather perfunctory tone, considering his vehemence of a moment earlier. All the fire seemed suddenly to have ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... he 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 ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson
... had not taken her vindictive eyes off her younger niece, and the latter in sheer desperation plunged into an animated but very perfunctory conversation with her ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... that huge force given to the service of the Humanity which Jesus Christ has taken up into the Godhead. For the man that loves much is a Socialist, and the man that loves most is a saint, and every man that truly loves the brotherhood is in a state of salvation."[1032] These words seem rather perfunctory and laboured. ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... 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 ahead of a ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... veil had defeated the news camera levelled at her poor scarred face, was the first witness called by Coroner Price, and she was required for the single purpose of identifying the body as that of her mistress. To two perfunctory questions—"Have you any information to give this jury regarding the cause and manner of the deceased's death?" and "Have you any personal knowledge of the identity of any person, man or woman, of whom the deceased stood in fear of her life?"—Lydia answered ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... at hearing my own name correctly given was only equaled by the admiration I also felt for my companion's complete and absolute assurance. Mr. Cullen and I exchanged a perfunctory handshake, which left me without any change ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... into fashion," Julia explained; "the Mission is a wonderful place for gardens. And the change in my mother is more marked," she went on, with perfunctory pleasantness; "you would hardly know her. She is much thinner, of course, but so bright and contented, ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... human liberty, no one can fail to observe that the attitude of the two great political parties of to-day, is practically that of the two principal parties at the time the Abolitionists began their operations. One of them may pass perfunctory resolutions against the Philippine crime, but dares to say nothing about the treatment visited upon the negro. The other may say a few compassionate, but meaningless, words for the negro, but cannot denounce the oppression of the Filipinos. Both are fatally handicapped by their ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... an' git aboard," said the skipper, leaning on his stick and turning his cheek to his daughter, who obediently gave him a perfunctory kiss on the left eyebrow, and ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... towards Jehovah, betrayed by him in that one word: 'the Lord thy God,' No wonder that he had been content with a partial and perfunctory obedience, if he had no closer sense of connection with God than that! There is almost a sneer in it, too, as if he had said, 'What needs all this fuss about saving the cattle? You should be pleased; for this Jehovah, with whom you profess ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... events not too soothing to English feelings, and partly from the unpopularity which that honest herb still suffers on American soil. Coffee, yes; coffee at all times; but no one will take any but the most perfunctory interest in the preparation of tea. I found the harbour; I traversed wharf after wharf; but found no visible record of the most momentous act of jettison since Jonah. In the top room, however, of Faneuil Hall, in the Honourable Artillery Company's headquarters, ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... the management of our Forest Reserves left to a Land Office already busy, already doubted, when we have organized and equipped a Bureau of Forestry consisting of trained, enthusiastic and honest men? Reluctantly the transfer was made. The forestry men picked up the tangle that incompetent, perfunctory and often venal management ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... pictures and spent hours seated smoking at the doors of cafes, where there were flies and yellow curtains, on the shady side of sleepy little squares. In spite of these pastimes, which were mechanical and perfunctory, I scantily enjoyed my journey: there was too strong a taste of the disagreeable in my life. I had been devilish awkward, as the young men say, to be found by Miss Bordereau in the dead of night examining the attachment of her bureau; and it had not been less so to have to believe for a good ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... 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)
... very simplest and smallest of jumps. This excess of precaution necessitated many a detour, but neither of the two seemed anxious to make up for lost time by putting on extra speed to catch up with their friends; and the interest in the pursuit of the fox was of so perfunctory a nature that it often seemed more by chance than by design that they took the right turnings ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... in any scandal, or to be recklessly extravagant, like so many rich men. On the other hand, I couldn't find that he'd done any particular good in the world. Some charities were mentioned, but they were perfunctory, apparently, and I don't believe, from the accounts, that he ever really INTERESTED himself in any one—that he ever really cared ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... treasurer and council, resident in England, and appointed and controlled by the freemen assembled in general court. The little colony in Virginia was but an adjunct to the company, and its management was left, without other than conventional and perfunctory restrictions, to the treasurer and council, subject to the approval of the freemen. The first treasurer was Sir Thomas Smythe, who was also the first president of the East India Company, a great merchant in his day, whose influence ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... went in, found his hat, and told Mrs. Gaynor good-night. She was glad that he was going, and he knew it though she made the obvious perfunctory remark. Gloria saw and ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... nothing of Homer and Virgil. Plato is denounced still more unsparingly. From Aristotle and Diogenes down to Lord Chatham, assailants are set on to worry him, and tear to pieces his gorgeous robes with just an occasional perfunctory apology. Even Lady Jane Grey is deprived of her favourite. She consents on Ascham's petition to lay aside books, but she excepts Cicero, Epictetus, Plutarch, and Polybius: the 'others I do resign;' they ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... 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. Tell them that you have seen the proclamation, signed by the Field-Marshal himself, ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... the prostitute chiefly because it gives her patron a false sense of security. Even the most elaborate and painstaking examination—and such is not bestowed upon the prostitute—may fail to detect a woman's lurking infectiousness; the perfunctory, routine examination actually made affords but a feeble protection to the patron. Moreover, at the first cohabitation after such examination she may acquire disease which she may transmit to every subsequent patron, until it is perhaps discovered ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... tucking back locks of hair and in rearranging the folds of her long, Japanese kimono, and managed to fall into a languidly indifferent attitude by the time Chester opened the door. Behind him came Ford; Miss Josephine moved her lips and tilted her head in a perfunctory greeting, and afterward gave him no more attention than if he had been a Pullman porter assisting with her suitcases. For the matter of that, she gave quite as much attention as she received from him—and Mason's lips twitched betrayingly ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... sort of perfunctory supper together, and I think it cheered us all up somewhat. It was, perhaps, the mere animal heat of food to hungry people, for none of us had eaten anything since breakfast, or the sense of companionship may have helped us, but anyhow we were all less miserable, and saw the morrow ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... of his cases cleared up in a brief few hours of intensive effort. He covered every inch of the floor within the illuminated area; then he turned his attention to the walls and furniture and the rest of the room in somewhat more perfunctory, but no less skillful manner. Fully fifteen minutes elapsed, but I knew from his expression that he had discovered nothing. In a wringing perspiration from the heat of the arcs, but nevertheless glad to have had the intense light at his disposal, he motioned to the electrician ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... has got to," exclaimed Lady Eynesford, after a perfunctory search; "but it's too hot to hunt. Sit down here in the verandah. Eleanor has probably concealed herself somewhere to read the last debate. She takes such an interest in all your ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... 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 ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... nursery, when she did go there, were brief and perfunctory. And the mischief of it was that she always presented such admirable reasons for abstaining from Bill's society, when it was suggested to her that she should go to him, that it was impossible to bring her out into the open and ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... minister's perfunctory congratulations. When he called her "Mrs. Marsh," Rosemary instinctively looked toward Madame, then laughed and blushed when she understood. Madame took the girl into her arms as she came down from the altar. "Dear daughter!" she said. ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... of the gossip bees the person most acutely concerned heard little or nothing. Griswold's intimation to Raymer that he wished only to be a silent partner had been made in good faith; and beyond a few purely perfunctory visits to the plant across the railroad tracks, made because Raymer had insisted that he go over the books and learn for himself the exact condition of the business into which he had put his money, Griswold took no more than an advisory part ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... went through the usual ceremony, announcing that he was most happy, etc., in the perfunctory style that a million other men follow every day. Then he took the chair that was offered him, and gave an order for his ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... instances the British army must wait for material if navy demands were unsatisfied. With the tide of fortune going against the Russians and French on the Continent, the original agreement for only 120,000 men became entirely perfunctory, in view of the tragic necessity of more troops to be thrown against the Central Powers on the Continent. With a large proportion of her regular officers killed in the first two months of the war, Britain had to undertake the preparation of a vast army without adequate drill ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... moved away. He walked into the front room, looked in the cupboard, glanced round and went downstairs. On the first floor, he made a perfunctory inspection of the rooms, glancing in at my bedroom, and then went down to the ground floor. From thence the two officers descended to the cellar, which they examined more thoroughly, even prodding the sawdust in the bin, and so up to the back yard. Here, at the sight of the guys, the sergeant's ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... said Gerrard, with a perfunctory smile. "You don't think me altogether a coward, Bob? There is something evil about the atmosphere of this place. I felt it as I rode in ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... and other prominent Imperialists have, of course, defended their master; but their apologies, it is felt, were somewhat perfunctory and half-hearted. In allusion to the lamented demise of the Dowager Empress, it was pointed out that pity and loyalty alike should forbid trampling on a Ruler bowed down by repeated domestic bereavements; and attempts were made to enlist sympathy for the Imperial Orphan. ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... fellow-citizens care as much about literature as they care about aeroplanes or the programme of the Legislature. They do not ignore it; they are not quite indifferent to it. But their interest in it is faint and perfunctory; or, if their interest happens to be violent, it is spasmodic. Ask the two hundred thousand persons whose enthusiasm made the vogue of a popular novel ten years ago what they think of that novel now, and you will gather that they have utterly forgotten it, and that they would no more ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... daughter in the West, but they had now been so many years apart that they had ceased to feel any need of each other's society, and their intercourse had long been limited to the exchange of a few perfunctory letters, written with indifference by the daughter, and with difficulty by Mrs. Manstey, whose right hand was growing stiff with gout. Even had she felt a stronger desire for her daughter's companionship, Mrs. Manstey's ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... dissatisfaction with Montelupo's execution of the two statues finally committed to his charge, and we know from documents that the man was ill when they were finished. Still we can hardly excuse the master himself for the cold and perfunctory performance of a task which had such animated and heroic beginnings. Competent judges, who have narrowly surveyed the monument, say that the stones are badly put together, and the workmanship is defective in important requirements of the sculptor-mason's ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
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