|
|
|
More "Perfunctory" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... there, the horse, which had been cropping in a perfunctory manner at the short grass by the roadside, raised its head, and neighed impatiently. There was something so human about the performance that Jimmy and the girl laughed simultaneously. The utter materialism of the neigh broke the spell. It was ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... commonly 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 rod! The ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding
... 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 life, its ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... class and the vital needs of the Park as a public institution, {p.075} give especial emphasis to the recommendation made by Secretary Ballinger on his last annual report. Owing to the great number and extent of the National Parks, and the inefficiency of the present "perfunctory policy" in their administration, Mr. Ballinger asked Congress to put the management of these institutions under a Bureau of National Parks, conducted by a competent commissioner, and organized for efficient field administration and careful ...
— The Mountain that was 'God' • John H. Williams
... to the Old Louvre were by no means perfunctory, but he saw possibilities greater than he was able to perform with the means at hand. He first razed the central tower, or donjon, and scarce before the departure of his royal guest, was already dreaming of replacing the entire fabric with another which should bear the ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... his perfunctory "delighted, I'm sure, etc.," she said, quite clearly: "Oh, now I remember. I was sure I had seen you before, Mr. Barnes. You are the magic gentleman who sprung like a mushroom out of the ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... spread three thick slices of wheat bread with molasses from a cup, and sat down at the table. After the simple repast was over, she led the still reluctant (constitutionally reluctant) twins up the staircase and put them, shrieking, on a bed; left the room, locking the door behind her in a perfunctory sort of way as if it were an everyday occurrence, crouched down on the rug outside, and, leaning her head back against the wall, took her doll from under her skirt, for this was her playtime, her ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... in this expedition was probably purely perfunctory. So far as we know, this family, which had by this time risen to a position of great influence, was in no respect military, and the appointment of Umakai as chief of the forces sent against the Ainos was due to the political prominence of his family. ...
— Japan • David Murray
... stairs, answering friendly salutes at every turn. As at all times with the King in residence, the halls, corridors, and ante-rooms were like those of a barrack rather than of a royal chateau. Here and there he was challenged and his way barred by a lowered halbert, but it was more or less perfunctory, and at the password the way was cleared. That Beaufoy was unfeignedly glad to see him was another satisfaction. Ever since he had come in sight of Valmy an uncomfortable sense of friendlessness had haunted him with the unreasoning ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... Vaughan was Head Master of Harrow, and had to entertain his boys at breakfast, this inability was frequently manifested, and was met by the Doctor in a most characteristic fashion. When the muffins and sausages had been devoured, the perfunctory inquiries about the health of "your people" made and answered, and all permissible school topics discussed, there used to ensue a horrid silence, while "Dr. Blimber's young friends" sat tightly glued to their ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... the simple forms of the lion, ox, eagle and angel, with no attribute except wings. All four reliefs are rectangular, about eighteen inches square. The ox is, of course, the least inspiring, and here as elsewhere is treated in a dry perfunctory manner. The oxen on the facade of Laon Cathedral offered some scope to the sculptor, being life-sized; but in a small relief the subject was not attractive. The lion is more vigorously treated. As a work of natural history he is better than the Marzocco, and he has ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... their places side by side in the chair she was saying something perfunctory concerning the fete and Mrs. Ascott. And as he offered no comment: "Don't you think her very charming and sincere.... Are you listening to ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... the nave, beneath St. Pancras's image, while all came to receive his blessing. First, the Prior, pale and sullen, as always now; then the Community, some smiling and looking into his eyes before they knelt, some perfunctory, some solemn and sedate with downcast faces; each kissed the fragrant hands, and stood aside, while the laity came up; and first among them his father ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... He murmured a perfunctory acknowledgment. "Louise, what's this I've been hearing about you and Sid drinking sodas together at ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... work, whatever it be, and bend his will to his work, too, however unwelcome it may be; and that is the thought that will stir his whole spirit to fervour and earnestness, and thus will deliver him from the temptations to languid and perfunctory work that ever ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... 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
... Musgrave chatted away about his neighbours, his boys' club, his new organ, his bishop, his work. I used to think him rather a proser; how I blessed his prosing now! I took long walks with him; he asked a few perfunctory questions about my books, but otherwise he was quite content to prattle on, like a little brook, about all that was in his mind, and he was more than content if I asked an occasional question or assented courteously. ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... words were nothing but the perfunctory babble of the surface while the depths remained paralyzed. He turned away, and bent over a chair. Tess followed him to the middle of the room, where he was, and stood there staring at him with eyes that did not weep. Presently she slid down upon ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... from the 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 ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... made a perfunctory sign of the cross and gave her his blessing. Then, his face having become suddenly grave as if by machinery at the sound of the solemn Latin benediction, he ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... generally supposed that to-day the case would 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 ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... has at this early hour made only a very perfunctory toilet, and wears a Bulgarian apron over a once brilliant, but now half worn out red dressing gown, and a colored handkerchief tied over her thick black hair, with Turkish slippers on her bare feet, comes from the house, looking astonishingly handsome and stately under all ...
— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw
... about the sanded stretch. And, though there were soldiers in sight, one always expects soldiers in European countries. No one asked to see the passports we had brought with us, and the customs officers gave our hand baggage the most perfunctory of examinations. Hardly five minutes had elapsed after our landing before we were steaming away on our train through a landscape which, to judge by its appearance, might have known only peace, and naught but peace, for a thousand ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... landed at Villaviciosa in Asturias on September 13, 1517. Among his first acts was the dispatch of a letter to the Cardinal, in which the latter was dismissed to his diocese with a few perfunctory expressions of regard and recognition for his services. Cardinal Ximenez breathed his last a few hours after reading this heartless communication and Las Casas was left to begin anew his life as a courtier and to cultivate the good-will of the all-powerful Flemish favourites. ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... far from being a perfunctory, haphazard affair. Everything had been thought out and planned beforehand. The servants sat in a circle with eager, expectant faces. In front of them was a circle of dogs. The dogs' presents were not much of a novelty. ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... with a tour of inspection of the entire establishment, although the latter was largely perfunctory in character, since he knew that for days everything had been in readiness for his orders, waiting only for his return from Washington; then returning to his quarters, he tumbled into bed to catch a few hours of sleep before again whirling off at a sixty-mile-an-hour gait to board his steamer ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... gets down off the scale with a pleased grin. She has evidently gained. She rejoins the group of women, chattering volubly in low tones. Her exultant "gained half a pound" can be heard. The other women smile their perfunctory congratulations, their eyes absent-minded, intent on their own worries. Stanton writes down the ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... accumulation of large stores in his mind. It is true, in political campaigns he had occasionally spoken on the ostensible issues between the Whigs and the Democrats, the tariff, internal improvements, banks, and so on, but only in a perfunctory manner. Had he ever given much serious thought and study to these subjects, it is safe to assume that a mind so prolific of original conceits as his would certainly have produced some utterance ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... little of 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 conceivable he had been more than usually ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... assortment of cotillion objects. She did her part ably. But Wilhelmine de Naarboveck gave but a perfunctory attention to this choosing of ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... against it every soul before him was really longing to be gathered within His almighty arms, and when she said this, Laura Filbert, on the floor, threw back her head and cried "Hallelujah!" and Duff started. The mothers broke in upon the Ensign with like exclamations. They had a recurrent, perfunctory sound, and passed unnoticed; but when Laura again cried "Praise the Lord!" Lindsay found himself holding in check a hasty impulse to leave the premises. Then she rose, and he watched with the Duke's Own to see what she would do next. The others looked at her too, as she stood surprisingly fair ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 14, 1919 • Various
... entertaining under a roof seem more than ordinarily fatiguing and pointless. The handsome rooms were hot, in spite of open windows; the guests quite evidently were making heroic efforts to seem gay. Somehow even Janet's brilliant music stirred only a perfunctory sort ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... on the blanket she had spread on the lawn in her front yard, knitting a pair of booties for the PTA bazaar. Occasionally she glanced at her son in the play pen, who was getting his daily dose of sunshine. He was gurgling happily, examining a ball, a cheese grater and a linen baby book, all with perfunctory interest. ...
— The Ultroom Error • Gerald Allan Sohl
... 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 ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... the 'Passon's' sermon that morning had been something of a failure. Walden himself, all the time he was engaged in preaching it, had known that it was a lame, halting and perfunctory discourse, and he had felt fully conscious that a patient tolerance of him on the part of his parishioners had taken the place of the respectful interest and attention they usually displayed. He was indeed sadly at a loss concerning 'the ornament ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... she was his and that he defied anyone to question his right of possession. It appeared to me, as I afterward learned was the fact, that I was witnessing the most primitive of marriage ceremonies. The assembled members of the tribe looked on and listened in a sort of dull and perfunctory apathy, for the speaker was by far the mightiest of ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... pleasurably for them both. They were fond of one 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 departure from ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... desk he guessed the contents of the note awaiting him, but he took a long time to read its stereotyped expressions in transferring him to perfunctory duty well to the rear of the army. Then he pulled himself together and, leaden-hearted, settled down to arrange routine details for his departure, while the rest of the staff was immersed in the activity of the ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... think the labour lightened his pain; and I know he was not so absorbed in his unhappiness, though at times the flashes of a keen agony broke from the dull cloud of his misery, as to perform the duties he had undertaken in a perfunctory manner. The catalogue made slow but steady progress. And so did ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... 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 of frivolity and futility, but, from time to ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... see about her fortune. He has has only a perfunctory duty—to see that the fortune is not squandered. But he is safe there. Maiden ladies never squander! And the girl, being only seventeen, can't possibly squander it herself ...
— A Little Rebel - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... 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 and ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... such as a visit from the Bishop for confirmation or from the Rural Dean to preach at the Harvest Thanksgiving, he made the necessary preparations. But he had no hesitation in doing all manner of things without more than a perfunctory consultation with the Vicar, and the Vicar, though always ready to be saved trouble, much resented the churchwarden's managing ways. He really seemed to look upon himself as the most important person in the parish. Mr. Carey constantly told his ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... it. It was Mr. Heywood's solemn protest, as an American citizen—on behalf of himself and the other members of the perfunctory Republican Committee of his County—against the wholesale disfranchisement of the Mormons, on the ground that it would only delay a progressive American settlement ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... cigars from a drawer of the desk, 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 ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... in the same perfunctory way: "You have been very kind; uncle has depended on you so much. Your advice and help have been everything ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... names all carefully set down in alphabetical order, and Barnabas read them through with perfunctory interest. But—half-way down the list of B's his glance was suddenly arrested, his hands clenched themselves, and he grew rigid in his chair—staring wide-eyed at a certain name. In a while he closed the little book, yet sat there very still, gazing at ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... to accompany his guest outside to the car; but Paula evidenced her intention of remaining in the house. Graham started over to her to murmur perfunctory regrets and good-by. ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... satisfactorily to the Child, though there was always the danger of getting the days mixed. The first mother-day had been as "intimate" and delightful as the first father-one. They followed each other intimately and delightfully in a long succession. Marie found her perfunctory services less and less in requisition, and her dazed comprehension of things was divided equally with her self-gratulation. Life in this new and unexpected condition of affairs was ...
— The Very Small Person • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... her. She greeted him politely but coldly, expressing some perfunctory regret when he asked for a dance, and showing him that her card was already filled. And then her partner claimed her, and she went away on his arm, smiling up into his face in a way she had that drove men wild for her. "The wicked little witch!" Paul thought. "Would she make ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... 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 always entirely ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various
... into evil courses. One must admit that in the verse of Burns 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, ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... careless nod from Mornac I muttered the formal "I have to report, sir—" and began mumbling a perfunctory account of my movements since leaving Paris. He listened, idly contemplating a silver penknife which he alternately snapped open and closed, the click of the spring ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... read the service, with his back to the audience, most followed in their Hebrew books; but one by one many men slipped out, as though they were "on 'Change" and did not care to stay any longer to-day. The women remained, but with a slightly perfunctory air in most cases. One old crone before me seemed touched with the true pathos which belongs to her race and its history. She followed the service intently, swaying her body back and forth in time with the beautiful music, and ever and ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... extended activity of the pontifices, so far as we can dimly trace it in this third century B.C. Most of it is connected more or less directly with the State religion, yet with a tendency to become more and more secular and perfunctory; the word cura would express it better than caerimonia, and caerimonia better than religio. The care of the calendar, for example (a technical matter which lies outside my province in these lectures), ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... station we changed guards. They drove us with the butt-ends of their rifles to a spot where a train of cattle trucks was standing in the yard, and we had to get in. The previous occupants had been cattle, and the trucks had been cleaned in a very perfunctory fashion. There was neither straw nor seats. Off we went. Every time we stopped at a station the soldiers on guard there insulted us. It was even worse when once we arrived in Germany. They opened the doors on the platform side, and if we were on a line between ...
— Their Crimes • Various
... carried out on a large scale, and was the necessary condition of Sherman's Atlanta campaign of 1864. Taken as a whole, Halleck's instructions to Burnside presented no definite objective, and were a perfunctory sort of introduction to his new command, which raises a doubt whether the organization of a little army in the Department of ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... was because he stood high in his profession, and was almost constantly engaged in going into the best society that Doctor Z did not appear to be the least bit excited over my having picked him out to look into me. In the most perfunctory manner he shook the hand that has shaken the hands of Jess Willard, George M. Cohan and Henry Ford, and bade me be seated in a chair which was drawn up in a strong light, where he might gaze directly at me as we conversed and so get ...
— "Speaking of Operations—" • Irvin S. Cobb
... whispered into her ear. She took a moment to consider, and then laughed. It was not the spontaneous laugh of a person overwhelmed by the irresistible humour of a good joke, it could not well have been that, assuming that he had told her the true answer; nor was it the perfunctory laugh of a person pretending to be amused. It was a laugh of ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... perfunctory brushing to the tangled mass of curls, and getting into her clothing swiftly and silently. She had been cautioned the night before by her mother not to awaken her sister by getting up at too early an hour, for she would be called in plenty of ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... short thighs, so that I sat backless above and dangling below. What had I to do with those grown-up sermons? Men's talk is babble to a child, as much as children's to a man. The wind that blew past my ears meant as much, and sounded better. Or what were the prayers to me, or the singing? This perfunctory, formal early piety of mine had much influence, long afterward, by natural reaction. Nothing can better shadow forth the weariness of those weekly jornadas del muerto than the fact that I found now and then an oasis of delight in pious stories for children, out of the Sabbath-school ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... business, and the progress through the town to the rest camp at the top of the hill was one of the worst forms of route march the Battalion had ever experienced. Frequent checks, but no halts, taught the true weight of packs and kit; and a perfunctory inspection on arrival at the camp ...
— Short History of the London Rifle Brigade • Unknown
... 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 whether Mr Hume's doctrine be sound or unsound. For, sound or unsound, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of an officer or noncommissioned officer who gives an order to see that it is obeyed; carrying out orders received by him does not end with their perfunctory transmission to subordinates—this is only a small part of his duty. He must personally see that the orders so ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... Terence, and went down on one knee beside the body to make a perfunctory examination. Then he looked up at ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... 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
... granddaughter Mrs. Clarke, a critical essay from the versatile but vapid pen of Lord Houghton, the gossip of Robert Buchanan, and editorial notices by Prof. Saintsbury and the late Richard Garnett, together afford nothing more than a perfunctory appreciation. Two writers, indeed, have attempted a more elaborate estimate: James Spedding, an able prig,[5] reviewed Peacock's novels in the Edinburgh of January 1839, and more than half a century later ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... he passed into the restaurant. Gabe offered him the choice of various tables; he selected one which commanded a view of the entrances and ordered a perfunctory "Scotch." Nervous and anxious, he was more troubled than he cared to admit even to himself. Fortunately, there were not many people in the cafe; and his gaze, wandering about the place, soon halted before the small alcove ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... 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' extry an' I don't never see a dish er fried chicken but what pa ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... Office a little black slip of a milliner's girl dodged under the horse's head, saving herself and the huge box slung to her arm by a miracle of agility, and the cocher called her the most frightful names, without turning his head and in a perfunctory tone ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... telephones were ringing, patrolmen and detectives, summoned from their beds, were reporting and receiving orders; yet all this bustling activity affected him with a kind of angry impatience. It seemed, somehow, perfunctory and inadequate; in the intensity of his feeling he doubted that any one else realized, as he did, the full significance ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... with perfunctory interest, "have the spoons gone—?" he almost said "again," but checked himself in time. He turned to look at the table, which had been carefully denuded of every piece ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... early morning when only a yawning night porter or a sleepy maid servant was astir. He never returned to the same place, nor did he go to the same restaurant twice. Most carefully did he read the newspapers, but nothing appeared in their columns to alarm him; merely an occasional perfunctory paragraph about the Cornwall murder. The favourite adjective in the journalistic etymological garden was culled for the heading, and it was described as an amazing case. Charles felt that the definition was correct enough. Early developments were faithfully promised—by ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... departure, but many. The second method is, without even so much casting about, to set forth in any direction, take the first attractive unread book at hand, and let that lead to others. The third course is intended for the student whose previous reading has been so scanty and so perfunctory as to afford him no outlook into literature, a case, which, it is to be feared, is only too common. We will consider this method first. Obviously such a student must be furnished with a guide, one who shall set his feet in the right paths, give him his ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... Frenchmen but two or three, 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 ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... discountenanced unreasonable sleeping in church. Thanks to his patronage the choir made marked progress, and eventually there was no louder in the county. In 1813, we find him overseer with one George Olney. He took a perfunctory [28] interest in the village school (where, by the by, Arthur Orton, the Tichborne claimant, received his elaborate education), and was for a time "director." He led the breezy life of a country gentleman. With his fat acres, his thumping balance at the bank, his cellar of crusted wine, ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... book makes very interesting reading, but there is a succession of shocks in store in it for the complacent New Englander or Bostonian and for the orthodox or perfunctory reader of American literature." ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... that "The Readers' Corner" is enlarged. I always turn to this first, even before reading the stories. This is a most entertaining department, and I'm glad it is not spoiled by any perfunctory remarks ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... and the food rarely pleased her. She would cast a contemptuous look over the menu offered by the deferential Henri, then turn wearily away, esteeming that no item on its length merited even her most perfunctory consideration. But after one or two despondent glances, Yvette ever made the best of a bad bargain, and ordered quite a comprehensive little dinner, which she ate with the same air of utter disdain. She always concluded ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... from her desk in the glass-enclosed office toward the trio in the sample room as inevitably as the moth to the candle flame. She took up some cutting slips from a table, by way of excuse for her intrusion, but the blush and smile with which she acknowledged Ike's rather perfunctory nod betrayed her. Abe was fingering the Hamsuckett swatches, but Miss Cohen's embarrassment did not escape Morris Perlmutter. He marked it with an inward start, and immediately conceived a ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass
... owing in part no doubt to the singular failure on the part of most critics to apprehend correctly the nature and conditions of pastoral poetry.[278] Mr. W. C. Hazlitt, who edited Randolph's works in 1875, does not so much as mention the play in the perfunctory introduction, in which he chiefly follows the extravagant, pedantic, and utterly worthless article in the sixth volume of the Retrospective Review.[279] The merits of the piece have been somewhat more fully recognized by Dr. Ward and Mr. Homer Smith, but the treatment accorded ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... room I saw that one of the little tables in the corner was in reality occupied by a very small and very extraordinary child. Seated in a high chair, attended by a dreamily abstracted nurse on one side, an utterly perfunctory negro waiter on the other, and an incongruous assortment of disregarded viands before him, he was taking—or, rather, declining—his solitary breakfast. He appeared to be a pale, frail, but rather pretty ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... sitting by her side and Nick smoking a few yards away, until presently the Rajah rode up unescorted and occupied Nick's attention for the remainder of the time. He came and shook hands with Olga later and congratulated her on her escape, but his manner seemed to her perfunctory and somewhat absent. Remembering Noel's words, she wondered what schemes were developing behind those ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... survey of momentous and familiar events to afford profit or satisfaction. One feels that, while the style retains its fluency, the tone has lost its warmth, and that much of the writing must have been perfunctory: the reading, at all events, cannot but be so. But scarcely any one, however well acquainted with the ground, can follow without pleasure and an enlargement of view Mr. Green's account of "Early England," "England under Foreign Kings," "The Charter" and "The Parliament" (from 1307 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... 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 ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... 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 ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... stripped from me my dirt-encrusted shirt that I had worn since my entrance to solitary, and exposed my poor wasted body, the skin ridged like brown parchment over the ribs and sore- infested from the many bouts with the jacket. The examination was shamelessly perfunctory. ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... At last, with a perfunctory judicial charge, the case went to the jury. Keith, weary to the bone, sat back in grateful relaxation. He had worked hard, against odds, and had done a good job. He was willing now to spare a little professional admiration for McDougall's skilful legal manoeuvring. ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... was as threadbare as one likes a priest to be.) Looking into the new Roman Catholic church at Groningen I found a little company of restless boys, all eyes, from whom at regular intervals were detached a reluctant and perfunctory couple to do the Stations of the Cross. I came as something like a godsend to those that remained, who had no one to supervise them; and feeling it as a mission I stayed resolutely in the church long after I was tired of it, writing a little and examining the pictures by Hendriex, a ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... were 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 Montgomery tradition; ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... she brought Colville back very soon. He had to stand by the sofa where she sat till Madame Uccelli found him and introduced him to another mother of daughters. Later he joined a group formed by the father of one of the dancers and the non-dancing husband of a dancing wife. Their conversation was perfunctory; they showed one another that they had no pleasure ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... line-camp was performed in a hurried, perfunctory manner that day. Charming Billy, riding the high-lines to make sure the cattle had not drifted where they should not, was vaguely ill at ease. He told himself it was the want of a smoke that made him uncomfortable, and he planned a hurried trip to Hardup, if the ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... estimate of the English as a fierce and cruel people. With his character as a magician to maintain he could scarcely keep entire silence, so he wrote down for the satisfaction of his interrogators a horoscope: a mere perfunctory piece of work, as we learn afterwards. He begins by reciting the extraordinary nature of the King's birth, repeating the legend that his mother was delivered of him by surgical aid, and only lived a few hours afterwards; and declares that, in his opinion, it would ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... the people in the big world like? His knowledge was so very limited. There had been people at the Home, who exchanged a stilted, perfunctory kindness for their salaries. The visitors who called on receiving days he had divided into three classes: the psalm-singing kind, who came with a tear in the eye and hypocrisy in every feature of their faces; ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... the same light. Over and over again young Horace would keep the whole table listening to him with unreasoning and unreasonable delight, while his father's efforts to converse received only a polite and perfunctory attention. And the prospect of having young Horace's humour let loose on his meeting and on his speech at the meeting was distinctly disagreeable. Fanny oughtn't to have allowed it to happen. He oughtn't to have ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... 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 a flat ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... of those officers who paid a hasty visit now and then to the lines, ducking his head when his guide said, "Duck, sir!" where the wall of the traverse was low, and who, after a perfunctory glance about him through a gold-rimmed monocle went back again to headquarters, "having seen nothing and learned nothing." General Dashwood knew that he had a certain section of the front to defend, and did his work thoroughly, and the whisper often ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... great surprise that not only did Nina deliver the English maiden's retorts without any of the saucy spirit that the situation demanded, but also that she was quite confused about the words, stammering and hesitating, and getting through them in the most perfunctory manner. At last, when the little Capitaine Crepin says, "Bewitching maid, say you will fly with me!" Clara's reply is, "You forget I am to be married to-morrow—see, here comes my betrothed;" but Nina only got as far as "married to-morrow"—then she paused—hesitated—she put her hand to her ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... of the defeated faction had been recognized by the chair, and was moving that the convention's choice of the gentleman from Tuscarora County be declared unanimous. His manner was even more perfunctory than his words. ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... into which the K. P.'s splashed the food. Occasionally someone stopped to ask for a larger helping in an ingratiating voice. They ate packed together at long tables of roughly planed boards, stained from the constant spilling of grease and coffee and still wet from a perfunctory scrubbing. Andrews sat at the end of a bench, near the door through which came the glimmer of twilight, eating slowly, surprised at the relish with which he ate the greasy food, and at the exhausted contentment ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... in at that moment, and with perfunctory interest in his guest, invited him to examine the splendid collection of revolutionary relics in ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... 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, ...
— Behind the Line • Ralph Henry Barbour
... feeling will establish the co-ordinations. Mere perfunctory performance of an exercise or a mechanical use of the will may produce certain local effects, and in this way may actually do harm, while the same exercise practiced with a feeling of joy and exhilaration ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry
... Randolph, president of the June Holiday Home, appeared in the doorway, what he saw was a well-appointed bedroom, a little blue-clad lady demurely reading a small volume, and Polly hovering near. With a perfunctory good-morning to Miss Sterling, and a genial handshake for Dr. Dudley's daughter, he passed with Mrs. Nobbs to the southwest corner of the apartment. He took a glance around the ceiling, a look from the window, and some measurements with ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd
... 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 ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow
... cries the leader, and the others answer: "We sit in solitude and mourn." "We pray Thee have mercy on Zion," cries the leader, and the others answer: "Gather the children of Jerusalem." With most of them it seems a perfunctory mourning; but there are two or three old men with the tears running down their faces as they kiss the ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... early, and the business of the day had not yet begun—although, had she been British, her crew would already have been at the job of washing the decks and scouring the paint and brass-work. But here a solitary seaman slouched to and fro on the topgallant forecastle, keeping a perfunctory lookout; two or three others lolled over the rail forward, staring in stupid, open-mouthed wonderment at the silver shape of the Flying Fish; and the officer of the watch paced the bridge athwartships with an air of great importance, pausing for a moment every time ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... not relax nor his success desert him, until Mauville finally threw down the cards in disgust, weary alike of such poor luck and the half-nodding automaton confronting him; whereupon the count thrust every piece of gold carefully away in his pocket, absently reached for his hat, drawled a perfunctory farewell and departed in a ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... in the feelings of those who would consider it formal or perfunctory. There was the high-domed forehead, like that of Pericles and Walter Scott; there were the steady eyes, the clear-cut nose; and as for the lips—I never for an instant doubted the truth of what I saw—I am as certain as I can be that they are the lips of a corpse, drawn up ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... to which his life had bound him. He was by no means inclined to flatter the House of Lords, or to exempt them from blame for much that he thought mischievous. They had neglected their business, their discharge of their functions had been careless and perfunctory, their meetings had been short, and their intervention in public affairs scanty, "while the other House sat, and drew the eyes of the kingdom upon them, as the only vigilant people for their good." Clarendon's constitutional ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... putting on a wide-awake, and lighting a cigar with rough perfunctory puffs, ran along a corridor to call Loveday, whereupon the two went out to the ledge and up to ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... her explanation: "How's Van Horn?" he asked casually. "And Stone?" he added, with undiminished interest. "All well," was his echo to her perfunctory answers. "Say, Belle, was Jim ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... 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 ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... 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 as not, damning ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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
... religious education in the family as that of the development of the lives of religious persons, the place and value of the Bible will be evident. It will be used as a means of developing and directing lives. This will be quite different from a perfunctory use because our fathers used it or a use under the compulsion of the fear lest some strange evil should befall us, some visitation ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... A constant reader of lady-novelists, I have always been hoping for this excitement, but somehow it has never come my way. I am beginning to suspect that it never will, and am inclined to regard it as a figment. Such conversation as I have heard in clubs has been always of a very mild, perfunctory kind. A social club (even though it be a club with a definite social character) is a collection of heterogeneous creatures, and its aim is perfect harmony and good-fellowship. Thus any definite expression of opinion by any member is regarded as dangerous. The ideal clubman is ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... eyes of men accustomed to see in that superstition the sanction of their morality. For the "practical" proofs of freedom, immortality, and Providence—of which all evidence in reason or experience had previously been denied—exceed in perfunctory sophistry anything that can be imagined. Yet this lamentable epilogue was in truth the guiding thought of the whole investigation. Nature had been proved a figment of human imagination so that, once rid of all but a mock allegiance to her ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... on Tyr, the old wolf-hound, who basked dozing, whimpering and twitching in his hunting dreams. Prone went Rol beside Tyr, his young arms round the shaggy neck, his curls against the black jowl. Tyr gave a perfunctory lick, and stretched with a sleepy sigh. Rol growled and rolled and shoved invitingly, but could only gain from the old dog placid toleration and a half-observant blink. "Take that then!" said Rol, ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... in mathematics, and 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 satisfy ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... days of this rhetorical—or satirical, didactic—or perfunctory, treatment of classical themes were doomed. It is the glory of Romanticism to have opened 'magic casements' not only on 'the foam of perilous seas' in the West, but ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... succeeded themselves—that they forgathered to conduct the dull routine business which is a part of all annual meetings. After they had adjourned as stockholders they reconvened as directors, and again mumbled hurried and perfunctory ayes to the motions put before them, so that Bell could the more quickly get out his bottle of fine old Bourbon, the one really ceremonious procedure of the day. The Security National was as conservative, as rock ribbed, as respectable, and as uninteresting as any bank ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... now, Major!" With the mere social instinct of long years, Alan Hawke recognized the man's perfunctory politeness, tipped him a couple of francs, and then, mechanically sauntered to a seat in the superb salle a manger. "I'll get out of here to-night," he muttered, and then he bent down his head over the carte ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... 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, be digitalis. Far better ...
— Glaucoma - A Symposium Presented at a Meeting of the Chicago - Ophthalmological Society, November 17, 1913 • Various
... through the usual rigmarole such as I had at first experienced at Goch. The evidence also, as usual, was committed to paper. It was a perfunctory enquiry, however, and was soon completed. Naturally upon its conclusion I considered that I would be free to resume my journey. I turned ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... civil service must go on; but the changes should be real and genuine, not perfunctory, or prompted by a zeal in behalf of any party simply because it happens to be in power. As a member of Congress I voted and spoke in favor of the present law, and I shall attempt its enforcement in the spirit in which it ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... at the fort before them, waiting with Dick outside the locked door leading to the ancient passages below. They said nothing beyond the most perfunctory greetings, but, each taking a kerosene lantern, passed through the door in single file, Tom leading, and locked the door after them. That was all that the fort guards ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... missionary clergy of old times. No doubt in mediaeval times so much stress was laid upon the mere perfunctory performance of the ministerial act, as apart from careful teaching of the meaning and purport of the act, that the mediaeval missionary is so far not a very safe model for us ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... more of it—more whining explanations artfully tinctured with abuse, more terse commands to depart, the whole concluding with scraping footsteps, diminuendo, and another perfunctory, rattle of the knob as the bobby, having shoo'd the putative evil-doer off, assured himself that no damage had actually been done. Then he, too, departed, satisfied and self-righteous, leaving a badly frightened but very grateful amateur ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... the "Oxford Sausage" and his "Triumph of Isis," had an academic flavor. These we may pass over, as foreign to our present inquiries. So, too, with most of his annual laureate odes, "On his Majesty's Birthday," etc. Yet even these official and rather perfunctory performances testify to his fondness for what Scott calls "the memorials of our forefathers' piety or splendor." Thus, in the birthday odes for 1787-88, and the New Year ode for 1787, he pays a tribute to the ancient minstrels and to early laureates ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... into the 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 ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... hereditary character of the membership, upon the meagerness of (p. 103) attendance at the sittings and the small interest displayed by a majority of the members, and upon the hurried and frequently perfunctory nature of the consideration which is accorded public measures. Fundamentally, however, the tremendous attack which has been levelled against the Lords has had as its impetus the conviction of large masses of ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... for me—it's a long time. It would be a pity there shouldn't be something to show for it." They sat down and she asked him about his sisters, with other enquiries of a somewhat perfunctory kind. He answered her questions as if they interested him, and in a few moments she saw—or believed she saw—that he would press with less of his whole weight than of yore. Time had breathed upon his heart and, without chilling it, given it a relieved sense of having taken the ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... 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 ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... their epitaphs, and the sculptors' chisels making the commonplaces of fulsome commendation permanent on their tombs! What vanity to their nicer ears must be the sonorous and declamatory orator's breath! Let us not offend them so. They will take it for the insult of perfunctory honor, not for the sympathy it assumes to be. Nothing but good of the dead, do you say? Nothing but truth of the dead, we answer. Do not disturb their bones; let them rest easy at last, is the commentary on ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... the family as that of the development of the lives of religious persons, the place and value of the Bible will be evident. It will be used as a means of developing and directing lives. This will be quite different from a perfunctory use because our fathers used it or a use under the compulsion of the fear lest some strange evil should befall us, some visitation of ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... turns to a game. At Hapton, Musgrave chatted away about his neighbours, his boys' club, his new organ, his bishop, his work. I used to think him rather a proser; how I blessed his prosing now! I took long walks with him; he asked a few perfunctory questions about my books, but otherwise he was quite content to prattle on, like a little brook, about all that was in his mind, and he was more than content if I asked an occasional question or assented courteously. Then we had some good talks about the rural ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... supported by a white pillar, over which the carpet passes. Of these accessories every thread is most delicately and carefully painted; no slovenly washes of meretricious colour where He is to be served, before whom all things are open; no perfunctory sparing of toil in serving Him who has given us all that is best. On his right hand kneels the Virgin Mother in adoration, her very face a magnificat—praise, lowliness, confidence; next to her, Joseph, telling by his looks the wonderful story, ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... enough! I tell you what, Loo, it's worth living up here just for the inspiration." Even while boyishly exhaling this enthusiasm he was also divesting himself of certain bundles whose contents seemed to imply that he had brought his dinner with him,—the youthful Mrs. Harcourt setting the table in a perfunctory, listless way that contrasted oddly with her ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... latest guest with a first glow of pseudo-hospitality, a hectic, haggard, perfunctory welcome like the specious smile of a demirep. The sophistical comfort came in reflected gleams from the decayed furniture, the ragged brocade upholstery of a couch and two chairs, a foot-wide cheap pier glass between the two windows, from one or two gilt picture frames and a brass bedstead ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... day a bishop. Hugh was soon after this ordained priest, and was distinguished for the great fervour of his behaviour in celebrating the Mass "as if he handled a visible Lord Saviour"—a touching devoutness which never left him, and which contrasted strikingly with the perfunctory, careless or bored ways of other priests. He injured his health by over-abstinence, one effect of which was to cause him to grow fat, Nature thus revenging herself by fortifying his frame against ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... nation arrives year by year, can be estimated by its building. In the new order, little is being built. Apart from certain perfunctory garden-cities, which are being erected for the principle of the thing, to meet the needs of a few thousand favoured households, and which perhaps will never be finished, we will for decades have to content ourselves with new ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... 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
... a good deal in a perfunctory manner, but inwardly he was somewhat elated. "Her emotions must have been excited more than I supposed," he thought. "That is ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... something which comes of being out of the rut, and imagines it to be the prick of conscience, the still, small voice that is urging him ever to righteousness. If the digression is unusual enough, the drag of habit will be heavy enough to cause the unreasoning victim to return and perform the perfunctory thing. "Now, bless me," says such a mind, "I have done my duty," when, as a matter of fact, it has merely done its old, unbreakable trick ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... 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 ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... children, their bright hair, even their voices, were subdued. Fanny, apparently, hadn't moved; the 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 on ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... provision for my wife and family.' 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 immersed ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... 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
... romances, though it does not always rise above commonplaceness, escapes the perfunctory quality of hack writing by virtue of his keen interest in the subject. He continued to like this prosaic kind of literary task even while he was writing novels with the most wonderful facility. We may judge not only by the fact that he continued to write reviews ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... the long, shining beach and children played about the sanded stretch. And, though there were soldiers in sight, one always expects soldiers in European countries. No one asked to see the passports we had brought with us, and the customs officers gave our hand baggage the most perfunctory of examinations. Hardly five minutes had elapsed after our landing before we were steaming away on our train through a landscape which, to judge by its appearance, might have known only peace, and naught but peace, for ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... commented Quin sadly. "Our Poor Law, like so many excellent institutions, is mostly run on a wrong basis. Huge sums of money are expended in procuring homes for homeless children, and the last thing that seems to be considered is the suitability of the home. Applications are accepted in a perfunctory, business-like way by guardians and others - and perhaps an inspector takes a casual glance round; but the moral aspect of the whole matter, as to character and habits, is mostly left to chance. We, who are on the spot, often have to rescue ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... 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
... their springing apart and so ready the mind to believe what the heart denied, that it was almost conceivable that he had not seen. There was not even a pause, and through the perfunctory greetings of these two men of strangest relation, Lilly found herself somehow back at her desk, little prickles out all over her body and particularly against her face, like the bite of sleet, something like this ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... literature; he makes perfunctory obeisance to it. The truth is that Browning is expressed by his defects. He would not be Robert Browning without them. In the technical part of his art, as well as in his spirit, Browning represents a reaction ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... hours he gave it up, and returned home dispirited and furious. Walker and Appleby had taken much less time to appreciate the uselessness of the search, and had returned an hour ago from a perfunctory walk round one ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... bows," 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 at ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... drawer of the desk, 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 ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... proposition which they are urging. I have 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 work is just as obvious; more ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... misapprehension of the duties of this body, and such misapprehension assumes various and opposing forms. Some appear to think that the librarian is responsible for all that is done in the library and that his board is a perfunctory body. Others seem to believe that the board is the direct administrative head of the library, in all of its working details and that the librarian is its executive in the limited sense of doing only those things that he is told to do. Unfortunately there are libraries that are operated ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... chiefly taken up with descriptions of the regular sights and "objects of interest," which we often feel to be rather perfunctory and a little in the style of the traditional tourist's diary. They abound in charming touches, and every reader of Transformation will remember the delightful colouring of the numerous pages in that ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... deciding ballot New York's part in the convention proved perfunctory. Beyond the sound of its music and the tread of its marchers neither applause nor good will encouraged its candidate. Reformers regarded Conkling as the antithesis of Bristow, supporters of Morton ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... 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 ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... the Mother-Superior, though, certainly, since the Colonel's visit of the previous day, the Mother had seemed strangely preoccupied and sad.... Her good-night kiss, invariably so warm and tender, had been the merest brush of lips against the girl's soft cheek; her good-morning had been even more perfunctory; her eyes, those great maternal radiances, turned their light elsewhere. Unloved and neglected, the Convent's spoiled darling hugged her abandonment, weaving a very pretty, ineffably silly romance, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... 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, ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... decay. At one time, no doubt, the house had formed a nest for the petite amie of some rich Parisian, but now the owner of the property was only too glad to sell it at any price, and without asking any but the most perfunctory questions of the man who had offered to buy. In the solitude of the ruined villa, Matheson had been pursuing his scientific research at such times as he could snatch from his financial business. He had been ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... sir," said 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, to be sure. ...
— The Honourable Mr. Tawnish • Jeffery Farnol
... daughter, and caresses had seldom passed between him and his children. His duties as a family man had always been perfunctory. He was tingling now from the surprise of Jewel's action, the feeling of the little gingham clad arms about his neck, the touch of the rose-leaf skin as she swept his cheek and ear in ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... was deep in conversation with Monsieur Jesen—the friend of mademoiselle's friend. He glanced up, but his greeting was almost perfunctory. Kendricks looked keenly at the man who was leaning back in his padded seat. The eyes of Monsieur Jesen were a little more bloodshot now. He had spilt wine down the front of his waistcoat, cigar ash upon his coat-sleeve. He was by no means an inviting person ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... but not everybody's; each of them rouses enthusiasm, but not everybody's; in each case a part of the attention, interest, and enthusiasm is a matter of habit and custom, and another part of it is official and perfunctory. Cup Day, and Cup Day only, commands an attention, an interest, and an enthusiasm which are universal—and spontaneous, not perfunctory. Cup Day is supreme it has no rival. I can call to mind no specialized annual day, in any country, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... butler, an Englishman of over forty, heavily built, soft-moving, with ruddy, smooth-shaven cheeks and prematurely gray hair. But now from his face the look of perfunctory politeness had fallen; the subdued voice had changed to a snarl that carried with it the ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis
... BENNETT'S new novel, The Roll Call (HUTCHINSON), is a continuation of the Clayhanger series to the extent that its hero, George Cannon, is the stepson of Edwin, who himself makes a perfunctory appearance at the close of the tale. The scene is, however, now London, where we watch George winning fame and fortune, quite in the masterful Five-Towns manner, as an architect. The change is, I think, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 5, 1919 • Various
... Uncle Remus allowed 'Tildy to remain in the cabin, the little boy was not particularly interested in preventing the perfunctory abuse which the old man might feel disposed to bestow upon the complacent girl. The truth is, the child's mind was occupied with the episode in the story of Mr. Benjamin Ram which treats of the style in which this romantic old wag put Mr. and Mrs. Wolf to flight by playing a tune upon his fiddle. ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... given place to other and more material ideals. From the first its practitioners have been artists rather than poets, have possessed, that is to say, the constructive rather than the creative, the organizing rather than the imaginative temperament, but they have rarely been perfunctory and never common. French painting in its preference of truth to beauty, of intelligence to the beatific vision, of form to color, in a word, has nevertheless, and perhaps a fortiori, always been the expression of ideas. These ideas almost ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... or as good, use of our Sundays as we might do. There is a medium between the rigid Sabbatarianism of our ancestors and the absolute waste of the day of rest in mere pleasure and frivolity. All the world is deploring the secularizing of Sunday. Not only is churchgoing perfunctory or absent, but in all ranks of life there is a disposition to make it a day of rest and amusement—sometimes the amusement rather than the rest. Sunday, the Sabbath, as Alex McLaren pointed out to me, is not a day taken ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... left the table, he was, for a moment, relieved. But only for a moment. Judge Baker drew his chair beside Paul's, and, taking his cigar from his lips, said, with a perfunctory laugh:— ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... great deal to say about London, as London appears to the observer who does n't fear the accusation of cynicism, during the high-pressure time—from April to July—of its peculiarities. He flashed his faculty of making the fanciful real and the real fanciful over the perfunctory pleasures and desperate exertions of so many of his compatriots, among whom there were evidently not a few types for which he had little love. London bored him, and he made capital sport of it; his only allusion, ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... nothing was said as to the weather except that it was warm—a self-evident proposition. The weather is not a fruitful topic in Egypt. After a little time some officials came in with a whole pile of papers for signature, and we took the opportunity to terminate our mutual discomfort, the pasha with a perfunctory grin shaking hands with everybody, at the same time ordering some of his own cavasses to join ours as a special bodyguard to clear the way for us through ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... Constitution to which his life had bound him. He was by no means inclined to flatter the House of Lords, or to exempt them from blame for much that he thought mischievous. They had neglected their business, their discharge of their functions had been careless and perfunctory, their meetings had been short, and their intervention in public affairs scanty, "while the other House sat, and drew the eyes of the kingdom upon them, as the only vigilant people for their good." Clarendon's constitutional ideals might be mistaken; but he was under no mistake as to the process ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... be the only customer at that hour, I selected a table by the window for distraction. Tom had taken my order; the other waiters, including Tournelli, were absent, with the exception of a solitary German, who, in the interlude of perfunctory trifling with the casters, gazed at me with that abstracted irresponsibility which one waiter assumes towards another's customer. Even the proprietor had deserted his desk at the counter. It seemed to be a favorable opportunity to ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... awkward enough situation, but neither the girl nor the young man was heavy-witted. Doris rose slowly, languidly, it seemed, and though aware that her eyes must betray her, turned and greeted Bullard in cool, even tones. The two men exchanged perfunctory nods. ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... of the 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 Em'ly perfectly happy. To ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... King 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 came ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... Jimmie crossed and kissed her. She kissed him back—a perfunctory kiss. Maggie had never paused to think the matter out, but for some reason she felt little real affection for her father, though of course she admired his astuteness. Perhaps her unconscious lack of love was due in part to the fact that she had never lived with him. Ever since ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... a little. My influence is peculiar; it sometimes comes out a long time afterwards!" This speech, on Verena's part, was evidently perfunctory, and the grandeur of her self-reference jocular; she was much more serious when she went on quickly, "Do you mean to say Miss ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... Haugians 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, ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... had 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
... order to make sure of an uninterrupted supply of food and raw materials. The act would be justified as necessary to national existence. Great Britain in alliance with Japan would be in no position to protest in anything but the most perfunctory way. The guarantee of such abstinence would be for Japan the next best thing to open naval and financial support. Without the guarantee they would not dare the seizure of Chinese ports. In recent years diplomatists have ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey
... conversion seems to have been during the period that she resided with her mother and sister in Dublin. To the earnest man of God whose ministry they attended, the preparation of the younger members of his flock for admission to the Lord's Supper was no perfunctory task. He introduced her, with others of his candidates, to one of his helpers as "anxious inquirers." So shy and reserved was Agnes that she said but little, yet this lady remarked of her:—"In the class her intense appetite ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... could work got out their needlework, and began to perform their allotted tasks in a very perfunctory manner. Grannie's fingers quite longed and ached for something to do. She was sent for presently to see the doctor, who examined her hand, said it would never be of any use again, ordered a simple liniment, and dismissed her. ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... become the custom of sending wedding presents that it is perhaps necessary to remind those who really desire to do the correct thing, that a perfunctory service, or gift, or courtesy has no intrinsic value, and the omission of it would often be far ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... the woman. He had no further inclination for make-believe, and he saw Naraini with eyes that nothing illuded. Quite as casually as though she had been no more to him than a chance acquaintance, he reached up, took her hand, and gave it a perfunctory shake. ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... he was superstitious, and repeated to himself the cabalistic formula: "Losin's seekin's, findin's keepin's"—presumed to be of great efficacy in such cases—with religious fervor. He had laboriously reached the end of the veranda when he noticed the open window of Louise's room, and stopped as a perfunctory duty to look in. And then Richelieu Sharpe stood for an instant utterly confounded and aghast at this crowning proof of the absolute infamy ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... a sudden hemorrhage that attacked Martel brought the prison doctor to his side. He shook his head after an examination. There was no hope. It was a matter of days only, perhaps of hours. He was heartless and perfunctory. What did it matter? The ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... conversed, rather painfully, for perhaps an hour. They had tea. All the effort to talk was made by Sanchia, who broached the children— Philippa's three, Vicky's one—and got nothing but perfunctory enthusiasm in reply. Mrs. Percival was far too sincerely interested in herself to care for children. The sons-in-law proved a better subject. Here she could point a moral inwards. She extolled them highly—never was woman so blessed in her daughters' ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... After all, it was the simplest of matters to fire even the biggest of guns. I had but to pull a lever. All morning I had been watching men do that. I knew it was but a perfunctory act. But I could not feel that! I was thrilled and excited as I had never been in ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... a perfunctory manner, points out the kind of 1st class carriage we have to travel in. It is not inviting, and we get back to the river, and make a jotting of our steamer and the shore against the evening sky, and the bullock-carts slowly stirring the dust into a golden haze.... Then ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... 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. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... and pray to their gods by the way, but would have them go out from their houses direct, with their minds set upon the duty, and so Numa, in like manner, wished that his citizens should neither see nor hear any religious service in a perfunctory and inattentive manner, but, laying aside all other occupations, should apply their minds to religion as to a most serious business; and that the streets should be free from all noises and cries that accompany manual labor, and ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... 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 ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... mal-contrivance, to prevent a regular and minute investigation, to introduce confusion and contest, to puzzle, perplex, and obumbrate; to teaze, fatigue, and disgust the inquirers, that the examination might be hurried over in a superficial and perfunctory manner; and the ministry, from this anarchy and confusion of materials, half explored and undigested, derive a general parliamentary approbation, to which they might appeal from the accusations of the people. A select committee would have probably examined ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... the Rhone to think of playing tricks elsewhere. Accordingly, I started for the station in a spirit which, for a tourist who sometimes had prided himself on his unfailing supply of sentiment, was shockingly perfunctory. ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... same perfunctory way: "You have been very kind; uncle has depended on you so much. Your advice and help have been everything ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... pictures of great allied leaders which excited a mild interest and drew some perfunctory applause. Then came the tragic comedy of John Bull's experiences as an immigrant, when just as the interest began to deepen, the machine blew up, and the pictures were ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... intensification of labour during the shorter hours, does not leave the women competent and free for the proper ordering of home life. Home work is consciously slighted as secondary in importance and inferior, because it brings no wages, and if not neglected is performed in a perfunctory manner, which robs it of its grace and value. This narrowing of the home into a place of hurried meals and sleep is on the whole the worst injury modern industry has inflicted on our lives, and it is difficult to see how it can ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... moment they waited until, as before, the voice of the adjutant was heard, clear and commanding, above the clamor. Then came the publications, a perfunctory order or two, and then the colonel put forth a hand, pushed open the door, and while Mrs. Graham and Bud, trembling with excitement, clung to each other's arms, and the rest of the group instinctively closed about them, Hazzard turned ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... from his fourteenth year onward he was permitted to roam almost at will over the whole expanse of literature. He composed little beyond his school exercises, which themselves bear signs of having been written in a perfunctory manner. At this period he had evidently no heart in anything but his reading. Before leaving Shelford for Aspenden he had already invoked the epic muse for ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... came in answer to this call of his love, he flew around, at some height above the tree, in a circle of thirty or forty feet diameter, apparently to search out any enemy who might be annoying her. If he saw a bird, he drove him off, though in a perfunctory manner, as if it were done merely in deference to his lady's wishes, and not from any suspicion or jealousy. On these occasions, too, he came quite near me, stood fearless and calm, and studied me most sharply, doubtless to see if my intentions were innocent. Of course ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... believed that surveys should be established in all of the States and Territories. There is work enough for all, and the establishment of local surveys would greatly assist the general work prosecuted under the auspices of the government, and prevent it from falling into perfunctory channels. Its vigor and health will doubtless be promoted by ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various
... to giggle like children at the entrance of the foreigner and never took their eyes off us. Later, individual monks came running round the shrines, beating a gong as though to call the attention of the deity, and shouting a few words of perfunctory praise or prayer. Irreverence more complete I have not seen even in Italy, nor beggary more shameless. Such is the latter end of the gospel of Buddha in China. It seems better that he should sit deserted in his Indian caves than be dishonoured by ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... years has seen sons and daughters succeed fathers and mothers. More than nineteen hundred children have passed through her hands. With what pride she showed us the copy-books, and pointed out some particularly good compositions. Hers was no perfunctory task; a mother could not have displayed greater interest in her children. The number of pupils varies from one hundred and ten to one hundred and thirty, a little less than half of them being Catholics. ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... believe he meant to be gone more than a day or two. Then came his note, written at the Patroons' Club—very brief, curiously stilted and formal, with a strange tone of finality through it, as though he were taking perfunctory leave of people who had come temporarily into his life, and as though the chances were agreeably even of his ever ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... you're laughing at," he muttered, and, turning, found that the other couple had rejoined them. As if the matter had been privately agreed upon, the couples separated once more, Katharine and Denham passing out of the house without more than a perfunctory glance round them. Denham obeyed what seemed to be Katharine's wish in thus making haste. Some change had come over her. He connected it with her laughter, and her few words in private with Rodney; he felt that she had become unfriendly to him. She talked, but her ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... guest outside to the car; but Paula evidenced her intention of remaining in the house. Graham started over to her to murmur perfunctory regrets and good-by. ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... the general had seemed so self-assured that— Well, they'd almost forgotten about him until some ambitious clerk, trying to balance at least part of the budget, had discovered a monthly expenditure to an obscure base in the southwest totalling some millions of dollars. Perfunctory checking had brought out the fact that "Smiley" Webb had been drawing this money every month, and hadn't as much as mailed in ...
— Minor Detail • John Michael Sharkey
... 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, and polished ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... evening paper, which her uncle thought that Mr. Upton would like to see. That was how the girl addressed the boy, and the style always made him feel, and wish to seem, something of a man. But his present effort in that direction was sadly perfunctory: he almost ejected little Miss Platts in his eagerness to shut the door on her ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... Preparatory or of 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
... England were not indeed by any means a body of men wanting in personal morality, or even in religious feeling, but they had as little or no religious activity because they had little or no religious zeal. They performed perfunctorily their perfunctory duties; and that, as a ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... 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 ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... The perfunctory "Hello! Yes" was followed by a swift change of countenance, a surprised little cry, then,—in quite another tone—"Oh, it's you, Jock! I wasn't expecting ... No, not too busy to talk to you, you young chump! Go on." A ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber
... possible, by reasoning with her and appealing to her better nature. There was, therefore, but one thing for her mother to do in order to preserve her own dignity, and that was to ignore Beth. Accordingly, when the perfunctory lessons were over in the morning, Beth had her day to herself. She began it generally by practising for at least an hour by the church-clock, and after that she had a variety of pursuits which she preferred to follow alone if Sammy were at school, because then ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... 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?" she ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... in her boots," she thought confusedly. "I shall be late for coffee." She gave her perfunctory knock, and turned the door-handle. But the door ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... actor; he possessed keen dramatic instinct, poetic sensibility, a beautiful voice, a handsome person, and, above all, a dogged ambition. In after years, when his health began to fail and the sweets of success had, perhaps, become a trifle cloying, the tragedian often went through a part in a perfunctory manner.[A] But those early days in Ireland marked the sunrise of his genius—a time no less noble, in its freshness and promise, than the later glory of the noontide—and there was in his performance nothing ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... silence, during which Mrs. Ballinger, with a perfunctory hand, rearranged the skilfully grouped literature at which her distinguished guest had not so much as glanced; then Miss Van Vluyck tartly pronounced: "Well, I can't say that I consider Osric Dane's departure ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... Ibex sat at a long table in his sanctum paying some perfunctory attentions to a huge pile of letters which had come in by the afternoon mail. Most of them he threw on one side for his "sub," a few he opened himself and tossed into a basket for further attention later on. It was a task which he never entered upon with ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... toss more wood upon the fire, leaned back for a while, holding his glass to the light of the flames, and turned to me again with his cool, perfunctory smile. ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... attacked in the House privately, and even publicly by certain of his colleagues. Bennett showed concern and annoyance. Meanwhile the Conservative papers talked the usual employers' political economy; and the Liberal papers, whose support of the strike had been throughout perfunctory, and of no particular use to themselves or to other people, took a lead they were glad to get, and went in strongly ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... character but versatility of mind which caused him to undertake many things that having commenced he afterwards abandoned, and the probability is that as soon as he saw exactly how he could solve any difficulty which presented itself, he put on one side the merely perfunctory execution of such ...
— Leonardo da Vinci • Maurice W. Brockwell
Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com
|
|
|
