"Clerkly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... theory," Una's observation of the stalking specter of sex did not lead her to make any very lucid conclusions about the matter. But she did wonder a little if this whole business of marriages and marriage ceremonies and legal bonds which any clerkly pastor can gild with religiosity was so sacred as she had been informed in Panama. She wondered a little if Mrs. Lawrence's obvious requirement of man's companionship ought to be turned into a ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... enriched with annotations, tripling their value. I have had experience. Many are these precious MSS. of his—(in matter oftentimes, and almost in quantity not unfrequently, vying with the originals)—in no very clerkly hand—legible in my Daniel; in old Burton; in Sir Thomas Browne; and those abstruser cogitations of the Greville, now, alas! wandering in Pagan lands.—I counsel thee, shut not thy heart, nor thy library, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... thus condemned again to school-boy duties! How we glared, also, at any brilliant competitor, whose down-bent head seemed too intent on mastering the subject set before him; and, whose ready pen appeared to be travelling over paper at far too expeditious a rate for our chances of winning the clerkly race! With what horror and despair, we confronted a "poser" that was placed to catch us napping:—how we ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... boat was rowing down the Ouse, At eve, one summer day, Where Ely's tall cathedral peered Above the glassy way. Anon, sweet music on his ear, Comes floating from the fane, And listening, as with all his soul Sat old Canute the Dane; And reverent did he doff his crown, To join the clerkly prayer, While swelled old lauds and litanies Upon the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ely • W. D. Sweeting
... the CHANCELLOR standing at table. The SQUIRE, a great Parliamentary artist, attuned voice and manner to prevailing tone; avoided anything approaching oratorical style; plain business statement to make; accomplished it in fine head-clerkly manner. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, May 6, 1893 • Various
... walls. I will take you where an altar stands. There is no lack of holy priest to join their hands together. Your companion, Father Ambrose, as you call him, will do the office fittingly. He has essayed his clerkly skill already on others ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... doctrine that they preserved; but before there was time for these things to find their way into the wounds of his spirit, his expulsion from home had sent him forth to see another side of monkish and clerkly life. ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... significant that, whereas Labertouche himself was not seen either to enter or to leave the building at any time that day, an Attit mendicant did enter from Dhurrumtollah Street shortly after Frank had gone to lunch—and disappeared forthwith; while, in the dusk of evening, a slim Eurasian boy with a clerkly air left by the stairs to the alley. I say a boy, but he may have been thirty; he was carefully attired in clothing of the mode affected by the Anglo-Indian, but wore shoes that were almost heelless. His height may have been five-feet seven inches, but he carried ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... the genial society of Feuerbach. That jurist died in May 1833 (poisoned, say the Kasparites), a new guardian was appointed, and Kaspar lived with Dr. Meyer. Finding him incurably untruthful, the doctor ceased to provoke him by comments on his inaccuracies, and Kaspar got a small clerkly place. With this he was much dissatisfied, for he, like Feuerbach, had expected Lord Stanhope to take him to England. Feuerbach, in the dedication to Lord Stanhope of his book (1832), writes, 'Beyond the sea, in fair old England, you have prepared for him ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... back in a few days' time, if the War should be over in a few days' time you may expect me. I hope it won't. God forgive me for sayin' so, but I'll be more comfortable there. . . . Ay, d'ee hear me, Mr Pamphlett? More comfortable than here amidst women's tongues an' clerkly men's devices, an', what's worse, even the set-up whisperin' o' children. God forgive 'em an' forgive you! I'm a Polpier man, an' the last o' my stock; but I'll come back, if at all, to finish in ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... the next afternoon the Vicar of Bleakirk called at the Hall with a paper which he had found pinned to the church door. It was evidently a scrap torn from an old letter, and bore, scribbled in pencil by a clerkly hand, these words: "The young Squire Cartwright in straits by the foot-bridge, six miles toward Netherkirk. ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... folded up the paper, and put it in his pocket. A mere bit of ordinary clerkly writing; no character, no allure. Well, the actual chirography of the absentee would be made manifest before long. What was it like? Should he himself ever have a specimen of it in a letter ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... ladies and gentlemen were of various opinions, but all concentrated their rage on the poor, innocent little clerk, and panted for his clerkly death. In the midst of all this commotion the door-bell rang, and intensified it twofold, for nobody could get through to the door but by going around the house. This Superannuated finally did, and brought back with her the identical ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... "Very clerkly read," he spake, "and all runs smooth; methinks myself had been no poor scribe, were I but a clerk. Hadst thou written other matter, to betray my innocence, thou couldst not remember what I said, even word for word," he added gleefully. "Now I might strangle ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... with herself, and became of better heart, and set herself strongly to the learning of the clerkly lore; she gathered her wits together, and no longer looked for every day and every hour to bring about the return of the Champions, nor blamed the day and the hour because they failed therein, and in all wise she strove to get through the day ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... book-learning or clerkly skill, it is not worth so much as naming. The clerk was held to be a wondrous person in times when the "neck-verse" would save a man from the gallows; but "clerk" has far altered its meaning, and the modern ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... of Anjou. The story of his son is a story of peace, breaking like a quiet idyll the war-storms of his house. Alone of his race Fulk the Good waged no wars: his delight was to sit in the choir of Tours and to be called "Canon." One Martinmas eve Fulk was singing there in clerkly guise when the French king, Lewis d'Outremer, entered the church. "He sings like a priest," laughed the king as his nobles pointed mockingly to the figure of the Count-Canon. But Fulk was ready with ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... man of Genious need not model after BYRON's facsimile,' and so forth. Our correspondent does write a good hand; so good indeed, that we lament, as we gaze at it, that he does not know how to spell. A man may certainly be a 'Genious' without being able to write a clerkly hand; but a man who is not a 'Genious,' ought at least to be able to spell the word. As to writing 'too carefully,' our censor has mistaken the letter for the spirit of our remarks. . . . THE lines 'To my Mother' are replete with the poetry of feeling. Their literary execution ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... been a man of limited capacity and singular simplicity of character, formal and credulous, and tedious in his intercourse with the world. His letters to Lord Buckingham, written in a great clerkly hand, are full of solemn platitudes and ceremonious civilities; and whatever other excellent qualities he possessed, it cannot be inferred that he was a man of much mental reach or vigour. Obsolete in manners and ideas, and living in the ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... room crowded with oddments of furniture, including a desk which George Cannon had appropriated to his own exclusive use. This desk was open and a portion of its contents were spread abroad on the crimson cloth of the table. Among them Hilda noticed, with her accustomed clerkly eye, two numbers of The Hotel-Keeper and Boarding-House Review, several sheets of advertisement-scales, and a many-paged document with the heading, "Inventory of Furniture at No. 59 Preston Street"; also a large legal ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... of the residue of the fifty, as they stand in the column. They are not so imposing as John Hancock's on the Declaration, nor as small as a schoolmistress's copy; but assume all shapes and styles, from the "clerkly fist," to the genuine "crow-track," or ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... The posterity which in after times shall read of his voluntary martyrdom and heroic self-sacrifice in the cause of suffering humanity, must be somewhat better informed than Mr. Pereira himself; for we observe that his clerkly skill did not reach the point of enabling him to subscribe his name to the petition for habeas corpus, which is to figure so conspicuously in future history, it being more primitively witnessed by ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... he fondly had wooed, A love-stricken swain in a region campestris, Thus "clerkly" gave vent to his sorrowful mood, Ah! vota si ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 472 - Vol. XVII. No. 472., Saturday, January 22, 1831 • Various
... microscopic minority, as Lord Dufferin described it, when compared with the people proper, but still a very interesting class, seeing that it is of our own creation. It is composed almost entirely of those of the literary or clerkly castes who have received an ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... foreground of the mental picture, uprose a left-hand page of his pass book; and its tidings of great joy, written in clerkly hand, served to dispel ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... expected from him. Sir William forwarded excellent accounts to his brother of the behaviour of the heir to his estates. It was his way of rebuking the squire, and in return for it the squire, though somewhat comforted, despised his clerkly son, and lived to learn how very unjustly he did so. Adolescents, who have the taste for running into excesses, enjoy the breath of change as another form of excitement: change is a sort of debauch to them. They will delight infinitely in a simple country round of existence, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... doing little or nothing here (St. Louis), and I sent him to our clerk to work his way for a trip, measuring wood-piles, counting coal-boxes, and doing other clerkly duties, which he performed satisfactorily. He may go ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... running, a thing unprecedented. Dinner over, he slipped away to his rooms, lit a pipe, and read the letters, the contents of two of which, three including the Squire's formal one, are already known. Another, in a fine clerkly ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... on the morrow, when the noon was come, The Prince and Channa passed beyond the gates, Which opened to the signet of the King, Yet knew not they who rolled the great doors back It was the King's son in that merchant's robe, And in the clerkly dress his charioteer. Forth fared they by the common way afoot, Mingling with all the Sakya citizens, Seeing the glad and sad things of the town: The painted streets alive with hum of noon, The traders cross-legged ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... Doggie a good listener. To please him Doggie backed horses, through the old firm, for small sums. The fact of his being a man of large independent means both he and Phineas (to his credit) had kept a close secret, his clerkly origin divined and promulgated by Mo Shendish being unquestioningly accepted, so the bets proposed by Taffy were of a modest nature. Once he brought off a forty to one chance. Taffy rushed to him with the news, ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... read my article, for I sent five and twenty copies of the paper to as many traders. Others doubtless obtained the journal from the haughty brass-bound pursers (there are no "supercargoes" now) of the Sydney and Auckland steamers. For the steamers, with their high-collared, clerkly pursers, have supplanted for good the trim schooners, with their brown-faced, pyjama-clad supercargoes, and the romance of the South Seas has gone. But it has not gone in ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... action and the fierceness of his tone and gesture—a fierceness so grotesquely ill-attuned to his slender frame and clerkly attire left the company for a moment speechless with amazement. Then a mighty burst of laughter greeted him, above which sounded the shrill voice of Tyler, who held his sides, and down whose crimson cheeks two tears ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... public servant, receiving the appointment of Latin Secretary to the Council of Foreign Affairs. He knew some member of the Committee, who obtained his nomination. His duties were purely clerkly. It was his business to translate English despatches into Latin, and foreign despatches into English. He had nothing whatever to do with the shaping of the foreign policy of the Commonwealth. He was ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... a minute Toni stared at the two words "Leonard Dowson"; and a chill, as of anticipatory dread, swept over her at the sight of that firm, clerkly handwriting. ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... a factor's brain, Busied with his all-important balance of accounts, may deem Weighing words superfluous trouble: cheat to clerkly ears may seem Just the joke for friends to venture: but we are not friends, you see! When a gentleman is joked with,—if he's good at repartee, He rejoins, as do I—Sirrah, on your knees, withdraw in full! Beg my pardon, or be sure a kindly bullet through your skull Lets in light ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... house of worship, where in order due and fit, As by public vote directed, classed and ranked the people sit. Mistress first and good wife after, clerkly squire before the clown, From the brave coat lace-embroidered to the gray coat ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle |
