"Clerkly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... without imagination, the confidential clerk was impervious to surprise or shock. This was fortunate, for otherwise, his employment as practical aide to Average Jones would probably have driven him into a madhouse. He now ran his long, thin, clerkly hands through his ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... turning everything into ridicule, with bold figures and natural descriptions.' How invaluable he must have been in the Common-rooms at Oxford, then turned into guard-rooms, his eye upon some unlucky volunteer Don, who had put off his clerkly costume for a buff jacket, and could not manage his drill. Irresistible as his exterior is declared to have been, the original mind of Villiers was even far more influential. De Grammont tells us, 'he was extremely handsome, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... trying to find the simple-minded and good Dr. Strong's House. It is described as "a grave building in a courtyard, with a learned air about it that seemed very well suited to the stray rooks and jackdaws who came down from the Cathedral towers, and walked with a clerkly bearing ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... that, when dusk and darkness had fallen, the neighbourhood of his compound was haunted—not by the malignant and resident nat, but by the graceful and sinuous figure of a little Burmese girl! Once a stone, to which was attached a paper, was thrown into his room. On it was inscribed in a babu's clerkly hand: ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... such filth retreat, Go delve and ditch, in wet or dry, Turn groom, give horse and mule their meat, If you've no clerkly skill to ply; You'll gain enough, with husbandry, But—sow hempseed and such wild grasses, And where goes all you take thereby? - 'Tis all to taverns and ...
— Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations • Andrew Lang
... 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
... within sacred 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 of ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... serve as guide to the pilgrims, deeming he would surely light on someone compassionate enough to pay him a supper in guerdon of his fine stories. But the first folk he had offered his services to had bidden him begone because his ragged coat bespoke neither good guidance nor clerkly wit; so he had come back, downhearted and crestfallen, to the Bishop's wall, where he had his bit of sunshine and his kind gossip Marguerite. "They reckon," he said bitterly, "I am not learned enough to number them the relics and recount the miracles of Our Lady. Do they think my wits ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France
... which led from the second terrace and the pleasaunce, I almost overran the Prince himself. He was seated under a tree, a parchment of troubadours' songs lay by him, illuminated (to judge by the woeful pictures) by no decent monkish or clerkly hand. He had a bottle of Rhenish at hand, and looked the same hearty, hard-headed, ironic soldier he ever was, and yet, what is more strange, every ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... 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 his reply. "Know, my lord," wrote the Count of Anjou, "that a king unlearned is a crowned ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... granted too much, ye ask for more; I am not skill'd in your clerkly lore, I scorn your logic; I had rather die Than live like Hugo of Normandy: I am a Norseman, frank and plain; Ye must ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... addition, enhancing forever the value of this old copy of Pope's immortal poem, I find the following little note, in Lamb's clerkly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... Cuthbert justice, he had protested with all his might against the proposition of Father Francis to his mother to teach him some clerkly knowledge. He had yielded most unwillingly at last to her entreaties, backed as they were by the sound arguments and good sense of ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... book which I am quoting from is called "Indo-Anglian Literature," and is well stocked with "baboo" English—clerkly English, hooky English, acquired in the schools. Some of it is very funny, —almost as funny, perhaps, as what you and I produce when we try to write in a language not our own; but much of it is surprisingly correct and free. If I were going to quote good English—but I am not. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... shivered on lime-barges. The men had found food and rest in the Army, and now they were going to fight "niggers" - people who ran away if you shook a stick at them. Wherefore they cheered lustily when the rumour ran, and the shrewd, clerkly non-commissioned officers speculated on the chances of batta and of saving their pay. At Headquarters men said: "The Fore and Fit have never been under fire within the last generation. Let us, therefore, break them in easily by setting them to guard lines ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... with usury; 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 ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... 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
... strangers, although the junior had been seen at the ranch once before, the day Blake's troop was camped there on the way back from the Dragoons. There was the packet left by the orderly to be called for by officers arriving on the Yuma stage, addressed in clerkly hand, but Sancho, alas! could not read. Hovering as near as the gravity and dignity of his station would permit, he had heard the colonel's query about Blake. He pricked up his ears at once. Teniente Blake! Thirty miles east on the Maricopa road! Why, how was ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... tall; and when he was a lad fifteen years old, it became needful I should journey to certain cities and I travelled with great store of goods. But the daughter of my uncle (this gazelle) had learned gramarye and egromancy and clerkly craft[FN46] from her childhood; so she bewitched that son of mine to a calf, and my handmaid (his mother) to a heifer, and made them over to the herdsman's care. Now when I returned after a long time from my journey ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... I here tear up and burn all the feuds of Adlerstein," said Schlangenwald, producing from his pouch a collection of hostile literature, beginning from a crumpled strip of yellow parchment and ending with a coarse paper missive in the clerkly hand of burgher-bred Hugh Sorel, and bearing the crooked signatures of the last two Eberhards of Adlerstein—all with great seals of the eagle shield appended to them. A similar collection— which, with one or two other family defiances, and the letters ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Champion should perpetrate such spelling as the above; but those were days in which many a baron bold found it easier to inscribe his name on the scroll of fame, by dint of his trusty sword, than by the clerkly crowquill. ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... the hill, where an old color sergeant, pleased with his intelligence and his ambition to become a soldier of France, was teaching him to read and write. This friendly veteran was, in his comrades' eyes, a marvel of clerkly skill, for in those days the ability to read and write was by no means a universal possession among the soldiers ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... all three together till they came to a parting of the ways where stood a fair cross, and thereon letters red as blood. Sir Gawain was learned in clerkly lore, he read the letters wherein was writ that here was the border of Arthur's land, and let any man who came to the cross, and who bare the name of knight, bethink him well, since he might not ride far without strife and conflict, and the finding of such adventures as might lightly turn to ...
— The Romance of Morien • Jessie L. Weston
... examining the book more closely. It was a smallish volume but very thick, and with very many close-written pages, its stout leathern covers battered and stained, and an ill-looking thing I thought it; but opening it haphazard, I forgot all save the words I read (these written in Adam's small clerkly hand) for I came ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... others from the camp, went back to England by that clerkly messenger. No answers ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... is written in the French tongue," said Alleyne, "and in a right clerkly hand. This is how it runs: 'A le moult puissant et moult honorable chevalier, Sir Nigel Loring de Christchurch, de son tres fidele ami Sir Claude Latour, capitaine de la Compagnie blanche, chatelain de Biscar, grand seigneur de Montchateau, vavaseur de le renomme Gaston, ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... nigger, give a false account of yourself, and have no home, I hear," interrupts the captain, at the same time ordering a clerkly-looking individual who sits at a desk near an iron railing enclosing a tribune, to make the entry ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... hands! Friends, so ye are!—and shall prove it! Dear Arimbaldo, thou, like myself, art book-learned,—a clerkly soldier. Dost thou remember how in the Roman history it is told that the Treasury lacked money for the soldiers? The Consul convened the Nobles. 'Ye,' said he, 'that have the offices and dignity should be the first to pay for them.' Ye heed me, my friends; the nobles took the ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... 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 modes of a past age, he was respected ...
— 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
... it would be good for Griffith to be with his brother; and, moreover, we should hear of the latter. Nothing could be a greater contrast than his rare notifications or requests, scrawled on a single side of the quarto sheet, with Clarence's regular weekly lines of clerkly manuscript, telling all that could interest any of us, and covering every available flap up to the blank circle left ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... type—a man capable of dealing with the intrigues of a court and with problems of law, and, as such, suited for guiding the middle age of the kingdom, which the different qualities of his predecessors had been equally suited to found. Like his brother, Amalric I., he was a clerkly and studious king versed [v.03 p.0247] in law, and ready to discuss points of dogma. In an excellent sketch of Baldwin's character (xvi. cii.), William of Tyre tells us that he spent his spare time in reading and had a particular affection for history; that he ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... carelessly at the large, yellow envelope which was addressed to her in a clerkly hand, cast it carelessly aside and went on assiduously cleaning and oiling her gun. But the sight of it aroused Mrs. Thomas's curiosity, and after glancing at it once or twice over the top of her own letters, she could ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... same sense of honor, the same knightly bearing, the same passion for glory, and the same admiration for courage and prowess that had prevailed in the earlier days of its sway. But these were tempered by milder and more attractive virtues and accomplishments; the clerkly learning, which had held so humble a rank in the days when nobles could scarcely sign their names, had now risen into far higher estimation. Great warriors were now no longer ashamed to know how to read and write; on the contrary, the possession of learning and literature, the delicate arts ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... a very clever man," said I—"no, not a clever man, for clever signifies clerkly, and a clever man one who is able to read and write, and entitled to the benefit of his clergy or clerkship; but a person may be a very acute person without being able to read or write. I never saw a more ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... appeares by many of the auncient writers, about that time and since. And the great Princes, and Popes, and Sultans would one salute and greet an other sometime in frendship and sport, sometime in earnest and enmitie by ryming verses, & nothing seemed clerkly done, but must be done in ryme: Whereof we finde diuers examples from the time of th'Emperours Gracian & Valentinian downwardes; For then aboutes began the declination of the Romain Empire, by the notable inundations of the Hunnes and Vandalles ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... goodly 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 ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... commonplace transactions now invested by time with an accumulated, poignant significance, one smooth and clerkly, the other abrupt, with heavy, impatient strokes. Youth, probably, held at an unwelcome task; and, more than likely, Howat ... October, in seventeen fifty. Years of virility, of struggle and conquest, of iron—iron, James Polder had shown him, still uncorrupted, ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... alack that ye sent it back, It was written sae clerkly and well! Now the message it brought, and the boon that it sought, I must even say ...
— Phantasmagoria and Other Poems • Lewis Carroll
... 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 unworn ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... times in communication with this clerkly essence, both on its own ground and at the Bower, had no difficulty in identifying it when he saw it up in its dusty eyrie. To the second floor on which the window was situated, he ascended, much pre-occupied in mind by the uncertainties besetting the Roman Empire, ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... 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 ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... "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 thee slowly"; ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... to the French that with Indian aid they could easily drive the English into the sea; and the attempt was made. It must have been successful but for Clive. That remarkable young warrior rose from his subordinate desk, laid aside his clerkly pen, and gathering a little band of fighters round him, defeated both French and natives in the remarkable siege of Arcot. Then came the hideous tale of the "black hole of Calcutta," and Clive achieved revenge and completed his work of conquest ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... the old story with you," the Paymaster would say tolerantly. "You cannot see that if this country has not its wars and rumours of wars, its marchings-off and weedings-out, it would die of a rot. I hope you are not putting too many notions of that clerkly kind in the boy's head. Eh? I would be vexed to have my plans for him spoiled and a possible good soldier turned ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... strange tale which my Aunt Elinor had ended, speaking swiftly lest the worms grow impatient and Charon weigh anchor ere she had done: and the proofs of the tale's verity, set forth in a fair clerkly handwriting, rustled in my hand,—scratches of a long-rotted pen that transferred me to the right side of the blanket, and transformed the motley of a fool into the ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... and Easter of 774 at Rome. Thus the one contemporary authority tells the tale of the great alliance which was made on the Wednesday in Easter week: "On the fourth day of the week the aforesaid pontiff with all his nobles both clerkly and knightly went forth to S. Peter's Church and there {151} meeting the king in colloquy earnestly prayed him and with paternal affection admonished him to fulfil entirely that promise which his father of holy memory the dead king Pippin ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton
... bit more stir in him. Not that he lacks knightly courage—never a whit; carry him into battle, and he shall quit him like a man; but when all is said, he is fitter for the cloister, for he loveth better to sit at home with Joan of his knee, and a great clerkly book afore him wherein he will read by the hour, which is full well for a priest, but not for a noble of the King's Court. He never gave me an ill word (veriliest [truly], I marvel if ever he said 'I won't!' in all his ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... 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 envelope inscribed, ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... that we can't take such a risk as he is on any terms. A third caller, who really looked quite healthy except around the eyes, was also assured that he need not call again—"Because, you see," explained the clerkly wag, "it's no go for you to try to play your BRIGHT'S Disease on us!" When, however, the applicant was a robustious, long-necked, fresh individual, he was almost lifted from his feet in the rush of obliging young Boreals to show him into the room of the Medical Examiner; and when, now ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 • Various
... him were these days Of clerkly and sluggish calm— To the petrel the swooping gale! Austere he seemed, but the hearts Of all men beat in his breast; No fetter but galled his wrist, No wrong that was not his own. What if those eloquent lips Curled with ...
— The Sisters' Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... from Middletown in the afternoon, stopped at the post-office and got the mail. In it was a letter which she knew must be from her father, although the outer envelope was addressed in the same precise, clerkly hand which she associated ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... four days 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 hand, was ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell |
